A Man Like Mike (8 page)

“That wasn’t necessary,” Eve told Mike, rattled by his unexpected appearance at her office … not to mention annoyed at the way the other women had turned to melted butter around him.

The way
she
had turned to melted butter, just because he was here.

“Come on. I noticed you left with nothing to eat this morning and I’ve been making lasagne so I thought I’d bring you some.”

The air in the hallway became thick with silence as the staff exchanged furtive, speculative glances. Being one of the head accountants at the Brisbane headquarters of the Australia-wide organisation, Eve held a position of some authority. She acted as supervisor to some of the staff. In order to keep the line between professional and personal from blurring, she usually forewent socialising outside the office. She certainly didn’t routinely share information about her personal life beyond what was necessary. People knew about Bailey of course, but she hadn’t mentioned Mike. There’d been no reason to.

Now the man had gone and told the entire department they were living together.

Not wanting to become the subject of gossip, Eve felt compelled to explain to the room at large, “Mike is Bailey’s uncle. He’s living with—I should say staying with us for a while. In the studio downstairs. It has it’s own bathroom so it’s kind of like a whole separate apartment.”

Good Lord, Eve. Too much information
. She’d been so obvious in her attempt to assure everybody that she and Mike weren’t sleeping together, everyone probably now suspected they were. Mike sent her a look, one of curious amusement that told her he knew what she’d been trying to do and that he thought she was just hilarious. Eve fought to keep her blush from showing.

“Yeah, it’s quite a place,” he remarked dryly, smiling disarmingly at the group of women. “I could run a whole country from down in that little studio and Eve’d never know it, we see each other so rarely. We barely even speak to each other.”

Eve sent him a look that said,
Laying it on a little thick aren’t you?
He responded with a faux-innocent smile that made her want to scream. Then she noticed all the staff looking at her with perplexed gazes, probably wondering why she had a perfectly attractive man—a veritable hero who cooked and delivered lunch—living in her house and was refusing to speak to him.

She wrestled with her urge to explain and won by a small margin. She suggested to Mike, “Would you like to come into my office?”

He followed behind her, shouldering the door shut and placing Bailey down on the carpet at his feet. “Are you sure you want me in here, Eve?” he asked from his haunches, glancing around her compact, functional office with the single window framing a view of the building next door. “This space might be a little small for the both of us. Don’t want people to think we might be doing something in here.” He let out a mock gasp. “Perhaps I shouldn’t have shut the door.”

Eve gave him her best level stare. “Are you finished?”

Not in the least intimidated by the look, Mike stood and laughed. “I don’t know. Are you going to tell me why you wanted to make sure everyone out there knew we weren’t sleeping together?”

Eve supplied, as if he were a bit dense, “Because you gave them the impression we were.”

“Did I?”

“You said, ‘you left without anything to eat this morning’, as if we’d…” she made a circle with her hand.

“As if we’d … spent the night together working up an appetite?” Mike filled in, still sporting that amused grin. There was a gleam in his eyes that took his countenance a step beyond amused, into more stimulating territory that made Eve’s heart catapult against her ribs. “Why don’t you want your workmates thinking you have a love life?”

Because I don’t
. She searched for some other, less embarrassing explanation. “They aren’t my workmates. They’re my staff.”

Mike lifted a brow. “Excuse
me
.”

“I mean I directly supervise some of them. Having them out there speculating about my private life undermines my authority.”

He looked at her as if trying to decide whether she was crazy or not. She thought his conclusion would not be one she’d find flattering when he shook his head and dropped the subject. He turned to pulling the plastic containers of food from the bag he still held, popping one on her side of the desk and one in front of himself. “I’m guessing you want to eat this here—don’t suppose you’d come outside and find a spot in the sun?”

“I can’t. I should really be working right through lunch.”

The corner of his sexy, insolent mouth lifted. “If that’s a hint for me to leave—tough. I haven’t eaten yet and I’m starved.”

Eve watched Bailey while he shuffled around on the floor, touching all the new, strange-looking items in her office like they were great archaeological finds and not just filing cabinets and wastepaper bins. “What about Bailey?” she asked.

“He’s already eaten.”

Eve huffed in frustration. “I mean an office is hardly an appropriate place for him to wander about.”

“If you’d like to take up my idea of going outside…”

Letting out a growl, Eve sank heavily into her chair, accepting that she wasn’t getting rid of Mike. He seemed perfectly at home here, as though he were settling in for a long, companionable chat. He smiled at her ire and took the seat across from her, handing over one of the forks he pulled from his bag of goodies.

In silence, she sectioned off a bite-sized piece of the lasagne, keeping an eye on Bailey as he toured the facilities … because that was what good caretakers did with children, not because looking at Mike was too distracting for her own good.

The moment the tender meat, al-dente pasta and creamy béchamel sauce hit her taste buds, Eve let out a moan of delectation. It was like a little piece of Italy had exploded in her mouth. She closed her eyes, savoured the flavours, then took another bite before taking her next breath.

She was halfway through the lasagne before she noticed the silence. Her attention turned away from the food for a moment as she looked across her desk and saw Mike watching her intently, his face set in grim lines. “What?”

“Huh?”

“Why are you staring at me?”

He frowned and returned his attention to his food, stabbing at the lasagne with unnecessary vigour. “Sorry,” he muttered.

Eve didn’t think he sounded all that sorry, but she didn’t feel like pursuing it. Her food was getting cold.

She finished off the lasagne in record time. “My goodness. That was fantastic. You’re a very talented chef, Mike.”

He cleared his throat. “Thanks.”

Turning her attention to watching him eat, Eve noticed that he was barely halfway through his lunch. Chagrined, she said, “I guess I was hungrier than I realised.”

“Yeah, well. For a thin woman you sure do eat fast.”

So he thought she was a glutton, did he? And she had thought he was trying to be nice, bringing in lunch and making her take a break. “I would have thought you’d be flattered I like your cooking.”

“I am.” The two words sounded more like a complaint. “I just don’t know where you put it all.”

Eve glanced down at her nondescript dark suit. She’d put on weight the last month, from eating too much drive-through takeaway. She was lucky she didn’t go in for the more tailored, figure-hugging suits some women preferred, or she would have had to buy several new ones already. As it was, this one was growing a little tight around the waist. “Give it time. Much more of your cooking and you won’t be asking that question.” She really would have to get back to the gym sometime soon.

His eyes connected with hers, pinning her to her leather chair with a blast of unexpected heat. His gaze trailed downward, taking in what little of her he could see above the desk. Eve couldn’t move, and by the time his scrutiny returned to her face she could barely breathe.

His voice was husky. “You’ve got nothing to worry about.”

Eve swallowed. “All women worry about that sort of thing.”

“You shouldn’t,” he insisted. “You look fantastic.”

Really?
Eve wanted to ask. She was glad her jumping nerves had made speech next to impossible. She didn’t want him to confirm it. Mike’s compliments were far too addictive.

Besides, the way he was looking at her left her in no doubt that he meant what he said. He was as attracted to her as she was to him, and was having as much trouble fighting it. The knowledge was terrifying, yet it filled her with a tingling warmth that pushed terror to the furthest reaches of her mind. She was more to him than an idle curiosity, a challenge to pass the time. Who’d have guessed, the worldly and desirable Mike Wilcox, who charmed women as effortlessly as he smiled, was attracted to
her?

Eve’s office door swung open abruptly then, making her sit up with a start and break eye contact with Mike. “Where the bloody hell is everybody, Eve? We need to call an emergency meeting.”

She remained calm in the face of the General Manager’s agitation. Nathan Shore had a tendency to get agitated at the slightest provocation. Besides, she could handle her boss in a snit more easily than she could handle her confused feelings about Mike. “Everybody is probably at lunch, Nathan. What’s the problem?”

Nathan let out a choice word or two and pulled on his dark blue tie. “I’ve just got off the phone with head office. Sheila Smith herself is flying up here tomorrow and she wants to see a presentation on the budget—projected expenditure, cash flow, the lot.”

“I have a lot of that data on my computer, Nathan,” Eve told him calmly. “It shouldn’t take me long to compile something with the help of a couple of the other staff.”

“I shouldn’t need to tell you that the CEO deserves something a little beyond a hastily compiled speech. That might pass muster in a weekly staff meeting, but not for Sheila Smith.” It was only after this mini-diatribe that Nathan spotted Bailey in the corner, where he had tipped the wastepaper bin on its side and was now carefully sorting through its contents. “What in blazes is
that
?”

Mike answered before Eve could. “
That
, is a child.”

She shot him a look, but his eyes were on the other man, the offence he’d taken at Nathan’s obvious displeasure at seeing Bailey clear on his face.

Nathan turned his gaze on Mike. Mike stood and offered his hand, keeping his expression neutral. “I’m Mike, and I brought that along.” He tilted his head toward Bailey. “Was there a security checkpoint I should have passed him through?”

Nathan’s dark eyes narrowed behind his wire rimmed glasses, as though he might be taking Mike’s sardonic question seriously. With apparent reluctance he accepted Mike’s outstretched hand.

Eve considered staying out of it and letting the two males of the species size each other up but, knowing Mike as she did, she wasn’t sure there would be much of her boss left when he was finished. It wasn’t just sheer physical power that Mike had over the thin-framed Nathan. It was as though the very impact of his magnetic presence could wash the other man away.

Nathan was much easier to handle when he was in a good mood. Her afternoon would be chaos if Mike put him in a bad one.

Standing and scooping up Bailey before he was able to strew any more of her rubbish across the floor, Eve walked over to stand beside Mike. “Nathan, this is Mike Wilcox, Bailey’s uncle. Mike, this is the General Manager, Nathan Shore.” She hoped Mike picked up on the subtle emphasis she placed on the title, General Manager. The expression on his face told her he cared not a whit if Nathan Shore was the Sultan of Brunei. “Mike and Bailey were just leaving.”

“Good,” Nathan said with satisfaction. “I know your situation, Eve, but you know how
I
feel about children in the office.”

“Yes I do, Nathan. I assure you, this won’t be a regular occurrence.” She felt rather than saw the tension that stiffened Mike’s spine and rushed to suggest to Nathan, “Why don’t I join you in your office in five minutes and we’ll discuss an action plan for tomorrow’s presentation?”

Fortunately he seemed satisfied with that idea, giving a stiff nod and a last, wary glance at Mike before taking his leave. Eve breathed a sigh of relief that she had averted an ugly scene, but she barely had time to relax before Mike rounded on her. “You let that guy go on like that all the time?”

“You mean, do I let the
General Manager
of the company that employs me assign me work? Dictate how the office is run? Yes, Mike, I usually do.”

“I’m not talking about that. He looked at Bailey like he was something he’d found on the bottom of his shoe.”

“Not everyone likes children. It’s not a crime. I promised Nathan my altered home situation wouldn’t in any way impact my work here.”

“Still, you could have said something about his attitude.”

“I can’t just go around telling people I work for what I think of their attitude. You have to be a bit politic in an office. It’s not a no-holds-barred situation, like in a kitchen.”

He crossed his arms over his chest and smiled, and not in a friendly way. “I bet you’ve never seen the inside of a commercial kitchen.”

“Well, no,” Eve was forced to admit, “but I imagine it’s very different from working in an office, where people have to be a little more … polished.”

“Polished?” he repeated. “Should I take that to mean you think I’m
unpolished
?”

She looked down at his T-shirt with the quirky slogan, his ripped jeans. “I think your wardrobe speaks for itself on that count.”

He followed her gaze, then shrugged. “All right, fair point, but you have seen me in a tux before, so you know I can clean up if the occasion demands.”

Oh, yes, she had seen him in a tux. He’d looked spectacular then and, despite the very different attire he wore today, he looked just as good now. Better. Human, approachable, and enormously appealing.

Eve shoved that thought away in annoyance. She had to stop noticing him as a man. Mutual attraction aside, he was Bailey’s uncle. It would make things easier if they could be friends. If they ever managed to agree on anything.

“Anyway, I can live with you having a low opinion of my wardrobe,” Mike said dismissively. “What I can’t live with is you thinking what I do for a living is easy.”