The Rebound Guy by Fiona Harper

on the boss!’
    The crowd roared its appreciation and there was a stampede to the bar. Kelly glared at Jason as best she could past the people who had squeezed between their two stools to wave at the bar staff.
    Technically, she’d won. He hadn’t bought her a drink—at least, not just her—but the satisfied smirk on his face made her feel as if she’d just been trumped.
    She wasn’t sure if she liked that, but he’d had a rough day. McGrath’s refusal had been a disappointment, and maybe teasing her now that they were out of the office was his way of blowing off steam. She decided to give him the benefit of the doubt.
    She ordered a second cosmo. Beer seemed too...chummy. Cocktails were suitably aloof. As she sipped it she tried hard to remain equally aloof and detached from her boss.
    It didn’t work very well. She kept forgetting and getting absorbed in a funny story he was telling the people gathered around them, and then she’d start laughing and smiling. That in itself wasn’t so bad, but then she’d catch Jason’s eye and discover it held a twinkle just for her.
    What was worse, she liked it. Liked feeling as if they were a unit of two amidst the larger group of Aspire employees. Co-conspirators, even.
    But soon she began to wonder why he was on such top form that evening. Wasn’t he disappointed too? She searched for signs of it, but when someone asked him directly about the McGrath deal, he just batted the subject away, as he would a pesky fly, telling the person who’d asked that it was no big deal.
    That was when Kelly started to get angry with him.
    She’d worked really, really hard on that project, had become invested in it emotionally, because she’d believed in the shoes. She’d believed in Jason Knight and his passion for them.
    Once again she’d been suckered in by a good-looking man with a line. Because now he was laughing it all off as if it didn’t matter.
    It started to boil inside her as she nursed the last dregs of her cocktail. Perhaps this was how he was... Tim had been a bit like that, suffering from sudden and overpowering passions for hobbies or pet projects or even TV programmes. Golf had lasted a year. After he’d spent a fortune on getting top of the range kit, of course. Squash had been next. Then paintball. And they hadn’t been able to watch one episode of a favourite TV show a week, like normal people. Tim had been all about the DVD box set—multiple episodes per evening until her head had spun with the plot lines and characters and she’d ended up dreaming about them all night.
    So, it didn’t matter how good Jason Knight’s broad shoulders looked in his immaculately cut suit. She didn’t need to get enamoured with another man like that. A man who couldn’t commit to something for more than a couple of weeks. She’d bet he had a set of clubs mouldering in his hall cupboard too.
    So she downed the last of her cosmo and slammed her empty glass on the bar, then she stood up, said a terse goodbye to the group and pushed her way through the crowd to the door.
    The delicious air of a spring evening wrapped itself around her as she stepped outside, cooling her skin and sharpening her senses. Sharpening her anger too. The echo of her heels on the paving slabs bounced off the walls of a low bridge as she passed under it and marched down the road to the Tube station.
    * * *
    Jason looked in both directions when he burst from the door of Joey’s and quickly spotted his PA marching off down the street as if she was on her way to execute something. Or some one .
    â€˜Kelly!’ he called out, but those legs just kept striding. ‘Hey, Kelly!’
    She didn’t slow or stop, but there was a slight straightening of her spine that indicated she’d heard him just fine. He smiled to himself. He could play it that way, if that was what she wanted.
    Kelly’s legs might