Hired for the Boss's Bedroom (5 page)

‘Don’t tell me that you’re Mr Domestic?’

‘You mean you wouldn’t believe me?’ He perched against the counter, arms folded, and laughed softly under his breath.

‘I mean—’ Heather had to take a deep breath to steady her sudden giddiness ‘—I’d quicker believe that there were lots of little green people dashing about on planet Mars.’

‘Okay. You win.’ He gave a mock gesture of defeat. ‘Domesticity doesn’t agree with me.’ He watched as she opened the bottle of wine and poured them both a glass. The ubiquitous flowing skirt was gone. She was wearing some grey jogging-bottoms and an off-white vest bearing the telltale signs of her painting. For the first time, he could really see something of her figure, and his eyes roved appreciatively over the full breasts, the flat stomach, the womanly curve of her hips. She was by no means thin, but her body was toned and surprisingly tanned. He wondered whether she had been taking advantage of the hot weather, tanning in her garden—tanning nude in her garden…?

When she swung round to give him a glass, he surprised himself by flushing.

‘And why is that?’ Heather asked. ‘Could it be that, the more money a person has, the more temptation there is to buy the services of other people who are a lot more handy at doing all those inconvenient chores like cooking?’

Instead of bringing down his shutters, that little undercurrent of belligerence sent a jolt of red-hot lust running through him.

‘Ah…’ He strolled towards her and took a sip of wine. ‘But just think, my little economist, of how many people I keep employed…’

Looking up at him, she could feel that breathing thing happening again. She forced herself to get a grip, to bring the conversation back down to a level she could handle.

‘Or maybe you’re just scared at the thought of putting down roots,’ she said wryly. ‘And if you never treat your house like a home then you never put down roots, do you?’

H
UGE
inroads had been made into the Chinese food, which was spread on the table between them. Noodles and other assorted bits of food had managed to escape the chopsticks and were hardening on the pine table-top. The bottle of wine was nearing its end, but Heather was barely aware of having drunk anything at all. It had taken a little while, but she had lowered her defences and was proud of how normal she was behaving. As far as exercises went, this was a pretty good result. Yes, she could talk to the man without pigeon-holing him. She knew him for what he was, but was not letting that get in the way of responding to him like an adult. She was smugly aware of a sense of personal achievement.

Of course, it had to be said that Leo was making things easy for her. He was no longer on the attack, no longer looking at her with narrow-eyed suspicion which made her hackles rise. The conversation was light, skimming the surface, avoiding any pitfalls.

And the wine was helping. Heather rested her elbow on the table, cupped her face in her hand and looked at Leo sleepily.

‘Don’t tell me that you’re going to doze off in the middle of my conversation?’ he said, sipping his wine and looking at her over the rim of his glass. ‘My ego would never recover.’

‘And we both know that you’ve got a very healthy one of those,’ Heather murmured. His eyes were hypnotic. She could stare into them for ever.

‘I’m going to say thank you, even though I have a sneaking suspicion that there wasn’t anything complimentary behind the observation.’

‘My head feels a little woolly.’

‘In which case, we’d better get you to the sitting room. Leave all this debris. I’ll tidy it up.’

‘You will? You’re domestically challenged—you said that yourself. Do you even know what a dishwasher looks like?’

Leo gave a low laugh and looked at her. She was as soft and full as a peach. Her hair was a riot of gold ringlets framing her face, giving her a look that was impossibly feminine. No hard edges there. Sitting across from her as they had eaten had required a lot of restraint. He had watched her as she tipped her head back, her eyes half-closed, so that she could savour the noodles on her chopsticks, and he had had to shift his body because it had been so damned uncomfortable dealing with his aching erection.

‘You seem to forget that I had a childhood,’ he told her drily. ‘And there was no one around then to do my bidding. My brother and I had our list of chores every day, and some of them included clearing the table after meals.’ Another memory that had not surfaced for a very long time.

‘I can’t imagine you doing chores. I bet you paid your brother to do yours for you.’ Heather had never met Alex. She knew that he was away somewhere distant and exotic and had been for a while.

‘Come on. I’m going to get you into the sitting room.’ The shutters had come down with the mention of his brother, and he stood up. But as she pushed herself away from the table he moved quickly around, and was sweeping her off her feet, taking her by surprise and therefore finding little resistance.

After a few startled seconds, Heather wriggled against him.

‘What are you
doing
?’

‘I’m carrying you into your sitting room. You look a little wobbly on your feet.’

‘I’m perfectly capable of walking three inches!’

‘Stop struggling.’

‘You’ll pull a muscle in your back, lifting me up! ‘After all her smug satisfaction at how amazingly adult she had been—chatting to Leo as though he was just another perfectly normal guy who didn’t rattle her cage—she could now feel every nerve ending in her body screaming in response to this physical contact. His chest was hard and muscular and the hands supporting her were strong and sinewy; all those stirrings, of whatever the heck they were that she didn’t want, were flooding through her in a tidal wave.

The more she wriggled, the more the stirring magnified, so she stopped wriggling and told herself to get a grip.

‘There.’ Leo deposited her gently on the squashy sofa in the sitting room and stood back, looking down at her. ‘Ordeal over.’ He wasn’t sure whether to be amused or disgruntled at her frantic efforts to bolt.

‘It wasn’t an
ordeal
,’ Heather told him, gathering herself into a sitting position. ‘I was—I was just
concerned
for you…’ Her heartbeat should have been returning to normal, but it wasn’t.

‘Concerned?’

‘I’m not the lightest person in the world.’ She spelled it out for him, willing herself to get back into sensible, protective mode.

Leo sat on the sofa and she immediately squirmed into a cross-legged position, her hands resting lightly on her knees.

‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘You do that.’

‘What?’

‘Introduce a topic and then suddenly decide to back off before you can explain what you’re talking about.’

‘There’s nothing to explain.’ She gave a careless shrug and linked her fingers together. ‘I just think that caveman gestures like that are probably better done with someone skinnier than me. Probably with one of those women who fall over themselves to be in your company.’

Leo, well skilled in the ways of women, could recognise a fishing expedition from a mile away. She was curious about him, wanted to know more, but was reluctant to frame her questions directly. Good sign.

‘I thought women liked the caveman approach.’

‘Not when it can lead to personal injury.’

‘Who on earth ever told you that you were…?

‘Fat?’ Heather supplied for him. ‘Overweight?’ She stared at her fingers. ‘In need of losing a few pounds? No one.’

‘No one. Well, you can tell
no one
that he was way off-target. You are neither fat nor are you overweight. And as for all those women who fall over themselves to be in my company…’ He noticed the way she inclined her head very slightly, as if stilling to hear some distant sound. This, he thought with satisfaction, was the sound of a woman who was sexually interested in a man. ‘They do tend to be on the skinny side,’ he admitted. He relaxed back on the sofa and crossed his legs.

‘I knew it.’

‘One more of those monstrously predictable things about me?’

‘Why is it that men with lots of money are always attracted to women who look as though they would have difficulty keeping upright in a strong wind? I mean, really, is there something
attractive
about a human being who doesn’t eat?’

Leo laughed, and when he was finished laughing he looked at her and shook his head, as if a little dazed by the woman sitting opposite him on the sofa.

‘No, there’s absolutely nothing attractive about a woman who doesn’t eat, and I have to admit that I’ve dated a lot of those.’

‘Brainless bimbos?’ She wanted to pull information out of him, and was guiltily aware that she was being as intrusive with him as he had been with her.

‘Brainless bimbos? No, definitely not that.’

Now, that
did
surprise her, and Leo laughed again, amused. ‘Why would I be attracted to a brainless bimbo?’ he asked.

‘Because she looks good on your arm?’

‘And what about when there’s no one around to see her looking good on my arm? What conversation could there possibly be with a brainless bimbo?’

‘So what sort of women
do
you go out with?’

‘Why do you ask?’

Why
, Heather thought, do
I ask?
This wasn’t the sort of casual, skimming-the-surface conversation which was safe and unthreatening. There was an edge to this conversation, but like someone standing on the edge of a precipice, peering down, she found that it was irresistible.

‘No reason. Just making conversation. Really, though, you should go. I’m awfully tired. There’s honestly no need for you to tidy the kitchen. I can do that later, or better still in the morning.’

Leo had no intention of leaving, but it dawned on him that Heather was not like any other woman he had known. That bristly, belligerent spark wasn’t an act to get his attention. If she told him that he should go, then she meant it, and since Leo wasn’t going anywhere—at least not yet—he stood up and shook his head in his best bedside manner, something of which he’d had precious little practice.

‘You need some coffee.’ Before she could launch into another goodbye speech, he left the room, only throwing over his shoulder that maybe she should doze for a bit. The occasional catnap could work wonders, he told her. Not that he knew, but it was all part of the bedside manner.

In truth, Leo had forgotten the art of seduction, or at least the art of persuasion.

With women, the outcome was usually apparent within a matter of minutes: conversation of the intelligent variety, a certain type of eye contact and then the unspoken assumption that they would end up as lovers.

With Heather, he realised that one false move and she would run a mile—and of course, given that he was no more than a highly competitive red-blooded male, what more of a turn on could there be than an uncertain outcome?

Not for a minute did it occur to Leo that a deliberate seduction was anything less than perfectly reasonable. He took his time in the kitchen. Dishes were washed and precariously balanced on the draining board, because drying and putting them away seemed a senseless waste of time when they would be used again at some point in the future—and she had been right with the ‘dishwasher’ accusation. There was some sort of coffee-making machine with nozzles and a vaguely threatening glass jug, which he ignored. Instead, he made them both a cup of instant coffee and was gratified to find that she wasn’t dozing, as he’d suspected she might be, when he returned to the sitting room.

‘Instant,’ he said, handing her the cup and then sitting on one of the big, comfortable chairs by the fireplace. ‘There was a machine there, but…’

‘But you didn’t have a clue how to use it?’ She cupped the mug between her hands and watched him as he sat back, relaxed, in the chair.

‘I could have figured it out in time.’ He shot her a wicked grin that made her toes curl. ‘But life’s too short to waste any of it trying to come to grips with a complicated machine that just ends up making stuff you can get out of a jar.’

‘It tastes much better than the stuff you can get out of a jar.’ After their very civilised evening, Heather knew that she should really be getting rid of him. He had made a nice gesture; she had not been churlish and thrown it back at him, and now she could close the evening on a satisfactory note. But didn’t it make her feel alive, having him here? Looking at him? It was, in equal measure, exciting and disturbing.

‘That’s open to debate.’ But he laughed again. ‘Tell me about your work. Do you work freelance, or are you commissioned to a publisher?’

Since this was nice, safe conversation, Heather felt herself relax as she began explaining to him what she did, telling him about some of the books she had illustrated, then finding that they were talking about art in general. Working freelance as she did, she had relatively little contact with members of the opposite sex, and for the past three years that had suited her. After Brian, she had retreated to lick her wounds, only meeting the occasional guy through some of the women she had befriended in the town, mums from the school where she gave art lessons to their kids once a week. She had accepted no dates, and indeed had made sure to give off all the right ‘hands off’ signals to anyone who had looked even mildly interested.

It made a change to have male company. That, she told herself, was why she was now talking to Leo. She had allowed him in to prove to herself that she was capable of rising above her past. Also, it made sense for them to be, if not friends, then at least on speaking terms, because she would bump into him now and again, and the less awkwardness between them the better.

She resolutely slammed the door on the little voice telling her that she was enjoying that weird, tingly, excited flutter inside her; that she was turned on by his charisma, mesmerised by the raw power of his sex appeal.

Heather was not in the market for being turned on or mesmerised by anyone. In due course, she would emerge from the protective walls she had built around herself and would get back into the dating scene. If she wasn’t too old by then. And, when she did, she would be very careful about the type of men she went out with. In fact, she might get them to fill out a questionnaire before the first date—nothing too complicated, just a few sheets of questions so that she could make sure that only the right kind of guy got through the net.

Since Leo was the complete opposite of the right kind of guy, she felt herself fully protected. Yes, she could appreciate all that alpha-male sex appeal; yes, she could admit that he was ferociously intelligent. But there was no way that she could ever physically be attracted to him, not when her head told her that it made no sense—and she was always careful to be guided by her head now.

So why shouldn’t she enjoy talking to someone who seemed interested in her art? In fact, she even found herself showing him some of her past illustrations, ones she had done for a trilogy about a ballerina.

‘So you don’t just do the fairies,’ Leo murmured, impressed by what he saw, but not liking the way the evening was descending ever increasingly into friendly chit-chat. ‘Tell me something, do you make a living from this?’

‘Depends on what you call “a living”.’ Heather stashed her portfolio to the side of the sofa and sat back down. ‘Compared to what you probably earn, I don’t even begin to make a living, but then again I realised a long time ago that money’s way overrated.’

‘Yes?’ Leo’s ears pricked up. ‘Tell me about it.’ He stood up and began pacing the small room, pausing to look at pictures in frames, eventually settling on the sofa with her. Sitting on the opposite side of the room was not working for him. In a minute she would be gearing up to remind him of how tired she was before she sent him on his way.

His frustration levels were growing by the second.

‘There’s nothing to tell,’ Heather said casually. ‘You just have to read about all those super-rich, super-privileged people who end up in rehab all the time. I mean, have you ever thought that
you
might end up in rehab one day?’