Millionaire Boss

He quickly looked away, discarding the troublesome thought. No, he told himself. Though Mrs. H. had run roughshod over his life for more than fifteen years, ever since Red had brought Erik home with him the first time, and over Erik’s office since her husband’s death, she’d never once tried to fix him up with a woman.

He glanced up again as his new secretary rose and headed for her adjoining office. Her hand was on the doorknob when he called out, “Hold up a sec.”

Penny stopped, startled by her employer’s barked command, her heart seeming to stop, too. It leaped into a pounding, joyous beat as she turned to face him, as she was sure that he had at last remembered her. “Yes?” she asked expectantly.

“Do you have any family?”

“Well…no,” she replied, caught off guard by the unexpected question. “Other than a brother, two nieces and a nephew,” she added prudently.

“Good.” He spun his chair around and grabbed the mouse next to his keyboard and began to scroll through a complicated table of computer codes. “’Cause you’re going to California with me this afternoon.”

Her eyes widened as she stared at the back of his head. “To California? With you?”

“Yeah. Go home and pack a bag. Throw in something fancy,” he added.

She gulped a breath, trying to absorb the fact that she would be traveling with him. “Fancy?” she repeated dully.

“Yeah. You know. A cocktail dress or something.”

“B-but why?”

His brows drew together as he found the information he was looking for and clicked on the accompanying file. “A black-tie thing,” he mumbled. “Supposed to bring a date.”

Two

Suzy shoved Penny’s suitcase aside and flopped down on her stomach on the bed, propping her chin on her hands. “I can’t believe Erik didn’t remember you.”

Disappointed because he hadn’t, Penny avoided Suzy’s gaze. “It’s been ten years,” she reminded her friend.

“So what? It’s been ten years for you, too, and you remembered him.”

“Yes, but that’s different.”

Suzy rolled her eyes but—thankfully—let the comment pass without argument. Instead, she craned her neck and peered over the side of the suitcase, poking through the items Penny had already packed. “So how long will y’all be gone?”

“A week.”

“Are you planning on jumping his bones?”

Penny whirled from her closet. “Suzy!”

Arching a brow, Suzy held up a plastic case, taunting Penny with the damning evidence she’d found. “Why else would you have started taking the Pill?”

Her cheeks flaming, Penny snatched the packet of birth control pills from her friend’s hand and shoved it back into her suitcase, burying it beneath a stack of underwear. “That’s none of your business. Besides, I started them over a month ago.” Just about the time she’d applied for the job as Erik’s secretary, she thought but didn’t say.

Chuckling, Suzy sat up, plumping pillows at the headboard before sinking back against them. “Just trying to help you face the facts.”

“If you want to be helpful,” Penny replied irritably, “you can tell me what I should wear to a black-tie affair.”

“What are your choices?”

Penny turned to study the row of clothes hanging neatly in her closet. “Well, there’s the floral dress that I wore Easter Sunday three years ago,” she offered, then glanced at Suzy. “You know. The calf-length dress with cap-sleeves and Puritan-style collar?”

Groaning, Suzy covered her face with her hands. “Please tell me you’re not seriously considering wearing that old thing?”

“What’s wrong with the floral dress?”

“Nothing, if you were going to be herding a gaggle of toddlers at an Easter egg hunt. Jeez, Pen,” she complained. “You gotta stop dressing like somebody’s mother. Think bold. Daring. Go for shock value. I guarantee you, if you do, not a man in the room will be able to take his eyes off you. Not even the Cyber Cowboy himself.”

Penny turned to stare at the clothes hanging in her closet, all of which seemed more appropriate for a PTA meeting at one of her nieces’ or nephew’s schools than for a cocktail party escorted by Erik Thompson.

Not that he would notice her, anyway, she thought, swallowing back a swell of tears.

“I don’t have anything else,” she said, sniffing as she dragged the floral dress from its hanger. “It’ll just have to do.”

Suzy vaulted from the bed. “Then let’s go shopping. We’ll buy you something sinfully expensive. Something totally outrageous that will have Erik Thompson’s eyes bugging out of his head.”

Tempted, Penny glanced at the bedside clock, and the tears pushed to her eyes. “There isn’t time. I have to meet him at the office parking lot at five.” She swept a hand across her cheeks, then carefully folded the floral dress and placed it in her suitcase. “This will just have to do.”

Suzy moved to stand beside her and slipped an arm around her shoulders. “The dress’ll do fine. And so will you,” she added, giving Penny a reassuring squeeze. Drawing away, she sighed as she scooped her purse from the foot of the bed. “I guess I’d better go so you can finish packing. Call me the minute you get back in town.”

“I will.”

“You’d better,” Suzy warned as she headed for the bedroom door. “I want to hear every intimate detail. Oh, and Penny?”

Penny turned to look at her. “What?”

“Don’t forget to take your pills.”

Erik lounged against the hood of his truck, his arms folded over his chest and his buttocks braced against the grill guard, watching as his new secretary steered her beige sedan into her assigned space in the building’s underground parking garage. The vehicle was as plain and nondescript as its owner, he thought, with a woeful shake of his head.

What was Mrs. H. thinking when she hired the woman? he wondered again. Penny Rawley was a mouse, afraid of her own shadow. The first time he lost his temper—which, he admitted, he was prone to do on occasion—she’d probably run from his office, bawling. And he didn’t have the time or patience to deal with a crybaby.

Scowling, he watched her flip up her sun visor, eject a cassette tape from the player on the dash, then carefully slip the tape into its plastic case and tuck it neatly into the console. Her movements were as methodical as a pilot’s, clicking off controls after a landing…which wasn’t a bad thing, he reflected grudgingly. Erik appreciated order. Not that he managed to ever create it on his own. But that’s what secretaries were for, right? Hadn’t Mrs. H. always taken care of all the little details of his life, allowing him the freedom and time to focus on the bigger, more important issues?

Damn straight she had, he thought, swallowing back a lump of emotion. He was going to miss the old girl. She had possessed a sixth sense for determining his mood and anticipating his needs, and had managed for the most part to ignore his temper tantrums…but was unafraid to give him a good tongue lashing when she felt he deserved one.

And now he was stuck with a damn mouse, he thought irritably as he watched his new secretary twist around inside her car to collect something from the back seat.

Her hair was still wound up in that old-maid bun he’d noticed at the office that morning, and she was dressed in the same utilitarian suit, with that damn fussy bow tied prissily beneath her chin.

A week, he thought with a sigh as he heaved himself away from his truck and headed for her car. He’d be lucky if he didn’t die of boredom after the first day.

When he reached the side of her car, he bent over, bracing his hands on his knees to place his face level with the open window. “Ready?”

Before he knew what was happening, he found himself staring at the business end of a small canister of mace. A mouse fending off a man-eating lion. The image that popped into his mind was ridiculous enough to be comical.

“Please don’t shoot,” he deadpanned. “I’ll go peacefully.”

She sagged weakly, then clamped her lips together and reached for the window’s handle, rolling the glass up between them with quick jerks of her hand. After snatching her shoulder bag from the passenger seat, she shoved open the door. “You startled me,” she accused.

He arched a brow, surprised by the unexpected display of temper. “Didn’t mean to,” he said, stepping out of her way. “Was just going to offer to help you with your luggage.”

She headed for the rear of her car, her nose in the air. “I can manage on my own, thank you.”

She stabbed the key into the lock, gave it a furious twist, then flung up the lid. Their hands brushed and their heads bumped as they both reached for the bag she’d stored inside. She leaped back, clutching her hand against her chest, as if stung.

Scowling, he pulled her bag from the trunk. “Over there,” he said, with a jerk of his head toward his truck, then slapped a palm against the trunk’s lid, slamming it down.

She drew the strap of her purse to her shoulder and turned, but stopped before she’d taken a full step, her eyes going wide.

He pressed a hand against the small of her back. “What’s the matter?” he asked, giving her a nudge to put her into motion. “Never seen a truck before?”

She sidestepped just enough to escape his touch. “Of course I’ve seen a truck,” she replied, sounding flustered. “I grew up on a ranch. I just never considered that you would drive one.”

He tossed her bag into the back, then opened the passenger door and shot her a wink as he held it open. “No true cowboy would be caught dead driving anything else.”

When she continued to hesitate, nervously eyeing the gaping distance between the ground and the running board created by the six-inch lift he’d added to the truck’s original design, he realized the cause of her concern. Short of hiking her skirt up around her waist, there was no way she was going to negotiate the climb.

Though he thought that scenario might be worth observing, he resolved her problem by wrapping an arm around her waist and swinging her up. She squealed as he swept her from the ground, then clung to him as he planted her conservative little pumps on the floorboard and her fanny on the passenger seat.

Dusting off his hands, he took a step back. “Comfortable?” he asked, trying hard not to smile.

She stared at him, her green eyes wide and unblinking, her face pale but for two bright spots of color high on her cheeks. A wisp of carrot-red hair had escaped her bun and now brushed her temple. A sense of déjà vu swept over him. Had he seen those eyes before, that face? Had he enacted this scene before?

A frown puckered his brow as he narrowed an eye at her. “Have we—”

She tore her gaze from his and turned to face the front. “Quite comfortable,” she replied, cutting him off. “Thank you.”

Erik frowned a moment longer, then lifted his shoulder and headed for the driver’s side of his truck.

Penny stole a peek at Erik, who sat slumped in the seat next to hers, his head tipped back, his eyes closed, his lips slightly parted in sleep. Though the private jet’s cabin was dimly lit, the overhead reading lamp and the glow from his laptop computer screen provided enough light to illuminate features she’d always considered too perfect to be human.

Taking advantage of this rare opportunity to study him unawares, she leaned for a closer look. He hasn’t changed all that much, she noted. The squint lines fanning from the corners of his eyes were a little deeper than she remembered and his cheeks were a little more lean, but basically he looked the same as the memory she’d kept locked away in her heart for the past ten years.

She caught her lower lip between her teeth, wondering what he would say if she were to tell him that she’d fantasized about him throughout the years, weaving dreams about him that made her blush even now to think about them.

He’d probably laugh, she thought, swallowing back the disappointment. He’d never given her a moment’s notice in college, treating her much as he did now, as if she were nothing but a robot programmed to do his work. Then her purpose had been to earn him an A in English. Now it was to take care of all the little details in his business and personal life.

So what exactly is it about this man that you find so irresistible?

Shying away from the question, she plucked a piece of lint from the sleeve of his T-shirt…then, unable to resist, let her fingers linger on the gentle swell of biceps. The memory of him scooping her up into his arms and plunking her into his truck, settled like a heavy mist over her mind and her heart. Unconsciously she let her fingers drift down his sleeve, shivering when she encountered warm flesh. Then, realizing what she was doing, she snatched back her hand and squeezed her eyes shut.

Oh, Lord, she cried silently. I’ll never survive a whole week without jumping him like some sex-starved nymphomaniac!

In spite of her determination to do otherwise, she stole another peek at him and had to grip her hands over the armrests to keep from reaching out and brushing back the endearing lock of hair that drooped over his forehead.

He’s too handsome, she thought, feeling the panic rising higher. Too worldly, too sexy…too everything!

And she was plain-as-a-copper-penny Penny Rawley, a dried-up old maid who’d barely ventured farther than fifty miles from the ranch she’d grown up on.

Disheartened by the reminder, she lifted a hand to turn off the overhead light, not trusting herself to look at him any longer without touching him again.

But just as her finger brushed the light’s button, an electronic alarm beeped shrilly on his laptop computer. Frozen in place by the chilling sound, she watched the screen flash red.

Erik bolted upright, knocking his forehead against the hand she still held aloft. He blinked twice, then shoved her arm from in front of his face and grabbed for his laptop, drawing it to the edge of the portable desk.

“I didn’t touch it,” she said quickly, fearing the dark scowl that creased his brow was an indication that he thought she’d done something to harm his precious computer. “I swear. I just reached up to turn off your light.”

“It’s him,” he muttered, ignoring her, his eyes riveted on the screen.

“Him?” she repeated, turning to stare at the screen. “Him who?”

Eyes narrowed, his fingers fairly flying over the keyboard, he replied, “Boy Wonder.”

She stared, watching as window after window popped into view, the information that flashed on each as foreign to her as Erik’s reference to Boy Wonder.

“He’s just down the street.” He set his jaw as he increased the size of one window and scrolled through the garbled lines of data registered there.

“Down the street?” she repeated, wondering if he realized they were presently flying 30,000 feet above the ground.

“From the office,” he snapped impatiently, then swore and slammed a fist down on the edge of the portable desk, making the laptop, as well as Penny, jump. “He’s gone,” he said, then swore again. “That sneaky hacker slipped through the cracks again.”

Frightened by his anger, she asked uneasily, “Who is Boy Wonder?”

“If I knew who he was,” he growled, “I wouldn’t be sitting here listening to you yap. I’d be hauling his butt to jail.”

Resenting his contemptuous reply to what she considered a simple and justifiable question, Penny flounced around in her seat and slapped her arms across her chest. “Well, excuse me. It isn’t as if I’m aware of every detail of your life and business. I’ve only worked for your company a month, you know.”

Erik whipped his head around, prepared to lambast his secretary…but when he saw her face, his scathing retort dried up in his mouth.

Those were tears in her eyes, he realized, his stomach clenching at the sight of them. Big alligator-size tears that looked as if they might overflow her eyes and slide down her cheeks at any moment. A twinge of something close to guilt—an emotion Erik rarely indulged in—pricked at him and he tore his gaze from her.

Not your fault, he told himself as he shut down his laptop. She’s a mouse. A crybaby. Totally incapable of handling the stress her job entailed.

“Cry and you’re fired,” he warned as he shoved the laptop under his seat. “I won’t have a crybaby working for me.”

Penny turned her head again, this time away to face the opposite bank of windows, blinking furiously. “I’m not a crybaby.”

“Could’ve fooled me.”

She graced him with the coldest, most damning look she could muster under the circumstances. “I’m not a crybaby,” she repeated tersely. “But you, on the other hand, are undoubtedly the rudest, most self-possessed, most linguistically challenged man I’ve ever met.”

“Never said I wasn’t,” he replied easily, then frowned. “Linguistically challenged? What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

Jutting her chin, she smoothed the hem of her skirt over her knees. “My point exactly.”

His frown deepening, he shoved back his seat and closed his eyes. “You are, too, a crybaby,” he muttered, then held up a hand in warning, as if anticipating a comeback from her. “I’m going to sleep,” he informed her. “And I’d advise you to do the same. We’ve got a lot of work to do once we reach California.”

Moaning softly, Penny sat up straighter in her chair and pressed a hand to her lower back, arching against it as she tried to ease the dull ache there. After more than six hours sitting before a monitor, entering and tracking data for her employer, her eyes burned from the strain of staring at a glowing screen, and every muscle in her body screamed from sitting in the inappropriately designed chair.

Erik certainly hadn’t exaggerated when he’d warned her that they’d have a lot of work to do once they reached California, she thought wearily.

Sighing, she rose and crossed to the wet bar in the hotel’s penthouse suite in search of something to drink. “Would you like a soda?” she asked. “Or something to eat? We never got around to eating lunch,” she reminded him.

When he didn’t respond, she glanced his way. He sat slumped on the overstuffed sofa as he had all day, his cowboy boots propped on the coffee table, his laptop balanced on jean-clad thighs. His forehead looked like a freshly plowed field, the furrows that ran across it deep and wavy, a testament to the level and intensity of his concentration.

The man is a machine, she thought in disgust, a suspicion she’d formed before their trip to California, but now knew for a fact.

They’d arrived in California a little after ten the night before and were at their hotel by eleven, where she’d discovered to her dismay that he intended that they share a suite. She hadn’t had time to recover from the shock of that nerve-warping discovery before Erik had hustled her onto a glass elevator and to a penthouse on the hotel’s uppermost floor.

Once there she lost her ability to speak when confronted with the elaborately appointed and spacious suite—which, thankfully, she’d discovered consisted of a living area and two large bedrooms, each with its own private and luxurious bath. Erik hadn’t shared her starry-eyed fascination with the suite’s opulence and its ceiling-to-floor view of San Diego’s skyline, or her desire to explore. Instead he had immediately mumbled a curt good-night and gone straight to his room and to bed.

Disappointed, Penny had gone to her room, as well. But when she’d awakened that morning, she’d found herself alone in the suite—though, not for long. She’d barely had time to shower and don a fresh suit before Erik had returned, carrying a briefcase filled with a thick stack of reports. Without a word of greeting or explanation as to his whereabouts, he’d given her clipped orders to enter the data from the reports into a computer he’d set up for her on the suite’s only desk.

They’d worked silently and without a break ever since.

Sighing again, she chose a can of juice for her employer, poured it into a glass, then selected some fresh fruit, cheese and crackers from the basket on the bar and arranged them on a plate.

“Here,” she said, placing the snack on the coffee table beside his propped boots. “Eat.”

When he didn’t respond, she drew in a frustrated breath. “Mr. Thompson!”

He jumped, swore, then glared up at her. “What?”

“Food,” she said and pointed to the plate. “Now eat before you collapse from lack of nourishment.”

He scowled and turned his face back to the screen. “Not hungry.”

Wondering why life seemed to always link her with grumpy, sour-faced men who didn’t have the good sense to take care of themselves, Penny snatched the laptop computer from his thighs.

“Hey!” he cried, dropping his feet to the floor and sitting up. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“Taking care of you,” she replied, “just as Mrs. Hilloughby instructed me to do. Though I can see it will be a thankless job,” she added with more than a little resentment. She set the computer out of his reach, then pointed a finger at the plate. “Now eat,” she ordered.

Scowling, he snatched up the plate and fell back against the sofa. He stuffed a strawberry into his mouth and smashed it between his teeth. “Satisfied?” he asked, dashing a hand over his chin to catch a stream of juice that leaked from the corner of his mouth.

With a sniff, she turned for the bar to make a snack for herself. “Only when the plate is clean.”

Erik narrowed an eye at his secretary as she sank down onto a chair opposite the sofa, primly balancing her plate over pressed-together knees.

“What did you do before you came to work for me? No,” he said, holding up a hand before she could respond. “Let me guess. An army nurse? A nun in an all-girl school? A prison guard for a chain gang? A marine drill sergeant?”

She offered him a tight smile. “Funny. But, no, I was none of those things. After graduating from college, I was employed at a local bank, serving as the bank president’s secretary. I resigned about three years ago to work for my brother.”

“Doing what? Breaking kneecaps for him? Kicking puppies? Stealing old ladies’ canes?”

Though his suggestions were outrageous enough to be humorous, Penny refused to dignify his sarcasm with a smile. “My duties included housekeeping, cooking for a family of five and caring for my nieces and nephew.”

He bit a chunk off a wedge of cheese. “Why’d you leave?”

Uncomfortable with his close scrutiny, as well as his question, she lifted a shoulder. “My brother is a widower and depended on me too much, leaving the care of his children entirely up to me. If I’d stayed, he would have continued to ignore them.” She lifted a shoulder again. “So I left.”

“Bet your brother was plenty ticked at you for leaving him in a bind.”

She stiffened, reminded of Jase’s angry phone call when he’d returned to the ranch and found her gone and a new nanny in her place. “I didn’t leave him in a bind,” she stated defensively. “I hired a woman as my replacement. A very capable woman, I might add, who immediately won the children over with her cheerful disposition and youthful exuberance.”

“Cheerful disposition and youthful exuberance?” He snorted a laugh and popped a grape into his mouth. “Who’d you hire? Mary Poppins?”

Irritated by his contemptuous remark, she ignored him and nibbled on a slim wedge of Gouda she’d selected from the variety of gourmet cheeses she’d placed on her plate.

He shook his head and popped the last strawberry into his mouth. “Should’ve stayed with your brother,” he said as he set the plate aside and reclaimed his laptop. “No kid deserves to have a stranger dumped on ’em…even if the alternative is being saddled with a frumpy old aunt who wouldn’t know fun if it bit her square on the butt.”

Frumpy old aunt?

Numb, Penny could only stare, his description of her smacking at an already bruised self-esteem.

She rose quickly, tears stinging her eyes, and crossed to the bar, furiously blinking them back, not wanting to give him the opportunity to call her a crybaby again. She dumped the remains of her snack into the waste basket, rinsed off her plate, then grabbed her purse from the bar and headed for the door.