Her Impossible Boss (7 page)

In the sweltering heat, tempers were frayed. Tess miserably wondered whether Matt would rather have stayed at home with his girlfriend. Did his foul mood stem from the fact that he could think of better things to be doing with his time? Didn’t he know that his relationship with Samantha was still so fragile that coming down heavy on her now was going to jeopardise everything they had begun building together?

She felt as though she had failed them both. She told herself stoutly that their relationship wasn’t her concern, that she was just a ship in the night, passing through their lives, but right here, with people bustling around them and Samantha looking to be on the verge of tears, Tess suddenly felt miserable and depressed.

‘I’ll be at work bright and early on Monday morning,’ Tess said brightly. ‘Or we could even do something tomorrow, if you like…?’ This was to Samantha, but Vicky was quick to step in, smiling and giving Matt’s arm a gentle squeeze.

‘We’ll be fine.’ Her voice was hard as nails. ‘I just got back from the Far East. I’d quite like to have my little unit to myself over the weekend. Besides, don’t you have anything better to do than spend your Saturday with a ten-year-old child?’

Those ringing words were a timely reminder to Tess that she needed to get her act together. Hadn’t Matt mentioned something along those lines to her himself? Had he and his girlfriend been exchanging jokey e-mails about her? The sad little nanny with no life to speak of in one of the most exciting cities in the world?

The journey back to her sister’s apartment was long and hot and tedious. The upside was that there would be no one around to question her tearful mood. The downside was that she did, actually, feel as though she needed a sympathetic shoulder to cry on.

Nothing could distract her from the sobering realisation that she had made a complete fool of herself by lusting after a man who wasn’t interested in her. It was a sign of her own vanity—which was something she had never even known she
possessed
—that she hadn’t once stopped to ask herself whether he was involved with a woman. There had seemed to be none on the scene, and he had mentioned no names, and so she had made her own incorrect conclusions.

It was a little after eight when the buzzer sounded. Claire had an intercom system in her flat. It was an excellent way of avoiding unwanted visitors. You could see them on the little television-style screen and then just duck low until they got the message and disappeared.

Her heart flipped when she made out Matt’s face. He looked impatient and at the end of his tether, and she was determined to ignore him, but instead found herself picking up the phone to ask him what he wanted.

‘You. I need to talk to you.’

‘What about? I thought you were going to be spending
the weekend playing house with your girlfriend.’ She clapped her hand to her mouth. ‘I’m sorry I said that. I’m tired. Can it wait until Monday?’ ‘No. It can’t. Buzz me up.’

‘What’s so important?’ Tess persisted. ‘I’m about ready to go to bed.’

‘It’s not even nine. It’s a Friday evening. You’re not ready to go to bed. Buzz me up.’

‘What do you want!’ was the first thing she asked when he was standing in the doorway, filling it out and sending her nervous system into frantic disarray. He was still in the clothes he had worn to the zoo. She, however, had changed, and was now wearing a pair of black pyjama bottoms and a small vest. No bra. She folded her arms and backed away, following him with her eyes as he strode into the apartment and headed directly to the kitchen.

‘I think,’ he said, opening the fridge and extracting a bottle of beer, which he proceeded to flick open after he had hunted down a bottle opener in one of the drawers, ‘I need a drink.’

‘Look, you can’t just barge in here—’

‘Your sister’s away, isn’t she? Visiting the boyfriend’s parents, if I remember correctly?’

‘Who is with Samantha? Is…is your girlfriend with her?’

Matt drained a quarter of the bottle in one long, thirsty gulp while looking at her as she hovered to the side, ill at ease and wary. Tension was climbing its way up her spine. What did he want? When she thought about the excitement that had infused her at the start of the day, when she had dressed with thoughts of him in
her head, she felt humiliation washing over her all over again.

‘Today didn’t go as planned.’ Matt finished the beer, wondered whether to have another. But he had already drunk too much for his own good—had had to get his driver to ferry him across to Tess’s apartment. Hell, what else was alcohol for, if not to smooth away the rough edges of uncomfortable situations? He had made an appalling mistake in asking Vicky to accompany them. It had been a massive error of judgement. And for a man who could count his errors of judgement on the fingers of one hand, it tasted like poison. He helped himself to another beer and angled her a challenging look as she mutely stared at him, her mouth half open in surprise.

‘No,’ Tess agreed stiffly. Now that she was looking at the detail, she could see that his hair was rumpled and he looked a bit
askew
—a bit like a guy who wasn’t completely in control of everything around him. Vulnerable, it struck her. ‘If you’d wanted to spend time with your girlfriend, then a group outing might not have been the best idea. Or did you think that I would be a good buffer between your girlfriend and your daughter?’

Matt tilted his head back to swallow some beer and continued to stare at her.

Held reluctant captive by those dark, brooding eyes, Tess felt her skin begin to tingle—and she hated the feeling. It reminded her of how weak she had been to allow this man to climb under her skin. She hated the intensity of his silence. It felt as if he was sifting through her thoughts, turning her inside out and exposing all her doubts and weaknesses. He already seemed too capable
of forcing her to face up to failings she hadn’t known existed.

‘Well?’ She angled away from him and sank into one of the kitchen chairs. ‘I got the impression that Vicky hadn’t had a lot of contact with Samantha.’

‘Almost none,’ Matt agreed.

‘So what was the grand plan, Matt? To get the nanny to pave the way for a happy family unit? Take some of the heat off your girlfriend?’

‘Vicky was never a contender for a happy family unit.’ He had been leaning against the wall. Now he pushed himself away, dumping the empty beer bottle on the counter
en route
to a chair, which he sat on, his big body indolent and relaxed under the influence of drink. Not too much, but certainly enough to paper over the sharp edges of his mood.

‘Well, that’s none of my business,’ Tess muttered. Of their own volition, her eyes flicked towards him, taking in all the details of his body, and she realised that there was a familiarity to what she was seeing that was scary.

‘Turns out—’ he laughed shortly, stretched out his legs and stuck his hand in his trouser pocket ‘—that I was on my own when it came to that misconception.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. Have you been drinking?’

‘Now, what would give you that idea?’ His eyes locked with hers and there was a lazy amusement there that made her go hot and cold. Even when she hurriedly looked away, she could feel him
looking
at her in a way that he hadn’t looked at her before—looking at her in a slow, leisurely way that made her want to fidget. ‘I let
that relationship get out of hand,’ Matt mused. ‘I took my eye off the ball. While I was under the impression that we were having a casual fling, it turns out that Vicky was making all sorts of plans.’

‘What sort of plans?’ Tess was fascinated to hear more. Matt had never breathed a word about his personal life, but she wasn’t looking at the Matt she knew. She was tiptoeing on the very edge of seeing a side to him that hadn’t been in evidence before, and she was eaten up with curiosity.

‘Are you having fun?’ He laughed softly under his breath and Tess flushed.

‘Of course not!
You
came here, don’t forget! And if you want to talk, then that’s fine by me.’

‘I actually didn’t come here to talk about Vicky,’ he murmured. He shifted in the chair, leaned back into it. ‘You distract me.’ He enjoyed the way she blushed madly when he said that, and leaned forward as though not quite believing her ears. ‘You make me lose track of what I want to say.’

‘I’m
not making you lose track of anything,’ Tess said briskly, but there was slow burn inside her that felt good.

‘Oh, right. It’s the demon drink. I’ll stick to the agenda, in that case. My daughter has reverted to her old ways.’ He leaned forward abruptly, elbows on thighs, and pressed his thumbs against his eyes.

His body language spoke a thousand words and Tess automatically moved towards him, hovered for a while, not quite knowing what to do, and eventually pulled her chair so that she was sitting right alongside him. Should
she reach out and try to comfort him? Confused and addled, she opted for sitting on her hands. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean…’ Matt looked directly at her and raked his hand through his hair. ‘We got back to the apartment and she promptly proceeded to shut herself in the bedroom.’

‘But didn’t you go in to try and talk to her?’

‘Of course I went in! She lay there with her back to me and her headphones stuck in her ears—and,
hell,
I can’t
force
her to have a conversation with me, can I?’

‘So what did you do?’

‘I had a couple of whiskies in rapid succession. It seemed like a good idea at the time.’ ‘And Vicky…?’

‘Dispatched. The point is, I’m back to square one.’ His smile was tight and bitter. ‘It seems that the ground I believed I’d covered was just a bit of wishful thinking.’

‘That’s not true!’

‘No? Then perhaps you’d like to explain my daughter’s lack of response?’

‘She’s ten years old! She’s not capable of thinking things through in an adult way. She’s had a disappointing day. I suppose she thought that she would have you to herself.’

‘You mean have
both of
us…’

‘No,’ Tess said firmly.
‘You.
She didn’t bank on your girlfriend showing up, and she really didn’t bank on her—I don’t know—being so proprietorial…’

‘Nor did I,’ Matt muttered under his breath. Vicky had made
plans
! A stint in the Far East together, his
daughter conveniently dispatched to a boarding school somewhere…She had even checked out possible acquisitions he could make once they were living in Hong Kong! He had been furious and appalled, and then had turned his wrath against himself—because, as he had told Tess, he had taken his eye off the ball and had reaped his just rewards. But his relationship with his daughter was the biggest casualty of his slip-up, and damn if he knew how he was going to rescue the situation.

‘Samantha’s not…’

‘Not
what?’
he gritted into the developing silence. ‘No need to tread on eggshells, Tess. I’ve already blown it. I think it’s fair to say I can withstand whatever you have to say.’

‘You haven’t blown it! It’s just that Samantha…Well, I don’t think she ever really understood why she saw so little of you over the years.’

‘She’s told you this?’

‘In bits and pieces. I mean, please don’t think that we sat down one day and had a heart-to-heart, because we didn’t. I don’t think children of that age ever do. I don’t think they know
how to.
But I’ve gleaned it over time.’

‘You’ve
gleaned
it? And how did you respond?’

‘What could I say? You’ve never spoken to me about your marriage…and, anyway, it wouldn’t be my place to have that conversation with your daughter. That’s something you would have to do. I thought, I guess, that you would. In time.’

‘God. What an unholy mess.’

He looked wiped out, and she reached out and tentatively
put her hand on his shoulder. When he responded by taking hold of it, she assumed it would be to politely dismiss her gesture of sympathy, but instead he kept hold of it, playing idly with her fingers with frowning concentration.

‘Catrina and I were the perfect couple on paper.’ Matt glanced at her, but Tess wasn’t sure that he was seeing her. ‘Our families knew each other. We moved in the same circles and came from the same background. I suppose you could say that there was an understanding—and the understanding was hastened along when Catrina fell pregnant. I wasn’t gutted. Yes, I was young, but I was content to marry, and marry we did. With all the pomp and ceremony that vast wealth can buy. The cracks opened up almost immediately. Catrina was a socialite. I was an ingrained workaholic. She saw no reason why I should put time and effort into making money. As far as she was concerned my job should have been to lead the life of a playboy. Go skiing in winter for a couple of months. Take long summer holidays at her parents’ house in the Bahamas. Take up golf. Lead a life that would complement hers.’

Tess tried and failed to picture Matt taking up golf and having long holidays. He was still playing with her hand, and it was doing all sorts of strange things to her body. Whilst she was desperate to concentrate one hundred percent on what he was saying, part of her was wrapped up with the tingling in her breasts, the dampness spreading between her thighs, the warm feeling in her belly that made her want to sigh and close her eyes.

‘The more she nagged, the faster I withdrew into the
safety of work. We were a divorce waiting to happen, but I’m not sure it would have if I hadn’t found out that my best man at the wedding had stepped in to carry out the duties she felt I was failing to do.’

Tess couldn’t imagine what that would have done to a man as proud as Matt.

‘My divorce was what dictated the relationship I developed with my daughter, and so here we are.’ He gave her a crooked smile. ‘Any thoughts?’

‘I
DON’T
understand. Surely the court would have awarded you joint custody, Matt?’

‘A vengeful wife has a lot of tools at her disposal when it comes to making free and easy with court judgements,’ Matt told her drily. ‘Weekends were cancelled on a whim. I lost count of the number of times I travelled to Connecticut only to find that Catrina had taken Samantha off on a trip, destination unknown, leaving a bewildered maid to try and explain in broken English that there would be no visit that weekend. Toys were routinely left at an empty house. I never knew whether Samantha got them or not.’

Matt’s eyes glittered with open pain and bitter regret. This was a man who opened up to no one, and Tess wasn’t sure whether this flood of confidence and self-recrimination was something he would live to rue, but she stroked his face with a trembling hand while her mind frantically spun off at another devastating angle.

While she had been busily telling herself that what she felt for Matt was an understandable case of lust, she had failed to recognise that it ran much deeper than that. She had long stopped being a concerned spectator to someone else’s problems. She hadn’t forsaken her
social life because she lusted after Matt Strickland and was driven to spend as much time in his company as she could, like a lovelorn teenager. She had forsaken her life because she had unwittingly become sucked into his. It had been easy, at first, to dismiss him as the sort of man who took advantage of everything and everyone around him, but slowly but surely she had begun glimpsing other sides of his complex, absorbing personality.

She had watched him subdue his natural inclination to dominate so that he could make strides in getting to know his daughter. She had been ensnared by a wit and intelligence that was far greater than she had originally imagined. She had been seduced by those snatches of humanity she saw in his less guarded moments.

She had fallen in love with the whole man, and the time she had spent ignoring that reality hadn’t served to protect her—it had just rendered her horribly defenceless.

Looking back now, Tess could see that love had just been waiting round the corner, ready to ambush her and turn her world on its head. Matt Strickland had overwhelmed her. She had been waiting for something gentle and careful, and had been unprepared for the chaos and power of real love, gutsy and demanding, when it finally came. She had expected that the guy who won her heart would be kind and sensitive. She had been utterly unprotected against a man who’d broken through to her heart like a battering ram and grabbed it when she hadn’t even been looking—when she hadn’t even taken the time to steel herself.

Her heart was racing. Inexperience left her unsure as to what to do. She had never considered herself
extraordinary because she hadn’t fallen into bed with any man. It just had never happened, and she had accepted that with a shrug of her shoulders.

‘My relationship with Samantha became distant,’ he said heavily. ‘Stilted. Nothing I did, when I
did
manage to see her, could reverse the effects of the separation, and God only knows what Catrina had been telling her when I wasn’t around. And just when I thought that some progress was being made.
this.!’

‘You came here,’ Tess murmured.

‘Where else? You know the situation better than anyone.’

He gazed at her with those stunning eyes and her breathing became laboured. Without warning, the atmosphere shifted. She could sense him grow still. It was impossible to think straight and nor could she tear her eyes away from his dark, outrageously sexy face. She wanted him so badly that it was a physical pain inside her, and her craving was made all the more irresistible because of the intensity of the emotion underlying it. She leaned forward and kissed him very chastely on his cheek, and the shock of contact almost had her reeling back.

‘It’ll be all right,’ she whispered huskily. ‘Samantha may have been disappointed at the way today turned out, but you’ve already started building the blocks of a relationship with her and she’ll have that to fall back on.’

She was losing herself in the intensity of his gaze, and with a soft moan she did the unthinkable. She placed the palm of her hand on his chest and leaned into him once again. This time her kiss—not on his cheek, but
daringly, recklessly, on his lips—was sweetly lingering, and an exquisite rush of pleasure crowded her mind, driving coherent thought away, taking away the ability to analyse what she was doing. She felt that if she stopped breathing just for a second she would be able to hear the frantic beating of her heart.

It didn’t occur to her that she might be making a complete fool of herself. She had acted on impulse and she didn’t regret it.

When he curved his hand at the nape of her neck and pulled her towards him she melted into the embrace as though this was the moment she had been born to savour.

This wasn’t why he had come. Was it? He knew that she had been the first person he thought of in his frustration. He had called his housekeeper and had been waiting by the door for her to arrive so that he could come here and do…what?

What had he been expecting? At the back of his mind, had he already succumbed to the desire to take her to bed? From every angle, seeing Vicky had been a disaster. Not just from the point of view of his daughter. He had looked at her standing next to Tess and suddenly he hadn’t been able to remember what he had ever seen in the woman.

Her statuesque beauty now seemed angular and unappealing. Where Tess was soft, her face open and transparent, Vicky was a hard-bitten career woman. He had been bored by her monotonous monologues about the Hong Kong market, impatient with her informed conversation.

Had he come here because he had been driven by something more than just an urge to offload?

The fact that he had even felt the need to offload was, in itself, cause for wonder.

The honeyed moistness of Tess’s mouth was driving him crazy, but he still managed a final last-ditch attempt to control the situation.

‘What’s happening here?’ He pushed her away and his resolution was immediately floored when he felt her tremble against him. ‘We…shouldn’t be doing this.’ His voice was rough and uneven.

‘Why not?’

‘Hell, I can think of a hundred reasons!’

‘You’re not attracted to me.?’

‘That’s not one of them.’ His mouth hit hers with a hunger that detonated an explosive pleasure inside her that she had never known existed. Her whole body was suddenly on fire and she could hardly sit still. She needed to wriggle just to try and assuage the burning restlessness blazing a trail through her.

‘I’m not about to make love to you in a kitchen!’ Matt growled, and Tess whimpered, her eyes fluttering closed, as he lifted her off the chair and began heading towards a bedroom—mistakenly kicking open the door to Claire’s room first and then, two seconds later, getting it right.

He deposited her on the bed and she lay there in a state of heightened excitement, watching as he closed the curtains and then fumbled with his belt, finally whipping it off in one swift pull.

Released from the mindless intoxication of his body
being in contact with hers, she felt the reality of her virginity penetrate through to her fuddled brain.

This was a situation she had never envisaged, and there was no ready process she could think of for dealing with it. She just knew that she was beyond the point of walking away. And it felt
right,
she told herself fiercely. She was in love with him! She wasn’t going to listen to any little voices in her head trying to push their way to the surface and preach to her about consequences. She wasn’t—because there were always consequences to everything. If she didn’t do this—if she turned her back on this one moment in time—then she would forever live with the consequence of that. Would forever wonder what it would have been like to surrender to this big, powerful man who had stolen her heart.

Optimistic by nature, she pleasurably played with the thought that this could lead anywhere. Who was to say?

He had stripped off his shirt. Her breath caught in her throat and she drank in the muscular beauty of his body. When he moved, she could see the rippling of sinew and the raw definition of his torso. He reached for his zip and she nearly fainted in anticipation. Her clothes were an irritating encumbrance, but she lacked the courage to divest herself of them.

He walked slowly towards her and she squirmed. Her eyes flickered away as he tugged down the zip and she heard the soft drop of his trousers, the sound of him stepping out of them, and then she was looking at him, shyly at first, and then mesmerised by the massive surge of his powerful erection.

With small, squirming movements, she edged up
into a sitting position and hooked her fingers under her vest.

‘I’ve thought about this,’ Matt muttered in a driven undertone, and her eyes widened in surprise. ‘You have?’

‘Why so shocked? You’re sexy as hell. You must know the effect you have on a man…No, don’t lift a finger. I want to take off your clothes piece by gradual piece.’ He gave her a slow, curling smile that made her bones melt, and then he straddled her.

She fascinated him, and suddenly he could barely wait a second longer. Like a horny teenager, he covered her body with his own and kissed her with bruising ruthlessness, his hand moving along her thigh and easily slipping underneath the silky trousers. She was as soft and as smooth as satin. Just the feel of her was enough to wreak havoc with his control, and he had to slam the door shut on his raging libido or else risk making a fool of himself.

She wasn’t wearing a bra. He had spotted that the second he had walked through the door. He caressed her full breasts through the thin, stretchy fabric of her vest, felt the way they moulded into his big hands and the way her nipples were tight and stiff under his fingers. He wanted to do this slowly, to take his time, and was disconcerted to realise that he had been fantasising about this for weeks. It had never risen to the surface of his consciousness but it must have been nagging at the back of his mind, and touching her now had released the nebulous, intangible notion. His hand shook as he heaved himself up so that he could pull off the vest with one hand.

‘God, you’re so damned beautiful,’ he rasped, bending to nuzzle one breast, teasing her nipple with the tip of his tongue while she panted and moaned.

Having thought that he had barely noticed her as belonging to the female sex, Tess allowed herself to fully occupy Cloud Nine. He wanted her. He thought that she was beautiful. For the moment it was enough, and as she squirmed underneath him, desperate to get rid of her clothes, she felt herself letting go.

She pushed her fingers into his hair and urged his head down so that he could fiercely suckle her pouting nipple. He grappled with her trousers, levering himself up so that she could wriggle herself free of them.

His effect on her was electrifying. She felt as though this was what her body had been designed for—to be touched by this man. She arched upwards and cried out helplessly as he continued to move his mouth over her breasts. She ran her hands across his shoulders and felt the bunched muscles. She couldn’t seem to remain still. When she angled her body up her nakedness touched his, and his stiff erection against her was explosive.

Tess had had boyfriends in the past, but none of them had ever affected her like this. Indeed, she’d had no desire to submit her body to theirs the way she wanted to submit her body to this man. She had enjoyed kissing, and there had been a bit of amateurish fondling, but this was in a league of its own, and her body sang under his expert touch.

He parted her legs with one hand, and as he continued to lavish attention on her breasts he began to move his hardness between her thighs, driving her into a frenzy.

‘Talk to me,’ he commanded hungrily, and Tess looked at him, confused. ‘About what?’

‘About how much you want me. I want you to tell me…’ He laughed softly, and then demonstrated exactly what he meant by talking to her, telling her how much he wanted her and what he wanted to do to her. All the time his hard, pulsing erection pushed between her parted legs. Tess was going out of her mind.

‘I want you…now…’ she groaned, when she thought that she wouldn’t be able to take any more.

‘I’m not finished enjoying you yet.’ He gradually began trailing an erotic path down the length of her body, relishing the salty taste of her perspiration on his tongue. Her uncontrolled passion matched his own and he liked it. As with everything she did, she was generous in her lovemaking. He realised that it was what he had expected. She didn’t hold back. Her personality was forthright, open, giving. Her lovemaking was the same, and it unlocked a barrage of mindless desire he hadn’t been aware he possessed.

He paused as he neared her thighs, and reared up to support himself on his hands so that he was looking down at her, appreciating her soft, feminine mound which was slick with moisture. The sweet, honeyed, musky smell of her threatened to tip him over the edge—and that was before he even touched her. Which he fully intended to do. With his hands, with his fingers, with his mouth, until she was begging for release.

He blew softly against her and Tess gasped. She was discovering a whole new side to herself, and she wouldn’t have been able to stop herself now even if she
had wanted to. She didn’t think that she had ever known what it was like to have a man turn her on—but then she had never
met
a man like Matt.

She froze as he gently parted the delicate folds of her femininity, and sank back with a soft sigh of pleasure as he darted his tongue between and tasted her. She covered her face with one arm and her mouth fell open. The sensation was so exquisite that she could hardly breathe. All the muscles in her body seemed to go limp and she gave herself over to his gentle, persistent mouth which continued savouring her.

His dark head between her legs was the most erotic thing she had ever seen in her whole life. His exploring mouth became more demanding, and she could no longer keep still. Her body was spiralling out of control.