Falling for Her Impossible Boss

by Alison Roberts

  ‘I’m just wondering if we’re rushing things a bit.’

  There was a horrified silence coming down the phone. Kate had to think quickly and change the subject. Before something catastrophic happened, like her bursting into tears. Desperately, she grabbed a conversational lifeline.

  ‘Why else are you having a bad day? Apart from anything to do with me?’

  ‘What? Oh…I can’t find Lady Dorothy’s necklace.’

  Relief flooded Kate. Here was her reprieve. ‘Oh, my God…have you lost a string of priceless Dawson diamonds or something?’

  ‘Not diamonds. Garnets. And I haven’t lost it. I’ve just…misplaced it. Only it’s Lady Dorothy’s favourite and she’s kind of upset.’

  ‘Where did you last see it?’ Kate was idly sorting papers again, confident that she’d headed Bella off from dangerous territory. Good grief, but these path results that needed her attention were piling up. Some had been sitting on her desk for weeks and weeks now. Well, that one could go. She screwed up a copy of a result that she had made a note on about getting the calibration of a machine checked. The task had long since been done.

  ‘I took it off for her when we were in the spa pool the other day but I know I picked it up afterwards. We just didn’t stop to put it back on because she was a bit cold and I wanted to get her dressed again.’

  ‘So you must have dropped it somewhere. Retrace your steps.’

  Always the best idea. Go back to the point you started from and find out where things had gone wrong. Bella seemed to be explaining that she’d done exactly that but her voice was no more than a background buzz in Kate’s ear now.

  She had unearthed a scrap of paper at the very bottom of that pile from the corner of her desk. The result that had her name on the top and the date that marked the point where things had started to go so terribly wrong.

  ‘I’ve got to go,’ she cut Bella off. ‘Just keep looking until you find it. Focus, Bella. It’s not as if it’s the first time you’ve dealt with this kind of thing and I really can’t sit here and talk about it. I’ve got a lot on my plate right now.’

  Too much. Kate hung up the phone, ignoring how hurt Bella’s farewell had sounded after the brush-off. Her niece had no idea how lucky she was having a stupid piece of jewellery to worry about. Her own problem was a hell of a lot bigger.

  Big enough to ruin her life.

  Worse, it was big enough to ruin the life of the man she loved so much.

  * * *

  The house felt oddly empty.

  Oliver checked his watch. Six-fifteen p.m. He wasn’t late. He was home earlier than usual, in fact, because he’d promised to spend some time with his mother before attending an engagement on her behalf later this evening.

  The event was the annual gala of her favourite children’s charity and Oliver was going to present the main award on Lady Dorothy’s behalf. She was anxious to make sure he knew exactly which people he couldn’t omit spending time with, probably because they included members of the country’s ‘rich list’ and were being groomed to become future sponsors.

  But Lady Dorothy wasn’t in her sitting room. Neither was Bella. Why was that so disappointing? Oh…that’s right. Oliver had caught up with Wally’s progress today and the chemotherapy her old patient was receiving seemed to be shrinking his brain tumour to the point where surgery might be possible without causing too much collateral damage. Bella would be thrilled to hear that. In fact, it had been Bella Oliver thought of instantly, when he’d been in the MRI lab scanning the latest results on Wally. He could imagine the joy dawning in her eyes and then spreading to the rest of her face and he knew it would culminate in one of those smiles that could light up the darkest of rooms. He couldn’t deny that he was really looking forward to telling her the news.

  But she wasn’t there.

  Oliver went swiftly back down the sweeping staircase and headed for the kitchen area. Yvonne, the housekeeper who came during the day, prepared meals amongst her other duties and left them in the kitchen. Bella was now in charge of reheating and serving his mother’s dinner and Oliver knew she was also in the habit of eating with her employer now.

  Unorthodox but perfectly acceptable when it gave him the freedom to stay at work for as long as was necessary without the worry of upsetting a routine that was more important than ever given his mother’s health status. Oliver decided that was probably where they both were right now. Maybe his mother’s blood sugar was a little lower than it should be after her evening dose of insulin so Bella had decided to serve dinner earlier than usual.

  Except that the kitchen was also empty.

  Very strange. Unsettling.

  Oliver wandered from room to room on the main floor of the house, the silence pressing in on him and somehow making him more aware of the size of his family home than he’d ever been. It was huge by any standard. Ridiculous that only two people lived there.

  Three, if you counted Bella, he supposed.

  And who wouldn’t count Bella? Oliver’s mouth twisted into a wry smile. Given the size of Bella Graham’s personality, she probably filled as much space as three ordinary people would.

  The smile faded but Oliver found himself wishing for the faint strains of some foot-stomping country music to be coming from one of these vast, deserted spaces.

  Like the drawing room. The library. The conservatory… Was his track taking him there automatically because he remembered the last time he had been in there? With the awful music and that glow of happiness and pride in his mother’s face? And Bella, making the very air in this house feel like it had more oxygen or something in it?

  There was nobody in the conservatory but there was a half-drunk cup of tea on a glass-topped table that was part of a suite of cane furniture screened by oversized potted palm trees. Beside the cup and saucer was a blood-glucose meter that still had a testing strip poking out of the end. Beside that lay an empty insulin syringe.

  Oliver’s breath left his chest in an exasperated huff. The syringe might have a needle that was small enough to be virtually invisible but it should have been put in a sharps container the instant it had been finished with.

  Bella should know better.

  Where the hell was she?

  Raising his head as if to look for her, Oliver saw that the French doors of the conservatory were open and beyond them he could see a figure standing in the middle of the lawn. His mother, apparently caught by the shimmer of the sea in the soft light of dusk.

  With a surge of relief, Oliver strode outside.

  ‘Mother!’ he called as he got closer. ‘How are you?’

  Lady Dorothy didn’t answer. She didn’t even turn her head.

  ‘Where’s Bella?’ The inflection on the query faded as if Oliver didn’t actually expect a response. Maybe he had instinctively known there wouldn’t be one. He was still operating on autopilot, however, bending to kiss his mother’s cheek. Well before his lips brushed her skin, he knew something was wrong.

  Lady Dorothy was still staring out to sea, totally unaware of his presence. The lights were on but nobody was home and Oliver knew exactly what was happening. He didn’t have to touch her skin to feel how clammy and cold it was. Or to pick up her wrist to feel the rapid pulse. His mother’s blood sugar was dangerously low and she was only seconds away from losing consciousness completely.

  And she was standing outside. By herself.

  With a speed and control fuelled by fury, Oliver picked his mother up in his arms as if she weighed nothing and strode back into the house. Through the conservatory and back towards the kitchen, almost colliding with Bella as she came flying down the staircase.

  ‘Oh, my God,’ she gasped, the colour draining from her face. ‘What’s happened?’

  Oliver kept going without saying a word, aware of Bella following because he could hear
her breath hitch in a half-sob. Carefully, he put his mother down on a chair beside the kitchen table, pausing for a moment to check that she was still conscious enough to remain upright. Bella crouched beside the chair, her arms outstretched to offer support.

  Lady Dorothy sat there in her robot-like state, apparently unaware of Bella’s horrified face even though she was staring straight at her nurse.

  ‘What’s happened,’ Oliver finally snapped as he headed for the fridge, ‘is that you left my mother alone, outside, to have a hypoglycaemic attack.’ He wrenched the fridge door open and jerked out the drawer that held the insulin supplies. Amongst all the preloaded syringes were some clear plastic sachets. He was ripping one open as he turned back to his mother.

  ‘I’d only been gone for a couple of minutes.’ Bella’s voice was strained, her face as pale as his mother’s was. ‘Lady Dorothy thought of somewhere else her necklace might be…said I had to go and look right now in case she forgot later…’

  Oliver ignored the flow of words that were obviously supposed to be excusing the inexcusable. He was rubbing the glucose gel from the sachet across his mother’s gums and over her tongue. She could still swallow safely, thank goodness, but if it was necessary, he had the supplies available to administer intravenous glucose.

  His anger hadn’t faded at all yet.

  ‘I have a job I have to go to, in case you hadn’t noticed,’ he told Bella. ‘I can’t be in two places at once so, unless I give up my position at St Patrick’s, I can’t take total responsibility for my mother’s health care. That’s what you were employed for and I thought you could be trusted.’

  Bella wasn’t saying anything. Oliver ignored the tiny sniffle he heard. Why did women seem to think that crying was going to fix anything? He glanced at his watch. If the glucose gel was going to work, it should be starting to have an effect by now.

  He would call an ambulance if he had to, of course, but remembering how upset his mother had been the last time such a fuss had been made, it would be preferable to avoid such drastic measures.

  And the glucose she was rapidly absorbing through her mucous membranes seemed to be working finally. He could feel the tone returning to her sagging body and saw her blinking her eyes.

  ‘Oh…my…’ Lady Dorothy’s voice sounded surprisingly strong. ‘Where am I?’

  ‘In the kitchen,’ Oliver said. ‘You had a hypo, Mum.’

  ‘Oh, dear. I’m sorry, darling.’

  ‘There’s no need for you to be sorry,’ Oliver growled. ‘It was hardly your fault.’

  * * *

  It was her fault.

  Bella didn’t need Oliver’s barbed, indirect comment to hammer the guilt home.

  She couldn’t look at him either because she didn’t want to see the look that told her how hopeless he thought she was.

  ‘I’ll go and get the glucometer,’ she muttered, scrambling to her feet. They would need to check Lady Dorothy’s blood-sugar level to be sure that whatever measures they were taking now were effective enough to ensure that her patient didn’t lapse into a coma later tonight.

  And die in her sleep.

  No wonder Oliver was so furious with her. How stupid had it been to follow directions that had left Lady Dorothy on her own straight after an insulin injection? There were all sorts of reasons why a reaction could be stronger or more rapid than usual and the control of Lady Dorothy’s diabetes had been noticeably more fragile since she’d become ill. If she’d been there, she might have heard the elderly woman’s speech become slurred or noticed that her behaviour was unusual. Or seen the sheen of perspiration on pale skin.

  Noticing that kind of change was precisely why Lady Dorothy needed a nurse with her and not just a companion who could encourage her to do her exercises and keep her spirits up while she coped with the aftermath of the episode of acute rheumatoid arthritis.

  Even Kate had been annoyed with her that morning. Virtually accused her of being unable to focus. Scatterbrained. Always losing things.

  Oliver was making a cheese sandwich for his mother by the time she got back to the kitchen. Lady Dorothy had clearly recovered.

  ‘It was my own fault,’ she was saying to her son. ‘I sent Bella away to look for my necklace.’

  ‘What necklace?’

  ‘The lovely garent one, you know? You found it in a junk shop when you were about ten and gave it to me for my birthday.’

  Bella cringed inwardly as she peeled open the foil packet containing a test strip and then fished a lancet from the kit. So the necklace had been a gift from Oliver? A sentimental treasure?

  Her day was just going from bad to worse. She twisted the tiny plastic square from the base to expose the hidden pin of the lancet.

  ‘Sorry, Lady Dorothy,’ she murmured, reaching for a hand that still had painfully swollen joints. ‘Small prick coming.’

  The fact that the reading was within a normal range already failed to lift Bella’s spirits.

  ‘I’ll have my dinner and then a bath,’ Lady Dorothy declared. ‘And then I’m going to watch all the episodes of Coronation Street that I’ve missed this week. You can have the night off, Bella. I’m sorry to have given you a fright, dear.’

  Bella didn’t meet the glare she could feel coming from Oliver’s direction. ‘I’ll have to check your BGL every so often,’ she said apologetically, ‘but I’ll try not to disturb you if you want an evening to yourself.’

  ‘I do,’ Lady Dorothy said firmly. ‘I’m embarrassed that this happened. It won’t happen again, I promise. Can I have my dinner now, please, Bella?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Will you join me, Oliver?’

  ‘I’ll have to eat later, at the gala,’ he said. ‘And I’d like to get a workout in but I’m all yours for a while, Mother. Remind me who I need to be polite to tonight.’

  Bella served dinner in the dining room but left Oliver alone with his mother. She wasn’t hungry herself and she certainly didn’t want to hang around. She ran a bath for Lady Dorothy and made sure the taped episodes of her favourite television programme were ready for her in her private sitting room. She checked Lady Dorothy’s blood-sugar level again, ignoring the elderly woman’s impatience with the procedure.

  ‘I’ll be back to do it again in an hour,’ she warned.

  Bella went to her own room but it felt like a prison. What was she doing here when she couldn’t even do her job properly? When she couldn’t even look after her patient’s precious, sentimental piece of jewellery?

  With nothing better to do and a determination to put at least one thing right today, Bella set off, tracing every single footstep she’d taken on the day the necklace had gone missing.

  A path that led, inevitably, to the gymnasium with its swimming and spa pools.

  It was just after eight p.m. and the last rays of a blood-red sunset were bathing the gymnasium in a glow that needed no artificial enhancement.

  Bella hadn’t expected the area to still be in use. OK, Oliver had said something about needing a workout before he went off to some glitzy function but that had been hours ago. Surely he’d had time to get himself exercised and cleaned up and drive off to meet up with whoever the woman was that she’d overheard Oliver mention when she’d been serving dinner?

  Monique. The name sounded as posh as the charity ball or whatever it was. He’d ‘arranged a suitable partner’, Oliver had been telling his mother in response to an unheard query. He’d said it with a finality that had seemed like yet another rebuke in Bella’s day. As if she might have been thinking he could have asked her.

  As if!

  Bella was on a different planet as far as the social circle the Dawsons moved in. Right now she could feel the space between herself and Oliver as clearly as if there was a solid glass panel in place. Maybe that was why she didn’t run away
when she saw that Oliver was still using the exercise machines in the gym. It felt safe to stop for a moment and stare through the invisible window.

  He was wearing nothing more than boxer shorts, his back to where Bella stood, in the middle of a routine that involved holding a free weight in each hand. Squats and lunges and arm raises that made the muscles all over his body bulge and ripple and the sheen of sweat shine in the sunset glow from outside.

  Bella was transfixed.

  She had never, ever, seen a more glorious specimen of a male body. The strength in those muscles. The control of the hold in positions that had to be painful. The elegant grace with which he moved from one position to another. The attraction was enough to make Bella’s knees feel weak. She actually leaned against the doorframe as desire like none she had ever experienced stole through her body. She knew she shouldn’t be doing this but couldn’t help herself.

  It was no worse than a bit of fantasy about, say, a movie star, was it? It was the realm she’d always allocated to Oliver Dawson and it wasn’t as if she was going to do anything about it. He wouldn’t have a clue. She was quite safe while he had his back to her and she would steal away before he could turn.

  Just a few seconds more.

  Bella had no idea she had been slowly licking her lips until she touched them with her fingers and found them wet.

  * * *

  Oliver could feel the burn in every muscle in his body but he wasn’t going to stop. Not yet.

  Not when he could see Bella reflected in that mirror through the open dressing-room door.

  When he could see the way she was looking at his body.

  Wanting him.

  He should be used to women looking at him like that. Maybe not in quite such an obvious fashion but Bella probably had no idea he could see her so clearly and it was irresistible not to keep going a little longer because it was like eavesdropping on someone’s thoughts.

  The way she was leaning on the wall like that, so loose limbed and relaxed, her arms bare in that singlet top and her tight jeans moulding her hips—did she have any idea how attractive a picture she made?