A diva didn’t get any less diva-ish just because she was good at her job. Or good to look at. And she was, in a lanky, Keira Knightley kind of way. The glass walls of his office had given him plenty of opportunity to conduct an assessment when she was otherwise engaged. Or when she wasn’t. And he’d used them to the fullest.

He’d been grooming Dean to replace him when he moved on at the end of his stint, but after Wednesday’s spectacular meltdown …

Let her walk.

The firm could well do without high-maintenance attention seekers.

Yet here he was, cap in bloody hand, sent to persuade her to reconsider, because she’d walked on his watch. Which apparently made getting her back his responsibility.

The tense anger of Broadmore’s human resources director, Rifkin, yesterday afternoon echoed back at him. Implying, but never saying outright, that Dean’s hasty departure was somehow his fault. As if her inability to accept constructive criticism and cede to authority weren’t the bulk of the problem. He’d argued that, but Rifkin had challenged him with a list of staff they’d lost since he’d come aboard and asked how they could all develop such terminal flaws after years of working together well.

Implication: his fault.

Harry’s interpretation: dead wood, well rid of.

Just because someone had been around for a while didn’t mean they were still adding value.

Even if she was the most talented person on his team.

Then again Rifkin hadn’t seen the words on the glass of his office wall …

‘Eyes forward, handsome,’ the vixen in his lap purred as if he’d been checking out her rack, not her friend serving celery sticks to the ravenous hordes. He dragged his focus reluctantly back to her eyes, which were more than a little liquor-glazed.

He was definitely off his game.

‘Are you sure you’re not uncomfortable?’ he tried, again.

‘No, I’m great.’ She wiggled her butt down further, which only served to make him significantly less comfortable.

A tiny brunette flopped down into the empty half-space next to them. Not quite big enough for her, leaving her pressed closely to him and, for half a moment, he feared his troubles had just doubled.

But then her eyes filled with casual sparkle and she leaned around him and said, ‘All right, Tori?’

Tori. That was what she’d mumbled while he was busy staring at Izzy Dean. And the little brunette was not a flanking assault; she was the extremely welcome cavalry.

‘Fantastic, Poppy.’ Tori waved her friend’s concern away with dramatic sweeps. ‘Having a great time. Have you met Harry?’

The brunette thrust out her hand. ‘Hello, Poppy Spencer. This is my flat.’

Which was pretty much polite social code for ‘who are you and who invited you?’ Just because he’d been out of the scene for a few years didn’t mean he’d forgotten the rules. Shaking Poppy’s hand was the perfect excuse to ease Tori into a slightly more upright and appropriate position without causing offence.

‘Nice to meet you,’ Harry hedged, unwilling to give away too much. ‘So this is your party?’

‘My flatmate’s actually. She’s just out of a dreadful job.’

‘Do you always celebrate employment changes?’

‘This one we do. Izzy’s been miserable for months. Lousy job, lousy new boss. She’s well out of it.’

Lousy?

‘Maybe a job is what you make it,’ Harry defended.

‘She made that one long enough.’ Tori pouted prettily. ‘You can’t polish a turd.’

To have his entire career aspiration and management expertise summarily written off stung. Like a bitch.

‘Would you like a drink, Harry?’ Poppy offered, though he wasn’t sure how she thought he would manage a glass with both hands full of busty, wriggling woman.

‘I’d love one,’ he said. ‘And I wouldn’t mind meeting your flatmate. Congratulate her on her … new-found freedom.’

Drag her back to the firm kicking and screaming, if necessary.

‘Conveniently they’re in the same place. Izzy’s hiding in the kitchen.’

Hiding? That wasn’t the woman he knew. Isadora Dean was always the centre of attention in any space. Laughing and shaking back her dark blond mop and generally being delightful to her adoring audience.

And thoroughly distracting to him.

She should have been in her element at a party that was all about her.

He set Tori to her feet and she happily took him by his loosened tie and led him through the crowd to the kitchen.

‘Izzy,’ she gushed dramatically, entering with him and Poppy in tow. ‘A man without a drink is a tragedy not to be borne.’

The woman in question emerged from behind the fridge door, a warm smile on her face, and turned automatically to the sink full of ice and beer. But the smile died the moment she saw who stood in her kitchen.

‘What the bloody hell are you doing here?’

‘Izzy!’ Poppy’s shock could have been for the language as much as the tone.

‘Dean.’ He nodded, cautiously.

‘What is he doing here?’ she hissed again, as if he weren’t in the room. Kind of desperately.

‘He’s a guest …’ Tory squinted, then twisted to look at him. ‘Isn’t he?’

‘He’s my boss!’ Dean sputtered.

Tori dropped his tie and it fell, flaccid, against his suit. Both women turned on him and there was a surprising amount of unity in the three angry female faces now facing him.

‘Ex-boss,’ he reminded her. Though hopefully not for long. He thrust his hand out to finish the introductions Poppy had started. ‘Harry Mitchell.’

‘You’re really him?’ Poppy squeaked.

‘But you’re gorgeous,’ Tori helpfully contributed. ‘I imagined you hideous and old.’

Dean’s face flamed. ‘Tori! Bad enough you’ve been giving him a lap dance—’

She rolled her eyes. ‘I didn’t know, Iz. Obviously.’

Dean reached for her glass and clutched it, white-knuckled, like a weapon. ‘Why are you here?’

‘To see you.’

‘I hope you’re not planning on begging her to come back.’ Poppy laughed. ‘You could have saved yourself the tube fare.’ Begging. Cajoling. Bribing. Little Miss Potty-Mouth had suddenly become Britain’s most wanted. As galling as that was.

‘There was an email circulating, inviting all staff.’ He shrugged. ‘I’m staff.’

‘You’re not staff, you’re my supervisor,’ Dean pointed out. He took a shred of comfort from her use of the present tense.

‘Management weren’t excluded,’ he thrust. As if staff communiques usually came with small print.

‘So, now even my party invites are sub-standard?’ she parried. ‘Common decency excludes you.’

Yeah, this was more the Isadora Dean he recognised. Uptight and defensive. And all pink and breathless when she was riled. Which he took care to do often. ‘Well, I’m here now.’

‘You’re not welcome,’ she pointed out, as if there was any question at all. And not the rudest thing she’d ever said to him. His memory filled with her offensive departure and then overflowed with the memory of those lips sucking on her finger.

He cleared his throat.

‘Could be worse. At least I’m not moving in.’

Dean blinked at him. ‘What?’

‘There’s a guy out there with two full duffel bags. At least you know I’m only here for a few hours.’

Poppy’s face creased. ‘Out there?’

He cast her a sideways look. Gentler, because he quite liked her and she’d genuinely tried to save him from Matahari earlier. ‘Go see for yourself.’

Poppy threw Dean an apologetic look and then excused herself, the party noise surging until the doors swung shut again as she stomped through.

One down, one to go. He needed Dean alone for this conversation. If he was going to demean himself it wouldn’t be with an audience.

‘He was pretty buff, too,’ he added casually, looking right at Tori.

To her credit she stood firm. For about four seconds. Then …

‘Sorry, Iz,’ she whispered before hastening out after Poppy.

Dean’s eyes darkened even further when his returned to her. ‘This is my home, Mr Mitchell.’

‘Harry.’

The indignation on her face did what it usually did to him and stirred around in places he tried not to disturb. Righteousness leaked out of her like wayward passion.

‘You weren’t invited.’

‘I hardly broke in. The downstairs door was wedged open. I think the law would back me on this one.’

‘Employee harassment laws might not.’

‘You’re not my employee.’ Not currently. The only reason he was letting his hormones off the chain just a little.

She grabbed the champagne bottle and refilled her glass, spilling it over in her haste. Liquid gold ran down her long, expressive fingers where she clutched the glass stem. ‘You truly expect me to believe that you were so bereft of something to do on a Friday night in London that you came along to the farewell party of an employee who’d just told you to—’

‘Careful, Dean. Do you really want to say it twice?’

Her anger subsided like the fizz in her champagne. ‘Why are you here?’

‘Isadora, how can we improve if we get no feedback?’ he asked reasonably.

‘Izzy!’ she gasped. ‘No one calls me Isadora.’

‘It’s on your file.’

‘But that doesn’t mean I like to be called it.’

And, just like that, he had her permission to call her by her familiar name, and hostilities between them cranked down a notch. Though not so far that he didn’t make a mental note for later to poke around a bit in the sore spot he’d just uncovered.

‘Fair enough. Izzy. If you call me Harry.’

‘I won’t be calling you anything for much longer. You’re not staying.’

‘I’ve not had my drink yet.’

She glared at him. ‘If I get you a drink, you’ll leave?’

‘Probably. I just let my strongest chance of hooking up walk out the door, after all.’

His dig had exactly the right effect. Izzy flashed fire again. ‘She is nobody’s hook-up. Tori is in a relationship, actually.’

‘Could have fooled me,’ he shot back.

She passed him an open beer as though it were a grenade. Icy cold, as a beer should be.

‘Interesting place,’ he finally said, swallowing down his umbrage with the amber nectar. He had a job to do and he wasn’t going to achieve it while she was still angry. That was why she’d quit in the first place.

‘We like it.’

Okay, not giving an inch. ‘Old factory?’

She took a long, deep breath and seemed to finally realise how rude she was being. Even if he wasn’t quite a guest. ‘Fire station. We have the top floor and turret. There are several smaller flats downstairs and the café down on the street.’

Oh, so grudging. And he’d be damned if he’d let her do that to him. So he started poking.

‘You have a turret?’

‘It’s my bedroom.’ Then her pale skin forked between her eyes. ‘Used to be.’

He opened his mouth to reply but she cut him off. ‘That is not an invitation.’

‘I’m very happy with my place overlooking the Thames, actually.’

Her hair swung in silky pieces around her angular jaw. ‘Swanky river view; why does that not surprise me?’

‘Why is it swanky to overlook water?’

‘It’s just such a cliché.’

He let that one through to the keeper. Better than admitting he needed the sounds and smells of the water splashing the sides of the embankment to keep himself sane. Awkward silence fell again.

‘How are you enjoying the sleep-ins?’ he finally ventured.

‘All two of them? Lovely. I could get used to it.’

Just part of what baffled him about Izzy Dean: apparently miserable in her job yet a work ethic strong enough to have her at her desk before everyone else arrived. Brilliant operator until the day she just … stopped trying.

He leaned one hip on the kitchen island and kept his voice as casual as he could so she wouldn’t remember that he’d virtually promised to leave when she gave him his beer. ‘When do you start your new job?’

Her pupils flared enough to see from across the island. ‘Not … immediately. I’m looking forward to some time off.’

‘Nice for some.’

‘Please …’ The word bloomed mist on the edge of her glass as she took a sip. His whole body tightened at the reminder of her spectacular performance in the office. ‘You can’t tell me your management salary doesn’t buy you whatever leisure time you want.’

‘Not if I want to keep making that salary,’ he muttered. ‘I haven’t had a decent break in five years.’

That, at least, was true. He spent nearly as much time at home researching the business as he did in the office delivering it. Downtime was lost time in his book.

‘Well, that explains a lot.’

‘Such as?’

‘Perhaps if you had a holiday now and again you would be a little easier to work with.’

With champagne came courage, apparently.

‘You think I’m hard to work with?’

She didn’t miss his emphasis. ‘I do, actually. I’m more of a more flies from honey kind of person.’

Yeah. He’d bet. Pretty much anything to do with honey fitted Isadora Dean. Her skin tone, her voice. His eyes drifted straight to her lips.

Honey. Definitely.

‘You think a manager should be nice to his staff, all the time?’ he said, to distract himself from that line of thought.

‘I think a working relationship is a partnership, not a tyranny.’

‘A partnership in which I pay you to work.’

‘Just think how much more productive I’d be if I was interested in earning your respect.’

Ouch.

But he at least took some solace from her use of the present tense. Maybe this whole thing was just a ploy for more money from an ambitious employee. Effective: he was authorised to up her pay packet by ten grand.

‘I have thirty-three direct reports in this role. Not too sustainable to be buddy-buddy with each of them.’

Especially not when he kept finding reasons to haul a particularly sexy and recalcitrant one into his office.

‘Boohoo.’ She tossed back the last of her champagne. ‘Anyway, officially not my problem since I’m not your employee anymore and never will be.’

He shifted closer. And he liked it. He’d never allowed himself to get this close to her before. Too dangerous.

‘Never?’

She stood her ground. ‘Nope.’

‘You have no price that you’ll eventually come to after a day or two of faux deliberation?’

Insult blazed heavily in her pretty eyes. ‘Nope.’

She pressed her hand to her breast and all it did was remind him she had them. His eyes went straight to those long, champagne-sticky fingers pressed against her blouse and the slight curve beneath. But he fought it.

‘Everyone has a price.’

‘Is that why you’re here?’ She gaped. ‘To see what it will cost you to get me back?’

He wasn’t about to let her start thinking that she was special. ‘We invest a lot in our staff. I don’t like to see anyone walk away with that investment. Or our corporate knowledge.’

‘I signed your confidentiality agreement. Broadmore Natále’s secrets are safe with me.’

Actually, he believed her. She might be a princess but she’d always been a discreet and professional princess. Wednesday excepted. And peering up at him as she was—all enormous-eyed and unflinching—she certainly looked very sincere.

And he was through begging.

Rifkin be damned.

‘I told them you’d tell me to go to hell.’

Realisation dawned in her eyes. And with it, a hot little smile. ‘Oh, I see … You’ve been sent.’

He just glared.

She shifted onto one hip and the move changed the angle of the classy outfit she was wearing, highlighting the line of her body. ‘That must really pain you.’

You have no idea.

‘I gave it a shot,’ he breathed. ‘I need to get your keycard back, then.’

All warmth from their sparring drained from her eyes like the dregs from her glass. ‘Security can’t just disable it?’

‘They’re ten-quid access cards.’

She flushed and actually looked a little hurt that he didn’t even consider her worth ten pounds.

Really? That was her hot button—devaluing her? Handy to know.

‘Whatever. Follow me.’

The sudden distance she put between them was almost like a cool chill after the warmth of their heated discussion. Exactly when had it stopped being business and started being flirting? He took one final tug on his beer then left the three-quarters-full bottle on the kitchen bench and trailed her back out through the doors, being sure to appreciate the round sway of her arse.

Now that he could.

CHAPTER TWO

‘WATCH YOURSELF,’ IZZY murmured exactly as her ex-boss ducked sideways and down to avoid clipping his egotistically big head on the steel frame of the mezzanine stairs going up to the bedroom above them. Though a scar would probably only make him more handsome.

She shoved her shoulder against her door.

‘You’re kidding me,’ he said over the party music. ‘This is you?’

Spinning revealed him to be much closer than she’d expected. And it only served to remind her how tiny her new room really was. And how chaotic.

‘Much as I’d like to lock you in the store room as a hilarious prank and listen to you beating at the door while no one else could hear you, I do, in fact, need to sleep in here tonight. So I’ll just find my ID card and you can be on your way.’

‘What happened to the turret?’

Why did he look so concerned? ‘Poppy’s renting it to someone else.’

‘Your best friend evicted you?’

‘God, no. She’d never ask that. I swapped rooms. Economies of scale.’

‘Economical is right,’ he murmured. ‘I have a linen closet bigger than this.’

She smiled tightly. ‘Are you always so gracious?’

Colour streaked up his jaw and it confused her as much as a rare trace of humility in him always did. ‘I just … It doesn’t fit.’

‘Nothing fits, as you can see.’

He dragged his gaze the very short distance from the left of the room to the right, taking in her pathetic bed and her mounded-up belongings. ‘Is this because you quit the firm?’

Something about the size of him in her tiny room, the male scent swilling into every corner, the sexy accent and maybe the multiple champagnes in quick succession stole all but the most essential air from her lungs. But not so much that she couldn’t protest his monumental ego.

‘The world does not revolve around you, Harry Mitchell, surprising as that may be.’

‘So you chose to live like this because …?’

‘Because I’m careful with my money.’ Oh, such lies. ‘And because it’s easier for Poppy to rent the best room than this one.’

It had nothing at all to do with the fact that despite earning stupid money for the past few years she’d actually managed to put very little of it away for the rainy day that had now come. That she’d gone a bit spend-mad with the first real money she’d ever had at her disposal and then become ridiculously accustomed to it. Reliant on it. Which made the myriad belongings cluttered around them now very quality belongings … but still clutter.

And not the gently shambolic clutter of her parents’ meagre belongings. The clutter of someone with a life rapidly outgrowing her circumstances.

Much like her ambition.

She’d always had a disconnection between what she wanted and what life had given her. The only girl in her childhood estate with big-city ambitions.

Many people might call it denial.

Behind her, Harry leaned on the wall while she began the hunt for her work ID card. It wasn’t in the pile she’d hastily thrown together at her desk. No, that was because she’d been wearing it that day.

Her jacket … Where was Wednesday’s jacket?

She turned back for the door and paused in front of his inconvenient bulk.

‘Excuse me.’

Harry straightened and she squeezed past, the back of her calves pressing against her bed and her front brushing against the expensive fabric of his open coat. His lips twisted as he stretched taller to give her space and politely focused over her head on a point across the small room. Izzy rummaged around in the clothes hanging on the back of the door they’d just come through until she found the cropped jersey jacket she’d worn on Wednesday, and unclipped the security tag still pinned to its lapel.

‘There you go.’ She pressed it into his front as she squeezed past again.

His fingers automatically came up to catch it before she dropped it, but they snagged hers instead, pressing them into his not inconsiderable chest.

Izzy froze. Hard heat soaked through his cotton shirt and charred her skin.

‘Seriously,’ he urged as her eyes flashed up to him, his fingers still holding hers captive, ‘reconsider.’

His voice had dropped down somewhere much more gravelly and, down there, his accent did its best work.

‘Seriously,’ she mimicked. ‘I don’t go back on my decisions.’

‘Ever?’

‘Ever.’

‘Even the bad ones?’

‘Especially the bad ones. There’s no going back from those, only forwards.’ And she knew that from experience.

She glanced up into his fathomless eyes and heard her next words tumble from her lips. Surprised even herself with her candour. ‘That job was killing me. It was time. Regardless of everything else.’

‘You’ve only been in it for a couple of years.’

‘It’s not boredom. It’s—’ me! ‘—the work.’

‘So, go for a different job within the firm.’

She suddenly became aware that her fingers still pressed into his pectoral region and she tugged them gently free and curled them at her side. ‘What is it to you? Why do you even care?’

‘Because you were a good employee,’ he murmured down at her, all smoky intensity. ‘My best.’

Pfff. ‘We fought every day.’

He slipped his hands into his trouser pockets and the move effectively pushed him out from the wall and a smidge closer to her. She didn’t step back. On principle. This was her domain, tiny as it might be. The scented heat pumping off him pleasantly consumed her.

‘You challenged me every day,’ he corrected.

It felt odd testing him now, standing this close and peering up at him. Hardly a position of power. Yet she felt as if the cards were all hers. ‘You made some bad decisions.’

It was only when his lips twisted so fully that she remembered what a nice mouth he had. When it wasn’t issuing ridiculous demands.

‘Clearly you thought so. But they were my decisions to make.’

‘If you just want a bunch of yes-men in your department then why are you here, trying to get me back?’

‘Because diversity is apparently healthy in a workforce—’

‘Not if it’s only token.’

‘—and because, surprising as it might seem, I appreciate spirit in women.’

‘Like horses?’ She snorted.

He wisely ignored that. ‘Spirit and brains.’

‘Uh-huh. So all those times you and I ended up locking horns, that was … appreciation making you flush red?’

He did it again now and it added a dangerous kind of gleam to his eyes.

‘You tell me.’

She crossed her arms angrily and it only served to plump her minor cleavage up a tad in the aperture of her blouse when viewed from virtually above. Which, naturally, he took full advantage of. Izzy dropped her hands by her side, instead, to take away his toy. It left his eyes nowhere to go but back to hers, all simmering and smart and way, way too close.

‘Come on, Dean,’ he purred, ‘you can’t say our … discussions didn’t give the daily grind a productive boost.’

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