A Bride for the Boss

by Maureen Child

  “I’m glad.” Remembering the look on his face when he told her about what the ranch meant to him, she smiled. Maybe she had gotten through to him. At least a little.

  “And,” he added with a quick grin, “I learned that not answering my phone doesn’t mean instant death.”

  Laughing, she said, “Also good.”

  “Mostly, though,” he said, and his voice dropped to a low, throaty hush that seemed to ripple along her nerve endings, “I learned what we have.”

  “Mac—”

  “Just wait,” he said and held on to her hands when she tried to tug free. “Look, I admit, I was doing all of this to get you to come back to the office. Couldn’t see how I’d run the place without you. But it’s more now.”

  There went that flutter of hope again. “More?” She held her breath, watched his eyes.

  “We’re great together.” He said it flatly, brooking no argument even if she’d been inclined to try. “Hell, we have fun together. The sex is incredible and damn it, Andi, if we can have it all, why shouldn’t we?”

  And the hope died.

  This was only what he’d said before. Teamwork. Come back to the office. Be his trusty sidekick. Keep separate homes. Have sex with him. Don’t let anyone know.

  “If it turns out you are pregnant,” he was saying, and Andi warned herself to pay attention, no matter what pain it cost, “we can get married and live out at the ranch.” He gave her that smile filled with charm as if that would be enough to smooth over the jagged edges of her heart. “Closer commute for both of us. And Teresa’s there to take care of the baby while we’re at work.”

  The last remaining remnants of that hope burned to a cinder and the ashes blew away.

  God, she was an idiot.

  Before she could tell him to leave, his phone rang. “You mind?” he asked after glancing at the readout.

  “No, go ahead.” It would give her another moment or two to find the right words to end this. God. How could she be so cold?

  “Right... Okay, Tim... Yeah, I know you could. But I’ll feel better if I meet you. Twenty minutes?” He hung up, slid the phone into his pocket and looked at Andi. “We’ve got to finish this later. I have to get to the office. The Brinkman deal is faltering.”

  Brinkman. She flipped through her mental files. “Oh. Brinkman Auto Industries.”

  “Right.” He stood up, then leaned over and took a last bite of his now cool pizza. Still chewing, he told her, “There are a few things to be done before Hal Brinkman panics and backs out entirely.”

  “Why are you going in?” Sitting on the floor, she stared up at him and said, “Tim was point person on that deal. No one knows Brinkman better than he does.”

  “Yeah, but it’s my company. Buck stops with me.” He narrowed his eyes on her. “And you. Come to the office with me, Andi. You did all the prelim work on those contracts. With your mind, you remember every single detail.”

  Her heart actually hurt. “No, Mac.”

  Frowning, he stared at her. “What do you mean, ‘no’?”

  “I mean, I quit, Mac. Two weeks ago. And if that doesn’t help, I quit again. This time, it’s final.” Mac was ready to race out the door even though this wasn’t an emergency. Andi had to recognize that she simply wasn’t a priority to him. Never would be.

  How could he not see it? Despite everything they’d shared the past two weeks, nothing had changed. He wanted her. Back in the office. Back in his bed. And for nothing else. It hurt to accept. To realize that Mac hadn’t changed. Not really. His company was still the most important thing to him.

  Even now, when he was trying to finagle her back into his life, he was willing to put that conversation on hold so he could race to the office to deal with something his vice president was completely capable of handling.

  “I’m done, Mac.” Slowly, Andi stood up, because if she was going to stand her ground metaphorically, then she’d do it literally, too. “You’re running back to the office when they don’t even need you to.”

  “It’s business,” he said as if that explained everything.

  “And Tim can handle it, but you won’t let him. You have to be there.” She shook her head sadly and looked at him as if etching this memory into her mind forever. It would help, she told herself, while she worked to get over him. “I thought your heart was really in the ranch, but I was wrong. It’s in that office. In the computers and the files and the phone calls and hustle of the day. But mine’s not, Mac. It’s not what I want.”

  “What the hell do you want, Andi?”

  She laughed quietly, sadly. “I want Easter eggs that smell like little boys’ sweaty socks. I want little girls who have tea parties with their hamsters. Little League games and cheerleading practice.”

  He looked so confused, it broke her heart. He’d never understand so she wouldn’t bother trying to explain.

  “Mostly, I want love, Mac. I want to be loved like I love you.”

  “You—” His head jerked back as if she’d slapped him.

  “Yeah,” she said softly, sadly, as hope dissolved into dead dreams and left her feeling hollowed out from the inside. She’d had to say it, if only once. She didn’t want his pity, but damn it, she deserved the opportunity to tell the man she loved him, even if she shouldn’t. “But don’t hold it against me. I’ll get over it eventually.”

  “What the hell am I supposed to do with that?”

  “If you have to ask,” she said, “then I can’t explain it.”

  “Okay.” He shook his head, hard. “Leaving that aside for a second, you’ve known me long enough that you should understand what that company means to me. Hell, it meant a lot to you, too, once.”

  It had. But those days were gone. “Not as much as having a life, Mac. That means more.”

  “So you can just walk away? From me? From what we’ve had for years? What we had the last two weeks?”

  “I have to,” she said simply.

  “You love me so much you can’t get away fast enough?” He laughed shortly and there was fury and pain shining in his eyes. “What the hell kind of love is that?”

  She sighed and her heart broke a little more. “The kind I can recover from. I hope.”

  * * *

  The next two weeks were a lot less interesting than the previous ones. Mac fell back on his default settings and buried himself in work. The office. The ranch. He kept himself so damn busy he didn’t have time to sleep. Because he couldn’t risk dreaming.

  Tim was now generally stationed at the office and working with Laura to run down new leads on failing companies that might be suitable takeover material. The Brinkman contract problems had been solved readily enough and looking back Mac could see that Andi had been right. Tim could have handled it. But the point was, this was Mac’s business and his responsibility. So of course he’d had to go in. Supervise. Give his opinion and monitor the situation until it was settled. There was zero reason for him to feel guilty about doing what he had to.

  So why did he?

  She loved him.

  A cold, tight fist squeezed his heart. Why the hell would she tell him that and then toss him out of her damn house? That was love? He rubbed at the center of his chest as if he could ease the ache that had settled in there the night he’d last walked away from Andi’s house.

  She loved him.

  Well, if she loved him, why wasn’t she there? You can’t say you love someone and then say, But I don’t like you doing this and this. You should do that instead. What the hell kind of love was that?

  He kept remembering Andi’s face, the expression in her eyes. The...disappointment he’d read there. And he didn’t like it. Didn’t care to remember that she’d told him to leave. That he’d never change. Hell, he had changed. He’d asked her to come back to work for him, hadn’
t he? He hadn’t demanded it.

  Pushing up out of his chair, Mac paced the confines of his office like a tiger looking for an escape route out of his cage. That thought brought him up short. Made him frown as he looked out the window to a wide sweep of McCallum land. The office wasn’t a cage. It was...what? The heart of him, as Andi had said?

  “No, damned if it is,” he muttered. Stalking to the window, he slapped both hands on either side of the glass and leaned toward it.

  Outside, the sun was heating up. July was just around the corner and summer was settling in to stay for a while. On the ranch, they’d be moving the herd to a new pasture. The sky looked brassy and there wasn’t a cloud in sight. But he didn’t really care what kind of view he was staring at. “Why the hell is she being so stubborn?”

  He missed her, damn it. What did sweaty Easter eggs have to do with anything?

  “That’s it, you’re gonna snap soon. Talking to yourself.” He shoved away from the window and went back to pacing. “You start answering your own questions and you’re done, son.”

  He kicked his desk and gritted his teeth against the pain. He didn’t want to miss her, but he couldn’t deny that without Andi in his life, it felt as though he was missing a limb.

  He’d interviewed a half dozen people for the executive assistant job and not one of them had been able to read his mind the way Andi could. Being at the office wasn’t enjoyable anymore. He didn’t want to be here, but he couldn’t find any damn peace at his own house, either.

  Every time he walked in the door, Teresa gave him a cool, disapproving look. And when he tried to sleep in his own bed, visions of Andi rose up and kept sleep at bay while his body burned. He couldn’t even look at the hearth in his room without remembering those moments in the firelight with Andi. She’d changed everything on him. And now it felt as if nothing fit quite right.

  The buzzer on his desk phone sounded and he glared at it. No damn peace. Three long strides had him at his desk. He hit a button and snapped, “What is it?”

  “Sorry, Mac,” Laura said coolly and he winced in response. “Tim’s on line one.”

  “Fine. Thanks.” His vice president was in Northern California to foster a deal on a tech company. Mac picked up, turned to look out the window again and said, “Yeah, Tim. How’s it going?”

  “Not good.” Tim sounded hesitant—the kind of tone people used when they were about to break bad news and really wished they didn’t have to. “Jackson Tully made a deal with someone else last week. We lost out, Mac. Sorry, there was nothing I could do. Tully wanted his business to stay in California.”

  Mac heard but was barely listening. He realized that a couple of months ago, that news would have made him furious. They’d put in a lot of time, working up strategies for the Tully takeover. The tech company was on its last legs and Mac had figured to pick it up cheap, restructure, then sell it for a profit within eighteen months. Now that plan was shot.

  And he didn’t care. Scrubbing one hand across the back of his neck, he acknowledged that the blown deal didn’t mean anything to him. Because Andi wasn’t there. She was gone so nothing else mattered.

  What the hell had she done to him?

  He rubbed his eyes. “It’s all right, Tim. Come on home. Time to move on to something else.”

  “If it’s okay with you,” he said, “I’ll stay a couple more days. Have a lead on a sinking computer company. I figure it’s worth a look.”

  “Sure. Keep me posted.”

  Mac hung up, thinking that a month ago, he’d have been all over that news, eager to carve another notch in McCallum Enterprises’ belt.

  But what the hell did success mean when you didn’t have anyone to share it with? When you didn’t have the one person who mattered. Always before, he and Andi had celebrated every deal together, congratulated each other on the maneuvering, the planning and the final win.

  But she was gone and he’d just have to get the hell over it. He wasn’t going to go after her again. A man had to hang on to some of his pride, didn’t he?

  * * *

  “I didn’t know I could be this bored.” Andi slumped into one of her new kitchen chairs and propped both elbows on the table. Staring at Vi, she said, “The house is painted. The new furniture’s here. There’s nothing left for me to do.”

  “What about starting your business?” Vi asked, reaching for an Oreo. “Isn’t that on the agenda?”

  “It should be,” Andi mused, turning her coffee cup around and around between her palms. “But there’s no hurry and I’m just not feeling real motivated, you know?”

  It had been three weeks since Mac walked out of her house for the last time. July had arrived and her sister was insisting she attend the Royal Fourth of July celebration. She couldn’t have felt less like being around people who would expect her to smile and mean it.

  Violet sighed, dunked her cookie in her coffee and said, “Mac is being stupid.”

  “He’s being Mac.”

  “That’s what I said.” Vi bit her cookie and muffled a groan.

  Andi laughed a little, but her heart wasn’t in it. Those two weeks with Mac had gone too quickly. She’d thought she was building memories, but what she’d really constructed were personalized torture devices. Whenever she closed her eyes, he was there. How was she supposed to get over him, get past this feeling, when her own subconscious was working against her?

  She had to find a way because Andi knew Mac wouldn’t be coming back. She’d done the unthinkable and told him no. He’d let her go and called it a lesson learned, because his pride wouldn’t allow him to come for her again.

  “You know,” Vi spoke up again. “Mac’s just as miserable as you are.”

  “He is?” Ridiculous how that thought cheered her up. It seemed misery did love company after all.

  “That’s got to make you feel a little better.”

  “It does.” Andi got up, went to her new French-door refrigerator and got more tea to refill their glasses. “But you know, rather than the two of us being sad and gloomy apart, I’d rather we were happy. Together.” She poured the tea, offered her friend more Oreos, then said, “But it’s over, Vi. I can’t go back to the office. I love him, so working with him every day would be a nightmare. And I can’t jump back into his bed—same reason. The problem is, I haven’t figured out yet how I’m supposed to live without him.”

  “I don’t think you’re going to have to,” Vi said quietly.

  Andi looked at her. “Why?”

  Smiling, Vi said, “If there’s one thing I know, it’s my brother. Mac loves you, sweetie. He just hasn’t figured it out yet.”

  “I wish I could believe that.” Andi shook her head, and lifted her chin. She had to protect herself. She couldn’t keep building hopes on a shaky foundation and not expect them to crash down around her. So instead of giving in to the urge to pin her dreams on Vi’s words, Andi said quietly, “I can’t take the chance, Vi. I can’t wait and hope and keep my fingers crossed. I love Mac, but I’m not going to put my life on hold just on the chance he might wake up and realize that he loves me.”

  “Oh, Andi...”

  “No.” Taking a deep breath, Andi said, “Living without him will be the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. But I’ve got to find a way to do it.”

  Eleven

  Mac was working a horse in the corral when his sister found him. He was in no mood for company. Hell, hadn’t he bolted from the office because he wanted to be left alone? Feeling surly, he dismounted, tossed the reins to the nearest ranch hand and crossed the dirt enclosure to where his sister waited just outside the fence.

  The heat was steaming, making him even more irritable, which he wouldn’t have believed possible. Snatching his hat off, he raked his fingers through his hair, then slapped the brim of the hat against his jeans to get
rid of at least some of the dirt he’d managed to collect. He opened the gate, stepped through and secured it again. Only then did Mac look at his sister.

  “Violet, what are you doing here?”

  “It’s still my home as much as yours,” she reminded him.

  “Bet that’s news to Rafe.” He tugged his hat back on. “Go home, Violet.”

  “Not until we have a talk,” she said.

  “Not in the mood.”

  “Too bad.”

  “Not a good day for this, Violet.” He turned and headed for the stable, but she was right behind him, though she had to hurry her steps just to keep up.

  “Pregnant here, not as fast as I used to be,” she called out, and that made him stop. He couldn’t risk her falling and injuring herself or the baby.

  He faced her, his arms crossed over his chest, feet planted wide apart. Squinting into the sun, he glared at her. “Fine. Talk.”

  “What is wrong with you?” she demanded.

  He gritted his teeth and sucked air in through his nose. His temper was dangerously close to erupting so he made a deliberate attempt to hold it down. “Not a damn thing except for an interfering little sister.”

  Poking her index finger against his chest, she asked, “Don’t you see that Andi is the best thing that ever happened to you?”

  Of course he saw that. Was he blind? But Andi was the one who’d ended things. “If that’s all you came to talk about, this meeting is over.”

  Damned if he’d stand here and be lectured to by his younger sister. He had stuff to do. And he figured if he kept himself busy enough, he wouldn’t have the room or the time to think about Andi.

  “You’re an idiot.”

  Mac shook his head. He’d had about enough of women lately. “Great. Thanks for stopping by. Say hi to Rafe.”

  “I’m not done.”

  “Yeah,” he nearly growled. “You’re done. I don’t want to share my feelings, Vi. I’m not looking for a soft shoulder or a stern talking-to. You can butt the hell out because this is none of your business, understand?”