LITMIR.BIZ

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invited them. How would she survive hours with them and not blurt out her incredibly stupid attraction to Darrington, despite his snobby-arrogant-potential-playboy-jerkdom? They’d think she was an idiot.

      Maybe she could distract them by getting them to help with her criteria for a partner instead, to narrow down her prospects, help her pick the qualities in a man that she could live with for the rest of her life.

      Tahlia snatched up a pen. She wasn’t about to get into dating without a plan. She didn’t want to be responsible for hurt feelings, crushed dreams or unreal expectations. She didn’t want to be anybody’s last straw.

      She closed her eyes against the wave of memories that crashed against her heart. How had her mother picked herself up, carrying all those burdens, after her father had died?

      Had she been haunted by questions, wondering what it had been that broke her husband’s will to live? Had she been tortured by their last argument over unpaid bills, her need for him to be there for her, for him to be a good father?

      Had she wished she could take back her last words, the last time she saw him, time itself? Tahlia’s throat tightened. Like she did.

      She jerked straight-backed, blinking away the ache, and picked up a file and flipped it open. Business was safer to think about, deal with and be involved in than all that personal stuff, except where Darrington was concerned.

      She chewed on her bottom lip. She didn’t like being as out of control as she was around Case Darrington, and feeling way too much.

      It just wasn’t professional and the sooner he was gone the better. And if she had to be the one to show him the door, so be it.

      It would be a giant step in the right direction.

      Case dropped his attaché case and knelt down on the polished timber floor and hugged Edison, nestling his face in his neck, breathing in his heavy doggy scent in an effort to douse the haunting memory of Tahlia’s perfume.

      ‘Hey Edi, you miss me, boy?’ he crooned, slapping Edi’s back and standing up, loosening his tie and kicking off his shoes. ‘It’s been one hell of a day.’

      He’d driven himself insane all afternoon, trying to rationalise his impromptu request for Tahlia to be his assistant. Was it logical or a knee-jerk reaction to her story about the last Marketing Executive?

      Running into that Chrystal woman in the lift again had just topped off his agony. At least they hadn’t been alone, but that hadn’t seemed to deter her.

      Evading her probing, very personal questions had been one challenge, avoiding her pushing herself up against him a whole other dilemma.

      Case shrugged off his suit jacket and tossed it over the black leather recliner. He was supposed to be the Marketing Executive, not some mouse for the woman to toy with. Hell, if she only knew who he really was!

      One thing he was going to outlaw was desperate women. They freaked him out.

      ‘That you, Mr Darrington, sir?’ Luciana’s heavy accent laced every word and echoed around the high ceilings of his open-plan loft-style apartment.

      The designer had got a bit carried away with the stream running down the hallway under glass and the waterfall in the lounge, but Edi didn’t seem to mind it. Better than the toilet bowl.

      His Italian house-fairy heaved her ample frame from the hallway that accessed the laundry room and kitchen, wiping her hands on her canary-yellow apron. ‘Dinner is in oven. Timer dings, you eat. Yes?’

      ‘Yes, thank you,’ he said, smiling at the woman who liked to think she’d adopted him. He couldn’t live without her. She cleaned the house, cooked and kept Edison company while he wasn’t around. He should have discovered his housekeeper phenomenon before he married Celia; he may have decided he didn’t need the anguish.

      Luciana snatched up a heavy cane bag from the floor, beside the black steel and smoked glass dining table, shoved her apron deep inside and straightened the greying coil of hair at her nape. ‘You good boy. Nice boy. You need good woman.’

      He shrugged. It was a familiar conversation he had with her, and a sure-fire way of having all the single young females of her family tree described to him. ‘I have you.’

      She laughed. ‘I help you find,’ she sang, opening the front door, pausing, taking out a cloth from her bag and wiping down the ochre wall beside her. ‘If you not finding.’

      ‘I don’t need help, but thank you anyway, Luciana,’ he said, lurching forward and ushering the most valuable employee he had to the lift. He punched the button. ‘See you tomorrow?’

      The doors opened. She stepped in and turned. ‘Yes. What you want for dinner? I could cook special lasagne, secret recipe?’ she said, eyeing him carefully.

      Case could read the gleam in her eyes. Probably lining up a whole meal that she planned him to share with someone she knew.

      ‘No dinner. I have a date,’ he rushed on. Better to eat out alone than endure Luciana’s umpteen single relatives’ profiles again and be asked to pick one. Maybe Simon would be free.

      She nodded, her smile wide. ‘Good. You need a good woman.’

      The doors closed and he wandered back to his penthouse suite, closing the double doors behind him and looking out of the floor-to-ceiling glass windows that stretched the entire wall at the view of the northern shore of the bay.

      He didn’t need any help in finding a woman. He found plenty. Finding one who liked him for who he was…was the hard part. Who wanted to know him, be with him, for him.

      How to find said woman was the biggest dilemma in his life. He couldn’t help but question a woman’s motives if she knew all he had. He wondered how he’d broach protecting his assets from another bad choice, how he could downplay his portfolio and try to assess whether it was him she liked or his money.

      The phone rang and Case answered.

      ‘So what was with today?’ Simon asked in his best lawyer-cum-best-mate tone of inquisition. ‘A desire to play undercover agent?’

      ‘A desire to make everything I own into a resounding success, actually,’ Case stated drily. And he sure needed the challenge of taking his newest acquisition back into the black.

      He had needed to distract him from himself. ‘I was out with my Director of Sales.’ And her very fine green eyes.

      ‘Why didn’t you just go there no—lies? You are the new owner of WWW Designs.’

      Case sank into a recliner chair. ‘Because of all the airs and graces that are always put on to muddy the truth.’

      He’d already seen the myriad attempts of the General Manager at WWW Designs to flatter him into keeping her on; the woman was practically dripping with greasy compliments—on his clothes, his business acumen and his plan to be put on the staff incognito.

      Case knew the best way to maximize the company’s efficiency was to get in there and see how it was being run firsthand and nothing was going to stop him, especially a small thing like a few white lies. The fact that he needed to escape the monotony of his routine didn’t come into it. Much.

      ‘So you’re after the truth by telling lies.’ Simon made a guttural noise deep in his throat. ‘You know you don’t have to keep on with it—you could get someone else to do it.’

      Case loosened his tie. ‘No. I like it there.’ And liked being surprised by a certain member of his staff and her lack of hesitation in speaking her mind.

      Simon groaned. ‘Come on, get serious. Your time is far too valuable to put into this. Just employ an efficiency expert, or I could go.’

      Case rubbed his smooth jaw, loath to put words to the hollow feeling in his chest at the thought of backing down from this challenge. ‘I don’t see it that way.’ This was an opportunity just begging for him to conquer it…and maybe, hopefully,

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