Then she would cite holiday time still owing, which would allow her to resign without having to set foot in the office again.
In the end she decided to hand the letter to Raffaele herself and deal with the consequences head-on.
How bad could it be anyway? As far as she knew there were no dungeons in the building into which she could be flung because his offer had been rejected. She expected he would be startled but then he would shrug and accept the inevitable.
She’d never known Raffaele to beg for anything in all the time she’d been working for him. When it came to women, he was good at walking away. His nose might be put out of joint because the walking-away schedule had not been set by him, but habit would kick in and the only thing he would really miss would be her efficiency in the office.
She was a bundle of nerves on the Monday morning as she strode into the lift and headed up to the top floor.
Cruising down the Grenadines felt like a lifetime ago even though they’d only returned two days previously, from the sticky humidity to the uncomfortable heat of the city.
Her resignation letter was burning a hole in her bag.
How was it that everything around her was so familiar, from the people greeting her to the buzz of employees ditching their jackets and settling down for a day’s work, and yet she felt as though she was having an out-of-body experience?
Raffaele was, of course, already in. There was something about the atmosphere on the floor when he was in, a certain alertness, a tacit awareness that the big guy was around, which meant everyone went into hyper-focus mode.
She waved and nodded to people she knew as she walked towards the office she and Raffaele shared. It was at the very end of a corridor that housed the various directors behind smoked-glass walls.
She breathed in to steady her nerves, pushed open the door and then walked straight through the connecting door. Raffaele was on the phone, his seat pushed back from his desk.
He came off his call with alacrity and looked at her with intense satisfaction before vaulting to his feet to perch on his desk, the very picture of an alpha male in possession of just what he happened to want.
‘I thought you were taking some time out to go visit your parents. How are they, by the way? Told them about us yet?’ He grinned and moved to shut the connecting door, locking them into his office space.
‘I decided that my time might be better served coming in to work today.’
‘Got it. Fully on board with that one.’ He reached to sift his fingers through her hair. ‘The sun loves you. You’re an incredible golden colour after a couple of weeks in it. Brings out your freckles.’ He deposited a kiss lightly on her lips and for a couple of seconds, Erin’s world stopped and she was besieged by memories of how her body felt whenever he touched it.
As though he could literally control her ability to think or not think.
Right now, he barrelled straight through her defences and she felt herself go weak at the knees.
She put her hand on his chest, felt the beating of his heart underneath the white shirt and pushed him away although it was a very wobbly, unconvincing push.
‘I know,’ he breathed, not budging. ‘I get it. Very reckless of us to carry on within the confines of the office. Much better for us to meet outside. Office gossip can spread faster than a flu virus, but which of us would be able to resist if we happened to be within ten metres of one another? Hence why working on a different floor might help our blood pressure.’ He slanted a wicked smile. ‘But I get why you had to come in. Believe me, I’m on the same page. The thought of not being able to touch you for another fortnight was bringing me out in a cold sweat. I realise I might not be a fan of delayed gratification after all. I might have had to spring a surprise visit on your parents.’
Erin was temporarily distracted by that appalling thought.
She wriggled away from him and moved to her usual chair in front of his desk in a pointed attempt to put some distance between them. Not much but any small amount of distance would do.
He, in turn, returned to perch on the desk, which left her with the heart-stopping sight of his muscular thighs and the fabric of his trousers pulled tight across them. She stared, dry mouthed for few seconds, at his hands hanging loosely between his knees and cleared her throat.
‘That would have been a terrible idea,’ she croaked distractedly.
‘Under normal circumstances, yes,’ Raffaele agreed. He didn’t take his eyes off her for a single second. ‘Under normal circumstances, the last thing I’ve ever been interested in is getting to know the parents. But then your parents are in a league of their own.’
‘Am I supposed to take that as a compliment?’
‘Insofar as that would be a first for me,’ he murmured without skipping a beat. ‘But then, in so many ways, you’re a first for me.’
‘I’m duly flattered,’ Erin said politely. She wasn’t. Being seen as a novelty was no great compliment and that was what it came down to, wasn’t it? Plus, did he really think that seeing her parents as oddballs in ‘a league of their own’ was going to have her heart racing? That she was going to be bowled over by the fact that he might want to meet them the way a scientist might be interested in meeting someone from another planet?
Erin knew that she was being unfair.
Raffaele was a naturally curious person and he was genuinely curious about her parents. In a lot of ways she couldn’t blame him. They couldn’t have been further removed from his own stuffy, cold family, the people too rooted in tradition to give their only child the basic love and affection he had once craved.
No amount of money could buy love and affection.
