Turning The Good Girl Bad

Chapter 1

...he tugged at the chignon at her nape. Hairpins scattering, the tight knot unwound. His fingers slid through the heavy chestnut silk—

'CATHY!'

Catherine North jumped in her seat, scoring a bright red mark across the manuscript page she'd been poring over.

Max.

Her boss.

Back early from his overseas trip.

She cast one horrified glance at her computer screen, where the ardent love moves of her fictional hero Alex Taylor screamed Disaster! at her. A second glance went to the printer, which was delivering Passion Flower page by steamy page at precisely timed intervals.

'Cathy? I'm back!' came the bellow.

Catherine's breath jammed like a fork in her throat. Heart leapt. Sweat popped.

She shoved at the edge of her desk and shot backwards across the floor on her wheeled chair to the printer. Grabbed the pages. Used her feet to leverage another whizzing roll back to her desk. Shuffled the fresh pages behind the others she'd be marking up. Stopped, panting like a woman in labour. What next?

A click from the printer galvanised her. Duh! She should have cancelled the print job first. She started jabbing, lightning-fast, at the keyboard. Find the printer. Jab. The print queue. Jab, jab. Dammit, where is it? Where is it? Where—?

She heard a curse, looked up. Saw Max's brown leather briefcase swinging into sight, rounding the corner. Froze as six feet and two inches of lean, elegantly suited frame descended on her with its usual churning impatience.

No time to stop the printer. No time to save her changes. No sudden frantic moves now if she didn't want to look seven shades of guilty.

Catherine dragged in a breath around the fork in her throat as Max came to a stop in front of her desk. A waft of his expensively delicious cologne slid up her nostrils. She looked up at him, smiled serenely, and with an admirable imitation of calm, slid the damning pages under the thick report that was mercifully sitting in her in-tray.

'Good morning Mr Rutherford.'

'Huh,' he said. Or maybe asked.

Max had become pretty free lately with that slightly mystified 'huh', but Catherine hadn't worked out what the 'huh' said about his state of mind and she was not going to start interpreting it today. She just wanted him to go into his office. Like right that second.

But he didn't. He just stood there.

Silence. Except for the sound of the printer, relentlessly spitting out pages. Max hadn't looked in that direction yet, but he would.

Breathe. Think. Breathe.

She needed a distraction. Something dramatic, to keep his attention from straying over there. Something like...throwing up—if only she didn't have a stomach like cast-iron. Or fainting—which she'd never come close to. Or maybe a heart attack. That was at least a possibility, because her heart was jumping around in her chest so vigorously she thought it might crack a rib.

And then it registered. He hadn't noticed what was happening over at the printer. He hadn't noticed her technically perfect in-tray slide. He hadn't even noticed her 'good morning'.

Because he was too busy noticing her hair.

Oh my God.

Her hair. She raised a hand, touched the loose waves. Felt her eyeballs bug out behind her glasses.