Her Impossible Boss

by Cathy Williams

  ‘I didn’t throw away my virginity. I gave it away. I gave it to you because I wanted to—because you were the first man to make me feel like that. I’ve always had a very regular cycle. I honestly thought that there would be no consequences.’

  ‘I’m flattered that you were so overwhelmed by me that you just couldn’t help yourself, but excuse me for thinking of a more prosaic reason that you hopped into bed with me.’

  Tess looked at him in confusion. Everything about him was designed to threaten, and she didn’t know whether he was aware of that. She had to twist in the chair to follow his movements, and her neck was beginning to ache from having to look up as he towered over her—a cold, distant stranger who had sliced through the fragile bridge that had once connected them. Her heart was breaking in two.

  ‘Yes, I concede that you were turned on. But maybe it occurred to you that if you had to lose your virginity with anyone, why not lose it to someone who was a damn good financial bet? If I recall, I gave you every opportunity to take a step back, but maybe you didn’t want to lose the chance. Maybe, subconsciously, you didn’t mind playing with fate, because if you did get pregnant then it would be a very profitable venture for you…’

  Anger brought a rush of colour to her cheeks. ‘A profitable venture? You think I wanted to get pregnant? You think I want to have a child at the age of twenty-three, when I’m just finally beginning to see a way ahead for myself? I was actually thinking about going into teaching! I was going to work with children because I got so much pleasure from working with Sam. I was going to go back to school and try and get the qualifications I should have got years ago! Do you really think that I want to ditch all of that?’

  She stood up, trembling. She shouldn’t have come. She had messed up his wonderful life. She should have just returned to Ireland. He would never have known about the pregnancy. In fact, she should never have got involved with him in the first place. She should have taken one look at the fabulous trappings surrounding him and realised that he was not in her league and never would be.

  ‘I’m going to leave now,’ she mumbled, frantically trying to hold on to her composure. ‘I just thought that you needed to know…and now you do.’

  She began walking towards the door. She didn’t get very far. In fact two steps. Then Matt was standing in front of her—six feet two inches of menacing male.

  ‘Going to leave? Tell me that was a joke.’

  ‘What else is there to say?’

  Matt stared at her as though she had taken leave of her senses—maybe started speaking in tongues.

  ‘You’ve dropped a bomb on me and you don’t think that there’s anything more to say? Am I dealing with someone from the same planet?’

  ‘There’s no need to be cruel and sarcastic. It’s. I’m dealing with the same shock as you…’

  Matt raked his fingers through his hair and shook his head, as though trying to will himself into greater self control.

  He was shaken to his very foundations. Had he felt the same way when Catrina had declared herself pregnant with Samantha? He had been so much younger then, and willing to drift into doing the right thing. Since those youthful days a lot of lessons had been learnt. He had erected barriers around himself and they had served him well.

  Now he was staring at a problem, and whether he liked it or not it was a problem that would have to be dealt with. But all problems had solutions, and flinging accusations at the woman who was going to be the mother of his child would get neither of them anywhere.

  And how clever had he been to accuse her of ulterior motives? Now she was staring at him with big, tear-filled green eyes, as if he had morphed into a monster, when in fact he had just reacted in the way every single man in his position would have reacted under similar circumstances.

  That didn’t alleviate the niggle of guilt, but he firmly squashed that momentary weakness.

  ‘I don’t feel comfortable having this conversation here,’ he told her shortly.

  ‘What difference does it make where we have the conversation?’ Tess looked down at her feet, stubbornly digging her heels in. She didn’t want to go to his apartment. Nor did she want to go to Claire’s apartment. For starters, Claire knew nothing of what was going on. Right now she was on a job in Brooklyn, but what if she and Matt went to the apartment to continue their conversation and Claire unexpectedly showed up?

  Tess knew that sooner or later everything would have to come out in the wash, but right now she felt equipped to deal with only one horrendous situation at a time. Her mind just wouldn’t stretch further ahead.

  In truth, she wanted to be somewhere as public and as impersonal as possible. It seemed to make things easier to handle.

  ‘This is my place of work,’ Matt intoned, already taking it as a foregone conclusion that she would follow his lead by heading towards the jacket which was slung over the back of one of the leather chairs. ‘I’ve instructed my secretary not to disturb me, but a lot of meetings will be cancelled. Sooner or later she will come in and expect some kind of explanation from me, and when she doesn’t get a satisfactory one she’ll be curious. Frankly, I would rather not generate public curiosity in my private life.’

  ‘What will you tell her?’ Tess reluctantly conceded his point. He was an intensely private man. ‘I’m not going to Claire’s apartment and I won’t go to yours.’

  ‘Why not?’ Matt paused and looked at her through narrowed eyes.

  Heat shimmered through her. Alone with him…She didn’t want her strength to be put to the test. She knew how weak she could be when she was around him. She had to build up an immunity, and enclosed spaces would be the worst possible start to doing that. If he could be considered an illness, and falling in love with him some kind of terrible virus that had flooded her entire system, then detachment was the first step to a possible cure.

  ‘Are you suddenly scared of me?’ he asked softly. ‘What do you think I’m going to do?’

  Tess shamefully thought that the danger would be wanting him to do things that he shouldn’t do and she definitely shouldn’t want. Given a lifebelt, she clutched it with both hands. Hadn’t he accused her of the most horrible things? That being the case, why shouldn’t she accuse him of a few?

  ‘I don’t know!’ she flung back in a shaky voice. ‘You’ve insulted me. You’ve as good as told me that I set everything up—that I took risks because I wanted to trap you. You’ve been a bully. Of course I don’t want to be anywhere with you, unless there are lots of people around.’

  ‘Are you saying that you’re afraid that I might be physically threatening?’ ‘No, of course I’m not…’

  A dark flush had accentuated his high cheekbones. ‘I have never laid a finger on a woman before, whatever the provocation. The thought of it alone is anathema to me!’

  ‘I’m tired,’ Tess muttered wearily. ‘I don’t want to be badgered. Maybe you should just think about things overnight and then we can speak tomorrow. Or the day after, even.’

  Matt didn’t bother to dignify such delaying tactics with a response. He had never been a believer in putting off for tomorrow what could be done today. Problems not faced head-on, he had discovered to his personal cost, never went away—they just got out of hand.

  ‘Wait for me by the lift,’ he instructed her, ‘I will need to discuss rearranging my schedule.’

  ‘Really, Matt. There’s no need to put your entire day on hold! Just let me go home and we can both discuss this when it’s sunk in and…and we’re both calmer.’

  ‘I’m perfectly calm. In fact, given the situation, I couldn’t be calmer.’ Nor was he lying. The fog was beginning to clear and a solution was presenting itself. It was the inevitable solution, but already he was coming to terms with it. He was rising to the occasion and that, for him, was something of which to be proud. She would discover soon enough that he was a man who shouldered his responsibility—even when, as in this instance, it was occasioned by something out of his control.

 
Strangely, he didn’t feel as cornered as he might have expected.

  Tess regarded him helplessly. He could be as immovable as a block of granite. This was one such occasion. ‘Then we’ll go to a café. Or a coffee shop. Or even just find a bench somewhere.’ When he nodded, she gave a little sigh of resignation and left him slipping on his jacket, shutting down his computer, getting ready to face one of the most important conversations of his life.

  It was pointless pushing the button. He was with her in less than five minutes. He had told her that he was calm and he looked calm. Cool, calm and composed. If nothing else, he was brilliant when it came to hiding his feelings. In fact, he could have been nominated for an award, judging from the performance he was putting on as he depressed the button and they took the lift down.

  There was a coffee shop two blocks away, he was telling her. It would be relatively quiet at this time of day.

  When she asked him, stiff and staring straight ahead like a mannequin, what he had told his secretary, he shrugged and said that he had intimated some sort of situation with his new nanny. Nothing new there, he had implied to her. It had been a thirty-second conversation. His secretary wasn’t paid to ask intrusive questions.

  As the lift door purred open, Tess thought that anyone listening to their impersonal, polite conversation would have been forgiven for thinking that there was absolutely nothing amiss.

  Matt continued to talk to her as they walked towards the coffee shop.

  He certainly didn’t think he had overreacted to a word she had said, but he had still managed to scare her—and that didn’t sit right with him. To think that she had looked at him with those wide green eyes and effectively informed him that she didn’t want to be in his company without the safety of an anonymous public around her had shocked him to the core.

  It was essential to put her at ease. Talking about nothing in particular as they covered the short distance to the coffee shop was step one in that procedure.

  Once there, he installed her at a table away from the window and any possible distractions and ordered them both something to drink and eat—although when he appeared with two lattes and a selection of pastries Tess glanced at him and blushed.

  ‘To be honest, I’ve gone off coffee,’ she confessed. ‘And food in general. I have morning sickness that lasts all day, pretty much.’

  Which made it all so real that his eyes were drawn to her still flat stomach. His baby! Unlike the Matt of ten years ago, this Matt was finding it strangely pleasurable to contemplate impending fatherhood—even with the dilemmas involved. There was much to be said for maturity.

  ‘I can get you something else. Name it. Whatever you want.’

  ‘You’re suddenly being nice. Why?’

  Matt sat down and helped himself to a cinnamon roll. ‘If you think that I reacted too strongly, then I apologise, but this has come as a shock. I’ve been very careful when it comes to making sure that…accidents never happen.’

  Tess hung her head in guilty shame. And, as luck would have it, this ‘accident’ had occurred with a woman who had never been destined to be a permanent fixture in his life. He might not have lasted the course with Vicky, but Tess couldn’t imagine that he would ever have accused her of staging a pregnancy for his money.

  ‘However,’ Matt continued, interrupting her train of thought before it had time to take hold and plunge her into further depths of misery, ‘there’s no point dwelling on that. We’re both facing a problem and there are always solutions to problems. Have you told anyone about…this situation?’

  ‘I’ve only just found out myself!’ Claire didn’t have a clue as to what was going on. She would be in for a double shock. Tess shuddered just thinking about it. When she paused to consider her parents, her mind went blank. Beyond that, there were so many practical concerns that she hardly knew where to begin—and here he was, cool as a cucumber, working it out as though it was a maths question with an easy answer.

  ‘Well, sooner rather than later, that’s going to have to change. Your parents are going to have to know, for a start.’

  ‘Yes, I realise that.’

  ‘How do you think they’re going to react?’

  ‘I…I haven’t thought about it. Yet.’

  ‘And then there’s the question of money.’ He watched her carefully, but she was obviously still mulling over the thought of breaking the news to her parents. He knew that she was very close to them. He could see where her thoughts were going. ‘Fortunately for you, I am prepared to take full responsibility for this. I think you know where this is leading.’

  Cinnamon roll finished, Matt looked at her over the rim of his mug and said nothing until he had her full and undivided attention.

  ‘We will be married. There is no other option.’

  He waited for signs of relief and gratitude. Now that his proposal had been made, he decided that things might have been considerably worse. Their relationship might have come to an end, but that end had been prematurely engendered by the fact that she had given him an ultimatum—by the fact that time had not been on their side. Yes, he had certainly concluded that she was not his ideal match, at least on paper, but his thinking had had to change and change it had. Never let it be said that he wasn’t blessed with an ability to get the best out of a thorny situation.

  Relief and gratitude were taking their time, and Matt frowned at her. ‘Well? We’re going to have to proceed quickly. I will break it to my parents, and then arrangements can be made for a wedding. Something small would be appropriate, I think you’ll agree.’

  ‘Are you proposing to me?’

  ‘Can you think of a better solution?’ Matt was prey to a one-off, very peculiar feeling. He was a knight in shining armour, she the damsel in distress. He had never been given to fanciful notions of this nature, but he was now, and a sensation of general wellbeing spread through him with a warm glow.

  Her eyes glistened and he whipped out his handkerchief—pristine white.

  ‘This is everything I ever dreamed of,’ Tess said bitterly. ‘And I’m not going to embarrass you by bursting into tears in the middle of a coffee shop, so you can have your handkerchief back.’

  ‘I guess it is,’ Matt concurred.

  ‘All my life,’ Tess continued in a driven undertone that finally caught his attention, ‘I’ve dreamt of a man proposing to me because he has no choice. What girl wouldn’t want that? To know that a guy who doesn’t love her, and in fact was glad to see the back of her, is big enough to marry her because she’s pregnant!’

  For a few seconds Matt was stunned into speechlessness. Twice in one day so far he had been lost for words! Tess wondered whether a world record had been set.

  ‘Furthermore,’ she carried on, ‘haven’t you learnt any lessons from your past?’

  ‘You’re losing me. Correction. You’ve lost me.’ Having leant forward, he now flung himself back in the chair and gave her a scorching look from under his lashes. ‘I can’t think of a single woman who wouldn’t be jumping up and down with joy at this juncture! Not only am I not walking away, I’m positively offering a solution. You are having my baby. You will therefore be protected—as will our child. With my ring on your finger you will never need or want for anything in your life again. And what lessons,’ he added belatedly, ‘are you talking about?’

  ‘I’m talking about your ex-wife, Matt! Catrina?’

  ‘What about her?’

  ‘You married her because she fell pregnant. You married her out of a misguided sense of responsibility.’

  ‘I married her because I was young and foolish. Her pregnancy had very little to do with it.’

  ‘Look…’ She took a few deep, calming breaths. ‘I understand that you want to do the right thing but the right thing, isn’t for us to get married.’

  ‘You’re telling me that a stable home life for a child is unimportant?’

  ‘You know that’s not what I’m saying,’ Tess cried in frustration. ‘Of course a stable home lif
e is very important for a child! But two people living under the same roof for the wrong reasons doesn’t make for a stable home life. It makes for…for bitterness and resentment. It wouldn’t be right for both of us to sacrifice our lives and a shot at real happiness because I happen to have fallen pregnant.’

  Matt was finding it hard to credit that she was turning him down, but turning him down she was. Only days ago she had been desperate to prolong their relationship, and now, when he was offering her the chance to do so, she was throwing it back in his face as though he had insulted her in the worst possible way! On some very basic level, it defied understanding.

  ‘You’re not being logical.’

  ‘I’m being incredibly logical. I won’t marry you, Matt. I know I wanted us to carry on seeing one another—I know I would have stayed here a while longer if you had wanted me to—but I’ve had time to think about that, and you were right. It would never have worked out. We just aren’t suited, and we’re not going to become magically suited just because I made a mistake and fell pregnant.’

  Matt felt the ground shifting awkwardly under his feet.

  ‘You won’t be returning to Ireland.’ He delivered this with brutal certainty. ‘If you think that you’re going to make your bid for happiness across the Atlantic, then you’re going to have to think again.’

  A shot at real happiness? He pictured her having her shot at real happiness with one of those sappy guys she claimed to be attracted to and it was a picture that made him see red. He wasn’t going to get embroiled in a long debate about it, however. Reluctantly he admitted that he was in a very vulnerable place. The second he had arrived at his solution to their problem, the very minute he had understood what would have to be done and had reconciled himself to the inevitable with a great deal of largesse, he had expected her to follow suit.

  ‘Then I guess we’ll have to talk about arrangements,’ she said heavily.

  Matt shook his head in the impatient gesture of a man trying to rid himself of something irritating but persistent.