My boss and I stack the boxes in the middle of the plush living room carpet and my mind spins. All these coincidences. It’s weird. After twenty-one years of crappy luck, including being orphaned and homeless, I’ve suddenly become a lucky girl meme.
The money. The hotel room. This job. I think,I wish someone would help me with this stupid bank stuff and give me a hug, and my boss appears. I mean, sure, I’m dying even moredeaths—getting good at this now—every time I remember that he saw me crying, face blotchy.
But… Well I did get to find out what it felt like to be in his arms. Amazing.
I just don’t dare ask why he was there. And why did my luck change? That shadowy figure I saw yesterday before I found that bank note… It couldn’t be?
No.
But it’s too strange, and I sneak a look at my boss. It does all seem to be associated with Mr Anderson. He’s the kingpin of Croydon, after all, and it’s since I was in Croydon that I’ve been lucky. Literally everything I’ve wanted is falling into my lap, and it feels like there must be a catch.
Maybe it’s just poetic justice, because while I’ve been given all these amazing things I’ve longed for, I suddenly find that what I most want is utterly forbidden: my big, tattooed, older, darkly handsome kingpin boss.
I shake myself as he brings in the last couple of parcels. I’m being ridiculous. I’m excited about my whole Wishlist being delivered, and not pining after the man I can’t have, to the point of making up insane theories about how he’s following and caring for me.
Definitely.
“Do you have plans for dinner, neighbour?” he says casually as he moves to the door. “Since you’ve only just moved in, I figure you maybe don’t have groceries? And I made far too much for one.”
“I…” My mouth goes dry. Is my hot billionaire boss inviting me to have dinner with him?
“Do you like chicken pie?”
“I love it,” I admit. I was reading that item on the menu of a restaurant yesterday and thinking how I craved it.
“Good, then that’s settled.” He turns away, leaving me gaping like a fish.
“Are you sure?”
“Close the door behind you,” Mr Anderson calls over his shoulder. Quickly picking up my key and closing both doors behind me, I follow him. It occurs to me as the door snicks shut that I’m alone with a man twice my age, who is my boss.
I don’t care. It’s him who should be worried, because I’m greedy for more information about Mr Anderson. About Kane, though I dare not call him that.
His apartment is the mirror image of mine, but more homely. There’s a bowl with his life stuff in it on a sideboard. Small coins, receipts, some notes, a spare key. Bookshelves line the corridor leading to the main living space, and the scent of rich broth and buttery pastry makes my mouth water. Emerging into the kitchen and lounge area, the walls are covered with more art, and while I really love my apartment, this has the feeling of a place I could snuggle into.
“Here.” Mr Anderson pulls out a chair for me at a little table on the other side of the kitchen island. It’s set for two, with wine and a candle, and my tummy does a flip.
“Thank you.” I don’t know where to put my hands and I’m terrified I might spill the red wine on my new cream trousers, but Mr Anderson picks up his glass and raises it to mine.
“It’s only dinner, and what you deserve.”
There’s something funny about his phrasing, but he fetches the food from the oven, and I relax.
Having dinner with my boss is nothing like eating with my aunt and cousin. There’s no fetching or carrying for me. Every time I try, Mr Anderson’s brows pinch together, and he shakes his head.
When we’ve eaten and finished our glasses of wine, he walks me to the door of my apartment. I’m not sure what to do, but he clasps my shoulders and presses a kiss to my forehead.
It’s a chaste—if still inappropriate from my boss—kiss, nothing smutty in it. But my whole body responds in a way I never have before.
I’m buzzing even as he puts me away from him immediately, with a low, gravelly, “Goodnight.”
I guess it’s been a long time since anyone kissed me. And I’ve never had a proper kiss, so my internal standard for what’s sexy is probably misaligned. All it takes is Mr Anderson’s affectionate dad’s-best-friend kind of kiss and my brain thinks it is a turn on like a filthy romance novel.
It’s a good thing Mr Anderson bought me knickers though, as the next morning, I could swear I put the soaked white cotton ones I wore yesterday beside my other clothes on the chair in the bedroom. But they’re gone.
9
KANE
