Falling For Her Bad Boy Boss (Island Girls: 3 Sisters In Mauritius)

by Zee Monodee

  Suzanne lowered her eyes, then she looked up again.

  “The Isle Looks Contest. He wants me to enter, says he’ll back my application.” She took a deep breath. “According to him, I have a big chance of making it through to the final line-up.”

  Does it get any worse?

  Neha had heard of the contest. Some of the past winners and finalists had competed in international modelling contests, and a few had even scored big contracts with top agencies abroad.

  That a professional photographer who saw his fair share of beautiful aspiring models every day thought her daughter had a chance of touching such heights must mean Suzanne could make it big in the modelling world.

  Did she want this for her only daughter? The world of models and fashion wasn’t pretty and all ‘sugar and spice and all things nice’...

  “Exactly like the world of media is not suited for a woman.”

  The words of her mother drifted through her mind, and she grimaced. She’d hated being treated in such a way, and she wouldn’t treat her daughter in the same manner, too.

  Still, it didn’t mean she needed to blindly acquiesce to everything such permission would entail for Suzanne.

  “Mum?”

  The small voice reminded her of the little girl who’d cuddled up with her at bedtime story time and who had confided all her fears about the monsters under the bed to her mother.

  Neha allowed her focus to drift over the tall, beautiful young woman next to her, and a big hand closed around her heart and squeezed it.

  What to do? Suzanne was still a minor. As such, she’d need her parents’ permission to enter the contest. In their case, the decision lay only on Neha.

  “When do you need to let him know of our decision?”

  “Saturday,” Suzanne said.

  She nodded. “I … I’ll think about it, and let you know by then.”

  Suzanne slid down from the washer and came over to her for a quick hug. “Thanks, Mum.”

  Neha watched her exit the laundry room with a heavy heart.

  What had she gotten involved in? A cyclone with the devastating class four warning?

  Suzanne with her modelling opportunity. Kunal with his kickboxing dreams and wanting Logan to attend his birthday party. And last but not least, the damn man himself. Logan, and how he was becoming enmeshed inextricably in her life.

  Neha closed her eyes.

  ***

  “Come by my office when you get here.”

  Neha had no time to reply before he’d cut the call. Of course, Logan had delivered his request and, as usual, expected all and sundry to follow right away. With a sigh, she entered the lift to take her up to the station’s floor.

  She dreaded this encounter with her boss. She had to invite him to Kunal’s birthday, which she didn’t want to do, for a very specific reason she’d never disclose to him, and the conversation with Suzanne kept running in her head like a tape caught in a bad re-run. Her daughter’s words echoed with a pulse rivalled only by her own admission as to how she saw Logan as a hunky man.

  Did it get worse?

  It does, the little voice in her mind replied with glee. You had nothing to substantiate your stand of how Logan was not for you.

  Neha scrunched her face. So true. She’d spoken of him being in rehab in a desperate attempt to cling to something—anything—that could portray the man in an unfavourable light. So he’d had a problem with alcohol. And? her conscience asked. He’d gotten over it. One merely had to look at him and the steadfast way he went about his every business to know he had become a pillar of mental strength and determination. He had risen from the ashes like the proverbial phoenix.

  The lift dinged, and the doors slid open. With a heavy step, she exited the carriage and walked into the station. While exchanging greetings with some of the people in the lobby, her first instinct urged her to dash into the newsroom to check on her team.

  But she couldn’t. Logan wanted to see her.

  Taking a deep breath, she straightened her spine and knocked on the door to his office. A few seconds later, she pulled the panel open and stepped inside the dark room.

  Logan sat at his desk, his cell phone pressed to his ear. He motioned for her to come sit across from him with his free hand.

  She settled down in the chair and wrung her hands in her lap. An aura of concentration and repressed energy pulsed around him and sent her heart into overdrive.

  “You take care of yourself, okay?” he said into the phone.

  A sharp edge of emotions hung in his words, and she watched with fascination as a small smile touched his lips and lit his whole face.

  “Yeah. Me, too.”

  Her lungs closed at the hushed way he’d said the last phrase. She instinctively reckoned the words had been spoken in reply to an “I love you” statement on the other end of the line.

  In the space of a heartbeat, her whole world crashed around her.

  He was taken ...

  “Sorry for this.”

  His deep, throaty voice cut across, shattering through her cold thoughts.

  “It’s okay.” The words came out like a croak.

  He narrowed his eyes. “You’re not going to have an asthma attack, are you?”

  Was he chiding, or was he serious? She didn’t know. Didn’t want to know, really. She wished for nothing more than to be out of there and as far away from him as possible.

  Blast it, she had started to fall for him, and here, she’d just found out she’d been heading through a no-entry and down a dead end, on top of it.

  What an idiot!

  “We need to talk, you and I,” he said, bringing her back to business.

  “What about?”

  Tell me who you were speaking to …

  He locked his intense gaze on her, and she squirmed.

  “You,” he replied.

  Neha moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue. “What about me?”

  He took a deep breath, bending forward until his bare forearms lay crossed on the desk. “I cannot have you this way.”

  You can have me any way you want.

  She shivered at the wanton thought flitting through her mind. “I … don’t understand.”

  One corner of his mouth lifted slightly. “Being too much of a perfectionist is not always a good thing, babe.”

  He’d called her ‘babe.’ She had to focus on what he was saying to her rather than what her brain wanted to pick up on.

  “I like doing things right.”

  The curve lifted a little more, into the small smile he reserved for the camera. Neha could choke right then on the puff of air she had to let out.

  “You have to choose. One or the other. Not both.”

  And she’d now grown totally confused. “Both what?”

  “Both jobs. You’re either my news editor, or my co-anchor.”

  I’m your news editor, she begged to shout, but something in the way he looked at her stifled the words somewhere between her brain and her vocal chords.

  “Let me lay it down straight. Pam is not coming back, and you—” He pointed at her. “—are good at creating the news segments and at delivering them on-screen.”

  He hadn’t finished; so, she waited.

  “Now, what should I do with you? Better yet, what should you do to help me here?”

  She gulped at the sudden dip in his tone. He was playing the emotional card. Blast it. He’d started playing the attraction card. Damn the man—he must know he made mush out of her.

  All the more reason to scamper as much as possible from his side.

  “I—”

  “Don’t answer me now. Take your time to think this through. I want you to make an informed decision.”

  She trained her gaze onto his face, eager for him to continue.

  “I won’t lie and tell you I don’t like having you as my co-anchor. We work well together, and this, everyone knows. It’s obvious in the way our ratings have gone up since you’ve come on-screen.” />
  “But I’m good at drafting the news, too,” she said.

  “True enough.” His dark eyes bore into hers. “You’re better by my side.”

  She parted her lips, and the words died in her mouth.

  “This is the offer,” he said. “As news editor, you work twelve-hour days minimum throughout the week. Great pay and benefits, but lots of work, too, and lots of time involved.” He paused to let the words sink in. “As co-anchor, you come in Monday through Friday at five and leave at eight. More money, but you’ll be a freelancer, so no benefits like health insurance and pension funds guaranteed by the station. But think of the time you’d have on your hands for your kids. We’d only occasionally require you to cover some special segments or local events, and I’m not worried about you being a public face for the station since you have a stellar image.”

  And he’d started using the emotional card again.

  “It’s your choice,” he continued. “Me, or the newsroom.”

  He smiled then, really smiled at her, and she grew certain he had her where he wanted her to be.

  Between a rock and a hard place.

  “I’ll have to think about it.”

  He nodded. “I can only give you ’til Friday.”

  Friday. Her deadline for Suzanne’s request. Drat, what would she do about that?

  “Anything the matter?” he asked.

  A slight frown graced his face, eyebrows drawn close over the bridge of his nose.

  “Family business,” she said.

  He wasn’t someone she could drag into this affair. For goodness’ sake, he wasn’t even a friend, but her boss.

  “Kids giving you grief? It’s not Kunal, is it?”

  The concern in his voice washed over her in an all-encompassing wave.

  If there existed someone she could open her heart to and talk with, it would be him.

  “It’s Suzanne,” she found herself saying.

  He lifted his arms from the glass surface, pushing his chair back to stand up and walk around the desk so he could come sit on the edge of the seat next to her.

  Neha sat there taken aback by the physical movement, as if clearly highlighting he was giving her his support and side in an instinctive way.

  “She’s not in trouble, is she?”

  “No, nothing like this. But,” she hesitated. “She’s got me in a tough spot, and I don’t know what to do.”

  Blast it, she couldn’t believe she was talking to Logan about this. Yet, he didn’t seem to be annoyed. In fact, it looked like he wished to be nothing less than of steadfast assistance to her.

  “What happened?”

  She looked up into his face. How to tell him this? She took a deep breath.

  “Logan, if you had a teenage daughter who wanted to become a model, would you let her go ahead with it?”

  “She’s been scouted, eh.”

  Neha nodded. “A photographer noticed her and wants her to take part in a modelling contest. Says she has what it takes to make it to the top stage.”

  His face tensed, and he braced his elbows on his knees and leant forward towards her.

  “Who is that photographer? Someone reliable?”

  “He’s one of the best. My sister has worked with him on some interior design projects for lifestyle magazines.”

  “Then he wouldn’t con her.”

  “I don’t know,” she replied softly.

  “She wants to do this, doesn’t she?”

  Neha acquiesced with a nod.

  “What do you want for her?” he asked.

  “The best,” she replied without hesitation.

  “Yet, sometimes, we’re not really certain what the best is where those we care about are concerned.”

  She frowned at the heavy hint of wisdom and empathy in his tone.

  “Sometimes, we have to let them loose a little so they can learn the lay of the land beyond our circle of protection.” He cocked an eyebrow. “Take Tyler, for instance. For weeks, I’ve been urging him to get out of Syria. Did he heed my words? No. Then, out of the blue, he tells me he’s had it with the violence there and is moving back to India for a while.” He shrugged. “Found his way on his own. Nothing I could do but let him chart his own course.”

  “So you’re saying I should let Suzanne try the contest.”

  “She won’t have you as a safety net her whole life, Neha. You have to set her free at some point.”

  “But already? She’s seventeen.”

  And at seventeen, you were already engaged to her father and planning your wedding trousseau and the layette for your first baby.

  She shook her head. Not the point. She’d been getting ready for marriage, a life in the shadows. Not one in the spotlight where everyone could abuse a naive girl’s trust.

  “I didn’t say you had to cut all strings. Only to cut her some slack.” He grinned. “Trust me, this is what works with kids.”

  Her heat thudded in her chest. “And you’d know this how?”

  He watched her for long seconds, the burn of his penetrating gaze blazing a path down her soul. Then, one side of his mouth curved.

  “I don’t have any kids, to my knowledge, anyway, and I doubt such a situation would ever have taken place. But I helped bring Tyler up since his birth, and he’s more like a son than a brother to me.”

  She’d figured that out from the intense thrum of emotion in his voice whenever he spoke of the younger man. “Sounds like you did a good job with him.”

  He grinned. “I sure hope so. It was him on the phone, when you came in.”

  A thousand butterflies took flight in her stomach. So Logan had been talking to his brother. Not to another woman. Which meant he was not taken ...

  “Neha?”

  “Yes?”

  “What are you thinking about?”

  That my daughter wants me to take a chance on you. That I am sorely tempted to give in, too.

  But she couldn’t say so. A blush crept up her cheeks, the fire burning her skin with shame and embarrassment.

  Needing to change the topic, she gulped back and forced her face to cool down. Come to think of it, she had the perfect thing to make her blood go cold in a flip. The invite she needed to give him.

  “It’s Kunal’s birthday party on Saturday. He’d like you to come, if you’re free.”

  He straightened in his seat, his eyes drawing level with hers. “At your place?”

  She nodded.

  He drew those beautiful lips to a tight, tense line.

  “Would you like me to come?”

  The temperature in one’s veins can shoot from naught to hundred in a nanosecond—she’d just gotten proof of it. Oblivious to anything but the heat scorching her insides with big, thick licks, she didn’t shy away when she caught his gaze and held it.

  “Yes.”

  The echo of the fire inside her blazed in his irises, and the skin at the corners of his eyes creased when he smiled.

  “It’ll be my pleasure, then,” he said.

  And it’ll be the death of me.

  Chapter Eight

  Logan steered his four-wheel-drive down the long winding road to Neha’s house. He darted a glance at the big bouquet on the seat next to him and chuckled. Flowers completely clashed around him, but his mother had always drilled into him how proper courtesy spelled to bring something for the host whenever invited somewhere.

  A bottle of wine was out of the question given his track record with alcohol, and Neha didn’t drink. Chocolate represented a complete minefield where women were concerned. So the only safe bet had been flowers.

  He inhaled, and the heady scent of the roses shot to his mind despite the air con blasting on full.

  When he’d stopped by the florist’s, he’d known what to ask for. The best roses. Neha struck him as that kind of woman: one who didn’t demand the best. Consequently, according to his reasoning, she deserved the best because she didn’t ask for it.

  Turning into her driveway, he slowed the
vehicle. The yard was full of cars, expensive ones, too, and he hesitated for a split second.

  The world knew he’d made a fortune throughout his career, but his bank balance had not been enough for him to cut it in with the rich folks back in Auckland. With Jessica’s Old Money type of folks. Neha, too, came from the same Old Money and big name background.

  What would the people of her entourage think of him?

  As if you should care, mate.

  He shouldn’t, but tell that to the street kid who still lived in the furthest part of his being. There always burnt the need to be accepted, especially when trying to win over a woman.

  Bugger. There it hovered, the notion of how he wished to win Neha over. Ever since the day he’d held her to him in the aftermath of her asthma attack, he’d known he could no longer kid himself.

  He wanted her. And what Logan wanted, he usually got.

  At what price, though? Neha could be his, all right, in the scope of things and from his viewpoint, but what would this relationship look like from her end?

  Oh, she grew flustered and all when around him, but what did this really say? That he made her uneasy? Worse—he frightened her? Bloody hell, he tried his best to be a normal man and not an angry beast around her.

  At the same time, he’d long ago given up on being normal and had embraced the smouldering anger. So much so, he now found it hard to strike the right balance on the thin wall separating these two sides.

  Cutting the engine, he sat there with his hands braced on the steering wheel. He hated to admit it, but his heart hammered away. In a good but at the same time bad way, as it always had before a big fight in the ring. The adrenaline would skyrocket, and the fear of failure would hover right along with the anticipation.

  There’d existed a time when he’d lived for that sort of rush. Today, he found himself much too old and used up for this kind of nerve-wracking emotional roller coaster.

  Against himself, a laugh escaped him. Yeah, mate, you’re a grandfather at thirty-seven, eh.

  Stop waffling.

  He tore his grip from the leather cover on the wheel and opened the door. Touching his shirt pocket for the envelope containing Kunal’s gift—a gift certificate from a top sports equipment shop—he then grabbed the bouquet with one hand, refusing to think of the ridiculous picture he must paint with this silly assortment of flowers and ribbons in his grip.