AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Not waiting for his response, she grabbed her bag and suitcase and went in search of the bedroom.
Logan released a slow breath after Cassidy headed out of sight and scrubbed his hand over his face.
He was very glad that she hadn’t taken up the offer of his shirt. Just the thought of her in that and nothing else had been enough to send his blood pressure sky high again. But what would she be wearing instead? Her underwear? Nothing?
Cursing beneath his breath as his body responded with predictable urgency, he ripped the cap off the nearest water bottle and guzzled the liquid to cool himself down.
When Cassidy had stepped into his car dressed in a suit, and with her hair fastidiously tied back, despite his questioning of her, he’d breathed a sigh of relief that his normal EA had returned, but she kept doing things that threw him off centre.
Like her excitement over the plane taking off. She’d been right when she’d said she’d come across as unsophisticated. None of the other women he dated would have ever shown such a natural reaction, always carefully considering how they looked before opening their mouths, and to his disbelief he’d found himself enjoying Cassidy’s uncensored delight.
He’d enjoyed her smile even more. It had transformed her face from attractive to stunning and he’d been unable to look away. It was as if he’d never seen the woman smile before and with a frown he realised that he couldn’t remember a time when he had. Not like that, anyway. She came to work, she did her job, and then she went home. It was the way he liked it and the way he wanted it to remain.
Wondering if she was as innocent in other matters as she was in flying, Logan gave himself a mental dressing down. He recognised that he was probably only seeking a distraction from thinking about his current problems, but his EA was off limits. Besides, she already had a lover. The tall, well-built guy who had kissed her goodbye in her doorway. So not that innocent after all.
His jaw clenched at the thought of her with some unknown man, and he didn’t like the way that affected him either. Cassidy could be with ten men and it wouldn’t have anything to do with him.
Reminding himself that he might be his father’s son but he most definitely did not behave like him with his employees, he forced his mind to forget Cassidy’s sweet smile and instead think about the more important issue of what he was going to say to his brother after he arrived in Arrantino.
He also reminded himself that Cassidy’s childhood was none of his business and that he did not get personal with his EAs. Personal equalled complicated and complicated equalled trouble. All he needed to know about Cassidy was whether she was fit enough to do her job, not how she had coped with all the difficulties she had obviously faced.
He rolled his shoulders and felt the muscles in his back bunch and release. Maybe his sudden interest in her was not only to do with shock, but because he didn’t want to think about going home. Going home to face the restricted life of a sitting monarch.
Not if he could help it.
It was enough to sometimes feel that he was like his father, a man who had always been in control of his surroundings—Logan certainly didn’t want to return and take up the same job that he had held. But he also knew that he’d do anything for his brother after watching him battle so much to be well. It left him in quite a dilemma.
Unbidden, his gaze shifted to the rear of the plane. To Cassidy. He scrubbed a hand over his face, resigned to the fact that it was going to be a long night.
CHAPTER FOUR
ARRANTINO WAS BEAUTIFUL.
Cassidy couldn’t take her eyes off the landscape she could see from her vantage point in the plane as they were coming in to land. High mountains and deep green valleys and villages dotted outside the main city, which looked to have a wall running around the perimeter and a river winding through it. Not that she could see it all, but she could see that it was nestled on the coast and the sand looked like a ribbon of gold against the deep blue of the Mediterranean.
A blue the exact shade of Logan’s eyes.
Not that she should be thinking about his eyes. Or any other part of his anatomy, for that matter. Today was a new day and it was going to be the exact opposite of the day before.
To her surprise she’d managed to sleep most of the night in the hugely comfortable bed and she was showered and dressed for success, as the twins would say.
In the end she’d slept in her knickers and blouse and it had been okay. With any luck Logan would sort out this issue with his brother quickly and they’d be back home by tonight New York time before she even needed to launder anything.
She wondered what was behind Logan’s staunch determination that he would not be King. She could guess that some of it had to do with the fact that he didn’t want to change his life and maybe he didn’t want to move back to Arrantino, but his comment that he wasn’t king material had made her curious.
If anyone was king material, in her mind, it was her boss. He commanded attention and respect wherever he went, without even trying, and people lined up to get his advice. Admittedly that advice was usually business related but she didn’t believe for a second that his keen intelligence was limited to running a bank. Especially since he’d completely turned it around in the five years he’d been at the helm and lifted it from just another boutique investment bank into a global concern. His reach into the Australasian market was the last bastion he had to conquer and she knew he wouldn’t rest until he had, and he would because he worked harder than any person she’d ever met before.
His determination was a formidable force and she was only glad it was his brother who had to face it and not her.
The image of him stalking toward her in his apartment building as he’d told her that his needs took precedence over Peta’s sent a hot, shivery sensation down her spine, pooling low in her pelvis. Which did not bode well for the business-as-usual front she planned to adopt.
The last thing she had ever wanted was to find her boss sexually attractive and for those few moments, and a few afterwards when she’d caught the look in his eyes, that was how she had felt.
And it didn’t seem to matter that he was exactly the kind of man her dear father had warned her and Peta away from when they had hit their teenage years. Men who were too good looking for their own good, and expected everything to drop into their laps. Cassidy wasn’t sure if Logan expected it, or if it just happened because of who he was, but there was no doubt that it did happen. Her sister’s question about whether she was in love with him returned like a bomb. But she wasn’t in love with Logan, just her job.
A job she relied on too much to ever put it in jeopardy by developing feelings for her boss. Her world had fallen apart before, and now, with her sister throwing in the curveball of her impending marriage, it was more imperative than ever that Cassidy keep at least one aspect of her life the same. Because while most people could deal with change relatively easily, the whole concept of it made her want to run for the hills.
Feeling skittish about what lay ahead, she went online on her laptop and did another check on what was being reported, to find that not only was news of the King’s affair being bandied around but the breaking news was that he planned to abdicate as well.
