Page 21 of Tall, Dark, and Grumpy

Behind me, my housemates titter.

“A condom.”

“I can see that,” he says with smoothly exaggerated patience. “Why do you have it in your purse for a night out with the girls, when youhave a fiancé?”

There are plenty of good reasonable answers I could give. Things like,you’re my fake fiancé. And,it’s none of your business since you are my boss, and this is Friday night when most normal people are relaxing, drinking alcopops, dancing, and having casual sex.

Admittedly, I am not like most people, because I have spent the last four Friday nights being grilled by my hot boss about sexy, sexy things like Gantt charts.

Mr Blackwood drops the strawberry condom, gritting his teeth so hard I can almost feel the vibrations of it above the pulse of the bar’s music.

He drags his gaze over the banana-flavoured one, yellow and glow-in-the-dark, obviously.

“You were going to use these, tonight?” His brows are lowered, his blue eyes glittering.

“No! Of course not!”

“But you bought them.” He’s thunder. “You were going to use them. Three of them.”

I don’t know why he’s acting like he’s really my fiancé, and he’s possessive of me, but my brain is mush. There’s nopretending they were for him. Mr Blackwood is not the sort of man who would wear a purple condom. Or glow-in-the-dark pink.

“For balloon animals?”

“Miss Meadows,” he growls.

“Water bombs.”

Next to Vito, his brother snorts with laughter and I die internally.

“Are you a five-year-old, Miss Meadows?” Mr Blackwood asks severely.

“Cut price gloves.” I’m babbling. I’ve lost the plot. All sense of what’s appropriate or not has gone right out the window. After all, I was the one who told my housemates that someone exactly like my boss in every detail was my boyfriend.

“Do I not pay you enough?” There’s a sinister edge to the words.

“Oh, he is her boss!” exclaims Tamara, and I really don’t know how I’m going to explain any of this to anyone. I might just move to Outer Mongolia instead.

“Budget chewing gum.” I press my lips together to prevent myself from saying anything more.

I bet yak farming is really fun. Compared to my hot boss discovering my impulse-buy condoms.

“Cassie.”

Simultaneously, I melt and combust. The way he says my name in that gruff voice gives me the crazed impulse to snuggle into him and lick his neck where his dark stubble gives way to smooth skin.

It’s a physical impossibility—not least because he’s too tall for me to do that—but rather like my interest in sex suddenly bloomed when I met my boss, it’s a force of nature. My libido is one of those plants that blooms only once for one day in like a hundred years and the rest of the time is a plain green thing withnothing interesting at all about it. In fact, don’t those plants die after they bloom for that single day?

Never mind, never mind. That hardly matters, because I will already be deceased from sheer embarrassment. My cheeks are a heating element on an old-fashioned cooker, glowing neon red. You could fry eggs on my face.

Mr Blackwood takes a deep breath.

“Amore mio dolce. It was thoughtful of you to buy condoms, but you must believe me this time. There’s no need for contraception, becauseI wantto get you pregnant.”

My jaw falls open. It’s an even more public claim than the kiss. From the corner of my eye, I see that the smirks are wiped from Julie, Tamara, and Polly’s faces and replaced with an expression that with a jolt I realise is jealousy.

I just watch in shock as Mr Blackwood shakes his head fondly at me, makes some wordless communication with the barman who presumably knows a Blackwood pays his debts, then grabs my purse, and leaving the condoms strewn on the bar, takes my hand in his, and tugs me to his side.

He presses a kiss to my forehead and then announces to the room in general, “I’m takingmy fiancéehome.”