Page 30 of Love to Loathe Him

“I thought we agreed on you calling me Liam,” he murmurs. The proximity makes my stomach flip and I curse myself for the traitorous reaction.

“Of course. Liam.”

Honestly, I prefer him as an insufferable asshole. At least then, I know where I stand. This new, almost playful side of him is throwing me off-balance, and I don’t like it one bit.

I manage to break free for a few precious minutes to grab some of the leftover buffet when Lizzie’s name flashes across my phone.

“Yeah?” I answer, typing furiously at my laptop with my free hand.

“Uh, we’ve got a slight issue here, babe.” Lizzie’s voice is laced with poorly concealed panic. “Hmm, do you know how to makeWinnie poo on demand? Like, is there a special cat treat or something that just gets things moving?”

I pause mid-keystroke. “What? Why?”

“So, I, um, you know, went to drop the cat poo off but can’t find it anywhere! So I’m back home now, trying to get Winnie to provide a replacement sample. But she’s not exactly being cooperative. Should I try feeding her?”

“So you’ve lost the original poo sample?”

“I swear I had it in my bag with your files! It must’ve fallen out at your office.”

“At my office?” I hiss, before remembering where I am and lowering my voice to a furious whisper. “Are you telling me there’s a rogue cat turd rolling around somewhere in my workplace?”

She makes a whimpering sound.

Squeezing my eyes shut, I suck in a deep, calming breath through my nose. “Don’t force it, she only goes once per day usually. We’ll get another deposit tomorrow morning. I’ll have to do a sweep and make sure that biohazard isn’t rolling around reception somewhere.”

I hang up abruptly and charge out toward the lobby, doing my absolute best to seem cool, calm, and collected—like I’m not on a covert mission to locate a wayward piece of cat poo in a flipping transparent tube.

Liam is holed up in his office, deep in what looks like an intense discussion with three blokes who can only be the dreaded auditors.

Mercifully, there’s no sign of the missing specimen tube in the lobby. But I still feel uneasy.

I stride back through the open-plan office while sneaking a furtive glance toward Liam’s glass-walled office.

He appears to be attempting a smile for the auditors, though it clearly causes him great physical and emotional pain. He lifts a hand, idly stroking the stubble dusting his jawline, then his arm comes down to land on the folders I left on his desk and . . .

Oh.

God.

No.

Out rolls the fucking poo tube in tortuous slow-motion, directly into Liam’s line of sight.

What have you done, Lizzie?

I feel the blood draining from my face. Liam’s frown carves deeper into those handsome features as confusion—and a trace of horror—washes over him.

He glances at the auditors, nostrils flaring, probably praying they didn’t witness that. Then his gaze whips back to settle on . . . the poo sample, nestled all snug and cozy beside his tanned, toned forearm.

And . . . is that my lipstick? My bright red, unmistakable, signature shade of lipstick, lying conspicuously next to the offending turd like some sort of bizarre still life? What the actual hell, Lizzie? Did you just grab a handful of random objects off my table and stuff them in with the files?

I snatch up a random file from a nearby desk, feigning deep concentration as I pretend to review its contents. All the while, I’m watching Liam out of the corner of my eye, trying not to look like I’m watching him.

All right, deep breaths. In through the nose, out through the mouth.

Nothing definitively links the poo to me, except for the fact that I was likely the last person in his office. And it was nestledoh-so-lovingly in the folders I handed him. But besides that, I’m in the clear.

He shifts uncomfortably, his features contorting into something I can only describe as flustered confusion. In all my years at Ashbury Thornton, with all the shit I’ve witnessed, I’ve never once seen McLaren flustered.