Cinderella and the CEO by Susan Meier

Author:Susan Meier
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2013-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seven

In the kitchen the next morning, trying to walk to the refrigerator to get cream for his coffee, Deke bumped into Laurel. Judy was barking orders to the girls about breakfast as Laurel packed brown-bag lunches, so when the collision occurred, it went unnoticed by everyone except Deke and Laurel. Putting his hands on her shoulders to keep her steady, he looked into her eyes, and the entire room, every sound, every person disappeared, except for Laurel.

“Sorry,” he said.

She cleared her throat. “That’s okay,” she said, shifting until she was out from under his hold. She turned away quickly, opened the refrigerator to grab the supplies she needed and nearly ran to the butcher block where she was assembling the lunches.

Deke felt as if somebody had slapped him. He knew they couldn’t pursue a relationship, but he thought they were on the same wavelength about regretting it. He couldn’t believe he’d misinterpreted her feelings.

“You want to ride to the plant together?” he asked cheerfully, pretending he had imagined her cool reaction.

She shook her head. “No. I have some errands to run at lunch time and I need my car.”

“We could take your car…”

She caught his gaze and said, “I want to go in alone.”

That he knew he hadn’t imagined.

Driving to the factory and even for the first few hours of work that morning, Deke didn’t have to wonder about her odd behavior. He’d overstepped a hundred boundary lines when he’d said those things the night before and then kissed her.

But the truth was, like it or not, they weren’t simply two people who had accidentally met. The chemistry between them was too powerful to believe that this was a chance meeting, and knowing her was starting to feel as much like his destiny as taking over Graham Industries. Alone in his bed, still tingling and aroused from a simple kiss and bombarded with the intuition that she was meant to be in his life, he decided he didn’t want to miss what was happening between them. He wanted to try to figure out what it meant.

She obviously did not.

“Deke?”

Deke turned to see Laurel standing behind him. The bell announcing the first break of the morning began to ring, and everybody from the Shipping and Receiving Department dropped what they were doing and zoomed out of the cage as if every cupcake would be gone if they didn’t get to the lunch room immediately.

“Yeah?” Deke said carefully.

“I’ve been thinking.”

He nodded. “So have I.”

Deke watched the expression on her face as she recognized the innuendo in his voice, but nonetheless disregarded it before she said, “There has to be a way we can speed up your investigation. There’s got to be something we’re missing. An angle we’re not thinking of—something that would take us to the next step.”

He didn’t bother reminding her that he had thought of the angle to proceed with when he’d e-mailed his assistant for background information about the plant and its workers, because he knew what she was really telling him.

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