‘Cakes? Cookies? Casseroles?’ His voice implied that she had asked him to fly to the moon and back. ‘Isn’t that your job?’ he asked with heavy sarcasm. ‘Correction. It shouldn’t be a question. It’s a statement of fact. Everything on this list consists of things you should be doing. In case you’d forgotten, my work keeps me out of the house for long periods of time.’
‘I understand that you’re a workaholic—’
‘I’m not a workaholic.’ He considered crumpling the list and chucking it into the bin, but was tempted to carry on reading. ‘I run a company. Various companies. Believe it or not, it all takes time.’
‘DVD night’ was scheduled for Wednesday. He couldn’t remember the last time he had watched a DVD. Who had time to sit in front of the television for hours on end? How productive was that?
‘You have to make time for Samantha,’ Tess told him stubbornly. ‘I don’t think you even know how scared she is of joining a new school. All her friends were at her school in Connecticut. She’s terrified of making new ones!’
‘Understandable, but kids adapt easily. It’s a known fact.’
‘That’s easy for you to say,’ Tess retorted, digging her heels in and refusing to budge. ‘I can remember how scary it was going to secondary school! And I knew people who would be going with me. Just the thought of new teachers and new schoolbooks…’
‘You didn’t see it as a challenge you could rise to? No, maybe not, if you refused to settle down and do the work. But this isn’t about you, and you’re not Samantha. Granted, things haven’t been easy for her, but being surrounded by new kids her own age will be a good thing. I’m not,’ he said heavily, ‘asking her to forget all the people she knew in Connecticut.’
‘Maybe it feels that way to her.’ Tess despaired of getting through to him. Where she had always seen the world in shades of grey, he seemed to see it entirely in black and white. Which, she wondered, was worse? The shades of grey that had prevented her from ever focusing on any one thing, or the black and white that seemed to prevent him from letting go of the reins for a second?
‘What,’ he asked, looking down at the list, ‘is a “talking evening…”?’
‘Ah. That one. I was going to slot in a games night.’
‘I thought we had a Games night—where we play “Monopoly or Scrabble or some sort of other board game as agreed upon…”’
‘I mean perhaps, take her to a rugby game. Maybe not rugby. Not in America, anyway. A soccer game. Or basketball. Or baseball. But then I really can’t see you getting into any of that stuff.’
‘Ah, those games. For guys who aren’t workaholics…’
‘You’re not taking any of this seriously, are you?’
Matt looked at her speculatively. Was he taking any of it seriously? None of the previous nannies had presented him with lists before. He didn’t think that any of them would have had the nerve. In fact he couldn’t think, offhand, of anyone working for him who would have had the nerve to tell him what he should and shouldn’t do.
On the other hand, none of the other nannies had had the success rate that she had—even after one day.
‘Okay—here’s the deal.’ He sat back and folded his hands behind his head, the very picture of the dominant male. ‘I’ll consider some of your suggestions, but you’ll have to be present.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Baking cookies and cakes. What do I know about that? My housekeeper looks after that side of things, or else I ensure food of the highest standard is delivered.’
‘You just have to follow a recipe,’ Tess pointed out. Did he even possess a recipe book? She hadn’t seen any in the kitchen. Maybe he had a stash of them in his library—although she doubted that.
Matt stood up abruptly and walked towards the window, looking down at the matchstick figures scurrying along the pavements and the small yellow taxis like a toddler’s play-cars.
‘Have you shown this list to my daughter?’ he asked, turning around to look at her.
In return she frowned at him. ‘Not yet. I did it in the car on the way over. I mean, I would have had it typed out, but I…I didn’t have time.’
‘Then how do you know that she’s going to go along with any of these schemes?’
‘They’re not schemes’
‘Okay. Ideas. Suggestions. Brainwaves. Call them what you want. How do you know that she’s going to be keen to…let’s say…play a board game for two hours?’
‘Oh. Right. I see what you mean.’
‘I very much doubt that,’ Matt said irritably. ‘Kids these days prefer to sit in front of their computers. It’s how they connect with their friends. Samantha has a very advanced computer. It was one of the first things I bought for her when she came here to live with me.’
‘I’ll do it,’ Tess decided. ‘If you need me around, then I’ll do it.’
Need was a word that didn’t feature heavily in his vocabulary—not insofar as it applied to him, at any rate. He opened his mouth to point that out, and then realised that, like it or not, the prospect of trying to coax a positive reaction from his daughter whilst trying to appear relaxed in front of a game of Scrabble was the equivalent of looking up at an insurmountable precipice and trying to work out how to scale it in a pair of flip-flops.
‘It’s hardly a question of need,’ he stated, frowning.
‘Some men find it difficult to take time out for quality family time.’
‘Spare me the psychobabble, Tess.’
He met her eyes and for a split second she felt almost dizzy. She wondered whether it was because she was just so unused to any of this. Standing up for something and refusing to back down. Telling a man like Matt Strickland—who was her sister’s boss, for goodness’ sake—that he should be doing stuff, when it was obvious that no one ever told him what he should be doing. Getting involved enough to go beyond the call of duty for a job she had been reluctant to accept in the first place.
Her mouth went dry and she found that she was sitting on her hands, leaning forward in her chair. Crazy! ‘It’s not psychobabble,’ she said faintly. ‘It’s the truth! What activity would you…would you like to start with?’
‘Ah. A choice?’ Matt looked at the list. ‘You do realise that choosing to participate in these activities will curtail your free time in the evenings?’
‘That’s okay.’
‘I’ll make sure that you’re paid overtime, of course.’
‘I don’t care about the money,’ Tess muttered, looking in fascination at his downbent head as he continued to frown over the list, as though trying to work out which was the most acceptable of the options on the table.
‘But you might,’ he murmured, not looking at her, ‘regret committing to something that’s going to involve time you might otherwise spend seeing New York…going out and having fun. Isn’t that going to be a problem?’
Quite suddenly he raised his eyes to hers, and there it was again—that giddy feeling as though she was free-falling through space.
‘Why should it be a problem?’ she asked breathlessly.
‘Because,’ Matt murmured, ‘you’re young, and I’ve gathered that you came here to have fun. Since when has your definition of fun been spending time with your employer and his daughter, playing a game of Scrabble?’
Never, Tess thought, confused.
‘Right.’ He stood up, and she hastily followed suit. Her allotted time was over. ‘First of all, you will be reimbursed—whether you like it or not. And as for which activity takes my fancy…having done none of them for longer than I can remember…’
He grinned. A smile of genuine amusement. And for a few heart-stopping seconds he ceased to be Matt Strickland, the man who was employing her, the man who represented just the sort of staid workaholic that she privately abhorred, and was just a man. A suffocatingly sexy man who made her head spin.
‘Your choice. I’ll be home tomorrow by six.’
CHAPTER THREE
‘OKAY. So let me get t
his straight. You’ve now got yourself a clothes allowance, no limits, and you’re going on a date with my boss.’
‘It’s not a date,’ Tess said irritably, but she was only half concentrating on Claire who was lounging fully clothed in a tight green dress with high heels—also green. Claire was killing time before going out with the guy she had been seeing for the past eighteen months—an investment banker whom Tess had met several times and liked very much, despite the fact that the second he left the room she could never seem to quite remember what he looked like.
‘No? What is it, then? Cosy restaurant? Bottle of Chablis? Candlelight? No one’s ever had a clue as to what Matt Strickland does in his private life, and here you are, less than three weeks in, and you’re on a date.’
Small and black or small and red? Tess was thinking, looking at the selection of outfits she had bought earlier that day. Five seconds of tussling with her moral conscience and she had shamelessly capitulated once inside the fashionable department store to which she had been directed—because, he had told her, he would be taking her to dinner to get her feedback, and she would need something fairly dressy to wear. Were it not for him, she’d reasoned to herself, she wouldn’t have to spend money on clothes for restaurants she wouldn’t be going to. So if he wanted to foot the bill, then why not?
Besides, Samantha had been having fun. They had made a deal. Tess would pretend to yawn inside the toy shops and Samantha would tap the over-sized face of her newly acquired Disney watch in boredom inside the grown-up clothes shops, and then they would break for lunch at a place upon which they had both agreed, and which was based on a menu of pizzas and burgers. Good, fortifying food before they dutifully visited some place of culture in the name of education.
Tess had discovered that in New York there was a cultural destination for every day of the week for at least a year. Having always considered places of culture as unutterably boring, she was slowly discovering that they weren’t half bad—especially when being explored with someone with an equal lack of knowledge. Even if that particular someone happened to be a ten-and-nine tenths-of-a-year-old child. They would learn together along the way, and it had to be said that Samantha was as sharp as a tack. Indeed, Tess had delegated most of the guidebooks to her, and her job was to describe what they were looking at, including its history.
‘I think I’ll go red.’
‘Why do you care if it’s not a date?’ Claire smirked, easing herself off the bed and dusting herself down. ‘And please don’t tell me again that it’s not a date. For the past three weeks I’ve hardly seen you, and now you’re off to a restaurant with him. Surely you’ve said everything there is to say over your games of Monopoly and your cinema evenings?’
‘Has it been three weeks?’ Yes. Yes, it had. Time seemed to be moving at the speed of sound. After her initial hesitation about getting involved with Matt and the tense relationship he had with his daughter, she seemed to have dived in—headlong. Games night—their first night—had been a muted success, and since then things had picked up because he had been making an effort. He was getting back to the apartment before seven without fail, and throwing himself into every activity with such enthusiasm that it was difficult not to be swept away along with him. Samantha, wary at first, was slowly beginning to thaw, beginning to really enjoy herself, and it was hard not to be caught up in the changing tide.
‘It’s a debriefing,’ Tess concluded. ‘And I only wish I didn’t have to go. I’d much rather be living it up in Manhattan on a Friday night out with you and Tom. Okay, maybe not you and Tom, but with other people. Young, exciting people. Artists and writers and poets.’ The sort of people she thought she should be thrilled to hang out with, in other words. ‘I haven’t really had a chance to report back to Matt on how things are going with Samantha. This is purely about my job. I think I’ve put on weight. Have I put on weight? This dress feels a bit snug.’
‘Tess…’ Claire said hesitantly. ‘You’re not going to do anything stupid, are you?’ ‘Anything stupid? Like what?’ ‘I don’t know what Matt Strickland gets up to in his personal life, but there’s a reason why he is where he is today. He’s tough and he’s pretty ruthless.’
‘What are you trying to say?’
‘Don’t fall for the guy.’
‘I wouldn’t!’ Tess turned to her sister. ‘My dream guy isn’t a high-flier who wants to make money. You know that. My dream guy is down to earth and sensitive, and when I find him I’ll recognise him.’
‘That’s not how life works.’
‘I’m just doing my job, and for the first time in my life I’m actually enjoying what I’m doing. You have no idea what it’s like to see Matt and Samantha together. Okay, it’s not perfect, but it’s beginning to work, and I’d like to think that I’ve had something to do with that. It seems to me that the whole world wants me to settle down and find something I wants to stick with. I think I’ve found it. I like children and I like working with them. It’s something positive that I’m going to take away from this whole experience and please don’t confuse that with anything else!’
It was the first time she had come even close to being at odds with her sister, and she relented as soon as she saw Claire’s shocked expression.
‘I can take care of myself, so don’t worry about me. I’m not falling for Matt Strickland! I’m getting to know him. And the only reason I’m getting to know him is because I need to for the sake of his daughter.’
She could have added that Matt Strickland had become three-dimensional, and that her head was slowly becoming crowded with images of him. Matt frowning in concentration in front of a recipe book for beginners she and Samantha had bought three days ago. Matt exultant when he managed to buy a hotel and charge exorbitant rent in a game of Monopoly. Matt teasing but tentative as his daughter brought him hesitantly into her life in Connecticut over the images of her friends on her computer.
This dinner, she knew, was purely about business. He would point out any areas of concern he had with her. He would see room for improvement. No need for nerves, and no need to be unsettled by anything Claire had said.
For the first time Tess was beginning to get a handle on just how much she had been protected through the years by her parents and by her sisters. They had allowed her to retreat from the competitive race academically. Claire and Mary had indulged her when she had turned her back on schoolwork. Had they felt sorry for her because they’d known how impossible it would be to live up to the standards they had set? Or had they enjoyed vicariously living a different kind of life through her? A life without responsibilities? And her parents had been almost as bad. No wonder Claire now thought that she was incapable of protecting herself when it came to the big, bad world! The fact was that she was finally growing up. She was taking on responsibilities. She was more equipped now that she had ever been to deal with whatever life threw at her.
Self-confidence restored, she slipped on the red dress, stuck on high, wedge-heeled sandals with delicate straps, and then stood back and examined her reflection in the mirror.
She didn’t often do this—stare critically at herself in the mirror—but doing it now, really taking time to see how she looked, she wasn’t disappointed. She would never be tall and spindly, but she looked okay. Her hair was loose and it shone, and she was already acquiring a healthy glow from the baking summer sun. Claire and Mary both had a typically Irish complexion: dark hair, pale skin with a hint of freckles, and of course the family trademark—bright green eyes. Tess, however, was warmer in colour, and it showed. The sun had also lightened her hair. She wasn’t blonde, but lighter, with more varied shades of caramel.
With Claire loitering somewhere outside, ready to resume their conversation, Tess waited until Matt’s driver paged her on her cell phone and then hurried out of the apartment, stopping to peep into the kitchen only to announce that she was off.
After three weeks she had become accustomed to being driven around New York. She no longer felt like roya
lty inside the limo, and she was hardly aware of the streets slipping by until the car finally stopped outside an elegant restaurant—just the sort of restaurant that would have chucked her out had she turned up in her normal gear of jeans and a tee shirt.
Stanton, Matt’s driver, swooped round to open the car door for her.
Inside, a small foyer opened to an expanse of gleaming wooden floors and circular tables with starched white linen tablecloths and comfortable brown leather chairs. Every table seemed to be full of people chattering and, frankly, looking unashamedly glamorous. It was almost as though a Hollywood director had decided to film a movie inside a restaurant and supplied his own cast.
Two impressive wooden tables were home to the most towering vases of flowers Tess had ever seen. White lilies intricately laced around a honeycomb of twisted driftwood neatly partitioned the restaurant, so that there was at once an atmosphere of pleasant busyness that was yet strangely intimate.
Even by the impossibly high standards of opulence to which she had been exposed, this was in a league of its own, and Matt, sipping a drink and waiting for her in the most private corner of the restaurant, looked perfectly at ease in the surroundings.
Nervous tension beaded her upper lip, and suddenly, unexpectedly, her body was doing strange things. For a few seconds her breathing seemed to stop, and—perversely—her heart began beating so fast that it felt as though it would burst out of her chest. Her mind had shut down. There was not a thought in her head. Even the sound of the diners and the clatter of cutlery faded to a background blur.
He was wearing a black jacket that fitted him like a glove, and the white of his shirt threw the aristocratic harsh angles of his face into stunning prominence. He looked vibrant and drop-dead gorgeous, and she almost faltered in her high heels as she walked towards him.
In the act of lifting his glass to his lips, he seemed to still too.
Suddenly self-conscious, and embarrassed at being caught red-handed in the act of staring, Tess plastered a brilliant smile on her lips as she weaved her way towards him.
Her Impossible Boss Page 4