by Susan Meier
After dinner, they went inside for a drink, but Danny paused beside the stairway that led to his third-floor office suite.
“Bonuses don’t pass through our normal accounting. I write those checks myself. It’s a way to keep them completely between me and the employees who get them. The checkbook’s upstairs. Why don’t we just go up now and give you your bonus?”
Grace grinned. “Sounds good to me.”
Danny motioned for Grace to precede him up the steps. Too late, he realized that was a mistake. Her perfect bottom was directly in his line of vision. He paused, letting her get a few steps ahead of him, only to discover that from this angle he had a view of her shapely calves.
He finished the walk up the stairs with his head down, gaze firmly fixed on the Oriental carpet runner on the steps. When he reached the third floor, she was waiting for him. Moonlight came in through the three tall windows in the back wall of the semidark loft that led to his office, surrounding her with pale light, causing her to look like an angel.
Mesmerized, Danny stared at her. He knew she was a nice person. A good person. He also knew that was why he had the quick mental picture of her as an angel and such a strong sense of companionship for her. But she was an employee. He was her boss. He needed to keep his distance.
He motioned toward his office suite and again she preceded him. Inside, he sat behind the desk and she gingerly sat on the chair in front of it.
“I think Orlando Riggs is the salt of the earth,” Danny said as he pulled out the checkbook he held for the business. “You made him feel very comfortable.”
“I felt very comfortable with him.” She grimaced. “A lot of guys who had just signed a thirty-million-dollar deal with an NBA team would be a little cocky.”
“A little cocky?” Danny said with a laugh. “I’ve met people with a lot less talent than Orlando has and a lot less cash who were total jerks.”
“Orlando seems unaffected.”
“Except that he wants to make sure his family has everything they need.” Danny began writing out the check. “I didn’t even realize he was married.”
“And has two kids.”
Kids.
Danny blinked at the unexpected avalanche of memory just the word kids brought. He remembered how eager he’d been to marry Lydia and have a family. He remembered his naive idea of marital bliss, and his chest swelled from the horrible empty feeling he got every time he realized how close he’d been to fulfilling that dream and how easily it had all been snatched away.
But tonight, with beautiful, sweet-tempered, sincere Grace sitting across the desk, Danny had a surprising moment of clarity. He’d always blamed himself for the breakdown of his marriage, but what if it had been Lydia’s fault? He’d wanted to go to counseling. Lydia had simply wanted to go. Away from him. If he looked at the breakdown of his marriage from that very thin perspective, then the divorce wasn’t his fault.
That almost made him laugh. If he genuinely believed the divorce wasn’t his fault then—
Then he’d wasted years?
No. He’d wasted his life. He didn’t merely feel empty the way he’d been told most people felt when they lost a mate; he felt wholly empty. Almost nonexistent. As if he didn’t have a life. As if every day since his marriage had imploded two years ago, he hadn’t really lived. He hadn’t even really existed. He’d simply expended time.
Finished writing the check, Danny rose from his seat. It seemed odd to think about feeling empty when across the desk, eager, happy Grace radiated life and energy.
“Thank you for your help this weekend.”
As he walked toward her, Grace also rose. He handed her the check. She glanced down at the amount he’d written, then looked up at him. Her beautiful violet eyes filled with shock. Her tongue came out to moisten her lips before she said, “This is too much.”
Caught in the gaze of her hypnotic eyes, seeing the genuine appreciation, Danny could have sworn he felt some of her energy arch to him. If nothing else, he experienced a strong sense of connection. A rightness. Or maybe a purpose. As if there was a reason she was here.
The feeling of connection and intimacy could be nothing more than the result of spending every waking minute from Friday afternoon to Sunday night together, but that didn’t lessen its intensity. It was so strong that his voice softened when he said, “No. It isn’t too much. You deserve it.”
She took a breath that caused her chest to rise and fall, calling his attention to the cleavage peeking out of the pink lace of her dress. She looked soft and feminine, yet she was also smart and sensitive. Which was why she attracted him, tempted him, when in the past two years no other woman had penetrated the pain that had held him hostage. Grace treated him like a person. Not like her rich boss. Not like a good catch. Not even like a guy so far out of her social standing that she should be nervous to spend so much one-on-one time. But just like a man.
“Thanks.” She raised her gaze to his again. This time when Danny experienced the sense of intimacy, he almost couldn’t argue himself out of it because he finally understood it. She felt it, too. He could see it in her eyes. And he didn’t want to walk away from it. He needed her.
But then he saw the check in her hands and he remembered she was an employee. An affair between them had consequences. Especially when it ended. Office gossip would make him look foolish, but it could ruin her. Undoubtedly it would cost her her job. He might be willing to take a risk because his future wasn’t at stake, but he couldn’t make the decision for her.
CHAPTER TWO
DANNY CLEARED HIS throat. “You’re welcome. I very much appreciated your help this weekend.” He stepped away and walked toward the office door. “I’m going downstairs to have a drink before I turn in. I’ll see you in the morning.”
Grace watched Danny go, completely confused by what was happening between them. For a few seconds, she could have sworn he was going to kiss her and the whole heck of it was she would have let him.
Let him? She was so attracted to him she darned near kissed him first, and that puzzled her. She should have reminded herself that he was her boss and so wealthy they were barely on the same planet. Forget about being in the same social circle. But thoughts of their different worlds hadn’t even entered her head, and, thinking about them now, Grace couldn’t muster a reason they mattered.
Laughing softly, she combed her fingers through her hair. Whatever the reason, she couldn’t deny the spark between her and Danny. When Orlando left that afternoon, Grace had been disappointed that their weekend together had come to an end. But Danny had asked her to stay one more night, and she couldn’t resist the urge to dress up and hope that he would notice her the way she’d been noticing him. He’d nearly ruined everything by offering her a promotion she didn’t deserve, but he showed her that he trusted her opinion by taking her advice about Bobby Zapf.
The real turning point came when he mentioned his son. He hadn’t wanted to talk about him, but once Danny slipped him into the conversation he hadn’t pretended he hadn’t. She had seen the sadness in his eyes and knew there was a story there. But she also recognized that this wasn’t the time to ask questions. She’d heard the rumor that Danny had gone through an ugly divorce but no report had mentioned a child from his failed marriage. Nasty divorces frequently resulted in child custody battles and his ex-wife could very well make him fight to see his son, which was undoubtedly why he didn’t want to talk about him.
But tonight wasn’t the night for probing into a past that probably only reminded him of unhappy times. Tonight, she had to figure out if he felt for her what she was beginning to feel for him. The last thing she wanted was to be one of those employees who got a crush on her boss and then pined for him for the rest of her career.
And she wouldn’t get any answers standing in his third floor office when he was downstairs!
He glanced up when she walked over. Though he seemed surprised she hadn’t gone to her room as he’d more or less ordered her to, he said, “Drink?”
Wanting to be sharp and alert so she didn’t misinterpret anything he said or did, Grace smiled and said, “No. Thanks.”
She slid onto one of the three red leather bar stools that matched the red leather sofas that sat parallel to each other in front of the wall of windows that provided a magnificent view of the Atlantic Ocean. A black, red and tan Oriental rug between the sofas protected the sand-colored hardwood floors. White-bowled lights connected to thin chrome poles suspended from the vaulted ceiling, illuminating the huge room.
Danny took a swallow of his Scotch, then set the glass on the bar. “Can’t sleep?”
She shrugged. “Still too keyed up from the weekend I guess.”
“What would you normally do on a Sunday night?”
She thought for a second, then laughed. “Probably play rummy with my mother. She’s a cardaholic. Loves any game. But she’s especially wicked with rummy.”
“Can’t beat her?”
“Every once in a while I get lucky. But when it comes to pure skill the woman is evilly blessed.”
Danny laughed. “My mother likes cards, too.”
Grace’s eyes lit. “Really? How good is she?”
“Exceptional.”
“We should get them together.”
Danny took a long breath, then said, “We should.”
And Grace suddenly saw it. The thing that had tickled her brain all weekend but had never really surfaced. In spite of her impoverished roots and his obviously privileged upbringing, she and Danny had a lot in common. Not childhood memories, but adult things like goals and commitments. He ran his family’s business. She was determined to help her parents out of poverty because she loved them. Even the way they viewed Orlando proved they had approximately the same beliefs about life and people.
If Danny hadn’t asked for her help this weekend, eventually they would have been alone together long enough to see that they clicked. They matched. She knew he realized it, too, if only because he’d nearly slipped into personal conversation with her four times at dinner, but he had stopped himself. Probably because she was an employee.
It was both of their loss if they weren’t mature enough to handle an office relationship. But she thought they were. Her difficult childhood and his difficult divorce had strengthened each of them. They weren’t flip. They were cautious. Smart. If any two people could have an office relationship without it affecting their work, she and Danny were the two. And she wasn’t going to miss out on something good because, as her boss, Danny wouldn’t be the first to make a move.
She raised her eyes until she caught his gaze. “You know what? Though you’re trying to fight it, I think you like me. Would it help if I told you I really like you, too?”
* * *
For several seconds, Danny didn’t answer. He couldn’t. He’d never met a woman so honest, so he wasn’t surprised that she spoke her mind. Even better, she hadn’t played coy and tried to pretend she didn’t see what was going on. She saw it, and she wanted to like him as much as he wanted to like her.
And that was the key. The final answer. She wanted to like him as much as he wanted to like her and he suddenly couldn’t understand why he was fighting it.
“It helps enormously.” He bent across the bar and kissed her, partly to make sure they were on the same page with their intentions, and partly to see if their chemistry was as strong as the emotions that seemed to ricochet between them.
It was. Just the slight brush of their lips knocked him for a loop. He felt the explosion the whole way to his toes.
She didn’t protest the kiss, so he took the few steps that brought him from behind the bar and in front of the stool on which she sat. He put his hands on her shoulders and kissed her deeply this time, his mouth opening over hers.
White-hot desire slammed through him and his control began slipping. He wanted to touch her, to taste her, to feel all the things he’d denied himself for the past two years.
But it was one thing to kiss her. It was quite another to make love. But when he shifted away, Grace slid her hand around his neck and brought his lips back to hers.
Relief swamped him. He’d never had this kind of an all-consuming desire to make love. Yet, the yearning he felt wasn’t for sexual gratification. It was to be with Grace herself. She was sweet and fun and wonderful...and beautiful. Having her slide her arms around him and return his kisses with a passion equal to his own filled him with an emotion so strong and complete he dared not even try to name it.
Instead he broke the kiss, lifted her into his arms and took her to his bed.
* * *
The next morning when Grace awoke, she inhaled a long breath as she stretched. When her hand connected with warm, naked skin, her eyes popped open and she remembered she’d spent the night making love with her boss.
Reliving every detail, she blinked twice, waiting for a sense of embarrassment or maybe guilt. When none came she smiled. She couldn’t believe it, but it was true. She’d fallen in love with Danny Carson in about forty-eight hours.
She should feel foolish for tumbling in over her head so fast. She could even worry that he’d seen her feelings for him and taken advantage of her purely for sexual gratification. But she wasn’t anything but happy. Nobody had ever made love to her the way he had. And she was sure their feelings were equal.
She yawned and stretched, then went downstairs to the room she’d used on Friday and Saturday nights. After brushing her teeth and combing her hair, she ran back to Danny’s room and found he was still sleeping, so she slid into bed again.
Her movements caused Danny to stir. As Grace thanked her lucky stars that she had a chance to fix up a bit before he awoke, he turned on his pillow. Ready, she smiled and caught his gaze but the eyes that met hers were not the warm brown eyes of the man who had made love to her the night before. They were the dark, almost black eyes of her boss.
She remembered again the way he’d made love to her and told herself to stop being a worrying loser. Yes, the guy who ran Carson Services could sometimes be a real grouch, but the guy who lived in this beach house was much nicer. And she was absolutely positive that was the real Danny.
Holding his gaze, she whispered, “Good morning.”
He stared at her. After a few seconds, he closed his eyes. “Tell me we didn’t make a mistake.”
“We did not make a mistake.”
He opened his eyes. “Always an optimist.”
She scooted closer so she could rest her head on his outstretched arm. “We like each other. A lot. Something pretty special happened between us.”
He was silent for a few seconds then he said, “Okay.”
She twisted so she could look at him. “Okay? I thought we were fantastic!”
His face transformed. The caution slipped from his dark eyes and was replaced by amusement. “You make me laugh.”
“It’s a dirty job but somebody’s got to do it.”
Chuckling, he caught her around the waist and reversed their positions. But gazing into her eyes, he softened his expression again and said, “Thanks,” before he lowered his head and kissed her.
They made love and then Danny rolled out of bed, suggesting they take a shower. Gloriously naked, he walked to the adjoining bathroom and began to run the water. Not quite as comfortable as he, Grace needed a minute to skew her courage to join him, and in the end wrapped a bedsheet around herself to walk to the bathroom.
But though she faltered before dropping the sheet, when she stepped into the shower, she suddenly felt bold. Knowing his trust was shaky because
of his awful divorce, she stretched to her tiptoes and kissed him. He let her take the lead and she began a slow exploration of his body until he seemed unable to handle her simple ministrations anymore and he turned the tables.
They made love quickly, covered with soap and sometimes even pausing to laugh, and Grace knew from that moment on, she was his. She would never feel about any man the way she felt about Danny.
CHAPTER THREE
WHEN GRACE AND Danny stood in the circular driveway of his beach house, both about to get into their cars to drive back to Pittsburgh, she could read the displeasure in his face as he told her about the “client hopping” he had scheduled for the next week. He wanted to be with her but these meetings had been on the books for months and he couldn’t get out of them. So she kissed him and told him she would be waiting when he returned.
They got into their vehicles and headed home. He was a faster driver, so she lost him on I-64, but she didn’t care. Her heart was light and she had the kind of butterflies in her tummy that made a woman want to sing for joy. Though time would tell, she genuinely believed she’d found Mr. Right. She’d only known Danny for two weeks, and hadn’t actually spent a lot of that time with him since he was so far above her on the company organizational chart. But the weekend had told her everything she needed to know about the real Danny Carson.
To the world, he was an ambitious, demanding, highly successful man. In private, he was a loving, caring, normal man, who liked her. A lot.
Yes, they would probably experience some problems because he owned the company she worked for. He’d hesitated at the bar before kissing her. He’d asked her that morning if they’d made a mistake. But she forced herself not to worry about it. She had no doubt that once they spent enough time together, and he saw the way she lived her beliefs, his worries about dating an employee would vanish.
