Daydreamer
Chapter 1

Lucy

“Lucy, are you listening to me?” Felix snapped, and I flinched in the chair. The honest answer to that was no. I had instead been focusing on the way his beautiful, thick, dark hair brushed the collar of his shirt.

I started to nod, but when my focus moved to his stern expression, I shook my head instead. Felix sighed, throwing his hands up in the air in that expressive Italian way the Moretti family seemed to have retained, even though they’d been in the UK for two generations now.

“This is exactly what I’m talking about. This constant daydreaming is completely unacceptable. Will’s complained about you again.”

Bloody Will. That slimy bastard could take a running jump. I bit my lip, and my gaze dropped down to my lap. Looking at Felix for too long was like staring at the sun – he was just that blindingly handsome. Deeply tanned skin, brown eyes so dark they were almost black, strong jawline with a close-cropped, perfectly styled stubble, broad shoulders, tall enough to dwarf my hobbit-like stature, with the lines of his designer suit exactly tailored to his muscular frame. He was the most attractive human I had ever met in real life. Even as a child, he’d had this Italian loose-limbed grace which we pasty English folk of a more awkward persuasion could only marvel at. I cleared my throat so that actual words could make it past the lump that had formed.

“I don’t mean to daydream,” I said in a small voice. “It’s just that my mind tends to wander, and I sort of… lose time.”

As an abject coward, I was loath to tell him the truth – that this job was just so boring. I was well aware that as executive assistants went, I was the worst this company had probably ever seen, but meetings and deadlines and emails and prescribed tasks were honestly not my bag. It didn’t help that my direct boss, Will – or Mr Brent as he preferred me to address him – was an unrelenting prick.

Everything about this office felt like a cage. Even the décor screamed prison cell. Yes, okay so Felix and the big wigs had floor-to-ceiling views of London, but the rest of the office floor, beyond their heavy oak doors, had barely any natural light. The plant I brought in for my desk had withered in a matter of days. Everything was grey and white. Even my colourful pens and notebook were frowned upon so much that I had to hide them in my bag most days. But worse than the aesthetics of this place was the atmosphere. The partners were feared and revered like gods. Emphasis was put on a certain kind of cut-throat dynamism that was completely foreign to me.

Only now was the reality sinking in, that coming to London had been a big, fat mistake. I should have stayed at home. At least in Little Buckingham, I wouldn’t be berated on a daily basis about my general crapness.

I looked up as Felix moved around the desk to stand directly in front of me, crossing his arms over his broad chest and leaning back against the solid wood of his desk. His suit jacket strained under the bulk of his arm muscles, and my mouth went dry at his proximity. This crush I had on Felix was totally inappropriate. He’d be completely horrified if he knew about the fevered dreams I had involving him and his desk. I felt a mortifying heat rise to my cheeks just thinking about it.

“I made a promise to your mum, Lucy,” he said in a serious tone. “I don’t want to let her down, but you’re making the situation impossible. People line up for this job. We’ve basically handed it to you on a silver platter, and you’re squandering the opportunity.”

I had to lean back in the chair and tilt my head to look directly at him. It made me feel even smaller than I usually did around him. Guilt swelled at the thought of letting down my mum, and for the people who would have taken this job in a heartbeat – who no doubt would have made the absolute most of it. I imagined them lining up outside the building looking like they just stepped out of GQ magazine: severe expressions, trendy glasses, glamorous pencil-skirt-wearing women, Clark Kent lookalike men, briefcases ready to smash me out of the way.

“I–I’ll try harder,” I said, my voice coming out just above a whisper as I twisted my hands in my lap, pulling the sleeves of my jumper down to cover my fingers and pushing my thumbs through the holes that had formed there from frequent use. Felix’s eyes flicked down to my hands, and his eyes narrowed.

“And this is another problem,” he snapped. “These ancient woolly jumpers you wear have actual holes in them. Have you not noticed how the rest of the office dresses, Lucy? You can’t just keep chugging along in all your scruffy little outfits. This is a serious business I’m running here. I’m not saying you have to power dress, but you could at least ditch the moth-eaten clothes and the Uggs that have seen better days – those days being back in the nineties when people wore Uggs.”

I bit my lip as I looked down at my feet. They were practically toe to toe with Felix’s, and the contrast couldn’t be starker. His shiny Italian leather next to my scuffed, faded, fluffy boots. As I thought about how the rest of the office were turned out I winced. None of the women wore anything lower than four-inch heels.

“And you can’t keep touting stationery around in your hair either,” he said, and then, to my shock, leaned over me, his hand coming up around the back of my head to touch my hair (dear God, the man touched my hair) and plucking out the four-colour pen I had shoved into my messy bun. I swallowed, still recovering from the giant rush of adrenaline in response to the contact. He frowned and cocked his head to the side before plucking out another four pens (two gold Sharpies, a biro and a fountain pen) from deeper in my mass of hair. He placed all my pens down on the desk before turning back to me. My heart felt like it was beating outside my chest. “Do you see any other women in the office carrying sundry items in their up-dos?”

I thought about all the sleek blondes and glossy brunettes that littered the office, and tried to imagine any of them shoving pens into their perfectly coiffed tresses. I shrugged and forced myself to make eye contact with Felix again. But having all the intensity of his dark gaze directed at me was mega intimidating, so I chickened out and focused on his shoulder instead.

“I… er, well, sometimes I just kind of need a pen,” I muttered to his suit jacket. “And I’m really not that great at keeping hold of them, so my hair is the logical place.”

“You need five pens in your hair at all times?” he asked in a dry tone.

I shrugged again but didn’t really know how to respond. To be honest, yes, I did need five pens in my hair. If I had a plot idea or a character development strategy, I had to write it down immediately. Years of painful attempts at recall after the fact had taught me it was better to always have access to pens and my notebook. But there was no way I was telling Felix that little piece of information.

Just then there was a knock behind me. Both Felix and I looked over as the office door swung open, and Tabitha, Felix’s executive assistant, stepped into the room.

“So sorry to interrupt, Mr Moretti,” she said, not sounding sorry at all. The gust of air from the door caused me to shiver in my seat. That was the other thing about this bloody office – it was freezing. Tabitha threw me a brief, dismissive look before focusing back on the boss. “But I’ve got a message from Mr York wanting to rearrange tomorrow’s meeting. Apparently, his wife’s got an appointment for an antenatal scan.”

I swivelled away from her critical gaze to focus back on Felix. His expression flickered with annoyance before he hid it. The man was such a workaholic that he probably couldn’t get his head around the idea of anyone needing to attend anything outside the office that couldn’t be “outsourced”. He likely thought that unless you were incubating the baby yourself, your presence in the ultrasound room was completely surplus to requirement. Well, I’d spied on Harry York with his wife Verity when they came to the office last week, so I wasn’t surprised that the man put his wife and future child above business. They were very sweet together – he guided her through the office space with his hand at the small of her back as if negotiating a minefield and not a few desks; then held her hand whilst they waited for Felix outside his office.

“Fine, whatever,” Felix said, his voice laced with annoyance. “Thanks, Tabitha. Could you set it up for next week, or am I full then?”

“You’re always fully booked, but I’ll make it work,” she said, efficient as ever. “I’ll get on and sort it now.” She turned on her perfect, red-soled, four-inch heels and swept out of the door, leaving a trail of expensive perfume in her wake.

The gap between women like Tabitha and me had never seemed so wide. Her pristine white silk shirt was paired with a tight pencil skirt that stopped just above the knee. The entire outfit was almost freakily wrinkle-free. Even if I spent hours ironing a shirt like that, I knew it still wouldn’t be fit to wear. But then, ironing had never really been my forte. Not a hell of a lot of practical things were, to be honest.

My shoulders dropped and I sighed. This was completely pointless. I was, and always would be, a lost cause. This whole job business had been a good idea in theory, but it was becoming very clear that coming to work for Felix was not the stepping stone to broadening my horizons that I thought it might be. It might even be making things worse. My vision of moving to London and having gal pals to bowl about with was very naïve. I hadn’t met one person that wasn’t super intimidating. Instead of popping out for drinks and meeting in cafés as I had envisaged, I went home to my empty flat every night, ordered a lonely takeaway and sank back into my fantasy world – the same fantasy world that I’d spent the last ten years constructing back in Little Buckingham. Nothing had changed. Coming here was pointless. I really should have stayed back home. At least there I had Mum, Emily and Mike.

Painful shyness and a touch of weirdness were my problems. I was confident in the fictional world I had created, but in the real world… not so much. That’s why I’d never left Little Buckingham before, never moved out of my family home, never had a boyfriend – the list went on. But the hope that getting a job in the big smoke would boost my confidence was slowly dying. As was the hope of making some new friends outside of my village bubble. The very idea of making friends with a woman like Tabitha was completely laughable. When she wasn’t displaying open contempt for me, she was largely ignoring me. Then there was the other secret hope I didn’t admit to anyone – the hope that Felix might finally notice me as something other than his best friend’s slightly odd little sister. Well, that was the most far-fetched idea of the lot.