Rob shrugged. He was one of those guys who always had a grin, a charming compliment, an easy-going confidence. He looked comfortable in an expensive suit or a T-shirt to go jogging in and could switch from beer to wine and back again depending on the crowd.

“This is a prize trip. Most guys take their wives or their girlfriends, or if neither of those are available, their brother or something. No one ever takes their secretary, unless she falls in the girlfriend category.”

“She doesn’t.” Damien’s answer sounded sharp even to him and he felt a hot rush of angry embarrassment. It did look odd that he was taking Mandy, and he knew it. But he hadn’t been able to resist the impulse to spend time with her, assure himself that she didn’t think he was the boss from hell.

It had never bothered him before, what anyone thought. Yet it did now, with Mandy. But he would toss his laptop into the East River before he would ever admit that. “You know me. I can’t stand being out of touch. We’re going to get a jump on some of next month’s projects.”

“You really mean that. You’re not sheet diving with your secretary.” Rob looked at him in total disbelief.

“I really mean that.” He didn’t sheet dive with anyone, not anymore. And Rob was probably the only one who knew that, since he was the only person who had known Damien from before, when he’d lived in Chicago with Jessica.

But that wasn’t to say that part of Damien hadn’t been much more, well, alert, since Mandy Keeling had been hired. He wouldn’t go so far as to say he wanted to have sex with her, but he was attracted to her.

That alone was something of a miracle given that he had thought himself incapable of any emotional or physical interest in another human being.

“Maybe you should.”

“Should what?” Damien had lost the thread of their conversation.

“Have sex with your secretary. A little island fling under a tiki hut.”

“That would be professional.”

Rob crossed his feet on Damien’s desk, making him itch to shove them off. His sense of neatness and order was offended by Rob’s shoes nudging his inbox of papers a little to the left.

“She’s hot.”

“Excuse me?” Damien stared at Rob, not sure he was following him again. His foot tapped impatiently on the carpet; his hand rattled the change in his pocket. He needed to get to the airport.

“Mandy. Your assistant. She’s hot.”