Entry-Level Mistress - By Sabrina Darby Page 0,13

Falsified tax documents? Proof that he’d set my father up a lifetime and a different company ago? This wasn’t some primetime television show with convenient eavesdropping and surely no one would be so stupid as to leave that sort of evidence around, not even on a password-protected computer that could one day be confiscated by the feds or the police.

My father hadn’t been quite that cagey. The day they arrested him, they took everything in our apartment, including my computer. When I’d left for Arizona, everything of financial value from my old life had been confiscated, pored over in some distant room by nameless suits with grim expressions.

Hartmann didn’t know what that was like. Hadn’t had to deal with the fear of one’s home being raided. And he was the reason I had.

He could be back at any moment.

I reached out, touched the curved side of the leather portfolio, played with the hard corner. One flick and it could be open before me. Wasn’t this exactly why I was here?

I looked to my right, where a brown sofa sat parallel to the paneled wall. With sudden purpose I crossed the room, dropped my purse on the floor and sat down on the couch. It was completely possible that this whole situation was a test to see what I’d do. Perhaps he had cameras in here and could see every move I made. Perhaps he was even now in a room next door, watching me. If I were a billionaire about to have a date with the daughter of my enemy, that would seem like a smart move.

But if it was a test, then it wasn’t very subtle.

Why did he invite me here for a takeout lunch? To ask me the same question I’d been wondering all day, why was I still working here? Or to talk about this weekend, about what made him change his mind? What did run through Daniel Hartmann’s head?

And what did I want to talk about? Sitting there, I grew increasingly self-conscious and nervous, aware that on Saturday, I’d been bouyeed by a false confidence inspired by physical attraction, by knowing I had the power to tease him, to make him kiss me.

The way I wanted him to kiss me again.

After another silent moment in the huge, empty room, I kicked off my shoes and lay down, arm stretched upward to pillow my head. With that slight tilt, I could see out to the opaque June sky. I looked up. The ceiling was a mixture of white and wood paneling that concealed a well-designed lighting system.

When he walked in, he’d see my legs first, and maybe the fall of my hair off the side of the sofa. I liked that image, imagined it as a photograph in a fashion magazine—as if anything I was wearing was remotely a designer brand.

But I was being ridiculous. Really, I should sit up, stop playing at seduction. If he wanted to talk—about the past—then that would be for the best. And yet the thought terrified me, as if that dark, shared history might hold monsters better left locked away.

I heard the faint but distinct sound of the glass door opening. Then footsteps and a ridiculously loud rustling of plastic. I struggled up to a sitting position.

“Don’t move. Stay right there.”

I looked over my shoulder, found Daniel striding into the office carrying a bag of what smelled like takeout, which he placed on the coffee table as he slid onto the couch next to me.

I didn’t move, desire flooding through me at that expression on his face.

“I wasn’t going to do this,” he said softly, his heat wrapping around me, his mouth finding my ear at the same moment that he touched my stocking-clad thigh just below the line of my skirt. “But then I saw you there, waiting for me.” I melted back against him, into the feel of his mouth on my skin and his hands caressing me. He made it sound as if I had been lying on his bed waiting for sex. “I’m sorry I’m late.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I said quickly, turning, nearly crawling into his lap, all thoughts of talking far, far away. He smelled like the hazy June day, aftershave and shampoo. Maybe it was simply our intertwined past, but it felt as if I’d known him forever. “I entertained myself reading all your papers and computer files.”

He moved away from me infinitesimally.

“I don’t think you did.”

Despite the undercurrent of uncertainty, the note of