Her Impossible Boss (6 page)

‘How have we landed up here?’

‘We’ve landed up here because…because…’ What should have been a cool, businesslike conversation in relaxed surroundings was falling apart at the seams—and it was
her
fault. Was it any wonder that he was staring at her as though she had taken leave of her senses? He had complimented her on her progress and she had responded by snapping. She was miserably aware that she had snapped because she didn’t want him implying that she was somehow immature, and she wasn’t sure why she cared.

‘Because it hasn’t all been about Samantha having fun. I’ve had to really coax her out of her shell, and I admit it’s easier to coax a child when you dangle something in front of her that she wants. But I’ve also been doing schoolwork with her.’

‘Yes. I know.’

‘You do?’

‘She’s told me.’

Tess didn’t miss the flash of quiet satisfaction that crossed his face, and she made a big effort to remind
herself that
this
was why she so enjoyed the job. Because she had been instrumental in helping to heal some of the rifts between Matt and his daughter. And if Matt patted her on the back and patronisingly complimented her on getting the job done because she was immature enough to win over her charge, then so be it.

‘You’ve proved yourself wrong.’ He leaned back in the chair as menus were placed in front of them and more wine was poured into glasses. ‘How does that feel?’

‘I’ve only gone through the basic stuff with her,’ Tess mumbled, blushing.

‘It’s a mountain when your starting point was insisting that you were incapable of doing simple maths and science.’

A slow, palpable sense of pleasure radiated through her, made her feel hot and flustered, and although she knew that his dark, lazy eyes were on her, she couldn’t bring herself to meet them.

‘Well, I won’t be taking a degree course in them any time soon.’ Tess laughed breathlessly.

Claire might have given her long lectures about his ruthlessness, but this was a side of him to which she had been not privy. Claire hadn’t seen the complete human being. She had just seen the guy who issued orders and expected obedience.

‘But doing something of which you didn’t think yourself capable must have gone some distance to bolstering your self-confidence…’

Her eyes flew to his, and she had a few giddy seconds of imagining that those dark, deep, brooding eyes of his could see right down to the very heart of her. Her
voice was shaky as she gave her order to the waiter, and when she thought that the conversation might move on she was greeted with a mildly expectant silence.

‘I’ve always had bags of self-confidence,’ she muttered eventually. ‘You can ask either of my sisters. While they were buried under heaps of books, I was always out having a great time with my friends.’ Why did she get the feeling that he didn’t believe her? And his disbelief had to be infectious, because she was almost failing to believe herself. ‘I may not be going out a great deal in the evenings now, because of my working hours,’ she said, relentlessly pursuing the point even though he hadn’t contradicted a word she had said, ‘but I’m normally the kind of girl who always had lots of invitations.’

‘And you miss that?’

‘We’re not here to talk about me.’

‘But in a way we are,’ Matt pointed out smoothly. ‘You spend more time with my daughter than I do. It’s important for me to know your frame of mind. I wouldn’t want to think that you might be storing up resentments. So…you’ve spent most of your evenings over the past few weeks at my apartment. Does that bother you? When you’re accustomed to spending your time going out with friends?’

He watched her fiddle with the stem of her wine glass. Her cheeks were flushed. Her thick, straight, toffee-coloured hair hung like a silky curtain over her shoulders, halfway down her back. Amidst the plush, formal surroundings she looked very, very young, and suddenly he felt very, very old. A quick glance around him confirmed that there was almost no one in the restaurant under the age of fifty. The fabulously high prices
excluded all but the very rich, and he was an exception when it came to being very rich and the right side of forty. He had grown up in an ivory tower and had never had cause to leave it. It discomfited him to think that curiosity, if nothing else, should have driven him out at least for a brief period of time.

Annoyed to find himself succumbing, even temporarily, to an unusual bout of passing introspection, Matt frowned, and Tess, seeing the change of expression, was instantly on her guard.

Was he going to tell her that she needed to stop spending her evenings at his home? Did he
disapprove?
Maybe he hankered after more one-to-one time with Samantha and she, blithely unconcerned, was in the process of just
getting in the way.

Maybe she should suggest reverting to normal working hours.

Dismayed, Tess realised that she didn’t want to do that. How had that happened? How had Matt Strickland and his daughter and their complicated family life suddenly become so integral to her day-to-day existence?

Her thoughts were in a whirl as food was placed in front of them—exquisite arrangements of shellfish and potatoes that Tess would have dived into with gusto were it not for the feverish whirring of her mind.

‘I’ll curtail my hours if you want me to,’ she heard herself say in a small voice.

‘I don’t believe that’s what I was asking you,’ Matt told her impatiently. He had become accustomed to her never ending cheerfulness, and the despondent droop of her shoulders made him feel like the Grinch who stole
Christmas. ‘You’re my employee,’ he said tightly. ‘And I have certain obligations as your employer.’

Tess hated that professional appraisal. She realised that she didn’t
want
him to have any obligations as the guy who had hired her, but when she started to think about what she
did
want her thoughts did that crazy thing again and became tangled and confusing.

‘I wouldn’t want you to turn around at some later date and accuse me of taking advantage of you.’

‘I would never do that!’ Tess was horrified and offended.

‘You’ve insisted on forgoing any overtime payments.’

‘You pay me enough as it is! I
like
sticking around in the evenings and helping out with Samantha.’

‘Doesn’t do much good for a social life for you, though, does it?’

‘I didn’t come over here to cultivate a social life,’ Tess said firmly. Well, she admitted to herself, that
was
a bit of an exaggeration, thinking back to the dismay with which she had greeted the suggestion of a job, but that was in the past so it didn’t count. ‘I came here to try and get my act together and I have.’ Her natural warmth was returning and she smiled at him. ‘I feel like I’ve finally found something I really enjoy doing. I mean, I think I have an affinity with kids. I don’t get bored with them. You’d be surprised how clever and insightful Samantha can be without even realising it. I can get all the socialising that I want when I get back home.’ Which was something she wasn’t going to start thinking about just yet.

‘And do you socialise with anyone in particular there?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You’re an attractive young woman.’ Matt shrugged and pushed aside his plate, which was swept up by a waiter seconds later. ‘Left any broken hearts behind?’

‘Oh, hundreds!’ Tess said gaily. If he thought that she was immature and green around the ears, how much more cemented would that impression be if he knew that being ‘one of the lads’ and having loads of friends who happened to be boys was a far cry from having a solid relationship with one in particular.

‘So was that part of the reason you came over here?’

‘No!’ Tess protested uncomfortably.

‘Because no boy is worth it. Not at your age.’

‘I’m twenty-three. Not thirteen.’ Just in case he had missed that, which she suspected he had. Because she had never, not once, caught him looking at her with male interest. While she…Tess flushed and felt something scary and powerful stir in her, as though finally being allowed to take shape.
She
had looked at him. Released from their Pandora’s Box, little snapshots of him began swirling in her head. The way he looked when he was laughing, the way he raised his eyebrows in lazy amusement, that half-smile that could send shivers down her spine—except it hadn’t. Not until now.

Uncomfortable in her own skin, Tess struggled to get her thoughts in order while her innocuous remark hovered in the air between them, challenging him to assess her in a different way altogether.

As though the reins of his rigid self-control had
suddenly been snapped, Matt was assailed by a series of powerful, destabilising images. She might look young, with the stunning attraction of dewy skin and an open, expressive face that was a rare commodity in the hard-bitten world in which he lived, but she wasn’t thirteen. She especially didn’t look like a teenager in that dress she was wearing, which left just enough to get the imagination doing all sorts of interesting things. It took massive will-power to pull himself back from the brink of plunging headlong into the tempting notion of taking her to his bed.

She was his daughter’s nanny! What the hell was going on in his head? It grated on him to know that this wasn’t the first time he had played with the idea. He should know better. Work and play mixed as successfully as oil and water. He had never brought his private life to work and he wasn’t about to start now. Tess Kelly might not hold down a job within the physical walls of his offices, but she was as much his employee as any one of the hundreds who worked for him.

And, even taking that small but vital technicality out of the equation, Tess Kelly didn’t conform to anything he required from a woman. Having lived through the horror that had been his marriage, wedded in unhappy matrimony to a woman who had fulfilled all the requirements on paper and none in practice, as it turned out, his checklist when it came to women was stringent.

It was essential that they were as focused as he was. Focused and independent, with careers that were demanding enough to stave off any need for them to rely on him to define their lives. Like him, Catrina had come from old money, and her life had consisted of
fundraisers and charity balls and lunches and all those other little things that had left her with plenty of time to decide that his duty was to provide a never-ending diet of excitement. There had been no need for her to work, and she had, in any case, never been programmed for it. And into the void of all those empty hours when he had been working had crept the seeds of bitterness and disenchantment. She had wanted a rich partner who wanted to play, and he had failed to fulfil the specification. In the aftermath of that experience, and the consequences it came to entail, Matt was diligent in never straying beyond his own self-imposed boundaries.

Belatedly, because she had been away and contact between them had been sporadic and via e-mail, he remembered Vicky. She was in Hong Kong, getting a taste for the Eastern markets. She was due back in a couple of days’ time. He tried to pull up a memory of what she looked like, but the second he thought of her dark tailored bob and the neat precision of her personality another image of a bubbly, golden-haired girl with a dusting of freckles on her nose and a personality that was all over the place superimposed itself on the woman who claimed to be dying to catch up with him.

Irritated, he frowned. Then his face cleared and that vague feeling of being out of sorts began to ebb away.

‘Tell me your plans for the next few days.’ He pushed himself away from the table and signalled to the waiter for some coffees.

‘Plans?’ Still fretting over her tumultuous thoughts, it took Tess a few seconds to register that he had completely changed the subject. ‘A museum, and then a quiet day just relaxing with Samantha tomorrow. Maybe I’ll
grab an early evening and catch up with my social life, now that you’ve put that idea into my head.’

‘And then on Friday perhaps we might visit the zoo…’ said Matt.

This was a breakthrough. Instead of just following the tide, he was actually generating an idea of his own! Pure delight was all over her face as she nodded approvingly. She would take a back seat, watch father and daughter together, remind herself that her involvement with them both began and ended as a job.

And Matt, watching her carefully from under lowered lashes, calculated on Vicky’s presence. The two of them, side by side, would squash uninvited rebellious thoughts for which he had no use. He and Vicky might not be destined for the long haul, but she would be a timely reminder of what he was looking for in the opposite sex.

Matters sorted satisfactorily, and feeling back in control, he signalled for the bill.

O
VER
the next two days Tess had ample opportunity to think about herself. Matt had asked some very relevant questions, and had kick-started a chain of thoughts that made her uneasily aware that the things about herself she had always taken for granted might just be built on a certain amount of delusion.

She had always considered herself a free spirit. Her sisters had been the unfortunate recipients of their parents’ ambitions. Neither of their parents had gone to university. Their mother had worked as a dinner lady at the local school, and their father had held down a job in the accounts department at an electrical company. But, they were both really clever, and in another time and another place would have gone to university and fulfilled all sorts of dreams. They hadn’t, though, and consequently had taken an inordinate interest and delight in Claire and Mary’s superhuman academic achievements.

Tess had set her own agenda from an early age and had never deviated. Just in case her parents got it into their heads that she was destined to follow the same path, she had firmly set her own benchmark.

She had always thought that she loved
living
too much to waste time hiding away in a room in front of a pile
of books. She liked
sampling
things, getting a taste for different experiences. She refused to be tied down and she had always been proud of her thirst for freedom.

Matt’s take on things had badly damaged that glib acceptance. She wondered whether her happy-go-lucky attitude stemmed from a deep-rooted fear of competition. If you didn’t try, then you weren’t going to fail—as he had said to her on day one—and she had never tried and so had never set herself up for a fall. She had been offended and resentful at his implication that she lacked self-confidence, and yet she knew that she had never made the most of her talents. Underneath the pretty, popular, happy-go-lucky girl, had there always been an anxious, scared one, covering up her insecurities by wanting to be seen as the antidote to her sisters? Had she cultivated her social life—always being there for other people, always willing to lend a hand and always in demand—because that had helped her prove to herself that she was every bit as valuable as her two clever sisters?

Tess didn’t like this train of thought, but, having started, she was finding it impossible to stop. One thought seemed to generate another. It was as though a locked door had suddenly been flung open and out had spilled all manner of lost, forgotten and deliberately misplaced things from her childhood.

For the first time she had no inclination to share her thoughts with her sister, indeed, was relieved that Claire had taken herself off for a week’s break with Tom and wouldn’t be returning until the middle of the following week.

As she was getting ready on Friday morning for their
expedition to the zoo, Tess made herself address the other discomforting issue that had been nagging the back of her mind—the other loaded pistol that Matt had pointed at her head and forced her to acknowledge.
Why
had she suddenly jettisoned her social life? Why? She had arrived in Manhattan a carefree, fun-loving girl, with no thoughts beyond enjoying a lovely break from Ireland and perhaps trying to figure out what job to apply for when she returned. So how had she suddenly found herself in the position of willingly sacrificing her social life for the sake of a job? Why did the thought of going out and having a good time with young people her own age leave her cold? Of course she enjoyed Samantha, and loved the small changes in her personality she could detect as the days passed. It was rewarding to watch the person emerge from the protective, wary shell—like watching a butterfly emerge from its cocoon—but beyond that she just really liked being in Matt’s company because she fancied him.

Tess hadn’t recognised that for what it was because she didn’t think she had ever truly fancied anyone before. She had never questioned all those stolen glances and the way her body responded when he was around. Even now, as she wriggled into a navy and white striped vest and brushed out her hair before tying it up into a ponytail, she could feel her body tingling at the thought of seeing him.
That
was why she had thought nothing of putting her social life on hold.
That
was why she was happy to spend evenings at his apartment, sometimes just sitting cross-legged on the sofa with Samantha, watching something on the telly, while on the chair close by Matt
pretended to watch with the newspaper in front of him and a drink at his side.

Tess felt a little thrill of excitement race through her. She was in lust, and it felt good even if nothing would come of it. Because she certainly hadn’t caught him stealing any glances at her, and she couldn’t imagine him thinking about her in some way—not the way she realised she thought about him.

Tess could only assume that the very sheltered life she had led was the reason why she was only now feeling things that most women her age would have felt long ago. Where her sisters had flown the nest and pursued university degrees, then moved to new, exciting cities to begin their illustrious careers, she had remained at home, circulating with more or less the same crowd she had grown up with—a protective little circle that had, she could see now, been comforting and restrictive in equal measure. She felt as though she was finally emerging from cold storage. It was exciting. And who knew what lay round the corner? she thought, with the optimism with which she had always greeted most situations.

The journey to Pelham Parkway was baking hot, but she had dressed for the heat in a pair of cool linen trousers and flip-flops. It was going to be a long day. The zoo was enormous—one of the largest urban zoos. She had agreed with Matt that she would contact him by text as soon as she arrived, so that they could agree a meeting point, but with this new awareness of him burning a hole in her she found herself texting Samantha instead, and then making her way to a convenient spot where she
could wait for them to finish their animal sightseeing on the monorail.

On the way, her stomach rumbling, she bought herself a giant hot dog, and was sinking her teeth gratefully into the eight-inch sausage, onion, ketchup and mustard indulgence when she spotted Samantha running towards her.

Samantha was no longer the primly dressed ten-year-old of a few weeks ago. She was in a pair of trendy cut-off denims, some flat espadrilles and a tee shirt that advertised a teenage musical.

‘Have a bite.’ Tess offered the hot dog to her and stood up. ‘I’m never going to finish this.’ She was driven to search out Matt, but resisted the impulse.

‘I thought you were giving up junk food.’ Samantha took the hot dog and smiled up at her. ‘Because you were piling on the pounds.’

‘Next Monday. I have it pencilled in my diary.’

‘Anyway, they’re waiting for us, so we’d better go.’

‘They…?’

‘Vicky was tired and had to rest, even though she’s been sitting on the monorail for twenty minutes.’ Samantha made a face while Tess confusedly tried to compute a name that meant nothing to her and had never been mentioned before. Was Vicky a relative?

She hurried after Samantha, and after a few minutes came to a shuddering halt by a café—one of the many that were dotted around the zoo. It was packed. Kids were eating ice cream, infants with more common sense than the adults were howling in pushchairs because they were hot and sticky and wanted to leave. She could easily have missed the couple sitting at the back, because
they were surrounded by families trying to find somewhere to sit and children being called back to tables by anxious parents. But her eyes were automatically drawn to Matt and she grinned, because he looked just as she would have expected him to look away from the comforts to which he was accustomed. He was a man who took for granted the bliss of air-conditioning in summer and the luxury of personal shoppers who did everything for him and spared him the inconvenience of having to do battle with crowds. It was a real indication of how determined he was to involve himself with his daughter that he would ever have suggested a zoo expedition and accepted this less than luxurious experience as a necessary consequence.

For a few seconds she found it hard to tear her eyes away from him. In a pair of light tan trousers and a navy blue polo shirt, he looked dark and sexy and dangerous. He was wearing dark sunglasses, which he proceeded to remove, and the thought of his eyes on her as she tried to manoeuvre a path through the crowds sent a little shiver down her spine.

She could fully understand how he had managed to turn her notion of sexual attraction on its head. She had foolishly assumed that because he represented the sort of man she didn’t find attractive personality wise her body would just fall in line and likewise fail to respond. She hadn’t bargained on the fact that her body would have a will of its own and would go haring off in the opposite direction.

Samantha had made it to him, and it was only when they were both looking at her that Tess took in the woman sitting next to him at the small, circular metal
table. For a few seconds her steps faltered, because if this was a relative then she certainly wasn’t a relative of the comfortable variety.

Holding a cup primly between her fingers, and with dark shades concealing all expression, was a strikingly attractive woman with an expertly tailored bob that was sharply cut to chin level. A pale lemon silk cardigan was casually draped over her shoulders.

Matt half stood as she reached the table but his companion remained seated, although she pushed the shades onto her head revealing cool brown eyes.

‘Tess…I’d like you to meet Vicky.’

The expected return of his common sense was failing to materialise. It had been a trying morning. Samantha had been disappointed that their cosy party of three had expanded to include Vicky, and although Matt told himself that it was healthy for her to deal with the fact that Tess was not a member of the family he had still felt as though some of the progress he had made with his daughter had been somehow undermined by the inclusion of Vicky in their day out.

And then had come his disappointing reaction to seeing Vicky. His interest had not been re-ignited, and indeed he had been irritated by her.

She had had precious little contact with Samantha before her three week visit to Hong Kong, but had immediately seen fit to try and establish a relationship. He had been all too aware that his daughter had retreated into herself and had blamed him for this unwelcome development.

All in all, a bit of a nightmare, and now, seeing Tess
next to Vicky, he was already beginning to draw unwelcome comparisons.

‘You’re the nanny!’ Vicky offered a cool smile. ‘Matt’s told me about you in his e-mails. What a blessing that you turned up when you did! This little thing has been super-naughty with her nannies—haven’t you, sweetie? You’re very young, aren’t you?’

E-mails? Tess didn’t like the thought of being discussed behind her back, and it was dawning on her that this was Matt’s girlfriend. The fact that he even had one came as a shock, but as the reality of it began to sink in she wondered how on earth she could ever have expected otherwise. Men like Matt Stickland were never short of women throwing themselves at him. He was as rich as Croesus and sinfully good-looking. Now, in light of this, her silly infatuation with him—if it could even be called that—struck her as tellingly naïve.

This woman was far more the type he would go for, even if his body language was saying otherwise. She was clever and accomplished, and, as the day progressed, Tess was left in very little doubt that there was absolutely nothing the woman hadn’t already achieved or else was about to.

Vicky talked non-stop. She tried to make jokes with Matt, who smiled stiffly and contributed very little to the conversation. She gave long, educational lectures to Samantha about every animal they passed and was undeterred by the silent, faintly hostile response. She confided in Tess every qualification she had ever gained and her progress in her career step by step, starting with when she was a lowly junior manager and culminating in her exalted position now, as CEO of one of the largest
listed companies in America. She was smart and she was self-confident, and she had scaled heights in her career that most women might only ever dream of.

Matt wouldn’t raise his eyebrows and make some dry, amused remark about
her
taste in television programmes. He would have informed discussions with her and talk about everything from the state of the economy to world politics.

Tess waited two and a half hours before she felt it polite to tell them that she would be on her way. Samantha, like her, was drooping, and had been for a while. A small, quiet bundle, shorn of the tentative beginnings of exuberance that had marked the past week or so.

What a hellish disaster, Matt thought in raging frustration. What the
hell
was Vicky’s agenda? She had monopolised the conversation, glorified herself, done her level best to ingratiate herself with Samantha.

‘You’ve hardly been here two minutes.’ He frowned at Tess, who was fidgeting apologetically, playing with the clasp on the leather satchel slung over her shoulder. ‘What do you mean
you’re going?’

‘I have some stuff to do.’

‘Your working day hasn’t come to an end. It’s not yet five-thirty.’

He felt, with considerable irritation, Vicky’s arm link through his and the weight of her as she leant against him.

‘We could go off and do something,’ Samantha interjected in a cool, childish voice. ‘Tess could drop me home. Couldn’t you, Tess? We could even stop off and have something to eat on the way. Burgers and fries,’
she added, because somewhere along the line there had been a long lecture from Vicky on the dangers of the wrong diet. At the time she had been focusing on the last of the hot dog disappearing into Samantha’s mouth.

‘You’ll leave with us,’ Matt rasped, sliding his eyes down to where his daughter was staring at him, sullen and tight-lipped. ‘And I don’t want any arguments, Samantha. I’m your father and you’ll do as I say.’