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Her eyes narrowed and her chin firmed. ‘I told her that you would be supplying a temp to fill in.’
Her steady golden stare challenged him to deny it. The sheer novelty of anyone attempting to manipulate him drew a grudging admiration and a grin from Zac. She had guts, he’d give her that.
‘I will of course arrange a replacement, though I’m sure that our Miss Hill is irreplaceable.’
Unlike Rose, Jac didn’t hear the sarcasm, but she had recovered her power of speech, and looked relieved and enthusiastic as she almost fell over herself in her eagerness to agree and paint Rose as a cross between Superwoman and a saint.
In the periphery of his vision Zac was amused to see Rose squirming with embarrassment at having her praises sung so loudly. It would seem this twin was not into self-promotion. Not knowing Kate well enough, he didn’t know if this was a shared characteristic. The whole twin thing was fascinating—if twins were raised apart, did they turn out the same?
Ironic really that, from what Marco had revealed, the adopted twin had drawn the lucky straw on the parenting front, a caring family who were close and supportive, whereas this twin was raised by her biological father who could hardly be considered supportive, but Zac supposed she didn’t know any different.
Rose forced a smile that left her eyes suspicious and wary. Jac didn’t need to advise caution with this man, she had a brain, though admittedly not one that worked too well when she shared an enclosed space with him. His sheer overpowering physicality was rapidly undoing all the good work of the painkillers.
She took some comfort from the fact that his Greek home was not going to be a shoebox size... She was going to find out first-hand how the other half lived and she was curious, but not envious. She had lived in some pretty plush places over the years, depending on her dad’s fortunes, and some pretty basic places too. Given the option she would have taken plush, but it didn’t always equate with happiness.
One of the worst times she remembered growing up was when they were living in a lovely house in an upmarket area. Her dad had taken off to Paris and thecolleaguewho had come looking for her absent parent had called her a pretty little thing in a really creepy, sinister way. She’d not dared turn on a light every night that week because she’d seen him hanging around outside—she had hated that house.
‘I was just on my way home, Mr Adamos...?’ Hands stretched palm upwards in a mystified gesture, she arched a questioning brow, though she was less interested in why he was here than him leaving—fingers crossed he would take the hint.
‘Of course.’ Before Rose could begin to guess his intention, he reached out casually and caught her right hand, his long brown fingers curling around her wrist. The brush of his thumb against her palm sent a zigzag of sensation along her nerve endings and she forgot how to breathe.
It was a weirdly out-of-body moment as Rose watched, as though it were happening to someone else, as he placed a bunch of keys in her palm and closed her fingers over them.
‘I think you’ll need these.’
The contact lasted only seconds but the effect on Rose was electric. She blinked and opened her hand, knowing that she was staring at the keys like an idiot but it was better than the option of looking up at him. That was something she was delaying until her nervous system had re-established some protective boundaries.
‘Oh, I didn’t know that I’d...thank you.’ Until she opened her mouth she wasn’t sure she would sound totally sane, because what else could you call her reaction to the fleeting contact if not insane? Relieved by her steady delivery, she addressed the comment to a point over his left shoulder while convincing herself that the skin-peeling tingle was just a symptom of stress, like a headache without the pain—she already had the headache.
‘Not at all.’
Rose felt some of the tension leave her shoulders when he left the room with a clipped nod of his dark head.
‘Oh, my goodness. You know, Rose, he’s not really so bad, is he?’
His fiercest critic was won over by one smile. Rose rolled her eyes in despair. ‘I thought he was a merciless GGW?’ she observed drily.
CHAPTER FIVE
‘AH, MISSHILL.You are going home?’
Kill me now, Rose thought, closing her eyes and fixing an interested smile on her lips before she turned to face the tall figure who had materialised in the doorway. ‘Yes...?’ she said warily. He was half in and half out of the room but the disturbing skin tingling was sadly not halved.
She nodded, thinking he was not a shark and not white, he was more an olive gold, more a sleek, dangerous, unpredictable panther.
‘Excellent,’ he said briskly, turning his wrist to consult his wafer-thin expensive watch with narrowed eyes. She got a flash of lightly hair-roughened sinewy forearm as he appeared to make some silent calculation before fixing her with his deeply unnerving dark stare. ‘I’m heading out myself, so as we’re on the clock it will be simpler if I take you home and wait while you pack.’
It wasn’t even couched as a suggestion! This man was utterly unbelievable.
And I am pathetic, she told herself as shejuststopped herself nodding in agreement. The man spoke and people jumped. You could sort of see why, she conceded, studying his face. It was no hardship, but she wasn’t going to be one of that number.
He took a commanding personality to the next level. It was easy to see why people didn’t question, they just went along without argument.
As he began to turn, clearly expecting her to follow, Rose, who was rarely the voice of dissent and hated confrontation, experienced an uncharacteristic surge of defiance, and along with it came a rush of resentment she hadn’t even known she was nursing until it bubbled up like water under pressure to the surface.
She’d spent her lifefollowing, her opinion never even considered by her dad, and now she was always the one who said she didn’t mind what pizza topping, what film... She told herself it didn’t matter, they were inconsequential things, but it did matter.
There had to come a time to stop following and stand your ground.
