At The Boss's Command

He strode alongside her as they crossed the foyer. A lift was waiting, its doors open.

Case strode in, punched their floor number and turned to her. ‘Now what can I do to show you I’m only human?’

Tahlia’s glance went straight for his mouth.

Case fought every impulse in his body to reduce the distance between them, take her into his arms and crush his mouth to hers.

It was insane.

He’d thought he’d got his instincts under control. After the disaster that his marriage had turned into, he would have thought he’d have learned.

He took a deep breath. He wasn’t going to rush into this, no matter what this was.

If he hadn’t been so young and naïve four years ago he wouldn’t have ended up with a two-year sentence for stupidity with Celia.

He’d been in such a rush to get married and complete his well-rounded success in all areas of his life he hadn’t stopped to think.

The fact that she’d been married once already to another blinded-by-love well-off businessman should have given him fair warning of what he was in for.

He pulled his attention from those lips that were taunting him and those sea-green eyes that seemed to be daring him to take the plunge. ‘Tahlia, Miss Moran… I…don’t have a personal assistant or secretary.’

She blinked. ‘She went when the Executive went, sir,’ she said smoothly, her sweet voice hardly registering the look of surprise that showed in her eyes.

‘Really?’ He cleared his throat, pushing down the heat in his body. Talking shop would dull the senses. ‘Why was that?’

‘Yes. I believe Raquel can explain your predecessor’s departure more appropriately than I can,’ she said slowly, staring at the lift doors, her sweet perfume circling around him and taunting him.

It would be so easy to lean over and hit that stop button, sweep her into his arms and taste those lips and feel the passion that lay there, simmering just beneath the surface.

‘I want to hear what you have to say,’ he asked tightly. Any sort of office history may serve as a distraction to the desire coursing through him.

‘He and his secretary had a hot and heavy affair.’

Case stared at the ceiling. Cripes. Just what he needed to hear. ‘And that was frowned upon by company policy?’ he asked slowly. And maybe he’d find out Tahlia’s policy.

She smoothed down the fabric of her short skirt over gently rounded hips. ‘Well, yes. The powers that be don’t want office harmony going to hell because of spats between exes and all those favouritism issues that become a factor in intimate relationships, not to mention issues of harassment.’

‘That makes sense,’ he said softly, forcing his feet to stay where they were and not take him any closer to the woman who was calling him like a siren to the rocks. ‘But what do you think?’

She moistened her lips and jerked her gaze back to the lift door, holding her hands tightly in front of her. ‘Me?’ she asked tightly. ‘In the end, the staff are all adults…mostly,’ she rushed on. ‘And it’s impossible to police—more a guideline, really. You know, don’t mix business and pleasure.’

‘Right.’

She sucked in a breath. ‘And in that particular instance the pair involved were doing more of the pleasure than business, and not just in his office—’

‘O-kay,’ Case said, adjusting his belt and taking a step back from Tahlia. ‘I get the picture.’ Vividly. And his mind filled with all the places they would have gone and visions of him visiting such quiet nooks with the incredible woman next to him.

‘Basically it’s to dissuade secretaries of the young and idealistic variety from thinking that a fling with the boss is going to help the career,’ she blurted, twining her fingers together.

Case couldn’t help but smile at her rush of words. Was she nervous?

‘Well,’ he offered, his voice low. ‘You can inform the office and any young and idealistic staff that I’m single. But I can assure you that I will not give my assistant any illusions about climbing the ladder through sexual favours.’

The lift doors opened.

Tahlia stepped forward. ‘You don’t have to assure me anything, despite your lack of assistant,’ she shot over her shoulder.

He wanted to assure her of so many things, but the scars still ached from Celia. ‘Well, that’s the thing,’ he said slowly, following her. ‘Until I get one, I’ll need some help.’

She swung to face him. ‘Of course. You’ve met quite a few of the staff. Have you anyone in mind…maybe from the copy room or mail room on a temporary basis?’ She touched a flushed cheek; her nails, long and rounded, were painted the same peach as her lips. ‘Until we get someone else in, you know, advertising and interviews take time.’

Case shrugged, slipping his hands deep into his trouser pockets. ‘I’m thinking of someone who’s very aware of who’s who and what’s what and how the place is run.’

She looked towards her office, pointing in that direction, avoiding his gaze. ‘Great. Look, I’d love to chat on and on but I do have work to do, as you well know. And I’m sure you do too. Having such a senior position and all. If that’s all? Let me know what you decide…how you want to do it…who.’

Case rocked back on his heels, taking in her tall, shapely body, her neat black skirt and jacket, her white sleeveless shirt. Her all-business appearance covering the all-enticing challenge that gleamed in her eyes like burning embers waiting for his breath.

He knew exactly who he wanted. ‘Actually, I’m thinking of you.’

Chapter Seven

‘What does not destroy me, makes me stronger.’ Yeah, right, Nietzsche. And who does not drive you crazy, can’t steal your job and make you act stupid?

TAHLIA sat at her desk, staring at her computer screen. Case Taunting Darrington couldn’t mean her, want her, as his assistant—that was just wrong, humiliating and wrong, and stirring and sexy and wrong.

As if she was going to accept a job helping out the competition, the man who had stolen her job, her promotion, her rise, her nice safe rung that she was going to conduct the next challenge of her life from.

Hell, the man had taken so much from her he didn’t deserve anything but the same confusion and pain he was putting her through.

This was her life he was messing up, her feelings he was messing with and her anchor he’d cut loose with no concern for the weather.

She gripped the desk tightly. Just because her life was fraying at the edges didn’t mean she didn’t have her act together and couldn’t handle anything that came her way…no matter who her father was or what he’d done.

Tahlia lifted her chin and clicked on her inbox.

TO: [e-mail]

CC: [e-mail]

FROM: [e-mail]

RE: SOS

Still okay for tonight? Can’t wait to hear about your

mysterious SOS.

I’ll bring a couple of my favourite romantic movies to soothe your soul. And chokkies.

Have you seen Chrystal? She’s acting weird and standing in quiet corners with the pot plants. It’s truly freaky. Do you know what’s going on? Em

Tahlia sighed. Chrystal was the last thing on her mind. She wasn’t just the office date-a-holic, she was the resident drama-queen.

As one of the receptionists-cum-fix-it gals Chrystal was all over the place. It could be anything or anyone that had disturbed Chrystal, from a new male in the building to a new female too-good-looking for her comfort to a resident female wearing the same outfit, jewellery or shoes.

Tahlia’s only surprise was that they all hadn’t heard the latest development in Chrystal’s life firsthand, at least twice.

Actually, she wouldn’t mind listening to one of Chrystal’s adventures rather than dwelling on Case Darrington.

TO: [e-mail]

CC: [e-mail]

FROM: [e-mail]

RE: SOS

You can count on me being there too. The SOS sounds very mysterious. And I’m coming with wine—to enjoy vicariously through my mat—es and doughnuts!

Re Chrystal: Do you think it could be Liam, that shy programmer downstairs, who’s caught her eye finally? Sure, he’s nothing like Chrystal. He’s as shy as a monk and as nerdy as hell. But he’s cute and he must be the only fresh meat left.

She’s had to have done every single straight guy in the place, and then some. Except Liam and Darrington, but he’s way out of her league. Tahlia, is he married? I heard you two had lunch—is he the reason for the SOS?

See you tonight where you must tell all!

Keely

Tahlia stared at her screen. She’d love to tell all, but she wasn’t sure she could tell her friends anything if she wasn’t sure what was going on, least of all with herself.

Where was her usual together self? Would her friends even recognise this babbling bimbo she’d turned into and help her resolve her current angst?

Should she even try or, as her mother said, deal with it on her own because the challenges in life were to make us grow, not to leech off or lean on others?

She scrolled through her inbox of business memos. At least her friends would help her wipe her mind of every annoying trace of Case Taxing Darrington with their movies, their treats and their company.

Maybe she shouldn’t have invited them. How would she survive hours with them and not blurt out her incredibly stupid attraction to Darrington, despite his snobby-arrogant-potential-playboy-jerkdom? They’d think she was an idiot.

Maybe she could distract them by getting them to help with her criteria for a partner instead, to narrow down her prospects, help her pick the qualities in a man that she could live with for the rest of her life.

Tahlia snatched up a pen. She wasn’t about to get into dating without a plan. She didn’t want to be responsible for hurt feelings, crushed dreams or unreal expectations. She didn’t want to be anybody’s last straw.

She closed her eyes against the wave of memories that crashed against her heart. How had her mother picked herself up, carrying all those burdens, after her father had died?

Had she been haunted by questions, wondering what it had been that broke her husband’s will to live? Had she been tortured by their last argument over unpaid bills, her need for him to be there for her, for him to be a good father?

Had she wished she could take back her last words, the last time she saw him, time itself? Tahlia’s throat tightened. Like she did.

She jerked straight-backed, blinking away the ache, and picked up a file and flipped it open. Business was safer to think about, deal with and be involved in than all that personal stuff, except where Darrington was concerned.

She chewed on her bottom lip. She didn’t like being as out of control as she was around Case Darrington, and feeling way too much.

It just wasn’t professional and the sooner he was gone the better. And if she had to be the one to show him the door, so be it.

It would be a giant step in the right direction.

Case dropped his attaché case and knelt down on the polished timber floor and hugged Edison, nestling his face in his neck, breathing in his heavy doggy scent in an effort to douse the haunting memory of Tahlia’s perfume.

‘Hey Edi, you miss me, boy?’ he crooned, slapping Edi’s back and standing up, loosening his tie and kicking off his shoes. ‘It’s been one hell of a day.’

He’d driven himself insane all afternoon, trying to rationalise his impromptu request for Tahlia to be his assistant. Was it logical or a knee-jerk reaction to her story about the last Marketing Executive?

Running into that Chrystal woman in the lift again had just topped off his agony. At least they hadn’t been alone, but that hadn’t seemed to deter her.

Evading her probing, very personal questions had been one challenge, avoiding her pushing herself up against him a whole other dilemma.

Case shrugged off his suit jacket and tossed it over the black leather recliner. He was supposed to be the Marketing Executive, not some mouse for the woman to toy with. Hell, if she only knew who he really was!

One thing he was going to outlaw was desperate women. They freaked him out.

‘That you, Mr Darrington, sir?’ Luciana’s heavy accent laced every word and echoed around the high ceilings of his open-plan loft-style apartment.

The designer had got a bit carried away with the stream running down the hallway under glass and the waterfall in the lounge, but Edi didn’t seem to mind it. Better than the toilet bowl.

His Italian house-fairy heaved her ample frame from the hallway that accessed the laundry room and kitchen, wiping her hands on her canary-yellow apron. ‘Dinner is in oven. Timer dings, you eat. Yes?’

‘Yes, thank you,’ he said, smiling at the woman who liked to think she’d adopted him. He couldn’t live without her. She cleaned the house, cooked and kept Edison company while he wasn’t around. He should have discovered his housekeeper phenomenon before he married Celia; he may have decided he didn’t need the anguish.

Luciana snatched up a heavy cane bag from the floor, beside the black steel and smoked glass dining table, shoved her apron deep inside and straightened the greying coil of hair at her nape. ‘You good boy. Nice boy. You need good woman.’

He shrugged. It was a familiar conversation he had with her, and a sure-fire way of having all the single young females of her family tree described to him. ‘I have you.’

She laughed. ‘I help you find,’ she sang, opening the front door, pausing, taking out a cloth from her bag and wiping down the ochre wall beside her. ‘If you not finding.’

‘I don’t need help, but thank you anyway, Luciana,’ he said, lurching forward and ushering the most valuable employee he had to the lift. He punched the button. ‘See you tomorrow?’

The doors opened. She stepped in and turned. ‘Yes. What you want for dinner? I could cook special lasagne, secret recipe?’ she said, eyeing him carefully.

Case could read the gleam in her eyes. Probably lining up a whole meal that she planned him to share with someone she knew.

‘No dinner. I have a date,’ he rushed on. Better to eat out alone than endure Luciana’s umpteen single relatives’ profiles again and be asked to pick one. Maybe Simon would be free.

She nodded, her smile wide. ‘Good. You need a good woman.’

The doors closed and he wandered back to his penthouse suite, closing the double doors behind him and looking out of the floor-to-ceiling glass windows that stretched the entire wall at the view of the northern shore of the bay.

He didn’t need any help in finding a woman. He found plenty. Finding one who liked him for who he was…was the hard part. Who wanted to know him, be with him, for him.

How to find said woman was the biggest dilemma in his life. He couldn’t help but question a woman’s motives if she knew all he had. He wondered how he’d broach protecting his assets from another bad choice, how he could downplay his portfolio and try to assess whether it was him she liked or his money.

The phone rang and Case answered.

‘So what was with today?’ Simon asked in his best lawyer-cum-best-mate tone of inquisition. ‘A desire to play undercover agent?’

‘A desire to make everything I own into a resounding success, actually,’ Case stated drily. And he sure needed the challenge of taking his newest acquisition back into the black.

He had needed to distract him from himself. ‘I was out with my Director of Sales.’ And her very fine green eyes.

‘Why didn’t you just go there no—lies? You are the new owner of WWW Designs.’

Case sank into a recliner chair. ‘Because of all the airs and graces that are always put on to muddy the truth.’

He’d already seen the myriad attempts of the General Manager at WWW Designs to flatter him into keeping her on; the woman was practically dripping with greasy compliments—on his clothes, his business acumen and his plan to be put on the staff incognito.

Case knew the best way to maximize the company’s efficiency was to get in there and see how it was being run firsthand and nothing was going to stop him, especially a small thing like a few white lies. The fact that he needed to escape the monotony of his routine didn’t come into it. Much.

‘So you’re after the truth by telling lies.’ Simon made a guttural noise deep in his throat. ‘You know you don’t have to keep on with it—you could get someone else to do it.’

Case loosened his tie. ‘No. I like it there.’ And liked being surprised by a certain member of his staff and her lack of hesitation in speaking her mind.

Simon groaned. ‘Come on, get serious. Your time is far too valuable to put into this. Just employ an efficiency expert, or I could go.’

Case rubbed his smooth jaw, loath to put words to the hollow feeling in his chest at the thought of backing down from this challenge. ‘I don’t see it that way.’ This was an opportunity just begging for him to conquer it…and maybe, hopefully, fill that void for just a little while.

And what a challenge. WWW Designs was the biggest firm of its type in the state and he was itching to turn the company around and shove its success in all the biggest rags and in a few faces who had failed to see how much more he was than just a suit and a bank balance.

‘What about the ethics of it?’

Case smiled. ‘What ethics would they be? As the new owner I could have sacked them all but I’d rather find out how they’re doing things and where the problems lie. I’d hate to get rid of valuable staff.’

‘Right, sure, that’s what it is. And the fact that you were getting bored doesn’t come into it?’

Case stared at the modern painting on the wall. Simon was too smart. ‘Okay, I admit it. I wanted to do something new. There’s no crime in that. I’m sure you’re holding the fort.’

He was so sick of presiding over a clockwork company, being obliged to attend one function after another and kissing arse to every prestigious alliance in the business.

‘Sure, I can take care of the company, if I can call you to make the decisions without using some damned code.’ Simon cleared his throat. ‘But come on, be serious, what are you expecting to find there?’

‘I’m looking…’ Case rubbed Edi’s chin with his foot ‘…for something…’ To wipe out the empty feeling that had been eating him up inside. Ignoring it hadn’t helped. Dating hadn’t helped. Work hadn’t even helped, until now.

‘Well, I can tell you you’re not going to find it at WWW Designs. But are you sure about what you’re getting yourself into?’

‘Not a problem; nothing there that I can’t handle.’ Case rang off, Tahlia Moran’s sweet face coming to his mind.

Tahlia Moran didn’t know what he had, the companies he owned, the properties that were his, the people that he rubbed shoulders with or the five cars parked downstairs in the garage.

She hadn’t questioned him on choosing companies to buy out today at lunch—had probably accepted that he was playing the stock market, not playing Monopoly.

Was this his chance?

She was all he could think about since lunch, and he’d acted impulsively. He’d made that reckless phone call before leaving work. The one that had tortured him all the way home.

It was way too early for gestures like that.

Hell, was he being silly entertaining the thought that he could have a relationship with the woman? Could he be incensed by lust into making another mistake that could not only cost him dearly, but break what was left of his heart?

The trouble was that she was incredible. A man didn’t meet incredible often in his life… How could he ignore incredible?

Edi sat by his feet, his tail pounding the floor.

Case glanced down at the big dark eyes of his best friend and companion. ‘I’m being an idiot, aren’t I? Getting carried away, just because I feel something more than what I normally feel. It’s nothing, right?’

Edi’s tongue lolled out of his mouth.

‘Time for a walk, hey?’

He knew exactly what he had to do. Stay away from the incredible woman, at least while he had a job to do that involved being near her.

He could plead ignorance if she mentioned his brash action… What had he been thinking? He knew more than anyone that nothing could be built on lies.

Case hauled himself up out of his chair. Maybe she wouldn’t even guess it was from him. She probably had a heap of men in her life anyway. A woman that beautiful…

Case raked both hands through his hair and back over his face, slapping himself on the cheeks. This thing between them was probably nothing anyway.

Staying away would prove that his attraction was nothing more than convenience, just because Tahlia and her hot body and fiery eyes were there, and nothing more.

How hard could it be to avoid her?

She wasn’t about to take up his incredibly rash invitation to be his assistant…and he’d be flat out assessing employee performance, sifting through personnel files and meeting them all, one by one. And it was a big office.

Case swung around, striding to the hallstand and taking out the leash. Edi followed, his tongue wagging, panting his eagerness.

There was no reason to see her at all.

Chapter Eight

What I want in a man on a good day:

1) Tall, dark and reasonably good-looking

2) White collar professional

3) Sense of humour

4) Reasonably sane in-laws

What I want in a man on a bad day: space

‘YES, Mum. I am looking after myself.’ Tahlia threw herself on to the couch, a nuked bowl of low-fat noodle dish in one hand and the phone in the other.

‘And the promotion?’

She stared at the ceiling. ‘No news yet.’ There was no way she was going there with her mother, least of all admitting how the new guy had not only taken her job but had turned her world inside out and wanted her to be his assistant—glorified or not. Her mother would go nuts.

Her mother figured Tahlia had her life together, under control and on plan like hers was. Usually, she’d be right. Today she was so far from it, it made Tahlia’s belly fight the noodles.

She couldn’t tell her.

Her mother would demand the entire story and every detail so she could bestow her wisdom and advice to remedy the problem.

Tahlia was used to it. As a child she’d listened with her mother to motivational tapes, had filled out goal sheets and dream journals and said affirmations just like her mum.

She knew the drill and knew exactly what her mother would say and she couldn’t bring herself to share the sorry news and hear the disappointment in her mother’s voice.

She’d tortured herself enough for one day with Case’s request to be his assistant.

Maybe it was just another way to torture her into submission. Damn the man. Wasn’t it enough that she was tortured by his smile, his eyes, his very fine-looking body? And thoughts of him being all too human with his shaggy little dog and all.

‘I’ll let you know—’ she said carefully, watching her tone.

Her mother tsked. ‘Still nothing? And you’re home this early? Couldn’t you have found something to do at the office to show them that you’re keen?’

Tahlia sighed, pushing the red velvet cushions around beside her. ‘I have been, Mum. But I do have to have a life too.’

She took a mouthful of noodles, staring at the newscaster on the muted TV in the corner, the pile of business management books on her coffee table and the fashion magazine laid open to the latest in-office wear for kick-arse professional women.

‘Are you sure you’ve done everything you can to make your boss see your assets?’

‘Yes, Mum.’ Tahlia couldn’t help but smile. Her new boss seemed very aware of her assets…and the thought of his blue gaze coursing over her body made her nerves tingle anew.