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Why had he kissed her, why had she kissed him back, why had she liked it...? Some of the answers were obvious even in her shocked state—she was no expert, but it seemed safe to assume, with her lips still tingling, that he was a good kisser.
Zac really found that stutter attractive, and with lips pumped up from the kiss, her eyes sparking, she looked—It did not matter what she looked like, he reminded himself. This was Marco’s sister-in-law and as such off limits.
He had seen an opportunity and...en route to a smooth rationalisation of his actions his thoughts hit a truth roadblock. What he had seen was her mouth, the humiliation she had been trying to shrug off in her eyes, and the guy who had put it there.
He had wanted to flatten the guy right there and then. That not being an option in a civilised world, sadly, he had gone for the next best thing...give the loser a taste of his own medicine.
Zac, who considered himself a pretty good judge of character, had summed up the guy in one glance as a pretentious idiot with an inflated sense of his own importance. You could tell a lot from a glance, and when you’d heard his victim laugh about the humiliating experience—it had given meaning to the phraseputting a brave face on it.
And, less nobly, because he’d recognised a chance to satisfy his curiosity. Was he right to suspect there was a sizzling sensuality waiting to be coaxed into life? Turned out there was not much coaxing required.
And now he knew, which was a punishment in itself because the kiss was it. It was not going anywhere, he wouldn’t allow it to. He’d lost one friend and he wasn’t going to lose another. Marco would not approve of anything less than a saint for his sister-in-law and Zac was not a saint.
‘I think that...what’s his name...your boyfriend is realising what he has missed, which is what you wanted...no?’
Zac, on the other hand, was realising what he could not have. He continued to feel the knowledge like a nerve exposed to cold air, and he only had himself to blame. Taking responsibility didn’t cool the heat inside that had nowhere to go, or answer the one question in this self-confessional mode he was dodging, namely the strength of his reaction to the sight of the man who had humiliated Rose.
‘He works for you and he’s not my boyfriend.’ She’d been wondering how much he’d overheard and now she knew—everything!
‘He will tell everyone that he saw...’ Her eyes slid from his. ‘And by this time tomorrow just about everyone will know. They will think...’ She looked at him, suspicion beginning to dawn in her bright eyes. ‘That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?’ Thewhyremained.
He gave a magnificently unconcerned shrug. ‘You are making a big thing of one little kiss,’ he complained, unwilling to admit that he had broken one of his own cardinal rules. Hard to take the high ground when he had indulged in the sort of behaviour he would have condemned in anyone else—workplace liaisons never ended well.
Despite multiple examples that disproved the rule, Zac clung to this belief.
‘Believe me, I know, by the time you get back to work this will be yesterday’s news. For the life of me,’ he added in a disgruntled tone, ‘I have no idea why you’re so bothered about what this guy thinks, unless you were hoping to take up where you left off?’
Rose drew in a wrathful indignant breath. ‘I’m not that desperate!’
‘I’m glad you know your own worth.’
She looked up at him expecting to see something smug or sarcastic in his face but there wasn’t. He looked...intense...?
‘And now,’ he continued, ‘your accountant knows that too. The punishment fits the crime, he’s humiliated.’ He watched her face. ‘Because on the dating food chain I come a little higher than an accountant, shallow but true,’ he added before she could respond. ‘You can thank me another time.’ He followed up the outrageous suggestion with a throaty laugh when she hid a smile behind her hand. ‘Good to know that you’re not all saint. Revenge can taste very sweet, can’t it?’
So did he, she thought, the taste of him still in her mouth. He’d kissed her to teach Andy a lesson, but she’d learnt one too, an important one for her self-preservation, namely she was not at all indifferent to Zac Adamos and to kiss him for real would be very dangerous.
‘Shall I sack him?’
She blinked at the casual offer.
‘What?’
‘Sack him.’
‘You can’t do that.’
‘I think you’ll find that I can... Oh, you mean the legality? Don’t worry, I’m sure he has crossed a line at some point...most people have.’
‘Not me!’ she snapped back huffily. ‘You shouldn’t judge people by your own standards.’ Her eyes widened on his face in horror. ‘I said that out loud, didn’t I?’
‘You did, but relax, and for the record I do not judge people by my own standards...most people have scruples.’ He allowed his cynical gaze to move across her shocked and disapproving face. ‘It gives me an advantage.’
Rose, her full lips still pursed in disapproval, had arranged herself in the cushioned leather luxury of a low-slung seat with a lot more leg room than she needed when Zac slid sinuously in.
He turned and looked at her, after a long silence finally voicing the question. ‘Where do you live?’
‘Oh, sorry!’ She told him, expecting him to ask directions—the unfashionable backwater would not be one of his stylish haunts—but he just nodded.
