At the Boss's Command

by Darcy Maguire

  Jemima didn’t know whether she ought to cry or to laugh. She didn’t know whether she ought to accept it either.

  She’d looked at tickets for the London Eye months ago and decided it really was too pricey. How much had Miles had to pay to get a private capsule?

  Miles pulled a hand through his hair and stood up as though he sensed her indecision. ‘Hopefully I’ve timed it right so you’ve still got time to have your lunch.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Jemima carefully folded the tickets and put them back in the envelope.

  ‘It’s a shame we didn’t think about it earlier because Ben could have asked some of his school friends along. You can have up to twenty-five guests, I think—’

  ‘Miles.’ She stopped him and he turned to look at her. Jemima held the envelope out helplessly as though she didn’t quite know what to do with it. ‘This is lovely, but…how much did this cost you? I really didn’t mean you to—’

  ‘I told you, I was owed a favour. It’s nothing.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘And anyway, it’s not for you, it’s for Ben’s birthday. Just have a good time.’

  Miles turned away as though what he’d done for them was completely insignificant. But it wasn’t. It really wasn’t.

  Inside her head sparks were flying. She wasn’t sure what she thought about anything any more. What she was thinking had to be impossible.

  But then she thought about the way his eyes had darkened when they’d looked at her earlier. The way she’d been so sure he was about to kiss her.

  What did any of it mean? She was so out of practice at reading the signals. And she’d hardly ever been in practice. Russell had been her first serious boyfriend and he’d been more in love with the success of her family than her.

  A man like Miles Kingsley? Attracted to her? It wasn’t possible.

  ‘Mum?’

  Jemima turned to look at Ben standing in the doorway. ‘There’s a wicked picture of a sailing boat on this computer.’

  She turned automatically to look at Miles.

  He was looking at Ben. ‘It a Najad. Forty-six foot. Swedish.’

  ‘Is it yours?’ Ben wanted to know.

  Miles laughed. ‘I wish. One day, perhaps. Are you interested in sailing?’

  A shadow passed across Ben’s face. ‘I used to be, when I was a bit younger. We had a Heron, but Stefanie doesn’t like sailing and Dad sold it.’

  ‘Stefanie’s your dad’s girlfriend, right?’

  Ben nodded.

  ‘Perhaps you’d come out with me in my dinghy? You know, some time? If your mum’s happy with that.’ He looked across at her.

  Jemima thought she wanted to cry, but when she looked at Ben’s face she knew she wasn’t going to. She didn’t understand why Miles would do that for Ben, but she was absolutely sure she could trust him not to carelessly hurt her son. She didn’t know how she knew that for certain either, she just did.

  Jemima looked at Miles. ‘Come with us today?’ Then she hesitated, amazed she’d found the courage to ask him. ‘I…I mean, if you’re not too busy this afternoon, that is.’

  Oh, help.

  Miles started to shake his head so she rushed on, ‘It seems a shame for just the three of us to go on if there’s space for twenty-five.’

  Jemima felt as though her face must be shining with embarrassment. It was almost as though she’d asked him out. She wanted to curl up into a ball. He must be so embarrassed. He’d tried to be kind and she’d completely got the wrong end of the stick and…

  ‘On one condition.’

  Jemima looked up at him. Slowly he smiled and her mortification faded. ‘I get to buy you lunch.’

  Lunch? Whatever she’d thought he’d say, it hadn’t been that. ‘You’ll come with us to use tickets you got us,’ she said slowly, ‘as long as I let you buy us all lunch?’

  ‘That’s about it. Do we have a deal?’

  ‘We’ve brought…’ sandwiches, she finished mentally. What was the matter with her? The lines at the edges of his blue eyes deepened and she fell that little bit more under his spell. ‘We’d like that.’

  What was it he wanted from her? They were such different people. She had to be imagining what she thought he was thinking. But what if she wasn’t?

  Miles had a philosophy of life that was completely incompatible with hers. She couldn’t change—and, she suspected, neither could he. But there were these moments when he looked at her when all those differences didn’t seem to be very important.

  It was so daft. Miles dated amazing women. Women as beautiful as Verity, as confident as Imogen and as successful as her mother. It was inconceivable…

  She couldn’t even put words on the idea that had taken up residence in her head. Why would Miles be attracted to someone as…normal as her?

  Chapter Nine

  ‘MUM, isn’t pepperoni the best topping on pizza?’ Ben asked, bringing Jemima back into the concrete present. ‘Miles says it’s beef and chilli—’

  Miles winked at her. ‘Or ham and pineapple. Everyone loves that.’

  ‘Mum,’ her boys said in unison, stretching that one syllable into something with at least three. ‘Tell him it’s pepperoni.’

  Jemima sat back, a smile tugging at her mouth. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d taken the boys out to eat anywhere. It was just too expensive. She knew that Russell did it fairly regularly, whenever Stefanie wanted some peace and quiet, but…this was such a rare occurrence for her—and it was all the more special for that.

  Special, too, because Miles was there to share it with her. He made everything seem easy somehow. For a man who hadn’t had much contact with children, and claimed not to want it, he made it look effortless.

  Miles looked over the top of his menu at her, the expression in his eyes making her feel as though she were entirely composed of marshmallow.

  ‘It’s going to have to be your decision,’ Miles said. ‘But I want you to know I fully intend to bear a grudge if you decide against me.’

  Jemima laughed as her sons immediately started canvassing for her vote.

  ‘Why don’t we have the one that’s got a mixture of toppings on it?’ she suggested, her negotiating skills honed by experience. ‘Then we can try a bit of all of them and give them a mark out of ten.’

  ‘Like a cake picnic,’ Ben said.

  Miles lifted an eyebrow in her direction. ‘What’s a cake picnic?’ he asked.

  The boys fell over themselves to tell him. Ben leant forward eagerly. ‘We choose a cake each and cut it into three bits—’

  ‘It’s cool,’ Sam said with a wide toothless smile. ‘You get a bit of all of them.’

  ‘Mum always picks shortbread.’

  Miles looked across at her and his eyes were laughing. ‘Does she?’

  ‘Particularly if it’s been dipped in chocolate,’ Jemima agreed, keeping a straight face. ‘And Ben always has a chocolate éclair.’

  ‘And the cream drops down his top,’ Sam said, ‘because he doesn’t lean over the plate.’

  Ben looked stormy, but Miles forestalled world war three with a quick, ‘Okay, I get it. Pizza picnic it is.’ Then he folded the menu and asked the boys, ‘Who wants what to drink?’

  Ben looked at his mum for guidance.

  Miles also turned to her and she tried to answer as nonchalantly as possible. ‘We tend to either have something to eat and ask for tap water, or we have a drink and nothing to eat.’

  This was where people usually said something sympathetic— and made her feel worse about it. When they were with their father, she knew, Ben and Sam could have anything they wanted.

  Miles said simply, ‘Sounds like a good plan.’ Then he smiled and looked at her. ‘But…since this is a special occasion. What do you think?’

  Jemima swallowed hard. ‘I—It’s your money,’ she managed.

  When the waiter brought across a tall glass with Coke in it, Ben couldn’t quite believe his luck. ‘This is the best birthday treat
ever,’ he said and his younger brother nodded in full agreement.

  ‘Well, it’s not often you get to be nine. In fact,’ Miles said, ‘I’ve only done it once.’

  Ben and Sam dissolved into giggles—and it was a state Miles pretty much kept them in.

  Jemima enjoyed watching them. All of them. And she found she could relax. For the first time since Russell had decided to walk out on their marriage, she wasn’t totally responsible for the success of the day. Of course, she was responsible. She knew that. They were her children.

  But it was different with Miles there. Better. Much better.

  When he suggested they walk to the London Eye rather than take the tube, she didn’t have to worry about working out the route in her A-Z. She merely had to follow, confident that when he led them down tiny side roads Miles knew exactly where he was going.

  It might not sound like much, but it felt revolutionary. Sam had been only two and a half when Russell had decided to leave and, from that moment, Jemima had been ‘it’. Every sleepless night, every illness, every decision she’d made for them had been her responsibility alone.

  ‘Did you know,’ Miles said, as they boarded their capsule, ‘that one thousand, seven hundred tonnes of steel was used to construct the Eye?’

  Ben and Sam looked at him.

  ‘Which means it’s heavier than two hundred and fifty double-decker buses…and can carry fifteen thousand visitors every day, which is more than enough to fill Concorde one hundred and sixty times over.’

  The boys were suitably amazed. So was she, but for very different reasons. Miles was so…unexpected.

  How had he guessed that Ben loved facts and figures? That his favourite reading was the kind of huge tome crammed full of a thousand and one things no one else knew and probably wouldn’t need to. Jemima smiled. Miles had set out to make this day magical for Ben and he was doing just that. It was also magical for her.

  Sam came and tucked his hand into hers as they started to climb higher, but Ben was peering out of the glass from the very beginning.

  ‘Why do they call it a flight?’ he asked Miles and she tried not to laugh as her usually articulate boss did his best to answer to the satisfaction of a nearly-nine-year-old.

  Strange, but she didn’t think of him as her boss any more. Their relationship had changed irrevocably since dinner with Alistair and Rachel. Jemima turned on the bench to look at him, watching the way his T-shirt stretched over his toned torso. Heart-stoppingly handsome, she thought—and way, way out of her league. But there were moments when he looked at her when she was sure…

  Her smile twisted. Even if she had done all those abdominal crunches after Sam was born, how attractive would she really be to a man like Miles who had his pick of women? It didn’t seem particularly likely and, truth be told, she wouldn’t be happy in the kind of relationship Miles advocated.

  She was naturally monogamous, she supposed. She wanted to build ‘family’ and make things secure for the people she loved. Was that so wrong?

  As Sam ventured over to join his brother, Miles came to sit beside her on the wooden seating. ‘Good idea?’ he asked, his eyes indicating the glass capsule they were in. ‘Do you think they’re enjoying it?’

  Jemima couldn’t believe he was experiencing a moment of doubt about it, but his blue eyes seemed to be waiting for an answer. ‘It’s brilliant. They’re loving it. Thank you.’

  Then he smiled and she wondered whether it was doing her heart any permanent damage to keep beating so erratically. For thirty years she hadn’t experienced the slightest difficulty, but since meeting Miles it had been behaving very peculiarly.

  ‘Are you?’

  She nodded, feeling unaccountably shy.

  ‘Come see,’ he said, holding out his hand.

  Slowly, her heart pounding, Jemima put her hand inside his. She’d seen a movie once where they’d talked about looking down and not knowing where one hand left off and the other began. It felt a little like that, except that she knew which hand belonged to whom. His hand was dark against her fair skin. It was more that she felt as if it belonged there.

  Jemima tried to pretend that nothing had changed, but she was too honest a person not to know she was falling in love with Miles. Little by little. Despite the paralysing fear of being hurt again, she knew she was sliding inexorably closer to the point where there would be no way back.

  She didn’t want to be in love with him. Or did she? Surely at thirty the idea of giving way to unrequited passion, particularly when you were responsible for two young lives, was a bit ridiculous. And, if it wasn’t unrequited, what then?

  What was Miles thinking? She looked up at him, trying to read what was going on in his head. It seemed so…unlikely that he should be feeling anything like she was.

  But there was that look in his eyes—just sometimes. The expression that made her feel hot and cold at the same time. Excited and scared.

  And now he was holding her hand. Miles led her over to where she had a perfect view of the River Thames snaking through the city. It was an amazing thing to see, curiously beautiful and everything it was hyped up to be, but it was the feel of his fingers interlocked with hers that filled her senses.

  ‘There’s Buckingham Palace,’ Miles said, pointing.

  Jemima took a shaky breath. ‘There’s so much green around it,’ was the only thing she could think of to say in reply.

  She felt him smile. ‘Not a bad back garden,’ Miles agreed.

  ‘It’s amazing to see the whole city laid out like this,’ she said, conscious of the fact that he was still holding her hand. There was no reason for him to be holding it, other than that he wanted to.

  Did he want to?

  ‘Have you been on the Eye before?’

  She shook her head. ‘I thought it would be a little like the Ferris wheel in Vienna, but it feels so different…’ Then she stopped as a memory started to ache like an old wound.

  She didn’t want to think about that. Not now. It was years since she’d been in Vienna with Russell. She didn’t want to think of him now.

  ‘Bad memories?’ Miles asked, watching her face.

  Her mouth twisted. ‘Actually, no. Good memories turned bad.’

  ‘Difficult to forget?’

  ‘You can never forget,’ she said brusquely. ‘I know I’ve been divorced a year and everyone seems to think I should be over it by now, but no one gets over something like that. It’s such a stupid thing to say. You can’t just erase all the memories and pretend none of it happened.’

  Jemima made a half-hearted effort to take back her hand, but Miles refused to let her pull away. ‘Do you…still love him?’

  ‘No,’ she said quickly and then, more slowly, ‘No, I don’t, but I did.’ Her eyes searched for understanding. ‘And…he’s the father of my children. It’s not as though I can draw a line beneath the whole experience and re-invent myself.’

  Miles moved his thumb gently across the palm of her hand, sympathetic and erotic at the same time.

  ‘When you’ve been…badly let down by someone you trusted, it’s always inside you. You think you’re fine and then something happens and you…remember.’

  ‘Like now?’

  Jemima shrugged. ‘Russell proposed to me in Vienna.’ She shouldn’t be saying all this. Not to Miles. Everyone said that the first rule of ‘getting back out there’ was that you never talked about your failed relationships…

  But what if you hadn’t had so many failed relationships? What if there’d only been the one? And what if it had been the largest part of your adult life? How was it possible not to talk about it? Almost every memory she had since the age of eighteen involved Russell or Russell’s children.

  Miles was frowning.

  ‘He proposed on the Ferris wheel?’

  ‘In a felucca,’ she said with a shake of her head. ‘It’s a horse-drawn carriage.’

  ‘Yes, I know.’

  ‘It was supposed to be very romantic because I’d
really wanted to go in one, but—’ and she bit down on a laugh as she remembered the farcical elements of the ride ‘—it started to rain halfway round and we had to stop while the driver put the hood up.’

  The frown disappeared from his forehead. ‘Probably an omen.’ Then he reached out and slowly, very slowly, stroked her cheek. Jemima felt her breath freeze. The felucca hadn’t been romantic—but this was. This was incredible. It was the kind of thing that only happened to other people.

  ‘I’d like to kiss you,’ Miles said quietly. So quietly she was almost unsure of what she’d heard.

  ‘W-would you?’ Her voice sounded cracked and dry.

  ‘You’re beautiful.’ She shook her head in denial and he smiled. His hand moved so that his thumb could lightly brush against her lips. ‘Why do you find that so surprising?’

  Jemima could have recited all the things Russell had filled her head with when he’d wanted to justify his decision to leave. Miles couldn’t have noticed that she was focused entirely on her children, that she wasn’t spontaneous and that she took life too seriously.

  Miles smiled and pushed back a red curl from her forehead. ‘I need to bring you back here. You ought to see London when it’s lit by electric light.’

  A date? Was that what he was meaning? Jemima swallowed nervously. Miles was attracted to her. She wasn’t imagining it. The air thinned around her and she struggled to think of anything beyond that.

  ‘Look, Mum,’ Ben said from the other side of the capsule. ‘Look down here.’

  Miles let his hand drop and Jemima walked over to look where her eldest son was pointing. Far below on the ground there was a clown with exceptionally long arms and big white hands.

  Sam pushed his face up against the glass and peered down. ‘He looks funny.’

  ‘Yes,’ she agreed, looking up to catch Miles watching her. A frisson of awareness passed between them. It was really happening.

  And he wanted to kiss her. That thought stayed swirling around in her head—exciting and scary at the same time. Miles wanted to kiss her.