Tempted by Her Single Dad Boss

by Annie O'Neil

  But loving? The completely natural thought suggested her feelings were taking a journey she had very specifically forbidden them to take.

  One glance told her all she needed to know. His kind face. The crinkles by his eyes she would’ve sworn had come from laughter. And concern. His ability to nurture. That hair. Those lips of his. Ridiculous. Ridiculously off limits more like.

  And she was falling head over heels in love with him.

  Alex opened his palms in an apologetic gesture. “I shouldn’t have jumped to imagining the worst-case scenario. I should’ve trusted that you had Jake’s best interests at heart.”

  His words arrowed straight into her heart and pounded through her veins.

  Trust.

  It was something she valued beyond anything. Well, on a par with respect. Trust and respect. Without those two things?

  You couldn’t have love.

  She let her hands drop to her sides and looked him straight in the eye. “I’ll admit I spent a lot of time sitting under a pretty dark cloud before I built up my ‘silver linings’ skills. I got sick when I was thirteen. That’s given me eighteen years of practice. You’ve only had, what? Six at best? Total novice. It’ll come. The fact you responded as you did is a credit to you. To the love you have for your son. My parents’ love for me was just as fierce and let me tell you it gave me the strength to become who I am today. Even if I am a little bit of a loony sometimes.”

  There was more to it. Of course there was. She just didn’t know how to tell him. Or even if she should tell him. Would he even be interested?

  Alex swiped a hand across his face and sat forward in his chair. “I’m sorry I came blasting into the barn like an insane poppa bear.”

  “And I’m sorry I gave you cause to. I think I went a bit ‘Goldilocks’ on you and your family.”

  He let his smile broaden. “I did invite you to stay here.”

  “But maybe I’ve made myself a bit too much at home?”

  Alex gave his jaw a scrub.

  The silence was unbearable.

  Oh, God. She was going to have to move out. Right now. This minute. He didn’t want her here anymore.

  He pointed up the stairs. “I’ve got a reading date with a little boy right now. Help yourself to some supper from the kitchen, and maybe we should talk about this again afterwards.”

  As soon as he disappeared up the stairs Maggie dropped her head into her hands. She’d ruined everything. She’d stay here tonight because she had nowhere else to go, but in the morning? In the morning she’d hand in her notice.

  Was it cowardly?

  Of course it was.

  But could she bear living a separate life from the two people she now considered the closest thing to family she would ever let herself have?

  Not for a New York second.

  * * *

  “Dad!” Jake gave his dad’s arm a poke with one of his little-boy fingers. “You’ve already read that part. Three times.” He heaved out a dramatic sigh.

  Maybe if he stopped thinking about Maggie and how to convince her to stay, he’d be better at this.

  He stared at the page. Couldn’t even remember where he’d left off.

  “Enough for tonight?”

  “If you’re going to keep reading the same paragraph over and over I might as well do it myself.” He scrunched up his face. There was obviously more.

  “What?”

  “You don’t do it like Maggie does.”

  This caught his attention.

  “Maggie’s read to you?”

  His son gave him a look as if he’d lost a few brain cells on the walk back home from work. “Didn’t you notice?”

  “What?”

  “That for the last week or so we’ve started about twenty pages further on from when we stopped the night before.”

  “When did she read to you?”

  “Sometimes she brings my book into the daycare center. When I go there after school.”

  The knot of emotions tangled up in his chest doubled in size. What was he feeling? Jealousy? Relief? Hope that maybe he’d found someone who could genuinely love both him and his son?

  Careful, you’re a long way from that, pal.

  * * *

  Jake rearranged himself so he was staring at the book and not his father as he continued quietly, “She does great character voices. Maybe if you were a bit nicer to her then she would stay longer than three months and teach you how to do them too.”

  All the breath left Alex’s lungs.

  Wow.

  “Would you like that? If Maggie stayed?”

  Alex didn’t know if he wanted to hear the answer. His heart was twisted so tightly inside his ribcage he could hardly breathe.

  The clinic made huge demands on his time and even he had to admit he didn’t always get the balance right.

  Jake was enjoying having a woman around the house. No, it was more than that. He was enjoying having Maggie round the house. She was fun. She saw the bright side of life, even when she was clearly distracted. Sure, he’d near enough ripped her head off when his fear over his son’s safety had morphed into rage, but once he’d cooled down, listened to her, it was obvious she had been acting totally responsibly.

  I love that little boy.

  It was a huge admission. Enormous from someone who was still bottling up a secret and keeping him at arm’s length, both physically and emotionally.

  Was that the real reason why he had been so angry with her? Because he’d invested all this trust in her and she still didn’t trust him?

  Well, what do you know? Instead of making him want to run like hell, he’d realized the war that had been raging inside him since the first time he’d laid eyes on her had been because he wanted her to stay, too. And for a whole lot of different reasons than his son did.

  “She’s nice,” Jake said, still not meeting his father’s gaze.

  Alex put his arm round his son and pulled him close. “That she is, Jakey, boy. That she is.”

  After tucking him in, he walked to the next room and saw Maggie’s bedroom light was on. She must have decided she didn’t want to talk about it anymore. He knocked softly, not entirely sure what he was going to say.

  “Yes?”

  He opened the door and almost shut it again. Maggie was sitting on the bed, bathed in the warm glow of the bedside lamp. She wasn’t wearing her prosthetics and was tugging a blanket over her legs. Not quickly enough for him to miss a glimpse of her thighs, her short pajama bottoms hugging the curves of her derriere and a figure-hugging tank top. He gripped the door handle until his knuckles turned white.

  He definitely wanted her to stay.

  “Yes?” she asked again, her eyebrows crinkling at his muteness. She arranged the blanket a little more tightly over her knees.

  He threw his planned speech out the window and ad-libbed. “I just wanted to say thanks. For the surprise.”

  She barked a short laugh. “Yeah. I don’t think I’ll be pulling off any more coups like that anytime soon.”

  “No. Seriously. I overreacted. I should’ve trusted you.”

  He watched her process the honest apology and was honored to see it finally hit home. She valued trust every bit as much as he did.

  Their gazes met. Heat flared in his chest bright and hot. He knew right then and there that he wanted more than this. More than different bedrooms. More than stumbling over awkward apologies for fights they never should have had. He wanted her. He wanted Maggie.

  He came into the room, leant down, cupped her face in his hands and kissed her lips more softly than he’d kissed anyone.

  She pulled back but in such a way that their lips brushed against the other’s all over again. It was intoxicating.

  “I think I’d better get to sleep,” she whispered. “It’s been a long
day.”

  Her fingertips pressed against her lips as he rose up to his full height. She’d felt it, too. He could see it in the high shine of her dark eyes.

  “Well, goodnight, then,” she said.

  He knew a cue to leave when he heard one. But her eyes told a different story.

  She wanted him as much as he wanted her.

  Leaving would be the sensible thing to do. The practical thing. But for the first time in over half a dozen years he wished like hell he hadn’t folded himself into the narrow confines of a man who played his whole life by the rulebook.

  So he threw that out the window, too.

  “What happened?”

  “When? Today? I told you—”

  “No. Not with the horseback handstands. With that man. The one at the Bradys’ bakery.”

  Her brown eyes turned pitch black. “That’s not a very nice story.”

  “Is it one I ought to hear?”

  She knew what he was asking. He wanted her and if anything was going to happen between them, they needed complete and total honesty between them.

  She stared at him for a moment, her expression completely neutral...and then crossed her arms tightly in front of her as if protecting herself in advance of whatever his reaction might be.

  He sat at the end of the bed.

  “You sure you want to hear this?”

  “Absolutely.”

  * * *

  Three years’ worth of tension and pain worked itself free and flowed like hot lava through her veins.

  Alex wanted to hear her story.

  He cared.

  He trusted her.

  She knew now the love she thought she might feel for him was genuine and true. So she forced herself to bare her emotional scars to him just as he had for her. She may as well go physical, too. She moved the blanket away so that her legs were fully exposed below the knee.

  Alex didn’t bat an eyelid.

  So she started talking.

  “We dated.”

  Alex pulled his knee up and tucked it under his other leg. “Right. This was back in Boston?” He was fact-gathering. Not judging. She filled her lungs with a deep breath of courage and continued.

  “We met through a friend. Another physio I worked with. We dated for a while with the proviso—my proviso—that we take things slow. He...” Her eyes shifted up to the ceiling to pick the best description, then looked back down to meet Alex’s steady, warm, gaze. “Let’s just say the man could sell ice to penguins. He had the gift of the gab and was on a dedicated charm offensive. I’d never been so actively...wooed, I guess. He really went for it. Called me all the time. Texted. Sent flowers. He told me I was beautiful, smart, talented, and I totally bought it. Hook, line and sinker.”

  “All of those things are true, though,” Alex said.

  Heat crept into her cheeks and she batted away the compliment. She needed to get through this. “Anyway. I had dated a couple of people before. People in the equestrian scene. People with...” She blew out a breath to stave off the sting of tears. “People like me.” She pointed to her legs, though she didn’t need to. “So it wasn’t as if I hadn’t had experience with the physical side of things, but Eric was the first so-called able-bodied man I’d ever been with.”

  Now that she could see the situation clearly, she saw how over the top he’d been with her. How she’d been some sort of special notch to his bow. The Paralympian with a hot body and flame-colored hair. The papers had billed her as a modern-day Aphrodite. A symbol to all women who wanted to soar up and surpass all expectations. A golden girl. And it still hadn’t been enough for him.

  Alex reached out and gave her leg a squeeze. The gesture sent a thousand rays of reassurance through her. “There’s no need to hash over all of the details, but suffice it to say I took my time letting things get physical between us. And when they finally went beyond kissing...”

  Alex drew in a sharp breath, one that seemed to know what was coming. So she cut to the chase. “Once he saw me without my prosthetics, he looked horrified. I don’t know what he’d expected to see. He knew my feet were all made for me. Too real looking, I guess.” She had to laugh, though there was nothing funny about what had happened. “Fooled him until the very last hurdle. When I took them off, he was clearly repelled by the reality. Said he just couldn’t. That if he were to have sex with me it would be out of pity. Pity!”

  The word burned her throat as she spoke it and hot tears of fury she’d never let free flowed down her cheeks. In an instant Alex was beside her, pulling her into his arms, holding her tightly to him as she released the rest of the rage and anger that someone had ever made her feel so much shame. She’d given Eric that power. And from this moment on she was taking it back.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  WHITE-HOT RAGE THAT anyone could be so cruel to her crystallized all the chaos of Alex’s emotions as he held Maggie in his arms. He rocked her back and forth, stroked her hair, held her to him as if each of their lives depended upon it. Maybe not actual life and death. But he knew they were being given a chance here. A chance to set the world to rights. Her world to rights.

  He wanted her, something fierce. And tonight he was going to show her exactly how beautiful she was.

  As her tears eased, he held her out at arm’s length then swept a few errant tears away from her cheeks. She was so beautiful. Exquisite, even. And every cell in his body ached to be with her.

  “I think you’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen,” he said.

  It hadn’t been what he’d planned to say, but it was true. He couldn’t yet put a name to what he was feeling for her, but she could be sure it included respect and desire.

  “You don’t have to say that.” She tried to wriggle free of his hands but he held her, determined to make her see that he meant it.

  “I know I don’t. And you don’t have to say anything in return. But we both know there’s been something between us ever since we met.”

  “Something we’ve both been pretty actively fighting,” she pointed out. “There’s got to be a reason for it.”

  She was being cautious. Now that he knew her full story, her fears, he understood her reluctance to follow through on the obvious sexual tension that had being zinging between them since that first day on the ferry.

  “You’re right. Absolutely right. We each had hurdles to cross. I definitely did. I needed to understand that what happened with Amy didn’t happen to me...it just happened. She had milliseconds to make a choice. I probably would have done the same thing. Tried to help the patients. She was in an impossible situation.” He reached to the top button of his shirt and undid it. “I guess now’s as good a time as any to learn to let loose a little. Life is full of risks. Especially when there’s a Maggie Green living right here under my roof.”

  Her soft smile warmed him through and through. “You don’t mean that.” She didn’t sound convinced, so he plunged in at the deep end.

  “Absolutely, I do. From the moment I met you, you turned my world upside down. Did I want to resist? Hell, yes. My son is my priority. And you know more than most I adhere to a rigid code of conduct, but when I see Jake with you? Playing games or cooking? Whatever it is the two of you do...” He shook his head as he pictured their heads tipped toward each other, laughing over some silly joke. “It makes my world light up. You make my world light up.”

  Light flared brightly in her eyes. It was time. The energy coursing between the pair of them was a powerful mixture of understanding, love and desire. It was sexy as hell.

  He tipped her chin up toward him and kissed her. Softly at first. And then when he felt the tension in her body give a little, he pressed his hand to the small of her back and pulled her even closer. He wanted to taste and explore that beautiful mouth of hers. Catch that full lower lip of hers between his teeth then give it a slow, warm, swoop with
his tongue. Soon any control he possessed had morphed into pure, raw need.

  She flicked his switches. All of them. Hot and cold. Wary and elated. Grateful. Furious. And a thousand more he couldn’t think of names for because all his body wanted right now was to be touching her.

  In one swift move he shifted his feet to the floor then scooped her up in his arms.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Something I should’ve done the first day you came here.”

  Seconds later they were in the shower, fully clothed, her legs cinched round his waist as if she’d done it a thousand times before, each of them tipping their heads up, laughing as the steamy warm water poured down on the pair of them.

  He knelt down so that he could put Maggie onto the chair that she used in the shower. He’d never felt such a powerful connection with a woman before. Two hearts, bare to the other. Two bodies he already knew were made for one another.

  “Maggie Green...” Alex barely recognized his own voice it was so hoarse. “Would you do me the honor of allowing me to make love to you?”

  * * *

  For the first time ever Maggie felt shy in front of him.

  “I wish I had on something a bit more...sexy.” They both looked down at her saturated flannel shorts and plain cotton tank top.

  “You don’t need lingerie to make yourself look beautiful.” Alex dipped in close and began kissing her neck just below her ear, his fingers running the length of her décolletage. Her breasts instantly responded to the light brush of his hand, the tingling sensations soaring in an arrow straight to that magic spot below her belly.

  Oh, boy. She was in serious trouble.

  She grabbed his face between her hands and forced him to look at her, water pouring down both of their faces. She prayed he couldn’t tell some of the droplets on her face were tears of disbelief.

  “Are you absolutely sure this is what you want?”

  “I’m absolutely sure you are who I want,” he said.