The Price of Inertia (The Seven Sins #4) - Lily Zante Page 0,52
She liked Jamie and I’ve always wondered if there was a hint of an attraction between them. It would be good to catch up and see everyone and see what they are doing now.
We haven’t managed to talk much in recent days because he’s doing an extra half an hour, at Ward’s request. When he finishes he has to rush off to make it back to the gym where he works.
I’m in the study early one morning, tidying up Ward’s desk. As I begin to polish his table, moving his papers and notebooks out of the way, I catch sight of my name scribbled on a sheet of paper.
It’s a scribble in his spidery scrawly handwriting:
Mari
I bend over, lowering my head and peering closer.
He wrote this.
My name.
Why?
“What are you doing?”
I jolt my head up as his sharp voice pierces the air. “I... I...” I lift my hand, duster and all, trying to figure a way out of this.
Ward walks towards me. There’s a sharpness to his features that wasn’t there before when his beard hid most of his face. My heart threatens to crash out of my ribcage, my pulse gallops like wild horses.
“I told you to keep your hands off my work.”
I quickly put his notebook on top of the papers and try to make his desk look neat and orderly, just how he likes it.
“What were you doing, Mari?” He lifts up his pen, that pen, and taps it on the table as if he’s a headmaster waiting for an answer.
I try to straighten up to my full height, to regain some semblance of control, of authority, but his menacing glare makes my insides quiver.
“You wrote my name.” I state, lifting my chin in a way that I hope signals defiance.
“You were looking through my papers,” he replies, as if that explains everything.
We’re facing one another and only the chair, neatly tucked into the desk, stands in our way.
“Why did you write my name?”
He scoffs, as if I’ve lied. “Did I?”
“Who else would?” I quip, cheekily. “I can show you.” I go to pull out the sheet of paper.
“Don’t touch my notes.”
My duster falls to the floor and I reach down to get it. I forgot. He doesn’t like me snooping around.
Then, in a softer voice, probably because he’s reminded of what an ass he can be, he says, “I must have been thinking.”
“Of what?” I ask, standing up. His Adam’s apple bobs, telling me he’s not as calm as he pretends to be. “Am I in trouble?” I want to know. I can’t help but think of my job, and my mom, and the expensive nursing home. I’ve given this man enough chances to fire me.
“In trouble?” His eyes glint in the dim light of the room. “Any reason you would think that?”
“I didn’t read any of your papers. I swear I didn’t. I saw my name and I ...” I can’t think of what to say. Him writing my name means something, doesn’t it? Or am I desperately trying to make it mean something?
“But you managed to find a sheet of paper with your name on?” he asks, calmly.
“It was sticking out. I didn’t go looking for it. It caught my attention.”
“Did it, now?”
I blink, and I’m about to ask him what he means but I have lost the ability to think. The nerve endings all over my body throb like a thousand miniscule drums.
This is the wrong reaction for me to have here in this room standing so close to this man. I’ve done nothing wrong, I remind myself, and I never took his pen.
“First you take my pen, and now you find a sheet of paper with your name on it. What’s going on, Mari?”
I gulp. “You’ve got it all wrong. I saw my name, and I was curious.” I try my power move tactic and take a step towards him. I’m so close now that I accidentally brush my hand across his naked forearm. I shiver, not because he’s accused me wrongly, but because the heat and hardness of his arm, of his body, of his muscles, causes a peculiar reaction inside me. He advances a teeny bit, and I retreat but now I’m pushed up against his desk and I have nowhere else to go. If I inch back any further my bottom will be perched upon it.
“Curious?” he whispers, then makes a counter move and cages me so that my bottom is perched on the desk.