Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Boss?

by Nina Harrington

  Scott had already left for work when she got up that morning and had been out most of the day visiting banks and suppliers bright and early on a Monday morning. In fact she had only seen him once when he’d let her into the building and passed her a set of keys and he had been all cool politeness and calm.

  It was as if they had never kissed or snuggled.

  So where did that leave her?

  Deny it as best she could, at that moment last night when Scott pressed his lips to hers...her poor parched heart had soaked in every precious second of that glorious intimacy and physical sensation like a desert in the rain.

  It frightened her just how much she needed someone in her life.

  But not just anyone. She wanted to be intimate with someone she could call her friend as well as her lover. Peter had never been her friend.

  Scott Elstrom was the last person she wanted to fall for. He was gorgeous and she had been more than tempted to spend the night with him. But then what? A few days of fun before she went back to work?

  She had never had a one-night stand in her life and this was not the best time to start.

  No. It would be better if she followed Scott’s example and put last night behind them and got back to being professional colleagues who would be working together for the next few days. Side by side. She could do that.

  Um. And the garden was suddenly full of a squadron of purple piglets in pink tutus singing as they flew across the sky.

  She let her head drop back and just sat there, listening to the sound of her breathing and gentle sobs in the darkness.

  Pathetic!

  It wasn’t the dark, or the silence.

  No, it was the crushing feeling of loneliness which drove her to feel sorry for herself. She had never got used to being so lonely. Amy was the only family she had left and she was currently in the depths of South America so it was silly to want to talk to her so very badly. Amy would ring or text the minute she could. She always did.

  And nobody was prouder than Toni.

  What had she promised Amy? This was a New Year. A fresh start.

  Stupid girl! She didn’t need to be alone if she didn’t want to be. She had friends. Real friends who would come around in an instant if she needed them.

  Toni rolled her shoulders back and was just about to pull herself to her feet when her cellphone rang out from her bag.

  Amy! She scrabbled around in her bag, terrified that she would ring off before she found her phone in the near darkness, and flicked it open, instantly creating a bright panel of light. Her shoulders slumped down in disappointment. It wasn’t her sister. It was an email.

  With a photo of the purple underpants she had modelled last evening at her birthday party. A small smile creased her lips and Toni blinked away her tears and sniffed. Apparently Scott had found the underwear under the sofa and it had looked vaguely familiar.

  Did the item belong to her or should he put it in Freya’s room?

  Toni giggled at the screen, tapped out a quick reply saying that she was claiming them but gift-wrapping was not necessary, thank you, and pressed the send button before she could change her mind.

  That outrageous man!

  But he had made her laugh and for that she was grateful.

  Grinning like mad, Toni quickly scanned the other messages from her work colleagues and pals and took a sharp intake of breath. It was a perfectly friendly and chatty email from the same team she had worked with on the documentary with Peter. Apparently Peter had just joined the company’s new production team, working on ideas for a five-part series on the legacy of the Raj in India. Houses and heritage. Wasn’t that exciting? Why didn’t she come along to the ideas meeting? Could be fun!

  She almost threw the smartphone at the wall.

  Peter.

  Toni pressed her hand to her mouth, and then wiped away the tears from her cheeks.

  Oh, what a fool she’d been.

  She’d been prepared to wait for Peter to make the first move and start dating her properly. Too busy with the project at work, he had said. The film production and editing had to be perfect—but then they could relax and spend a weekend away together and tell the other people at the media company office back in London that they were a couple. Surely she could wait a few more weeks?

  She had been his guilty little secret.

  Sordid. Dirty. Expendable.

  She had been the temporary stand-in girl he would simply throw away when he had used her enough to do his work for him. How many times had he asked her to cover up for him when he’d felt the need to sunbathe or shop?

  And once their film work was over? Then he would get back to his real girlfriend, who was working on a fashion shoot and designer shows in the Caribbean.

  Peter had deceived her. Tricked her. Used her for his own advantage. Amy had never liked Peter from the start and on the one occasion they had met in person had openly declared him to be a fake.

  Well, that was over now. She was done with being used by other people who lied to her. That was then and this was now.

  And she had waited long enough.

  Lesson learnt. No more waiting. No more putting things off until later.

  Toni jumped to her feet, suddenly energised and, shoving her arms into the sleeves of an old warm fleece jacket she kept by the door, she started pacing up and down to keep warm and to help clear her head.

  Houses and heritage, her armpits!

  What did Peter the flea know about heritage? He could learn a few things from Scott Elstrom, and people like him, whose life was a tribute to family heritage.

  Her steps slowed. Two hundred years of heritage, in fact.

  A crazy idea fluttered around inside her head.

  The media company she worked for was always looking for clever and special ideas and the creative director had a passion for British heritage. He had been heading up the government think tank on traditional crafts for years.

  What about traditional skills such as fine British mapmaking?

  Diving back into her bag, Toni quickly reread the email about Peter. Yes! They were using the same brilliant location scouts who had the most amazing talent for tracking down authentic buildings and sites to film historical dramas and documentaries.

  They would probably faint if they walked into Elstrom Mapping!

  Yes! She could see how the right director could come up with a brilliant proposal. And of course they would have to pay Scott for the exclusive use of the building for weeks, if not months!

  Before she could change her mind, Toni jogged up to her freezing-cold bedroom and quickly downloaded the photographs she had taken during the past two days on to her laptop computer. It only took a few minutes to compose a few lines of explanation and her suggestion and fire off the emails and photos to the location scouts and the creative director.

  The first reply came winging back before she had time to light the fire in the living room and make her hot chocolate. Every one of the scouts was pleading for more details and begging for an appointment.

  Toni sat back on the sofa in front of the fire, wrapped in a duvet, sipping her hot chocolate and then picked up her phone.

  Time to call Scott. This could be fun!

  * * *

  Scott carefully swung Freya’s hatchback around the corner from the main street and checked the name plate high on the wall of the end house. Toni had warned him that he should look out for a quiet cul de sac close to a park with trees lining the street.

  The house numbers on the terraced Victorian houses were mostly hidden behind leafy evergreens or elaborate railings but as his gaze scanned the houses he spotted a bright blue and white hand-painted sign attached to a stone gate pillar. Baldoni House. This was it. He pulled into a narrow parking spot a few metres away along the street and turned off
the engine and sat in the car, gathering his thoughts.

  What was he doing in Hampstead at this time on a Tuesday morning? The traffic was mad, his hand was hurting and Freya’s car wasn’t designed for anyone over six feet tall.

  He could have walked from the office in less than twenty minutes. Instead of which, it had taken him almost an hour to negotiate the road system with no help at all from Freya’s new satellite navigation system. Which, for a map-maker, was not only embarrassing but incredibly frustrating.

  Shrugging into his fleece jacket, Scott stepped out of the car on to the wet tarmac, which was strewn with sodden leaves, and slowly rolled back his shoulders.

  The sleet and rain had cleared during the night, leaving a fresh cold morning with plenty of broken sunshine to brighten the air.

  Working outdoors had made him acutely sensitive to even the smallest change in the weather and, as he stood and gazed past the trees into the small park area, there was something in the wind that told him that this was winter’s last waning steps. No more cold weather gear. No more feet of snow to plough through. No more icy winds and frozen skin.

  He missed Alaska—the space and the quiet—and he missed the work. More than he’d thought possible.

  Maybe this was a mistake? All it would take was one phone call and he could be on a plane back to the real life he had left behind in a couple of hours.

  Inhaling sharply, Scott looked up into the branches of the trees that lined the street and focused on the sound of the birdsong instead of the incessant hum of the heavy traffic a few minutes away. A pair of grey squirrels bounced along at the foot of a large beech tree only a few metres in front of him, seeking out nuts. Playful. Spring was in the air. He had forgotten how quickly the seasons changed in Britain.

  Shaking his head, Scott turned towards the narrow terraced house. It didn’t look so very different from the others from the outside. Two storeys. Red brick with tall sash windows and stone window ledges. And, to his eyes, narrow. As in very narrow.

  In two strides he pushed open the black wrought metal gate and crunched his way up a brick and gravel path to a covered porch. The front door was painted in the same dark blue as the window frames and a pair of bay trees in bright painted pots provided a splash of welcome green against the dark wood.

  He could hear the sound of the door knocker echo inside the house as he waited on the doorstep. And waited. So this time he knocked a little harder. Still no reply.

  Strange. She must have slipped out. And he had been a bit vague when he’d said that he’d be around in the morning to collect some extra lighting equipment.

  Scott was just about to head back to the car when he spotted a flash of colour out of the corner of his eye. Stepping forward, he could just see one corner of what looked like a living room from where he was standing in the porch. One step further and he had the best seat in the theatre.

  The entertainment was Toni Baldoni. She was dancing. Swaying from side to side and apparently singing along to the music being fed into her ears through the wires dangling around her neck. No wonder she hadn’t heard the door knocker.

  Plastic crates were stacked to one side and she seemed to be moving books from the shelves as she danced.

  Hands in his trouser pockets, Scott leant his back against the wall and enjoyed the moment, suddenly content to simply watch in silence as the girl he’d come to see enjoying life on her own terms. There was a fire burning in the grate and the glow from the flames lit up one side of her face in the faint morning sunlight, turning her pale skin a golden shade of flickering shadow and light on sharp cheekbones and round full lips.

  How many more variations of Toni Baldoni were there?

  A bright red bandana held back her hair, focusing his attention on her face. And what a face that was! The girl who had come to Elstrom Mapping was bright and intelligent and happy to challenge him on every level. Confident in her ability and fighting her corner against all of the perfectly logical reasons he could come up with why the last thing he wanted was to sit still for hours while she painted his scraggy face.

  But the girl he was looking at now was completely different. It was as if a weight had been taken from her shoulders and she was free to be herself in her own space. Her fine cheekbones glowed and a big smile creased her face, which positively beamed with warmth and happiness.

  Yes. That was the difference. She looked happy. Joyous, even. High on life.

  With a dress sense to match her mood.

  Toni was wearing what looked to him like a flying suit, only the strangest one he had ever seen. It looked as though some toddler had melted every crayon in the box and sprayed the whole lot over a pair of workman’s overalls. It was astonishing. Put that with a brunette who was dancing across the floor and the whole picture was worth taking the time to admire.

  In fact he could do better than that. He could try and capture some of that happiness.

  Tugging his smartphone out of his jacket pocket, Scott lifted it to his eye but the second he pressed the camera button he knew that he had made a mistake.

  The flash went off. Toni immediately whirled around and came to the window to find out what was going on. And saw him. Ogling her.

  The expression on her face would have broken the camera lens. Oops.

  Then he made it worse by giving a casual wave.

  * * *

  Toni stood with her hands wrapped around a copy of an old encyclopaedia for several seconds, staring at Scott in disbelief, before she whirled around, tossed the book on to the sofa and lifted the ear pieces out and turned off her music system.

  Her heart was thumping so hard that she was certain that it would beat out of her chest and that Scott would be able to hear it on the porch.

  Oh, no. She hadn’t expected him to show up this early.

  She wasn’t dressed for visitors and especially not him! She had planned to get showered and blow-dried and nicely dressed before he turned up to collect the lighting equipment.

  Plan B.

  A low groan of exasperation escaped her lips and, with a quick shake of her head, she padded out to the hallway in her stocking feet.

  Catching a glance at her reflection in the hall mirror wasn’t a good idea but there wasn’t much she could do about that now, and he had already seen her, so...chin up, smile on. She could carry this off...couldn’t she?

  With her head high, Toni flung open her front door, ready to give Scott a lesson on manners.

  The words caught in her throat as she gulped in a breath of air in startled shock.

  She had been too busy reacting to seeing him standing there to pay attention to what he really looked like, but as the morning sunlight hit the porch she was hit by the full-on splendour that was the cleaned up version of Scott Elstrom.

  He was wearing a smart cashmere jacket and dark trousers, a pale blue button-down collar shirt which only made his deep tan more pronounced and he had done something to his hair. Washed it.

  Her stomach turned over just to look at him and her heart was doing things which were probably dangerous to her blood pressure.

  She had thought that Scott was attractive when he’d first walked in on her birthday party, and he had changed his shirt yesterday at the office, but this version leaning against her porch was from another planet.

  A planet of hunky handsomeness where the adult males were all tall, blond and had neatly trimmed beards which only highlighted their square jaws and long straight noses.

  His cheekbones were so taut they might have been sculpted. But it was his mouth that knocked the air out of her lungs and had her clinging on to the door frame for support. A plump lower lip smiled wide above his cleft chin, so that the bow was sharp between the smile lines. It was a mouth made for smiling.

  The corners of those amazing blue eyes crinkled slightly in his dee
ply tanned skin and Toni realised that he had been watching her. The warmth of that smile seemed to heat the air between them. It was so full of genuine charm and delight that she knew, no matter what, this was the smile that would stay with her for a long time.

  This smile was for her. And her heart leapt. More than a little. But just enough to recognize that the blush of heat racing through her neck and face were not only due to the flames that had been warming her back.

  That killer smile and those blue eyes came together in one single look that could charm anything in its path and knock it senseless. There was no escape. She was hit with the full blast.

  * * *

  The top two buttons of his pale blue shirt gaped open as the fabric stretched over a broad chest and revealed a hint of deeply tanned skin, and more than a few dark chest hairs.

  He was stunning.

  Oh, no. Do not stare at his chest. Just don’t.

  The pounding in her chest was simply because she had been taken by surprise—that was all. Trying desperately to regain some kind of control over feelings that were so new and raw, Toni stepped forward to meet him.

  Luckily he spoke first, his voice low and husky in the quiet garden as he smiled and reached out his hand. Toni felt his long cold fingers clasp around hers for only a few seconds before she released him. The calloused surfaces of his fingers rasped against her skin on the back of her hands. Gentle but firm.

  ‘Good morning. Apologies if I startled you but I tried the front door and there was no answer.’ He made a point of checking his gold wristwatch. ‘And I am early. I hope that isn’t a problem.’

  Oh, no. No problem at all. It was perfectly normal for her to welcome clients who looked like Viking gods when she was wearing her grungiest painting overalls!

  She should be annoyed. But look at the man!

  Toni inhaled deeply, straightened her back and managed to find her voice at last as she smiled back at him. ‘No problem at all. Please do come in out of the cold. I have a fire going in the living room and hot coffee on the table. Want to join me? Because I can’t wait to hear what you think about my idea. You’re going to be in the movies! Isn’t that exciting?’