Chapter 10
She swung around, the light flush on her cheeks, the sheer joy in her expression making him feel like a jerk. But when she opened her mouth, he raised his palm to stop her.
"No unnecessary conversation, though. And no sneaking into my bedroom uninvited."
She nodded, the gratitude in her eyes so transparent he wasn't quite able to tell her a cute Irish craic addict had no business working for a man like him. A man whose bite was a heck of a lot worse than his bark.
Not your problem. She wants this job, she can have it. Then, when she runs screaming, Brett can pick up the pieces.
"I'm gonna crash," he said, his throat scratchy from all the unnecessary talking. "Don't wake me up. When I want to eat again, I'll let you know."
She bobbed her head, and the escaped tendrils bounced on her shoulders.
A new jolt of unwanted arousal pierced the exhaustion. And he wondered what the hell he was thinking, letting anyone invade his sanctuary. Especially a woman who made him ache.
But he refused to dwell on the decision as he trudged up the stairs, the anxiety that had tied his stomach into knots blissfully absent for the first time in over a year.
Roisin watched her new boss make his way up the wide staircase, the nerves finally releasing their stranglehold on her ribs. Her gaze roamed over his muscular shoulders, drifted down past the crisscross of scars on his back and located a strange tattoo scrawled across the bottom of his spine, just above the low waistband of his sweats.
She read the rudimentary letters etched into his skin before he disappeared from view—ricco sfondato. Getting out her phone, she fed the words into the search engine. The translation from Italian appeared.
Rolling in money.
Had the kidnappers inked him? They must have. Nausea rose up her throat.
How had he survived the trauma? And what could she do to make things better for him? Because surely that was all this was—this deep well of compassion, which felt like so much more than a desire not to mess up her new job?
Over the next week, Roisin barely saw her new boss. Nate King was like a ghost in the enormous penthouse, always where she was not, and yet she felt his presence everywhere. Perhaps it was just the struggle to sleep without dreaming of seeing far too much of his hard, lean body that first morning or the aura of raw masculinity which seemed to permeate his luxury lair.
He slept late each day and spent hours in the gym and on the roof garden—probably swimming in the lap pool and tending the plants—which no longer had a gardener to keep them alive—but he never missed a meal. She had stopped herself from blurting out all the questions queueing up in her head whenever he appeared at mealtimes, in order to keep to the no-talking rule. But alongside the back-off vibes which emanated from him, she could still sense the wounded animal, not yet willing to engage. And she was far too aware of the sensual yearning that clouded her senses whenever he was near.
Five hundred dollars had dropped into her account at 7:00 a.m. the day after nightmare-gate, with a text from Morgan-King's COO that had simply said "Hang in there, kid—you're doing great."
By the end of her first week, though, Roisin had figured out it wasn't just the astonishing bonus, her new rent-free luxury pad downstairs or even the beyond-generous salary that made her so determined not to get fired.
Nathaniel King fascinated her on so many levels—all of which seemed to tug at a place deep inside her…the same place which had been so determined to rescue all those broken wild things as a kid. Or that's what she tried to tell herself while busy ignoring the ripple of awareness every time he appeared. And her avid—and completely inappropriate—fascination with his lean, scarred body, which she was powerless to control.
After the first few days, he no longer bolted his food like a hungry wolf, but she could see the feral light in those pure blue eyes whenever she placed another one of her mammy's signature dishes in front of him. After every meal, he grunted his thanks, then disappeared again, and she'd been grateful at first, because she really did not want to get caught staring at his pecs again.
But this evening, she was determined to push back against the no-chat rule.
After all, Mr. Charles had asked her to become Nate's friend. And how could she do that if she never spoke to him?