Bachelor Boss

by Christie Ridgway

  Suddenly, her heart sped up again, her pulse fluttering against the place at her throat that still throbbed from his accidental touch. Was…was Carlo looking at her with a masculine kind of interest?

  She took in the gleam in his deep-set, dark eyes and then tried to find more clues in the aquiline line of his masculine nose and the sensual curve of his full mouth. He was a beautiful man, every artistic angle of his face a testament to his Italian heritage—but she couldn’t read his expression.

  She licked her bottom lip again.

  Carlo abruptly straightened, his gaze dropping away. “So, uh, Goose—”

  “Lucy.” And didn’t that answer her question? No man would feel the least bit of lust for someone he thought of as “Goose.” Disappointment coursed through her, even though she’d taken the job for this—to finally accept there was no mutual heat between her and Carlo.

  No heat. No hope.

  “So, Lucy, I suppose I should get back to work.”

  With an inward sigh, she followed him with her gaze as he strode down the hall, admiring the way the European cut of his pale blue dress shirt accentuated the muscled leanness of his back and waist. She didn’t try to find a word for how she felt about the curve of his tight, masculine behind in the dark slacks.

  Three weeks, Lucy. Three weeks to look, but not touch. Three weeks to accept, finally, that’s all you’ll ever have of him.

  A few minutes before five, she was congratulating herself on making it through the could-be-disastrous initial day, when a messenger appeared with a high-priority package for Carlo. Fine, she thought, she’d deliver the slender cardboard envelope and bid him good-night at the same time. Then her first day on the job, and her first day with Carlo, would be behind her.

  At her tap on his door, he called her inside. This time he was sitting behind his desk, file folders in front of him, his computer screen angled just so.

  He looked up as she entered. “Lucy. Just the person I’ve been thinking about all afternoon,” he said, leaning back in his chair.

  Her fingers squeezed the package. “Me?” The view behind him was still awe-inspiring, but she couldn’t drag her gaze away from his face to appreciate it. He’d been thinking about her?

  “I realize I don’t know what brought you back to San Diego.”

  “Oh.” What to say? Dissatisfaction with the jobs she’d found in the accounting industry she’d spent four years preparing herself for? It made her sound so flighty. So, well…ditzy and goosey, especially when every Sutton sibling had gone straight from graduation to climbing the ladder of success in the corporations they’d joined right after college. “Of course, you know I’m from here, and…”

  “Your father mentioned something to mine about disappointments in Phoenix?”

  She shifted her weight on her feet. “Well…um…” Her face was heating up again and she didn’t know what more to say. While she knew the jobs in Phoenix had not been quite right for her, would Carlo, like her family, only see her as unable to settle down?

  “I got to thinking you might have had man trouble.”

  Lucy blinked. Man trouble? The only man trouble she’d had recently was the trouble she had forgetting about Carlo and the feelings for him she couldn’t seem to stamp out. “It’s not—”

  “I admit that until just a couple of hours ago I was still picturing you at about fourteen years old in my mind. Banged-up knees, a mouthful of braces and all those white-gold curls.”

  Terrific. While she’d been tossing and turning at night, wondering what it would be like to be with him, his lingering image of her was something that sounded horribly close to Pippi Longstocking.

  Carlo cleared his throat. “But now I see that you’re all grown-up. Like I said earlier, a woman.”

  Hmm. That sounded more interesting. And even more interesting than that was the way he was staring at her mouth again. Could it be…?

  Uncertain, Lucy held her breath as the atmosphere in the room seemed to ripple with a new, tingly charge.

  He jerked his gaze from her mouth to her eyes. “And I was thinking maybe you’re here because someone broke your heart.”

  “Oh. No. N-not yet.” Because so far she hadn’t quite accepted she could never have Carlo. And now, with this new shimmer of tension in the room, she was even less sure it could never be.

  No, Lucy. No! Don’t delude yourself!

  Listening to her common sense, she interrupted the drift of the conversation by sliding the priority envelope in front of him. “Anyway, this just came for you. It looks important.”

  When he picked it up, she turned. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Carlo.”

  “Wait.”

  She didn’t spin back around. “It’s after five.”

  “But we’re old friends, and I was thinking that since you’re doing me the big favor of filling in—” His voice broke off. “Damn.”

  Curiosity reversed the direction of her feet. “You were thinking…?”

  He was staring down at what looked to be a pair of tickets in his hands. “I was thinking, no, I know, ” he said, grimacing, “that I could use a date for tonight.”

  Lucy swallowed. “Is there someone you’d like me to get on the phone for you? Tamara, or…?”

  “You, Lucy.”

  “Me?” She was beginning to sound like an echo machine.

  Carlo was up and around his desk before she could run for the door. Not that she really wanted to. Not when he came close enough to do up her buttons again…or undo them.

  The air was jittering with tension. And heat. Or maybe that was just her. No. No. Carlo was standing over her and she saw his nostrils flare as he took in another breath of her perfume. He was looking at her in a manner that surely he wouldn’t waste on Pippi Longstocking.

  You smell like a girl.

  I see that you’re all grown up.

  A woman.

  “So will you go with me to a party tonight?” he asked.

  She curled her fingernails into her palms. “Oh, well…”

  “I can introduce you around. Maybe find you—”

  “The man I’ve been missing?” Lucy couldn’t say what made her utter the words. They came out of nowhere, sounding a little hoarse, a little flirty, a little like she was flirting with him.

  She felt both appalled and excited. Outside of a few jokes and that one humiliating kiss, she’d never been overt when dealing with him.

  Carlo’s brow lifted, and a corner of his mouth ticked up, too. One of his fingers reached out to wrap itself around a lock of her hair. He tugged. “Lucy. Is that what you’re looking for?”

  Her tongue trailed across her bottom lip and she lowered her lashes—again in what seemed a totally unthought-out, yet obviously flirty way—to gaze at him through them. “It depends on how far I’ll have to go to find him.”

  Carlo shook his head, an amused, masculine smile quirking both corners of his mouth. “My, my, my. You have grown up.”

  Enough to know what this was. No mistaking it now. Carlo was looking at her with a new kind of interest, with the sort of heat she’d only fantasized about before. Her blood raced through her body, waking up thousands of nerve endings with the thrilling news.

  Carlo’s looking at me the way a man looks at a woman!

  His knuckle ran down her cheek and she felt it all the way to her toes. “Eight o’clock,” he said. “Cocktail attire.”

  “Yes.” Yes, yes, yes!

  “Where shall I pick you up?”

  The racing movement of Lucy’s blood stopped, stilling in one fell swoosh. That shimmering heat continued between them, but she wondered for just how long.

  “Where, Lucy?”

  “My sister’s. Until I find my own place, I’m staying with Elise.”

  And then Lucy had her answer. The tension, the temperature, the thread of attraction running between them didn’t last even another moment, instead dropping like an anchor from one of the boats traveling through the bay she could see over his shoul
der. She leveled her gaze at the pretty sight, even as she noted the unpretty view of Carlo’s expression closing down.

  His hand dropped, his feet stepped away. “I’ll be there at eight.”

  He didn’t renege on the invitation. Former cop, old family friend that he was, he wouldn’t be out-and-out rude to her. Even if it meant picking Lucy up at the home of her married sister.

  Her sister. The unrequited love of Carlo Milano’s life.

  CHAPTER TWO

  There was a rap on the door of the guest bedroom as Lucy stood before the open closet, frowning. “Come in.”

  Her sister stuck her head inside the room. “Dad called while you were in the shower. He wanted to know how your first day went.”

  “I hope you told him I haven’t quit,” Lucy said. “And I didn’t get fired, either,” she continued, muttering under her breath. Though not true, she suspected that was what her family had assumed each time she’d changed jobs.

  Her grumble caused a frown to mar her sister’s perfect face as she stepped into the bedroom and swung the door shut behind her. “Are you okay?”

  Lucy avoided a probing gaze by turning back to the closet. “Cocktail attire. For an advance party to hype the Street Beat rock music festival at the end of the month. Don’t you think that calls for something a bit less conservative than a little black dress?”

  “I don’t know,” Elise replied, coming to stand beside her. “You’re the music lover. Carlo was smart to invite you.”

  “Yeah. Smart.” Lucy figured it was more out of convenience than IQ. Carlo had needed a date for the business thing and she’d been the closest available woman. Those short moments of self-delusion when she’d thought her fantasies had come true…well, self-delusion said it all. “Since I’m working for him, I thought I’d better say yes. Though I’m sure he has a black book full of numbers he could have called.”

  “He dates. I know that.”

  Lucy slid a look at her sister. How much did Elise know? Was she at all aware of Carlo’s feelings for her? Lucy didn’t think so. Even though, when Elsie had married her husband, John, six years before, it had been clear to anyone paying close attention that Carlo had lost the girl of his dreams.

  Lucy had noticed because he’d been the man of hers, but she doubted that Carlo had ever deliberately shared with others how being best man at Elise’s wedding had broken his heart. Lucy might have doubted it herself, except on the big day, wearing her own bridesmaid’s tulle, she’d overheard Carlo’s sister guess aloud his bitter secret. Lucy’s own heart had fractured as he’d reluctantly confirmed the truth. The woman of his dreams was walking down the aisle. Away from him.

  But it hadn’t changed the way she felt about him, ever. Just as his stiff expression when she’d mentioned her sister made it clear his feelings for Elise were rock solid.

  It was why Lucy hadn’t made up her mind about what to do tonight. Should she really go? There was still time to claim a migraine or call in an excuse of stomach cramps.

  Still uncertain, she reached for a hanger draped with a stretchy garment in sunset colors and sprinkled with sequins. “What do you think about this?” she asked, holding the various straps and scraps of fabric against her terry-cloth robe.

  Elise’s laugh burst out.

  “What?”

  Her sister couldn’t seem to stop grinning. “Oh, I think you’re going to be good for our Carlo.”

  Her Carlo, Lucy corrected. “I don’t understand.”

  “Let’s put it this way. Getting out of police work and into his own successful business didn’t lighten up the man.”

  “Losing a partner to a bullet might account for that,” Lucy defended, frowning at her sister. “Patrick McMillan was like a second father to Carlo.”

  Elise sighed. “It wasn’t a criticism.”

  Crossing to the bed, Lucy tossed the dress down and then grabbed a bottle of lotion from the dresser and started to smooth the cream over her legs. “What did you mean by it, then?”

  “You’ve seen how he’s changed over the years,” her sister said. “He used to smile more. Heck, he used to laugh. But now he ducks from most of the invitations our group of friends sends out, and when he does say yes, he broods in a corner or brings a date who does all his talking for him.”

  Like that too-pretty Tamara? Though apparently she was yesterday’s news.

  “I don’t think he knows how to have fun anymore.” Elise nodded toward the spangled dress stretched across the bedspread. “Maybe you could make that part of your job description.”

  Lucy’s palm stopped halfway up her shin. “Aren’t you afraid I’d botch that up just like I’ve botched up every other job I’ve had since graduation?” She knew that’s what they all thought, even though leaving her positions in the accounting departments of the law firm, the school district and the insurance company had been completely voluntary. It wasn’t that she hadn’t done good work…it was that she hadn’t enjoyed it.

  Elise rolled her eyes. “You’ve been listening to our brothers too much.”

  “ And Dad. And then there’s Mom, who just keeps giving me these worried glances.” Elise wasn’t so innocent, either. All of them couldn’t fathom why Lucy had yet to find the right job.

  “Remember,” her sister said, “you’re the baby of the family.”

  “But for pity’s sake, I’m not a baby anymore!”

  Elise nodded, then leaned over to pluck the almost-nothing dress from off its place on the mattress. “I’m getting that. But maybe it’s time you made it clear to everyone else.”

  Oh, great, Lucy thought. Just another item to put on her list. Don’t screw up the temp job, do get over Carlo, do make clear to the public-at-large that Lucy Sutton was no longer in pigtails and braces.

  On that last thought, Carlo invaded her mind again.

  I see that you’re all grown-up.

  A woman.

  For a moment she’d actually believed he did see that. That he saw her. But then she’d mentioned Elise’s name and he’d gone distant and cool. No more masculine gleam in his eyes and no more half smile on his mouth. As usual, for Carlo, it was always Elise.

  So why should she go through with this “date” tonight? She could comfortably stay home and still torture herself with that particular piece of knowledge.

  But no! She capped the lotion with a vehement snap. Elise was right. Lucy should be out there proving she was no longer the Suttons’ silly youngest sibling. Tonight didn’t have to be about Carlo. Or about Carlo and Elise. Or about Carlo, and never Lucy.

  Tonight could be about Lucy alone. If she focused on herself, maybe she could move into the future, leaving him the lone soul left wallowing in what-couldn’t-be. Tonight, she should, no, she would go to the party as a single, sophisticated woman instead of a goosey love-struck girl.

  Her older sister wandered off, leaving Lucy alone to finish prepping for the evening. After putting on makeup and smoothing her hair into straight strands with the flat iron, she wiggled into the stretchy dress she’d selected, adjusting the straps over her braless breasts and criss-crossing them on her bare back in order to tie the ends at her waist. Then she inspected herself in the mirror.

  Okay. This was no baby-sister kind of dress. She’d purchased it at a boutique in Phoenix, at a supersale that even then cleaned out her clothing budget. The colors—ranging from palest yellow to the most passionate pink—mimicked a Southwest sunset and brightened her blond hair and fair skin. She paired it with high-heeled pink sandals and a raspberry lip gloss guaranteed to last all night long.

  Through kisses and anything else, the product’s sexy ad promised.

  She didn’t let her mind go there, though then it did, even without her permission. But why not? Maybe she would meet an attractive man at the party. Maybe he would kiss her.

  It could happen.

  She heard the doorbell ring, followed by the distant murmur of voices. Her brother-in-law, John’s, the deeper rumble of Carlo’s.
>
  Her little shiver was merely because the night was turning cooler, of course.

  So stifling any second thoughts, she grabbed a gauzy wrap and her evening purse, then headed out of the bedroom and down the hallway. A single, sophisticated woman on the way to a party.

  Despite herself, her forward motion stopped just short of the living room. From her place in the shadows, she took in the tableau in front of her.

  Her sister and brother-in-law were seated on the couch, Lucy’s “date” standing before them. Carlo was dressed in ash-gray slacks and a matching ash-gray silky-looking T-shirt, topped by a black linen sports jacket. He looked relaxed and, well, rich, the shine of his loafers mimicking the gleam of his dark hair. His mouth curved in polite amusement as John related something funny about work. After a moment, Carlo’s eyes flickered away from his friend’s face to light on Lucy’s sister’s classic features.

  It seemed to her that his smile faded and his eyes turned empty.

  Perhaps she made some movement then, giving herself away, because Carlo’s gaze suddenly jumped to where Lucy was lurking. Hoping to cover for her staring, she immediately stepped into the living room, her shoulders back, her hips swaying. A sophisticated, single woman on her way to a party.

  A sophisticated single woman who watched Carlo’s carefully blank expression turn to one of blatant disapproval.

  Her first-day nerves returned with a vengeance. Hives felt as if they were rising all over her skin. She would have turned and run, but her sophisticated, single-girl high heels allowed for no fast getaways.

  * * *

  Carlo Milano didn’t like parties in general. He didn’t like the one he was headed to tonight in particular. In particular, because he was accompanied by five feet and a hundred pounds of potential danger. Five feet and a hundred pounds of potential danger wearing high heels and a flaming-hot dress.

  Closing his eyes as he shut the passenger door on her and the view of her bare, slender legs, he allowed himself a groan. If only he hadn’t broken things off with Tamara, she would be his date tonight.