Andrew seldom smiled, especially not at the office, but he felt the corners of his mouth begin to twitch up ever so slightly as he tried to envision Mr. Gregson’s reaction the first time he met the newest addition to the team. Because while Tessa was undeniably young, she was also – first and foremost – undeniably gorgeous. Andrew had been more than a little taken aback when she’d walked into his office, finding himself oddly speechless at the breathtaking vision she made – tall and shapely, with long blonde hair and huge blue eyes. She’d reminded him of a modern day fairytale princess – Sleeping Beauty in the Big City, he had deemed her rather irreverently. She would certainly cause a stir among the males in this office – even the ones old enough to be her father, or the happily married men with families. Or even, thought Andrew with rather an evil grin, his formal, stuffy British boss – the same one who had an ironclad policy against dating employees, who never even spared any of the females in the office a glance, and who by his own admission was a confirmed bachelor.

‘Well, we’ll see, won’t we, sir?’ Andrew thought to himself with a rare chuckle. ‘It’s possible – just possible – that you’re every bit as susceptible to a pretty face as the next man. That is definitely one introduction I’m going to look forward to making.’

Chapter Ten

Two Weeks Later

“Well, sweetie, tomorrow morning the wait will finally be over. His Hotness is due back in to the office, and you’ll get to see what all the fuss is about.”

Tessa glanced up distractedly from the spreadsheet she’d been painstakingly constructing for the better part of three hours now at the sound of her co-worker Kevin’s high-pitched, excited voice.

She gave him a weary little smile. “I’m sorry, but I don’t really know who you’re talking about. Guess my brain is a little fried from staring at my computer screen all morning.”

Kevin wrinkled his nose in distaste. “That doesn’t shock me in the least. Have I told you yet how happy all of us are that you’ve had the godawful task of doing those dreadful spreadsheets dumped on your lap?”

Tessa laughed. “A few times, yes. And I honestly don’t mind. I’m not sure I would have got this job if I didn’t know how to do these things.”

Her new co-worker – who was rather flamboyantly and proudly gay – smirked in response. “Well, if we all didn’t suspect that old stick-up-his-ass Andrew there was either gay or neutered, I’d make some sexist comment right about now. Like maybe one of the other reasons you got hired was because you’re a smoking hot babe. But this is Andrew the Robot we’re talking about, so I’m guessing he didn’t have those sort of ulterior motives.”

She felt her cheeks pinken at Kevin’s compliment, not quite used to his brash, often ribald way of speaking. From her very first day on the job, he’d more or less taken her under his wing, showing her around and giving her advice – whether it had been asked for or not. He talked almost nonstop - whether it was about a movie he’d seen over the weekend, what he was having for lunch today, a shirt that he’d seen in the window of his favorite men’s boutique that he simply had to have. Unfortunately, Kevin also talked – a lot – about his very active and adventurous sex life, and she’d received quite an unwilling education during her time here thus far. He’d used terms and slang that she had honestly never heard of before and didn’t really have a clue what they meant, and spoken in such frank detail about some of his encounters that Tessa had found herself blushing visibly in embarrassment. And that had given Kevin cause to tease her rather unmercifully, jokingly calling her a virgin bride and asking if her husband locked her up in a chastity belt while he was out of the country traveling.

But at least he’d been genuinely kind to her, going out of his way to make her feel welcome, which was more than she could say for some of the other team members. Tessa glanced up from her computer screen and wasn’t the least surprised to see Marisol with yet another cup of coffee in hand, Shelby giggling as she continued to exchange texts with someone on her phone, while the two remaining members of the team – Alicia and Gina – had their heads bent together as they gossiped about yet another hapless victim of their almost constant taunts.

In the nearly two weeks that Tessa had worked here on the executive floor, she couldn’t really remember seeing Alicia or Gina doing a whole lot of what amounted to actual work. She’d learned that Alicia was responsible for making all the travel arrangements for the executive staff, and that Gina was in charge of catering for all of the various meetings held on this floor. Marisol kept the master schedule for everyone on the floor, while Kevin used his skills as a graphic designer to create PowerPoint presentations and other sorts of media. Shelby didn’t seem to have any particular set of responsibilities, and more often than not had a lot of the grunt work dumped on her – photocopying, replacing the printer cartridge, filing. All of them, of course, were also given letters to type, reports to compile, data entry projects, and a variety of other administrative and clerical duties.

And everyone seemed as relieved as Kevin was that Tessa was now handling all of the spreadsheets for Mr. Gregson and some of the other managers. In fact, it seemed that all she had been doing for the past week and a half revolved around that particular task, and she was starting to see databases, pie charts, and formulas in her head even as she tried to fall asleep each night. Andrew had been piling the work on her, evidently intent on having a particular report for each hotel in the region updated prior to Mr. Gregson’s return. And since Tessa had estimated there were at least sixty-five hotels in the American region, she’d been working almost nonstop to get the task finished in time.

Mrs. C.’s advice hadn’t really been necessary, Tessa acknowledged ruefully, considering the long hours she had put in thus far. After her first day on the job, she’d begun arriving closer to seven-thirty than eight, even beating Andrew in to the office a few times. She’d eaten lunch at her desk most every day, and had stayed well past quitting time. But it had all been worth it, she thought wearily, because by the end of the day all of the reports would be updated. Just in time, it seemed, for Mr. Gregson’s return to the office tomorrow morning.

“Are you referring to Mr. Gregson?” she asked Kevin. “I mean, is he the person you meant when you said someone was returning to the office tomorrow?”