After the Storm (All I've Ever Needed) Read Online Free

the empty tissue dispenser that she hastily refilled, there was nothing to indicate that she and Stephano had had sex on her desk.
    I had sex on my desk!
    Natalie still couldn’t wrap her mind around it.   She didn’t believe in office romances, especially since she loved her job and wouldn’t want to leave when the relationship went sour.   Staying in a job and seeing an ex-lover every day would be hard thing to endure—seeing that lover with someone new in the same office would be even harder.   Thankfully, she wouldn’t have that problem as she was the only woman in the team of ten.
    Unless he starts batting for the same team as Morgan , she thought with a smile.
    She sobered as she checked the time on her computer and realized that it was after ten o’clock.   Stephano should have been in the office by now.
    The agency allowed flexible working and each of them did their required thirty-five hours around the ten-to-four core hours.   An early bird by nature she had switched to a later working pattern when she’d realized that Stephano came in later in the morning and was usually the last to leave the office in the evening.   But although he was often the last to arrive, he always arrived by ten, unless the Tube experienced severe delays.
    Worried, she positioned her monitor so that she had a view of the road and the passengers exiting the Tube station while appearing to be focused on her computer screen.   Her desk was in prime position in the office—most of her colleagues would swap desks in a heartbeat.   She had inherited it from Mary O’Brien, her successor, a woman who had been the longest-serving member of staff before retiring early to go sailing around the world with her husband.   Morgan had complained bitterly when Natalie had been given the best desk in the office, but Alan had insisted that as Mary’s replacement she was entitled to it.   Morgan had ranted and raved for weeks, but Alan had remained unbending.
    A sporty red car pulled up just outside her window and blocked her view of the station.   Wanting to scream abuse at the driver, Natalie glanced angrily at the occupants instead, hoping that a dirty look would send them on their way.   With a shock she recognized the back of Stephano’s head as he leaned over to kiss the female driver.   It was a brief kiss, but Natalie was certain it had been on the lips.   As he unfolded his length from the passenger seat with some difficulty, Natalie caught a glimpse of the beautiful, young black woman who smiled as she waved at him, then gunned the engine and drove off before the loitering parking attendant could issue her a ticket for stopping in the no-parking zone.
    Numb with shock, Natalie quickly re-positioned her monitor and adjusted the blinds covering the window so that he wouldn’t know she had been looking out for him like a love-sick fool.
    She should have known better than to doubt her first instincts.   Alarm bells had immediately gone off when Stephano hadn’t as much as extended an invitation for a walk in the park over the weekend.   She had gone home thinking that she’d been ‘laid and played’, but after reading the first of the three romance novels she’d finished over the weekend she’d been once again convinced that good men did exist and Stephano was one of them.
    She’d come to work this morning eager to see him, to find out if he’d missed her as much as she’d missed him, hoping that he would admit that not one waking hour had passed without thoughts of her and the scorching sex they’d had.
    She should have known that it was all too good to be true.
    “Sorry, I’m late, guys,” Stephano apologized as he burst into the office.   “Crazy weekend and then my father complained of chest pains last night and had to be rushed to hospital.   Turns out he had a nap too soon after eating a large portion of my mum’s lasagna and had a bad case of heartburn.”
    Yeah, right!   She wanted to snort in derision