by Judy Jarvie
And now she was very far from achieving repaying him.
Maddie rubbed the aching spot between her temples and closed her eyes. A tiny gasp escaped her throat. ‘I’ve had a necessary wake up call that I was kidding myself. Tim was substandard. So I’ve moved on. Now I’m your son’s nanny, I’ve tried to put it all behind me. But it still hurts that I was the one who paid the price.’
Lyle pointed to the gloves, pulled the punchbag nearer. ‘Pretend it’s Tim. Get it out of your system. Unresolved rage is destructive. Trust one who knows.’
‘Spoken like a true psychoanalyst.’
They were in the large outbuilding to the right of the main house. In a vast sized office.
‘My den,’ he’d explained. ‘Where the Ice Café planning first started.’
Lyle had a large wooden desk in the far corner by the window, with a framed photo of Josh grinning in the centre. She’d noted the mounds of paperwork, the detailed model of the Ice Café in miniature on a far table, rows of rally trophies lined shelves. A huge, shiny, polished chrome and electric blue motorbike sat resplendent by the window.
Maddie enjoyed the glimpse of his hidden self – she liked what she was discovering. Lyle’s hidden rebel streak.
Wanting to take the focus off her problems and boxing therapy routine, which made her feel a bit foolish, she pointed to the bike.
Lyle smiled. ‘I have a wild side too. Sometimes I still go and race away the cobwebs.’
Maddie surveyed the room, deflecting the focus from herself. She was intrigued by the man that lurked within. Did he realise how attractive he was? How deeply sexy his laid-back approach made him?
‘The Ice Man of the Ice Café has a human side too.’
‘You seem to have a habit of limiting me, Maddie.’ His jaw twitched but his gaze was intent. ‘Am I really so hard to relate to?’
‘Just cool. Reserved. A tight-lipped Scot.’
Maddie took a tentative jab at the punchbag. Then Lyle strode closer, altered her stance. Put his hands on her arms to show her the technique. She followed his moves. Pretty quickly she was punching harder.
‘A violent streak, what’ve I started?’
Maddie walloped the bag as Lyle taunted her with his eyes. Suddenly she was buzzing, the vibe felt loaded. He was teasing her, flirting, eye to eye.
‘You’re all contradictions,’ Lyle added softly once she’d built up a rhythm pounding the bag.
Truth was, so was Lyle. Sexy, scary, hard yet soft, unpredictably enticing. Distant yet intimate.
With a lift of his brows, he touched her glove to encourage her to jab again.
The proximity and the way he watched her was intoxicating. She felt the zip and zap of the connection – filling her with a mixed rush of elation and trepidation. Like downing her first champagne and heading straight for another glass. She began to ham up her new Rocky role, slamming her fists into the punchbag, spurred on by his encouragements.
‘You’re good at this.’
‘If only I’d realised, I’d have taken up boxing years ago. Made my Dad see I had a talent after all.’
The comment had slipped out. She felt her colour rise.
‘Meaning?’ One dark brow raised but his eyes probed her.
Maddie shrugged. ‘Parental disappointments. Childcare was a lowly career choice for the big Boston lawyer’s daughter. But then again we never saw eye to eye on things.’
Lyle stared hard at her and she hoped her makeup wasn’t as bad as she suspected close up. Too many tears earlier, not enough tissues.
‘Now I understand your encouragements to value my connection with Josh.’
She motioned to the frames across the office wall. ‘Let’s talk about you, Lyle. The rally driving cups and trophies and hall of fame photographs you’ve stashed here so no one else can see them. You’re proud of what you’ve achieved, you just want to play your cards close to your chest.’
‘Why play life’s poker if you shout about your hand?’ He watched her. Then he hooked his arms into hers to stop her boxing and managed to skilfully turn his hold into one where he held her at bay. In his arms. She wasn’t able to move and their gazes locked as he kept her in his embrace. She was the one wearing the gloves, yet she’d never felt less in control in her life.
Lyle took over the verbal jabs. ‘You bury your own potential pretty deep. Question is why?’
‘Criticism in the past, I guess,’ she admitted.
Maddie’s pulse was going crazy and her heart hammered inside her chest. His breathing, his proximity, fired her to an extreme state. The mere smell of him turned her nerve endings to useless goo.
‘Truth is, I was never in motorsports for the fame and flash photography. So yes, I think you’ve tagged me right. I’m proud, privileged too. I’m also just a guy holding a woman and trying his hardest not to kiss her.’ He reached out to grasp her closer. The gloves meant she was at a disadvantage. Right now she didn’t want to punch him. ‘Does admitting attraction have to be wrong here?’
‘We shouldn’t go there. I’m your employee.’
Lyle looked into her eyes, searching and frank. ‘You’re great with my son, he thinks you’re a wonder woman, higher ranking than that blue-haired bear he worships. You make anything you turn your hand to a flying success. In summary – you’re great. I find you very attractive. The more I learn, the more I want to know about you.’
Lyle slowly unlaced her boxing gloves and eased them off. With his forefinger, he turned her face. The gesture was gentle but firm, and awareness skittered through her at the touch. Something inside started up – like an engine. Burning desire and chemistry on a low pulsing, throb beat.
‘Sometimes you can’t evade urges.’
His incredible magnetism focused solely on her. Like he was peeling layers of inhibitions away. For once it seemed like it didn’t matter, she didn’t need to cover and hide.
‘I love your energy. Sometimes I swear it’s like you’re reading my mind. You’ve got me off track, wheels spinning.’
‘More to me than just blue hair huh?’
‘More to me than coffee and a short fuse. Right now all I can think about is tasting you.’
Lyle brushed her lips with only his thumb, parting them as a prelude to action. She felt them throb – she wanted more. So much for all her ethical vows and mantras. But nobody seemed to have briefed her hormones on how to resist.
His head came close as Lyle pulled her to his body. She could feel the ridges of his hard muscle flex beneath her touch. Heat and thrills multiplied and danced crazily inside as her nerves keened and craned for the contact. The pulsing hot man separated only by warm fabric and a tiny sliver of reserved hesitation. Her attention fixed on his mouth as Lyle put both hands up to cup her face. His lips travelled to hers; a molecule’s breadth away. Warm, minty, inviting.
Their mouths met with more promise than she’d bargained for. Desire’s voltage wired her spine as her world rocked and spun as he kissed her, taking her over the edge with him.
Everything inside her melted. She reached up to hold his neck, tug him close as he deepened the kiss and their tongues told of desire unmasked. Mouths flirted and tangoed and told that each of them understood. He clasped her closer, then his hands smoothed down her spine. Groaning with spiralling need, he trailed kisses on her neck, behind her ear.
She needed Lyle so badly it bared the weak and vulnerable spot deep inside.
‘I want you!’ he whispered.
‘Me too.’
She opened her lips as his tongue plundered and she relished it.
Lyle moaned deep and brought her closer still, fisted his hand in her hair and tilted her mouth, pulled her body right against his own. Her tongue and hands betrayed deep reciprocated desire, clutching him close, one hand gripping his shirt, the other cupping his neck.
Maddie moaned against his mouth and his groin was alive, pulsing with her wildness.
She opened her mouth wider, shivering with delight in th
e shared sensation and his heat. His need. Mutual intoxication.
He knew he’d read this right. It was okay to want her, to recognise the passion and act on it. His past should stay behind him. He’d spent so long running from the fear of past failings. But Maddie held such a rare spark, and his hormones had never been this fired in his life.
Lyle groaned as the giveaway pebbling of her breasts stoked his arousal stronger and sent him further into dangerous waters.
But in a blink Maddie drew back with a gasp of shock. Her blue eyes showed regret. Her mouth twitched but no words emerged. Her gaze ghosted away as her expression betrayed that shock. Frustration hailstoned him with self-doubt.
‘You’re looking at me like I shouldn’t have done that.’
She retreated further and hugged herself. ‘Kisses aren’t in my remit,’ she said abruptly, then pushed away from him. ‘As wild as it may feel, it’s not worth the risks. I already made one boss love affair mistake. All-round bad idea.’
‘Dismissed so easily?’
‘Sense and caution, Lyle. I would have thought that was obvious.’
‘The kiss was desire. Not me testing the boundaries of our working relationship.’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t judge before I know. I hardly know you.’
‘Clearly.’ He answered tightly, frustration biting his manners in the neck like a dog unchained.
Trouble was, he didn’t like to play ‘wit sodoku’ with things that mattered. He’d done that with Becca. In the end, he’d seen too many accusations fly in their private life. It had sickened him to the core. You couldn’t win with word play. When players were opposed, they seldom solved the root dissent. There was always a smarter answer. One that twisted a knife that caused your heart a lethal wound.
Was Maddie from the same stamp as Becca? Did she like to tease and then deflect?
Her mask had returned. He yearned to stride over and tear it back down. Lyle shook his head as reality yanked the rug from beneath his prior faith and joy in the woman beside him.
Becca’s impulsive go-getter ways meant she’d always put her personal gain above duty. One minute she’d want to try, for Josh’s sake, the next the lure of glamorous life got too much. It had been like watching a set of old-fashioned weighing scales that couldn’t quite decide between the greater pull. Watching Maddie now he saw the same loaded hesitation. He wouldn’t beg here.
‘If that’s how you feel.’
‘Yep.’
‘Is this anti-guy with a kid stuff?’ he asked, unable to quash the rawness of his emotions.
‘No. Anti-affair with the boss. Your salary isn’t a means to an affair, Lyle.’
‘Your interpretation, not mine.’ His eyes flashed and accused her. ‘And a rather insulting deduction so let’s firmly close that door.’ He pushed shut a partially open desk drawer with a snap.
The comment stung him hard. He didn’t do extra curricular. Never had. Didn’t want a quickie affair – or need one. Especially not with a woman who sparked up razor memories yet promised intense passion. Why had he been so weak, thinking this could be different?
‘I think I should leave now,’ she said. ‘As it’s my day off, I’ll head home.’
‘Whatever you think best.’
With pain in her eyes, she fled.
He could easily have jumped up and punched clear through the wall. Instead he seized the punchbag himself.
Maddie bit back the whirling intensity as she drove; frustration at her lapse, bewilderment at what had happened.
Committing Lyle’s kiss and her reaction to it to memory, wanting to underline the mistake but instead shaking with the intensity of its potency. Lyle, his hands, his mouth, his touch. How much she’d wanted him.
Is this how Truda succeeded with my Dad? Nanny turned temptation.
Just thinking about her father’s transgressions caused her anger to simmer. She held it all airtight. Trawling past mistakes wouldn’t help here. At work affairs didn’t work. She bit her lip, gunned the accelerator, pushed ahead. The road traffic lights screamed ‘red light’ and that’s what she needed to hold onto.
By the time she reached Stockbridge and ran into the apartment via the back entrance, she’d gone over the kiss a million times.
Lyle’s tsunami kiss should make her flee for high land. Build her house far from his threat, on concrete sky-high stilts – and yet she’d wanted it to happen and had reciprocated fully too.
Maddie stopped dead with sudden shock when she opened the door and immediately saw that all her furniture was in disarray, the carpet was gone, the bare floorboards in a mixed up state of half-primed, half unattended to mayhem. In the bedroom she didn’t even have a bed in situ – it had been taken apart and stowed against the wall.
She remembered her uncle’s promise to refurbish her apartment. Even though she was grateful for the thoughtfulness, a part of her wished it all away. She’d left Lyle’s immaculate home and come back to chaos. Plus she’d have to sleep on a dusty cold sofa tonight, dreaming of frenzied kisses with the boss.
Suddenly her apartment didn’t feel quite as homey after all.
With shaky hands, she ran through the mail pile that had arrived in the days she’d been absent from the apartment, hardly seeing the items there. Then she stared at the last envelope she came to. Postmarked Boston.
Her heart sank at the handwriting – reluctant to revisit the turmoil it caused. A ‘let’s make up’ entreaty. Another plea for in-roads.
Blue-haired, new direction Maddie didn’t see the point in a detour via Memory Lane. And on that she was firm. Just like she had to be firm with Lyle. It was just a kiss, a momentary lapse. Her principles had to stay intact.
‘Thanks, but no thanks, Dad.’ Maddie tossed it straight in the shredder pile.
Chapter Eight
The restaurant at Marco’s had begun to fill, the lights were low, the ambience high. The waiting staff were at the ready and canapés that would normally have made her mouth water filled Bonafonte’s kitchen. But Maddie’s appetite had deserted because her mind was still buzzing with thoughts of Lyle.
Twenty-four hours since the meltdown kiss and still it replayed. No matter how much she knew she shouldn’t go there.
She’d left a message on Lyle’s office answerphone but it hadn’t been returned. She had stated that she wished to put it behind them. That she didn’t believe in mixing professional life with pleasure. She hoped he would understand but she also intended to be firm when they next met.
She had seen the hurt look in his eyes. She knew she wasn’t blameless; she wasn’t immune to the chemistry that flared. But right now she needed a job without complications or pitfalls. She simply wasn’t up for an affair with the boss.
‘So how’s life with your new boyfriend?’ Stefano asked softly, too close for comfort or escape. He was baiting her; in the mood for tricks. She was too edgy to engage.
Maddie didn’t even look up at him. ‘Don’t go there.’
‘Your boss watches you, I’ve noticed. You like guys with ready-made families now?’
Yesterday’s barb slashed a tender spot; Lyle assuming she didn’t like a man with a child. In truth Josh had already captured a chunk of her heart. It was her principles that were helping her opt for good sense retreat.
She twirled on the spot and irritation came easily to hand. ‘Sometimes your jokes miss by a mile. Lyle’s my boss, nothing more. Don’t push me, I’m not in the mood.’
Stefano’s brows rose, his olive skin emphasised by the chef’s whites. He might be Italian-born and handsome but jealousy jarred. ‘Credit to Lyle. He succeeded where I failed.’
Maddie stared. ‘Leave me alone. Don’t bait me just because I won’t date you.’
The mistake encounter hurt enough without jokes from Stefano.
She heard his low whistle behind her. ‘You’ve given me the evidence. You’re hot for each other.’
Maddie stalked off. ‘Some line in friendship you offer.’
When Lyle finally arrived, the room hummed with the rumble of chatting, eager business owners who were by now on to after dinner coffee. He’d already missed out on early networking opportunities but those didn’t count. He was here for the blindsiding waitress in the demure white fitted blouse, waistcoat and black pencil skirt with opaque stockings. For the threat she presented to his sanity. Maddie’s slim curves nailed Lyle’s attention. She transformed the uniform – from bland and basic to sexy and svelte. But then, she was a woman who could turn a shapeless sack into the season’s killer look.
Right now she was serving dessert canapés. If only he could take her somewhere private and show her just how hungry she’d made him. How crazy his mind had gone today thinking of how to handle things. But she’d made the way she felt clear in her phone message.
He sipped his drink, managed a scattering of comments and let Marco make fast introductions. He watched Maddie. Efficient, courteous, blending in yet standing out as the only interesting person in the room. Lyle needed to backtrack, to make things right between them. He must calm down the freewheeling hormones that had taken over his self-control. He needed her back, he needed her help. He needed another chance.
Before Lyle knew what he was doing he’d cupped her elbow as she passed. ‘Maddie, can we talk?’
Her lips were tight, her eyes piercing. He could read concern in her frown. ‘Later. Not now.’
‘I’ve done a lot of thinking. I’ve spent the day packing and organising. Josh has gone for a pre-Christmas theme park week. He sends his goodbyes. And now I need to talk to you.’
‘Josh gone? That sounds unexpected.’
‘My mother offered and I can’t go due to work. His aunt is joining them for time with Josh. So, can I see you?’
Once a rally pro, always a rally pro. His heart was speeding hard, like he’d done the race of his life. ‘Your uncle won’t deny you a break, and if he needs convincing I’ll have a word.’