From Boss to Bridegroom

by Victoria Pade

Did he imagine himself to be some kind of playboy potentate? Dishing out orders without so much as a please or thank-you. Forcing her to write his love missives to other women at the same time she was supposed to play wife with his cleaning and banking?

  What nerve. What gall. What—

  What was she doing getting mad?

  Lucy put the brakes on the things going through her mind, on the anger that was gaining momentum.

  You’re just his secretary, she reminded herself yet again.

  Granted, she hadn’t assumed the job would entail his personal errands. That wasn’t what she had agreed to and it also wasn’t something she would have agreed to. But that wasn’t all that was making her mad. Every time she read that third item on the list and saw those other women’s names, she could feel her blood boil.

  And why? she asked herself.

  Because she was jealous.

  She abhorred the very idea. But there it was—unwarranted, unwanted jealousy. Jealousy she had no right to. No reason for. No rational excuse for.

  You’re just his secretary!

  Her aunt had told her Rand was a man-about-town. But somehow Lucy hadn’t taken that into consideration. Why should she have? It didn’t have anything to do with her.

  Except that one day of working for him and she was feeling possessive.

  It was insane.

  She had no business feeling that way.

  Social and interpersonal deprivation or not, this was uncalled for.

  On the other hand, she thought as she fought to regain some control, some equilibrium, maybe this was just the wake-up call she needed today. Maybe it was good to have the evidence right under her nose that Rand was the man he was. That he wasn’t some uncomplicated, ordinary nice guy who might break down her barriers to convince her that she should allow him into Max’s and her life.

  No, what she had there in front of her was written proof that Rand Colton was an entirely different breed. A breed that juggled women and didn’t have time for kids.

  And she was just his secretary. His temporary secretary.

  And she’d better not forget it.

  But still, as the car stopped at the curb in front of the dry cleaners for her first chore of the day, she couldn’t untie the knot in the pit of her stomach left by that renewed knowledge that she and Rand Colton were on two very different tracks.

  That she was on the mommy track with Max.

  And that Rand was on the fast track with Deidre, Bunny and Veronica.

  “So, Max, have you told your mom what you want to be when you grow up?”

  Sadie had invited Max and Lucy to dinner that night and while she and Lucy put together a salad, Max sat at the kitchen table coloring in his new coloring book.

  “No, not yet,” Max answered.

  “Today’s story at day care was about what to be when you grow up and then everybody got a turn talking about it,” Sadie explained to Lucy.

  “Last I heard you wanted to be a fighter pilot or a policeman,” Lucy said.

  “Not anymore,” Max informed her matter-of-factly, without looking up from his coloring. “Now I’m gonna be a pail-intologer. That’s the guy who works at the mooseum putting the dinosaurs’ bones together. And some of the times I’m gonna sing songs with a guitar.”

  “A paleontologist and a rock star, huh?” Lucy mused.

  “He sang us a song, too,” Sadie contributed. Then, barely suppressing a laugh, she added, “Maybe later he can perform again. I think you ought to see it.”

  “Last Saturday he was enthralled with an old Elvis Presley movie on TV. Don’t tell me I’m raising a little Elvis impersonator.”

  “Forget the college fund. You’d better start saving for the sparkling suits, big belt buckles and wig,” her aunt advised. “Max does ’Blue Suede Shoes’ like a pro. He had every teacher and aide rolling in the aisles. And if you think he’s shy, think again.”

  Max was listening to this exchange even though he still hadn’t stopped coloring, and a grin stretched from ear to ear at his reviews.

  Lucy was about to ask to see him sing when the doorbell rang.

  “Our other guest,” Sadie said as she wiped her hands on a dish towel and headed for the door.

  “I didn’t know there was going to be another guest, did you?” Lucy asked Max.

  He nodded his head. “I helped Aunt Sadie set the dining room table.”

  Not that Lucy minded that someone else would be joining them. She was always happy to meet new people, especially now that she needed to cultivate a Washington circle of friends.

  But then she heard a man’s voice and froze.

  It wasn’t just any man’s voice. It was the deep tones of a voice she recognized instantly—Rand Colton.

  And panic replaced the pleasant prospect of meeting someone new.

  Lucy hadn’t told her aunt about Rand’s no-kids dictate. Or that she hadn’t confessed that she had Max. It just hadn’t come up.

  No, that wasn’t exactly true.

  The truth was, Lucy hadn’t brought it up because she was so chagrined at having kept Max a secret. And since the job was only temporary, she’d just chosen to keep that under wraps when it came to her aunt.

  It hadn’t occurred to her that it would backfire by Sadie getting them all together.

  “Here they are,” Sadie was saying as she led the way into the warm kitchen, redolent with the scent of roasting chicken. “My two darlings. Lucy and Max. I don’t suppose you’ve met Max yet, have you, Rand?”

  There wasn’t time to make a run for it. There wasn’t even time to think of a face-saving excuse or some glib quip. Instead Lucy looked up from the salad she was dressing to find her handsome boss taking in the whole domestic scene, his expression confused as his gaze went to Max while Sadie made the introduction.

  And what was even worse, Max seemed to fall in love at first sight with the big man. The little boy’s blue eyes sparkled and his smile showed pure delight.

  “I’m coloring a Tyrannosaurus. He ate other dinosaurs.”

  “Did he? I didn’t know that,” Rand answered amiably enough. But then he turned a much more cloudy expression to Lucy as he added, “But then there are a lot of things I don’t know.”

  Sadie seemed to pick up on the tension between Lucy and Rand but she kept up a good front. “I’ve opened a bottle of wine. Will you have a glass?” she asked Rand then. “Dinner is just about ready.”

  “I think a glass of wine might be a good idea. Maybe it’ll have a calming effect,” he said pointedly, still letting his gaze bore into Lucy with the heat of ten lasers.

  She drew herself up, pulling back her shoulders, straightening her spine, holding her head high. Just as Rand had his own life that was none of her business, her life was none of his. And she was not going to cower or sulk or try to deny the fact that yes, she did have a son. A son she loved to death. A son she was proud of.

  “Go wash your hands for dinner, Max,” Lucy told the little boy gently, meeting Rand’s stormy eyes with a defiant gaze of her own to let him know he could take this turn of events or leave them, that she couldn’t care less.

  Sadie poured Rand a glass of wine, making small talk that he responded to while still staring daggers at Lucy.

  Then Max returned from the bathroom, slipped his hand into Rand’s as if it were something he’d done a million times before, and said, “Come on. I’ll show you where to sit. You can be by me.”

  “Thank you,” Rand said to both Max and Sadie at once as he accepted the wineglass with his free hand before letting the child take him into the dining room.

  He earned points with Lucy for not rejecting the handholding or the invitation to sit with her son, no matter how mad he might be at her.

  The moment Max and Rand were out of earshot Sadie sidled up next to Lucy and whispered, “He didn’t know about Max?”

  “It was an underlying condition of the job that I not be a single mother. He said he was sick of dealing with them and all the comp
lications that came with them. He said having kids interfered with work. He assumed I didn’t have any and I didn’t inform him otherwise.”

  “Oh, dear.”

  “It’s okay. As long as he’s nice to Max tonight, he can do what he wants about me tomorrow,” Lucy assured her aunt, casting a glance in the direction of the dining room where she could hear her son regaling her boss with his career plans.

  Rand was nice to Max, though. All evening. More than nice, he was actually good with the little boy who had been stricken by a sudden case of hero worship and seemed to have made it his goal to charm the object of it.

  For her part, Lucy let her son have free rein. Ordinarily she would have attempted to keep him in check so he didn’t monopolize an adult evening, but tonight she didn’t. Tonight she wanted Rand to see that she doted on Max, that she wasn’t ashamed of him in any way.

  As a result, Max was the entertainment of the evening. He told his dinosaur stories and demonstrated dinosaurs stalking other dinosaurs. He did his full repertoire of knock-knock jokes and then he sang “Blue Suede Shoes”—complete with hip-wiggling gyrations, air guitar, and a curled lip at the end.

  For his part, Rand didn’t seem to mind. In fact he held up his own side of the conversation with Max, posing questions as if the little boy were the resident expert—which he actually was.

  Rand told a few of his own knock-knock jokes, surprising both Lucy and Sadie that he knew them, and laughed and clapped as heartily as Lucy and Sadie at the end of “Blue Suede Shoes.”

  It was all a relief to Lucy because no matter how angry Rand was at her—and it was still clear she was in trouble with him—at least he didn’t take it out on her son.

  By eight o’clock Max was getting overtired and slap-happy so Lucy announced that it was time to go home.

  After a few protests, Max went to stand directly in front of Rand and held out his right hand for Rand to shake.

  “It was nice to meet you,” the little boy said like a seasoned businessman.

  Rand accepted Max’s hand with the same decorum. “It was nice to meet you, too.”

  Max beamed as if he’d been granted the best compliment in the world and then ran to where his mother waited for him at the front door.

  But Lucy couldn’t go without posing the first question she’d aimed directly at Rand all evening. “Should I come to work tomorrow?” she asked with a high note of challenge in her tone.

  “The car will be here at seven-thirty,” he answered, but dourly enough to leave Lucy wondering if he just wanted to berate her in his office before he fired her.

  “Seven-thirty,” she repeated.

  Then she thanked Sadie for dinner, urged Max to do the same and left.

  But if she thought her stress for the evening was over when she stepped out into the cold night air to cross the few feet of sidewalk to her own town house next door, she was mistaken.

  Because an hour later, just as she was coming down the stairs from reading Max to sleep and tucking him in, there was a sharp knock on her front door that she somehow knew didn’t bode well.

  She took a deep breath and decided if Rand had changed his mind and decided to fire her tonight instead of tomorrow she’d just as soon get it over with.

  So, with her shoulders once again squared, she crossed the small entryway at the foot of the stairs and opened the door.

  Sure enough, Rand was outside, leaning one shoulder against the jamb as if she’d kept him waiting, his arms crossed over his expansive chest.

  She hadn’t taken notice of what he had on before, but she did now. Tan slacks, navy blue blazer, navy blue V-neck sweater over a cream-colored shirt with the collar button left open. As good as he looked in his expensive suits, he looked even better in the more casual attire.

  Except that his handsome face was still a thunder-cloud.

  “Change of plans?” she asked, not bothering with a greeting.

  “Just thought I’d stop by before I went home and find out why you lied to me,” he answered, his voice even deeper than usual and so low there was no chance of it waking Max. So low it was even more ominous than had he been shouting.

  But even though he wasn’t likely to wake the neighborhood, she still didn’t want to do this on the front stoop so she stepped aside and formally invited him in.

  When he was inside she closed the door and led the way into the living room to the left of the foyer. It was the one portion of the house that had no boxes left to be unpacked and the furniture positioned where it would stay.

  Lucy went to the bean-pot lamp on the antique oak end table beside her overstuffed plaid sofa and turned it on.

  “Would you like to sit?” she asked.

  But when she turned to see where Rand had landed she found him the same way he’d been outside—leaning a shoulder against the archway between the entry and the living room, his arms once again over his chest, his weight slung on one hip and his expression an expectant, direly solemn mask as he waited for an answer to his question.

  So Lucy cut to the chase.

  “I didn’t lie to you,” she said, taking her own stand behind the overstuffed chair that matched the sofa. “I just didn’t tell you about Max. As long as my being his mother doesn’t interfere with the job you’re paying me to do, he’s none of your business. And since I haven’t heard any complaints, I assume my having a child hasn’t caused a problem, has it?”

  Rand ignored the challenge in her tone. In fact, he seemed to ignore what she’d said. “I don’t like being lied to.”

  “No one does. But you left it up to me, and I just opted to leave out the fact that I’m a parent.”

  “Omission is still a lie in my book.”

  “Well, in my book it’s an omission. And had you not come to dinner tonight, you would never have known there’d been one because I don’t let Max interfere with my work. As you’ve seen for yourself.”

  “I need you later than five in the evening and you won’t stay so you can get home to him. What do you call that?”

  “I call it a nine-hour workday if it starts at seven-thirty and I only take half an hour for lunch. I think that’s sufficient.”

  “Not if I need you longer.”

  Why had that sounded more personal than professional? Maybe she was just imagining it.

  “I’m not your permanent secretary, remember? I’m just the fill-in. You can stipulate whatever you like when you hire someone else, but with me this is the way things are. If you want me to continue working for you until you find someone else, fine. If not, I’m sure you know the number for the temp agency. They can send you someone else first thing tomorrow.”

  Their eyes were locked together.

  Lucy could tell he was tempted to say that calling the temp agency was just what he would do, that he no longer needed her services. And she was surprised by how much she didn’t want that to be the case. By how bad it made her feel to think he might walk out in the next few minutes and she’d never see him again.

  But regardless of how she felt, she stood her ground. She wouldn’t sacrifice time with Max to please Rand, to go on working with him, to go on seeing him.

  Rand pushed off the archway then, finally coming into the room. He sat on the Bentley rocker that faced the overstuffed chair Lucy’s fingertips were digging into the back of.

  “You know damn well you’re too good for me to give up before I have to,” he conceded. Then he glanced around the room. “Are you hiding anything else I should know about?”

  “You didn’t need to know about this.”

  “I thought maybe you were rushing home to a boyfriend.”

  She wondered if that possibility had bothered him the way she’d been bothered by the evidence of the women in his life, but the only thing she gave him in response was a raised eyebrow.

  It made him smile. Just slightly. A secret, satisfied sort of smile that left her thinking he enjoyed the fact that she was still keeping him guessing.

  But he didn’
t pursue it. Instead he let the subject slide and said, “Now that I do know about Max—even if I don’t know anything else about your life,” he added facetiously, “what if when I need you to work later than five we do it here?”

  “Here?” she repeated dimly.

  “It wouldn’t be every night. But tonight, for instance, after being away from the office all day, I could have used you. As it is, we’ll have to spend tomorrow morning doing the finish-up work for today, which will give us a late start on tomorrow’s work. But I don’t live far from here. I’d be willing to continue things out of the office just to get them done.”

  Again she heard some sort of double entendre in his words but she once more decided it was only in her mind.

  “I like my evenings with Max,” she said, trying to push away the sense that more was going on here than business.

  “You’d be with Max. And so would I, for that matter. Unless I’m mistaken he liked me well enough. Between the two of us we could make sure he’s not neglected but still get some work done.”

  Lucy had no doubt her son would like that arrangement. Max hadn’t talked about anything but Rand the whole time she’d been getting him ready for bed.

  “There would have to be an understanding that when we’re on my turf, Max comes first. You’d have to be patient with interruptions.”

  “Fair enough.”

  Lucy was amazed at the change in his mood. Gone, suddenly, was the anger she’d been bathed in all evening, replaced by a coolheaded negotiator. No wonder the man was good at his job. He could be an intimidator one minute and an arbitrator the next.

  “So do we have a deal?” he asked amiably.

  “I guess so. But there’s one other thing you’d better know. I did not appreciate being sent to run your errands today. I’m not your personal maid, valet or social secretary. Find someone else to pick up your dry cleaning, do your banking and send flowers to your girlfriends.”

  It was his turn to raise an eyebrow at her. “Sadie always took care of everything.”

  “I’m not Sadie.”

  He sized her up again, clearly debating whether to push this issue.

  But once more Lucy stood her ground, not wavering beneath his scrutiny.