Page 53 of Hot in the City
“You called?” The deep and throaty male voice with a cheeky note of laughter rang out behind her.
She swivelled in her office chair and nearly swallowed her tongue.
Holy Hottie McHottie, Batman!
The guy from across the laneway. But he said she called him. Did she summon him with her imagination-fuelled lust-powers? Hang on, what did he say?
“What did you say?”
He extended one extremely large hand in her direction. “Cruz Ono. You called out my name. Oh-no.”
Megan stared at him blankly. Her brain had left the building.
“Never mind. I’m pleased to meet you. Manny Macauley, the Website Manager, I presume? Sorry to say, I thought you’d be a man judging by your name. And Irish.”
She reached out and shook his hand, and whoa, didn’t that make sparks jump from her fingertips through her whole system. “I am. Irish, I mean. Half-Irish, half-Thai. The parentals are, anyway. I'm all Aussie.”
She dropped his hand like a hot potato, though she had the strange urge to kiss it first.
With his left eyebrow raised sky-high, he grinned. Sexily. His teeth sparkled. “Really? Not a man though, obviously.” Cruz’s gaze took a leisurely cruise of her petite frame from head to toe, lingering on her exposed legs.
She coughed, trying not to have a full-on meltdown. Hottie had looked at her legs! "Bold of you to assume anything about me. But it's Megan, I am indeed a woman, and Manny is just a stupid nickname that should never have been mentioned. Because I’m just one of the guys, apparently." She rolled her eyes.
“Megan. It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”
Did she imagine the emphasis he placed on the word pleasure? Surely not. Hottie McHottie was flirting with her.
Just as she was about to embark on some tentative retaliation flirting, someone came crashing around the corner of the cubicle.
“Holy, Guacamole!”
Oh no. Jean!
Megan’s face heated as she turned slowly to her left, checking out a red-faced Jean having a full-on panic attack, while flicking her gaze right to where Cruz was standing. His arms were crossed over his chest, a sardonic half-smile on his face.
Jean sucked in a deep breath and waved her arms in the direction of their visitor. “What the hell... I mean what’s our Man Friday doing over here? With his shirt on?”
Megan bit her lip. Oh no. But wait, she could still cover their awkward, peeping-tom tracks. “Um, Jean. This isn’t the underwear model we were waiting on for the photoshoot. This is Mr Ono. The auditor. Come to analyse our IT systems.”
Jean’s mouth popped open. Her eyes were wide, startled and watering. “Oh hell! I mean, right. Good. As you were.” Jean pointed dual finger guns at Cruz, then turned and fled, back to the tea room, probably.
Cruz cleared his throat. The sound resonated somewhere down around Megan’s knees.
She nodded at Cruz, who was taking a very close look at her face. Seriously, the way he stared into her eyes, he could have looked right into her soul and seen her guilt sitting there like a lump of coal.
She shook her head. “Right, um, don’t worry about my colleague. We should head to the meeting room. Follow me.” She stopped to grab her notebook and laptop but didn’t worry about anything else.
She couldn’t worry about anything else, there was literally no more space in her brain for catastrophes or coincidences.
Meet-cute
The meeting went as all these things did. Slowly. Painfully slowly. Cruz had asked about the major projects she had undertaken and the database underpinning the company website.
Megan hadn’t had it in her to lie. There was no database but what she had invented on the fly. She’d built the entire website and online store with very little help. She explained about all she’d achieved with basically nothing at her disposal, he nodded and then stared at her for an uncomfortable amount of time. It was probably only a few seconds, but uncomfortable was the word for it. Also, hot.
He was probably deciding whether or not to fire her. Having a full-body tingling reaction to him was probably inappropriate.
Megan tried to inject a bit of levity into the situation. “If I’d known you were coming to rake us over the coals today, I’d have worn my serious intellectual outfit.”
