The Prince's Forbidden Cinderella, page 17
Lex didn’t blame her. Gorgeous Guy deserved a second or third look.
Unable to look away, she watched as he raked his hand through his hair, obviously frustrated. He jabbed a finger at his phone and lifted it to his ear, scowling. He looked Italian—maybe Greek or Arabic? His nationality didn’t matter. He would be classified as a hottie from Cartagena to Canberra and everywhere in between.
And she had to stop gawking at him before he noticed her open mouth and glassy eyes. Honestly, she should get out more if she was this affected by a random handsome guy in an airport terminal.
Pull yourself together, Satchell!
Unfortunately, yanking her eyes off him proved harder than she expected. She was about to—she was!—when he turned his head and his eyes collided with hers. Despite being across the room, she felt the heat of his gaze as his eyes moved over her face and down her long body. It was easy enough to figure out what he was thinking: bright-red hair, long and curly, tendrils springing out around a heart-shaped face, every inch covered in distinctive freckles with a small nose, a wide mouth and green eyes. A tallish, too-thin redhead dressed in black jeans, biker boots and a battered black denim jacket over a long-sleeved white T-shirt.
He didn’t drop his eyes or walk away and a hot slap of attraction hit her, causing the world to shift under her feet. A million tiny needles hit her over-sensitised skin and she felt light-headed and weird. Why did all the colours and sounds in the airport seem amplified? Maybe she was having a stroke because all her nerve endings felt as if they were on fire, sending bolts of current up her arms and straight to her heart.
Or maybe this was pure animal attraction. She tipped her head to the side. She’d heard of the phenomenon but had never experienced it, not to this degree anyway. He picked up his overnight bag and started to walk...
And, good grief, was he heading in her direction? Was he seriously going to initiate a conversation...with her? What? Why?
She was way out of practice with guys and didn’t know how to flirt any more. Lex shuffled from foot to foot, her heartbeat loud in her ears. She couldn’t get enough air into her lungs and, despite having taken a few sips of icy coffee, her mouth felt as if it hadn’t experienced liquid for weeks. What would he say when he reached her. How would she respond? Lex darted a quick look over her shoulder... Maybe someone behind her had captured his attention and she was reading the situation wrong, but...nope. He was definitely focused on her.
And, standing in a busy airport, she felt naked, emotionally vulnerable. As if he knew her or could easily discover her secrets. That he knew that, beneath her insouciant exterior and her ‘I’ve got this handled’ attitude, she was floundering and second-guessing everything she did.
And, sometimes, who she was.
Damn, he was still heading her way, his eyes still locked on her face. Why couldn’t she look away from him? What was wrong with her?
As he approached, Lex realised his eyes were a topaz-brown colour, a gorgeous mixture of gold and amber tinged with hints of green. Lex, feeling off-balance and more than a little shocked—he was now just a few feet from her—felt her sign fall to the floor. His cologne, a masculine combination of sandalwood, lime and something herby, drifted over to her, along with the hint of expensive soap. He’d showered recently because the tips of his wavy hair were wet, but he hadn’t bothered to shave, as thick stubble covered his lower face.
Up close he was even more impressive than he was from a distance and Lex tightened the grip on her coffee cup.
Be cool, Lex. Don’t do, or say, anything stupid.
Lex tipped her head back to look up into his eyes as he opened his mouth to speak.
‘I’m Cole Thorpe...’
But, before he could finish his sentence, a loud jangle emanated from the back pocket of her jeans, causing her to jump. The ring sounded like a foghorn—she’d made it that loud so she could hear it ring from every corner of the house—and Lex squeezed her plastic coffee cup so hard that the lid popped off. She watched, horrified, as a long stream of cold coffee flew into that hard face and down that wide, cashmere-covered chest.
Oh.
Oh, help!
* * *
Cole was used to walking off his private jet and straight into a car that would whisk him away to his next destination, a seamless transition that he’d made five hundred times or more. His arrival in Cape Town had been anything but standard.
And, so far, deeply annoying.
Had his long-term virtual PA been in charge of his travel arrangements, he would already be in a car, halfway to Thorpe Industries, Cape Town. But, because Gary was on paternity leave, Cole was making do with another virtual assistant he’d found through some agency. So far she was proving to be a shade up from useless. In capitals. And by the end of the day, if he remembered, she’d be gone and he’d be onto temporary assistant number four. He had too many balls in the air for inefficiency and needed someone who could make his life easier, not harder. And, really, what was so difficult about making sure he had a ride from the airport to Thorpe Industries’ Cape Town headquarters?
After hanging around in the airport for fifteen minutes—a complete waste of time—he’d reached someone at Thorpe Industries who’d told him that the driver’s instructions were to wait at International Arrivals. She had a sign, he was told, but you couldn’t miss her...
His driver was a woman, and would probably be dressed in black. She also had red hair. Once he started looking for her, Cole found her almost immediately, only to find her eyes already on him. For the first time, his feet felt glued to the floor and his lungs didn’t seem to be taking in enough air.
She was tall, maybe five-eight in those clunky, ugly boots, but to say that she had red hair would be like saying the sun was yellow. It was a deeply unimaginative description for such an unusual shade. Long and curly, it wasn’t red, orange or auburn, but a cacophony of colours, reminding him of the fallen maple leaves that carpeted the ground at the end of autumn in the Bukhansan National Park in South Korea. And those freckles...
They ranged from pinpricks to tiny dots, each one perfect. Hers wasn’t just a spray across her nose, or on her cheeks, but her entire face was covered in a Milky Way of cinnamon-coloured tiny stars.
Heart-stopping stunning.
Her hair and her freckles captured his attention—how could they not? Her body was slim but curvy, and she had dark-red, perfectly arched eyebrows over bright eyes—green or blue?—and a wide, sexy mouth. Without her freckles and red hair, she’d be another attractive woman, but her unusual colouring made her stand out from the crowd. And that wasn’t easy in a busy airport.
She was also, apparently and weirdly, his driver. Cole looked down at the sign she held in her hand—it was upside down—and winced internally. She was the first woman he’d been attracted to in months—the last six months had been hectic and his sex life had dropped way down his list of priorities—and she worked as a driver for Thorpe Industries.
He didn’t play where he worked. Ever.
Tucking his phone into the back pocket of his jeans, he swung his bag up so that it hung off his shoulder and started to wind his way through the crowds to the redhead. She watched him approach, her eyes wary. Then her lips parted and her tongue appeared between strong, very white teeth. He was old enough and experienced enough to know that his immediate, and intensely inconvenient, attraction to her was reciprocated.
After everything that had happened these past few months, this was not what he needed.
Slowing down, Cole told himself to take a breath, to gain control. He was tired, stressed, overworked and he was overreacting. She was just another woman, nobody special. He didn’t believe in special and he didn’t have time for an affair. He had a hedge fund to manage, a company he didn’t want to sell and a life to resume.
He’d be in and out of Cape Town in a week...maybe two.
Forcing his feet to move, Cole walked towards his driver, telling his stomach to unknot, his throat to loosen and his lungs to take a breath. He couldn’t let her know that he found her compelling, let her suspect that it felt as if she’d slid her hand through his ribs and held his heart in a tight grip.
Normally very cool and completely collected, Cole had never been sideswiped by attraction before, and he was stumbling around in unknown territory. But he only had a few feet to pull himself together...
Three, two, one...
He took his final steps up to her and introduced himself, only to be interrupted by the sound of a foghorn piercing a dark, stormy night. He braked, the redhead squeezed her takeaway container of coffee and a stream of the cold, sticky liquid hit his cheek and lips and slid off his chin to fall to his chest and then the floor.
He stood there, shocked and, well, wet, wondering what else could go wrong. Then tears started to roll down the redhead’s face.
He could handle a long flight, being inconvenienced, having to track down his ride and being smacked in the gut by a very unexpected attraction...but a woman’s tears?
Nope. They were enough to drop him to the floor.
* * *
As her phone went silent, Lex closed her eyes, praying that this was a nightmare, that she hadn’t just started crying in front of her boss, the brand-new owner of Thorpe Industries, the man who, indirectly but ultimately, signed off on her pay cheques.
What on earth was wrong with her? She never cried. Why in front of him? And why right now?
Lex scrabbled in her tote bag for a pack of tissues and pulled out a small pack, her shaking fingers unable to pull back the tab to the opening. A tanned hand gently took the packet and pulled back the tab, allowing her to pull a couple of tissues from the pack. She wiped her eyes, thankful she seldom wore make-up. Streaks of mascara down her cheeks did not pair well with wet eyes and the post-box-red of her skin under her freckles.
Oh, how she longed for the floor to cave in beneath her feet. Anything would be preferable to standing here, feeling like a complete, over-emotional wreck. The last time she’d spontaneously cried was when Joelle had bleached her hair and she’d ended up looking like a half-ripe apricot. She’d been thirteen. She was now more than double that age and should be in control of her emotions.
The problem was that she normally was.
So why was she crying? What was wrong with her? She’d known sad, and she was a long way off from feeling that overwhelming emotion. Sure, she was tired, but she’d learned to function on minimal sleep. Was she stressed?
She was a woman in her late twenties trying, with the help of her sister Addi, to raise her young half-sisters, study, stretch their income further than it was supposed to go and keep their rag-tag family together. She was studying psychology. She knew that stress always found a way to express itself, sometimes when the person was least expecting it. It rolled through the body, looking for a way out, and sometimes it was released through tears.
And exhaustion inhibited the body’s ability to self-regulate and made it more prone to emotional outbursts. Yes, she tended to shove her feelings down, telling herself she didn’t have time to deal with them, that she’d process all she was feeling later when she was less tired, when she was alone. However, she never had time, was infrequently alone and there was a good chance that all those pesky feelings had piled on top of each other and spilt over and out.
But why did she have to cry in front of Cole Thorpe, her boss? Was it because, subconsciously at least, her attraction to him made her realise that she was still a woman, still capable of feeling sexually aroused and knowing there wasn’t a damn thing she could do about it, even if she’d wanted to? Was it because seeing him, knowing that she couldn’t just accept a potential offer to join him for a drink or dinner later, made her remember all she’d sacrificed for her sisters, all that she couldn’t have?
Had it made her see that she wasn’t a normal single woman, that she had more responsibilities than most, that she sometimes felt trapped, and felt guilty for feeling that way?
Possibly. Probably.
She could figure out the reasons for her tears later—they were so stupid!—but right now she needed to rescue this situation, preferably before Cole Thorpe fired her. If he did that, she’d have a very decent excuse to cry and another huge reason to stress. She desperately needed this job: it worked around her big sister-substitute mum duties.
Lex sniffed and lifted her eyes to see a black jersey being pulled up to reveal a washboard stomach and a muscled chest. Her mouth fell open as a steady hum started in her womb and the space between her legs buzzed, getting warmer by the second.
His sweater came off and he impatiently tugged down the black T-shirt that had ridden up his chest. She couldn’t help noticing his bulging arms as he dragged his jersey over his coffee-splashed face and chest. Then he dropped to his haunches, snapped open his leather bag and pulled out another sweater, pale-grey this time, and pulled it over his head. He shoved the black jersey into a corner of his bag and stood up.
From start to finish, his swapping of jerseys couldn’t have taken more than a minute, but Lex felt as if she’d watched the longest, sexiest movie in her life. And she wanted to hit rewind.
He was her boss, and Lex needed to stay employed, so maybe, instead of ogling him, she should apologise profusely and try and act like the professional she knew she could be. But, after having shared some serious eye contact, tossed her coffee over him and burst into tears, there was a good chance that she might have over-cooked her golden goose.
Lex held out her hand, gave him an embarrassed smile and cleared her throat. ‘I’m sorry. For tossing coffee over you and crying.’
He put his hand in hers and gave it the briefest shake before dropping it as if it was a Cape Cobra. ‘And you are?’
She’d forgotten to give him her name. Great. ‘I’m Lex Satchell.’
He nodded, picked up his overnight bag and slung it over his shoulder. ‘I’ve seen enough of this airport, so I’d like to get out of here. Where’s the car?’
It was hard to think around him. ‘Uh, we need to go down a floor. It’s not far but, if you prefer, you can wait in the pick-up zone. I’ll take your bag to the car.’
‘I’ve got legs. I can walk.’
He had very nice, very long, very strong legs... Stop it, Lex!
‘Let’s go,’ he added, his tone brusque. ‘I want to check in at my hotel and drop in at Thorpe’s Cape Town headquarters today.’
So did that mean she wasn’t fired? Or was he just waiting for her to deliver him to wherever he wanted to go before he canned her? Lex started to ask him but he took off towards the escalator, moving quickly.
Lex followed his broad shoulders, feeling dazed and disoriented. He was implacable and unreadable, and she suspected she wasn’t the first, and certainly wouldn’t be the last, person who’d wonder which way was up around the inscrutable international businessman.
Copyright © 2023 by Joss Wood
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ISBN-13: 9780369726896
The Prince’s Forbidden Cinderella
Copyright © 2023 by Kim Lawrence
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Kim Lawrence, The Prince's Forbidden Cinderella
