His Irresistible Darling - Sarah Randall Page 0,21
have a read over this today. That’s all.”
Pip gave him a quick nod and walked or rather stormed back to her desk, no doubt pissed off at him now that he had the emotional barrier back in place and hadn’t even uttered a word of thanks for her efforts in completing the task so quickly. What an ungrateful bastard he was.
Pip slumped back down in her chair and began typing impatiently on her computer. She needed to file this feeling for the next time her heart when berserk when Jumal walked by her desk…
“You keep mumbling under your breath people are going to talk, sweetie,” Melina said across the desks.
“I hate him. Ungrateful bastard.”
“Ah right, well maybe I can brighten up your day. Reception called for you whilst you were in there. They have a package for you.”
“A package? But I’m not expecting anything—oooh maybe it’s a present for my birthday from Matt and Ana.” She smiled, pushing up excitedly from her desk.
“Maybe.” Melina smiled at her mischievously. Her friend knew something and wasn’t for telling.
Pip felt some trepidation as she stepped into the lift again; she fiddled with her blouse and straightened her skirt on her way down to reception, assuring herself that her luck couldn’t be so bad as to get stuck again. The engineers had assured her that the problem was fixed.
She let out a relieved sigh as she stepped out into the cool, sand-coloured marble-tiled reception area of Jumal’s elegant building and glanced up towards the cloudless sky, visible through the atrium, and offered a silent prayer of thanks.
Those prayers were quickly forgotten as she spotted Jake nervously pacing and swinging her lunch box. The man was no doubt uncomfortable under the snake-like gaze of the receptionist, also known as the office gossip.
She approached him but he hadn’t noticed her yet so she tapped him on the shoulder. “Jake.”
He spun around to face her, hitting her in the leg with the lunch box. “Oh. Shit I’m sorry!” he blurted out apologetically. “Er, hi. You forgot this in your rush this morning,” he said, thrusting the lunch box at her.
Oh good grief, there was no good way for that comment to be interpreted and news would likely spread around the office like wildfire that Pippa Darling had been with a man! She gently took hold of his arm and led him away from the reception area.
“Thanks, it’s sweet of you to bring it for me. I’m forever forgetting and losing things.” She rolled her eyes and smiled at him and decided that he was definitely cute in an all-American clean-cut boyish way—the polar opposite of Jumal.
“No problem.” She watched him shift his weight from side to side. “Actually, I wondered if you’d like to go and have a coffee with me?”
“Oh, erm, sure that would be lovely. There’s a nice café in the mezzanine near the waterfall; it will have some shade.” She took her lunch box from him and swung it as she walked past reception and called back over her shoulder, “Reeta, can you tell Melina that I’m taking an early lunch? Thanks.”
Oh well, she thought, in for a penny in for a pound.
The sparkling waters of the Gulf did nothing to lighten Jumal’s mood as he sat back in his chair, steepled his hands and tried to fight the growing unease settling in his stomach, having analysed Pippa’s review of the Dubai contract.
He’d gone over it again and again to try to allay his fears but without success. There was no getting around it. She’d messed up big time. The only question was whether it had been done deliberately and he found it abhorrent that he couldn’t trust his own judgement on this. Never before had he second-guessed his gut reaction to something but the fallout from this could be catastrophic for his business. He needed a second opinion.
“So,” he said, turning his chair to face Malik who had just finished reading. “Do you agree with me?”
Malik looked up from the papers and shook his head, his face giving away his disbelief.
“I just don’t know why she’d do it,” he said, clearly as shocked as Jumal had been on first reading Pippa’s report and cross-referencing the contract. “She couldn’t have missed it by mistake; it’s too obvious.”
He watched his friend run a hand roughly through his hair before throwing the report back on his desk and slumping back in his chair.
“She didn’t miss it,” he declared, confidently. “She knew it was there and didn’t