The Case of the Mesmerizing Boss. Diana Palmer

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СКАЧАТЬ you!” he snapped, his eyes flashing warning signals as they met hers.

      She grinned, refusing to be intimidated. That was the first spark of interest she’d seen since they’d told him he couldn’t work. “That’s better,” she said. “How about a cup of coffee?”

      He hesitated. But after a minute, he gave in to the irritating need to be fussed over. He nodded and she almost ran in her haste to get to the coffee machine down the hall. He stared after her with helpless need. He’d never been treated like this by a woman, by any woman. It was new and unsettling to have someone care about him, want to do things for him. With his mother, and especially Jane, it had been, “What can you do for me?” Tess was different. Too different. She was getting under his skin, and not just with her warm affection. He looked at her body and felt a kind of desire he hadn’t experienced in years. She aroused him as Jane never had. That, he thought worriedly, could present some problems later on. She was only nineteen, even if she was probably experienced. Most girls were these days. He closed his eyes. Well, he’d cross that bridge later. Not now.

      He began to think about what she’d said, about a new profession. His lips pursed thoughtfully and all at once he began to smile as wheels turned in his mind.

      As the weeks passed, Tess came with time-clock regularity, sitting with him, talking to him. He accepted her presence and finally began to let his guard down with her. They grew closer, even as he fought his headlong attraction to her.

      The attraction slowly began to undermine his efforts to be kind to her. He was overly irritable one Monday morning when she came to his apartment and found him lying listlessly in bed.

      “You again? What the hell do you want?” he’d asked coldly.

      Used to his flashes of temper by now, she only smiled. “I want you to get well,” she said simply.

      He lay back and closed his eyes. “Go away. Aren’t you late for school?”

      “I graduated. It’s summer.”

      “Then get a job.”

      “I’m going to secretarial school at night.”

      “And working during the day?”

      “Sort of.”

      His head turned on the pillow. “Sort of?”

      She smiled. “Dad thinks I’m doing enough of a job helping you get back on your feet.” She didn’t add that her father had only agreed absently with her own comment on that score. Nita had been to see her son just that once, and had stayed less than five minutes. But Tess adored him. She’d worked to lose weight, to improve her appearance, so that he might notice her during his long recovery. It hadn’t worked, but she was hopeful that it might one day.

      “Are you qualified to practice psychiatry and physical therapy?” he asked with biting sarcasm.

      It bounced right off. She knew he was hurting, so she didn’t mind being a target. She put her purse aside and stood up, her ponytail swinging as she leaned over him.

      “My father is going to marry your mother. When that happens, you’ll be my big brother. I need to practice looking out for you,” she said.

      He glared at her. “I don’t need looking after.”

      “Yes, you do,” she replied pleasantly. Her eyes went to the visible scars on his upper arm in its white T-shirt. There were worse ones on his back. She’d seen them, though he didn’t know she had. “It must hurt terribly,” she said, her voice as gentle as the look she gave him. “I’m sorry you got hurt, Richard.”

      “Dane,” he corrected. “Nobody calls me Richard.”

      “Okay.”

      “And I don’t need a schoolgirl for a nursemaid.”

      “Why doesn’t your mother come to see you more often?” she asked curiously.

      He averted his eyes. “Because she hated my father. I look like him.”

      “Oh.” She moved a little closer, hesitant but determined. “Wouldn’t you like to be part of a family?” she asked, sounding more plaintive than she realized. “I’ve only ever had my grandmother, really, and she only kept me because she had to. My mother died when I was just little. Dad…” She shrugged. “Dad was never much of a family person. So I’ve really got nobody. And…I’m sorry…but it seems as if now you haven’t got anybody, either.” She clasped her hands tightly at her waist. “We could be each other’s family.”

      His face had gone hard, and his eyes glittered at her. “I don’t want a family,” he said deliberately. “Least of all, you!”

      “I might grow on you,” she said, and smiled to hide the hurt caused by his words. Of course he didn’t want her. Nobody ever really had.

      He hadn’t said anything else. He’d tried ignoring her, but she wouldn’t go away. She came every single day, bringing books for him to read, tapes for him to listen to. She cooked for him and sat with him and talked to him, argued with him and encouraged him, and despite his hostility and lack of encouragement, she very quietly fell in love with him.

      She didn’t realize that her love for him was so obvious. It was impossible not to notice how she felt, when her face was radiant with it. Neither had she known that Dane noticed her without wanting to, his dark eyes growing more covetous by the day as his recovery brought her close and kept her there. He became used to her, enjoyed her, wanted her. She was so different from all the women he’d had in his life. Tess was loving and gentle, and there was an odd kind of vulnerability about her. He thrived on her attentions. He began to look forward to her company.

      But even so, he eventually grew uneasy when he began to realize how attached he was becoming to her. He was afraid of involvement, terrified of it, after the disaster of his marriage. Even if he’d married Jane to spite his hard-hearted mother, who didn’t approve of her, he’d been attracted to Jane at first, and she’d pretended to be in love with him. Then had come marriage and her distaste of intimacy with him. The crowning touch had been her reckless affair with his old partner on the Houston police force. That had been revenge, he knew, and she’d left him more crippled than the shooting had. Tess was a woman. She could very easily be deceiving him, too, overcome with compassion and what was probably physical infatuation.

      His doubts led to a return of his former moodiness, and then to open hostility. He pushed Tess away at every opportunity, but she was stubborn and refused to believe that he really didn’t want her around.

      He got back on his feet and grew strong much more quickly than anyone thought he would. With good health came a revived male vitality that responded suddenly, and with devastating results, to Tess’s femininity….

      With her blond hair around her shoulders and wearing a white peasant dress with a colorful belt, she danced into his apartment at lunchtime one day carrying a homemade cake. Dane was in jeans and barefoot, his white T-shirt over his muscular chest damp with sweat from the workout he’d been having in his improvised gym. He limped a little because of his wounds, but he could walk. Now he was intent on walking without the limp, getting fit. But Tess was making him vulnerable all over again, draining him of strength.

      He wanted her desperately, even if it was totally against his will. СКАЧАТЬ