LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

few days tying up the Dubai deal.”

      “Yes, sir, of course.” She nodded and turned to leave.

      “Oh, and Pippa.”

      Damn it, freedom had been so close. She turned back to him defensively, still clutching her pad to her chest, and raised a brow.

      He now rested his elbows on the arms of his leather chair and steepled his fingers together across his chest. “I know you call me sir just to annoy me.”

      “Sir?” she asked innocently, tilting her head to one side.

      “Just so we’re clear, you don’t need to call me sir to get under my skin.”

      The inference was clear as she saw him try to hide what appeared to be a wry smile creeping to his lips. She was mortified to feel her cheeks redden in embarrassment. A smile on his face? Nah. Impossible.

      She reached for the door handle but turned back, still holding the knob. “Do you have a hole punch, sir?” she asked lightly, tilting her head again.

      He opened the desk drawer. “Yes, here. Why?” He held up his hole punch proudly.

      “Oh no reason,” she said, shaking her head and smiling sweetly. “Just good to know where you keep it. You never know when I’ll need to punch something.” She turned and skipped back to her desk.

      ***

      As soon as his office door closed Jumal dropped his head into his hands and raked his fingers through his hair. It was becoming a regular feature of his post-Pippa meeting analysis.

      He was pretty confident that banging his head on the table wouldn’t help ease some of the pent-up tension and would simply give him more of a headache. A trip to the gym it was then. He reached to loosen his tie and ended up taking it off entirely and opening up his top button.

      Since arriving on Dubain last October, Miss Pippa Darling was slowly, but oh so surely, turning his well-ordered life upside down. In fact, if he was being honest with himself, she’d been doing it since he’d met her again the previous Christmas at her family estate in Yorkshire.

      A meeting still etched in his mind, and readily available for repeat viewing like a scene from a favourite film. He and Matt had been looking over his newborn foal when her sultry voice had interrupted from the stable entrance…

      She had quite literally taken his breath away. At first sight he hadn’t known who she was, yet his entire focus had been drawn to her. A sledgehammer hit to his heart, and yes, a certain lower part of his body too. BAM. He’d had to force himself to turn away from her to greet Ana, Matt’s then girlfriend, now wife. He still couldn’t believe his oldest friend was married, very happily so, judging by how fast the pair had celebrated the birth of their first child.

      When his friend Matt had introduced Pippa as his sister he’d felt his heart and stomach plummet, together with the aforementioned lower part of his body. Yes, he’d known that Matt had a younger sister but it had been years since he’d seen her and she’d only been twelve or so. He’d struggled to accept that the femme fatale who had stood before him and hijacked his ability to breathe properly was the same one he’d last seen wearing her dark brown hair in bunches, sporting a mouthful of braces and following her elder brother around like a lost puppy begging for scraps.

      “Enchanté, Phillipa.” He remembered, as if it was only yesterday, her shy smile and blushes, the way she’d brushed her hand through her hair and fiddled with her glasses as she had reminded him of their earlier meetings. “Well you have certainly grown into a beautiful swan.” He’d denied remembering her at the time. He couldn’t very well flirt with Pippa. It was Pippa for God’s sake, and there were some lengths even he wouldn’t stoop to, despite his reputation as a ladies’ man. A reputation he wasn’t sure he entirely deserved. Oh good Lord, had he really compared her to a swan… Would he ever learn?

      Thankfully Ana had saved him from digging an even deeper hole, one which Matt would no doubt have thrown him into without much debate if he’d been aware of his friend’s carnal thoughts towards his little sister.

      Pippa was young, very young, and his friend’s sister. Two facts which, when put together, equalled stay the hell away from her. He’d been trying to keep to that plan ever since, probably the sole reason for his increasingly frequent bad moods and dependency on cold showers. Of course the fact that she was now working for him and would be doing so until June meant that he hadn’t been entirely successful in his campaign to stay the hell away.

      Her goddamn perfume drove him wild. As she’d peered over his shoulder to look at his computer he’d had to put his hands under the desk to refrain from acting out his desire to grab her and pull her onto his lap. Her breasts had been right in line with his mouth. Great, now he was getting hard…

      “Who’s a swan?”

      Distracted yet again by Miss Darling, he hadn’t heard his friend and finance director, Malik, come into the office. He raised his head and sat back in his chair.

      “I knocked but you didn’t answer,” he continued.

      “So you thought you’d just come in anyway,” Jumal challenged, but his tone was light.

      “Yep,” he said, taking a seat opposite Jumal and popping his foot up to rest on his other knee. “So, do I even need to ask who has managed to cause our great leader to drop his head in his hands and mumble to himself about, er, stuff?”

      “Nope,” Jumal replied, closing his eyes briefly, then looking up and shaking his head.

      Malik laughed. “Well she certainly keeps you on your toes and the place has never been so lively. The rest of your staff love her, my friend.”

      He met his friend’s gaze while considering how much to admit. “She drives me crazy, Malik. It’s not funny. I can’t concentrate.” He cursed inwardly. He hadn’t meant to say that last part and be quite so open about the effect Miss Darling had on him. He never showed weakness and Miss Darling was starting to be a weakness. He reached for his glass of water.

      Malik raised a brow. “Annnd that would be a bad thing?”

      “Of course.”

      “Well, it’s only a few more months and then she will be leaving. Unless…”

      He straightened in his chair. “Unless what?” he asked, coolly.

      Malik shrugged his shoulders. “Well, if she’s that…” his friend paused and waved his hand as if looking for the right word “…distracting, you could always send her home early. I’m sure you could come up with some excuse that sounded legitimate.”

      Jumal swallowed hard. The thought of Pippa leaving Dubain and returning to England made him nauseous.

      “No,” he said, immediately dismissing the suggestion. “I promised her brother and, well… Just no.”

      In actual fact he’d made a few promises to Matt. Firstly, look after her. Secondly, to keep his hands off. He’d never found it so hard to keep a promise in his life. The fact that she often made him want to strangle her one minute and kiss her senseless the next was beside the point. Matt wouldn’t differentiate.

      “Anyway,” he said, clapping his hands together, needing to distract his childhood friend and himself from the topic of Pippa Darling. “Where are we up to with the Ansari deal? Miss Darling, PA extraordinaire, has made him an appointment to see me later today. Have you completed the due diligence checks? What’s his financial position?”

      “Hmm, well it’s interesting. It’s a good deal and certainly worth going ahead with. His company is financially stable and there’s no evidence of him cooking the books. The fact he’s a local contractor is good for our public relations and local employment, but it’s certainly nothing on the scale of the Dubai government deal. When the ink is dry on that contract your company is going to be recognised as the world’s leading naval shipbuilding company. We’re going to go global. Although

Скачать книгу