LUCINDA. PICK UP. Lucinda. Pick up. Lucinda. Pick up.
Lucinda’s fingers hovered over the keyboard keys right as the voice stopped, their ends tingling from typing ninety-plus words a minute.
She cocked an ear but couldn’t tell where the voice had come from.
From her desk—aka The Guard Tower Blocking All From Entrance Into Her Boss’s Sacred Space—she could see all the way from his corner office, down the hall past Reception to the lifts at the end, and there was no one nearby.
She went back to typing and…
Lucinda. Pick up. Lucinda. Pick up. Lucinda. Pick up.
With a huff, she lifted her fingers from the keys and zeroed in on the sound.
It was coming from her phone, which was lit up beseechingly by her elbow. Someone had added a new ringtone. The picture smiling back at her gave her a fair idea who was behind the deep, gravelly voice.
Biting her lips to suppress a scowl—or possibly a smile—Lucinda pressed the little red “end call” dot on the screen, flicking the call to voicemail. She was a busy woman. The man could wait.
Straightening her shoulders, Lucinda found her spot on the screen once more, pressed a quick finger to her earbud and picked up the trail of the conversation in her ear as Dahlia—Executive Assistant to the Head of Advertising at the Melbourne Ballet Company—continued her story about the man who’d stood her up for drinks the night before.
As Lucinda listened, mmm-ing in all the right places, she continued to type a bullet-point list of the day’s top business-related headlines—trending brands, celebrity gaffes and wins, as well as a few choice titbits she thought might be relevant to her boss—a ritual she’d begun when she’d first landed a job at the Big Picture Group six-and-a-half years earlier.
Then her mobile started ringing again, the tone deep, resonant and insistent. Male. Lucinda. Pick up. Lucinda. Pick up. Lucinda. Pick up.
Lucinda did not pick up. She opened a drawer, tossed the phone inside, covered it in a pile of miscellaneous paper and shut the drawer once more.
Then into her mouthpiece she said, “Dahlia, you are a rare gem. Find a man who sees your worth. One who looks you in the eye. Who listens when you speak. Who shows up when he says he will. Find a grown-up. Do not waste another moment settling for anything less. You’ll thank me.”
Dahlia thanked her profusely and rang off. But not before promising to send Lucinda a dozen A-circle tickets to opening night of the Melbourne Ballet’s next show. Lucinda didn’t bite back that smile. She already had a couple of clients lined up who’d love her for ever for those tickets.
Though she did wonder—if only briefly—whether she was, in fact, the best possible person Dahlia, or anyone, could turn to for dating advice. At least she hadn’t given Dahlia any advice she wouldn’t follow herself.
“Probably why you’ve been single for so long,” she muttered, before getting back to work.
Until her phone started up again. Lucinda. Pick up. Lucinda. Pick up. Lucinda. Pick up. Only muffled. By paper. And a closed drawer.
Lucinda slowly typed the last bullet point, saved the file and sent it flying through the ether to her boss’s computer, before turning on her chair to face the man himself.
Angus Wolfe, one of the top branding specialists in town, if not the country, sat on the other side of a wall of diffused, smoky glass that separated him from the rest of the world.
He leant back in his big leather chair, feet up on the decadently deep windowsill, face in profile as he looked out over the stunning view of the Melbourne skyline. The dying sun sparkled and glinted off the staggering shards of chrome and glass beyond but Lucinda only had eyes for the mobile phone pressed to his ear.
When the drawer began to vibrate a moment before her phone rang, she whipped it open, grabbed her phone and again pressed the little red “end call” dot. She then shoved back her chair, stalked to the discreet glass door that was hers and hers alone, opened it with a satisfying swish and strode across the acre of soft grey carpet to her boss’s desk.
There was no way he wasn’t fully aware she stood behind him. The man’s ability to read a room was legendary. He noticed changes in temperature, pulse, breathing and tone of voice the way other people noticed being kicked in the shin.
Yet still she took a selfish moment to drink him in before officially making herself known.
For Angus Wolfe’s profile was a study in staggering male beauty.
The man was all chiselled angles. Sharp jaw, close-shaven. Hair darkly curling and a mite over-long. The reading glasses he refused to admit he needed to wear did nothing to soften the impact of the most formidable pair of dark-hazel eyes that had ever been seen.
Even the tendons in his neck were a sight to behold.
Then he shifted. Slowly. Like a big cat stretching in the sun. The lines of his charcoal suit moved with him, cut as they were to make the most of his…everything. Each one cost more than she’d spent on her car. She knew. She paid his bills.
Then she spotted his socks. Peeking out from the top of his custom-made dress shoes was the merest hint of a wolf motif. She’d given him those socks for Christmas.
Her heart gave a little flutter, releasing a gossamer thread of lust that wafted from throat to belly to places less mentionable.
She squished the thing. Fast.
Angus Wolfe might be able to read a room, but if anyone dared claim that Lucinda Starling—his long-time executive assistant, his right-hand woman, his not-so-secret weapon—was a teeny, tiny little bit in love with him, he’d have laughed till he split a kidney.
Either she kept her cards closer to her chest than she realised or he had a blind spot when it came to her. The fact that he had no clue was a gift. And she planned to keep it that way.
For the sake of her job. Her self-respect. Her mental health.
When her phone went off in her hand—Lucinda. Pick up—she flinched.
Then she pulled herself together. She held her phone at arm’s length and said, “Really?”
A beat slunk by before Angus turned in his chair, mouth kicked to one side in the kind of half-smile that always meant trouble.
“When did you even get access to my phone?” she asked.
He tapped the side of his nose. “I have ways,” he said, his voice deeper in person than in the recording, the words unhurried, the effect magnetic. “Ways and means.”
“So they say,” she sassed.
No one else would have noticed Angus’s pause. The infinitesimal shift in his eyes. But Lucinda noticed it all. It was her job to do so. It was what made her so good at getting him what he needed before he even knew he needed it.
It was also why she mentally kicked herself for the flirty bass note in her voice.
Their relationship, as it was, was a finely tuned, perfectly balanced thing. There was sass, and plenty of it. And banter. There was also brutal honesty. And respect. A little flirtation was within the rules. Part of the game. For they worked really long hours and had to do what they had to do to keep it fun. It took work to keep the balance right. Work to make sure the guy had no clue how she felt about him.
Lucinda feigned resignation as she cocked