The Boss's Proposal (18 page)

Chloe, desperate to get going, tugged her hand. She was in a state of high excitement. Vicky thought that her daughter might just spontaneously combust from it if she didn't go on a ride quickly. Were there medical services on site for desperate ride-deprived children? She put the question to Max and they both laughed companionably. She could already feel her resolution to remain as distant and as objective as possible beginning to crumble.

This was what it was all about. Being dragged along by a child, with the sun shining and your heart bursting with love for the man by your side. Had it not been for several clouds on that particular horizon, she would have said that happiness was very nearly within her grasp.

Even thoughts of Shaun, when she
did
think about him, had lost their power over her. He'd melted away into a vague shadow, eclipsed by the dynamic presence of his very much alive brother. Had that always been the way? she wondered. She could almost feel a pang of sympathy for him now, an emotion that would have been unthinkable three or four months previously. His ghost had let her go, or maybe it was the other way around.

The morning was spent on rides, little, delightful rides, for which the queues were not as lengthy as the guidebook had led her to believe. The three of them sat in the little cars, with Chloe between them, and anyone seeing them would have thought that they were the archetypal nuclear family, needing only the dog and the family saloon car to
complete them. They would have done a double-take, had they heard the convoluted history behind them.

And was it her imagination, or had all that hungry, masculine lust bitten the dust? Ever since he'd found out about Chloe, the sexual interest he'd had in her had died. He was behaving with such wonderful ease, was chatting to her in such a friendly and unthreatening fashion, that she wanted to burst into tears. Instead, she forced wide, bright smiles onto her face until the muscles in her jaw began to ache from the strain of it. Over lunch, she watched him from under her lashes, watched the way his attention was focused on his niece, winning her over. When he looked at
her
, he wasn't seeing her as a woman, he was seeing her as Chloe's mother. With all the cards on the table, she couldn't have hoped for a better situation, nor could she have expected to be feeling as desolate as she was now.

‘You're getting red,' he said, as they headed towards the MGM studios.

‘Thank you,' Vicky snapped shortly. An unsightly blush added more unwanted colour to her cheeks and further worsened her temper.

‘And you've gone into a sulk.'

‘I have
not
gone into a
sulk
.'

‘What are you thinking?'

‘I'm thinking that Chloe's having a wonderful time,' she lied, looking at her daughter, who was ahead of them by a few paces. ‘I've never been able to afford many treats for her.'

‘That needn't be a problem from now on.'

‘Because she's got an uncle with a bottomless wallet to oblige her? In case you're interested, money causes as many problems as it solves, and I don't believe in flinging it at children willy-nilly.'

‘Stop spoiling for an argument.' He looked sideways at
the angry tilt of her head, the tight mouth, and felt an irrational desire to smooth it all away with his fingers. He wanted to stroke her face and produce a smile, like a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat. His feelings for his niece, unexpected as they were, had been remarkably easy to find, but for a man who'd never had a problem with women her damned mother was proving to be a brick wall. He'd made a decision to back away from her, to win her over without suffocating her with an arrogant need to get what he wanted, and he was baffled that she was so tangibly failing to respond. Even when he'd managed to bring a smile to her face her eyes had slithered away from his and found sanctuary in her daughter.

‘I am not
spoiling for an argument
. Why would I want to argue with you?' She glanced at him and tossed her head, like a beautiful wild filly rearing up angrily against restraint.

Had it not been for Chloe skipping ahead, looking back every so often to make sure that she was still within the fold, he would have been seriously tempted to drag Vicky back to the hotel room and restrain her in any way he could. Which would have had her bolting off in the opposite direction. He couldn't win, could he?

‘You tell me,' he said through gritted teeth. ‘Do you resent me because your daughter and I get along? Are you jealous?'

‘That's ridiculous!'

‘Is it?' He didn't want to. At least, he knew he shouldn't, but he pulled off the band securing the end of her plait and wove his hand into her hair, relishing the soft fall around his fingers and tightening his grip when he felt her automatically try and pull away from him.

‘What are you doing?' she breathed.

He dodged the question. There was no acceptably polite
way of telling her that he was fighting the urge to do something very physical and very satisfying with her.

‘I am trying to get your attention.'

‘Well, you're not setting about it the right way.' She gave her head a gentle tug, but abandoned the effort when Chloe turned around. Instead she forced herself to smile, and when her daughter pranced to them and held her mother's hand she was reduced to having his hand in her hair, caressing her head. What was he playing at? She heard herself chatting to Chloe, valiantly keeping up the pretence that her body wasn't on fire, as his fingers softened and finally his hand dropped to curl around her waist.

He could feel her body tense. He could also smell the expectancy there and it thrilled and frustrated him at the same time. It was as though he knew the numbers to the combination lock, but not the right sequence and, however much he jostled with the digits, he never quite managed to get it right. The gentle brush of her slight body against his thigh was a sweet, agonising reminder of how capable she was of tormenting him, without even realising it.

She had a quality of stubbornness about her and, even though he could work out its origin, he still found it exasperating. It was as if her gentleness had hardened through experience into bull-headed pride, which had a nerve-racking tendency to shift into place just when he thought that he was getting through to her. He glanced down and hungrily eyed the gentle bounce of her small breasts, two mounds pushing against her light salmon T-shirt. Under normal circumstances, their one act of lovemaking, which had been the most satisfying he'd ever experienced, would have naturally led to more, but she'd dug her heels in and was continuing to dig her heels in.

By the time they had made it to the MGM studios, his
imagination had taken his frustration to new, unrewarding heights.

After some exhaustive queues for rides which Chloe seemed desperate to experience, they found themselves standing in front of the Tower of Terror, a massive brown house designed to look terrifyingly spooky. It succeeded.

‘Bigger than I thought,' Max murmured dubiously. ‘And no good for you, little one.' He patted the top of Chloe's head and she shot him a woebegone smile of acceptance.

‘But feel free to go ahead yourself,' Vicky said, positioning herself opposite him just in case his errant hand decided to stray again. With Chloe there, she was compelled not to make a scene, which was the last thing she wanted to do anyway, when the feel of his skin against hers was sinfully exciting.

‘I wouldn't dream of abandoning you two ladies…'

‘Go ahead. We'll wait here for you.'

‘The queue's too long.'

‘Oh, that's all right. Never mind us. We'll grab an ice-cream and watch the world go by, won't we, Chlo?' She gave him a nasty grin and arched her eyebrows in feigned surprise, as though struck by a sudden thought. ‘You're not
scared
, are you? Not when you told us that you were only scared of
spiders
?'

Max looked down at her and uncomfortably tugged at the collar of his polo shirt, as though it had unexpectedly shrunk two sizes and was now a tight fit. ‘Why don't
you
have a go, if you're so daring?'

‘Ah, so you
are
scared.' Vicky folded her arms and shot him a triumphant, lofty smile. This little nick of vulnerability was unbearably endearing, little did he realise. She noticed that he was looking positively sheepish and resisted the impulse to burst out laughing. ‘I think I might
just take you up on your offer, if you don't mind waiting for me…' Chloe's eyes went round with admiration.

‘You wait,' he murmured into her ear, before she headed off to join the curling line of people waiting for the ride of their lives. ‘When you stumble back here, white-faced and shaking…'

‘Coward,' she murmured back with laughter in her voice, and she looked to find him grinning wickedly at her. Whatever ride she went on, she decided that it couldn't destabilise her more than the man standing in front of her. What man in all creation could make all her senses feel as though she was hurtling through space and could wreak havoc with her nervous system in a matter of seconds?

Forty-five minutes later, she discovered that when it came to matters of the heart she was hopeless, but when it came to rides she was utterly lacking in fear, and for the next week she exhaustively tried them all while Max and Chloe experimented with interactive playgrounds for preschool children and rides that a three-month-old baby would feel at home on. Much to her glee. The one simulator ride he ventured on rendered him ashen-faced and speechless, and he was obliged to recover over a bag of chocolate chip cookies shared with his niece. He was good-natured in defeat and willingly allowed her to scamper off on mile-high roller coasters and death-defying water slides, while he tamely crammed his large masculine frame into ride-along cars and teapots and carousel horses with Chloe.

She discovered that they had settled into a habit of sorts, and one which suited her perfectly. They explored parks by day, a tiring business which left no time for personal chit-chat, had a spot of lunch, then went their separate ways in the early afternoon. Vicky had no idea what he
hived off to do at two-thirty in the afternoon, but she suspected that he worked, having noticed that, despite the fact that the holiday had been designed for bonding with his niece, he'd still travelled over with his laptop computer. In the evenings, they both ate with Chloe, and then Vicky retired at a reasonable hour to bath her daughter, settle her and have an early night herself. The days were long and sleeping was no problem.

It came as a shock when she awakened on the Tuesday morning to the realisation that the holiday was virtually at an end. One full day left and they would be leaving the following night. She would have to start packing her stuff in the evening.

She couldn't believe that all the warnings in her head about caution and wariness had been for nought. Aside from the occasional reminder to herself that he could hurt her, she'd allowed herself to succumb to the magic of the place, just as Chloe had, without a thought for common sense. Aside from that one fleeting instance when he had touched her, with the safeguard of Chloe to let him get away with it, he had been the model of good behaviour. If anything, it had not reassured her of his worthwhile intentions but added to the growing list of reasons why she had fallen in love with him in the first place. Hostility was always a safer defence against surrender, but she'd failed to consider that it takes two to wage a war and, in the absence of a willingly antagonistic partner, she'd found herself suspending her despair and giving in to the moment.

He made it easy for her to laugh. He didn't give her the time or opportunity to dwell on her own personal problems and she'd discovered that it was remarkably easy to put off dealing with the complications of her life, of which he was a major one, until a later date. Some mysterious
later
date
, when she would be forced to wake up and confront issues and handle the grief that she was busily creating for herself simply by enjoying him without the boundaries she knew were essential.

But she still imagined that she could somehow put off reality for the next two days, until he said to her, as they prepared to go their separate ways for the afternoon, ‘We need to talk.'

Vicky took in the implacable expression on his face, browner now that it had been less than a fortnight ago, and felt a slither of foreboding crawl up her spine. ‘How can we?' She shrugged helplessly, reluctant to let reality intrude on the last day but one. ‘Chloe—'

‘—has been fixed up with a babysitter for this evening. She's coming at seven-thirty. I arranged it through the hotel and, before you start throwing up your hands in anxiety, their babysitting service is very professional. They're all trained in childcare; I asked lots of questions before booking one. So we can have a meal and a…chat. It's time to sort out what we're going to do about the situation.'

Why did that have such an ominous ring about it?

Vicky wanted to ask
Already?
but she knew the dangers of even thinking along those lines, never mind voicing them. She also knew that he was right. If what he had set out to do with this trip was prove himself as a sound figure in Chloe's life, and a reliable, easy-to-digest one in hers, then he'd succeeded—if anything, rather well. He'd left her with no arguments to voice.

Chloe was asleep by the time the fresh-faced babysitter arrived, complete with a bag of ‘things to do', which would not be used, and Vicky was more or less ready to go. Mentally bracing herself, and feeling a little strange in her first dressy outfit of the holiday—a small pale-coloured flowered dress in silky material, falling softly to mid-thigh,
and a pair of wedge-heeled cream sandals that lent a couple of inches to her height. For the first time she felt nervous at the prospect of seeing him without the convenient distractions of Chloe and rides and people around them.