Caught on Camera with the CEO

As if.

‘Temp?’

‘Yes. Short, brunette bob.’ Alex winced, hating to have to reveal that he didn’t know her name. He watched Kelly’s lips purse and sighed, frustrated. ‘You’ve seen the clip, haven’t you?’ Now he felt his cheeks heating.

Kelly dropped the ‘no idea’ look and nodded. ‘Yes. She no longer works here.’

‘How come she’s no longer working here? That project is months off completion.’ Alex found he couldn’t meet Kelly’s eyes. Hell, what a mess. He’d never compromised himself at work like this. Socially for sure—he liked to play. But not at work. Kelly had worked for this company for more years than he’d been alive. She’d worked with Samuel, and his father before him. A Carlisle loyalist. There was nothing in the business that she didn’t know. Alex remembered her giving him paper as a kid to entertain him while he waited for Samuel and him making darts to shoot at people walking past. The severe look she was giving him now wasn’t so different from the one she’d given him then.

‘I know,’ Kelly said quietly. ‘But there’s a new temp now.’

Alex looked at her then, hearing the soberness in her voice. He didn’t like the censure in her eyes, either. ‘I think you’d better send Jo to see me.’

Kelly disappeared and Jo, the head of HR, was knocking at his door in less than a minute. Alex walked over to meet her. ‘The temp that we had working on the Huntsman project last week—where is she?’

Jo looked distinctly uncomfortable. ‘The temp?’

‘Yes,’ he growled. ‘You know the one I mean.’

‘Yes.’ Of course she did. ‘Her services were no longer required.’

‘But there’s a new temp out there now.’ He’d walked through the floor as soon as he’d got in, run the gauntlet of knowing looks and smiles only to be completely disappointed when it had been some blonde at the desk and not the little brunette who’d been haunting him for days. ‘So why did you get rid of the other one? On whose authority? For what reason?’ He rapped out the questions, the nasty feeling in his gut growing.

Jo looked even more uncomfortable. ‘It was the recruitment agency. They phoned and said they’d made a mistake with her file. They hadn’t been able to verify her school qualifications so they pulled her.’

Alex stared at her, anger churning. ‘So she’s no longer working for the agency?’

‘No. I don’t believe she is.’

It was his turn to take a deep breath—he had to force his jaw apart to do it. ‘They couldn’t verify her school qualifications?’ Alex shook his head. ‘But we had security clearance for her? And proof of her banking exams?’

‘Yes.’

So the records meant diddly, then. If she had her banking qualifications, then they didn’t need to verify any other records—she couldn’t have got the bank ones if she hadn’t had the school ones. It was a trumped up excuse to get rid of her.

‘So it wouldn’t have had anything to do with this?’ He strode to his desk and spun his computer screen round so the image he’d paused it on was viewable from her side of the room.

His head of HR went beet red.

Alex leaned back on his desk and folded his arms, hiding the fists. ‘Don’t tell me you haven’t seen it. Everyone in the office has seen it. Haven’t they?’

Jo nodded.

‘And now you’re telling me she’s been removed for the most flimsy of reasons.’

‘We’re covered, Alex. It was the agency who removed her. Her dismissal had nothing to do with this…incident.’

Alex stared at her, unable to believe his ears. Like hell it didn’t. She’d done nothing wrong. She shouldn’t have lost her job. His fists bunched tighter.

‘Does she have another job?’ He could only hope she had a better one.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Then you better phone the agency and find out,’ he growled—he was not going to be able to rest until he knew. The job market was horrendous at the moment. That meant the temp market was even more vicious.

‘Excuse me, Alex.’ Kelly came back in, shutting the door fast behind her and stepping forward. ‘I have someone outside insisting on seeing you.’

‘Who is it?’ Alex asked crossly. ‘I don’t want interruptions now, Kelly.’

‘I know you don’t. But this one is different. It’s her.’

‘Who?’

‘That temp.’

Alex froze. ‘She’s here?’

Kelly nodded.

‘Now?’ The ripple that ran through his body was pure testosterone. ‘You. Out,’ he barked at Jo.

She was out of there faster than a condemned prisoner getting a last-minute reprieve. But Alex was the one feeling the edge of desperation. He turned to the woman who knew more about what went on in the building than anyone. ‘Kelly, please, what’s her name?’

Kelly looked up at him through her half-glasses, her face as impassive and composed as always. When she finally answered, it was with marked deliberation. ‘You really ought to know that already.’ Then she left.

Alex stared at the door and wondered how on earth he was going to get away with it.

Dani perched on the edge of the chair—the one nearest to the exit. She shouldn’t have come. What was she doing back here? Sweating for one thing and she was all shaky inside, as if it wouldn’t take much for tears to sting. She couldn’t let that happen—getting all emo was one sure way to come off the loser. She blinked and went rigid as the hideous HR dragon appeared from his office. She glanced at Dani but made no acknowledgement as she swept past. That was it—Dani was leaving. What had possessed her to attempt this? Oh, yeah, desperation.

Now the PA was standing in front of her. ‘Mr Carlisle will see you now.’

Mr Carlisle. She swallowed, tried to quell the fluttering inside, told herself she had no need for nerves. But the moment before the door opened she had a second, a sliver of a second, when she thought she’d really rather die.

She pushed through, went in and it happened as it had all the last week. The large hand gripped her heart and squeezed, stopping the beat for two seconds too long, while lower in her belly someone switched on the heater.

He was in a suit. It was immaculate. He wasn’t smiling.

But he was still brain-zappingly gorgeous and she was as bad as the thousand other women who fell at his feet—breathless, bedazzled. She tried to clear her mind of the clutter, to quell the hormones shrieking at her. Think Zen. Think power.

‘Thanks, Kelly.’

Dani heard the door click. So it was shut. So they were alone.

He wasn’t behind his desk; instead he stood on her side of it, in the middle of the room. ‘My name is—’

‘I know who you are.’

Their eyes met. His face was expressionless. But she knew he was remembering the moment after the last time she’d said that, just as she was. That time the spark in his eye had surprised her. The oh-so-relaxed boss, the charming playboy, had looked bitter for a half-second. She’d spent all that night wondering why—in between reliving the heat.