That was something he couldn’t let happen.

“I don’t need a vacation. But I can appreciate the sun and a dive into the ocean. So I’m planning on making it a working week, just at a slower pace. Only I need you there, with me.”

“No, I couldn’t possibly!”

Was the prospect so horrible? He thought most employees would jump at the chance to hit the islands, all expenses paid for. He couldn’t quite keep the irritation out of his voice. “I’m not really asking you.”

“I see.”

There it was again, that disapproving schoolteacher voice.

He settled back in his chair, satisfied to have the upper hand again. “Do you feel our business relationship is working, Mandy?”

“I don’t have any complaints, Mr. Sharpton.” She paused. “Do you?”

Only one. “I think it’s working well overall. I’d like to make a few adjustments, though, with the idea that we’ll be working together long-term.” She really was a damn good assistant. He just wanted to see her more often.

Which sounded incredibly odd, like he was a mother neglected by her grown children. A mortifying comparison, to say the least.

“But we’ll discuss that on the trip.” He’d already wasted the better part of a half hour accomplishing nothing more than forcing her to share the same space with him.

“Fantastic,” she said, sounding so unenthusiastic that he hung up before she heard him snort in amusement.

Mandy dragged herself up the two flights of stairs to her apartment, wondering if her body realized that according to The Everything Guide to Pregnancy, she was supposed to have left first trimester fatigue behind. Someone upstairs hadn’t got the message, because she still felt like hell.

It was probably the stress of her new job. She had been working hard to make a good impression on Damien Sharpton, worrying that any minute he’d fire her without notice or just cause. Besides, she was expending a lot of energy dodging him, popping into the rest room or behind a cubicle wall when he came out of his office, so she wouldn’t come face-to-face with him.

In the eight weeks since she’d started as his assistant, she’d stuck to that pattern of hide and never seek, but lately she realized her reasons for it were changing. First it had been because she’d thought he was a beast, capable of making her work environment hell, and because she had seen the wisdom of keeping her pregnancy from him until it was no longer possible. But to her surprise, she was finding that while Damien was arrogant and impatient, he wasn’t a bad sort at all.