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Boss Meets Her Match
Janet Lee Nye
She can't fall for a guy like him…With kick-ass-and-take-names flair, hardworking Lena Reyes has everything a successful woman could want. Well…almost. She's still single, which means her family is practically auditioning guys for Hispanic Bachelor. But none of these guys compare to her newest client: a sexy trust-fund artist who's making Lena crazy in every way possible.Born into wealth and privilege, Charles “Matt” Beaumont Matthews V is everything Lena isn't. So why does she find him so deliciously irresistible? Now their attraction is breaking all kinds of rules. Worse still, Lena's falling for Matt—hard. He's either the perfect mistake…or her perfect match.
She can’t fall for a guy like him...
With kick-ass-and-take-names flair, hardworking Lena Reyes has everything a successful woman could want. Well...almost. She’s still single, which means her family is practically auditioning guys for Hispanic Bachelor. But none of these guys compare to her newest client: a sexy trust-fund artist who’s making Lena crazy in every way possible.
Born into wealth and privilege, Charles “Matt” Beaumont Matthews V is everything Lena isn’t. So why does she find him so deliciously irresistible? Now their attraction is breaking all kinds of rules. Worse still, Lena’s falling for Matt—hard. He’s either the perfect mistake...or her perfect match.
“Why do you do that?” Lena asked.
“Do what?”
“Every time you get real with me, let me see behind the smart-ass persona, you have to ruin it by being all annoying.”
Matt shifted closer and ran a finger along her jawline. She jerked away. “Lena. Look at me.”
She reluctantly turned to look. He was too close. Too everything. Those eyes. How could such icy blue be so hot?
“This,” he said as he took her hand. “This feeling right here is why you put up with me.”
He traced his fingers lightly across her palm. The sensation bypassed her brain, going straight to the very core of her.
She started to say he was crazy. She started to tell him to get out. But his lips were on hers and her hands were in his hair and oh dear God the man could kiss. He pulled her even closer, deepening the kiss. She kissed him back, ignoring the alarms from some distant rational part of herself.
Right now, she cared about nothing except for how good this felt.
Dear Reader (#ulink_a242f5b1-c003-5ee3-b528-09cbf612ca73),
Welcome back to beautiful Charleston, SC! I was very excited to have the opportunity to tell Lena’s story. It was also fun to bring Lena and Sadie back together.
For Lena, family is everything. Even when they are driving her crazy. She’s dedicated her life to lifting her family out of poverty, but now that the dream has been realized, she is left wondering, “What next?”
“What” did not include the impossibly annoying and sexy artist Charles Beaumont Matthews the Fifth. Or Matt, as he prefers.
For Matt, family is a touchy subject. A troubled youth led to estrangement and very hard feelings. While he is working to repair the damage, he struggles to accept that to fully live the life he wants, he may have to walk away from his family.
Family, by blood or by choice, is a central theme in my writing. The contrast between Lena’s family, who had been poor in money but rich in love and support, and Matt’s wealthy family, to whom obedience to family tradition is more important than personal fulfillment, is rather stark.
It is somewhere between those two extremes that Lena and Matt will find their HEA.
I hope you enjoy their journey.
Janet
Boss Meets Her Match
Janet Lee Nye
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
JANET LEE NYE is a writer by day and a neonatal nurse by night. She loves a good pinot grigio and a well-placed “f-bomb.” She wants to be Helen Mirren when she grows up. She lives in Charleston, SC, with her fella and her felines and spends too much time on Twitter and not enough doing adult things like making doctor’s appointments and dusting.
My love, my strength, my wailing wall, the occasional boot in my rear, my partner in everything: Jason Zwiker. Love you, baby!
Contents
Cover (#u603f845e-51c2-5c0d-bb67-f5135d4bec00)
Back Cover Text (#u35dfe482-93c9-52d1-99cc-ba5a8716679e)
Introduction (#u3bb17d6b-72b9-5dbf-a46e-76d391462847)
Dear Reader (#ulink_0c5abc20-d7fa-5d97-80f9-18037da322a5)
Title Page (#u026ecf6d-bffc-5a2f-bd94-6e478bc14410)
About the Author (#u55a89026-686e-5ca9-9588-e672e5bbc07a)
Dedication (#ubd06251b-217e-54e1-8eca-340e6dce9bfa)
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_e95334f3-66bf-51da-a20e-7da0fcf449ab)
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_0487bec1-74cd-5c6b-8d07-c850837dcd4c)
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_057432c1-8db3-565b-bd78-9543c69e591f)
CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_f9348d29-9793-51b8-ad27-f35ed7f8ef81)
CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_0aa830a2-0ba6-565e-a4c2-59b91dedf04c)
CHAPTER SIX (#ulink_078be3d2-998a-5804-9505-c24dfcc4338c)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#ulink_fcf2fa43-6b89-55e1-9274-393aec1192f2)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#ulink_3467fc6b-0bb8-543e-87cd-a5bd3fde5840)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FOURTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIFTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIXTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINETEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_e23aae49-87b3-5e37-b2bb-61c8aa397ed3)
THAT IS THE ugliest thing I have ever seen. Lena leaned forward and squinted at the tiny white sticker in the corner of the painting. Five thousand dollars? Tie a paintbrush to my cat’s tail and she’d do a better job. She shifted on the bench. The sounds of the party echoed loudly from the floor below. Sipping her wine, she wrinkled her nose. Cheap chardonnay.
She didn’t want to be here, which was why she was hiding out on the second floor of the City Gallery. She wanted to go home. Take her shoes off and put pajamas on. Drink some wine that didn’t taste like battery acid. She straightened with a sigh. Might as well get it over with. Dr. Eliot Rutledge, famed neurosurgeon, very old money Charleston—and her first of many clients—was waiting for her.
Footsteps on the hardwood floor caught her attention. A man ambled slowly around the corner, looking at the art exhibited on the walls. Lena cut a glance in his direction. He didn’t fit with the suit-and-cocktail-dress crowd downstairs. His beige linen pants were slightly wrinkled—and that shabby white dress shirt. No. Just no. His dark blond hair was long and tied in a ponytail with a length of leather. A neat beard covered his face. He leaned down, looked at a price tag and whistled. Lena smiled.
“Pretty pricey, huh?” he asked, sliding down on the bench beside her.
She looked directly at him. Damn. That is a fine-looking man. The hair and beard couldn’t hide his high cheekbones and eyes so blue they almost didn’t look real. White teeth appeared as he grinned at her. Her stomach went quivery under that bad boy grin. She looked away and sipped more wine. She didn’t do bad boys anymore.
He gestured at the painting in front of them. It was an abstract, not quite as dense as a Pollock but not as minimalist as Munch. Slashes of red and blue, smears of purple and yellow. “What do you think of this one?”
She shrugged. “Not my style, to be honest.”
“Ah, man. I saw you sitting up here instead of being downstairs with all the mingling and small talk and I thought to myself, now, there’s a woman who doesn’t go for polite society bullshit. Thought you were up here seriously contemplating the meaning of art.”
She tried her perfect one-eyebrow-arch-and-glare trick. “Did you, now?”
All that got her was another of those inappropriate thought-provoking grins. “Indeed I did.”
“I think it’s ugly,” she said, taking another drink. “I think my friend’s nine-year-old could do better.”
His laugh echoed off the narrow corridor. “But one of those people downstairs will buy it.”
“Probably.” She stood. “Excuse me, but I have to find someone.”
“Ah,” Eliot Rutledge said, as he walked around the corner. “You’ve met. Wonderful.”
Lena looked from Dr. Rutledge to the man smiling up at her from the bench. “No,” she said, ice cubes practically dropping from the word. “We have not met.”
“Lena, this is our artist.”
A hot spark of anger flared in her chest and spread to her cheeks. The man stood, still smiling, and held out a hand. “Matt. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Lena.”
“Did you know who I was when you approached me?”
“Nope. Just a happy accident.”
She stared at him until the smile melted from his face. A long string of profanities pushed against her pressed lips. Breathe. Just breathe.
“Matt asked for a recommendation. Told him I wouldn’t have anyone else in the city watch after my portfolio.”
“Thank you,” she said automatically. She turned back to Matt. Gave him her iciest smile. “I’d be happy to discuss this with you. In my office. During business hours. Call my secretary and make an appointment.” She turned to Dr. Rutledge. “Eliot, it was good to see you.”
As she rounded the corner to the stairs, she heard Dr. Rutledge’s voice. “Did you make her angry? I’d recommend not doing that anymore.”
Smiling as she pushed through the doors out into the perfection that was Charleston in October, she nodded. That’s right. Don’t piss me off. Her condominium was a short walk away along Waterfront Park. She ambled past tourists and college kids. There was still light in the sky and it was a perfect sixty-five degrees. Maybe she’d go for a run. Or maybe she’d collapse on the couch, order some Vietnamese and binge-watch something. Her phone vibrated in her purse. She fished it out. Sadie. Her best friend. The woman she called sister. Her finger hovered over the screen. Completely tired of talking to people for the day, she was sorely tempted to dismiss the call.
“What’s up?” she asked.
“Your mother is what’s up.”
Lena smiled. At least she wasn’t the only one being tortured by her mother. “What’s she done now?”
“We went to look at dresses. I swear to God, Lena. I’m going to get married in jeans and a T-shirt just to spite her. You should have seen the dresses she begged me to try on ‘just to see.’ I looked like Scarlett O’Hara’s cousin from the trailer park. A full veil. To the knees!”
“Sounds perfectly lovely. At least she’s off your case about getting married in a church.”
“For now,” Sadie replied grumpily. “What are you doing this weekend? I need a rational human being for dress shopping.”
Lena reached her condo door and leaned against it. She could hear her cat meowing indignantly from the other side. Supper was an hour late. “We can do that. But don’t invite my mother. I’m trying to stay off her radar right now.”
“Yeah, by throwing me at her.”
“You’re the blushing bride. Much more fun than the dried-up old maid.”
