Tempted by Her Single Dad Boss

by Annie O'Neil

  But if she didn’t feel she could trust him enough to tell him what had happened to make her pull back? It wasn’t a fabric that could hold.

  Give her time.

  He walked into the daycare center and right away he picked his son out from the smattering of children and gave Jake a wave.

  His son didn’t notice. He was utterly engrossed in making one of his Christmas presents. A huge construction project that Maggie had helped him bring over in the morning after they’d tried and failed to put it together the night before. Alex had been relatively certain the “failure” had come about because Maggie had kept taking pieces and using them as comedy eyebrows or miniature beards on herself, trying to make Jake laugh. It had worked. But when she’d seen Alex watching them, all the spark had drained from her eyes.

  He was trying not to take it personally. She’d only developed that vacant expression since the run-in with that man at the bakery. Another part of him wanted to pull his heart out of his chest and say, Here! I’ve shown you mine. Show me yours! And the other part of him just wanted his calm, quiet, life back.

  He watched his son. Now that Jake was able to concentrate properly, the structure was taking shape. A brick by brick towering beast of a Tyrannosaurus rex.

  He scanned the other after-school daycare kids. One pair was playing a ferocious game with swords. Another pair was pretending they were lions or tigers, judging by the roars coming from their corner. And yet another pair was playing a board game that had them in gales of laughter.

  His child was the only one on his own.

  Jake had never really struck him as a loner but... Alex scratched his jaw thoughtfully. He’d always been a serious little boy and lately he was beginning to question just how much that had to do with him.

  The joy on Jake’s face when he’d bumped down the stairs with Maggie that first night...it had felt like lighting up the Empire State Building right inside his heart. Ditto to the arm-wrestling championship she’d organized, the lesson on how to make pancakes with smiley faces on them...

  Maggie had burst into their lives like a field of tulips coming to bloom in a single moment—he’d felt alive again. Yet this past couple of weeks, when she’d pulled right back just as he’d been ready to start taking steps forward?

  He’d let himself fall back into his old reserved habits to protect himself, but this time the “Mr. Protocol” suit wasn’t fitting well at all. It was too tight. Restrictive. He wanted to live again, not watch life pass him by.

  Frustration crackled through him. And he had one very flame-haired, brown-eyed, feisty-spirited idea why he was suddenly questioning the way he lived his life.

  “That is a pretty serious model he’s got going on.”

  Alex had been so deep in thought he started at the sound of Summer’s voice.

  “Jake’s been at it since he arrived.” The daycare worker smiled warmly. “It always fascinates me to see a child so engrossed in something and your boy has concentration down to a T! I think he’s refused three games of tag and one offer of a piggy-back ride so he can keep on working.”

  Like father, like son.

  Maggie had asked him if he’d wanted to join her and Jake play board games for the past couple of nights, but he’d begged off. Paperwork, he’d said. It hadn’t been paperwork at all.

  It had been that urge to kiss her, taste her, slip his hands against her bare skin that had kept him holed up in his office late at night as she and Jake had giggled away until he’d stomped down the stairs, back stiff from using the wrong chair at his desk, and announced it was bedtime.

  Truth was, he wanted a relationship with her. And this whole “giving her time” thing was gnawing away at his sanity.

  Summer shifted her gaze to Alex. “Everything all right?”

  “Yes. Absolutely.” He forced himself to smile back. “You’re new here, right?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Alex. Please call me Alex. I was just wondering, from a newcomer’s perspective, does Jake strike you as being too serious?”

  Summer looked up to the right, a common tell that she was giving the matter proper consideration.

  “I think every child is different. And what you and Cody have created here... This place...” She opened her arms and scanned the warmly lit and comfortably furnished room. “It’s so much more than a daycare center. I actually call it an imagination castle. It’s got everything that will bring out the best in them. Whether they’re an introvert, an extrovert, a scientist, a builder—” She laughed as one of the little boys “died” after the other boy plunged his sword between the other’s arm and stomach. “Whatever they want. They know they are being cared for. They know the people who love them most are nearby. They know they’re safe.”

  Alex’s shoulders relaxed a bit. The magic word. “Safe.”

  “Right! Good. Well, I guess I better get back to work, then.” He waved at Jake again. He looked up this time and smiled, waved back. Alex’s heart thumped against his ribcage. He loved that little boy to within an inch of his own life. More. But he worried every day that the life he was giving him was maybe...a bit too safe?

  Perhaps now was the time to push his own boundaries. Experience what it felt like to not just dip his toe back into the land of the living but to dive in head first.

  * * *

  A couple of hours later than he’d hoped, Alex went back to the daycare center to collect Jake. Only when he scanned the sea of little boys’ and girls’ heads...his son’s wasn’t there.

  Panic pierced through him like shrapnel.

  “Jake? Jakey! Summer? Where’s Jake?”

  Summer jogged up to him, her brow furrowed with confusion. “Didn’t Maggie say? She came by an hour or so earlier. She said she had a surprise or something for him down at the barns. I thought you knew.”

  An irrational fear gripped his heart. She was letting his son ride but he didn’t know how to. He’d seen her ride off without a helmet. She took risks.

  Summer’s brow furrowed. “I’m sorry, Dr. Kirkland, I just presumed—”

  “Don’t ever, ever presume when it comes to Jake.”

  Summer paled at the admonishment. “I’m so sorry. Jake was so happy to see her it seemed almost as though they had planned it.”

  Alex swallowed and tried not to let the swell of rage and fear he was feeling lash out at Summer. “Not your fault. I’m sure everything’s fine.”

  “I should have called,” Summer said to his back as he turned to leave.

  “Yes,” he said under his breath as he pushed through the door and began to run to the barns. “You should have.”

  Moments later, the roar of blood pounding through his head, he was pulling open the barn doors. Jake was sitting on a saddle stand, applauding.

  The relief he felt turned to instant anger when he saw what—or rather, who—Jake was applauding.

  Maggie was doing a handstand on a moving horse.

  No helmet. No straps.

  She was holding onto some sort of bar mounted on the horse’s shoulders, but apart from that? She was about three seconds away from a fall that could break her neck and kill her.

  Fury roared through him. How dared she risk her life that way? And right in front of his son. A kid who was obviously falling in love with her. A kid who had lost his mother. No way in hell was he going to let his child experience that type of loss again.

  Maggie lowered herself onto the horse’s back and froze when she saw Alex striding toward her. He did not look happy.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  Wow. Definitely not happy. She flicked her eyes toward Jake. “I’m just showing your son some of my repertoire.”

  “Without a helmet?” His voice was low and white hot with rage. “Was that clever? Doing such a dangerous act in front of a child?”

  “It
’s okay, Daddy.” Jake slid off the saddle stand, ran up and took his father’s hand in his. “I’m fine. Maggie was showing me her tricks.”

  She held up her hands. “I’m sorry. I know I’m not wearing a helmet, but look—” She reached round to her back and unclipped the safety wire. She showed him the clip. “See? I was clipped in the whole time.”

  “Maggie clipped me in, too, so it was safe,” Jake said, tugging on his father’s hand.

  Alex’s voice dropped another notch. “What do you mean, she clipped you in, too?”

  “When I was doing handstands.”

  Everything about him stilled. The only thing Maggie could see moving on Alex was the carotid artery at the base of his neck thumping so hard she knew exactly which way his blood pressure was going.

  This had been a very bad idea.

  Alex dropped down on one knee, cupping his son’s small shoulders in his large surgeon’s hands. “Jakey, can you run on home now? We’ll get something together for supper in a little while, but I need to have a word with Maggie first.”

  “But we had a surprise for you.”

  “You can give it to me later, son.”

  Jake sent a pleading look toward Maggie. He didn’t want to go. She didn’t want him to either.

  “Jake.” Alex tipped his head toward the barn doors. “You go on home now, please.”

  Her lungs ached from holding her breath.

  Randy appeared from nowhere. “Want me to take the horse and stable her up?”

  Maggie nodded, her hands shaking as she handed him the reins. “Thanks for finding me the vaulting roller.”

  “My pleasure, Miss Maggie.” He tipped his cowboy hat and shot a look at Alex. “I’ll leave you to it.”

  This was bad. This was really, really bad.

  He wasn’t shouting. His face wasn’t puce. He wasn’t looming over her in a threatening way. But that stillness...

  When they were left on their own Alex finally met her eye and said quietly, “Would you mind explaining to me what on earth possessed you to risk my son’s life in that way?”

  “There was no risk. I was only teaching him handstands—”

  “On a moving horse? You know he’s never ridden, don’t you?”

  Intellectually, she knew where this was coming from. Alex liked to dot his I’s and cross his T’s. She should’ve checked with him beforehand.

  Emotionally? She felt backed up against a wall and there was no way she was going to let him steamroller her into admitting she’d done something reckless when she hadn’t.

  “When we did it with Jake, we were completely stationary.”

  “We? Who’s ‘we’?”

  She was fighting mad now. How dared he not trust her with Jake? He wasn’t the only one who had feelings for the little boy. “Randy was here. I was holding Jake the entire time. The horse was tied to a hitching post. Jake was clipped into the safety harness. There wasn’t a single unsafe thing about it.” She jabbed a finger into that hard chest of his, refusing to yelp when she felt it jam against the wall of muscle there. “So, if I were you, instead of marching in here and being all King Kong about everything, I would take a step back and cool your jets, pal.”

  He took a step back.

  But from the daggers he was throwing her from his eyes, she knew she shouldn’t have told him to cool his jets.

  She didn’t have any family left.

  Didn’t have a child.

  Didn’t know the pain of sudden tragic loss in the way Alex did.

  And she’d made him relive his biggest fear. Losing his son.

  He opened his mouth, pointed at her furiously—then shook his head, turned on his heel and walked away.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  IT TOOK ALL her courage to go back to the house.

  She’d waited, of course, for him to calm down. Had helped Randy groom horses who were already glistening until she had no choice but to leave the barns.

  Never before had her feet felt like cement blocks as she walked up the ramp to Alex’s porch.

  For the first time since she’d arrived, she knocked on the front door, reminding herself that just as he’d tapped into her fear of physical intimacy, she’d tapped into his today. Loss.

  She forced her shoulders down from her ears and waited.

  He opened the door but didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to.

  “May I come in?”

  He looked over his shoulder back into the house and called out, “Head on up to your room, bud. I’ll be with you in a minute.”

  She saw Jake run up the stairs. When he got to the top he turned and gave her a timorous wave followed by a good-luck pair of thumbs-up.

  Her heart pounded against her chest so hard she thought it was going to explode.

  When her eyes dropped back to meet Alex’s, he stepped to the side and let her in.

  This felt awful.

  Crazy awful.

  And then the apologies began pouring out.

  “Okay. First of all, let me apologize. I should have told you I was picking him up from daycare, presuming it would be all right with you. It will not happen again. Not without your express permission.”

  A muscle in his jaw twitched. Alex was most likely resisting telling her she wouldn’t be getting his permission for anything beyond doing her job and that better be done to the letter or else she may as well not even bother seeing out her contract.

  “Secondly?” She flicked her thumb up toward Jake’s room. “I love that little boy. There isn’t a single, solitary thing on this earth I would do to compromise his welfare. Not a thing. I promise you with all my heart we did everything in our power to keep him safe.”

  The irritation she’d seen crackle through his eyes diminished. A little.

  “I don’t understand why you did it at all.”

  “We—he wanted to surprise you.”

  “What? By doing a trick where he could break his—?” He stopped himself, held up his hands. “I don’t know, Maggie. There seems to be something more going on here. You won’t talk to me. You don’t want...” he moved his hand between them “...whatever this is going on with us.”

  “That’s not true! That’s not true at all!”

  She did want a relationship with him. She was just scared. Too scared.

  “Then why won’t you talk to me?”

  “How can I when you go berserk over something that wasn’t even a problem?”

  Okay, that wasn’t strictly fair, but she was caught up in the moment too. Fighting for—she wasn’t entirely sure what she was fighting for. Her right to be heard?

  He sucked in a deep breath. The kind that told her he was going to explain to her exactly how she could talk to him. What came out instead was a sigh. A sad sigh. He raked his hand through his hair and looked up at the ceiling. Finally he looked at her again.

  “So, you’re saying that by bursting into the barn like a he-man, I ruined my son’s big surprise.”

  Maggie scrunched her features up tight and pinched her fingers together. “A little bit.”

  “A lotta bit, from the sound of things.” He huffed out a sigh and dropped into a deep-seated armchair. “I don’t seem to be getting much right these days.”

  The hairs went up on Maggie’s arms. Oh, no. This wasn’t the way the conversation was meant to go. She was the one who should be bearing the brunt of the mea culpas.

  “That’s complete malarkey.”

  Much to her surprise, Alex laughed. “Malarkey, is it?”

  She replied, stone-cold serious. “Absolutely. Alex, please let me apologize again. From the bottom of my heart. I never meant to scare you like that. I thought it would be okay, but I obviously should’ve asked you first.”

  Alex gave a little nod. One that just might, if she were squinting, allow for a teen
sy bit of leeway when it came to any future surprises she or Jake might plan to give him.

  “Look...” she brandished her finger “...you built this whole entire place for your son, right?”

  He tipped his head back and forth as if trying to slot the words into the right position. “That was definitely one of the reasons, yes.”

  “As a tribute to your wife and, obviously, an unbelievably amazing place for your patients as well. But when I spoke with Cody during my interview I got the sense that the two of you really wanted to build this place so you could get your work-life balance straight. Make sure your children had the best care possible while you were at work. When you boil it down? All of this is for Jake. So, when there’s even a suggestion that there are any holes in your plan, you go a bit bonkers. Or did I get that wrong, too?”

  “No.” He shot her a sidelong look with those beautiful green eyes of his. “You’re right.”

  She stopped herself from giving a little victory punch into the air, wove her fingers together and forced herself to sit on the sofa across from him and rest them in her lap instead. Listening was every bit as powerful as being right. Now was a time to listen.

  Alex gave her one of those professorial looks of his that she was beginning to find incredibly endearing. They weren’t as judgmental as she’d originally thought. They were his way of buying time while he considered what to say or do.

  She waited patiently, trying her best not to think about what it would feel like if she crossed to him, ran her fingers through his hair and tipped his head back so she could give him a deep, consoling, loving kiss.

  Uh...hold your horses and tighten the reins!

  Loving?

  Okay. It wasn’t like she was in love with the man. Sure, she thought he was an incredible doctor. Plus he smelled amazing. Kissed like a freaking Greek god... His hands were also pretty nice. Especially when they were on her bum.

  She glanced at them.

  Okay, it had only been the once, but it had felt great and his hands weren’t just nice—they were actually spectacular. All big and strong and male.