Her Impossible Boss (10 page)

‘No? Then why the over-the-top sexy dress? Not to mention the fact that you’re not wearing a bra!’

The mere mention of that did horrible things to her body, reminding her of how easy it was to respond to him even when he wasn’t touching her. Even, it would seem, when he was being rude and arrogant and insulting.

‘This isn’t for
your
benefit!’ Her nipples were throbbing and she was mortified at her reaction. She felt that he must be able to see what he was doing to her with those laser-sharp, all-seeing black eyes of his.

‘No? Because, like I said, it won’t work. I’ve seen that ploy too many times. It’s lost its effect over the years. We’re no longer involved, and the best thing you could do for yourself is to move on.’

‘I can’t believe how arrogant you are, Matt Strickland! I…I can’t believe what I ever saw in you!’

‘I would bet that it wouldn’t take much to remind you.’

The look in his eyes had changed suddenly. Tess’s breath caught sharply in her throat. That simmering,
hot
gaze was not what she needed—not now! Did it give
him a kick to put her meagre will-power to the test? To prove how much of a hold he still had over her? She wanted to weep in frustration.

Perversely, Matt was relishing this hostile clash of words. He had been chatting and socialising like a man on a tour of duty—looking covertly at his watch, mentally bemoaning the fact that the party still had hours to run. Now he was having fun, in a grim, highly charged sort of way. And he couldn’t peel his eyes away from her delectable body. If there hadn’t been a roomful of people watching, he would have been sorely tempted to remind her of just what she had seen in him! He pictured himself yanking down that flimsy piece of nothing shielding her glorious breasts, cupping their fullness in his big hands, teasing her nipples with the abrasive pads of his fingers.

From where the memory had been lying, close to the surface, he recalled their last evening together, when he had brought her to a shuddering orgasm in the kitchen of his apartment. He had a graphic flashback to the feel of her body writhing against his fingers. He could even recall the soft fall of that yellow dress she had been wearing.

‘Has it occurred to you that I
am
moving on?’ Tess lied, tossing her head and trying hard to remember the name of the guy who had badgered her for a while and slipped her his business card.

No. Quite frankly, it hadn’t. Nor was he having a good time assimilating the concept.

‘Maybe,’ she threw at him defiantly, ‘you’re really not the reason I wore this dress—considering I didn’t know that you were going to be here anyway! In fact,
for your information, I’ve already been asked out on a date!’

That was a red rag to a bull. Having just told her that she should move on with her life, Matt underwent a rapid turnaround and was outraged that she should be out on the prowl within
seconds
of their split.

‘Who by?’ he demanded, keeping his voice well modulated, although inside he was seething with what could only be termed
jealousy.
His weakness infuriated him.

‘Tony!’ The name came back to her in the nick of time. ‘Tony Grayson.’

Sales manager. His career now looked perilously short-lived. Matt drained his glass, flicked back the sleeve of his shirt to look at his watch. ‘Well,’ he drawled with lazy indifference, ‘good luck with that one. I should be careful if I were you, though. New York isn’t a small village in Ireland. Give off too many obvious signals and you’ll have to be prepared to take the consequences. In other words, don’t go near the fire unless you’re happy to get burnt.’

He turned on his heel and walked away. Like a punctured balloon, Tess felt herself deflate. She could no longer put on a show of having fun. She just wanted to leave, to get back to the apartment. Like a patient suffering a severe relapse, she needed immediate time and space to recover, because seeing Matt again had knocked her for six.

Knowing that Claire would feel obliged to try and persuade her to stay, she didn’t bother to look for her. Instead, she took the coward’s way out and texted her
a message. By the time she checked her mobile phone Tess would be at the apartment, in her pyjamas.

Three days later, Tess emerged from the doctor’s surgery on wobbly legs. At Claire’s insistence, she had finally gone.

‘You can’t climb on a plane feeling under the weather!’ Claire had announced, in that voice of hers that permitted no argument. ‘The flight back is a nightmare—it’s so long, and if you start feeling really poorly on the plane it’s going to be awful. You obviously have some kind of persistent stomach bug and you
have
to go to my doctor and get it sorted. If you like, I can come with you.’

Now Tess was weak with relief that she had turned down her sister’s offer to accompany her. What would she have said if she had been confronted with the news that Tess was pregnant?

In a daze, she went to the nearest coffee shop and sat down, unseeing, in front of a cappuccino which, having ordered, she no longer wanted.

Her initial reaction—one of sickening disbelief—had ebbed. Now it was replaced by a recognition that all the signs had been there. She had just missed them. After their first time together, when she had been so convinced that there had been no danger of her falling pregnant because she was as regular as clockwork, she had gone to Claire’s doctor—the very same doctor who had broken the news to her twenty minutes ago—to have a contraceptive device inserted. The pill would have been easier, but Tess had an aversion to tablets.

‘You must be very fertile,’ the doctor had said, while Tess had sat here like a statue, trying to absorb what
had just been said to her. She had been thinking that it certainly explained her dodgy stomach. A quick look in her diary had confirmed that her period had been late—something she hadn’t even noticed because between being on Cloud Nine and then catapulted back down to Planet Earth she just hadn’t been thinking straight. In fact, she hadn’t been thinking at all.

Across from her, a woman leaned over and asked if she was all right and Tess returned a wan smile.

‘I’ve just had a bit of a shock,’ she said politely. ‘I’ll be fine once I drink this cup of coffee.’

Of course she would have to tell Matt. He deserved to know. But just thinking about that brought her out in a cold sweat of nervous perspiration.

Their last bruising encounter had left her in no doubt that he was over her. He had given her her walking papers and instructed her to move on—because he had. He had spoken to her in the patronising tone of someone dealing with a nuisance who showed promise of becoming a stalker. He had accused her of dressing to attract him, and she knew, deep down, that he hadn’t believed a word she had said about not knowing that he would be at the party. He wanted nothing further to do with her and what was he about to get? A lifelong connection that he hadn’t engineered. He had trusted her because she had told him that she had taken care of contraception, and in return for his trust he would find himself a father in a few months’ time.

But to keep the truth from him would be immoral.

Without giving herself the opportunity to dwell on what she knew she had to do, Tess stood up and hailed the first cab to his offices. If she thought too much about
it she would think herself into a change of mind. She was having his baby.

The traffic, as usual, was gridlocked, and Tess was a bag of nerves by the time she paid the cab driver and looked up at the offices that commanded one of New York’s prime locations in the heart of the financial sector.

She had been to his office several times before—little visits with Samantha—so she was recognised at the vast reception desk and waved across to the bank of elevators, one of which would take her to the top floor of the thirty-four-storeyed building.

His offices were the working equivalent of his apartment. Luxurious, plush, silent, industrious. His own office, perched at the end of the thickly carpeted corridor, was as big as some people’s flats, with one section partitioned for his personal assistant and another, larger one, comprising a comfortable sitting area with leather chairs and plants and little tables. She knew that there was even a bathroom adjoining his office, for those times when he came in very early or was obliged to leave very late.

It struck her forcibly that the size and the opulence of it was a glaring reminder of just one of the many differences between them.

Thinking like that made her feel even more nervous, and she tried to project a composed demeanour as she stopped to chat to his secretary.

He wouldn’t be aware that she was even there, and Tess was tempted to give him just a little bit longer to enjoy his carefree life before she blew it to smithereens. Matt, buzzed eventually by his secretary, felt a kick
of satisfaction knowing that Tess was waiting to see him. She had been on his mind even more, having seen her at that party. He didn’t know what she wanted, but when he thought that she might actually be reconsidering her options he felt like a predator in full and final control of its elusive prey. Maybe she had gone to the party to meet a man, but he had thought about that and eventually dismissed the notion. It really didn’t tally with what he had come to know about her. At any rate, he liked to think that seeing him had made her realise what she really missed. She would only be around for a few more days, but he was more than willing to reluctantly set aside his pride and take her back to his bed. In fact—and he barely acknowledged this—it was a shame that she had made the fatal mistake of trying to tie him down, because who knew what might have been the next natural step for them…? He might just have offered her the very thing she had so obviously craved.

He didn’t immediately look up when she quietly entered, although his senses went on sudden red alert. When she cleared her throat he finally raised his eyes, and then sat back in his chair without saying a word.

‘I’m sorry if I’m disturbing you…’ she began, painfully aware of his lack of welcome. He might just as well have set a timer on his desk and told her that she had one minute to state her case.

‘You’re lucky to find me here,’ Matt told her politely. ‘I have a meeting in a matter of minutes, so whatever you’ve come to say, you need to say it quickly.’

Faced with such bluntness, Tess dithered in an agony of uncertainty. She had vaguely rehearsed what she might say, but now she was looking at him every single
thought vanished from her head. She felt possessed of roughly the same amount of confidence as a rabbit staring at two headlights bearing down on it at great speed.

‘Well?’ Matt said impatiently. ‘What is it? I haven’t got all day.’

‘Even if you had, I still don’t think I’d find this easy to say,’ Tess told him shakily.

Something in the tone of her voice infused him with ominous foreboding. He went completely still and waited.

‘You’re going to be mad, but…I’m pregnant…’

M
ATT
froze. He wondered if he had misheard her, but then immediately revised that notion as he looked at her face. She was white as a sheet and leaning forward in the chair, body as rigid as a piece of wood.
Mad?
She thought that he might be mad? That seemed to be the understatement of the century.

‘You can’t be,’ he asserted bluntly, and Tess flinched.

‘You mean you don’t want me to be—but I am. I did a test this morning. In fact, I did more than one test.’

His usually sharp brain seemed to have shut down. Nothing had prepared him for this.

‘You were protected,’ he told her flatly.

With an abrupt movement that took her by surprise, he propelled himself out of his chair and walked towards the window. For once, his natural grace had deserted him.

‘If this is some kind of ruse to get money out of me, then you can forget it!’ He leant against the window and then restlessly began to prowl the office. He couldn’t keep still. Running through his head was the thought that this just couldn’t be happening.

‘Why would I be using a ruse to get money out of you?’

‘You can’t accept that we’re finished. You want to walk away with more than just a few memories. You
know
how much I’m worth!’

‘I don’t know how you can say that!’ Tess exclaimed, dismayed. ‘Since when do you know me to
ever
think about money? And I wouldn’t make something like this up!’

No, she wouldn’t. Painful sincerity was etched on her face. Whether he liked it or not, she wasn’t lying. She was carrying his baby, and that was a fact with which he would have to deal whether he liked it or not. While he tried to scramble for some other explanation, he was already accepting the truth that had been forced upon him.

But beyond that there were still a lot of questions to be answered, a lot of perfectly reasonable suspicions to be dispelled—if, indeed, they could be. Surfacing through the fog of his confused thoughts, a line of pure logic crystallised, and in the face of that every natural instinct he possessed took second place.

She had bewitched him, made him behave in all sorts of ways that had been alien to him. Yes, he had had a good time with her. She had known how to make him laugh and she had relaxed him in a way no other woman had. But in the bigger picture how much did that really count for?

He had known her for a couple of months! And lo and behold, having assured him that she was fully protected, here she was—pregnant and knowing full well that her future would now be a gold-plated one. Did that make sense? Wasn’t there something strangely suspicious about the circumstances?

Matt slammed the door shut on any shady areas in this scenario. He was conditioned to be suspicious. It was his protection. He wasn’t about to abandon it now, even if he could see the glisten of tears in her eyes. He reached for the box of tissues he kept in his drawer and handed them to her, but there was a cold cast to his features that sent a chill to her heart.

‘So. Explain.’

‘That first time…’

Matt cast his mind back with a frown. ‘If I recall, you assured me that—’

‘Yes, I know what I said!’ Tess interrupted fiercely. ‘Okay. I lied.’ Her eyes skittered helplessly from his dark, incredulous face.

She was aware of him picking up his phone, talking in low tones to his secretary, knew that he was telling her that he didn’t wish to be disturbed. While he spoke, she did her best to get her tangled thoughts in order.

‘That didn’t come out right,’ she said, as soon as he was off the line. Nervously, she plucked a tissue from the box on her lap and began shredding it with shaking fingers. ‘It wasn’t so much a lie as…I economised a bit with the truth. When you asked me whether I was taking any contraception, I was so…so turned on that I didn’t want us to stop…’

Without warning Matt’s mind did an abrupt detour and swerved off back to that night when they had made love for the first time. He had never been so turned on in his life before. Even thinking about it now…But, no, there was no way that he was going to let his body dictate his handling of this situation. He didn’t care how
turned on she had been. She had deliberately lied—taken a chance with life-altering consequences attached.

‘So you decided to let me go ahead. You
risked a pregnancy
for a moment of passion. You threw away your virginity and played fast and loose with both our lives because you
just couldn’t help yourself…’

‘I didn’t
throw away
my virginity. I gave it away. I gave it to you because I wanted to—because you were the first man to make me feel like that. I’ve always had a very regular cycle. I honestly thought that there would be no consequences.’

‘I’m flattered that you were so overwhelmed by me that you just couldn’t help yourself, but excuse me for thinking of a more prosaic reason that you hopped into bed with me.’

Tess looked at him in confusion. Everything about him was designed to threaten, and she didn’t know whether he was aware of that. She had to twist in the chair to follow his movements, and her neck was beginning to ache from having to look up as he towered over her—a cold, distant stranger who had sliced through the fragile bridge that had once connected them. Her heart was breaking in two.

‘Yes, I concede that you were turned on. But maybe it occurred to you that if you had to lose your virginity with anyone, why not lose it to someone who was a damn good financial bet? If I recall, I gave you every opportunity to take a step back, but maybe you didn’t want to lose the chance. Maybe, subconsciously, you didn’t mind playing with fate, because if you did get pregnant then it would be a very profitable venture for you…’

Anger brought a rush of colour to her cheeks. ‘A
profitable venture?
You think I
wanted
to get pregnant? You think I
want
to have a child at the age of twenty-three, when I’m just finally beginning to see a way ahead for myself? I was actually thinking about going into teaching! I was going to work with children because I got so much pleasure from working with Sam. I was going to go back to school and try and get the qualifications I should have got years ago! Do you really think that I
want
to ditch all of that?’

She stood up, trembling. She shouldn’t have come. She had messed up his wonderful life. She should have just returned to Ireland. He would never have known about the pregnancy. In fact, she should never have got involved with him in the first place. She should have taken one look at the fabulous trappings surrounding him and realised that he was not in her league and never would be.

‘I’m going to leave now,’ she mumbled, frantically trying to hold on to her composure. ‘I just thought that you needed to know…and now you do.’

She began walking towards the door. She didn’t get very far. In fact two steps. Then Matt was standing in front of her—six feet two inches of menacing male.

‘Going to leave?
Tell me that was a joke.’

‘What else is there to say?’

Matt stared at her as though she had taken leave of her senses—maybe started speaking in tongues.

‘You’ve dropped a bomb on me and you
don’t think that there’s anything more to say?
Am I dealing with someone from the same planet?’

‘There’s no need to be cruel and sarcastic. It’s. I’m dealing with the same shock as you…’

Matt raked his fingers through his hair and shook his head, as though trying to will himself into greater self control.

He was shaken to his very foundations. Had he felt the same way when Catrina had declared herself pregnant with Samantha? He had been so much younger then, and willing to drift into doing the right thing. Since those youthful days a lot of lessons had been learnt. He had erected barriers around himself and they had served him well.

Now he was staring at a problem, and whether he liked it or not it was a problem that would have to be dealt with. But all problems had solutions, and flinging accusations at the woman who was going to be the mother of his child would get neither of them anywhere.

And how clever had he been to accuse her of ulterior motives? Now she was staring at him with big, tear-filled green eyes, as if he had morphed into a monster, when in fact he had just reacted in the way every single man in his position would have reacted under similar circumstances.

That didn’t alleviate the niggle of guilt, but he firmly squashed that momentary weakness.

‘I don’t feel comfortable having this conversation here,’ he told her shortly.

‘What difference does it make where we have the conversation?’ Tess looked down at her feet, stubbornly digging her heels in. She didn’t want to go to his apartment. Nor did she want to go to Claire’s apartment. For starters, Claire knew nothing of what was going on. Right now she was on a job in Brooklyn, but what
if she and Matt went to the apartment to continue their conversation and Claire unexpectedly showed up?

Tess knew that sooner or later everything would have to come out in the wash, but right now she felt equipped to deal with only one horrendous situation at a time. Her mind just wouldn’t stretch further ahead.

In truth, she wanted to be somewhere as public and as impersonal as possible. It seemed to make things easier to handle.

‘This is my place of work,’ Matt intoned, already taking it as a foregone conclusion that she would follow his lead by heading towards the jacket which was slung over the back of one of the leather chairs. ‘I’ve instructed my secretary not to disturb me, but a lot of meetings will be cancelled. Sooner or later she will come in and expect some kind of explanation from me, and when she doesn’t get a satisfactory one she’ll be curious. Frankly, I would rather not generate public curiosity in my private life.’

‘What will you tell her?’ Tess reluctantly conceded his point. He was an intensely private man. ‘I’m not going to Claire’s apartment and I won’t go to yours.’

‘Why not?’ Matt paused and looked at her through narrowed eyes.

Heat shimmered through her. Alone with him…She didn’t want her strength to be put to the test. She knew how weak she could be when she was around him. She had to build up an immunity, and enclosed spaces would be the worst possible start to doing that. If he could be considered an illness, and falling in love with him some kind of terrible virus that had flooded her entire system, then detachment was the first step to a possible cure.

‘Are you suddenly scared of me?’ he asked softly. ‘What do you think I’m going to do?’

Tess shamefully thought that the danger would be
wanting
him to do things that he shouldn’t do and she definitely shouldn’t want. Given a lifebelt, she clutched it with both hands. Hadn’t he accused her of the most horrible things? That being the case, why shouldn’t she accuse
him
of a few?

‘I don’t know!’ she flung back in a shaky voice. ‘You’ve insulted me. You’ve as good as told me that I set everything up—that I took risks because I wanted to trap you. You’ve been a bully. Of course I don’t want to be anywhere with you, unless there are lots of people around.’

‘Are you saying that you’re afraid that I might be physically threatening?’ ‘No, of course I’m not…’

A dark flush had accentuated his high cheekbones. ‘I have never laid a finger on a woman before, whatever the provocation. The thought of it alone is anathema to me!’

‘I’m tired,’ Tess muttered wearily. ‘I don’t want to be badgered. Maybe you should just think about things overnight and then we can speak tomorrow. Or the day after, even.’

Matt didn’t bother to dignify such delaying tactics with a response. He had never been a believer in putting off for tomorrow what could be done today. Problems not faced head-on, he had discovered to his personal cost, never went away—they just got out of hand.

‘Wait for me by the lift,’ he instructed her, ‘I will need to discuss rearranging my schedule.’

‘Really, Matt. There’s no need to put your entire day on hold! Just let me go home and we can both discuss this when it’s sunk in and…and we’re both calmer.’

‘I’m perfectly calm. In fact, given the situation, I couldn’t be calmer.’ Nor was he lying. The fog was beginning to clear and a solution was presenting itself. It was the inevitable solution, but already he was coming to terms with it. He was rising to the occasion and that, for him, was something of which to be proud. She would discover soon enough that he was a man who shouldered his responsibility—even when, as in this instance, it was occasioned by something out of his control.

Strangely, he didn’t feel as cornered as he might have expected.

Tess regarded him helplessly. He could be as immovable as a block of granite. This was one such occasion. ‘Then we’ll go to a café. Or a coffee shop. Or even just find a bench somewhere.’ When he nodded, she gave a little sigh of resignation and left him slipping on his jacket, shutting down his computer, getting ready to face one of the most important conversations of his life.

It was pointless pushing the button. He was with her in less than five minutes. He had told her that he was calm and he looked calm. Cool, calm and composed. If nothing else, he was brilliant when it came to hiding his feelings. In fact, he could have been nominated for an award, judging from the performance he was putting on as he depressed the button and they took the lift down.

There was a coffee shop two blocks away, he was
telling her. It would be relatively quiet at this time of day.

When she asked him, stiff and staring straight ahead like a mannequin, what he had told his secretary, he shrugged and said that he had intimated some sort of situation with his new nanny. Nothing new there, he had implied to her. It had been a thirty-second conversation. His secretary wasn’t paid to ask intrusive questions.

As the lift door purred open, Tess thought that anyone listening to their impersonal, polite conversation would have been forgiven for thinking that there was absolutely nothing amiss.

Matt continued to talk to her as they walked towards the coffee shop.

He certainly didn’t think he had overreacted to a word she had said, but he had still managed to scare her—and that didn’t sit right with him. To think that she had looked at him with those wide green eyes and effectively informed him that she didn’t want to be in his company without the safety of an anonymous public around her had shocked him to the core.