Hired for the Boss's Bedroom

True, there was no man in her life, but that, she told herself, was exactly how she wanted it.

Little snippets of her past intruded into her peaceful cottage: Brian, as she had first known him when she had still been a young girl of eighteen and he had been on the brink of his glittering career. Blonde hair, straight, thick and always falling across his face, until he had had it cut because, he had told her seriously, in his profession men all wore their hair short.

Heather blinked and shoved that little nest of bitter memories back into their Pandora’s box. She had learnt years ago that dwelling on things that couldn’t be changed was a waste of time.

Instead, she shifted her attention to the kitchen which still bore the remnants of Daniel’s hastily eaten meal of spaghetti Bolognese. His father, he had told her, had planned on taking them out to dinner but he hadn’t wanted to go. He hated those fancy restaurants they went to. He hated the food. As a postscript, he had added that he hated his father.

Which made her start thinking of Leo and, once she started, she found that she couldn’t seem to stop. That cold, ruthless face swam into her head until she was forced to retreat to her little office and try and lose herself in the illustration she was currently working on. She was peering at the detail of a fairy wing, every pore in her being focused on the minute detail of painting, when the bang on her front door sent her jerking back, knocking over the jar of water, which shattered into a thousand pieces on the wooden floor.

A second bang, more demanding this time, had her running to the front door before she had time to clean up the slowly spreading mess on the ground.

She pulled open the door before a third bang brought down the roof.

‘You! What are you doing here?’ He was no longer in his suit. Instead, he was wearing a pair of cream trousers and a navy-blue polo shirt. Behind him was a gleaming silver Bentley.

At nearly nine in the evening, the sun had faded to a dull, mellow, grey light.

Leo dealt Heather a grim nod. ‘Believe me, I don’t want to be here any more than you want me to be here, but I have been put in the difficult position of having to ask you to accompany us to the cinema tomorrow. Daniel has dug his heels in and refused to budge. I’m being blackmailed by someone who hasn’t even graduated to books without pictures. It’s ridiculous, but it’s true, hence the reason I’m here when I should be reading over a due-diligence report that can’t wait.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘Why don’t you let me in and I can explain?’

‘I’m sorry, but can’t this wait until tomorrow? It’s late, and I have stuff to do.’

‘Late?’ Leo made a show of consulting his watch. ‘It’s ten past nine. On a Friday night. Since when is that late?’

Heather heard the amused incredulity in his voice and felt her hackles rise.

‘I was working,’ she said stiffly.

‘Of course. You never got around to telling me exactly what you do for a living.’

‘You aren’t interested in what I do for a living.’

Leo thought that she was spot on with that, but circumstances had forced his hand. He had returned to the house with Daniel in frozen silence and had endured what could only be called silent warfare.

The mobile phone had been looked at and then refused, on the grounds of, ‘Thank you very much, but the teacher doesn’t allow mobile phones at school.’

And, ‘It’s a kind thought, but young children don’t need mobile telephones,’ from his mother.

Frustration had almost driven him to ask his mother what the hell was going on because surely, surely, this complete lack of co operation couldn’t just be caused by the fact that he had missed a Sports Day! But Katherine had taken herself off to bed at a ridiculously early hour, and so here he was, compelled to try and do a patch-up job with the amateur psychologist in the hope that the weekend might not end up a complete write-off.

‘You seem to have something on your face…’ He rubbed his finger along the blue streak adorning her chin and gazed in bemusement at his finger. ‘What is it? Paint? Is that how you spend your Friday evenings—painting your house?’

Heather pushed the door, but Leo wasn’t having any of that. He wedged his foot neatly into the open space and met her hostile stare with a grimly determined expression.

‘You can’t just come here and disturb me at this hour,’ she said through gritted teeth.

‘Needs must. Now, are you going to let me in?’ He stood back and raked his hands impatiently through his hair. ‘I don’t suppose,’ he said heavily, ‘that I was the only father who didn’t make it to the Sports Day.’ It was a concession of sorts and as close to an olive branch that Leo was going to offer.

Situation defused.

‘Yes.’

‘You’re kidding, right?’

‘No, I’m not. Every single parent was there, taking pictures. Daniel had asked me to come along to watch, pretended that he didn’t care whether you came or not, but I watched him, and he kept looking around for you, wondering if you were somewhere in the crowd.’

‘Are you going to let me in?’ Leo asked brusquely, not liking this image of himself as some kind of heartless monster.

Heather reluctantly opened the door and allowed him to stride past her. She hadn’t noticed earlier, but he dominated the space—not just because he was tall, but because of that aura he exuded, an aura of supreme power. He owned the air around him in a way that Brian never had, even though it had seemed so at the time. She shivered.

‘So, where were you painting?’ Leo asked, looking around him. He had quizzed his mother about Heather, ignoring her look of surprise at his interest, and had gleaned that she and Daniel trotted over to the cottage whenever they had a chance. Heather had, it would seem, become quite a fixture in the household. Little wonder that she had been polishing her soapbox in anticipation of his arrival.

He followed her into a room at the back of the house, and was confronted by walls on which hung every manner of artwork. Yet more were housed in an antique architect’s chest against the wall.

‘I broke my glass,’ Heather said, kneeling down so that she could begin carefully picking up the shards. ‘When you banged on the door. I wasn’t expecting anyone.’

‘You…paint?’

Heather looked briefly at him and blushed, suddenly feeling vulnerable as those flint-grey eyes roved over the artwork on her walls. ‘I told you that I had a job,’ she said, before resuming her glass-collecting task. It would take a heck of a lot more elbow grease to fully clean the ground, but the biggest bits had been collected; the elbow grease would have to wait until the morning, because right now she was finding it hard to think properly. She just wanted him out of her cottage so that she could get her scattered wits back into order.

Leo dragged his eyes away from the paintings and focused entirely on the woman standing in front of him. When she had told him that she had a job, he had assumed something along the lines of a secretary, maybe a receptionist somewhere, perhaps. But she was an artist, and it explained a lot. Her apparent lack of any recognisable fashion sense, her woolly-headed assumption that she could say whatever she wanted to say without thinking, her earnest belief that she could somehow solve a situation over a cup of tea and a good chat. Artists occupied a different world to most normal people. It was common knowledge they lived in a world of their own.

He refocused on the matter at hand. ‘I don’t know how you’ve managed to form such a strong bond with my son,’ he said, not beating about the bush. ‘But after the Sports Day…situation…it seems that the only way this weekend isn’t going to descend into a nightmare is if you…’ Leo searched around to find the right words. It wasn’t in his nature to ask favours of anyone, and having to do so now left a sour taste in his mouth. He especially didn’t like asking favours from a woman who got on his nerves. Moreover, he would have to be pleasant towards her.

Leo had tried his damnedest to form a bond with his son, but there was murky water under the bridge, and he had had time to reflect that it wasn’t Daniel’s fault. Without a great deal of difficulty, he could see any relationship he might have with his son sink without trace beneath a tide of remembered bitterness.

‘If I…what?’

‘Movies…lunch…dinner. I leave on Sunday afternoon,’ he felt compelled to tack on because he could see the dawning dismay spreading across her face.

‘You mean you want me to sacrifice my entire weekend to bail you out of a situation you can’t handle?’

‘Sacrifice?’ Leo laughed drily. ‘I don’t think there’s a woman alive who has ever seen a weekend spent in my company as a sacrifice.’

‘That’s the problem,’ Heather said. ‘Men like you never do.’

CHAPTER TWO

LEO decided to leave that half-muttered remark alone. Why get embroiled in a lengthy question-and-answer session with a woman who was an irrelevance in his life? On a more practical note, he needed her for the weekend, because he couldn’t face a day and a half of his son’s withdrawn sadness. If she could smooth things over, then far be it from him to invite further hostility from her. As far as he was concerned, though, all this interest in a kid who happened to live a couple of fields away from her spoke of an unhealthy lack of social life, but each to their own.

By lunchtime the following day—having spent the morning at the zoo, where his son had displayed an amazing knowledge of animals, rattling off facts to Heather and his mother while studiously ignoring him—Leo was beginning to feel his curiosity piqued.

She exuded warmth, and when she laughed, which she seemed to do often, it was a rich, infectious laughter.

Of course the laughter, like his son’s encyclopaediac knowledge of every animal, was not directed at him.

Over a cup of tea in the canteen at the zoo—which Leo could only describe as a marginally more savoury experience than if he had actually pulled his chair into one of the animal enclosures—he noticed that the woman was not strictly limited to conversations about dinosaurs, reptiles and computer games. When his mother asked him about work, in an attempt to include him in the conversation, Leo was taken aback to be quizzed about the politics of mergers and acquisitions in so far as they affected the lives of countless hapless victims of ‘marauding conglomerates’.

While his mother tried to hide her amusement, Leo stared at Heather as though she had mutated into one of the animals they had just been feeding.

Marauding conglomerates? Since when did country bumpkins use expressions like that?

He also didn’t like the way her mouth curled with scorn when she addressed him, but in front of his mother and Daniel there was nothing he could do but smile coldly at her and change the subject.

Now, with the animals out of the way, he was taking them all to lunch; that nasty little remark she had flung at him the evening before, the remark which he had generously chosen to overlook, was beginning to prey on his mind.

Just who the hell did the woman think she was? Did she imagine that because she was doing him a favour she could indulge in whatever cheap shot she wanted at his expense?

People rarely got under Leo’s skin. This particularly applied to women. He was astute when it came to reading their feminine wiles, and could see through any minor sulk to exactly what lay underneath. In short, they were a predictable entity.

As they headed for the Italian on the main street, he stuck his hands in his pockets and murmured, bending so that his words were for her ears only,

‘Artist and financial expert, hmm? A woman of many talents. I had no idea you had such a keen interest in the business world.’

Heather pulled back. Something about his warm breath against her face had made the hairs on the back of her neck tingle.

It had been a mistake to let him rattle her, and she had been unable to resist wiping that lazy, condescending expression off his face by parrying with him about finance. Against her will, she had once known those money markets until they were coming out of her ears—and, once learnt, always remembered. It had been worth it just to see the shocked look on his face when she’d thrown in a few technical terms that surely a country hick like her should never have known.

Now, with his gleaming eyes fixed on her, Heather was belatedly realising that she might have been better off keeping her mouth shut and letting him get on with thinking whatever he wanted to think of her.

‘I read the newspapers,’ she muttered stiffly.

‘You’d have to be a very avid reader of the Financial Times to know as much as you do about the global trading-market. So what’s going on here?’

‘Nothing’s going on, and can I just remind you that I don’t actually have to be here? I only agreed to come because I knew that Daniel would have been disappointed if I hadn’t—and he’s already had enough disappointment with you missing his Sports Day because of “unavoidable work commitments”.’

‘It’s not going to work, so you can forget it.’

‘What’s not going to work?’

‘Your attempt to change the subject. Who the hell are you really? That’s the question I can’t stop asking myself.’

Ahead of them, Daniel and Katherine were putting a bit of distance between them; when Katherine turned round and gesticulated that she and Daniel were going to pop into his favourite sports shop, Heather could have groaned with despair.

Leo was intrigued by her reaction to his remark. From not really caring one way or another who she was, he now seriously began to wonder about her provenance.

‘Are you always so suspicious?’

‘Comes with the territory.’

‘And what territory would that be? No, don’t bother answering that—I already know.’

‘Care to explain?’

‘No, not really. If you don’t mind, I think I’ll just go and see what Katherine and Daniel are up to in there.’

‘Oh, I’m sure they won’t mind if we go ahead to the restaurant and wait there for them. It’s a beautiful day. Why rush?’

‘Because I have things to do at the house.’

‘What things?’

‘None of your business!’

‘I’m getting the impression that you don’t like me very much. Would I be right in that assumption?’ He went into the sports shop to tell his mother that he would wait for them at the restaurant with Heather. No rush; take as long as they wanted. ‘But don’t buy anything.’ He looked at his son, who stared back at him with grudging curiosity. ‘I want to see whatever you buy—an athlete like you needs the best equipment.’ He was rewarded with something approaching a smile.

The sports shop was an Aladdin’s den. Leo reckoned his son could spend a satisfyingly long time browsing with his mother and that, he decided, would give him sufficient time to put his sudden curiosity to bed.

He had no doubt that she would be waiting for him outside. If there was one thing Leo knew with absolute certainty, it was that no one ever walked out on him until he was finished with them.

Sure enough, there she was, peering through the window of the shoe shop, and he took a little time to look at her. The strange gypsy-skirt of the night before had been replaced by something equally shapeless, but it was a hot day and her tee shirt outlined the contours of breasts that would be more than a handful. What would they look like? What would she feel like?

That sudden thought seemed to spring from nowhere and Leo shoved it aside, disconcerted.

The woman was most definitely not his type. After his short-lived and disastrous marriage to Sophia, he had exorcised pretty little airheads from his repertoire of beddable women, and he hadn’t looked back.

Although…

The girl next door wasn’t exactly quite the airhead he had assumed. Nor was she exactly pretty, although he supposed that there were a fair few men who might look twice at her, with her unruly gold hair and her lush curves.

She turned to find him staring, and he watched that telltale colour bloom into her cheeks.

‘They’ll be a little while,’ Leo said. ‘I told them to take their time.’

Heather fell into step with him. Without the presence of Daniel and Katherine, she was suddenly conscious of how intimidating she found him. Even when he was at his most casual, as he was now, in a pair of faded jeans and a white polo-shirt that emphasised his olive complexion.

Five minutes later, which was about long enough for Heather to really feel her nerves go into over drive, they were at the restaurant. It was tucked away up one of the smaller streets in the trendy part of the little town, with wine bars and little boutiques that specialised in selling designer clothes and designer kitchenware. Tables were laid outside, but Leo ignored them, choosing to stroll into the restaurant and net them the quietest table at the very back.

‘So,’ he said, relaxing his long body into the chair and giving her the benefit of all his undivided attention. ‘You never explained your in-depth knowledge of the business markets. And I have to admit I’m curious. Were you a banker before you decided to throw it all aside and devote your life to painting little fairies?’

‘I don’t paint little fairies. I illustrate children’s books,’ Heather said mutinously. ‘And I don’t like the way you’ve manoeuvred me into being here alone with you.’

‘Why? You have a suspicious mind. What do you think I’m going to get up to?’

‘You have no right to question me about my private life.’

‘Of course I have. Until yesterday, I didn’t even know you existed. Now I’m to assume that you’ve become an integral part of my family.’

‘I’m not an integral part of your family,’ Heather protested. She looked at Leo’s dark, clever, shockingly good-looking face with dislike. He was like a shark, patrolling his waters and ready to pounce on anything that might possibly be construed as prey. In this case, her. Wasn’t it enough that she was helping him out? Obviously not.

Leo ignored that interruption. Without bothering to glance around, he summoned a waiter, who appeared as if by magic even though the restaurant was busy, and he ordered some wine, his eyes still focused on Heather’s face.

‘You’ve known my mother for a year or two, my son for considerably less time, and yet here you are—a vital part of this weekend’s activities because you’ve managed to ingratiate yourself. Furthermore, you dabble in pretty little pictures yet seem to have an astute business mind, and I know when someone’s lifting other people’s opinions from the business section of a tabloid newspaper. You appear to have some kind of inside knowledge about how stock markets operate. A little unusual for someone who paints fairies, wouldn’t you say?’

With a few bits and pieces of information, he had somehow managed to make her sound like a secret-service agent.

‘I don’t know where you’re going with this.’

‘Put it this way,’ he drawled, taking his time to taste some of the wine that had been brought to their table and keeping those fabulous grey eyes fixed on her. ‘In my position, it’s always a good idea to be wary of anyone who doesn’t fit their brief.’

‘And I guess,’ she said acidly, ‘that my brief is the unattractive country girl without a brain cell in her head?’

‘Do you think of yourself as unattractive?’ Leo pounced on that small, unthinking slip of the tongue, and she flushed with embarrassment.

She could have told him that she never used to. Sure, she had always known that she didn’t have the stick-insect glamour of some of the girls she had grown up with, but she had never had an inferiority complex about her looks. Not until she had moved to London with Brian.

However, the last thing Heather intended to do was bare her soul to the man sitting opposite her.

‘Do you think I’m after…what? Your mother’s money—do you think I might try to con her out of her fortune?’

‘Stranger things have been known to happen.’ He really couldn’t credit that, though. If the woman had a taste for high living, then she was doing a good job of keeping it under wraps. So far he had yet to see her in something that didn’t look as though its last home was a charity shop.

Heather didn’t say anything. She could have scoffed at his cynicism, but she understood it. Brian had gone from the good-looking boy who had stolen her heart with his floppy blonde hair and sweats to a cold-eyed stranger in expensive clothes. He had made his money and, as the money had rolled in, so too had the gold diggers, the people who’d always been there, wanting something from him.

She sighed and tried to appreciate his suspicions even though they were directed at her.

‘I guess so,’ she said with a shrug. ‘But not in this case. I think your mother’s a really sweet lady. We share a passion for plants and flowers, that’s all.’

‘Is there no one else on whom you could lavish your passion?’ Leo asked lazily. ‘For all things…horticultural?’

For a second there Heather could feel her skin prickling at what she had imagined he was asking her.

‘We get along, and I met Daniel quite by accident. He was exploring the fields; I guess he must have been lonely.’ This was the perfect time to turn the tables and do a little accusing of her own, but his presence was stifling, clogging up her brain, turning it to mush. ‘Anyway, I think he got lost. I asked him a few questions and he must have felt at ease because he came visiting again; I enjoy having him around.’

‘I guess you might,’ Leo mused thoughtfully. ‘You must get very lonely in that cottage of yours. Working from home is an isolated way of earning an income. I’m surprised someone as young as you is content to stay indoors all day. Don’t you crave to see what life in the fast lane is all about?’

‘No. I don’t.’ She lowered her eyes.

‘Really?’ What was she hiding? Leo thought. And didn’t she know that trying to keep secrets from a man was the one sure-fire way to fuel his curiosity? His curiosity was certainly on the move now…and he was beginning to enjoy the novelty. In fact, the weekend which had started on such an unfortunate note was definitely beginning to look up. Daniel had cracked one of those rare smiles of his, and even his mother seemed a little more relaxed than she normally did. The day so far had meandered in a more casual fashion than usual, and he had spent no time in front of his computer downloading his emails or generally continuing with business. It was proving to be all the more satisfying by the sudden challenge of ferreting out whatever Heather was keeping from him.

‘You never answered my question,’ he said, changing the subject so abruptly that she raised her startled blue gaze to him. ‘The one about your banking knowledge. And here’s another thing…’ Leo leaned forward, noticing the way she flinched back warily a couple of inches in her chair. ‘Last night you said that men like me take it for granted that women will want to spend time with them. What did you mean by that?’

‘I didn’t mean anything by it. In fact, I’m struggling to remember whether I made that remark or not.’ She looked at him resentfully.

‘If you deliver an insult, then you have to be prepared to back it up. What is a man like me?’

‘Self-assured,’ Heather told him bitterly. ‘Arrogant…accustomed to giving orders and having them obeyed. Ruthless, dismissive; the sort of man who doesn’t think it’s wrong to use other people.’

Leo would have taken offence, but for the fact that this was more than just a casual dismissal; this was personal experience speaking. Ferociously controlled as he was, he felt a flare of sexual curiosity which took him by surprise, but he didn’t fight it. He had a rich diet of very biddable women. Even women who could afford to pick and choose, women with both brains and beauty, had never been able to resist him. But he was without a woman at the moment, having parted company three months previously from the very delectable and very, very ambitious Eloise. Eloise had removed herself to New York, taking up a position with a hedge-fund company when it became obvious that their love affair wouldn’t be travelling down the altar any time soon.