Mia Scott

Lord James Dashwood

"I'm going to die," James exasperated dramatically. He was sprawled on his living room settee like a Victorian maiden with the vapors, with one burly arm flung over his eyes, still dressed in his Ralph Lauren pajamas and a silk robe.

Mia Scott sighed from where she stood in the archway of the lavish sitting room, balancing the drink caddy in one arm, files, and folders in another. She hung her head for a moment, mentally counting backward from ten. James's laptop rested on the coffee table, unmoved in her absence, the cursor flashing at the top of a blank page.  

"You can die after you finish this draft, Lord Dashwood," Mia stated.

She marched closer to her most irritating client, setting her purse and files down in a nearby chair and placing one of the coffee cups she picked up on the table next to him.

James cracked open an eye. "Lord Dashwood?" he repeated with a quizzical frown.

"You only call me that when you're vexed with me," he whined. It was still horribly attractive, wrapped in his lilting posh accent.

His dark head swiveled to pin her with his cerulean gaze, eyebrows crinkled.

"Are you vexed with me, pet?"

Mia took her seat, adjusted her sensible charcoal pantsuit, crossed her legs underneath her, and smiled tightly at him.

"What gave it away, Lord Dashwood," she deadpanned. She was giving him no quarter today.

"Have mercy on me, darling," James huffed. "I-" he paused, spotting the proffered coffee on the table. "You brought me a coffee?"

"I did," Mia said, removing her own beverage from the cardboard caddy. "Now, drink, stop whining and finish that draft, or I swear, I will strangle you and enjoy it thoroughly."

James sat up obediently then, setting his slippered feet on the oriental rug. He took a long sip and then beamed at Mia, dimples deepening.  

"You always remember how I like it."

Mia looked down into her lap, heart dancing and heat rising in her face, taking a sudden keen interest in her coffee cup. Of course, she remembered. One cream and two sugars.

"It is my job to handle the details."

"It's why you're the best," James replied with casual confidence. He took another sip, closed his eyes, and gave an exaggerated moan.  

The deep rolling bass of it absolutely did not throw Mia off her game face.

She took a distracted sip of her coffee, black, and set it down. "James, we've been through this. I cannot do my job unless you do yours. What, precisely, is your problem?"

"You know," James began, a sultry lull in his voice. "I would let you strangle me in a sexy kind of way if that's what you're into."

It was in these moments Mia's professional front wavered and cracked. In these moments, she thought, maybe, just maybe... But she could not afford girlish flights of fancy.

Instead, she gritted her teeth, "Lord Dashwood!"

James straightened up like a soldier being called to attention in the blink of an eye, visage turning serious. It still startled Mia after three years. He pulled the laptop closer to the edge of the coffee table and closer to him.

"The middle doesn't seem to be sitting right," he said, tone all business.

Mia fished for her reading glasses in her bag and popped up from her seat. James shifted a couple of inches to allow her room next to him. It was a trial of patience to focus her eyes on the text on the backlit screen instead of leaning closer into his warmth. The alluring and masculine scent of the Paco Rabanne fragrance he favored was faint but no less enticing.  

She adjusted the spectacles on her nose, leaning closer, she scanned through the text on the laptop, biting at the tip of her tongue in concentration. This was what she was good at. 

She motioned to the tricky passage. "Have you thought about trying this..."

Mia had been his editor from the beginning, and James said he would not work with anyone else. 

What Mia would never tell him, though, is that she would cut anyone who tried.