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relax, take a few minutes to enjoy your new office, learn where everything is.”
    “Okay, I can do that.” Piper tried a smile out , but it felt as contrived as it looked.
    “With the nature of the job, you are free to come and go as you please. Be prepared to be the most hated person in the office. Everyone else here only wishes they could have the freedom you’re getting, myself included,” he joked. “Then again,” he said thoughtfully, “no one here thinks it’s worth the sacrifice. Frankly, you couldn’t pay me enough to spend every day with that man.”
    Piper blanched. “Is he really that bad?” Could anyone really be that bad? Her mother was bad, intolerable, really, but bad enough that you couldn’t put a price tag on it? Now that was a scary thought.
    “I’ve heard he makes Scrooge look like a saint. Since I’m his boss I suppose I get special trea tment, but I’ve heard things…” He trailed off, but the lift of his eyebrow said it all. The man was horrid. What had she gotten herself into?
    Felix clapped his hands together loudly. “One last thing before I leave you to it. It will be up to you to figure out what needs to be done and in what order to do it. So long as it all gets taken care of, you will be the master of this ship. Okay?”
    There was nothing left to say, so Piper nodded her understanding. Once she was sure that Felix was gone, she released a long, heavy breath and got to work.

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    6
     
    Where was his goddamn assistant? For the hundredth time Tate Larson glanced to the door watching another suit enter and approach the counter to place his order.
    Checking his watch again, Tate gritted his teeth and dropped his eyes back to the screen before him. So help him God. Felix promised he had found a good one this time. He swore this was the one. Foolishly, Tate had believed the man, though why he did was beyond him. The last dozen or so certainly hadn’t worked out, so why should this one? Was it too much to ask for a person to be on time these days? Well, Felix was going to be pissed to hear that he fired this one on the spot. He didn’t tolerate incompetence well.
                  The bell over the door chimed again, announcing another arrival. Pausing mid-sentence, his fingers hovering over the keys, Tate lifted his eyes to the door once more, pausing on the pretty little thing that stepped inside.
    Dressed as a professional in a nice buttercream blouse and fitted pencil skirt, he was unable to keep his eyes from wandering over her luscious curves. She wasn’t as tall or slim as the women he normally chose, but there was just something about her that drew the eye. Maybe it had something to do with the woman he had hooked up with at the club over the weekend—lush lips, curvy body and bedroom eyes. Exactly the type of woman he went for and actively avoided.
    He was still reliving that moment nightly, hell, daily.
    He never should have kissed her. It went against his personal code of never kissing a one-night stand. But kiss her he had and now he was suffering the memory of that kiss and the way the woman tasted endlessly.
    Glancing around, he noticed that half the men in the shop ha d paused what they were doing to take notice of the woman, too.
                  He watched curiously, studying her form, the way the morning sunlight created a total body halo making her look positively heavenly, the way her eyes darted around the room nervously, landing on each man only long enough to disregard them and move on. Hmm, why only the men, he wondered as those innocent brown eyes snagged on him.
                  Oh, hell no.
                  Tate straightened from his slouched position and dropped his feet from the chair in front of him to the floor with a dull thud.
    It c ouldn’t be.
    This had to be some kind of trick. Some sick twist of fate. Two things occurred to him at once: he was looking at the obje ct of his