A Bride For The Boss

Not today, though. He’d made his own damn coffee—he wasn’t a moron after all—then had carried it to his desk and sat there alone, going over schedules that she had set up. She wasn’t there to talk to. She wasn’t there to remind him to keep on track and not to go spinning off into tangents—so his brain had taken one of those side roads and he’d lost two hours of time while researching an idea on the internet. So the rest of the day he was behind schedule and that was her fault, too.

“What the hell is she doing in Bimini? Or Tahiti or wherever it is she went looking to relax?” Shaking his head, he walked to the window and stared out as the twilight sky deepened into lavender and the first stars winked into existence.

In the distance, he could see the fields of his home ranch, the Double M, freshly planted and only waiting for summer heat to grow and thrive and become a sea of waving, deep, rich green alfalfa. Beyond those fields lay miles of open prairie, where his cattle wandered freely and the horses he wanted to focus on raising and breeding raced across open ground, tails and manes flying.

This was his place. His home. His empire.

He’d taken over from his father when his parents died and Mac liked to think they’d have been proud of what he’d done with their legacy. He’d improved it, built on it and had plans that would continue to make it grow and thrive.

“And it would be a helluva lot easier to do if Andi hadn’t chucked it all for the beach and a margarita.”

When his phone rang, he reached for it, digging it out of his pocket. Seeing his sister’s name pop up didn’t put a smile on his face. “What is it, Vi?”

“Well, hello to you, too,” she said, laughing in his ear. “Nothing like family to give you that warm, fuzzy feeling.”

He sighed, scraped one hand across his face and searched for patience. He and Vi had been at odds most of their lives, especially since he had been in charge of her and Vi didn’t take kindly to anyone giving her orders. Through it all, though, they’d remained close, which he was grateful for.

Usually.

Already annoyed, he didn’t need much of a push to pass right into irritated. “What is it, Vi? I’m busy.”

“Wow, I’m just choking up with all this sentiment. Must be all these hormones from being pregnant with your first niece or nephew.”

Reluctantly, Mac smiled. Shaking his head, he leaned back against the nearest cabinet and said, “Point made. Okay then, what’s going on, little sister?”

“Oh, nothing much. Just wanted to see how you were holding up—you know,” she added in a sly tone, “with Andi gone and all.”

“Heard about that, did you?” Hadn’t taken long, Mac thought. But then the only thing that moved faster than a Texas tornado was gossip in Royal. He hated knowing that the whole town was talking about him.

Again. During that mess with Rafe, the McCallum family had been pretty much front and center on everyone’s radar. With that settled, he’d expected life to go back to normal. Which it would have if Andi hadn’t gotten a wild hair up her—

“Of course I heard,” Vi was saying, and he could tell by her voice she was enjoying herself. “People all over town are talking about it and I figured Laura could use some advice on how to defuse your temper.”

“Temper?” He scowled and shifted his gaze back to the view out the window. He realized it was later than he thought, as he watched Laura hurrying across the parking lot to her car. He sighed when she glanced back at the building uneasily. Hell, he’d be lucky if Laura didn’t desert him, too. Still, he felt as though he had to defend himself. “I don’t have a temper—”

Violet laughed and the sound rolled on and on until she was nearly gasping for breath. “Oh my, Mac. That was a good one.”

He scowled a little as Laura drove out of the lot, then he shifted his gaze to the twilight just creeping across the sky. “Glad you’re having a fine time.”

“Well, come on,” she said, laughter still evident in her tone. “Don’t you remember the roof-raising shouting you used to do at me when I was a kid?”

“Shouting’s not temper,” he argued, “that’s communication.”

“Okay, sure,” she said, chuckling. “Anyway, how’s it going in the office without Andi there riding herd on everything?”

“It’s my business, Vi,” he reminded her. “I think I can take care of it on my own.”

“That bad, huh?”

His back teeth ground together and he took a tight grip on the shout that wanted to erupt from his throat. It would only prove his sister right about his temper. And yeah, she was right about Andi being gone, too. It wasn’t easy. Harder, frankly, than he’d thought it would be. But he wouldn’t admit it. Wouldn’t say so to Vi and for damn sure wouldn’t be calling Andi to ask for help while she sat on some beach sipping cocktails. She’d made her choice, he told himself. Walked away from her responsibilities—from him—without a backward glance.

“Well, when I saw Andi earlier, she was doing just fine, in case you were interested...”

He came to attention. “You saw her? Where?”

“Her house.”

Mac frowned out the window at the darkening sky. “She said she was taking her vacation time.”

“And she’s using it to fix up the house she’s barely seen since she bought it.”

He heard the dig in there and he wouldn’t apologize for working so much. And as his assistant, Andi had been expected to spend as much time as he did at the job—and she’d never complained until now.

“With what I pay her as my executive assistant,” he argued, “Andi could have hired crews of men to pull that house together at any point in the last year.”

“Speaking of points,” his sister said, “you’re missing Andi’s entirely. She wants a life, Mac. Something you should think about, too.”

“My life is just fine.”

“Right. It’s why you’re living in the big ranch house all by yourself and the last date you had was with that airhead model who had trouble spelling her own name.”

Mac snorted. She had a point about Jez. But when a man dated a woman like that, he wasn’t worrying about her IQ.

“You realize you’re supposed to be on my side in this?”

“Strangely enough, I am on your side, Mac. You’re the most hardheaded man I’ve ever known—and that includes my darling husband, Rafe.”

“Thanks very much,” he muttered.

“I’m just saying,” Vi went on, “maybe you could learn something from Andi on this.”

“You want me to quit, too? You ready to take over?”

She laughed and he could almost see her rolling her eyes. “A vacation isn’t the end of the world, Mac. Even for you.”

While Vi talked, telling him all about the new nursery she and Rafe were having designed, Mac’s mind once again focused on Andi.

Why in hell she’d all of a sudden gone off the rails, he still didn’t understand. But if she was here in Texas and not being waited on by hot-and-cold-running cabana boys, maybe he could find out.

He smiled to himself. And maybe, he could convince her that quitting this job was the biggest mistake she’d ever made.

Three

It had been a long day, but a good one.

Andi was feeling pretty smug about her decision to quit and was deliberately ignoring the occasional twinges of regret. She’d done the right thing, leaving her job and—though it pained her—Mac behind. In fact, she should have done it three years ago. As soon as she realized that she was in love with a man who would never see her as more than a piece of office equipment.

Her heart ached a little, but she took another sip of wine and deliberately drowned that pain. Once she was free of her idle daydreams of Mac, she’d be able to look around, find a man to be with. To help her build the life she wanted so badly. A house. Children. A job that didn’t eat up every moment of her time until it was all she could do to squeeze out a few minutes for a shower every day.

Shaking her head clear of any thoughts at all, she sipped her wine and focused on the TV. The old movie playing was one of her favorites. And The Money Pit seemed particularly apt at this moment. The house needed a lot of work, but now she had the time and the money to put into it. It occurred to her that she was actually nesting and she liked it. The smell of fresh paint wafted through the room, even with the windows open to catch whatever the early-summer breeze might stir up. It was a warm night, but Andi was too tired to care. Her arms ached from wielding a roller all day, but it felt good. So good, in fact, she didn’t even grumble when someone knocked on the front door, disturbing her relaxation period.

Wineglass in hand, she answered the door and jolted when she saw Mac smiling at her from across the threshold. He was absolutely the last person she would have expected to find on her porch.

“Mac? What’re you doing here?”

“Hello to you, too,” he said and stepped past her, unasked, into the house.

All she could do was close the door and follow him into the living room.

He turned a slow circle, taking in the room, and she looked at her house through his eyes. The living room had scarred wooden floors, a couch and coffee table and a small end table with a lamp, turned on now against the twilight gloom. The attached dining room was empty but for the old built-in china cabinet, and the open doorway into the kitchen showed off that room’s flaws to perfection.

The whole house looked like a badly furnished rental, not like someone’s home. But then, in her defense, she hadn’t had the opportunity before now to really make a difference in the old house. Still, her newly painted soft green walls looked great.

He sniffed. “Been painting.”

“Good guess.”

He turned around, gave her a quick smile that had her stomach jittering before she could quash her automatic response. “I can smell it. The color’s good.”

“Thanks. Mac, why are you here?”

“First off,” he said, “where the hell did you file the Franklin contracts?”

She hadn’t been expecting that. “Alphabetically in the cabinet marked T for takeovers. There’s also a B for buyouts and M for mergers.”

He whipped his hat off and ran his fingers through his hair. “Of course there is.”

“Laura could have told you this.”

“Laura’s not speaking to me.”

“You scared her, didn’t you,” Andi said, shaking her head.

“I’m not scary.”

“You don’t scare me.”

“Maybe I should,” he muttered, then shrugged. “I’m also here because I wanted to get a look at what you left me for.”

“You make it sound like I’m your cheating wife.” She sighed. “I didn’t leave you. I left my job.”

But she had left him, Mac thought. It didn’t feel like an employee walking out, but a betrayal. Damn it, she’d taught him over the years to count on her. To depend on her for too many things—and then she was gone. How the hell else was he supposed to feel?

“Same thing.” His gaze fixed on her and for the first time he noticed that she wore a tiny tank top and a silky pair of drawstring pants. Her feet were bare and her toenails were painted a soft, blush pink. Her hair was long and loose over her shoulders, just skimming the tops of her breasts.

Mac took a breath and wondered where that flash of heat swamping him had come from. He’d been with Andi nearly every day for the past six years and he’d never reacted to her like this before. Sure, she was pretty, but she was his assistant. The one stable, organized, efficient woman in his life and he’d never taken the time to notice that she was so much more than that.

Now it was all he could notice.

Dragging his gaze from her, he took a deep breath and looked down the short hall toward the back of the house. “Do I get a tour?”

“No.” She really wanted him out of there. He had to wonder why. “I painted all day. I’m tired. So—”

He looked back at her and thought she didn’t look tired to him. She looked downright edible. “You don’t have to do it all yourself, Andi. I could have a crew out here tomorrow and they’d be done with the whole place by the end of the week.”

“I enjoy painting.”

He shot her a speculative look. “You enjoy hacking your way through jungles, too? A team of gardeners could tear out those briars growing wild by the front porch.”

“I don’t want to hire someone—”

“I said I would hire them.”

“No.”

“Why the hell not?” He could understand stubbornness. Hell, he sort of admired it. But this was pure mule-headedness. There was no reason for her to work herself into the ground trying to prove a point. “People who own houses hire people to work on them all the time.”

“You don’t get it, Mac,” she said. “I want to do the work.”

“You obviously need the help.” He gave another quick look around. He could see what his sister had meant. The house did seem to be practically void of any kind of personal decoration or warmth. “You’ve been here—what? A year? As organized as you are, it shouldn’t have taken you nearly that long to whip this place into shape. But it looks like you’ve hardly touched it.”

Insult shot through her tone. “Seriously? When was I supposed to do any of that? I spend—spent—all of my time at the office. And on those extremely rare—I’m talking bigfoot-sighting rare—occasions when I did get an entire weekend off, I tried to squeeze in a little family time. See people. Go outside.”

Mac rubbed one hand across the back of his neck and wished he could argue with her, but he knew she was right. He had pretty much monopolized her every waking moment for the past six years. But it wasn’t as if he’d held her hostage. She’d made a hell of a lot of money thanks to the job she’d walked away from so easily.

“You don’t have to make it sound like you were in prison,” he pointed out in his own defense. “You love the work as much as I do.”

“I do enjoy the work, and I’m good at it,” she added as if he needed reminding. “But I want more out of life than closeting myself up in an office.”

“And painting your house yourself, digging out briars and a mountain of weeds like I’ve never seen before, is ‘more’?”

She frowned and he felt her irritation coming at him in thick waves. “For now, yes.”

“You really must be desperate if you call painting and gardening a vacation,” he said, watching her. “I really expected the rumor about you and Jamaica was true and you were off having silly drinks in coconut shells.”

That mental image of Andi in a bathing suit rose up in his mind again, and now, thanks to seeing her out of her normal buttoned-down attire, his imagination was doing a much better job of filling out that dream bikini.

She huffed out a breath, folded her arms over her middle, unconsciously lifting her breasts high enough that he got a peek at the tops of them thanks to the scoop-necked tank she wore. A buzz of electricity zapped Mac and he had to work to keep his own hormones in line. How had he spent six years with this woman and not noticed how nicely she was put together?

She’d always worn her long, straight brown hair pulled back in a businesslike knot or ponytail, so until tonight he never would have guessed that it was wavy when she let it down around her shoulders—or that lamplight brought out hidden golden streaks among the dark brown. Andi had always worn sensible, straitlaced clothing on the job, so seeing her in that sleeveless tank and loose, silky sleep pants was a jolt to his system. Not to mention the fact that her upper arms were sleekly muscled and tanned. Where did she get that tan?

“Do I really strike you as the kind of woman who would enjoy lounging on a beach for two weeks?”

“Yesterday,” he told her, “I would have said no way. But today—” he paused and let his gaze sweep up and down the length of her in an appreciative glance “—maybe.”

She seemed to realize what she was wearing and he thought he actually caught a flush of color fill her cheeks briefly. Andi blushing? How many more surprises could a man take?

“You should go,” she said simply.

Yeah, he probably should. But not yet. He could see that she was nesting or some damn thing here and until she’d gotten it out of her system, nothing would budge her out of this tiny, unfinished house. So the quickest way to get things back to normal would be for him to help her. Besides, if he really had kept her so busy she couldn’t even unpack over the past year, maybe he owed it to her.

Whether Andi knew it or not, she was going to be bored senseless with nothing more to do than paint and mow the yard and whatever the hell else needed doing around here. Her mind was too sharp, her organizational skills too well honed for her to be happy puttering around the house. The sooner she realized that, the better for all of them.

“Tell you what,” he announced. “I’ll take the next two weeks off, too.”

“What? Why? What?” She shook her head as if she hadn’t heard him clearly, and who could blame her?

Mac couldn’t remember when he’d last taken time off. He’d always been reluctant to leave the business in anyone’s hands but his own. Not even his vice president’s, and there weren’t many people Mac trusted more than Tim Flanagan.

Now, with both Mac and Andi out of the office, and Tim off investigating another possible business move, there’d be no one there but Laura and a couple of interns. But it wasn’t as though he was leaving the country, he told himself. He was right here in Royal, so if Laura ran into problems, he was completely reachable. Besides, two weeks would be over in a blink and everything would get back to normal.

“You quit your job so you’d have time to do stuff like this, right?”

Andi’s lips pursed for a second before she nodded. “In a nutshell, yes.”

“Fine. Then I’ll be here for the next two weeks, helping you slap this place into shape.” He curled his fingers over the brim of his hat. “Once we’re done, if you still want to quit, fine.”

“I will,” she told him. “In fact, I already have quit.”

He shrugged. “You can always change your mind.”

“Not going to happen.”

“We’ll just think of these next two weeks as a sort of trial period,” he said as if she hadn’t spoken at all. “You can see what it’s like to be out of the office and still have a chance to call off your resignation.”

“Mac, you’re making this harder than it has to be.”

Yeah, he thought, recognizing the stubborn set to her chin, the flash in her eyes. Her mind was set. But then, he reassured himself, so was his. And when Mac McCallum made a decision, it was set in stone. In short order, he was going to prove to Andi that she wasn’t the kind of woman to walk away from a high-powered job. She liked the responsibility. Thrived on it.

He had no doubt at all who was going to come out the winner in their little contest of wills. And by the time Andi had spent two weeks doing nothing but nesting, she’d be yearning to get back to the office and dive right in.

Giving her a slow smile, he said, “Tomorrow morning, I’ll go in, take care of a couple things, tie up some loose ends and then I’m all yours.”

“Mine?”

His smile deepened. Maybe it was small of Mac, but he enjoyed seeing her confused and just a little flustered. That almost never happened. Andi was too controlled. Too organized. Too on top of every damn thing that entered her universe. Being able to throw her for a loop, he decided, was fun.

“Yeah,” he said, hooking his thumbs in the front pockets of his jeans. “Like I said, I’ll be here, helping you. So for the next two weeks, you’re the boss and I’m the employee.”

“I’m the boss?”

He winked. “Like the sound of that, don’t you?”

While she stared at him, he shifted his gaze around the room, checking out the freshly painted walls. “You did a nice job in here—”

“Gee, thanks.”

“—but,” he added as if she hadn’t spoken, “the ceiling could use another coat. Hard for you to reach it I guess, since you’re not all that tall.”

“I used a ladder—”

“I won’t need one to go over it tomorrow. Then we’ll do the trim.”

“I don’t want your help.”

His gaze immediately locked on hers. “Maybe not. But you need it.”

She opened her mouth, then shut it again and took a breath before speaking. “Mac, I appreciate the offer...”

“No, you don’t.” In fact, her storm-gray eyes were smoldering. Typical Andi—she’d never admit there was something she couldn’t do on her own.

Her lips twitched. “Okay, no, I don’t. But then, you don’t really want to take time away from the office to paint my house, either.”

Mac thought about it for a minute. Ordinarily no, he wouldn’t. His company had been his life for so many years now, he couldn’t really imagine taking two weeks away from it. But if he wanted to keep Andi working for him—and he did—then he’d have to invest the time to convince her to stay. So he shrugged off her comment as if it meant nothing. “When I was a kid, my dad had me out on the ranch painting the barn, the stables, the fence around my mother’s garden. I’m damn good with a paintbrush. And at woodworking. The ranch carpenter taught me a lot back then. I’ve got a fair hand at plumbing, too, though that can be iffy.”

“Why would you want to use your no doubt impressive skills on my house?”

Here he gave her a grin and a wink. “What kind of Texan would I be if I didn’t ride to the rescue?”

Her head snapped back. “Rescue? I don’t need to be rescued, Mac. And now’s a good time to remind you that for the last six years, I’m the one who’s done most of the rescuing.”

He laughed. Her outrage put fire in her eyes and a rush of color in her cheeks. Her breath was coming fast and furious and her breasts hitched even higher beneath that skimpy tank top. He’d have to remember to make her furious more often.

“Okay,” he said, “I’ll give you that. You’ve been riding herd on the business and keeping things moving for six years. So now it’s time I paid that back.”

She shook her head. “I don’t need you to pay me back for doing my job.”

“Maybe it’s not about what you need,” he said, and felt tension crawl through him as he stared into her gray eyes, where the fire was now banked, simmering low. This woman had been a central part of his life for years and he wasn’t ready for that to end yet. Now that he was here, with her, in this nearly empty house with the dark settling around them, he wanted that even less than when he’d first come here.

“We’ll work together and at the end of two weeks, if you still want to walk away, so be it.” Sounded reasonable, though Mac had no intention of letting her go. “This is my decision, Andi. And you should know better than anyone else, once I make a call, I stick to it.”

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