Page 11 of Not Safe for Work

“Belinda said she booked our tickets together,” he says, his gaze focused out the window.

Dammit, Belinda. This is my blackmail.

I look around the room again. “Where’s your dad? Is he on this flight, too?”

Rafe shakes his head. “No, he left yesterday to meet with the other execs before the retreat begins.”

He shifts in his seat, his hips thrusting as he tugs on the legs of his jeans and settles back. Someone, somewhere, must have turned up the furnace as I stare at his denim-clad thighs, willing my gaze away from anywhere deemed inappropriate by the WMC Purcell HR manual.

Rafe glances at me, giving me a once-over. “A little early to be drinking, isn’t it, Trishara?” he asks, eyeing the delicate glass perched in my hand.

Pinning him with a defiant stare, I drain the rest of the contents in one gulp. I might regret that later. “It’s five p.m. in London.”

“We aren’t in London.”

I place the glass on the low table between us. “You’re almost as smart as everyone pretends you are, Rafe.”

A muscle tics in the precise line of his chiseled jaw, and he turns back to gaze out the window. Assuming that ends our conversation, I flip my book open.

“What are you reading?” He tips his head to the side and peers at the cover. I was just getting to the part where the main character was about to give a revenge blowjob to the hot fae prince who kidnapped her, but there’s no way I’m telling Rafe that.

“Why are you turning red?” he asks, a light dancing in his eyes.

My nostrils flare. I refuse to be embarrassed. I’m a grown woman, and thanks to my trust issues with the entire male species, it’s been almost a year since I’ve had sex. There’s nothing wrong with fulfilling my needs through the pages of a smutty novel. Rafe raises an arrogant eyebrow when I remain silent.

“You can borrow it when I’m done,” I answer. “Maybe you’ll learn something about how to please a woman.”

I don’t wait for a response. Instead, I ignore him and return to my reading, finding it impossible to concentrate thanks to his suffocating presence.

A moment later, Rafe stands and snags my empty drink.

“What are you doing?” I ask.

He peers down at me with the delicate glass dangling from one of his large hands.

“Getting you a refill.”

“Oh… thanks.”

He tips his chin and heads for the bar.

My frown deepens as I wonder why on earth he’s being nice to me.

Rafe and I don’t do nice.

The first time I met him was a few weeks after I’d started at WMC. I was distracted by my phone and nearly crashed into him in the hall. He grabbed me to keep me from falling, and then I looked up into the most beautiful, deep brown eyes I’d ever seen.

We stared at each other for several seconds, and it sounds ridiculous, but it almost felt like a movie. Like that moment when the crowd parts and you see someone across the room and zap—instant attraction.

But I immediately recoiled from it. After what happened with Leo, I wasn’t about to fall for another pretty face. And certainly not one at the office. I froze up, shook him off, and then walked away.

Over the next few months, I did my best to avoid him, though it wasn’t always possible due to the nature of our work. He was smart and charismatic, and he reminded me too much of Leo—not physically—but Rafe had the same effortless, confident aura. It scared me. He scared me.

It was about a year into my time at WMC when we were assigned to the same project and got into a heated disagreement about how to reroute a pipeline around a protected wetland. His method was cheaper and quicker, but I was positive it would result in an inferior outcome. We argued about it until we reached a begrudging compromise, but neither of us was satisfied.

From that moment on, we couldn’t seem to agree on anything. We butted heads at every turn. Slowly, we became something else. Slowly, we became adversaries. Everything became a competition between us. Who could work the fastest. Who could solve problems the most efficiently. Who could produce the best results.

And it’s been that way ever since.