She glared at the phone, wishing it would disintegrate so she wouldn’t have to talk to him again. Yeah, like that would help. She also had an inbox full of emails from Mr Alexander Bronson, asshole extraordinaire.

The guy was demanding, arrogant and clearly had been put on this earth to make her life a misery.

As if to emphasise the point, an email pinged into her inbox with a gut-churning subject line: One last thing.

Sighing, she opened the email. And stopped breathing.

Forgot to mention, Charlie, I’ll be arriving at the Sydney office tomorrow to follow up on my ideas to reconfigure staff. I look forward to meeting you then.

He didn’t sign off. He didn’t need to. Superior beings from other planets were above mere mortals.

Alexander Bronson, here, in the flesh, tomorrow. Torturing her. Tormenting her. Teasing her.

Charlie. No one ever called her that. She hated it. She’d told him so. Which ensured he never called her anything else. No Miss Baxter for him. Uh-uh. The CEO of countless accountancy firms around Australia, the wunderkind who took ailing companies and turned them around, had an informality about him that won friends and influenced lowly accountants like her.

The kicker was, her boss might be demanding and expect perfection, yet she couldn’t help but admire his work ethos. She respected him for it, she identified with hard work. It was all she knew in her lacklustre life. Which made it all the more annoying that a small part of her looked forward to their daily phone calls and his infernal teasing.

Could she be any more pathetic? The highlight of her day was talking to her cocky boss who seemed to make it his life’s work to tease some kind of response out of her.

Her cell rang and she glanced at the screen, dithering about whether to take the call. She adored her Aunt Dee but she couldn’t cope with any outlandish requests today. She had to prepare for her imminent meeting with the charming Mr Bronson tomorrow.

Mentally chastising her goody-two-shoes conscience, she picked up the cell and stabbed at the answer button.

‘Hey, Aunt Dee, I’m at work so can’t talk long—’

‘Dear girl, I know you’re at work.’ Her aunt sounded breathless, like she’d jogged up a flight of stairs. Unlikely, considering Dee equated exercise with the devil’s work. ‘But I need your help and it’s urgent.’

Charlotte instantly felt guilty that she’d contemplated ignoring her aunt. Dee had raised her when her flaky parents couldn’t be bothered, preferring to travel the world in search of the next village in dire need of education. Dee rarely asked for favours so the fact she needed help meant this could be serious.

‘Sure, whatever you need. Is everything okay?’

Dee inhaled a loud breath. ‘Not really. My friend Queenie has had a nasty fall and broken her hip. She’s alone, with no one to care for her animals, so I need to drive up to Byron Bay now. But the owner of the building where I keep stock for my business is coming to inspect it later today and I need to vacate the lease space.’

Her heart sank. As if this day couldn’t get any worse. Sorting through her aunt’s questionable ‘stock’ for her kinky online business wasn’t one of her favourite activities on the planet. Aunt Dee had enlisted her help on more than one occasion to stuff envelopes for orders and Charlotte blushed just thinking about some of the apparatus people used in their sex lives.

‘You need me to pack everything up and store it at home?’

Dee sighed in relief. ‘Could you, sweetie? It would mean I could be at Queenie’s today rather than tomorrow and she really needs me.’

Charlotte’s inner child wanted to say ‘I need you’ but that was selfish and untrue. She’d learned from an early age to depend on no one but herself. She valued her independence, wore it like a badge of honour. Except that lately, her closest friends Abby and Mak had found great guys, leaving her to ponder whether being alone was something she cherished because she could or because she had to.

Shaking off her melancholy, she said, ‘Leave everything to me.’

‘You’re a lifesaver, Charlotte.’ Dee made smooching sounds. ‘Not sure how long I’ll be gone, maybe a few weeks. I’ll let you know.’

‘Okay—’ but Dee had already hung up, leaving Charlotte to face the inevitable.

An afternoon of packing up vibrators, nipple clamps and edible underwear.

Oh, goody.

CHAPTER TWO

ALEXANDER BRONSON HADN’T been back in Sydney for a year and as he traversed the Harbour Bridge he couldn’t help but glance at the Opera House on his left and remember the first time he’d been there. The first time he’d felt like he’d finally broken free of the shackles of his past.

Sydney had a unique vibe, far removed from his claustrophobic upbringing in outback New South Wales. It was the city where he’d studied, where he’d launched his career, where he’d ensured he’d never have to end up like his father.

His unofficial home, a boutique hotel in the Central Business District, beckoned. But first he had to check out his last property for the day, a warehouse on the outskirts of the glitzy eastern suburbs. He’d already been to Manly, Mosman and Balmoral Beach today, ensuring his investments were running smoothly. This last warehouse had to be cleared asap for a new tenant to move in tomorrow and his manager had informed him there’d been some kind of hold-up.

He didn’t suffer incompetence lightly. He liked order in all aspects of life. Which was why he’d

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