defenses could protect against. Surrender, no matter how short-lived, was guaranteed.
“No,” she blurted, withdrawing from the heat of his nearness until her heels bumped against the closed door. “We already have an appointment tomorrow morning. I’m sure anything we have to discuss can wait until then.”
He arched a brow. “There are a few items in your personnel file we need to address. Items I’m sure you don’t want Henri to hear.”
A fresh wave of panic flooded her chest. Had Bill written something in her file about Emma? “What items?”
“Your file indicates that you’ve been here for four years.”
“Yes,” she hedged, studying his eyes for any hint of what he already knew. “So?”
“So where were you for the year between London and here?”
I was having your child. “Does it matter?”
“Why don’t you let me be the judge of what matters and what doesn’t?”
She inhaled as she cast about for reasonable excuses, knowing she navigated a fine boundary between placating him and raising his suspicions. “The job market was tight when I first returned. It took me a while to find a position that fit my skills.” And my childcare schedule.
“Perhaps you should have asked me for a reference.”
She let the statement pass without comment.
His gaze flicked over her body, managing to be both dismissive and unnerving at the same time. “How did you manage to acquire the Renaissance position without any documented work history?”
“Who knows?” She shrugged. Licked her suddenly dry lips. “Perseverance? Luck? Pounding the pavement for long enough that Masters took pity on me?”
Narrowing his eyes in speculative assessment, he flattened his mouth into a grim line. “Right. Masters pitied you enough to hire you despite your apparent lack of experience.” He paused, the accusation beneath his words as clear as if he’d spoken it aloud. “Why do you suppose that was?”
Defensive without having any reason to be, she hitched her chin. “Why don’t you ask him?”
“I did,” Stephen admitted smoothly. “He claims he took a chance on you. A chance he seems to be quite proud of taking.”
“Well, it has nothing to do with what you’re thinking,” she insisted. “He just likes to support the locals.” “The locals?”
Uncomfortable with her slip, she bit back a silent curse.
“Yes.”
“Since when are you local?”
She exhaled noisily through her nostrils. “Since I was born.”
His brow hitched high. “How did I not know that?”
There’s a lot you don’t know.
When she didn’t answer, he moved closer, crowding into her space and forcing her to tip her head back to maintain eye contact. “You never did tell me much about your past, did you?”
She felt her body flush hot and then cold. “No, I didn’t, and I’d like to keep it that way.”
Challenge flashed in his expression, firming his mouth and making his jaw bunch. “I’m not surprised. And I suppose you’d like to pretend we don’t know each other as well, right? Pretend to be strangers when we’re anything but?”
“Of course,” she blurted, grappling for a tone of normalcy despite her racing pulse. “It’s been five years. We’ve lived on different continents, led separate lives. I think it’s safe to assume we’ve both moved on.”
“And yet here we are. Together again.”
“We aren’t together,” she corrected with a thin, brittle voice, while both hands wrapped tightly around the strap of her purse. “We’re simply boss and employee. Nothing more. I don’t see any reason to acknowledge we have any history together at all.”
His gaze flicked to her knotted hands and strained expression before he leaned even closer. Close enough for the safe distance she’d shored up between her heart and the pain of leaving him to vanish in an unwelcome surge of heat. “So you’re … comfortable … pretending we never had an affair?”
Too unnerved to form a reply, she simply stared up at his achingly beautiful features, trying to make sense of his sudden reappearance in her life. Why wasn’t he in London? At the Whitfield Grand where he belonged? “Of course,” she finally managed. “Our … involvement … is hardly something I’ve been proud of, and hauling it out for inspection now, five years after the fact, will only complicate matters for everyone.”
His expression, as hard and inscrutable as granite, didn’t change as he stared at her for a long, tense moment. “For everyone? Or just for you?”
A flash of pique washed over her, sharpening her tone. “I was the subject of malicious hotel gossip because of our … whatever it was we had, and I’ve no desire to repeat the experience. I’d