Her Kind of Hero (24 page)

He shook his head. “No,” he assured her. “I've already told you that I won't let him. Now stop worrying. Okay?”

She managed a smile. “Thanks again, Ed.”

He shrugged. “No problem. See you Monday.”

She watched him get into his sports car and roar away before she went inside to her lonely room at the top corner of the house, facing the street. She'd made an enemy today, without meaning to. She hoped it wasn't going to adversely affect her life. There was no going back now.

 

Monday morning, Leslie was at her desk five minutes early in an attempt to make a good impression. She liked Connie and Jackie, the other two women who shared administrative duties for the vice president of marketing and research. Leslie's job was more routine. She kept up with the various shipments of cattle from one location to another, and maintained the herd records. It was exacting, but she had a head for figures and she enjoyed it.

Her immediate boss was Ed, so it was really a peachy job. They had an entire building in downtown Jacobsville, a beautiful old Victorian mansion, which Matt had painstakingly renovated to use as his corporation's headquarters. There were two
floors of offices, and a canteen for coffee breaks where the kitchen and dining room once had been.

Matt wasn't in his office much of the time. He did a lot of traveling, because aside from his business interests, he sat on boards of directors of other businesses and even on the board of trustees of at least one college. He had business meetings in all sorts of places. Once he'd even gone to South America to see about investing in a growing cattle market there, but he'd come home angry and disillusioned when he saw the slash and burn method of pasture creation that had already killed a substantial portion of rain forest. He wanted no part of that, so he turned to Australia instead and bought another huge ranching tract in the Northern Territory there.

Ed told her about these fascinating exploits, and Leslie listened with her eyes wide. It was a world she'd never known. She and her mother, at the best of times, had been poor before the tragedy that separated them. Now, even with Leslie's job and the good salary she made, it still meant budgeting to the bone so that she could afford even a taxi to work and pay rent on the small apartment where she lived. There wasn't much left over for travel. She envied Matt being able to get on a plane—his own private jet, in fact—and go anywhere in the world he liked. It was a glimpse inside a world she'd never know.

“I guess he goes out a lot,” she murmured once when Ed had told her that his cousin was away in New York for a cattlemen's banquet.

“With women?” Ed chuckled. “He beats them off with a stick. Matt's one of the most hunted bachelors in south Texas, but he never seems to get serious about any one woman. They're just accessories to him, pretty things to take on the
town. You know,” he added with a faint smile, “I don't think he really likes women very much. He was kind to a couple of local girls who needed a shoulder to cry on, but that was as far as it went, and they weren't the sort of women to chase him. He's like this because he had a rough time as a child.”

“How?” she asked.

“His mother gave him away when he was six.”

Her intake of breath was audible. “Why?”

“She had a new boyfriend who didn't like kids,” he said bluntly. “He wouldn't take Matt, so she gave him to my dad. He was raised with me. That's why we're so close.”

“What about his father?” she asked.

“We…don't talk about his father.”

“Ed!”

He grimaced. “This can't go any further,” he said.

“Okay.”

“We don't think his mother knew who his father was,” he confided. “There were so many men in her life around that time.”

“But her husband…”

“What husband?” he asked.

She averted her eyes. “Sorry. I assumed that she was married.”

“Not Beth,” he mused. “She didn't want ties. She didn't want Matt, but her parents had a screaming fit when she mentioned an abortion. They wanted him terribly, planned for him, made room for him in their house, took Beth and him in the minute he was born.”

“But you said your father raised him.”

“Matt has had a pretty bad break all around. Our grandparents were killed in a car wreck, and then just a few months later,
their house burned down,” he added. “There was some gossip that it was intentional to collect on insurance, but nothing was ever proven. Matt was outside with Beth, in the yard, early that morning when it happened. She'd taken him out to see the roses, a pretty strange and unusual thing for her. Lucky for Matt, though, because he'd have been in the house, and would have died. The insurance settlement was enough for Beth to treat herself to some new clothes and a car. She left Matt with my dad and took off with the first man who came along.” His eyes were full of remembered outrage on Matt's behalf. “Grandfather left a few shares of stock in a ranch to him, along with a small trust that couldn't be touched until Matt was twenty-one. That's the only thing that kept Beth from getting her hands on it. When he inherited it, he seemed to have an instinct for making money. He never looked back.”

“What happened to his mother?” she asked.

“We heard that she died a few years ago. Matt never speaks of her.”

“Poor little boy,” she said aloud.

“Don't make that mistake,” he said at once. “Matt doesn't need pity.”

“I guess not. But it's a shame that he had to grow up so alone.”

“You'd know about that.”

She smiled sadly. “I guess so. My dad died years ago. Mama supported us the best way she could. She wasn't very intelligent, but she was pretty. She used what she had.” Her eyes were briefly haunted. “I haven't gotten over what she did. Isn't it horrible, that in a few seconds you can destroy your own life and several other peoples' like that? And what was it all for?
Jealousy, when there wasn't even a reason for it. He didn't care about me—he just wanted to have a good time with an innocent girl, him and his drunk friends.” She shivered at the memory. “Mama thought she loved him. But that jealous rage didn't get him back. He died.”

“I agree that she shouldn't have shot him, but it's hard to defend what he and his friends were doing to you at the time, Leslie.”

She nodded. “I know,” she said simply. “Sometimes kids get the short end of the stick, and it's up to them to do better with their future.”

All the same, she wished that she'd had a normal upbringing, like so many other kids had.

After their conversation, she felt sorry for Matt Caldwell and wished that they'd started off better. She shouldn't have overreacted. But it was curious that he'd been so offensive to her, when Ed said that he was the soul of courtesy around women. Perhaps he'd just had a bad day.

 

Later in the week, Matt was back, and Leslie began to realize how much trouble she'd landed herself in from their first encounter.

He walked into Ed's office while Ed was out at a meeting, and the ice in his eyes didn't begin to melt as he watched Leslie typing away at the computer. She hadn't seen him, and he studied her with profound, if prejudiced, curiosity. She was thin and not much above average height, with short blond hair that curled toward her face. Nice skin, but she was much too pale. He remembered her eyes most of all, wide and full of distaste as he came close. It amazed him that there was a woman on the
planet who could find his money repulsive, even if he didn't appeal to her himself. It was new and unpleasant to discover a woman who didn't want him. He'd never been repulsed by a woman in his life. It left him feeling inadequate. Worse, it brought back memories of the woman who'd rejected him, who'd given him away at the age of six because she didn't want him.

She felt his eyes on her and lifted her head. Gray eyes widened and stared as her hands remained suspended just over the black keyboard.

He was wearing a vested gray suit. It looked very expensive, and his eyes were dark and cutting. He had a cigar in his hand, but it wasn't lit. She hoped he wasn't going to try to smoke it in the confined space, because she was allergic to tobacco smoke.

“So you're Ed's,” he murmured in that deep, cutting tone.

“Ed's assistant,” she agreed. “Mr. Caldwell…”

“What did you do to land the job?” he continued with a faintly mocking smile. “And how often?”

She wasn't getting what he implied. She blinked, still staring. “I beg your pardon?”

“Why did Ed bring you in here above ten other more qualified applicants?” he persisted.

“Oh, that.” She hesitated. She couldn't tell him the real reason, so she told him enough of the truth to distract him. “I have the equivalent of an associate in arts degree in business and I worked as a paralegal for his father for four years in a law office,” she said. “I might not have the bachelor's degree that was preferred, but I have experience. Or so Ed assured me,” she added, looking worried.

“Why didn't you finish college?” he persisted.

She swallowed. “I had…some personal problems at the time.”

“You still have some personal problems, Miss Murry,” he replied lazily, but his eyes were cold and alert in a lean, hard face. “You can put me at the top of the list. I had other plans for the position you're holding. So you'd better be as good as Ed says you are.”

“I'll give value for money, Mr. Caldwell,” she assured him. “I work for my living. I don't expect free rides.”

“Don't you?”

“No, I don't.”

He lifted the cigar to his mouth, looked at the wet tip, sighed and slipped it back down to dangle, unlit in his fingers.

“Do you smoke?” she asked, having noted the action.

“I try to,” he murmured.

Just as he spoke, a handsome woman in her forties with blond hair in a neat bun and wearing a navy-and-white suit, walked down the hall toward him.

He glared at her as she paused in the open door of Ed's office. “I need you to sign these, Mr. Caldwell. And Mr. Bailey is waiting in your office to speak to you about that committee you want him on.”

“Thanks, Edna.”

Edna Jones smiled. “Good day, Miss Murry. Keeping busy, are you?”

“Yes, ma'am, thank you,” Leslie replied with a genuine smile.

“Don't let him light that thing,” Edna continued, gesturing toward the cigar dangling in Matt's fingers. “If you need one of these—” she held up a small water pistol “—I'll see that you get one.” She smiled at a fuming Matt. “You'll be glad to know that
I've already passed them out to the girls in the other executive offices, Mr. Caldwell. You can count on all of us to help you quit smoking.”

Matt glared at her. She chuckled like a woman twenty years younger, waved to Leslie, and stalked off back to the office. Matt actually started to make a comical lunge after her, but caught himself in time. It wouldn't do to show weakness to the enemy.

He gave Leslie a cool glance, ignoring the faint amusement in her gray eyes. With a curt nod, he followed Edna down the hall, the damp, expensive cigar still dangling from his lean fingers.

F
rom her first day on the job, Leslie was aware of Matt's dislike and disapproval of her. He piled the work on Ed, so that it would inevitably drift down to Leslie. A lot of it was really unnecessary, like having her type up old herd records from ten years ago, which had never been converted to computer files. He said it was so that he could check progress on the progeny of his earlier herd sires, but even Ed muttered when Leslie showed him what she was expected to do.

“We have secretaries to do this sort of thing,” Ed grumbled as he stared at the yellowed pages on her desk. “I need you for other projects.”

“Tell him,” Leslie suggested.

He shook his head. “Not in the mood he's been in lately,” he said with a rueful smile. “He isn't himself.”

“Did you know that his secretary is armed?” she asked suddenly. “She carries a water pistol around with her.”

Ed chuckled. “Matt asked her to help him stop smoking cigars. Not that he usually did it inside the building,” he was
quick to add. “But Mrs. Jones feels that if you can't light a cigar, you can't smoke it. She bought a water pistol for herself and armed the other secretaries, too. If Matt even lifts a cigar to his mouth in the executive offices, they shoot him.”

“Dangerous ladies,” she commented.

“You bet. I've seen…”

“Nothing to do?” purred a soft, deep voice from behind Ed. The piercing dark eyes didn't match the bantering tone.

“Sorry, Matt,” Ed said immediately. “I was just passing the time of day with Leslie. Can I do anything for you?”

“I need an update on that lot of cattle we placed with Ballenger,” he said. He stared at Leslie with narrowed eyes. “Your job, I believe?”

She swallowed and nodded, jerking her fingers on the keyboard so that she opened the wrong file and had to push the right buttons to close it again. Normally she wasn't a nervous person, but he made her ill at ease, standing over her without speaking. Ed seemed to be a little twitchy, himself, because he moved back to his own office the minute the phone rang, placing himself out of the line of fire with an apologetic look that Leslie didn't see.

“I thought you were experienced with computers,” Matt drawled mockingly as he paused beside her to look over her shoulder.

The feel of his powerful body so close behind her made every muscle tense. Her fingers froze on the keyboard, and she was barely breathing.

With a murmured curse, Matt stepped back to the side of the desk, fighting the most intense emotions he'd ever felt. He stuck his hands deep into the pockets of his slacks and glared at her.

She relaxed, but only enough to be able to pull up the file he wanted and print it for him.

He took it out of the printer tray when it was finished and gave it a slow perusal. He muttered something, and tossed the first page down on Leslie's desk.

“Half these words are misspelled,” he said curtly.

She looked at it on the computer screen and nodded. “Yes, they are, Mr. Caldwell. I'm sorry, but I didn't type it.”

Of course she hadn't typed it, it was ten years old, but something inside him wanted to hold her accountable for it.

He moved away from the desk as he read the rest of the pages. “You can do this file—and the others—over,” he murmured as he skimmed. “The whole damned thing's illiterate.”

She knew that there were hundreds of records in this particular batch of files, and that it would take days, not minutes or hours, to complete the work. But he owned the place, so he could set the rules. She pursed her lips and glanced at him speculatively. Now that he was physically out of range, she felt safe again. “Your wish is my command, boss,” she murmured dryly, surprising a quick glance from him. “Shall I just put aside all of Ed's typing and devote the next few months to this?”

Her change of attitude from nervous kid to sassy woman caught him off guard. “I didn't put a time limit on it,” Matt said curtly. “I only said, do it!”

“Oh, yes, sir,” she agreed at once, and smiled vacantly.

He drew in a short breath and glared down at her. “You're remarkably eager to please, Miss Murry. Or is it just because I'm the boss?”

“I always try to do what I'm asked to do, Mr. Caldwell,” she assured him. “Well, almost always,” she amended. “Within reason.”

He moved back toward the desk. As he leaned over to put down the papers she'd printed for him, he saw her visibly tense. She was the most confounding woman he'd ever known, a total mystery.

“What would you define as ‘within reason'?” he drawled, holding her eyes.

She looked hunted. Amazing, that she'd been jovial and uninhibited just seconds before. Her stiff expression made him feel oddly guilty. He turned away. “Ed! Have you got my Angus file?” he called to his cousin through the open door to Ed's private office.

Ed was off the phone and he had a file folder in his hands. “Yes, sorry. I wanted to check the latest growth figures and projected weight gain ratios. I meant to put it back on your desk and I got busy.”

Matt studied the figures quietly and then nodded. “That's acceptable. The Ballenger brothers do a good job.”

“They're expanding, did you know?” Ed chuckled. “Nice to see them prospering.”

“Yes, it is. They've worked hard enough in their lives to warrant a little prosperity.”

While he spoke, Leslie was watching him covertly. She thought about the six-year-old boy whose mother had given him away, and it wrung her heart. Her own childhood had been no picnic, but Matt's upbringing had been so much worse.

He felt those soft gray eyes on his face, and his own gaze jerked down to meet them. She flushed and looked away.

He wondered what she'd been thinking to produce such a reaction. She couldn't have possibly made it plainer that she felt
no physical attraction to him, so why the wide-eyed stare? It puzzled him. So many things about her puzzled him. She was neat and attractively dressed, but those clothes would have suited a dowager far better than a young woman. While he didn't encourage short skirts and low-cut blouses, Leslie was covered from head to toe; long dress, long sleeves, high neck buttoned right up to her throat.

“Need anything else?” Ed asked abruptly, hoping to ward off more trouble.

Matt's powerful shoulders shrugged. “Not for the moment.” He glanced once more at Leslie. “Don't forget those files I want updated.”

After he walked out, Ed stared after him for a minute, frowning. “What files?”

She explained it to him.

“But those are outdated,” Ed murmured thoughtfully. “And he never looks at them. I don't understand why he has to have them corrected at all.”

She leaned forward. “Because it will irritate me and make me work harder!” she said in a stage whisper. “God forbid that I should have time to twiddle my thumbs.”

His eyebrows arched. “He isn't vindictive.”

“That's what you think.” She picked up the file Matt had left and grimaced as she put it back in the filing cabinet. “I'll start on those when I've finished answering your mail. Do you suppose he wants me to stay over after work to do them? He'd have to pay me overtime.” She grinned impishly, a reminder of the woman she'd once been. “Wouldn't that make his day?”

“Let me ask him,” Ed volunteered. “Just do your usual job for now.”

“Okay. Thanks, Ed.”

He shrugged. “What are friends for?” he murmured with a smile.

 

The office was a great place to work. Leslie had a ball watching the other women in the executive offices lie in wait for Matt. His secretary caught him trying to light a cigar out on the balcony, and she let him have it from behind a potted tree with the water pistol. He laid the cigar down on Bessie David's desk and she “accidentally” dropped it into his half-full coffee cup that he'd set down next to it. He held it up, dripping, with an accusing look at Bessie.

“You told me to do it, sir,” Bessie reminded him.

He dropped the sodden cigar back in the coffee and left it behind. Leslie, having seen the whole thing, ducked into the rest room to laugh. It amazed her that Matt was so easygoing and friendly to his other employees. To Leslie, he was all bristle and venom. She wondered what he'd do if she let loose with a water pistol. She chuckled, imagining herself tearing up Main Street in Jacobsville a head of a cursing Matt Caldwell. It was such a pity that she'd changed so much. Before tragedy had touched her young life, she would have been very attracted to the tall, lean cattleman.

A few days later, he came into Ed's office dangling a cigar from his fingers. Leslie, despite her amusement at the antics of the other secretaries, didn't say a word at the sight of the unlit cigar.

“I want to see the proposal the Cattlemen's Association drafted about brucellosis testing.”

She stared at him. “Sir?”

He stared back. She was getting easier on his eyes, and he
didn't like his reactions to her. She was repulsed by him. He couldn't get past that because it destroyed his pride. “Ed told me he had a copy of it,” he elaborated. “It came in the mail yesterday.”

“Okay.” She knew where the mail was kept. Ed tried to ignore it, leaving it in the In box until Leslie dumped it on his desk in front of him and refused to leave until he dealt with it. This usually happened at the end of the week, when it had piled up and overflowed into the out-box.

She rummaged through the box and produced a thick letter from the Cattlemen's Association, unopened. She carried it back through and handed it to Matt.

He'd been watching her walk with curious intensity. She was limping. He couldn't see her legs, because she was wearing loose knit slacks with a tunic that flowed to her thighs as she walked. Very obviously, she wasn't going to do anything to call attention to her figure.

“You're limping,” he said. “Did you see a doctor after that fall you took at my ranch?”

“No need to,” she said at once. “It was only a bruise. I'm sore, that's all.”

He picked up the receiver of the phone on her desk and pressed the intercom button. “Edna,” he said abruptly, “set Miss Murry up with Lou Coltrain as soon as possible. She took a spill from a horse at my place a few days ago and she's still limping. I want her x-rayed.”

“No!” Leslie protested.

“Let her know when you've made the appointment. Thanks,” he told his secretary and hung up. His dark eyes met Leslie's pale ones squarely. “You're going,” he said flatly.

She hated doctors. Oh, how she hated them! The doctor at the emergency room in Houston, an older man retired from regular practice, had made her feel cheap and dirty as he examined her and made cold remarks about tramps who got men killed. She'd never gotten over the double trauma of her experience and that harsh lecture, despite the therapists' attempts to soften the memory.

She clenched her teeth and glared at Matt. “I said I'm not hurt!”

“You work here. I'm the boss. You get examined. Period.”

She wanted to quit. She wished she could. She had no place else to go. Houston was out of the question. She was too afraid that she'd be up to her ears in reporters, despite her physical camouflage, the minute she set foot in the city.

She drew a sharp, angry breath.

Her attitude puzzled him. “Don't you want to make sure the injury won't make that limp permanent?” he asked suddenly.

She lifted her chin proudly. “Mr. Caldwell, I had an…accident…when I was seventeen and that leg suffered some bone damage.” She refused to think about how it had happened. “I'll always have a slight limp, and it's not from the horse throwing me.”

He didn't seem to breathe for several seconds. “All the more reason for an examination,” he replied. “You like to live dangerously, I gather. You've got no business on a horse.”

“Ed said the horse was gentle. It was my fault I got thrown. I jerked the reins.”

His eyes narrowed. “Yes, I remember. You were trying to get away from me. Apparently you think I have something contagious.”

She could see the pride in his eyes that made him resent her. “It wasn't that,” she said. She averted her gaze to the wall. “It's just that I don't like to be touched.”

“Ed touches you.”

She didn't know how to tell him without telling him everything. She couldn't bear having him know about her sordid past. She raised turbulent gray eyes to his dark ones. “I don't like to be touched by strangers,” she amended quickly. “Ed and I have known each other for years,” she said finally. “It's…different with him.”

His eyes narrowed. He searched over her thin face. “It must be,” he said flatly.

His mocking smile touched a nerve. “You're like a steam-roller, aren't you?” she asked abruptly. “You assume that because you're wealthy and powerful, there isn't a woman alive who can resist you!”