‘That’s lovely.’ Tess was unconvinced.
‘And now that we’ve covered that, let’s move on to your hours.’ He tapped his pen absently on the desk, beating a staccato rhythm that made her feel as though she was being cross-examined rather than interviewed. ‘I’ll expect you to be here every morning no later than seven-thirty.’
‘Seven-thirty?’
‘Does that pose a problem?’
Torn between truth and tact, Tess remained silent until he prompted, with raised eyebrows, ‘I’m taking that as a no. It’s a requirement of the job. I could occasionally request one of my housekeepers to cover for you in an emergency, but I would hope that the occasion doesn’t arise.’
Tess had always been punctual at all her jobs—the very many she had had over the years—but it had to be said that none of them had required her to wake up at the crack of dawn. She wasn’t an early-morning person. Somehow she knew that was a concept he would never be able to understand. She wondered whether he ever slept.
‘Do all your employees work long hours?’ she asked faintly, and for some reason Matt had the strongest inclination to burst out laughing. Her appalled look said it all.
‘They don’t get paid the earth to clock-watch,’ he said seriously. ‘Are you telling me that you’ve never worked overtime in your life before?’
‘I’ve never had to,’ Tess told him earnestly. ‘But then again, I’ve never been paid the earth for anything I’ve done. Not that I mind. I’ve never been that interested in money.’
Matt was intrigued, against his will. Was this woman from the same planet as he was? He should stick to the programme, but he found himself strangely willing to digress.
‘Really?’ he said with scepticism. ‘In that case, I applaud you. You’re one of a kind.’
Tess wondered whether he was being sarcastic, but then, looking around her at the luxurious surroundings of his penthouse, where the old sat comfortably with the new and every hanging on the walls and rug strewn on the floor screamed wealth, she realised that he would be genuinely mystified at her indifference to money.
It had very quickly struck her, the second she had walked through the front door of his apartment, that Matt Strickland was a man who moved in circles so far removed from her own that they barely occupied the same stratosphere. The people he mixed with would share the same exalted lifestyle, and it was a lifestyle that could not be achieved without an unswerving dedication to the art of making money.
But Tess had been telling the absolute truth when she had told him that money didn’t interest her. If it had, she might have been a little more driven when it came to a career.
Nor did she have a great deal of respect for someone who put money at the top of their list. Someone, in short, like Matt Strickland. Even though she could appreciate that he was clever and ambitious, there was a hard, cutting edge to him that left her cold.
She sneaked a quick look at that striking face, and her heart beat a little faster and a little harder in her chest.
‘You’re not saying anything. I take it that you disapprove of all of this?’ He gestured sweepingly with one hand. This was a woman, he realised, whose silences were as revealing as the things she said. It was a refreshing trait.
‘It’s all very comfortable.’ Tess tiptoed around telling him the absolute truth—which was that expensive furnishings and investment paintings all came at a price.
‘But…?’
‘I prefer small and cosy,’ she admitted. ‘My parents’ house is small and cosy. Obviously, not that small. There were five of us growing up. But I think that their entire house would fit into just a bit of this apartment.’
‘You still live at home with them?’ His sharp ears had picked up on the intonation in her voice and his curiosity was instantly roused. What was a twenty-three-year-old woman still doing living at home? And, he noted distractedly, a strikingly pretty twenty-three-year-old girl? Huge green eyes dominated a heart-shaped face that even in moments of thought carried an air of animation. Her long hair was the colour of caramel, and.
His eyes drifted lazily downwards to the full breasts pushing lushly against a small cropped vest, the silver of flat stomach just visible between the vest and the faded jeans that moulded slim legs.
Annoyed at being distracted, Matt stood up and began to prowl through his office. Originally a library, it was still dominated by the hand-made wooden bookcase that stretched along the entire length of the back wall. A rich Oriental rug, handed down through the generations, covered most of the wooden floor. The only modern introductions were the paintings on the walls and, of course, the high-tech paraphernalia essential to his work.
‘I…at the moment I do,’ Tess mumbled, with sudden awkward embarrassment.
‘And you’ve never lived on your own?’
The incredulity in his voice made her spin round to glare at him defensively. She decided that he really was truly hateful. Hateful and judgemental.
‘There was never a need for me to live on my own!’ she said in a high pitched voice. ‘I didn’t go to university, and there was no point looking for somewhere to rent when it was just as convenient for me to carry on living at home.’ As if it were spelt out in bold neon lettering, she was appalled to hear with her own ears just how hopeless that made her sound. Twenty-three and still living with Mum and Dad. Angry tears threatened to push their way to the surface and she blinked rapidly, forcing them back.
‘Remarkable.’
‘Most of my friends still live at home. It’s not that remarkable.’
‘And you never felt the need to spread your wings and do something different? Or did you give up and wave the white flag before you could get around to challenging yourself?’
Tess was shocked at the strength of her reaction. She had never shown any inclination towards violence before, but she could easily have leapt out of her chair and thrown something at him. Instead, she subsided into angry silence. Her entire nervous system picked up pace as he circled her and then leant down, arms on either side of her chair, effectively caging her in.
‘I don’t see what my home life has to do with this job,’ she breathed jerkily, looking anywhere but at the brown muscular forearms on either side of her.
‘I’m trying to get a measure of you as a person. You’re going to be responsible for the welfare of my daughter. You come with no references from a professional agency. I need to find out that you’re not going to prove a liability. Shall I tell you what I’ve concluded so far?’
Tess wondered whether she had a choice. Had her tongue been able to unglue itself from the roof of her mouth, she might have summoned up the courage to say something along those lines, but sarcastic rejoinders weren’t her forte and his proximity was wreaking havoc with her composure. Her skin was tingling, and she felt as though she was having to drag the oxygen into her lungs in order to breathe.
It was a relief when he pushed himself away from her chair and resumed his place behind the desk.
‘You’re lazy. You’re unfocused. You’re lacking in self-confidence and you’ve been perfectly happy to carry on being that way.’ He enunciated each derogatory bullet point with the cold precision of a judge passing sentence on a criminal. ‘You still live at home and it doesn’t seem to have occurred to you somewhere along the way that your parents might not be as happy with that situation as you are. You pick jobs up and you put them down again because you don’t want to be stretched. I’m no psychologist, but I’m guessing that it’s because you think you can’t fail at anything if you never bother to give your all to it.’
‘That’s horrible.’ Unfortunately there were elements of truth in some of what he had said, and for that she hated him. ‘Why are you interviewing me for this job if you have such a low opinion of me?’ she asked on a whisper. ‘Or has the interview ended? Is this your way of telling me that I haven’t got the job? Yes, it is. And, that being the case—’ Tess inhaled one deep breath that steadied her fraying nerves ‘—then I
can tell you what I think of you too!’ She looked at him with stormy green eyes and drew herself upright in her chair. ‘I think that you’re arrogant and rude. You think that just because you…you make a lot of money and grew up with a lot of money you can treat people any way you want to and be as offensive as you want to be. I think that it’s awful that you obviously work so hard that you have no time left over to give your daughter—who needs you! Or maybe you just don’t know how to give yourself to anyone else!’
Her breathing was jerky from the effort of pouring emotions she’d never known she possessed into what was, for her, an all-out shouting match. The worst of it was that she didn’t feel good about herself—even though she had spoken her mind, and even though speaking her mind should have achieved some sort of healthy cleansing.
‘And I’m not lazy,’ she concluded, deflating like a balloon with its air suddenly released. ‘If that’s all.’ She stood up and tried to gather some shreds of dignity. ‘I’ll be on my way.’
Matt smiled, and Tess was so flustered by that smile that she remained rooted to the spot, dithering as though her legs had forgotten how to work.
‘You have fire. I like that. You’re going to need some of it when it comes to handling my daughter.’
‘Wha—at?’
He waved her down into the chair and leaned back. ‘It’s healthy to hear a little criticism now and again. I can’t remember the last time anyone raised their voice in my presence.’ Particularly, he could have added, when it came to women. As if a switch had been turned on in his head, he suddenly keenly noted the fading pinkness in her cheeks. Her hair had fallen forward and was now spread over her shoulders, falling like spun silk over her breasts, almost down to her waist. She was regaining some of her lost composure but her breasts were still heaving.
He was shocked by the sudden responsive stirring in his loins. God, he had a girlfriend! An extremely clever, very high-powered girlfriend. One who understood completely the constraints of his job because they mirrored her own! They were on the same wavelength. She was diametrically, radically and dramatically the opposite to the elfin creature with the big green eyes sitting opposite him. Vicky Burns was focused, driven, and university-educated to the highest possible level.
So why the hell was he wondering what Tess Kelly looked like with her clothes off and only her long, long hair to cover her modesty?
He wrote a figure on a piece of paper and slid it across the desk to her.
Tess leant forward, and of their own accord his eyes strayed to the cleavage she revealed as she reached for the paper.
With a sigh of pure frustration Matt rubbed his eyes and half swivelled his chair, so that he was facing the vast windows of the library, framed with their heavy velvet curtains. It was a safer sight than the one his rebellious eyes had been absorbing.
‘This is too much, Mr Strickland. I couldn’t possibly accept.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ Annoyed with himself for his uncustomary lapse of self-control, Matt made his voice sharper than intended. He reluctantly turned to look at her. ‘It’s perfectly reasonable. You’re being asked to do a hugely important job, and for that money…well, consider yourself on a learning curve as far as overtime goes. There’s just one more thing. You’ll have to dress the part.’ He flushed darkly at the confusion on her face. ‘Looser clothing. It’s more practical in this heat. Particularly if you intend on doing…er…outdoor activities.’
‘But I don’t have any loose clothing.’
‘Then you’ll have to buy some. It’s not an insurmountable problem, Tess. You will have access to an account for all expenses to do with the job. Make use of it.’ He stood up, back in control of his wayward body, and waited as she scrambled to her feet, gathering her satchel which she slung over her shoulder.
‘Now it’s time for you to meet my daughter. She’s upstairs in her bedroom. I’ll show you to the kitchen. You can familiarise yourself with it. Make yourself a cup of coffee. I’ll bring her down.’
Tess nodded. After her gruelling interview, from which she was still reeling, the prospect of meeting Samantha wasn’t as daunting as she would have expected. What could be more full-on than her father had been?
The apartment, sprawling in all directions, occupied the entire top two floors of the building. Matt showed her into a kitchen which was as stunningly modern as the rest of the apartment was shamelessly and opulently old. Granite surfaces positively gleamed, and were completely bare of any of the normal clutter associated with day-to-day life. Tess foresaw problems should she attempt to do any cooking with her charge. She would be terrified of ruining the show home look.
‘Make yourself at home,’ he insisted, while she continued to look around her with the lost expression of someone suddenly transported to foreign territory.
For a few seconds Matt watched her with rare amusement. ‘It doesn’t bite,’ he said, and Tess flushed. ‘There’s tea and coffee in one of the cupboards, and in the fridge…’ he indicated something sleek that was camouflaged to look like the rest of the kitchen ‘…there should be milk. My housekeepers make sure that the kitchen is stocked, especially now that Samantha’s around. If you’re lucky, you might even locate some biscuits somewhere.’
‘You mean you don’t know where things are in your own kitchen?’
Matt grinned, and Tess had a disconcerting window into what this man would look like shorn of his arrogance. Not just beautiful, but dangerously, horribly sexy.
She lowered her eyes as a new, prickly feeling undermined her still shaky composure.
‘Terrible, isn’t it?’ He was still grinning and moving towards the door. He raised his eyebrows. ‘Maybe you could work that one into the next speech you give me about my shortcomings.’
Tess smiled weakly back, but somewhere in a part of her she hardly recognised warning bells were beginning to ring—although what that meant she had no idea.
CHAPTER TWO
‘WELL? Well? What did you think? Have you got the job?’
Claire was waiting for her. Tess had barely had time to insert her key into the front door and there she was, pulling open the door, her face alight with curiosity.
What did she think of Matt Strickland? Tess tried her best to sum up a guy who represented everything she so studiously avoided. Too rich, too arrogant, too stuffy. When her mind strayed to the peculiar way he had made her feel, she reined it back in.
‘Can you believe he didn’t want me showing up in tight clothing?’
‘He’s your boss. He can dictate your wardrobe. Do you think we’re allowed to show up to work in ripped jeans?’ Claire pointed out reasonably. ‘Move on. Impressions of the apartment?’
‘Barely had time to notice.’ Tess sighed. ‘I’ve never had such a long interview. I could tell you all about his office, but that’s about it. Oh—and the kitchen. I did notice that his apartment is the size of a ship, though, and I’m not sure about his taste in art. There were lots of paintings of landscapes and random strangers.’
‘That would be his family,’ Claire surmised thoughtfully. ‘Classy.’
‘Really? You think?’
‘And finally impressions of the daughter?’
No one had known that he even had a daughter, so private was Matt Strickland, and so far he hadn’t brought her into the office once!
Tess wondered what there was to tell—considering she hadn’t actually met the child. She had waited in the kitchen for what had seemed an unreasonable length of time, and Matt had finally returned in a foul temper and informed her that Samantha had locked herself in her bedroom and was refusing to leave it.
Tess had sipped her tea, distractedly helped herself to her fifth biscuit, absentmindedly gazed at her feet, which had been propped up on a kitchen chair in front of her and pondered the fact that, however powerful, self-assured and downright arrogant Matt Strickland was, there was still at least one person on the face of the earth who was willing to ignore him completely.
‘Y
ou shouldn’t have locks on the doors,’ she had informed him thoughtfully. ‘We were never allowed to when we were growing up. Mum was always petrified that there would be a fire and she would have no way of getting in.’
He had looked at her as though she had been speaking another language, and only later had she realised that he would have had no real experience of all the small details involved in raising a child.
‘So, Monday looks as though it’s going to be fun,’ she finally concluded now. ‘Samantha doesn’t want to know, plus I have to be there by seven-thirty. You know how hopeless I am at waking up early…’
Which earned her a look of such filthy warning from Claire that she decided to back off from further complaints on the subject. Of course she would do her very best to wake at the crack of dawn. She would set her alarm, and she would set her phone—but she knew that she might easily sleep through both. What if she did?
She still remembered all the choice words he had used to describe her, and her fact was still worrying at the problem when, the following evening, she answered the landline to hear Matt’s dark, smooth voice at the other end of the phone.
Immediately Tess was hurled back to his apartment and that first sight of him, lounging against the doorframe, looking at her.
‘You’ve probably got the wrong sister,’ Tess said as soon as he had identified himself—as though there had been any chance of her not recognising that voice of his. ‘Claire’s having a bath, but I’ll tell her you called.’
‘I called to speak to you,’ Matt informed her smoothly. ‘Just to remind you that I’ll be expecting you at seven-thirty sharp tomorrow morning.’
‘Of course I’m going to be there! You can count on me. I’m going to be setting a number of gadgets to make sure I don’t oversleep.’
At the other end of the line Matt felt his lips twitch, but he wasn’t about to humour her. He got the distinct impression that most people humoured Tess Kelly. There was something infectious about her warmth. However, when it came to his daughter, a stern angle was essential.
Her Impossible Boss Page 2