Bella's Impossible Boss

by Michelle Douglas

  ‘What’s destination two?’

  Something inside her loosened at his tone. It was no longer just amused tolerance or barely checked impatience. Something else had entered his voice—a hint of curiosity, perhaps?

  ‘A stroll along the harbour foreshore.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘There doesn’t have to be a reason.’

  ‘Yes, there does.’

  ‘Because we’re on holiday, then.’

  Although he didn’t say anything, she could tell he wasn’t satisfied. She considered telling him the truth—that it was Sunday and she wanted to see how the people of Newcastle spent their Sunday—but that would only remind him of work. And suddenly work was the last thing on her mind.

  She pulled him to a halt and pointed offshore. ‘How many container ships can you count out there?’

  He shaded his eyes and scanned the horizon. ‘Twenty-two.’

  ‘Twenty-two! And those are only the ones we can see. There’ll be more back that way.’ She gestured behind them. ‘I’m hoping I get to watch at least one of them come into the harbour today. It’s only a little harbour and they are big boats. I bet it’s quite a show.’

  Dominic stared at her for a moment and then threw his head back and laughed. ‘Bella, you are such a child!’

  But he said it so nicely she refused to take offence. And then they rounded the bend in the path and Bella found a brand-new beach stretching out in front of her—all the way to the headland with its lighthouse—and she couldn’t resist its silent invitation. ‘Ooh, look, it’s glorious!’ She raced down the steps to the beach, kicked off her shoes and dug her toes into the sand.

  * * *

  After a moment’s hesitation, Dominic followed her. The sand was cool beneath his feet. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d walked on a beach. He trailed behind Bella as she ambled along, seemingly aimlessly as far as he could tell, but it was no hardship watching her. Those snug jeans outlined her hips to perfection, and they had the most innocently sexy sway he could ever remember encountering.

  Eventually she pointed farther up the beach. ‘Let’s go sit up there for a bit to soak all this up.’

  He wasn’t exactly sure what they were supposed to soak up, but he didn’t argue. He was intrigued by whatever it was she was trying to prove to him today.

  He was intrigued by the woman herself.

  She threw herself down on the ground, the long strands of her hair touching the sand as she leant back on her hands and lifted her face skywards. She seemed at home here in a way she never was in their apartment. ‘Did you have beach holidays a lot as a kid?’ he found himself asking.

  ‘Oh, yes, all the time when my mother was alive. We’d spend the summer holidays on the Sunshine Coast. It was idyllic.’

  Her face came alive as she recalled those holidays and the ache to kiss her intensified. For the first time he felt a tiny tug of understanding for his father’s weakness. The man had been a gullible sap, but—

  But nothing!

  He wrenched his gaze from Bella’s face to stare out to sea.

  ‘Did you go on holidays as a child, Dominic?’

  His lips twisted. ‘Holidays cost money, Bella, and there was never enough for the essentials when I was growing up, let alone extras like holidays.’ He doubted that was something the pampered woman at his side would ever understand. Marco had shielded her from life’s harsher realities.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she murmured.

  He didn’t want her pity.

  She hesitated. ‘Was your childhood unhappy?’

  He should have resented her probing. His normal tactic was to stonewall personal questions, but he’d started to realise that normal tactics didn’t work where Bella was concerned. Maybe it had something to do with the fact they were sharing that God-awful apartment.

  Maybe revealing the vast gulf that lay between them would serve as a reminder why kissing her would be such a disastrous idea. Maybe it would remind him that, although she had vivacity and an animation that called to him, she was still a woman—a woman who had continually taken advantage of her father’s love and patience. She would do the same to any man.

  But he wasn’t a chump like his father, and he had no intention of ever becoming one.

  ‘When my father lost his job and found it hard to get work again, my mother left him.’ He met Bella’s gaze head-on. ‘I never saw her again.’

  Her eyes widened. Her bottom lip quivered. ‘She left you, too?’

  His disclosure was meant to create a barrier between them. The softness warming her eyes shouldn’t have him wanting to lay his head on her shoulder to rest for a while.

  ‘Oh, Dominic, that’s dreadful! How old were you?’

  He shrugged, made his voice uncaring, though that was harder than it should’ve been. ‘Nine.’

  ‘How did your father deal with that?’

  ‘Alcohol.’

  His heart burned at her quick intake of breath. He could just imagine how shocking it must seem to her. ‘He did have his sober periods when he picked up work and dangerous women.’

  She swallowed. ‘Dangerous?’

  ‘No sooner did he get a new job then there’d be a new woman to spend all his money on.’

  When he’d had it, Christopher Wright had thrown money around like there was no tomorrow, uncaring that there was next to no food in the house, that the electricity bill hadn’t been paid, that his son needed new shoes and schoolbooks. As long as he’d had men slapping him on the back for buying the next round of drinks, and women batting their eyes at him, all had been right in Christopher’s world. When Dominic had tried to remonstrate with him, he’d simply laughed it off and claimed that tomorrow would take care of itself.

  ‘My father married and divorced another three times by the time I was sixteen.’

  She gaped at him. ‘Three?’

  ‘All who took him to the cleaners in the divorce settlements. Not that he had much left in the end.’ His father had lost heart after wife number four had deserted him. ‘That’s when he hit the bottle hard.’ Luckily, Christopher had always been a jovial drunk.

  Dominic’s lips twisted and he gave one hard shake of his head. ‘My father either couldn’t make money or he couldn’t hold on to it.’ His father’s eventual disillusion had burned itself on to Dominic’s soul; the poor bloody schmuck. Dominic had never envied him his optimism for the future. He’d always known it would end in disappointment.

  He’d been very careful never to cultivate that kind of optimism in himself.

  He turned to her. ‘Your father helped me with him, you know?’

  Her brows shot up. ‘He did? How?’

  ‘My father developed alcoholic dementia and needed full-time care. Before I could move him into my apartment, he took off. I couldn’t find him. Marco put multiple men on the case, looking for him. Eventually we discovered him washed up at a welfare centre.’

  ‘I’m glad Papa could help.’

  Dominic had barely been out of university. ‘He then organised the best doctors to examine him.’

  Not that it had made any difference. His father’s alcoholism had been too far gone by then. Bella didn’t know how lucky she was to have Marco for her father.

  The resentment he’d felt for her that first day in Marco’s office started to slip away. Bella may take her father for granted, but he was starting to see that it didn’t mean that she didn’t love him. It didn’t mean that she was cold or hard or uncaring.

  In fact he was starting to see that the exact opposite was true.

  They were both silent for a long moment. Finally Bella said, ‘He must’ve loved your mother very much.’

  He stiffened. ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘To spend so long trying to replace her.’

  He didn’t answer. It wasn’t an idea that had occurred to him before. His hands clenched. It made no difference now, anyhow.

  ‘It’s a pity you couldn’t all have gone on at least one beach
holiday together.’

  He didn’t answer that either.

  ‘Good memories like that can help.’

  He doubted it.

  She nudged his shoulder with hers and grinned. ‘You want to know one of my father’s favourite things to do at the beach?’

  He stared back, his interest piqued. He found it hard to imagine Marco at the beach. ‘What?’

  She grabbed his hand, hauled him to his feet and then tugged him down towards the shoreline with its damper sand. ‘He loves to build sandcastles.’

  She dropped to her knees and started digging. It was so unexpected it startled a laugh from him.

  ‘They weren’t just any old sandcastles, mind.’

  A gust of breeze tugged at his hair. She glanced up and grinned. He grinned back. ‘Of course not, this is Marco we’re talking about.’

  ‘Exactly! We had moats and turrets and tunnels and interconnecting channels and... Oh, you name it! C’mon, chop-chop, you can get started on the moat and channel.’

  Dominic hunkered down on his knees, pushed a hand into the sand and started digging, created a channel that led down to the water’s edge. He felt ridiculously elated when a wave swept up the channel to fill their moat, and when Bella clapped her hands in glee.

  They dug; they built a ridiculously elaborate system of buildings and walls within the boundary of the moat. He whistled; Bella hummed. He didn’t know for how long they worked, but a squeal from Bella alerted him to an incoming rogue wave. He grabbed her hand and hauled her out of its path, his arm going around her waist to half lift her. Breathless and laughing, she grinned up at him.

  The breath shot out of him. His grip on her tightened. She stilled. He could read the question in her eyes—was he going to kiss her?

  Would she let him?

  When she didn’t move away, he had his answer.

  Heat surged through him, the temptation pounding at him like the surf breaking on the reef. Bella would taste divine. He wanted to bury his face in her neck and inhale her, and then he wanted to capture her lips in his and devour her slowly, thoroughly. He wanted to memorise the curves of her body with his hands...

  Icy water hitting his feet and ankles brought him back to earth and made Bella jump, breaking the spell.

  ‘Oh, look.’ She pointed to their sandcastle, now laid to waste by the wave.

  His jaw dropped. All their hard work washed away as though it had never existed!

  But Bella only laughed. ‘That’s the joy of sandcastles,’ she confided, bumping shoulders with him again before moving away. He missed the feel of her so close—her vital heat, her soft curves.

  ‘Joy?’ It was all he could do to keep his voice steady.

  ‘You can always start afresh tomorrow on an even more ambitious project.’

  He shook his head, but her words lightened him.

  Her face suddenly lit up. She tugged on his arm and hopped from one foot to the other. ‘Look, look!’

  It took all of his strength to look away from her face and to where she pointed, but when he did a laugh escaped him. A container ship was making its way towards the mouth of the harbour.

  She let go of his arm and set off up the beach to where they’d left their shoes. ‘Hurry up!’ she called back over her shoulder. ‘There’s no way I’m missing this.’

  He found himself breaking into a jog, unable to resist her enthusiasm. And, as he jogged after her, he couldn’t help wondering how different his childhood might have been if his mother had had a bit more of Bella’s spirit.

  * * *

  ‘So, what’s your verdict on Newcastle?’ Dominic asked when they let themselves back into their apartment, much later that day.

  ‘Oh, I just love it!’

  He rolled his shoulders, not comfortable with how easily she could bandy that word about.

  She grimaced as she entered the apartment. She walked across the room and tried to tug the curtains a few inches wider, but the light continued to pool in a kind of sexy halo about the love seat, the table and the sofa. Airy brightness was not this apartment’s selling point.

  She turned, shrugged and waved an apologetic hand at the curtain almost as if to say, You try. But then she smiled. ‘I had the best day.’

  After the demolition of their sandcastle, they’d raced across to the harbour foreshore and had eaten takeaway fish and chips while watching the tugboats bring the container ship into berth. Bella’s wide-eyed wonder had made him feel younger.

  They’d strolled along the foreshore for a while, enjoying the sun and the breeze, and the way both brought the harbour to life, before retracing their steps and ambling through the throng of picnickers in the foreshore park. Then they’d bought ice-creams and sat on a park bench by the beach to eat them. Bella had regaled him with tales of holidays past.

  It was early spring but it had felt like summer.

  ‘What’s your verdict of Newcastle?’

  He frowned. She straightened from petting Minky to slam her hands to her hips. ‘Are you saying you didn’t enjoy yourself today?’

  He shook his head. ‘It was fun.’ Unexpected, but undeniably fun. That had been the biggest surprise of all.

  ‘Then why the frown?’

  ‘After the day we’ve had, I figured your question deserved a considered answer.’

  ‘Oh.’ She blinked. ‘Okay.’ She sat on the sofa and waited. She didn’t try to hurry him.

  ‘It’s a place of contrasts,’ he finally said. ‘There is still a definite hangover from its industrial past.’ Newcastle had once been a steel city; its vast steelworks had provided the city with much of its prosperity. Steam, smoke and fire had once lit up its skies, but the steelworks were long gone and the city had needed to reinvent itself. ‘The beaches are beautiful and the harbour foreshore has been sympathetically reclaimed. Both are...nice places to be.’

  She wrinkled her nose at the term ‘nice’. He shook his head to tell her he wasn’t done yet. ‘The people are no-nonsense, but friendly. There’s a blue-collar mentality and a cosmopolitan sophistication that somehow manage to coexist in harmony. I’m surprised,’ he admitted. ‘It’s extraordinary.’

  As he spoke, he strode back and forth in the space between the table and the sofa. He swung to her now. ‘Is that what you wanted me to experience?’ he demanded. She’d found him lacking in something earlier. Did she still?

  ‘I just wanted you to see for yourself how unique this place is.’

  Her answer didn’t satisfy him, but he couldn’t explain why.

  She leaned towards him and for some reason it reminded him of that moment when he’d considered kissing her. His skin went tight.

  ‘Tell me the truth. After today aren’t you even more determined to make the Newcastle Maldini a success?’

  He blinked. He considered her question. Damn it, yes!

  Bella didn’t press him for an answer. With a little shrug, she rose. ‘I’m going to take a bath.’

  ‘Bella?’

  She turned in the doorway.

  ‘Why don’t you think I can make the hotel a success?’

  Her chin shot up. ‘I didn’t say that you couldn’t. I’m hoping very much that you can.’

  ‘But what is it exactly that you don’t think I have? What quality or qualities do you think I lack?’

  ‘You really want to know?’

  His gut clenched. He nodded.

  She shifted her weight. ‘What motivates you, Dominic?’

  He thought for a moment. ‘Pride.’ Pride in his work. Pride for a job well done.

  She shook her head. ‘That’s not what I think. I think you never want to be that little boy again, dependent on other people’s whims and living a hand-to-mouth existence.’

  He froze.

  ‘You work as hard as you do so you never have to be in that situation again. I understand that, but you’re not working towards something—you’re simply trying to prevent history from repeating itself. When will you decide you have enough money a
nd success? Or will you never have enough?’

  She was wrong! She had to be wrong!

  ‘Passion,’ she finally said. ‘That’s what you don’t have, Dominic. That’s what you lack—passion.’

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  ON MONDAY, Dominic saw the poster on the noticeboard in the staff lunchroom advertising Bella and Luigi’s Bistro for Beginners—a complimentary cooking school for all Maldini hotel staff starting this Thursday evening. All Welcome!

  On Thursday evening, Dominic pushed through the kitchen doors and then stopped dead when he saw how many staff members had shown up for Bella and Luigi’s Bistro for Beginners. He started counting heads and stopped at twenty.

  Were they all here for Bella’s cooking school?

  He shifted his weight from the balls of his feet to his heels. He’d been dubious as to how this idea of hers would fly. He’d shown up to boost numbers, totally unnecessary with this turnout, he now saw.

  He could sneak out again if he wanted and get back to all that paperwork waiting on his desk.

  He shoved his hands in his pockets. He didn’t make for the door. While her flyers and posters had promised fun, he suspected there was more behind this project of hers. She’d taken his lecture about team spirit to heart, it was more than that, too. She wanted to instil a passion in the staff for working at this hotel.

  Because she didn’t believe it was something he could accomplish.

  So it’ll just be like every other five-star hotel. Acid filled his mouth. He was starting to think she might have a point.

  He’d avoided her for the majority of this week—ever since their day in the sun—but he hadn’t been able to block her startling dissection of the motives that drove and rode him, of the reasons he worked so hard. She was right about them, too. It explained the restlessness and the lassitude that tried to settle over him whenever he began to slow down. He might not like what she had to say but, now he could see the truth in her words, he had no intention of ignoring them.

  For all her faults, he’d bet Bella had never had to fight a dreariness of the soul. He wanted to discover her secret for keeping it at bay, for chasing it away. That was the real reason he was here tonight. If he wanted to learn her secrets, he had to stop avoiding her.