Rock Hard (Rock Kiss #2)(22)

“I’ll be right there.”

After picking up the food, which she saw was from a top-tier restaurant Gabriel liked, she brought it up and carried it through to his office. It was a routine they went through at least three times a week, Gabriel pulling more hours than anyone else in the company.

As usual, the last container was marked “Charlotte.” Normally, she was the one who placed the order, but on the rare occasions he did so himself, he never forgot to order for her, and he never got it wrong. She had no idea how he’d noticed she liked certain things and not others, but he had.

“Finley?” Gabriel asked without looking up from the computer screen.

“On his way back into the city. He’s in Albany, so it’ll be twenty minutes at least with the current traffic.”

No answer, his concentration on work. Taking her dinner back to her desk, she opened it to reveal fragrant jasmine rice with a plastic tub of Thai green curry beside it, a prettily cut cucumber on the rice as a garnish. Mouth watering, she grabbed the included fork and began to eat at her desk.

“Ms. Baird.”

She almost dropped the fork at Gabriel’s quiet but penetrating call. Damn man. Leaving her food, she went to the doorway of his office. “Is there a problem with the document?”

“No. Bring your dinner in here.”

Blinking, she went back to retrieve the container. They never ate together—he was usually working and eating at the same time, and she had to eat quickly in case he wanted her to enter last-minute changes or organize meetings or phone conferences as soon as he was done with whatever he was working on.

Last week, she’d had to call suppliers in London, Namibia, and Finland, all in the space of a single—long—day. Saxon & Archer was once more being lauded as the luxury department store in Australasia, and it had a great deal to do with their rejuvenated supply chain as well as the rising staff morale. All driven by the inexorable force known as Gabriel Bishop.

When she returned to his office, it was to find he’d come around to the black leather seating area to one side that he sometimes used for more casual meetings. His tie was off, the top two buttons of his shirt unbuttoned and his sleeves rolled up as was standard by this time of day. Dark stubble shadowed his jaw. The sensual curve of his lower lip was the only point of softness on him.

In her madder moments, Charlotte sometimes wondered if he was rough in bed or if he had tenderness in him.

“You know he’s hot, right?”

Molly had said that to her when Charlotte had been complaining about Gabriel back at the start. While Charlotte had denied it at the time, they’d both known she was lying. Now, if she could only forget his attractiveness and focus strictly on the job, she’d be well on her way to a successful long-term career.

Taking a seat on the sofa opposite him on that reminder, she ate in silence as he alternately frowned at the document he was still reading and went through his food quickly and neatly, as if it was simply fuel. It was a tragedy, the meal exquisitely prepared by one of the top chefs in the country.

“Ms. Baird, why are you staring at me as if I’m killing baby kittens?”





10


HALF-NAKED T-REX AND ICE CREAM (SADLY NOT AT THE SAME TIME)





HE REALLY SHOULD STOP doing that to his pretty little admin, Gabriel thought with an inward grin. Every time he caught Charlotte staring at him, she turned bright red and couldn’t speak for at least a minute. He didn’t mind the red—it made him wonder if she blushed all over her body—but he minded the way she still went mute around him every so often. Usually, it was simply because he’d inadvertently startled her, but sometimes, he scented fear and it pissed him off.

Gabriel didn’t hurt women, had never hurt women. Hell, even his piss-poor excuse for a biological father wasn’t violent. Brian Bishop might have used his wife like she was an automatic teller machine, but he’d never lifted a hand to any of his family.

That was the only good thing Gabriel could say about the man.

Charlotte hadn’t been so lucky. Someone had brutalized her to the point that the scars lingered deep within; he’d like to get his hands around the neck of the f*cking bastard, give him a taste of his own medicine. One day, when she trusted him enough, she’d tell him, and he’d make sure she had no reason to fear her abuser again.

“You should appreciate your food. Someone put a lot of time and effort into it.”

He was so surprised at the feminine rebuke that he leaned back and looked at her. Breaking the eye contact almost at once, she focused on her own meal. He watched the fork travel through her lips and thought about that pretty, pretty mouth on his cock, her tongue licking along the vein that ran along the bottom.

Christ. Wrenching his mind off that particular trajectory before it became rigidly obvious what he wanted to do to her, no doubt terrifying her into running, he started eating again. “I appreciate food when I have the time,” he said, considering once again how to take this to the next level. Charlotte had finally stopped jumping when he was nearby, and today, she’d shown more than a hint of temper. He wasn’t about to allow that progress to stall. “We might have time for a proper meal together in Rotorua next week.”

Her eyes flicked up at the mention of the city famous for its high geothermal activity, complete with geysers and bubbling mud pools. “Rotorua?”