He nodded. "To your empty house."
Sophie's eyes flicked sharply to his. Was he fishing to find out whether Dan had moved back home? She steadied her breathing and shrugged one shoulder as she nodded.
"To my empty house."
Lucien steepled his fingers beneath his chin and studied her.
"Will you kiss my envelopes before you mail them?"
"Will you give me my job back if I say yes?"
He gestured towards the doorway to her old office.
"It's all yours."
Relief flooded Sophie's bones, and also an unexpected, disorienting sensation of safety, too.
"Just colleagues," she said.
"And friends," he murmured, with the slightest flicker of an eyebrow. He glanced sideways into Sophie's office at the gleaming coffee machine and dropped his plastic cup in the bin.
"Any chance you could start by making me a decent cup of coffee?"
Lucien sat for a second and listened to the clatter of cups and the tapping of keys on the keyboard from the room next door. Sounds that heralded the return of Sophie Black, the girl who surprised him. She'd done it once again today, just as she had the first time he'd met her. He knew how much it must have cost her to come back here today, and he wasn't fool enough to think she'd have come at all if she had any other options.
She was so much braver than she knew, and it impressed the hell out of him.
He'd grown accustomed to the silence over the weeks since she'd left, and it surprised him how much pleasure it gave him to hear Sophie next door again. He had no name for the emotion she stirred in him, and he didn't care to consider it beyond acknowledging the fact that in alleviating her money concerns by reinstating her, he could atone for the guilt he felt about his part in her unhappiness.
Besides. There was no denying the fact that she made a mean espresso.
Sophie reacquainted herself with another desk she hadn't figured on sitting behind again, but this time around there was no accompanying sense of unease. Things were as she'd left them, pen pot to the right, diary to the left. A glance inside the diary revealed notes in someone else's hand, evidence that things had been kept ticking over in her absence. Almost as if a caretaker had ensured that things were ready and waiting for her just in case she should need them.
Sophie shook the foolish thoughts from her head and clicked the computer into life, watching the familiar Knight Inc. logo emblazon itself instantly across the screen.
She'd seen that logo so many times, in so many places. Here, in this building. On the tail of Lucien's jet. And printed on the tiny bottle of neroli massage oil Lucien had used to work her into a state of boneless ecstasy in front of his roaring fire in Norway.
Norway.
The land of soaring alpine mountains, of dancing night skies flashed through with more colours than a paint box, and of beautiful Vikings who could melt your knickers at twenty paces.
He was less than twenty paces away right now.
Chapter Five
'Lunch?'
Sophie looked up from the diary to the screen as the instant message alert broke the silence in her office. There was only one person in this building who messaged her, even though she'd have been able to hear his voice perfectly well from his desk just outside her doorway.
'I'm not really hungry. I'll work through.'
It was a lie, but the idea of sharing lunch with Lucien chased away any hunger pangs.
'You need to eat. You're too pale.'
She couldn't argue with the facts. No amount of carefully applied make up could conceal the grey tinge on her skin.
'I'll get something later. Please. I'd rather.'
Sophie didn't know how to be clearer without being rude. Surely it was obvious that she needed to avoid spending unnecessary time with him? Just seeing him again that morning had affected her more than she'd thought it would. He made her breathless, and he made her feel things she didn't have the emotional wherewithal to feel right now. Her body responded to his nearness even when her head said no, and that situation had danger written all over it.
Lucien muttered something indistinguishable in the other room and Sophie heard his door bang behind him a minute or two later. She dropped her head into her hands, her palms pushed into her aching eye sockets. What the hell was she doing here? Everything in her life was jumbled. How could coming back here do anything but make her life a million times more complicated?
She knew the official answer, the one she had told herself and was ready to give to anyone else who cared to ask. She was here because it was a straight choice between this, being groped by Derek, or destitution.
But the unofficial answer lingered on the edges of her mind too, even though she refused to allow it any headroom. There was a tiny but influential element of the decision that wasn’t about those practicalities. It was because she was lonely, because she ached to feel alive again, and because being near to Lucien soothed her, which she knew was entirely ridiculous, given that he was the most lethal man she'd ever met.
Sophie puffed out the breath she'd been holding in and stared out of the picture window at the city skyline. It was vast, she was all at sea in it, and right now her job was the only lifeboat she could cling to. She'd be okay. She'd keep her head above water… just as long as she didn't cling to the skipper too.
Lucien walked into his office half an hour later just as Sophie deposited a sheaf of papers on his desk.
"Lunch."
He dropped a couple of brown paper bags on the coffee table in the corner of his office and shucked off his dark woolen reefer jacket. Sophie had to look away. He had a way of wearing business dress that rendered him centrefold-worthy. His close cut dark shirts defined the taut lines of his body, and Sophie had yet to see him in a tie. His top button may as well not have been there for the amount he used it, and his shirt-sleeves were always folded back to reveal tanned forearms. The man was a walking, talking poster boy for his own sinfully sexy empire.
Sophie hovered, uncertain. She was hungry, and whatever was in those brown bags smelt divine.
"It’s just food, Sophie. Come and eat."
Lucien settled on the sofa and reached for the bags, then looked up at her expectantly.
Sophie knew she was being churlish. If this was going to work, she had to find a way to be around Lucien without remembering how things had been between them last time around.
That was then, and this was now, and he was laying little cartons of Chinese food out on the table that she really, really wanted to taste. Her feet propelled her towards the sofa almost of their own accord, but still she perched as far away from Lucien as she possibly could without tumbling off the edge.