Breaking Through

Copyright

Mischief

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

77–85 Fulham Palace Road,

Hammersmith, London W6 8JB

www.mischiefbooks.com

An eBook Original 2014

Copyright © A. M. Hartnett 2014

A. M. Hartnett asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Ebook Edition © 2014 ISBN: 9780007587858

Version: 2014-10-07

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Epilogue

More from Mischief

About Mischief

About the Publisher

Prologue

The last thing Miranda Hayes expected to find as she popped into the ladies’ room after her shift was a man, let alone a man with his cock in some woman’s mouth.

At first, she simply stood there looking into the mirror with her hands frozen over the taps and stared at the pornographic scene behind her. She’d seen him before in the building. Never here on her floor of Keyes Tower, where she worked fielding calls for an American insurance company, but she’d stood behind him a time or two while waiting in line at the café on the lower level.

Double espresso, she remembered, as she watched him raise his hips off the toilet seat and go deeper into the woman’s mouth, with a carrot and pumpkin-seed muffin, no butter.

She’d always imagined that the tall, blond man drove into the city in an SUV that had plastic toys hidden under the seats and a stick-family decal on the rear windshield. He probably worked in finance and dealt with things like securities or trusts or some other matters Miranda knew nothing about. While he only put in eight hours at the office, he probably told his wife he had to stay late so he could get his dick wet with whatever student intern he’d managed to sweet talk that day. Something to recapture his youth, to ignore the lines deepening on his face and the way his midsection was getting soft.

Whatever his deal was, it was obviously working for him.

With a low moan, he pressed his free hand on the top of the woman’s head. The soles of his shoes squeaked against the floor and the toilet seat rattled as he moved in tune with the roll of the woman’s shoulders.

Miranda was running late. After sitting for two hours straight in her cubicle she really needed to pee, but if the lovers hadn’t noticed her yet she wasn’t about to draw attention to herself.

She hitched her bag onto her shoulder and turned, and her stomach flopped as her gaze connected with his.

The heat of embarrassment made her knees weak. She couldn’t look away, and the man seemed unperturbed. In fact, a smirk crooked at the corner of his mouth.

He raised his brows. It was a smug, wordless question: did she like what she saw? As her humiliation burned clean into rage, the man raised his leg and pushed the stall door closed.

Miranda didn’t try to make a quiet exit. She stamped her feet upon the tiles and slapped her hand against the bathroom door. As it whispered shut behind her she cursed it for not at least having squeaky hinges to make more of a statement.

She went to the empty ladies’ room on the floor below. As she washed her hands afterwards, she was seething. If she weren’t in such a shitty mood to begin with, that sordid performance probably wouldn’t have irked her so much. She’d seen worse in her first job, working security at the mall – for some reason P3 had been a popular cruising area – and if she had simply been able to slip out of the bathroom unseen it would have just been something to chuckle about later when her sister asked her about her day.

It was that grin and that sleazy acknowledgement that had gotten deep under her skin.

As she waited for the elevator, Miranda shot a text to her sister asking her to toss a beer in the fridge-freezer so it would be cold when she got home.

You’re turning into an old woman, she told herself as she watched the buttons above the elevator light up with its descent.

6 … 5 … 4 …

Every evening when she logged out, Miranda’s thoughts were consumed with the mundane. She wanted to flop down on the sofa, wriggle out of her bra and just turn into a vegetable in front of the TV.

She’d just received an ‘OK’ from Juliet when the elevator doors slid open.

It was like he’d performed a magic trick. His gaze was on her as soon as he was revealed to her, and that smirk was still on his face.

Miranda pressed her lips together and took a deep breath through her nose. She wanted to be snotty and say she’d wait for the next one, but she was too stubborn. She was in danger of missing her bus, and besides, she had every right to that elevator.

Miranda stepped forward as the doors began to shut. He leaned over and held them open, his expression as patient as it was smug.

‘Thank you,’ she told him in a tone that conveyed no gratitude as she stepped inside. She stared at the number panel, the lobby button already lit up, and could feel his amusement radiating throughout the car.

One floor later, the man spoke.

‘I’m sorry if I embarrassed you.’

Miranda snorted. ‘I’ve got nothing to be embarrassed about. I’m not the one who was getting my dick sucked in the toilet.’

He laughed, and Miranda’s temper cranked up another notch. She twisted her fingers around the strap of her bag and swore that if she missed the bus, she would still take her damn bra off – and strangle him with it.

‘Regardless, I’m sorry.’

She rolled her eyes. ‘I highly doubt that. You looked pretty pleased with yourself.’

‘Well, truth be told, I am. It’s been years since I did anything like that. It’s pretty sweet to know I can still –’

‘Excuse me –’ Miranda held her hands up in front of her and turned to him ‘– at what point did I give you the impression I wanted to hear any of this?’

‘I’m just trying to distract you from the mental picture of my hard dick.’

Out of nowhere, his remark struck her funny bone. She turned away quickly before her smile could show, and then scowled so hard to banish it that her eyes crossed.

The elevator reached the lobby, and Miranda hitched her bag onto her shoulder again as the door opened.

‘Jesus, buddy, at least blow your load on the fifth floor next time,’ she said as she scuttled to step out ahead of him.

She took one last glance back as she threw open the glass doors leading onto the street. The man was trailing behind her, his smile a mile wide on his face and his shoulders shaking with his laughter.

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