Rub It In Read Free

her spine stiffen. The infinitesimal shuffle backward was rewarding, especially when she stopped it midway, consciously determined not to let him fluster her.
    A grin tugged at the corners of his lips but he wouldn’t let it grab hold. Instead, he asked, “What do you need?”
    She raised her hand, a sheaf of papers fluttering with the force of the motion. “ We need to go over everything before I leave tomorrow. I sent you an appointment by email.”
    “I uninstalled the program.”
    Her eyes widened before narrowing to glittering slits. He loved it when Marcy got mad. Her blue eyes sparkled with a passion that made the muscles in his stomach tighten. She reminded him of a pixie; in fact, he almost hadn’t hired her because she looked as if a good stiff breeze could knock her on her ass. But beneath that tiny frame was a spine of steel and the heart of a drill sergeant. She was good at what she did, if a little too organized and into unimportant details for his liking.
    “Why would you do something stupid like that?”
    Simon shrugged, not caring that she’d just called him stupid. It was by far the least offensive term she’d used for him in the past two years.
    “Because I’m avoiding someone.”
    “Well, you can’t avoid me.”
    If that wasn’t the most obvious statement of the year he didn’t know what was. He chose to let the softball setup she’d just given him slide by.
    “What do you mean before you leave? Did I know you were going to be gone tomorrow? Isn’t the construction crew supposed to be starting? You can’t leave until you’re sure they know what they’re doing. I don’t have time to deal with them, even for a day.”
    Marcy shook her head slowly, the slick blond strands of her ever-present ponytail whipping behind her. He watched the rise and fall of her chest as she took a deep breath, held it and finally let it go. As chests went, hers was…fine. He tended to prefer big-breasted women with a huge handful he could grab hold of. Although it was hard to tell where Marcy was concerned. Despite the fact that they worked in a tropical location and the dress code was fairly relaxed, she insisted on wearing business suits when she was working—which was always.
    He’d decided that the slacks, skirts, blouses and tailored jackets that still somehow seemed a little too roomy over her body were her personal armor. He just hadn’t been able to discover what she was hiding from. At first he’d wondered if it was men in general. He worried maybe she’d been attacked. But as he’d watched her dealing, smiling and, hell, almost flirting with their male guests over the years he’d decided that couldn’t possibly be it.
    And while she hadn’t taken a lover in the past two years—at least not one that he was aware of, and he knew everything that happened on his island—it wasn’t for lack of offers. If she hadn’t said yes to anyone, it was because she hadn’t wanted to. Marcy McKinney was definitely the captain of her destiny and knew exactly what she wanted at all times.
    It exhausted him just to think about that kind of structured existence.
    “I’m not leaving for the day.”
    “But you just said you were.”
    “No, I said I needed to go over this—” she waved the papers again; now that he looked at them, the stack appeared rather large…and the type on them awfully small “—before I leave tomorrow. I’m taking two weeks’ vacation.”
    “The hell you say.”
    “We talked about this, Simon.” He heard her warning tone, but chose to ignore it.
    “I don’t remember you mentioning you were leaving these two weeks.” Although it was possible he hadn’t been paying attention to her. He did have a habit of tuning Marcy out when she spoke. But it was usually because whatever she was saying wasn’t important to him—at least not more important than the other thoughts flowing through his mind.
    He’d learned early that pretending to listen and nodding appropriately were