Do you want me to order you pastrami next week?

Oh, now she was just being a smart-ass. He could practically hear the sarcasm in her typed words. And it made him fight not to smile.

No.

Then what do you want, Mr. Sharpton?

He didn’t know what he wanted, aside from thoughts of Mandy Keeling to evacuate his head. And he definitely didn’t want pastrami.

I want to order my own sandwich.

Damien chewed the food in his mouth and reread his words. Now, that was a stupid thing to say. He sounded like a three-year-old. And he didn’t want to order his own food—that was the whole point of having an assistant, to free his time up for more pressing concerns. What the hell was he doing?

That can be arranged.

He actually laughed out loud. Something he never did. Ever. There hadn’t been a whole lot to laugh about in the last three years.

“So that’s how she gets all her work done,” he murmured to the screen as his laughter dwindled down to a chuckle. “She turns it all back around to me.”

“What was that, Damien?”

Oh, shit, he’d forgotten he was on a conference call.

“Uh, nothing, sorry.” Christ, he sounded like an idiot, and when the hell had he ever forgotten that he was on a call?

Impulsively, he pressed star six to mute the call and picked up his phone. He had to see Mandy. He had to reassure himself that he was not feeling any sort of attraction whatsoever to his invisible assistant. He had to know that she wasn’t any different than any other woman he’d encountered since Jessica. He had to look her straight in the eye and feel nothing.

She answered the phone in that clipped British accent of hers. “NY Computing, this is Mandy.”

“I need to see you in my office. Now.”

There was a pause. Then she said, “I was just going for lunch. I’ve an appointment.”

Damien was annoyed. How convenient that she had an appointment. And how coincidental that she never seemed to be at her desk when he was walking by. “When you get back then.”

“Mr. Sharpton…” She sounded nervous and as if she were scrambling around for a plausible excuse not to see him. “I have rather a busy afternoon.”

He was a suspicious man. Cynical. Inclined to think the worst. He hadn’t always been like that, but life had a cruel way of beating the trust out of a man, and he didn’t think he was overreacting in thinking something was really strange about his assistant’s behavior.

Clearly, she was avoiding him. And he wasn’t sure why it mattered, but he just needed to reassure himself that it wasn’t because she thought he was an ogre.

He wasn’t necessarily a nice guy, but he wasn’t a bastard either.