The Case of the Mesmerizing Boss
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When they told him the bad news, he almost gave up, he was so depressed.
“This won’t do,” Tess said gently, recognizing instinctively the lack of life in his lean face. She knelt beside the chair where he was sitting up for a few minutes and took his hand in hers, holding tightly. “You can’t give up, Dane,” she told him. “They only said that you might not be able to work—not that you will. You can’t let them do this to you.”
“Can’t? They already have,” he said tersely, averting his eyes. “Why don’t you get out, too?”
“You’re my almost-big-brother,” she said. “I want you to get well.”
He glared at her. “I don’t need a teenage sister.”
“You’ll get one, all the same, when our parents marry,” she said pleasantly. “Come on, cheer up. You’re tough. You were a ranger, after all.”
His face closed up. “Was is right.”
“So you won’t be in prime condition for a while. So what? Listen, Dane, there are plenty of things you can do with your law-enforcement background. God doesn’t close doors without opening windows. This can be an opportunity, if you’ll just look at it in that light.”
He didn’t speak. But he listened. His dark eyes narrowed as they searched hers. “I don’t like women,” he began.
“I guess not. With all due respect, your life hasn’t been blessed wtih nice ones.”
“I married Jane to spite my mother. Not that I didn’t want her at the time. She was all set to settle down and have children. That was all she wanted.” He averted his face, as if the memory of her desertion was killing him. “Get out, Tess. Go play nurse somewhere else.”
“Can’t.” She shrugged. “Who’ll keep you from wallowing in self-pity?”
“Damn 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.