Hired for the Boss's Bedroom (9 page)

Leo swore softly under his breath. He should never have given in to this attraction, should never have seen her as a challenge. Challenge? The woman was more than a challenge! Had he forgotten how many thorns a rose could have? Damn it, the woman would have a hell of a time finding any man who wouldn’t run a mile in the face of that tongue of hers!

The fact that she was standing there, looking as though she would collapse like a rag doll the minute her strings were cut, was no concern of his. She had said what she wanted to say, wrapped up in the greatest insults possible, and he didn’t have time for this.

‘
You
had a bad marriage,’ she said tightly. ‘And the way you deal with it is by never getting close to anyone. You don’t want any woman to penetrate your fortress, so you just have affairs—nothing permanent, nothing that could get too emotionally messy.’

‘Spare me the analysis.’

‘Because that’s something else you’re
not into
? There are quite a few things you’re
not into
, aren’t there?’ Her skin felt hot and tight. She knew in some part of her that was still being rational that there was no need for her to start having a go at him, but she wanted to. She was just so angry that she had allowed herself to get in this situation in the first place.

‘I may have that lonely bed for a while, but at least I won’t be scarred for ever. At least I know that there’s someone out there who’s right for me, and I know that someone isn’t going to be a workaholic who doesn’t have time for the rest of the human race!’

‘This conversation,’ Leo drawled, stepping out of the door and reaching for his car keys in his pocket, ‘is officially closed.’

Heather watched as he let himself out of the room, out of the front door, out of her orbit. Success; she had said her piece. He wouldn’t try anything again.

She should have been sagging with relief.

Instead, she felt one tear dribble down her cheek, followed by another, as she contemplated the lonely bed waiting for her upstairs.

A
T TEN
past nine on a Wednesday evening, Leo finally allowed himself to scan through the last of his emails, and swivelled his chair round so that he could stare at the uninterrupted view of skyline from his London office.

Like his apartment, his office was cool, uncluttered and furnished in the kind of uber-modern style that only real money could buy. One white wall was dominated by an abstract painting, subject incomprehensible. The carpet was pale and thick, and the furniture was a light, solid wood, handmade to stand the test of time, with very clever drawers that opened and closed without the benefit of handles. Leo had left it all to his design team and was still pleased with the result after five years. He could have had it stripped and updated but what would have been the point? He would still have gone for something similar.

A working environment should not indulge in the luxury of distractions.

And his private life should likewise be uncomplicated.

He frowned, very much aware that, since Heather Of The Background Issues had burst into his life a month previously, his private life had been anything but uncomplicated.

And this despite the fact that he hadn’t set eyes on her since their last encounter.

Twice he had visited his mother and Daniel, even staying for the whole weekend, which he seldom did, as time was a commodity rarely at his disposal. On both occasions, Heather had been conspicuous by her absence. She was clearly avoiding him at all costs. After some casual questioning he had discovered, via Daniel and his mother separately, that she had variously been away on an art course or visiting friends up north.

‘Busy lady,’ he had remarked, at which point he had been subjected to an enthusiastic account of her good work in the community by his mother—art classes for the little kids; volunteer work helping with the gardens once a month at the local retirement homes; cake baking, apparently, whenever there was a cake to be baked.

‘But no guy in her life,’ he had murmured encouragingly. ‘All that domestic stuff probably makes them run a mile.’ Having taken minimal interest in the doings of the various people in his mother’s life, a habit born over time and cemented through the years, he had been amused to find himself assaulted with all the tittle tattle that seemed to comprise village life.

His mother had even tentatively suggested, without prompting, two visits to London, and had arrived with Daniel clutching a London guide with pages marked at various places they wanted to visit. Gone were the expensive meals out and in had come sightseeing on a major scale. Leo had found, close and personal, queues, cafés and tourist sights he had never clapped eyes on.

Now, staring out of his window, he cursed himself for the fact that he couldn’t stop thinking about Heather. He had left her house weeks ago and had convinced himself that he had had a lucky escape. If she wanted to nurse her bitterness and bury herself in a solitary existence pretending that she was happy, then that was her affair. He wasn’t in the business of trying to persuade her otherwise. In fact, he wasn’t in the business of trying to persuade
any
woman into bed with him. He never had been, and he wasn’t about to start now.

It irked him, however, that she was still managing to fester away inside some corner of his brain, disrupting the smooth running of his life, causing him to lose concentration in the middle of meetings. Even when he had been out with one of his lawyer friends, a glamorous blonde whom he had dated off and on in the past, he had still been unable to shake off the uninvited image of another woman—one with curly, golden hair and soft, blue eyes—adorning his bed.

Never having dealt with a woman walking away from him, Leo could only think that his problem lay in the novelty of the situation in which he now found himself.

Why else would she still be on his mind, like a low-level virus he hadn’t quite managed to clear out of his system?

Or maybe, having bought into the notion that he needed to have a change from clever, hard-nosed power babes, he was just frustrated at having his plans thwarted.

Leo was unaccustomed to analysing emotional situations. The women he had dated in the past had seldom brought their personal baggage to the table, and the ones who had had been the quickest to go. That was just the way he operated and he was unapologetic about it. Now he found himself spending far too much time thinking about what Heather had said, furious at her self-righteous assumption that she was somehow morally superior to him because she had decided on a life of self-imposed celibacy to deal with what had obviously been a grim marriage.

He was scowling, chewing over her accusations that he was little more than a ruthless womaniser, when he felt the vibration of his mobile phone in his pocket.

His first thought was that he hoped it wasn’t the leggy, blonde lawyer. They had parted company without having made any arrangements to meet up again, but she had threatened to be ‘in touch’, and he had been too polite to tell her not to bother.

He therefore answered in the tone of voice of someone prepared to deliver a let down.

To hear Heather’s voice down the line brought him to his feet in surprise, but he recovered fast and bypassed all the usual pleasantries to ask curtly what she wanted.

His response was pretty much what she had expected, but, hearing his dark, velvety voice at the other end of the line, still had Heather’s nerves jangling.

She had steeled herself to make the call, had known that she had to. In her hand, she was still clutching Katherine’s address book, which she had found in the little chest of drawers by the telephone in the kitchen as instructed.

‘I’m sorry to disturb you,’ she apologised. ‘I tried your land line at your house, but you weren’t in.’

‘Repeat. What do you want?’

‘There’s no need to be so hostile.’

‘You’ve interrupted me in the middle of…let’s just say I’m busy.’

Busy doing what?
Heather thought.
And with whom?
She swallowed back a dark, intrusive jealousy that sprang out at her from nowhere and left her shaken.

‘It’s about your mother.’

Leo tensed. ‘What about my mother?’

‘She’s in hospital,’ Heather told him bluntly.

‘
Hospital?
That’s impossible. I spoke to her last night and she was perfectly fine.’

‘She’s had a fall, Leo. She was using the ladder to change a light bulb and she fell. Apparently she hadn’t secured it properly, and she must have landed in an awkward position. Daniel and I have just come back from the hospital. She’s broken her leg, and I’m afraid she’s going to be there for at least a couple of weeks. I’m sorry. I know you’re all wrapped up with you whatever it is you’re in the middle of doing, but you’re going to have to come up.’

‘I’m on my way.’

So this was how it felt to have someone hang up on you. She took a couple of seconds to regain her composure, then she turned to Daniel, who was exhausted and finishing the last of the meal which she had hurriedly prepared for him the minute they had set foot back into the house.

‘Your dad’s on his way here,’ she said with a reassuring smile. Daniel hadn’t reacted well to his grandmother’s fall, and Heather suspected that it was because she had become the one stable person in his life, the adult on whom he had learnt to depend following his mother’s death. The ambulance, that ride to the hospital, seeing Katherine’s ashen face, must have taken him back in time. Heather had made sure to be very gentle with him and to assure him that everything was going to be just fine. She had brought him home, sat him down at the kitchen table and made him a fluffy cheese-omelette with potatoes and chatted comfortingly about inconsequential things that had happened to him at school.

‘When you’ve finished eating I’ll run you a nice, hot bath, and then it’s sleep time for you, Dan.’

‘Do I have to go to school tomorrow? I haven’t done my homework.’

‘Oh, I think Miss Porter will understand. I’ll take you in and explain the situation myself, so there’s no need for you to worry on that score.’ She began clearing away his dishes, stacking them in the dishwasher.

‘Will my father be here when I get up in the morning?’

‘Of course he will!’ Just the thought of Leo closing the gap between them in that big, silent car of his was enough to bring her out in a cold sweat. She had been careful to avoid being around on the occasions he had visited. Yes, avoidance was always the coward’s way of dealing with a problem, but Heather hadn’t cared. If thinking about the man had sent her nerves into crazy free fall, then how bad would it have been to actually see him? Worse, to have to
talk
to him and feel those fabulous eyes of his rake over her with pity and scorn? Because she knew without a shadow of a doubt that he would not have understood a word of what she had told him about learning from her past experience with Brian, about not jumping into bed with anyone just because she happened to fancy them. He had looked at her as if she had taken leave of her senses, and she had been left feeling like Miss Haversham on a bad day.

‘He’s your dad, Daniel,’ Heather asserted with more optimism than confidence. ‘He’s going to be here when you need him.’

‘He can’t be here. He works in London. He showed me around his office the last time we went down. He says he’s away a lot. What if he’s away and Gran’s still in hospital? What then?’

‘He runs his own company, Dan. He can choose whether he goes away or not, and if he’s needed here then he’ll
choose
to stay put.’

That closed that particular line of enquiry, and Heather didn’t show how anxious she was that Daniel’s predictions did not materialise. Katherine had been thrilled with what she had described as her son ‘making such a big effort’, but as far as Heather was concerned Leo’s ‘big effort’ was only
really
big in comparison to how extremely
small
it had been before. With Katherine in hospital, Leo would have to make more than just what he considered ‘a big effort’. He would have to put great sections of his life on hold.

The little boy fell into sleep within minutes and, without the distraction of his worrying list of questions, Heather had time on her hands to get really wound up over Leo’s impending arrival.

She felt crumpled and unprepared. Three hours previously, Katherine had called and calmly explained that she had taken a tumble from a step ladder and was in a little bit of pain. In fact, Heather had rushed over to find the older woman on the ground, unable to move and white as a sheet. There had only been time to phone for an ambulance, to try to comfort a wideeyed, terrified Daniel, and then the mad, panicked hospital scenario of waiting and X-rays and doctors. Any question of having a bath had been out of the question, and so here she was, dishevelled and unable to leave the house, because Daniel was upstairs sleeping and couldn’t be left on his own.

She calmed herself with a pot of tea, having phoned the hospital and spoken to Katherine, who was sorted out in a private room, and thankfully in considerably less pain, but anxious about Daniel and about having to go under the knife.

She must have fallen into a light doze because the sharp ring of the doorbell made her jump and she hurried out, giving herself no time to dwell on the prospect of seeing Leo again and thereby get herself into a tizzy.

She had managed to convince herself that he couldn’t be as impossibly overwhelming as she remembered, that his impact had really only been so powerful because initially she had not expected him to be so good-looking; that she had had valuable time to put everything into perspective and so would be prepared to face him. Besides, none of that mattered, given the situation.

She was wrong on all counts.

She pulled open the door and momentarily froze. Her skin suddenly felt hot and tight and she had a moment of sheer, blind panic as she took in the stunningly beautiful lines of his lean, chiselled face; she was as much affected by his masculine beauty now as she had been the first time she had clapped eyes on him. Against her lacy bra, she could feel her nipples tingle and harden and respond to that unbidden memory that this was the man who had wanted to make love to her.

‘Are you going to stand there gaping for much longer?’ Leo asked. He placed the palm of his hand flat against the door and gave it a little push, which was Heather’s cue to step back immediately and rein in her turbulent thoughts.

He had noticed her gaping at him like a teenager with a crush! She could have died of embarrassment.

‘You made good time,’ she said, clearing her throat.

‘No traffic at this time of night.’ Leo strode into the house and then turned around to look at her. ‘Tell me what happened. In detail.’

‘Of course. Would you like something to drink?’ She watched in fascination as he impatiently began rolling up the sleeves of his white shirt. He had ditched the tie at some point during the journey, and her eyes were drawn to that slither of bronzed skin where the top two buttons of his shirt had been undone.

‘Just tell me what happened, and then I intend to head straight to the hospital.’

‘Now?’

‘I’m not one to stand around waiting for the grass to grow under my feet.’

‘But no one’s going to be there! I mean of course, your mother will be there, but you won’t be able to find a doctor or anything.’

‘You’d be surprised what I’m capable of achieving,’ Leo informed her with such bone-deep, casual conviction that Heather was left in no doubt that he would have a consultant dashing out to see him at the speed of light.

He was heading towards the kitchen and Heather followed in his wake, rather like an obedient dog waiting to take orders from its master. As he grabbed himself a bottle of water from the fridge and began to drink, he actually snapped his fingers, and she began telling him the sequence of events, concluding by assuring him that his mother was fine, all things considered.

Leo continued to drink until the water was completely gone, then he looked at her carefully.

He had been looking forward to seeing her again, having, with a sense of satisfaction, regained control over the situation by realising that her vanishing acts had been a direct consequence of the impact he had made on her—forget all that rubbish about never going near a man like him in a thousand years. If she had been so convinced of her rightness, she wouldn’t have spent the two weekends he had been up on mysterious away-days.