The Boss's Unconventional Assistant

He also noted the absence of any assurance that she wouldn’t apply similar tactics in the future. Annoying woman. Insightful, too.

His gaze roved over the still crimson-streaked hair, lingering on the ponytail tied with a matching crimson ribbon. A jet-black figure-hugging blouse, cream trousers and yesterday’s crimson boots covered her from head to foot… Was that cat fur on her blouse, just a few little strands of white?

‘Domestic to the core,’ he muttered in a tone that somehow changed from his intended gruffness to almost admiration. With a snort, Grey hobbled forward to sink into a chair at the table. She probably had a dozen cats in her apartment in Melbourne, making her home look cosy and welcoming. Rather, shedding hair all over the place. A non-domestic-seeking man’s nightmare!

Maybe he needed food, fuel for his brain so he could think more clearly.

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t quite hear what you said.’ She took a saucepan off the stove and spooned its contents into two bowls. On the bench, the coffee percolator belched out a scent that wasn’t quite ordinary.

‘It was nothing.’ Grey poured water into his glass and didn’t feel any anticipation about the food whatsoever. He ate to keep up his strength and she was all he had in the way of someone to conveniently provide meals while he focused on other things. She could dish up the blandest most ordinary foods and he would feel no differently.

He’d been off on a flight of some kind of weird, incapacity-induced fancy when he’d thought he anticipated her next meal. Now he had his thoughts under control. He’d reprimanded Sophia, achieved what he’d set out to do.

He’d killed the attraction stone-dead as effectively, hadn’t he, a sarcastic voice in his head put in.

Grey suppressed a second snort and grumbled, ‘What’s for breakfast? I’m hungry. It’s making my head explode. And I brought the brace for you to put on. You seem to feel I shouldn’t do it myself.’

‘No, and I’m sure you want to do everything possible to get better.’ She knelt at his feet and laced him up. Her movements were brisk and impersonal while those big sherry-coloured eyes fixed with way too much focus on first his foot and then his chin, his neck, even his ear.

Anything to avoid looking into his eyes, it seemed.

‘Just one more tug to make sure it’s snug enough.’ She suited actions to words.

In a moment she would get up, move away from him. Then he wouldn’t be able to smell her soft scent, touch the head bent to conceal her expression…

Grey’s hand disengaged itself from his brain function. There could be no other explanation for the fact that he reached out to touch the silken hair on that down-bent head. A feather-light touch she wouldn’t feel, wouldn’t know about.

Yet he felt that touch and reacted to it in a way he couldn’t explain. She had beautiful soft hair and a heart as big as Australia that drove her to send him demented with whatever manage-her-employer plan she had tucked away in that smart and sassy head of hers.

Inexplicably, a knot of something that felt like tenderness filled his chest. Grey yanked his hand back and leaned away from her.

‘How does that feel?’ She raised her gaze as she asked the question.

‘The brace is as comfortable as it will get.’ And her eyes were pools of liquid brown, her mouth soft and temptingly kissable.

She smiled that sunny smile even as she backed away from him and busied herself at the kitchen bench.

‘Uh, here’s breakfast.’ Sophia carried the bowls to the table and avoided looking into his eyes. She placed his bowl in front of him, pushed another of sliced bananas in some sort of brown, sticky sauce his way and returned to the bench to pour mugs of whatever she had brewed in the coffee percolator.

‘The cereal is five grain porridge, slow cooked for forty minutes on the stove—triticale, oats, barley, wheat and rye.’ She ticked the ingredients off on her fingers. ‘I’ve percolated my own blend of morning coffee. It’s decaf, but the cardamom flavour is so good you won’t notice the absence of a caffeine kick.’

‘I usually have toast or one of those snack breakfast bars you can buy off the shelf pre-wrapped and ready to go.’ He always had coffee with breakfast—real coffee—and, yes, his doctor had said he should give it up completely, but surely fewer cups a day would do? ‘I’m not really into coffee substitutes in the morning.’

But she’d already poured two big mugs of the brew. She put his on the table and paused to take the first sip of hers. The look that crossed her face as she absorbed the taste made his muscles clench.

Grey looked away. He had enough to cope with simply trying to control her and not desire her.

‘I’ll have the drink later, at my desk.’ It wasn’t capitulation. He would insist on some real coffee later this morning.