In Bed With the Boss

‘What made you think I might have coached him? I would have thought I’d made it perfectly clear these things can’t be rushed.’

He stopped one step below her so their eyes were almost level. And she saw something else she’d missed in her earlier summation of him—he might be hiding it well, but he was tired.

A smile flickered in his eyes as he said, ‘Yes, ma’am, you did impart that pearl of wisdom to me, amongst a few others. Uh—why? I’m not in a good mood, to put it mildly. I haven’t been for days and when I get like this I tend to be—cynical, suspicious, even downright bloody-minded.’

‘So they told me—’ She broke off and bit her lip.

‘Told you that, did they? My staff?’ he drawled. ‘They’re right.’

‘But have things fallen through?’ She looked concerned. ‘Has it all collapsed, the negotiations?’

‘No, it’s all signed and sealed.’

‘Then why do you feel like this?’ Her eyes, without her glasses, were wide and bemused.

Max Goodwin studied her from head to toe. The gardenia in her hair, the absence of any jewellery but her almost jewel-bright hazel eyes, the points of her stand-up collar against her slender, creamy neck. Then that dense blue gaze swept down her décolletage, her tiny waist, the fall of her skirt and the slit in it.

‘Oh, no!’ she said, with deep foreboding. ‘Don’t tell me I’m not dressed right again. But this is what I would have worn if I was working and I didn’t know—I didn’t know in what capacity I was coming to this party, anyway! I wasn’t expecting to come, you see.’

‘Miss Hill,’ he said formally, ‘you’re dressed fine.’ He said it with patent irony, however, because, in fact, the way she was dressed had induced a sudden desire in him to undress her, item by item in some quiet place, to release that lovely body from her clothes purely for his pleasure but in a way that brought her the same pleasure …

‘Uh …’ he forced his mind to the present ‘… and please do come to the party as a guest, although I did think an extra Mandarin speaker wouldn’t go amiss so if you see the need for any interpreting I’d be grateful if you could help out.’

‘Of course.’

‘As for the rest of it—’ he looked into her eyes ‘—to be perfectly honest I’m not a hundred per cent sure why I am the way I am, but even if I were you’d be the last person I’d tell.’

He continued up the stairs leaving Alex feeling dumbfounded, smarting and wounded.

She was not to know that Max Goodwin hesitated for a few moments before he went in to say goodnight to his son; nor was she to know that he’d travelled down from Brisbane with his intern and cousin, Paul O’Hara. And she had no idea that this had reminded him that Paul had given every impression of being smitten by Alex Hill when he’d come to call a few nights ago—even much earlier than that, of course—but he, Max, had had too much on his mind to digest it at the time.

But Paul’s patent disappointment a few nights ago when Alex had left them, the way his gaze had lingered on her back as she’d walked away, the way he’d been distracted from then on had all told their own tale.

Paul was thoroughly nice, though, and probably highly suitable for a girl who’d led a sheltered life; they were closer in age, they had no dark backdrops to their love lives as he had.

So, why, Max Goodwin wondered, with his hand poised to open Nicky’s door, was it a bit like the proverbial thorn in the flesh to think of Alex with Paul?

It was a long night.

Margaret Winston had also come down and she greeted Alex warmly, then faded into the background.

Alex discovered herself seated next to Sir Michael McPherson and opposite his wife, Lady Olivia. Those introductions would have appealed to her sense of humour, had she been feeling at all humorous.

Olivia Goodwin, now Lady McPherson, was, as Mrs Mi

lls had described, attractive and vibrant. She was slender with her brother’s blue eyes but coppery hair and a light dusting of freckles. She was forthright.

She said, as she unfolded her napkin and took up her champagne glass in a hand upon which a fabulous sapphire ring surrounded by diamonds resided, ‘I don’t believe we’ve met. Are you a friend of Max’s?’

‘No. I work for him.’

Well-bred surprise beamed her way. ‘In what capacity?’

‘I’m Nicky’s nanny and, because I speak Mandarin, Max’s personal interpreter and PA.’

‘Heaven’s above!’ Sir Michael intoned. ‘That’s a mouthful.’

‘It can certainly be a handful,’ Alex replied austerely, and sipped her champagne.