Something about the Boss...

“I’ve never been here before, but it all looks good to me.”

“Did you want an appetizer?”

“No, I’ll save myself for dessert.”

“Ah,” he said, “a sweet tooth, huh? I didn’t know that about you.”

“I would think there’s a lot you don’t know about me.”

Her tone was slightly quelling, but Zach was nothing if not challenged by her statement. He noticed the exact second she realized the light of that challenge had reflected in his eyes.

“Not that I expect you to know anything about me, that is,” she said, her voice flustered.

“I’d like to know more about you,” he answered, closing his menu and laying it on the crisp white linen of the tablecloth. “We work together. There’s no reason why we can’t be friends also.”

* * *

Sophie swallowed. There was a determined set to his jaw that she knew from watching him at work meant he wasn’t going to let this go. Why, oh why had she been so careless with her tongue? From the second she’d agreed to this dinner she’d been off balance. Could she be friends with someone like Zach? She very much doubted it; especially considering how unfriendlike she’d felt when he’d ever so slightly touched her while rescuing her dress from the voracious teeth of the zipper.

She’d all but melted at the unintentional caress, and had had to draw on every last ounce of self-control to stifle the gasp that had threatened to expose her reaction to his touch. No, friendly was the last word she’d ever employ to describe how he made her feel.

Could she be friends with him, though? Honestly?

It would be tantamount to torture. But worse, how on earth could she explain that to him? She took a deep breath and let it go slowly before speaking. “I’m pretty boring, really.”

“You think so?” he answered, cocking his head and locking those startlingly green eyes of his onto her like twin lasers.

She squirmed a little in her seat, and immediately regretted the action as she became even more aware of the silky softness of her underthings against her skin and of the way the silk lining of her dress whispered against her body.

“Well, by comparison to you, for example,” she deflected, quite neatly she thought, right up until he let loose with a rich belt of laughter.

“Oh, Sophie, you couldn’t be more wrong. I’ve been told I live to work. There’s not much more boring than that.”

Even though he joked at his own expense, she could see the light of an old hurt lingering in the back of his gaze. Compassion flooded her. A man in his early thirties, in his prime both mentally and physically, living to work? It was sad. Something must have shown on her face, because he sobered and reached across the table to grasp her hand.

“Don’t worry about me,” he said, his voice dropping intimately.

Oh, she wasn’t worried about him, not exactly. Of more immediate concern was the crazy flip-flop her stomach did as his thumb lightly stroked the inside of her palm. She gently pulled her hand away from his, relief and regret fighting for supremacy as he made no move to stop her.

“What makes you think I’m worried?” she asked, a note of defense in her voice.

“You have the most expressive face,” he answered, his eyes not shifting an inch. “It’s easy to see when something’s troubling you.”

As long as that was all he could see, she thought worriedly. What if he could see the longing she felt every time she looked at him? A man like Zach Lassiter was so far out of her league it wasn’t even funny. But a girl could dream, couldn’t she?

“There’s not much that troubles me,” Sophie said, closing her menu and placing it in front of her. She could barely concentrate on the culinary delights the pages offered. It wouldn’t matter what she ordered, it was bound to be delicious.

“But you’re worried about Alex, aren’t you? I can see it on your face every morning when you arrive in the office and he’s not there.”

“Aren’t you?” she countered. “He’s your friend as well as your colleague. Aren’t you worried about where he is, what might have happened to him?”

“Sure I am,” Zach replied. “I feel frustrated I can’t do more. The only thing I know I can do is keep all those plates he had spinning from falling down so that when he comes back everything will still be as it should.”

“Is that why you’re in the office so early each morning and don’t leave until after I do?” Sophie asked without thinking.

He looked startled at her question and his eyes became slightly shuttered before he replied. “Yeah, there’s a lot going on right now.”

“Can I take more of your load off you?” she offered.

“No, of course not. You already are the glue that holds the office together. No one could expect more of you than you already give. In fact, let’s make that the end of the subject of work. We’re here tonight because I wanted to thank you for everything you’ve done, not discuss how you can do more.”

He smiled at that last sentence but Sophie could tell it was a deflection. She’d been wondering what it was that was keeping him in the office for such long hours. He was right, she did keep the office running, and she knew exactly what stage each of Alex’s projects had been at before he’d disappeared. Unless Zach had suddenly become wildly incompetent, he should have been able to handle everything—his own portfolios included—within normal business hours, which made her wonder: What was he really up to?

Four

She reached for her water glass and took a tiny sip, letting the cool water slide down her throat while her mind worked overtime. The mere fact that he hadn’t sent more work her way for all the extra hours he was putting in was a glaring red flag to her. Why hadn’t she seen that earlier?

Her work had always increased incrementally depending on Alex’s output. Zach was doing something he didn’t want her to know about, he had to be. She was almost certain of it. But it was anyone’s guess what, exactly, that was. Could he somehow be involved in Alex’s disappearance? Was he actively hiding his tracks? The questions were never far from the back of her mind, even though she didn’t want to believe Zach was entangled in whatever had led to Alex virtually vanishing off the face of the earth.

There had to be some way she could find out.

“I do appreciate your hard work, Sophie,” he said, dragging her attention back. “And I know you put in some very long hours. Doesn’t your boyfriend object?”

“I don’t have a boyfriend,” she answered, feeling warm color flood her cheeks again.

Silently she cursed her fair complexion. There was only one man she was interested in and he was sitting right opposite her. What would he say, she wondered, if she told him exactly that? She fought back a smile. He’d probably make some excuse to draw the evening to a close early.

“I’m surprised. You’re a very attractive woman,” Zach said seriously, ensnaring her in his gaze like a predatory cat with its prey.

“Thank you,” she said, dipping her head.

“So, no boyfriend, huh? What do you like to do in your spare time if you don’t have a significant other filling it with you?”

“I read a lot, romances mostly and the occasional crime thriller.” She shrugged. “And I keep house, see friends. The usual things.”

“Did you grow up around here?”

She nodded, “Sure did, and I couldn’t imagine living anywhere else. Big cities aren’t my thing and I love the lifestyle that Royal has to offer.”

“It’s a different pace here, that’s for sure.”

“What about you?” she asked, happy to turn the tables on him for a change. Even though she was fairly certain of the answer, she couldn’t help probing. “Girlfriend?”

His face closed again, all warmth replaced by a sorrow that flashed briefly across his face. “No girlfriend,” he said emphatically. “Too many other things going on in my life.”

And what would they be? Sophie wondered as the waiter interrupted them to take their orders. After ordering a lamb shank braised in red wine, she wasn’t at all surprised to hear Zach order the eye fillet steak. He looked like a man who liked his red meat.

“Lamb?” he said to her after the waiter had taken their orders and moved away from the table. “You come to what is essentially the best steak house in Texas and you order lamb?”

Sophie shrugged. “It’s what appealed to me at the time. At least I ordered a domestic wine, not some fancy imported beer. And here I thought you were proudly American all the way?”

“Fair point.” Zach nodded slowly, then smiled as said fancy imported beer was put in front of him and her Californian white zinfandel placed before her.

She watched as he took a long pull of the chilled lager, her eyes mesmerized by the muscles working in his throat and then by the smile of satisfaction on his beautiful features as he put the glass back down in front of him. Oh, how she wished that she could be the reason behind a smile like that from him one day. The second the thought formed, she beat it to the back of her mind again. That way could only lead to trouble.

“Now that makes a hard day at the office worthwhile,” he said with a soul-deep gratification that brought another smile to her face.

“Simple pleasures, huh?”

He looked at her as if to check if she was still teasing him after the imported beer comment, then gave another nod of acknowledgment. “Yeah, when it comes down to it, it’s the simple things that matter the most. Don’t you agree?”

“Totally. For me it’s home and family. One day I hope to have both.”

“You’ve made a lovely home out of your apartment.”

“Thank you, but it’s still not mine, y’know? Soon I hope to be able to put a deposit on a place of my own. Something small, with a bit of a garden. Somewhere that I can truly call mine.”

And that was another reason why she was so darned worried about Alex Santiago. What if he didn’t come back? Would Zach continue to keep the business running or would he fold things up and go back to where he’d come from? Where would she be then? She earned good money now and her options within Royal to earn the same weren’t bountiful. If she lost her job, that could be the end of her dream of owning her own home—she’d never earn enough to make mortgage payments and to afford extras like the private investigator she’d hired to find her sister.

“And that’s important to you because?” Zach coaxed.

She took a moment to think before answering. “Stability, not being at someone else’s whim or mercy.”

“Sounds like there’s some history there.”

She shrugged. “Isn’t there always?”

“Can you tell me?”

Sophie sighed. It wasn’t something she tended to bandy about, but there was something about Zach’s gentle questioning that made her actually want to tell him.

“Nothing spectacular. My dad died when I was a baby and my mom remarried. They had my sister and life was great for a while, but then a few years later my new dad died in an accident at work and our lives turned upside down. We had to move out of our home and my sister went to live with her aunt, because Mom couldn’t cope with us both with the hours she had to work to make the rent. It was hard for her,” Sophie added just in case Zach felt inclined to be judgmental. “We had to keep moving around, which I hated, but even then I used to keep house to help Mom out. She’d usually juggle two jobs, or pull double shifts when she only had one source of income. Things settled down a bit after I finished college. She met someone new, they married and I moved out and got my own place.”

“They kicked you out?”

Zach sounded defensive and Sophie rushed to disabuse him of that. “No, not at all. But I was ready to stand on my own two feet. Mom and Jim marrying didn’t make any difference to that. No, that’s not entirely true. I felt better about moving to a place of my own, knowing she’d be taken care of.”

* * *

Zach looked at Sophie across the table. She’d talked more personally to him tonight than she ever had in the time they’d worked together, but there was a huge amount she wasn’t saying. Listening to her, he could begin to understand why she was so good at what she did. She was used to keeping things together, keeping things calm. It was a sure bet that she’d done her best to help her mother out at home from an early age—that capable manner of hers was second nature now, but there had probably been a time when it was all about security.

His own upbringing had been completely the opposite. At least up until his dad had been laid off from his job. Even then, forced to take on a menial position at a much lower wage, his father had insisted on paying Zach’s way through college. It was one of the reasons Zach worked so hard now. He didn’t ever want to be in the position his parents had been when his father’s job had been downsized. And he’d made it up to them for all the sacrifices they’d made to ensure he’d had the best opportunities available to him. It didn’t sound like Sophie had been so lucky.

“And your sister? She’s the one in that photo you had with you on Monday, right?”

Sophie inclined her head, her cap of hair swinging gently forward to caress her cheek. His fingers itched to do the same and he reached for the dewy glass in front of him instead.

“You said you don’t stay in touch. How come?”

“Her aunt formally adopted her several months after she took Suzie to live with them. She told Mom they didn’t think it was good for Suzie to continue to have contact with us. Said it was too disruptive.”

There was a world full of hurt and loss in her simply chosen words.

“And your mother agreed to that?” he said incredulously.

Sophie’s eyes flamed. “You have no idea of what it was like for my mother. Don’t you dare judge her.”

Zach put up both hands in surrender. “Whoa, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to touch a nerve there.”

After Anna’s car wreck, he’d fought tooth and nail to keep his son—arguing with doctors and specialists until he was blue in the face. But after Blake had been on life support for six weeks and the doctors had repeatedly told him his son had no brain activity, Zach and Anna had had to let him go. For the life of him he couldn’t understand how a parent could give up a child the way Sophie’s mother had, not when she had every reason to fight to keep her.

“Mom couldn’t work and take care of us both at the same time. I was in school. Mom couldn’t afford day care and Suzie, well, she was a bit of a handful. She had been a demanding baby and that didn’t change as she got older. She was always just that bit more vulnerable than I was, needed that much more attention. Giving Suzie up wasn’t Mom’s first choice, not by any means, but she had to do what was best—for all of us. And Suzie’s aunt, well, family money aside, her late husband had been a very wealthy man. She didn’t have to work and she was childless. Mom knew that Suzie would be the center of her world, that she’d be loved and cared for as she deserved to be—in ways we couldn’t.”

Her choice of words—saying “we” rather than “she”—explained so much about the person she was today. He didn’t doubt that Sophie harbored some guilt that she hadn’t been able to look after her sister enough or to help her mother more so that their small family wouldn’t have to be broken up. He tried to imagine what it would be like growing up feeling like that, and couldn’t.

“Sophie,” he said reaching across the small table to take her trembling hand in his, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to sound judgmental. It must have been tough.”

She hesitated a moment and he could feel her inner battle rage as she fought to drag her emotions back under control. Eventually she pulled her hand out from beneath his.

“It was, but it’s in the past now.”

But it wasn’t in the past. He could see that just by looking at her. The hurts, the loss—they were all still there. Their shadows lingered beneath the calm surface she presented to the rest of the world.

Zach fought the nearly overwhelming urge he had to tell her it would be all right, that he would do what he could to assuage the pain of her past, that he’d fight her dragons for her and lay them at her feet. Grappling to get his own emotions under control, he reminded himself that he’d already taken that road once before, with Anna, and look where that had led them. No, the last thing he needed was to complicate his life with another wounded bird.

He all but welcomed the waiter out loud when the man arrived with their plates of steaming-hot food, and Zach turned the conversation to more general things, including the latest developments at the Texas Cattleman’s Club. He entertained Sophie with a passable impersonation of Beau Hacket’s blustering about the new child-care center. By the time they’d finished their meal and enjoyed dessert and coffee, he thought he’d managed to chase those shadows from her eyes. Even if only for an evening.

He wished he had a reason to make their night last longer. She was good company and, when the conversation stayed well and truly off the personal, a great talker. Even more, she was a perceptive listener—he supposed that was part of why she was so darn good at her job. She was always subconsciously taking note of what was happening around her, always ready to put her hand on what was needed almost before the need arose.

Sophie Beldon appealed to him on an intellectual level, and her subtle beauty was a siren call—from the way her eyes began to sparkle before she would laugh right down to the enticing shadow of her breasts at the V of her neckline. And her mouth. God, her mouth. A jolt of longing shook him to his core. What would it be like to taste her, to feel the softness of those lips against his, to command their surrender?

Zach placed his coffee cup back on its saucer none too gently, a tremor in his hand betraying the need that fought for dominance over his heretofore steely control. Control won in the end as he signaled to the waiter for their check. He slid his card in the wallet and when the waiter returned with the receipt, he signed off with a generous tip.

He had to get Sophie home before he did or said something stupid. Before he went over the invisible line he’d drawn in respect of his working relationship, and only his working relationship, with her.

They made small talk on the short journey to her apartment building, extolling the virtues of the chef at Claire’s and how much they’d enjoyed the food. When they pulled up outside her ground-floor unit, it was second nature to Zach to get out of the car first and open her door for her. He walked her up the short path and waited while she extracted her key from her bag.

“Well, thank you for a lovely meal. I really enjoyed it,” she said simply once the key was in her hand.

Before he could reply, she stepped in closer and leaned up to place a kiss on his cheek. That was all it took for his instincts to kick in, for him to turn his face so that her lips met his instead. His arm curled around her waist to draw her more closely against his body and he angled his head ever so slightly so he could deepen their kiss.

Heat sizzled along his veins. Her lips were every bit as soft and delicious as he’d imagined and the tiny sound she made in the back of her throat sent his pulse racing. This was way more than he’d imagined—this scorching desire combined with the raging need he’d managed to keep firmly under control for so very long. Emotion rocked him, sharp and intense, and he knew their working relationship could never be the same again. He wanted Sophie Beldon from the gleaming top of her blond head to the tips of her dainty feet and everything, yes, definitely everything in between.

His hips flexed lightly against the softness of her belly. Her answering press back against him reminded him of what it felt like to be a man—to want with a gut-aching need so strong that it almost hurt to desire another human being this much.

And then, just like that, it was over. Cool night air swirled in the space between them. She was pulling away, her eyes glittering like whiskey-colored topaz, her lips still moist from their kiss and slightly swollen with the evidence of their all-too-brief passion. She dipped her head in that way she had, closing her eyes briefly.

“Don’t,” he said sharply.

“Don’t?”

“Don’t hide from me. From us.”

“There is no us, is there?” she asked, her voice slightly shaky.

Every cell in his body urged him to say, “Yes, there is an us.” To take her back into his arms again and to repeat the intimacy of what they’d just shared. But reason intruded with harsh reality. They worked together. More than that, they had to hold things together in the office until Alex’s absence could be explained and he, hopefully, returned. And then there was Anna. The reminder was as sobering as an icy-cold shower.

“No, you’re right. I’ll see you Monday?” he said, stepping back from her—away from temptation.

“Yes, Monday.”

He waited by his car until she let herself inside her apartment, and watched as her outside light went out, followed by the living room lights being turned on. Even then he had to force himself to get in his car and to start it up, put it in gear and drive away. He was a fool. He should never have let things get away like that. Never. It went against his code of ethics in so many ways, and yet there was still this invisible thread that pulled between them. A thread that grew tighter with the more distance he put between them.

Five

“You kissed him!”

“Mia, please, shh!” Sophie hissed across the table of the booth she shared with her friend Mia Hughes. “Besides, it was only supposed to be a short peck, a good-night and thank-you, not...not what it turned into, that’s for sure.”

Her nerve endings still buzzed with excitement even now, fourteen hours since Zach had seen her to her door. Fourteen hours since she’d been introduced to the most searing, blistering ardor she’d ever experienced in her entire twenty-eight years.

Mia moved in closer. “So, tell me. Did he make your toes curl?”

“Oh, Lord, yes. And everything in between.”

“I knew it!” Mia laughed, leaning back against the back of the banquette. “Beneath that GQ look, he definitely has that smoldering-hot thing going on. Plus, he’s so dark and mysterious.”

Sophie squirmed in her seat and almost immediately wished she hadn’t. Her body still hummed from the aftereffects of their kiss and the action just seemed to increase her discomfort.

“I still don’t know what possessed me to do it,” she confided in her friend.

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