Tempting the New Boss

by Angela Claire

  At the sudden confrontation, Mason stumbled back a little, flinching, and all the Andersons, including Camilla, stared at him, mouths tight.

  There was an awkward silence as her mom urged Joey back. “I’m sorry. My son is very demonstrative. He gets upset. But he doesn’t mean anything by it.”

  All it would take to smooth the moment over would be a few words from Mason. No problem. I understand. Anything. Even a smile.

  But all he did was shake his head, reaching for a napkin, his face shuttered.

  Camilla put a hand on her brother’s shoulder. “Don’t worry, Joey. It’s no big deal. It’s not like a plane crashing.”

  Joey fixed his watery eyes on her, a corner of his mouth going up. “That’s right. I crashed a plate, not a plane.”

  Brandy took his arm and led Joey away, murmuring to him, and their father said, “Sorry about that. We better get going. Thanks again. Cammy, see you upstairs.” And then he was gone.

  “I’ll take care of this mess, Mom,” Camilla assured her. “You go pack up. What room are you in?”

  When she’d given the number, her mother said softly, “Thank you again, Mr. Talbot, for flying us in. It meant a lot to us. You didn’t have to do that.”

  Camilla bit her tongue from saying that he didn’t, his secretary did.

  “We’ll get out of your hair now.”

  He nodded.

  When she was gone, Camilla scooped up large chunks of the broken mess, but the waitress came over and waved her off. “Don’t bother. We’ll sweep it all up. That was your brother?”

  “Yes.”

  “A nice smile that boy has.”

  Mason was still staring down at his pants, as if not sure what to do at this point. He mumbled, “I’ll call Marcia.”

  “You still want your omelet, miss? If so, I can move you to another table.”

  “No, that’s all right. I’m not hungry anymore.”

  After the waitress left, Camilla nodded at him with a short, “I have to go. I’ll see you in a bit,” and strode to the exit.

  He caught up to her, but she shrugged him away, avoiding his eyes. “I have to see my parents off, Mason. You better call about getting some fresh clothes.”

  When she went upstairs, her dad opened to her knock, shaking his head as he showed her in. “I don’t know about that guy, Cammy.”

  She bit her lip.

  “Looked like he was afraid of catching something from Joey, for God’s sake,” he scowled.

  “We’re pretty overwhelming as a group, Jack,” his wife reminded him, zipping a small carry-on bag and getting up from the bed. “We forget that sometimes. And he’s just her boss. It’s not like we’ll probably ever see him again. Right, Cammy?”

  “Yes.” Her voice came out thin. “That’s right.”

  “He was simply trying to have breakfast,” her mother continued, handing the carry-on to her husband and making a last minute survey of the room to make sure they hadn’t left anything, opening the closet, checking under the bed. “He probably didn’t expect his lawyer’s whole family to show up and cause a ruckus.”

  “Then he shouldn’t have been flying our daughter around in the middle of a goddamn storm. And he sat down to breakfast with us.” He slung the carry-on over his shoulder. “Talking about sperm donors, for heaven sake, and taking a little accident like it was the end of the world. And what was that stuff about one room when you were checking in?” he asked Camilla, as if he been holding the question in and Mason’s behavior at breakfast pried it loose. “If he was trying to pull some stunt on you when you’d just been through such a harrowing experience, I swear—”

  “Daddy, I told you that was nothing,” she assured him, a hand to his arm. “A mistake. Now I’m sorry about breakfast. He’s not used to family, and he isn’t the most outgoing guy to begin with.”

  “Seems like a kook,” her father muttered as her mother came out of the bathroom with a plastic bag of toiletries and put them in the outside pocket of the carry-on bag. “I have half a mind to buy our own tickets home. Not go in his fancy jet.”

  “Daddy, please. Don’t go to that trouble. I don’t want to be responsible for that expense.” On their retirement stipend, they couldn’t afford such an out-of-the-blue cost.

  “We wanted to see you, honey,” he insisted. “God, when I think—”

  “Yes, we did, Jack, and Mr. Talbot’s office was extremely considerate to have flown us here,” her mother insisted, linking arms with him. “I’m not going to make some fool gesture by not accepting their graciousness on the way home.”

  “You call that gracious?” he asked, with a roll of his eyes.

  “Not everyone is comfortable with people who are different, Jack,” her mother said quietly. “You know that.”

  “Maybe, but I don’t have to like it.”

  “I don’t know if that’s what it was,” Camilla said in a small voice.

  They waited, expecting her to say something else, arms linked, and when she didn’t, whatever her face said, her mother went back over to her. “Now listen to me, honey, do you think you could take a few days to recover? I know it was your first day, but—”

  “Some first day! She ought to sue the guy.”

  “Dad.”

  Her father relented. “Your mother’s right. Why don’t you come back with us? Clear your mind. Just for a few days.”

  “I do want to come home. Maybe for longer than a few days if I can swing it. If that’s okay with you.”

  Her parents traded looks. “Of course,” they said at the same time.

  She had just realized that was what she wanted to do, for now, while she tried to straighten out a life that had become suddenly too messy. “But I can’t come with you right now. I have to tie things up here. I’ll let you know, okay?”

  They went into the hall where Brandy waited with Joey, small overnight bags in their hands. Camilla gave her brother a big hug. Then her sister.

  “You okay?” Brandy asked.

  “I guess.” Her parents stood over to the side with Joey, and she whispered, “I don’t know, Brandy. Dad and Mom hate him.”

  “Dad is just suspicious because of the room thing, and you know how protective they are of Joey. I’m sure your, er, boss or guy or whatever didn’t mean anything. I don’t know. I’ve given you my best advice. I guess you can poll the others now.”

  She laughed. “I’m not so sure that’d be a good idea.”

  “It’ll work out. It always does.”

  “Does it?” She felt unaccountably sad at her family’s departure, at the decisions she had to make about her own situation.

  “Yes.”

  “You all go down to the van,” her mother told the others. “I want a minute alone with Cammy.”

  Camilla shot an accusatory look at Brandy who shrugged and mimed a zipper against her lips. “Not me,” she mouthed.

  After the elevator closed, her mother snapped her fingers. “Oh shoot. Your father had the key. We can’t go back inside the room. Well, never mind. Come here.”

  She led Camilla into an alcove with an ice machine and said, “I want you to promise me you won’t do anything rash.”

  Camilla kicked a stray piece of ice into the corner. “Why would you say that?”

  “Because when people are in extreme situations of stress, life and death situations, it takes some time to get perspective when they come out of it.”

  “Mom—”

  “Just listen to me, Cammy. I know you and the other girls think I’m too old to remember what it was like to be young and foolish, but sadly for you, you’re going to find out you’re never too old for that.”

  She smiled. “I don’t think you’re old, Mom.”

  “So let me say my piece then. You went through a scary, scary thing, and as a consequence, you might be making choices that you otherwise wouldn’t have made. That’s fine. Understandable. Healthy even.”

  She added in an undertone, kicking a stray piece of ice under t
he machine herself, “Though your father would kill me if he knew I was saying that to you because I think we both know what I mean by that.”

  Camilla leaned back against the ice machine. “What are you trying to say?”

  “Don’t beat yourself up for anything that happened after the crash, but please, please don’t jump into anything now. You’re not thinking like yourself. You’ve gotten very close to pulling back that veil, and you’re still not seeing too clearly.”

  No use pointing out she hadn’t been seeing too clearly before the crash either. Not when it came to Mason.

  “And even if the other person seems sincere, heck is sincere at the time, he might not be seeing too clearly, either.” Her mother shook a finger at her. “Did you know Christy Brinkley married a guy she barely knew who she’d gotten into a helicopter accident with and they were divorced, fighting like fiends over custody of their baby, a year later? Did you know that?”

  “Who’s Christy Brinkley?”

  She threw up her hands. “Oh, for heaven’s sake!”

  Camilla laughed and kissed her cheek, leading her back into the hallway and pushing the button for the elevator. “Don’t worry, Mom. I’m not marrying anybody right now. It’s just that with the veil back—” She paused. “Is that a poem or something?”

  “You don’t go to mass anymore, do you?”

  Camilla hurried on. “I want to take some time while I’m seeing whatever it is I’m seeing to try to figure out what I really want to do.”

  The elevator arrived. “Well, I can’t argue with that.” With a last hug, she got on the elevator. “Keep us posted about you coming home. I think that’s a very good idea for you right now.”

  “Will do.”

  “Love you.”

  “Love you, too,” she said to the closing doors.

  If Brandy really hadn’t said anything to their mother, she was a lot more perceptive than Camilla had thought. Or she and Mason were a lot more obvious.

  When she returned to her suite, Mason’s door was open, and he emerged as she put her card key into her own. His brand-new khakis and white oxford looked very out of place with the same beat up sneakers.

  “Marcia works fast,” she said as they went into her suite.

  “She sent them over last night it turns out. They were at the front desk.”

  The bed where they’d made love all night was still rumpled, the sheets half on the floor, the comforter pushed to the bottom. She turned away from it.

  “Your parents get off okay?”

  “Fine.”

  “I’m sorry I didn’t, ah, whatever,” he said ambiguously, brushing her hair from her eyes, linking his arms around her waist.

  She shrugged away. Time to bite the bullet. Fish or cut bait. Whatever. “I need some time.”

  He froze. “Time?”

  “Yes, to think things over.”

  He dropped his eyes and stared at his shoes. “We’re all set to take a charter back this morning. The pilots are standing by. London or New York, you say the word.”

  “I can’t do that right now.” Not just the plane, but everything, this sudden closeness with him, her intense feelings. Her mom was right. She didn’t know if the gut wrenching ache in the pit of her stomach at the thought of being anywhere but in his arms was a real thing or if it was just an extreme reaction to life and death circumstances.

  “All right, we’ll stay here for a few days. I can put off the meeting. I’d rather be alone with you anyway.”

  “I don’t think we should jump into that. Us, I mean. In fact, I might go home for a while. To Michigan.”

  “A…a vacation?” He stumbled over the word, like he’d never used it before.

  But a short week away, then back in the boardroom and bedroom, wasn’t what she was proposing. He couldn’t be her boss and her lover. She had known that all along. The only question was whether he could still be even one of those. Whether they were really right for each other, as different as they were.

  “No, not a vacation. I have some money saved, and if I live with my parents temporarily, my only expense will be my student loan payments. I can last for a while until I… I don’t know. Decide what I want to do.”

  “Don’t do this, Camilla.” His voice was low and intense, the blue eyes focused on her now, not his sneakers. “Come back with me.”

  She shook her head, and he turned away quickly. “I thought we did all this last night. Settled all this.”

  “We settled that we feel something for each other, but not what we should do about it.”

  The curls on the back of his neck just brushed his collar, and she wished she could reach out to him. A pad of hotel stationary rested on the nearby desk, and he ripped off a sheet, then folded it in two. “I know what I want to do about it.”

  “I need time.”

  “Yes, you said that.” The sheet was folded into quarters, then even smaller until it was a square that fit neatly in his palm. “How much time?”

  “I don’t know. I’m sorry.”

  He launched the wad of paper at the wastebasket but missed. “Is this because of what happened at breakfast? I’m not used to that kind of situation. If I did something wrong, I didn’t mean to. It was the sperm thing, right?”

  “No, you did fine,” she lied. “You don’t know my family, my brother. All breakfast did was remind me how different we are.”

  “I said I wanted to know them.”

  “Well, you didn’t make a very good start this morning,” she snapped.

  He bent to retrieve the misfired paper and dropped it in safely.

  “I’m sorry,” she said in a rush. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

  He glanced sideways at her. “And you’re not going to give me a chance, are you?”

  She was about to say it wasn’t about her family, but that wasn’t true. It was, partly anyway. The rest was about her and what she wanted out of life. Trite as it was, the plane crash had reminded her of her own mortality. If death came sooner than she expected, would she be content to say she had spent the last years of her life paying off her student loans and doing a profession she hated in a city that had never felt like home? There had to be some better way to figure out her future, and she needed some time, finally, to try to come up with one.

  “What does that matter anyway?” he went on, his voice clipped. “I live in New York. You live in New York. How often would I even see your family? Do you see even them? When it was just us, it was fine.”

  She sighed, sitting in the chair by the bed. “It’s not just us. We don’t live in a hermetically sealed airplane all the time or on a deserted trail.”

  “A plane is not hermetically sealed,” he muttered.

  “You asked me why I hadn’t been with anyone in so long. It was because I realized there wasn’t any future in it with the guys I dated in the city. I don’t want to be with a workaholic New Yorker who thinks that money is everything and who lives in a five hundred square foot box forty floors up. I want to be away from all that someday.”

  He stared at her. After a minute he said, “My apartment is a four-story townhouse on the upper east side. You could probably fit your parent’s house in it three times over.”

  “It’s not about money.”

  “What is it about then?” His face was flushed, and he jabbed his hands into the pockets of those nice new khakis. “You don’t want me? Is that what you’re saying here?”

  She took a deep breath. He stood before her chair, close enough for her to reach out and touch the lean cheek she knew would be warm or circle one thick wrist and coax a long-fingered hand from a pocket. Bring the palm to her lips and place a gentle kiss there.

  But she wasn’t doing either of them any favors if she wasn’t honest. “You’re a wonderful guy. I never imagined when I walked into your office two days ago— God, was that only two days?”

  He didn’t smile, and she stumbled on.

  “I never imagined how much I would enjoy being with you
, like you…”

  He said nothing.

  “But I can’t work for somebody I’m sleeping with, and I don’t know what you’re envisioning otherwise. I need to take a good look at my life right now, take this opportunity to think, since I’m out of a job and everything anyway.”

  She tried smiling again, but it faded away quickly. For once she didn’t feel much like smiling. She got to the point.

  “I can’t just drop my career or what’s left of it, with no other plans for the future but to be your girlfriend, if that’s even what you’re talking about. By your own admission, you’ve never even had one.”

  “You’re not arguing a case here.” His tone was sharp. “And I said I’d marry you.”

  “Mason! Come on. That’s not realistic. We just met each other.”

  He turned away, moving back to the desk, passing up the pad of paper for a ballpoint pen, flicking it around on the surface pad with one finger until it toppled off the edge. He shoved his wayward hand back into his pants pocket again as if to stop any further nervous movements. “You hate being a lawyer. Why can’t you give it up? And don’t say the fucking loans,” he hastened to add. “I can take care of those. You know that.”

  “I can’t let you. That’s not who I am.”

  He rounded on her. “Then come back to New York with me. Or we’ll go to London. Take that meeting. You say you can’t just drop your career, so don’t drop it. I never asked you to. You’re my lawyer. At least give that a chance. Try the job out. You worked in a firm before. How do you know you wouldn’t love being in-house?”

  “Believe me, even if I did, there’s a rule against sleeping with the boss. You can’t. I can’t.”

  “I’ll leave you alone. I won’t try to, we don’t have to—”

  “That would never work.”

  “You’re leaving without notice.” He straightened, taking his hands out of his pockets to fold them across his chest, his stance wide and his tone unmistakably boss, not lover. “Even Shreeman stayed until I hired his replacement. I have ongoing deals continuously. You’re going to quit on the spot? That’s not very professional.”

  Her mouth thinned. “I think I’ve gone way beyond not being professional, don’t you?”