Read More Than a Fling? for Free Online Page B

As Brand
and Image Director, it was her job to make sure that the look and feel of the
new stores was everything their customers expected them to be.
    Then she had magazine adverts to approve, paperwork regarding
their sponsorship of a yacht race to plough through and a new face to find for
the new line.
    Ally wiped the perspiration from her brow before resting her
forehead on her knee. She wished she was the type of person who could just pull
on a bikini, grab her e-reader and towel and hit the beach—who could spend the
day in the sunshine doing nothing. But that just wasn’t Ally. No: she’d sit down
and within a half-hour she’d be feeling guilty because she wasn’t being
productive, feeling tense because she’d be making mental lists of what she could
be doing.
    The truth was that she was happiest working; at work she didn’t
have to think about anything else except the next task she had to do. Work was
her entertainment. She felt safe there. It was her demanding lover. Ally looked
at the beach again and sighed.
    Intellectually she knew that she should want to take time off,
that she was entitled to relax, to have some fun, but she couldn’t translate the
thought into acceptance. Working was her way of repaying her debt to Sabine and
Justin; it was her way of saying thank you. She couldn’t be the soul-sharing,
emotionally expressive daughter they wanted—dear God, she would be if she
could—so hard work was all she could give them.
    She’d do anything they asked unless it involved her heart—not
that she was sure she had one any more. She knew what her life could have been
like, and the thought of it still made her shiver. If Sabine and Justin hadn’t
pulled her out of that sterile hotel room the Thai authorities and later the
British Embassy had shoved her into after they’d removed her dad’s body from the
beach in Phuket, God knew what would have happened to her. She had no other
relatives—none that she knew of anyway—and no one else would have run to her
rescue.
    She owed them for giving her a home and an education, but she
couldn’t risk loving them too much—just in case they got whipped away as well.
She didn’t think she could survive that.
    She had to work this morning, but it would be an absolute sin
not to spend some time on the beach. So...what if she printed out those reports
she needed to go through on her portable printer and took them to the beach with
her? She would still be working... and getting a tan.
And since she needed to concentrate while reading them she wouldn’t have time to
think of Ross Bennett—the A-grade sexy dipstick.
    But she’d only be productive if she didn’t think of his clever
mouth, his big hand on her breast, that hard thigh pressing into her crotch.
Ally sighed as her skin prickled and her crotch throbbed. Casting a last look at
the ocean, she turned to walk back into the hotel. Here we
go again.
    A cold shower was her last resort; if that didn’t work then she
was definitely ordering that sex toy.
    * * *
    Like most of his gender, Ross hated apologising. It made
him feel stupid and weak and...stupid.
    But stupid he had been, and although Ally had punished him for
it—being in a lift with two nosy old ladies with a full erection had not been
fun—he knew that he still owed her an apology. He’d tried most of last night and
all of this morning to find a reason why he didn’t, shouldn’t, couldn’t—and
still hadn’t found one.
    He’d opened his big mouth and by doing so he’d screwed up, and
he was enough of a man to admit it. For most of the morning he’d tried hard to
ignore his conscience but at noon, when he realised that he’d achieved sweet FA,
he’d given in and left his office to head over to Ally’s hotel.
    He needed to apologise—not only because his conscience dictated
it but also because his father had never been able to do so... Saying sorry is for wusses, pansies and pathetics. That was one of Jonas Bennett’s favourite