Chapter One
Luc
It was 10pm, but Luc was still at the office. It wasn't an unusual event, especially on the day the new season's collection was released. He needed to be on hand to check the website stats, sales figures, and do real-time promotion on all of the social media sites. Nearly everyone else had gone for the day, including the grumpy cleaner who had grumbled as he'd tried to dust, hoover, and polish around Luc. The only other person mad enough to still be around was Luc's boss, Adrianna Temple. It was her design label he was promoting; her clothes he was trying to sell.
"How are we doing, Luc?" Adrianna asked, as she waltzed into his office and sat on the edge of his desk. She looked like she was ready to leave, as she was wearing an ankle length coat with faux fur trim and held a clutch purse in one hand.
"Good. We're up on last season's first day sales by thirteen percent."
"Only thirteen percent?"
Luc looked up from the screen, his heart thudding until he met her clear green gaze. Her eyes were sparkling, her ruby lips upturned.
"I'm kidding, Luc. You need to loosen up. Thirteen percent is great." She stood, clutching her purse to her chest. "I'm going to join the others at the wine bar, are you coming?"
Luc shook his head. "Potential customers are still going wild on social media about the new collection. I want to be able to reply to any questions they have."
Adrianna sighed. "You work too hard."
"So you keep telling me." He folded his hands behind his head and leaned back in his comfortable office chair. "I just want today to be as successful as possible for you."
"You just want a bonus."
Luc grinned at her. "Or a pay rise," he said with a wink.
She pursed her lips. "And what would you spend a pay rise on? I'm pretty sure you sleep in the office. You don't have a girlfriend—"
"Boyfriend," he interjected.
She lifted her eyebrows. "Shame. Anyway, as I was saying... you don't have aboyfriendand you never go out. You didn't even take all your holiday allowance last year. Face it, Luc, you're chained to the desk. You don't need a pay raise, you need a life."
"That doesn't mean I don't deserve more money."
She nodded her head thoughtfully. "I'll think about it. So, are you coming out to celebrate a fabulous new season launch? The first few drinks are on me."
Luc considered her offer for about half a second before shaking his head. "Nah. I really want to be here. The personal touch could tip someone off the fence and into making a purchase. You want to improve on thirteen percent, right?" Going out and getting drunk wasn't really his thing; he didn't want to make a fool of himself in front of his colleagues.
"Fine." Adrianna sighed dramatically. "But next time, I'm not going to take 'no' for an answer. You can lock up, right?"
Luc pulled his top drawer open, lifted out the bunch of keys that sat inside and jangled them in front of Adrianna. "I do most nights."
"Because you're boring," she said, flouncing towards the office door.
"Because I'm committed," he retorted. "I'm driven."
"You're boring." She waved her hand without turning round to face him and then was gone, shutting the door behind her with a bang.
Luc scrunched up his nose as he went back to checking the company Twitter feed. He began replying to tweets with sassy comments or answering the questions that had been asked. One that cropped up a lot was whether or not the fur trim used on several of the new clothes was really fake. He'd lost count of the amount of times he'd assured people it was and told them exactly what it was made of.
As he answered the latest slew of questions, he turned Adrianna's accusation over in his mind. Was he boring? Maybe. A little bit. But he was also on a higher salary than most guys his age and could afford a really sweet studio apartment slap bang in the city centre. He hadn't got where he was by going out and getting hammered. He'd got there by working hard, putting in more hours than he was paid to, and by producing results. He was good at his job. If being boring was a side effect of that, so be it.
But the long hours were starting to take their toll. Recently, he always seemed to be tired. He couldn't remember the last time he'd taken any holiday allowance—or done anything with it, except spend a few days in his apartment, catching up on sleep. Once the initial buzz of the new collection died down, he'd take a few days and go somewhere. He pulled out his phone and set himself a reminder to drop by a travel agent on his lunch break the next day, to pick up some short break brochures; if he bothered to take a lunch break the next day. Normally, he worked straight through it, despite protests from personnel that he was causing legal issues by not taking all of his breaks.
He worked for another hour. The time passed quickly. It never ceased to amaze him that people actually wanted to shop online late at night. An alarm on his phone jerked him out of the hypnotic haze of staring at social media sites.
—You should probably go home now, loser.
Past Luc had obviously been in a foul mood when he'd set that sarcastic message. Either that, or he'd imagined that future Luc would be amused by it. Luc wasn't. After his conversation with Adrianna, he didn't need reminding that he was, indeed, a boring loser. He was married to his job and had no room in his life for anything else; he was content with the way things were.
