Talking Dirty with the CEO - By Jackie Ashenden Page 0,34

darling, no one’s interested in all that computer stuff. Absolutely no one. Why can’t you find something more interesting to do?

Christie growled and pushed Helene’s intrusive voice out of her head.

It was his loss, not hers. His. With a certain amount of determination, she deleted his e-mail.

She felt good about it for the rest of the day. Like the kind of woman who could have mad, passionate sex with a hot guy then leave him without a backward glance. Strong and confident and kick-ass.

But when she got home that night, all the kick-assedness had vanished, leaving a creeping kind of loneliness in its place. Her apartment, in the inner-city neighborhood of Ponsonby, had always felt safe. But tonight the familiar untidiness of it, with her Star Wars posters on the wall, the bits of electronics from the PC she was rebuilding all over the table, the remains of a half-eaten pizza from the night before still on the couch, felt kind of sad.

A computer nerd’s bachelorette pad.

For some reason it made her think of Joseph’s pristine apartment. How tidy it had been. How clean. God, if he ever came here and saw the filth she lived in, he’d have a heart attack.

Not that she cared about that. It was her home and she had nothing to be ashamed of.

And why was she thinking of him anyway?

Christie tried to wash away the annoying thoughts of Joseph in the shower, thinking instead about logging in to Zombie Force Online. Hopefully she could get rid of the stupid, lonely feeling with a good round of blasting aliens with awesome lasers instead.

…

Joseph couldn’t concentrate. He felt restless, edgy. Even more wired than normal.

He frowned at the sales figures he was supposed to be looking at but couldn’t seem to get them straight in his head. Always a bad sign when he couldn’t concentrate on sales.

He flicked another look at his in-box. No e-mail from her. Again.

Cursing, he pushed himself up from his desk and stalked around his office. There was a treadmill in the corner he often used for burning up excess energy, but he didn’t feel like running. He felt like something else. Something that burned up the same amount of energy but in a far more pleasurable way.

He wanted Christie.

His brain fixated on her. He couldn’t get her out of his head. All unpredictable passion and vulnerability. Courage and determination. He burned to know more about her and he was annoyed—no, extremely pissed off—that she hadn’t replied to his e-mail.

At the very least a thank-you for the job offer would have been nice.

Joseph made another restless pass around the office. It was dark outside the windows, all the rest of his people having long gone home. But not him. Him and his restlessness.

He moved to the desk and sat down again, opening up the Internet search page and Googling her name. It felt a bit pathetic to do so, a bit too teenage boy, but the curiosity inside him refused to let go. Anyway, he reasoned, if she did happen to accept his R&D job offer, it would be good to know something about her, right?

A whole host of hits came up and he scrolled through them, eventually finding what he was looking for.

Christie St. John. Features writer for Total Tech. Who also, it appeared, spent a lot of time on gaming chat forums, not to mention participating in online gaming tournaments. No surprises there, and great scores, too, from what he could see. Not much else apart from the fact that she seemed to be related in some way to a well-known Auckland society family.

He scrolled through some of the online gossip columns as more hits came up. Not just related as it turned out. She was the daughter of Helene St. John, ex-beauty queen turned socialite, one of the undisputed divas of the Auckland society circuit.

A picture popped up on his screen. An old one from the looks of things, at least a few years. A tall, slender, stunningly beautiful older woman with perfect blond hair and wide green eyes stood smiling at the camera, a glass held in one elegant hand. And behind her, partially obscured, another, much younger woman…a girl, really. Standing there in that awkward, gangly way teenage girls had when they didn’t know what to do with themselves. Christie. In a pretty dress and heels, peering out from the Pre-Raphaelite mass of her hair.

Joseph frowned. His Naughtygirl in her Docs and skull T-shirt a society maven?