Chapter 2 - The Vela Account

His tie was silver and his shirt brilliantly white, the stark absence of colour throwing everything at those extraordinary eyes—a dark honey brown, startlingly light against his skin. As he stood there with his jacket open and his hands shoved casually into his trouser pockets, the sight of him was like walking smack into a wall I hadn't known was there.

I jerked to a halt, my gaze riveted to the man who was even more striking than I'd remembered. I had never seen a head kept that precisely. His hair was dense and black, cut close at the sides and left long on top, long enough at the nape to touch his collar. That bit of length was the crowning touch of bad boy over the successful businessman, like sauce poured over ice cream. As my mother would say, only rogues and chancers wore it like that.

My hands clenched against the urge to touch it, to find out whether it was as soft as it looked.

The doors began to close. He took an easy step forward and pressed a button on the panel to hold them open. "There's plenty of room for both of us, Aviwe."

The sound of that smoky, implacable voice broke me out of my momentary daze. How did he know my name?

Then I remembered that he'd picked up my ID card when I'd dropped it in the lobby. For a second I debated telling him I was waiting for someone so I could take another lift down, but my brain lurched back into action.