Constantinou's Mistress by Cathy Williams Read Free Book Online

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    â€˜Our little mistake. I quite agree.’ Nick tapped the keyboard of his computer and it whirred softly into gear. He barely glanced as she left his office, gently closing the door behind her.

CHAPTER THREE
    T HE trip in to work this morning had been worse than usual. Lucy had missed her usual tube, had had to wait twenty minutes before she could get on the next one, and when she had managed to squeeze into a compartment had had to spend the entire thirty-minute journey hanging onto the pole by the door so that she was constantly buffeted by people getting in and getting off at every stop.
    And on top of that she had the first stirrings of a sore throat, which probably meant that she was coming down with a cold.
    So she was not in the best of moods when she finally made it to her office to find Nick waiting for her.
    â€˜You’re late.’
    Lucy calmly hung her lightweight jacket on the coat stand by the door and turned around to look at him. The connecting door between their offices was flung open and he was sitting behind his desk with his chair pushed well back so that he could stretch out his long legs at an angle. He looked as though he had been there for hours already, even though it was only a little after nine. His white shirt was rolled to the elbows and his tie had been loosened so that he could undo the first two buttons of his shirt.
    â€˜I’m sorry. I slept through my alarm clock and then I missed my tube and had to wait ages before I could get on another one. Shall I sort out the post and bring it in to you?’
    â€˜Just get in here. With your notepad.’ He watched her through the open door as she walked towards her desk, leant over and fished out her pad from the drawer on the right-hand side.
    Sometimes the line of her jaw when she turned her head or the flick of her wrist took him spinning back over eight months to when they had made love, right here on the sofa in his own office. When that happened he was left feeling oddly shaken and disoriented. It was as if his mind was holding out something for him to take, but, whatever that something was, it was just a little too far out of reach.
    He abruptly dragged his eyes away from her slender body, now straightening with notepad obediently in one hand and pen in the other.
    â€˜Can I expect you in here before the year is out?’ he rasped, pulling himself towards the desk and flicking through some files in front of him.
    â€˜Sorry.’ Lucy hurried in, flustered, and took her seat opposite him, poised to take notes.
    â€˜If you don’t think you can function properly today, then it’s better if you have the day off and send Terri in to cover for you.’
    â€˜I’m fine.’
    â€˜Have there been any developments with this Rawlings business?’ he asked, glancing up at her.
    Even now that her life was seemingly swimming along, she still couldn’t look at him without that stirring of awareness, as forbidden now as it had been when he had been married and out of bounds.
    â€˜We received a fax from them yesterday evening. Actually I stuck it on your desk.’
    â€˜Just tell me what it said,’ Nick told her shortly, frowning.
    â€˜Another dip in profits. No reason given. The usual optimistic forecasts for the next six months and no excuse as to why the past six months have been so sluggish.’
    â€˜And you phoned Rawlings himself?’
    â€˜He was out.’
    â€˜Out where?’
    â€˜I don’t know,’ Lucy said with a rebellious tide of irritation at his attitude. What was the matter with him? Even for him, this was more of a foul mood than normal. ‘Perhaps we could employ someone to act as an undercover agent and track his every movement.’
    Nick regarded her narrowly, noting the slow flush spreading along her cheekbones. Hell, he knew he was being aggressive, unnecessarily so, but he couldn’t stop himself. It had been like this for the