Free Fallen Into You by Ann Collins

what to say, and she felt a quick stab of pleasure at the fact that he was tongue-tied in front of Anders.
    “I need to speak with you a moment.”
    “I can be out in ten minutes,” she said. Scott was the kind of person she had to constantly maintain her personal boundaries over. If only she was like this with her father…
    “This really can’t wait.” His eyes flickered to the man in the chair.
    “Five minutes,” she said calmly.
    Scott’s eyes grew wide and his jaw tightened. It was a moment, just a small one, and then he recovered smoothly. “I’ll come back later.”
    “Please do,” she said, her voice just as cool as his.
    He gave her a nod that was almost a glare. A sudden rush of annoyance gripped her. If he was so worried about this man, why didn’t he just barge into the room and tell him to leave? If he were so concerned, why didn’t he step up and be a man and protect what was his? But she knew the answer to that. Scott was political. He didn’t tend to deal with situations head on – he liked to plot and find ways round.
    “Would you mind closing the door?” she asked.
    That gave him even more pause. His eyes flickered to the flowers again, and then to the man in the chair, the one who hadn’t bothered to turn around.
    “Have it your way,” he said, in a way that suggested she wouldn’t.
    Scott closed the door just a bit more firmly than necessary. Kara let out the breath she didn’t realize she had been holding.
    Anders chuckled. “He doesn’t like me one bit. I can’t say I blame him, though.”
    Seeing Scott had brought Kara to her senses. She looked at Anders with what she hoped was an all-business gaze. “You were saying?”
    “I want to take you to dinner,” he said.
    Kara had sensed this was coming. She had felt it from the moment he appeared at her door, before she even saw his face behind that jumble of flowers. She looked at the bouquet now, struggling for what to say in the wake of his announcement. The flowers were placed carefully in the jar, but they seemed to cascade in every direction, just as wild here in her office as they were outside in nature. They looked entirely out of place in her neat, orderly and polished life.
    So did the man in front of her. But she found that she liked the flowers – and the man – far more than she wanted to admit.
    “I can’t go out to dinner with you,” she said.
    “Why not?”
    “Because I have a boyfriend,” she said.
    “I know that.”
    “Because we agreed that it would just be a one-time thing…”
    “I’m not asking you to bed,” he pointed out. “Just to dinner.”
    “That would be…”
    “Fun?”
    “Awkward.”
    Anders laughed. “We’ve already gotten past the awkward part, don’t you think?”
    Her phone beeped, the soft sound of the internal intercom. She looked down and saw a little green button flashing next to her father’s extension. No doubt Scott had made his way into her father’s office with dire warnings about the man who had come to assault her with flowers. She felt a surge of defiance rise up, one that was only just kept under control by her sense of reason.
    “I can’t.”
    “You sure?”
    “Yes,” she said, unconvincingly. “No.” She settled on a third option. “Maybe.”
    He smirked and raised an eyebrow.
    “Look, there’s too much at stake here,” she said finally, still completely conflicted.
    Anders stood and reached across the desk. He picked her hand up in his rough one, lifted it, and bent down just enough. He stared into her eyes as he kissed the back of her hand, something a true gentleman would do, and Kara’s heart pounded so hard she was sure he could hear it. His lips lingered there for a long moment, until her phone beeped one more time, an insistent sound that broke the spell.
    She was breathing hard when Anders stood up to his full height and nodded. “See you at seven?”
    This had to stop. Not only was her relationship with Scott at risk, but the whole