by Emma Hart
She barked a laugh and snatched back her hand. “I’m sure you would, Cameron. There’s nothing like a woman in her forties with a teenage son to get a young man’s motor running.”
“Aw, come on. You could get anyone you wanted.”
“Yeah? Do you have Chris Pratt’s phone number?”
“If I did, I’d set you up myself.” I grinned. “How is Oscar?”
Her face lit up as it always did when she spoke about her son. “He’s doing well! I was wondering… when you’re settled with your new assistant…”
I smiled, knowing what she was going to ask me.
“Oscar needs work experience for extra credit, and he’s interested in what you do. Would you—uh…” She stumbled over her words.
Saving her, I touched her shoulder and smiled. “Isabelle, of course. I’d love to have him with me. How long is his experience?”
“One week. Five days, technically.”
I nodded my head once. “You have my number. We’ll figure it out.” I squeezed her arm.
“You’re a good boy, Cameron. Now scoot before your momma catches you messing around out here.”
I laughed, letting her go back to work, and headed down the hallway to my mom’s study. My shoes squeaked against the impossibly clean floor, and if I looked down, I could see my reflection on the tiles.
My mother was a slave driver.
She’d have a fit if she saw the spaghetti stain on my living room floor that was currently being masked by my coffee table and a well-placed ottoman.
It was also why she wasn’t allowed to my house.
“You have a crease in your shirt,” she said, her shrewd blue eyes raking over me the second I stepped through the door. “It’s unbecoming of a young man.”
“It’s good to see you, too, Mother,” I said dryly. My hand smoothed over the spot on my shirt she was staring at. “How are you?”
“As bored and as intolerant of fools as ever.”
“That explains why Dad isn’t here.” I bent and kissed her cheek.
Her lips curved to one side. “Don’t let him hear you say that. He’s at the cabin for a few days to make sure he’s got everything ready for hunting season.”
“Hunting season doesn’t start for another month.”
“So I keep telling him, and so he keeps ignoring.” She rolled her eyes and slipped her glasses on top of her head. “How is work?”
“Work is fine,” I said slowly. “Keeping busy, thanks to your long stream of clients you keep sending my way.”
She waved a hand, her perfect manicure flashing through the air. “People always need houses, darling. You just happen to be very good at making people buy the ones they don’t think they need, but actually do.”
“I don’t know. I’m not entirely sure Cynthia Carlton needs another house in the mountains.”
“Robert’s company had a breakthrough, and the value soared practically overnight. Doubled his wealth,” she mused. “And I’m sure they’ll sell the old one when she’s found a new one she likes.”
“Just like a pair of shoes.”
“Exactly. She’s frivolous. Goodness knows what she’d ever do if they lost all their money.” She shook her head. “Anyway, how is your new assistant? I had coffee with Anna yesterday, and she said Casey liked her a lot. And do sit down, Cameron—you’re making the place look untidy.”
I swallowed back a sigh and took a seat in one of the cream leather chairs. “She’s doing really well, actually. I was shocked at how competent she was given that I almost ran her over a few days ago.”
Mom choked on her coffee, almost spilling the hot liquid over her white pants. “You did what?”
“Well, it wasn’t me. Harold Bridgerton wanted to view a house and insisted on driving, and from what I understand, she stepped out into the road, and his driver slammed on the breaks.” I shrugged a shoulder and leaned back. “Total accident.”
“I don’t think having someone you almost ran over working for you is a good idea.”
“It’s fine, Mom. She doesn’t recognize me, and if she does, she hasn’t said anything. Besides, she’s good at what she does. She even handles Cynthia with ease.” I rested my foot on my knee. “It’s magical.”
Mom sniffed. “She hasn’t met her in person yet. You’ll see if she’s cut out for the job then.”
Dear God, the woman was hard to please.
I shook my head. “Was there a reason you called me today?”
“There’s always a reason, Cameron. Why else would anyone pick up the phone?”
“To talk?”
“And that is the reason,” she replied wryly. “But yes, there is a reason behind my call. Your grandfather wants to downsize, and he wants you to find him a new house.”
“Why can’t he call me himself?”
“You know what he’s like. Ever since he discovered that Chess website, that’s all he does.”
Ah. The Magnus Carlsen site where he can play people online. Yup. It was somewhat of an addiction.
“Anyway,” Mom said. “He’s getting a little old now, so he can only really have one floor. No stairs, a low-maintenance yard, and I’d like him to be a little closer to us so I can check on him more often.”
“Not a lot, then.”
“Don’t sass me, Cameron.”
I sighed. “Mom, why don’t you find him a place, and I’ll sort it out from there?”
“Because you’re the realtor, and I’m retired.” She sniffed, eyeing me. “Do you not want to help your grandfather?”
Dear God, the woman could get a murder confession out of the weapon if she really wanted to. “I didn’t say that. I just thought that since you knew better than I did what he should have…”
She raised one plucked eyebrow, the same shade of dark brown as her hair.
I knew that look.
That was the ‘Shut the Fuck Up, Cameron,’ look.
“Never mind,” I said, gripping the arms of the chair. “I’ll have Mallory search our listings tomorrow. I’m pretty sure one of the girls downstairs has a few properties in her books that will fit what Grandad needs.”
Mom nodded. “Stay for dinner.”
“I…”
She raised her eyebrow again.
I sighed inside. Yep. I should have known better than to try to leave. “Sure,” I said. “What’s for dinner?”
***
Mallory clicked her tongue as she looked at the computer screen. “Stupid thing. Stupid piece of—”
“Everything okay?” I asked, eying her from the door to my office.
She turned to me, her dark-blue eyes wide. “Oh, um, yeah.” Her cheeks flushed the way they did whenever I caught her unawares.
It was weirdly adorable.
“Computer giving you trouble?” I sipped my coffee, keeping my eyes trained on her.
She tucked a wisp of hair behind her ear, ducking her head and glancing at the screen. “A little. It keeps freezing, and I have a client asking about properties that I need to respond to.”
I strolled over to her and set my coffee on the empty coaster. “Let me take a look.” Leaning over her, I grasped the back of her chair and took the mouse from her. My fingers brushed hers, and she drew in a short, sharp breath at the touch.
I resisted the urge to look at her and focused on the computer.
There was no denying that Mallory Harper was beautiful. It’d been my first thought when I’d seen her lying on the sidewalk with her coffee cup flattened behind her.
Her brown hair was curly but pulled up into a bun on top of her head. Random strands fell out and curled around her neck and ears, and it was one of those that curled around her ear that bugged her.
She pushed it back again, her knuckles brushing against my chest as she did so. Visibly leaning away from me, she focused intently on the screen.
Her eyelashes were stupidly long. They curled right back so they almost brushed the skin beneath her eyebrows with each blink, and she puckered
her full, red lips more than once.
God only knew red lips were my weakness.
They couldn’t be on my assistant. Could I enforce a dress code of no red lipstick? Fuck knows she was hot enough to be a weakness.
Instead of focusing on the way she looked anymore, I swallowed hard and scanned my gaze over the computer. It was frozen, so I did a hard reset.
“Did Casey say the last time she’d done any checks on it?” I asked, shaking the mouse as it loaded up to make sure it was working.
“Checks?” Mallory asked, her voice fading. “What checks?”
“Virus scanning, defragmenting, things like that.”
“What’s defragmenting?”
Dropping my chin, I let out a small laugh. “It’s a process on the computer that scans it and pulls back together fragmented parts of files.”
“That…helps.”
Another laugh escaped me as I tapped the keyboard for her to log in. “Files break up, and defragmenting is basically the process of the computer finding those pieces and putting them back together again.”
“Ohhh. Okay. That makes sense.”
I smirked as the home screen came on and I took back control. “I assume Casey told you absolutely nothing, then.”
“Nope. Not a damn thing.”
“All right. Let’s fix this thing.” I brought up the virus scanning software, trying my best to ignore the way she shivered when my arm brushed hers.
Click. Click. Click.
I set the software doing its own thing and stood back a little. Mallory blew out a long breath and settled back into her chair. The phone rang, the high-pitched sound exploding through the silence of the room.
She scrambled to grab it and held it to her ear, giving her now-familiar greeting. She even said it all with a smile on her face, a fact that made her words sound all the brighter.
“Absolutely, Mrs. Cavendish,” she said, grabbing a notepad and scribbling on it. “My system is currently down for some routine maintenance, but as soon as it’s back up and running, I’ll make sure to send the information for the property to your email… No, it shouldn’t be long. It’ll be by the end of the day, absolutely… Wonderful. Thank you so much for understanding.”
I waited until she finished the call and said, “You know, you can use my computer while I’m doing this.”
“Oh—it’s okay. I mean, I’ve told them, so…”
I stood back as the bar ticked closer to being done on the virus software. “Mallory, it’s fine. You can log in to your profile on the system on it.” I rested against the desk and shrugged. “I’m not using it if I’m fixing your computer. Honestly, go. This could take a while. I don’t need it right now.”
She bit the corner of her lip, and I almost expected her lipstick to scrape off, but it didn’t. “Are you sure?”
“Absolutely sure. Go use it.” I waved my hand in the direction of my office. “Go get your emails sent out. I can handle this.”
“Don’t you have an I.T. guy for this?”
“Yes, but he’s my cousin, and he smokes a little too much weed to be employable,” I mused, taking her seat as she stood. “If it weren’t legal, we’d all be in trouble.”
She covered her mouth with her hand, and I was pretty sure she was hiding a laugh. “Thank you,” she said, casting a glance over her shoulder as she made her way to my office.
“You’re welcome.” I watched her as she went, appreciating the way her skirt hugged her ass.
Look. I was a human. My assistant was hot—I’d already established that, and it wasn’t a crime to eye up someone who worked for you.
Morally wrong, perhaps, but not illegal-wrong, so whatever.
I rubbed my hand down my face and shook my head. Jesus. I needed more coffee if I was justifying staring at my assistant’s ass.
Turning my attention to the computer, I watched as the virus software did its thing and checked the files for anything. When it was done, it’d found a few questionable things, so I set it to clean up and moved to the defragmentation software.
That would take all damn day.
The only thing Casey knew how to clean was a tiny human’s butt.
An excellent skill in itself, but that didn’t help run my business.
I sighed and watched as the computer began the process of cleaning itself up. There was nothing more to do here, so I got up, tucked the chair in, and made my way into the kitchen.
Shit. I had no idea how she took her coffee.
And why the fuck was I making coffee? That wasn’t my job. That was why I had an assistant. With a great ass.
Double shit.
I shook those thoughts out of my head and walked to my office. She was sitting in my tall leather chair, typing diligently without looking at the keyboard. It was an impressive skill, especially with how quickly her fingers moved across the keys.
I waited until she stopped and clicked, then said, “Hey—I’m making coffee. Do you want one?”
Mallory looked at me with wide eyes. “You’re making me coffee?”
“Well, I did take over your computer. I figure that caffeinating you is the least I can do.”
“I’d be more annoyed if this chair wasn’t so damn comfortable.” She wriggled in it just to make her point. “Also, your computer is ten times faster than the dinosaur out there.”
I leaned back. Maybe it was a bit of a dinosaur as far as technology went. “I’ll see what I can do about that. It’s probably time for a tech update. My dad bought the last computers, and he knows as much about them as my mom does physics.”
“Does she know anything about physics?”
“Not a damn thing,” I replied. “Your computer is doing its thing, but it’s gonna take a while. Feel free to work in here for now. The only problem might be your phone.”
Not that I’d have a problem with watching her run over to her desk every time it rang…
“Oh.” She sat up a little straighter at that. “I can reroute the calls to yours and answer here.”
“What if it’s a personal call?”
“Is there anyone calling you I shouldn’t be talking to? Wife? Girlfriend?” She raised one eyebrow.
I coughed. “No. Nobody like that. Just my mom.”
She grinned, her eyes lighting up with the movement. “So someone I shouldn’t be talking to?”
“On the contrary, please do. I’d rather you talk to her than me.” I paused. “Speaking of, she wants me to find a new place for my grandfather to live. Could you search our listings through the entire company and see if there’s anything that fits her particular demands?”
“Sure. What are they?”
“One floor, no stairs, low-maintenance yard, and relatively close to her house so she can visit.”
“Where does she live?”
I gave her the address.
She whistled. “Does she have a budget? Buy or rent?”
“Buy,” I replied. “And you heard that address. Do you think she has a budget?”
“No.” She fought a laugh as she met my eyes. “Never mind. I got it. I’ll ask Amanda and take a look. Anything else?”
“Yes. How do you take your coffee?”
“How I take my men. Tall, dark, and not nearly as sweet as I should.” Mallory paused. “In fact, my track record dictates a change. Toss in some cream and two sugars.”
“My mother cleared out the sugar.”
She turned her attention to the screen and said, “Casey told me where you hide the sugar. I take sugar, not that sweetener crap. There’s enough sourness from my great aunt.”
I laughed as I stood up. Damn. I liked her more and more every single time she opened her damn mouth.
She was a keeper, that was for sure.
CHAPTER NINE – MALLORY
I blew out a long breath as Cameron left to make coffee.
My mother had been right. Working with a guy you were attracted to was a terrible idea. I’d never tell her that, of course, but she was ri
ght.
It was only—what? Day three? And it was already becoming a problem.
The worst part was that I was sure he knew I was attracted to him thanks to my shiver earlier when he’d touched me.
My body had given me away more than once in that conversation, and now I was sitting here, on his very comfortable chair, and I was totally sure that I could feel the imprint of his ass on the seat.
I wriggled.
Yup.
There it was.
It was a nice imprint.
I sighed and focused back on my work. I didn’t have to wait long for my coffee because Cameron brought it back a few minutes later. I smiled at him as he set it down on a coaster.
“Thanks,” I said, reaching for it. “Are you sure me using your computer isn’t a problem? Don’t you have work to do?”
He waved one large hand and sat in the chair on the opposite side of the desk. “Nothing I can’t do later or at home. Besides, I have a viewing this afternoon, so I won’t be here later.”
“Oh. Are you—”
“Mallory. I’m sure.” His lips quirked to the side. “Honestly.”
“Okay.” I blushed and set the mug down.
Except I didn’t.
I missed the edge of the coaster.
Cameron jumped back before I even knew what happened.
The mug tipped right as I let go of the handle, and scalding hot coffee burst all over his desk. It coated sheets of paper and a red, cardboard folder and everything inside it. Dark spots splattered over the edge of the desk to the floor, and a leather-bound diary was swimming in what was once my coffee.
I clapped my hands to my mouth and froze. My eyes darted back and forth over the mess I’d accidentally created.
This was it.
This was the moment he realized he’d hired a total klutz.
“Oh my God,” I whispered, slowly dragging my hands away from my face. “I’m so sorry.” I couldn’t even look at him. “I’ll get a towel—or three. Maybe a wet cloth. And a trash bag. I—”
“Mallory.” Cameron caught my wrist before I could rush out of the office.
A tingle ran up my arm from where he was touching me, and I swallowed hard before I met his eyes.
