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She’d been an exhausted, inexperienced mother of a toddler who had no clue if she could do the job, much less commit to the hours required, when she’d interviewed to work for him. But he’d seen something in her nevertheless. Chutzpah, he’d said. A raging desire to pull herself up by the bootstraps that he understood.
He expected her to work hard, but he worked harder. And he’d never made her feel as if he took her for granted. Despite all she’d given up in order to work with him—time with her family, romantic relationships…
She shook her head and settled deeper into the chair.
“What ifs” were never worth the time spent dwelling on them. Life was good. Her family was healthy and happy. She loved her job. She had the security that came with having a roof over her head. What more could she want?
A devilish little voice whispered into her ear. Love. Intimacy. Romance. Someone who puts your needs first.
Hence the dirty weekend.
When her phone buzzed in her pocket, she found herself unsurprised to find a message from Angus.
She glanced at Cat, only to find her back typing at her ancient laptop.
The message asked if she was keen to start watching the final season of Warlock Academy on Netflix—a decade-old schlocky, supernatural teen drama they were both obsessed with. Another part of her job description—find TV shows just soapy enough to engage Angus and brain-numbing enough to let his active mind slow down so he could fall asleep at a reasonable hour.
She messaged back.
You bet.
Then she grabbed the remote, changed the channel, poked her tongue out at Cat when her sister groaned and settled in to watch teenaged witches and demons battle it out at a high school football match.
Though she kept shifting in her seat, unable to find a comfy spot.
For there was no denying that if she had to choose between her upcoming weekend away, with a handsome, eligible doctor who’d made it all too clear how much he liked her, or snuggling at home watching TV with a man who wasn’t even in the room, she’d choose the latter. Every time.
Worse, this was the first time admitting as much actually unnerved her.
Cat was right about one thing. Something had to give.
CHAPTER TWO (#u956244a0-1b45-5a83-acdb-6614758dfe05)
ANGUS LEANT BACK in his office chair, finger tapping against his lips as he looked over the impressive wall pinned with striking images, word clusters and thought clouds framing the penultimate drafts of the Remède rebranding that the graphics team had moved into his office earlier that morning.
Louis Fournier, the venerable president of the Remède cosmetics company, was just outside, leaning over Lucinda’s desk.
Angus didn’t need to see Lucinda’s face. From the way she sat forward in her chair, chin resting on her palm, chair swinging from side to side, it was clear she was flirting her heart out.
Angus felt the smile start in his throat before it even reached his mouth. Atta girl.
Fitz’s assistant—Velma—was built like a German tank with the accent to match. She was stern, efficient and ferociously protective of her charge. Fitz claimed he couldn’t be trusted with anyone more tempting under his nose all day long. Everyone knew he adored Velma as much as Velma doted on him.
Charlie’s new right hand—Kumar—was only slightly more human than Charlie. But, as work mates, they fit together like two pieces of a puzzle no one else understood.
In fact, there was not one single staff member at the Big Picture Group who was carried by someone else. Fitz for all his insouciance, was a ruthless recruiter. They ran a seriously tight ship.
And yet none of them held a candle to Lucinda.
The way she went about things was instinctive. And tenacious. She knew when to be brusque, when to be dulcet, when to be straight down the line and when to bewitch until she had even the most difficult clients eating out of her hand in a matter of minutes.
She was out there right now, wearing Remède’s Someday perfume. He’d seen it on her desk about an hour earlier. There was a story there, about her parents, both gone long before he’d met her. Lucinda kept a bottle in a drawer as a reminder of them, but she only pulled it out when Louis was on his way.
As if she felt his thoughts, Lucinda turned to look over her shoulder, the floppy frills at her collar framing her face, her long, dark hair swinging, her red lips curled into a half-smile.
The crack of the glass door created a slight distortion. He shifted slightly so he could see her whole face. It was a good face. Candid, spirited, empirically lovely and as familiar to him as his own.
A pair of small lines criss-crossed above her nose. A rare indicator of indecision.
Perhaps rare was the wrong word, for the criss-cross of lines over her nose had shown up more and more over the past weeks. Then there was that new lipstick. Darker, glossier than usual. She’d cut sugar from her coffee. Added infinitesimal pauses before each sentence. All of which, in Angus’s mind, spoke to restlessness. To a change in the air.
And he was not a man who liked change.
She lifted a single eyebrow in question. Ready?
It took him a moment to remember what he was meant to be ready for.
Louis Fournier. Remède. Saving his old friend’s business. He nodded curtly.
The criss-cross above her nose flickered off and on before she turned back to finish up with Louis.
Angus breathed out hard and rolled his shoulders.
His instinct for branding came from the ability to tap into the greater collective human subconscious. To mine people’s baser urges in order to encourage—no, demand—that they look to his clients to fulfil those needs.
Tapping into Lucinda’s baser needs to find out what was going on in her subconscious was not something he had any intention of doing.
Whatever was going on with Lucinda did not impact on her work. It would pass. Everything did. Eventually. And, if not, he’d drag it out of her when he had the Remèdeaccount off his plate.
Angus pressed out of his chair and moved to look over the mood wall one last time to make sure nothing had been missed. For nothing was ever perfect. Not for him. There were always improvements to make.
A childhood spent being told that he was a mistake by the procession of men in his mother’s life, a blight, in the way, had not been pleasant. But there was no doubt his burning need to prove them wrong was the root of his success. The reason he never stopped striving to do better, to be better, to reach for more.
Without them would he have been standing there in his huge corner office? Would he have had the gumption to land Louis Fournier as a client? As a mentor? As a friend?
He heard Lucinda’s laughter from beyond the glass wall and he turned away from the mood board. She’d pinch him if she heard him speak that way about the business. Literally. She’d growl at him to “chillax”. To appreciate all he’d accomplished. To enjoy the spoils.
His partners had no problem revelling in the benefits of their success. The highlight for Fitz had been when they’d been written up in GQ. Charlie’s highlight had come when the university from which he’d graduated with his doctorate in mathematics had enlisted him to manage their financial matters.
Angus’s one bright, shining moment?
It hadn’t hit him yet. Or, more precisely, for him it wasn’t about a moment. It was about moving forward. Stopping to look back, even for a moment, could halt the momentum he’d worked so hard to achieve. So he’d keep working. Keep striving. Keep kicking hard beneath the surface to make sure it continued.
Voices drifted through the glass door leading from Lucinda’s desk to his as Lucinda waved Louis into the office. Angus moved to meet them halfway.
“Gus,” said the older gentleman, a glint in his eye, and a goodly dose of French still in his accent despite his years spent in Australia. “Good of you to squeeze me in this morning.”
Angus’s gaze slid to Lucinda who was quietly shutting the door behind her. “Did you flirt him into calling me that?”
She opened her eyes wide and mouthed, “Who me?”
At which Louis scoffed. “You do not answer to Gus? I am an old man. Anything I can do to save the time I have left…”
“Fair enough,” said Angus. “Then I’d suggest you call that one Cindy. Every lost syllable helps.”
Louis looked over his shoulder in time to see Lucinda scowl menacingly Angus’s way. She tried to right herself, but only came across looking guiltier still.
Louis’s resultant laughter was rich and deep, full of the smoke left by a lifetime of cigars. “You two. Even if I did not have a business to save, I would pay simply to watch you spar.”
The guilt on Lucinda’s face made way for chagrin as Louis reminded him of their Hail Mary attempt to right his company’s ancient ship. For Remède, one of the world’s most revered beauty brands, was on the verge of collapse.
It would not happen on Angus’s watch. In fact, if he was on the hunt for a highlight, saving Remède from ruin would come close.
For, once upon a time, Louis Fournier had saved him.
Post-university, making waves as the youngest-ever junior partner in a whiz-bang upstart marketing firm, he’d met Louis at an industry night at which the older man had been a plus one.
They’d started up a conversation at the bar and found commonality in their disinterest in schmoozing and their love of French New Wave cinema.
The conversation had moved to the hotel lounge, leading to Angus missing the moment his team had won an award that night. Not that it had mattered. In the hour he’d spent with Louis he had already mentally moved on.
For Louis Fournier was the first man his senior who had seen straight through the cool veneer, the steely ambition, to the hunger beneath. The hunger to truly make a difference. And to show Angus that hunger had inherent value.
“Latte, Monsieur Fournier?” Lucinda asked, snapping Angus back to the present. “Milk, no sugar?”
“Oui. Merci.”
Lucinda didn’t need to ask for Angus’s order. She knew how he liked his coffee, his steak, his calendar. She knew his shirt size, his in-seam measurements and his favourite underwear—having restocked the closet in his private bathroom many times over.
She also knew when to pass the team baton to Angus, to switch off the glamour and melt into the background.
When she returned a few minutes later, bringing the neat silver tray and comforting aroma of hot coffee into the room, Angus hid his smile behind his hand. He couldn’t remember the last time Lucinda had brought him coffee rather than farming it out to an intern. The last time he’d asked if she’d be so kind, she’d laughed so hard he’d heard it even after she’d closed the door between them.
But Louis was old-school. The kind of gentlemen who would never enter a room before a woman, who smiled and nodded at every person who met his eye. And Lucinda had a huge soft spot for the man.
She placed Louis’s elegant, heat-resistant, double-layered glass on the table at his elbow, alongside a plate of small French pastries.
“Ah,” Louis said, eyes closing against the heavenly scent. “Parfait.” Angus recognised his mug in an instant. She’d bought it for him for… Lent? The Queen’s birthday? International Pirate Day? He’d lost track of the occasions once their gift-buying had become a blood sport.
He turned the mug. On one side it boasted his favourite Winston Churchill quote: Success is not final, failure is not fatal; it is the courage to continue that counts. The other side of the mug had a tacky photo of a penguin pushing another penguin off an ice shelf.
When he looked up, Lucinda was leaning over him, placing a smaller plate of pastries beside him. The frills trickling fussily down the front of her shirt weighed the fabric down, giving him a glimpse of white lace. The swell of female curves.
He tensed and looked up. Her eyes were on her work, a smile curving the glossy red of her lips. Definitely a new colour for her. It suited her. A great deal. So much so, he’d found himself staring. Considering.
Reminding himself this was Lucinda. His assistant. His right hand. His foundation. His conscience. The yin to his yang. The light to his dark. He could not do what he did without her.
Therefore, there was no staring at her lips. Or beyond the frills of her shirt. Or at any other part of her. No matter how inviting. No matter how lovely. Those were the rules he’d set himself from day one when he’d first seen her sitting outside Fitz’s office waiting for an interview, foot tapping with nerves, the rest of her glowing with eagerness, charm and life.
Her eyes shifted to his.
“Appreciate it,” he murmured.
“My pleasure,” she replied, though the criss-cross of creases over her nose were back.
Damn it.
Angus schooled his features until he knew he appeared cool, unmoved, the very picture of ambivalence—an expression learned over many years at the feet of those who’d enjoyed it when he flinched.
It was an expression that had once made an intern cry. Not a deliberate move, but there you go. Lucinda, on the other hand, raised a single eyebrow. Slowly. As if she was bemused he was trying such a move on her.
“Need anything else?” she asked, under her breath.
I need you to stand up, he thought, his eyes starting to water with the effort not to stray. He wondered for a brief moment if Fitz’s tank-like assistant Velma had a twin sister he could hire instead.
Lucinda righted herself—thank everything good and holy—her glossy dark hair swinging past her shoulders and showering him in the scent of her shampoo; coconut and lime, making him think of cocktails. Of holidays. Of Christmas parties. One in particular that he did his very best not to think about. Especially in the middle of important business meetings.
“Shall I leave you boys to it?” she asked, hip cocking, swinging her pencil-skirt-clad backside right into his eyeline.
Angus’s gaze shot to the ceiling. Was that a spider’s web on the light fixture?
“Merci, Lucinda,” Louis said, saving Angus from having to answer. “You are not only an utter delight and a great beauty, with excellent taste in perfume, you can now add coffee angel to your list of super powers.”
“And I shall.”
“In fact, have you ever considered cosmetic modelling?”
Lucinda un-cocked her hip. “What’s that, now?”
“Your skin is like satin, cherie.”
“My skin?”
“Louis,” said Angus, his voice a little gruff. “Are you making a move on my girl?”
At that Lucinda twisted and pinned Angus with a look he’d never seen before. Her eyes were wide, pink sweeping fast across her cheeks. Her mouth opened as if she was about to say something before she snapped it shut and turned slowly back to Louis.
“Monsieur Fournier, beneath the satiny veneer of my glorious Remèdefoundation is the lamentable skin of the mother of an eight-year-old who refuses to sleep past five in the morning.”
Then she bent down and kissed the older man on the cheek.
“But you are sweet for pretending. Now, stop distracting me. I am an important person with important work to do.” With that she stalked out of the room.
Both men followed with their eyes.
Louis broke the silence. “Never let that one go.”
“Count on it,” Angus promised, even if the amazing Velma did in fact have a nicer twin.
