Her Impossible Boss (3 page)

‘Now it’s time for you to meet my daughter. She’s upstairs in her bedroom. I’ll show you to the kitchen. You can familiarise yourself with it. Make yourself a cup of coffee. I’ll bring her down.’

Tess nodded. After her gruelling interview, from which she was still reeling, the prospect of meeting Samantha wasn’t as daunting as she would have expected. What could be more full-on than her father had been?

The apartment, sprawling in all directions, occupied
the entire top two floors of the building. Matt showed her into a kitchen which was as stunningly modern as the rest of the apartment was shamelessly and opulently old. Granite surfaces positively gleamed, and were completely bare of any of the normal clutter associated with day-to-day life. Tess foresaw problems should she attempt to do any cooking with her charge. She would be terrified of ruining the show home look.

‘Make yourself at home,’ he insisted, while she continued to look around her with the lost expression of someone suddenly transported to foreign territory.

For a few seconds Matt watched her with rare amusement. ‘It doesn’t bite,’ he said, and Tess flushed. ‘There’s tea and coffee in one of the cupboards, and in the fridge…’ he indicated something sleek that was camouflaged to look like the rest of the kitchen ‘…there should be milk. My housekeepers make sure that the kitchen is stocked, especially now that Samantha’s around. If you’re lucky, you might even locate some biscuits somewhere.’

‘You mean you don’t
know
where things are in your own kitchen?’

Matt grinned, and Tess had a disconcerting window into what this man would look like shorn of his arrogance. Not just beautiful, but dangerously, horribly sexy.

She lowered her eyes as a new, prickly feeling undermined her still shaky composure.

‘Terrible, isn’t it?’ He was still grinning and moving towards the door. He raised his eyebrows. ‘Maybe you could work that one into the next speech you give me about my shortcomings.’

Tess smiled weakly back, but somewhere in a part of her she hardly recognised warning bells were beginning to ring—although what that meant she had no idea.

‘W
ELL
?
Well?
What did you think? Have you got the job?’

Claire was waiting for her. Tess had barely had time to insert her key into the front door and there she was, pulling open the door, her face alight with curiosity.

What did she think of Matt Strickland? Tess tried her best to sum up a guy who represented everything she so studiously avoided. Too rich, too arrogant, too stuffy. When her mind strayed to the peculiar way he had made her feel, she reined it back in.

‘Can you believe he didn’t want me showing up in tight clothing?’

‘He’s your boss. He can dictate your wardrobe. Do you think
we’re
allowed to show up to work in ripped jeans?’ Claire pointed out reasonably. ‘Move on. Impressions of the apartment?’

‘Barely had time to notice.’ Tess sighed. ‘I’ve never had such a long interview. I could tell you all about his office, but that’s about it. Oh—and the kitchen. I
did
notice that his apartment is the size of a ship, though, and I’m not sure about his taste in art. There were lots of paintings of landscapes and random strangers.’

‘That would be his family,’ Claire surmised thoughtfully. ‘Classy.’

‘Really? You think?’

‘And finally impressions of the daughter?’

No one had known that he even
had
a daughter, so private was Matt Strickland, and so far he hadn’t brought her into the office once!

Tess wondered what there was to tell—considering she hadn’t actually met the child. She had waited in the kitchen for what had seemed an unreasonable length of time, and Matt had finally returned in a foul temper and informed her that Samantha had locked herself in her bedroom and was refusing to leave it.

Tess had sipped her tea, distractedly helped herself to her fifth biscuit, absentmindedly gazed at her feet, which had been propped up on a kitchen chair in front of her and pondered the fact that, however powerful, self-assured and downright arrogant Matt Strickland was, there was still at least one person on the face of the earth who was willing to ignore him completely.

‘You shouldn’t have locks on the doors,’ she had informed him thoughtfully. ‘We were never allowed to when we were growing up. Mum was always petrified that there would be a fire and she would have no way of getting in.’

He had looked at her as though she had been speaking another language, and only later had she realised that he would have had no real experience of all the small details involved in raising a child.

‘So, Monday looks as though it’s going to be fun,’ she finally concluded now. ‘Samantha doesn’t want to
know, plus I have to be there by seven-thirty. You know how hopeless I am at waking up early…’

Which earned her a look of such filthy warning from Claire that she decided to back off from further complaints on the subject. Of course she would do her very best to wake at the crack of dawn. She would set her alarm, and she would set her phone—but she knew that she might easily sleep through both. What if she did?

She still remembered all the choice words he had used to describe her, and her fact was still worrying at the problem when, the following evening, she answered the landline to hear Matt’s dark, smooth voice at the other end of the phone.

Immediately Tess was hurled back to his apartment and that first sight of him, lounging against the doorframe, looking at her.

‘You’ve probably got the wrong sister,’ Tess said as soon as he had identified himself—as though there had been
any
chance of her not recognising that voice of his. ‘Claire’s having a bath, but I’ll tell her you called.’

‘I called to speak to you,’ Matt informed her smoothly. ‘Just to remind you that I’ll be expecting you at seven-thirty sharp tomorrow morning.’

‘Of course I’m going to be there! You can count on me. I’m going to be setting a number of gadgets to make sure I don’t oversleep.’

At the other end of the line Matt felt his lips twitch, but he wasn’t about to humour her. He got the distinct impression that most people humoured Tess Kelly. There was something infectious about her warmth. However, when it came to his daughter, a stern angle was essential.

‘Hello? Are you still there?’

‘I am, and to help ease you into punctuality I’ll be sending a car for you. It’ll be there at seven. You forgot to leave me your mobile number.’

‘My mobile number?’

‘I need to be able to contact you at all times. Remember, you’ll be in charge of my daughter.’

Unaccustomed to being reined in, Tess immediately softened. Of
course
he would want to have her mobile number! He might not be demonstrative when it came to his daughter—not in the way that her parents had always been demonstrative with
her
—but keeping tabs on the nanny showed just how important it was for him to know the whereabouts of Samantha at all times.

She rattled it off, and turned to find Claire looking at her with a grin.

‘Step one in being a responsible adult! Be prepared to be answerable to someone else! Matt’s a fair guy. He expects a lot from the people who work for him, but he gives a lot back in return.’

‘I don’t like bossy people,’ Tess objected automatically.

‘You mean you like people who don’t lay down any rules to speak of and just allow you to do whatever you want. The joys of being the baby of the family!’

Tess had always been perfectly happy with that description in the past. Now she frowned. Wasn’t the unspoken rider to that description
irresponsible?
Her parents had shipped her out to New York so that she could learn some lessons about growing up from her sister. Was it their way of easing her out of the family nest? Had Matt been unknowingly right with his observations?
Taking on the job of looking after someone else’s child—a child who had already been through a lot and clearly had issues with her father—was not the job for someone who refused to be responsible. Matt Strickland was prepared to give her a chance in the face of some pretty strong evidence that she wasn’t up to the task. Being labelled
the baby of the family
no longer seemed to sit quite right.

She had half expected to arrive the following morning and find herself taking orders from one of those mysterious people he had mentioned who would be there to pick up the slack, but in fact, after her luxurious chauffeured drive, during which she’d taken the opportunity to play tourist and really look at some of the sights from air-conditioned comfort, she found herself being greeted by Matt himself.

The weekend had done nothing to diminish his impact. This time he was dressed for work. A dark suit, white shirt and some hand-tailored shoes—a combination that should have been a complete turn off, but which instead just seemed to elevate his sexiness to ridiculous levels.

‘I wasn’t expecting you to be here,’ Tess said, immediately taken aback.

‘I live here—or had you forgotten?’ He stood aside and she scuttled past him, weirdly conscious of her body in a way that was alien to her.

Under slightly less pressure now, she had her first opportunity to really appreciate her surroundings. It was much more impressive than she could ever have dreamt. Yes, the place was vast, and, yes, the paintings were uniformly drab—even if the portraits
were
of his
family members—but the décor was exquisite. Where she might have expected him to err in favour of minimalism, with maybe just the odd leather sofa here and there and lots of chrome, his apartment was opulent. The patina of the wooden floor was rich and deep, and the rugs were old and elaborate. A galleried landing looked down on the immense space below, and stretching the full height of the walls were two windows which, she could now see, offered a tantalising view of Manhattan. The sort of view to which most normal mortals could only aspire via the tourist route.

‘Wow! I didn’t really take much notice of your apartment the last time I was here. Well, office and kitchen aside.’ She stood in one spot, circling slowly. ‘Sorry,’ she offered to no one in particular, ‘I know it’s rude to stare, but I can’t help myself.’ Her eyes were round like saucers, and for the first time in a long time he fully appreciated the privileges to which he had been born.

‘Most of the things in here have been handed down to me,’ he said, when she had eventually completed her visual tour and was looking at him. ‘In fact, I could trace the provenance of nearly everything here. How was the drive over?’

‘Brilliant. Thank you.’

‘And you’re ready to meet Samantha?’

‘I’m sorry I didn’t get to meet her last time,’ Tess said with a rush of sympathy.

Matt, eager to get the day under way, because he had back-to-back meetings, paused. ‘Like I said, she’s been through a very rough time. It can be difficult to get through to her sometimes.’

‘How awful for you. I would have thought that she would have clung to you after her mother’s death.’

‘Some situations are not always straightforward,’ Matt informed her stiffly. ‘I don’t see you with any books.’

‘Books?’ Tess was still trying to figure out what
‘not always straightforward’
might mean.

‘Schoolbooks,’ he said patiently. ‘I hope you haven’t forgotten that teaching is going to be part of your duties with Samantha?’

‘Not on day one, surely?’

‘I’m not a believer in putting off for tomorrow what can be done today.’

‘Yes, well…I thought that I would get to know her first, before I start trying to teach her the importance of fractions and decimals.’

‘Ah. I’m glad to see that you’ve dropped your defeatist approach and got with the programme!’

‘I don’t have a defeatist approach! Really I don’t.’ She had thought a lot about what he had said to her, about her waving a white flag, and decided that he had been way off target. She had always firmly believed herself capable of doing anything. Why else would she have attempted so many varied jobs in the past?

Matt held up his hand to silence her. ‘No matter. Samantha’s collection of tutors have left a number of books over the course of the past few months. You’ll find them in the study. Most are untouched,’ he added, his mouth tightening. ‘I’m hoping that you prove the exception to the rule.’

‘I
did
warn you that I’m not academic…’

‘I’ve tried the academics,’ Matt pointed out. ‘None
of them worked out. Why do you keep running yourself down?’ ‘I don’t.’

‘If you insist on labelling yourself as stupid then don’t be surprised when the world decides to agree with you.’

‘Wait just a minute!’

He had spun around to lead the way, but now he turned slowly on his heels and looked at her with mild curiosity.

‘I’m not
stupid.’
Tess had had time to realise that she couldn’t cave in to his much stronger, more dominant personality. It wasn’t in her nature to make a fuss, but she would have to stand firm on what she believed or let him ride roughshod over her. ‘I could have got very good grades, as it happens.’

‘Then why didn’t you? Was it easier to fail for lack of trying rather than risk trying to compete with your brilliant sisters and not do quite as well? Okay, I withdraw my remark about your being lazy, but if you want to prove your abilities to me then you’ve got to step up to the plate. Stop apologising for your lack of academic success and start realising the only thing I care about is that you drop the assumption that you can’t teach my daughter. She’s in the kitchen, by the way.’

Behind him, Tess quietly bristled. While he explained the working hours of his various housekeepers, who took it in turns to come in during the week to ensure that his apartment was never allowed to accumulate a speck of dust, Tess mulled over what he had said like a dog with a bone. She had blithely gone through life doing as she liked, only half listening to her parents’
urgings that she settle down and focus. Claire and Mary were focused. In her own good-natured way she had stubbornly refused to be pushed into a way of life which she thought she couldn’t handle. No one had ever bluntly said the things that Matt had said to her, or implied that she was a coward, scared of looking like a failure next to her sisters. She told herself that he knew nothing about her—but his words reverberated in her head like a nest of angry wasps.

She nearly bumped into him when he stopped at the kitchen door. She stepped past him to see her charge sitting at the kitchen table, hunched over a bowl of cereal which she was playing with—filling the spoon with milk, raising it high above the bowl and then slowly tilting the milk back in, unconcerned that half of it was splashing onto the fine grainy wood of the table.

Tess didn’t know what she had expected. One thing she really
hadn’t
expected was, glancing sideways, to see the shuttered look of pained confusion on Matt’s face, and for a few powerful seconds she was taken aback by the burst of sympathy she felt for him.

He was tough and uncompromising and, yes, judgemental of her in a way that left her trembling with anger—yet in the face of his daughter he literally didn’t know what to do.

Frankly, nor did she. Stubborn, sulky ten year olds had never featured even on her horizon.

‘Samantha. Look at me!’ He shoved his hands in his pockets and frowned. ‘This is Tess. I told you about her. She’s going to be your new nanny.’

Samantha greeted this by propping her chin in her hands and yawning widely. She was probably wearing
the most expensive clothes money could buy, but Tess had never seen a child dressed with such old-fashioned lack of taste. Clumpy brown sandals and a flowered sleeveless frock. Silk, from the look of it. What ten-year-old ever wore silk? Her long hair was braided into two plaits with, of all things, ribbons neatly tied into bows at the ends. She was dark-haired, like her father, with the same stubborn, aristocratic set to her features. She would doubtless be a beauty in time, but just at the moment her face was sullen and set.

Tess cleared her throat and took a couple of steps forward. ‘Samantha! Hi! Okay, you really don’t have to look at me if you don’t want to…’ She giggled nervously, which earned her a sneaky glance, although the spoon and milk routine was still in full force. ‘But I’m new to this place so…’ She frantically thought of the one thing she and a ten-year-old girl might have in common. ‘Do you fancy exploring the shops with me? My sister doesn’t wear the same stuff that I do, and I’m far too scared to venture into some of those department stores without someone to hold my hand.’