LITMIR.BIZ

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blinked.

      “You didn’t on Friday. You went out and grabbed sandwiches.” It sounded more like an accusation than a comment. “So today, go eat. I won’t be back until late,” he went on. “So I don’t need you bringing me sandwiches.”

      So the sandwich had offended him, had it? Why? Had it made him think she was making another bid for attention? As if! She had simply done what she knew her mother would have done.

      But she didn’t say that. She gave a light shrug, as if it didn’t matter one way or the other to her. It didn’t. It really didn’t.

      Christo opened the door, then looked back over his shoulder. “You don’t need to stay late, either.”

      Natalie didn’t even deign to reply to that.

      She would stay late if she had work to finish. If she didn’t, she’d leave. And he could take his handsome face and his bloodymindedness and go stuff them both where they’d do some good.

      “Whatever you say, boss,” she muttered. But he was gone and didn’t hear her.

      Just as well. She finished the letter she was working on, then at quarter past one, took her lunch break, as ordered. She didn’t leave the office, but ate her tuna fish sandwich sitting at her mother’s desk. She did, however, spend the time catching up on her own work for Rent-a-Wife.

      Sophy had done the scheduling this week, but Natalie still had the billing to do. If Mr. Stickler Savas wanted everything in businesslike boxes from here on out, that was fine with her. She’d do her work now and start back on his after lunch.

      Her brother Dan called to ask if she would like his daughter Jamii to come for the weekend. “Kelly and I got invited to visit a high-school friend of hers in Sausalito. They live on a houseboat. We thought it would be cool. But if you’d rather not…”

      “No, I’d like it,” Natalie said. Her eight-year-old niece would be a welcome distraction from the man who was currently occupying most every waking thought—to no avail.

      “Great!” Dan was delighted. “We’ll drop her off after work on Friday and pick her up before dinner on Sunday. You can come out to dinner with us.”

      “Sounds good.”

      “If Kelly has anything she wants to add, I’ll have her call you.”

      He rang off and, after a quick glance at her watch that showed she still had ten minutes of Rent-a-Wife time, she went back to work.

      Immediately the office phone rang.

      She could have let the answering machine get it, she thought grimly even as she reached to pick it up. But however annoying Christo was being, she couldn’t inconvenience his clients that way.

      “Savas Law Office.”

      “Thank God you’re there. I need you to bring me a folder.”

      No question who it was. Natalie nearly choked on her tuna-fish.

      “It’s in my office. It has to be,” he went on. “I spent an hour Saturday morning making sure I had all of it in one place after those temps screwed things up.” He sounded as though he wanted to strangle someone. So much for Mr. Cool-and-Remote.

      “Which folder?”

      “Eamon Duffy’s. His is the second of the two conferences I have this afternoon. And his original birth certificate, the custody agreement and the divorce decree aren’t here.”

      “Can’t the judge just pull them up on the computer?”

      “They’re from out of state. I don’t know where the hell they are! Did you misfile them?”

      “Would I know if I had?” Natalie countered acerbically.

      “Sorry,” he muttered. But he didn’t sound sorry. He sounded at the end of his rope.

      “I’ll look,” Natalie was already heading into his office.

      “You’ll have to tear the place apart.”

      “Not likely,” Natalie said, seeing them on the tabletop under the mirror where he’d probably set them when he’d straightened his tie and combed his hair. “Where are you?”

      “You found them?”

      “Yes. Where are you?”

      He gave her the address and directions to the court building. He was waiting when she got there and took the folder gratefully. He even looked at her. And it was back—the electricity. She could feel it. It was almost a relief—as if the world had righted itself.

      “Need anything else?” she asked, her tone gently mocking, when she handed it to him. “A sandwich perhaps?”

      His mouth twisted wryly.

      She shrugged and was turning to leave when his voice halted her.

      “Natalie.”

      She glanced back, met his gaze. Oh, God, yes, you could light the whole city of Los Angeles with the electricity now. “Hmm?”

      “Thanks.”

      Some things, Natalie decided, were just not a good idea.

      One of them had been agreeing to work for Christo. Not that she didn’t enjoy it. She did. Too much. She liked the work, liked interacting with many of his clients, liked the variety and the challenge.

      Liked being able to look up or across the room and see Christo himself.

      That she probably relished more than anything else. But it wasn’t the salutary experience she’d hoped it would be—or at least not salutary in the way she’d hoped. It wasn’t helping her get over him at all. In fact, by Wednesday, her last day in the office, she knew she needed to get out.

      It wasn’t that she was afraid she would disgrace herself again. It was how badly she wanted to.

      Well, not really to disgrace herself. But she did want Christo Savas with a deep, profound, gut-level desire unlike any she’d ever known. And she shouldn’t.

      It was pathetic. She was pathetic, and she knew it.

      “Get over it,” she told herself. “You’ve been down this road before.”

      So she tried. But she kept looking up to feast her eyes on him every time he came into the reception area. She welcomed every opportunity to go into his office when he was there.

      She found herself memorizing the way his brows drew together when he was studying an argument and how he tapped his pen against his teeth when he was reading. She had an image in her mind of the way he always tilted his head and listened so intently when one of his clients was speaking, and how he always crouched down so he was on eye level with the children as he was doing now with eight-year-old Derek Hartman who was showing Christo baseball cards instead of talking about his parents’ divorce.

      She wondered what he’d be like with children of his own. And the vision of Christo with little green-eyed boys and dark-haired girls pierced so sharply that she had to catch her breath.

      “Don’t,” she said sharply.

      Christo, just straightening up to take Derek into the conference room, looked around at her. “Did you say something?”

      “No—” her cheeks were burning “—I just—no. Never mind. Made a mistake.” She waved in the general direction of the letter she was supposed to be typing. “Just…muttering.”

      He gave her an odd look, then shrugged. “What are you doing tonight?”

      Her gaze jerked up. Her heart kicked over. “What?”

      “I’ve got the shelves ready. Can I come up and put them in?”

      “Oh.” Deflated and annoyed at feeling deflated, she shrugged. “Sure. Of course.”

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