Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Boss?

His gaze locked on to her face and stayed there, unmoving for a few seconds, before the corner of his mouth slid into a lazy smile.

The corners of those amazing eyes crinkled slightly and the warmth of that smile seemed to heat the air between them. And at that moment his smile was for her. And her heart leapt. More than a little.

In that instant Toni knew what it felt like to be the most important and most beautiful person in the room. Heart thumping. Brain spinning. An odd and unfamiliar tension hummed down her veins. Every cell of her was suddenly alive and tuned in to the vibrations emanating from his body.

Suddenly she wanted to preen and flick her hair, to roll her shoulders back so that she could stick her chest out.

It was as if she had been dusted with instant lust powder.

Dear Reader

Parents. We love them dearly, but sometimes they pass on a heritage and family expectations that we cannot shake off—no matter how hard we try.

Antonia Baldoni knows about expectations. Toni is the fourth generation of the Baldoni family of artists to paint the portrait of the CEO of Elstrom Industries. She needs the money to help pay for her younger sister’s gap year, with something left over for the university fees. Toni has taken care of her sister since their parents’ death.

Only the new CEO is not the academic cartographer Lars Elstrom but his adventurer son Scott. Scott Elstrom has been brought back from Alaska to take over the company because his father is ill.

Scott certainly does not have time to sit around long enough to have his portrait painted! He might be the last of the line but he is not going to let two hundred years of heritage go down without a fight.

The one thing he does expect is that quirky and stubborn Toni Baldoni might just be the girl he needs to help him save Elstrom Mapping—and give him hope for a second chance at love.

I do hope that you enjoy travelling with Toni and Scott on their journey to discover how they can put the past behind them and move forward together to a new life.

I would love to hear from my readers, and you can get in touch by visiting www.ninaharrington.com

Nina

Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Boss?

Nina Harrington

www.millsandboon.co.uk

NINA HARRINGTON grew up in rural Northumberland, England, and decided at the age of eleven that she was going to be a librarian—because then she could read all of the books in the public library whenever she wanted! Since then she has been a shop assistant, community pharmacist, technical writer, university lecturer, volcano walker and industrial scientist, before taking a career break to realise her dream of being a fiction writer. When she is not creating stories which make her readers smile, her hobbies are cooking, eating, enjoying good wine—and talking, for which she has had specialist training.

Other Modern Tempted™ titles by Nina Harrington:

THE SECRET INGREDIENT

TROUBLE ON HER DOORSTEP

This and other titles by Nina Harrington are available in eBook format from www.millsandboon.co.uk

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Contents

Cover

Introduction

Dear Reader

Title Page

About the Author

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Extract

Copyright

ONE

Scott Elstrom looked out across the sea ice and squinted as the Alaskan sun rose over the horizon and made the light covering of snow suddenly turn brilliantly white.

It was so beautiful that for a moment he forgave the brutal biting wind that came with crossing the frozen sea. There was no cover for himself or his team of nine sled dogs and he could feel his cheeks burning with frostbite under the mask covering his face.

Reaching up with gloved hands, Scott turned off his head torch to save the batteries and, stepping off the sled, he ran a hundred paces on the thick plate of ice to get some warmth into his body and then jumped back onto the sled, much to the amusement of the dogs. The lead dog, Dallas, actually looked back and seemed to grin at him.

The dogs loved this weather: bright sunshine and a clear trail ahead across the sound to the base camp on the other side of the bay.

The fact that they had only crossed this stretch of sea ice once before didn’t matter. They were happy just to be out and doing what they did best. Running.

He had been out with his dogs for thirteen days, taking mapping and geo readings at each of the twenty stations the ecological survey company had established. Sometimes that meant staying in a small town along the way but often the station was a simple wooden house or shack where he would be alone with his dogs, checking their feet and feeding them. He loved this way of life and the gentle routine that they had settled into.

Out here in the silence he felt a kinship with all of the explorers who had used Elstrom maps in the past to find a route to new worlds as well as to hunt and fish.

Now that routine was shattered. The message from his sister, Freya, had been short and to the point.

Their father was in hospital. He had suffered another stroke and, although it was a small one and the doctors said that he should make a good recovery, his father wanted to talk to him. Urgently. Come home, Scott. We need you here.

Scott rolled his shoulders and fought back a sense of guilt at his resentment at having to go back to what passed for civilization a week earlier than he had planned.

They needed him. Well, that was new!

It had been two years since his father had handed over the management of their family business to his stepbrother, Travis. And look how well that decision had turned out! Now Travis was long gone and his father had been fighting for months to save what was left of Elstrom Mapping.

For their father to even admit that he needed Scott was astonishing.

That was why Scott had taken the decision to cross the open water instead of travelling inland and taking the slower route through the frozen forest and rivers to the station where he would find a snow machine and a lift to the local airstrip.

There was no other choice. He had to cross the frozen sea ice to get to the base camp to the airbase in time to catch the weekly cargo plane—it would take too long any other way.

But crossing open salt water ice was a serious commitment. The sea froze in huge cracked and floating plates which moved and heaved under the sled, making progress slow and dangerous. The ice was always unstable and never more so in the unusually mild Alaskan February.

Scott looked over the sled and, to his horror, he could see the ice ridges flexing and cracking. A giant piece of ice had broken away and was floating out to sea. He was driving across the frozen-over thinner layer.

One crack in a weak spot and the weight of the sled would drag him and the whole dog team underwater to their deaths, never to be found again.

There was a low grunt from his lead dog, Dallas, as she picked up a scent and set off at a steady pace onto the thicker ice, the other eight dogs behind her panting and settling into a trot from months of training and working together. They would run all day if he asked them, without complaint.

* * *

The blinding sunlight made Scott squint and glance sideways towards the open water of the sea.

For the last twenty-four hours he had been travelling and had barely dozed in the wooden trappers’ cabin for the the four or five hours while the dogs rested. Now, as the sun rose higher and warmed his skin, and the dogs moved steadily forwards, his mind drifted seawards.

The only sound was from the movement of the sled on the ice and the comforting panting noises of nine dogs moving as a team.

Beautiful. Unique. Mesmerising.

This was his life now. Not central London and everything that went with it.

He had waved goodbye to that world two years ago and would quite happily not see it again unless he had to. The technology he was using for his mapping and surveying meant that he could talk to his sister and his father, if he chose to, most days and at least once a week.

Of course Freya had tried to persuade him to come home for Christmas but what had been the point?

His quiet academic father had never understood how his son preferred adventure sports and a hard outdoor life to the quiet study of the maps and charts that had made Elstrom Mapping a familiar name around the world.

The only common thing holding them together had been the mapping company, and when his father had decided that Travis could be trusted to lead the company that link had been swept away, leaving nothing but regrets and harsh words behind.

The weather had closed in during December and made travel impossible for anyone at the research station, so he had a perfectly valid and very convenient excuse to stay in Alaska.

Way too convenient an excuse according to his sister, who’d ended up coping on her own for the holidays, being bounced between divorced parents who had drifted away from one another for years before their mother finally gave up trying to make a family with a father who was never home. Freya had spent New Year’s with their quite happily settled mother and her new boyfriend—a lawyer with a fine selection of colourful bow ties.

Scott chuckled to himself deep in the back of his throat. Freya would make him suffer for that one. He looked up and was just about to check his GPS position when his world shifted.

He felt the sled shudder and slip underneath him.

They had hit a weak spot in the ice.

Instantly every cell in his body leapt to attention, adrenaline surging through his veins.

While he had been thinking about London firesides, Dallas had slowed down, her tail high and in the shape of a question mark instead of hanging straight down. And her paws were dancing.

Scott’s heart almost stopped.

He couldn’t swim in five layers of thermal clothing and, even if he could, the water was so cold he wouldn’t last more than a few minutes. He would go down with the sled and the dogs.

The dogs would die because his father had given up the fight.

No way. Not while he still had breath in his body.

Scott snatched up the solid grab rope and dropped off the back of the sled onto his stomach, his legs spread wide so his body weight would be spread over the thin ice. ‘Dallas. Gee right. Gee right. Dallas.’

Dallas knew that this was the instruction to turn right to safety and she tugged and tugged as the team fought her, the other eight dogs desperate to run hard and straight. But she did it and after a few terrifying minutes Scott felt a ridge of hard ice under his stomach and they were back on the older solid pan ice.

The broken shards of ice ripped his right glove to shreds and his fingers instantly turned numb and blue. Frostbite. But he managed to haul himself back onto the sled and the dogs sped on to safety as the shapes of the cabins on the other side of the bay grew clearer in the growing early morning light.

He was going to make it home in time to hear what his father had to say after all.

But one thing was for sure. This was his chance to prove to his father that he was a better man than Travis could ever be. And nothing was going to stand in his way and stop him from making that happen. Not this time.

* * *

‘So let me get this straight. Those G-strings are edible?’

Toni pulled away the wrapping paper from the pink and black gift box that her sister Amy had given her and started reading the instructions on the back.

‘Of course.’ Amy shrugged and flicked the fluffy feather end of her pink whip against the packing. ‘Why else would you want to wear something that uncomfortable?’

‘I have just had a vision of what happens when those candy pieces come adrift and where they might end up in my lady parts. Amy, I love you and you are my only sister but I may save modelling this particular birthday pressie for another day.’

Amy giggled and shook her head. ‘Those knickers are not for us to ogle at. Save it for that hunky boyfriend you’re going to meet.’ She knocked her on the head with the feather whip again. ‘Very soon.’

‘Well, in that case I might as well put the box in the freezer right now and stick to eating supermarket chocolate bars.’

Amy sighed out loud and collapsed down on the arm of the dining chair next to Toni. ‘Now don’t be like that. It has been a whole year since you got rid of that skanky Peter and what did we agree? He was totally not worthy of your luscious magnificence. Right? Of course right. This is a new year and a new you, remember?’

Toni smiled and hugged the present to her new burgundy satin bra. ‘When did you get to be so clever? I’m going to miss having you around. You know that, don’t you?’

‘Of course. That’s why I’ve loaded up all these fancy gizmos on my tech so that we can talk every week!’

Amy wrapped one arm around Toni’s bare shoulders and rocked from side to side. ‘It’s only a few months and I’ll be right back in time to start university in September.’ Then she slid back and sniffed once. ‘And, for the record, I’ll miss you too but I’ll work hard to block out my pain by having the best gap year trip this world has to offer.’

Then she pointed the whip at Toni. ‘All thanks to the lovely Christmas present from my darling sister.’ She nodded over her shoulder. ‘The gals still cannot believe that you bought me a round-the-world plane ticket. Magic!’

‘How else could I get you out of the house long enough to get the plumbing fixed?’ Toni grinned. ‘You’re welcome. But you do remember that there’s one condition. You have to enjoy yourself and not spend the whole time digging up bits of ancient Peru.’

‘I can guarantee it. Oh! Looks like I’m getting the signal. I think more birthday cake might be almost ready. Be back soon.’

And with that Amy got to her feet and sashayed off as though she always wore a black laced-up pink and cream frilly basque and feather-trimmed mules around the house.

Toni sat back in her hard wooden chair and swayed a little from side to side as her whole crew of pals and colleagues from the media company where she worked joined in a very loud and very out of tune version of an old hit song about an uptown girl which was playing at full volume in her honour.

There was cheap Prosecco and white wine spillages and pizza and cheesy biscuit breadcrumbs all over the tablecloth, and probably the new plum lingerie that Amy had squeezed her into as the star of her Birthday Goddess sexy party special. At some point she had lost her shoe under the table when she sat down after all the toasts had been made.

Then Amy had presented her with a crown she had made from gold paper and wire and insisted that she wear it as a party princess. At a jaunty angle, of course.

Worse. Her make-up was probably a wreck after a brief but intense crying jag when Amy had said some incredibly sweet things about how lucky she was to have her as her sister and that leaving home for the first time was not going to change a thing.

The waterworks had started again when Amy gave her a bound book of their mother’s sketches of them as children and told her how proud their late parents would have been of her and what she had achieved, which had everyone in the room reaching for the tissues, paper napkins or, in more than one case, the corner of the tablecloth. There was not a dry eye in the house. Even Amy the Strong ‘accidentally’ dropped her napkin on the floor and had to drop out of sight for a couple of minutes to find it.

Good thing that the birthday chocolate iced cupcakes had arrived just in time to prevent a meltdown of nuclear proportions.

Toni glanced up across the tables and clusters of women spread out around the room. It didn’t matter that she looked a mess and that her guests were in great danger of trashing the dining and living room of a house she was borrowing from Freya Elstrom. Not to her friends, who had come out on a cold February evening to help her celebrate her birthday.

Amy had a lot to answer for. She had told Amy for weeks that she did not want a birthday party. It would only remind her of what had happened on her last birthday, when she had found her so-called boyfriend in the shower with the Brazilian lingerie model who turned out to be his real full-time girlfriend.

The one he had so conveniently forgotten to mention during the previous few weeks when he had been dating her.

That had not been one of her life’s finer moments.

Especially since she had already stripped off and was ready to make sure that Peter was washed in all of his important places.

Hence this surprise party. Toni’s latest project had been staging professional studio photo sessions on the explosion in demand for sex toys and bedroom accessories and daring lingerie among women of all ages. Young and old.

When Toni had mentioned it was her birthday in a few days and the first anniversary of breaking up with her cheating boyfriend then the girls had insisted that they hold a party for her to mark the occasion while Amy was still in London. Complete with the full range of accessories which had been used on the show. Amy thought this was a great idea and had arranged the whole thing while Toni was at work.

These were her real friends. Her real family. Girls from the local school she had known all of her life, who had left their husbands and boyfriends at home for one evening to share her birthday party, pals from her work, students from Amy’s school. All loud, boisterous and having fun. And that was precisely how she liked it. No false pretenses here. Real people who shared her life each and every day.

She was so lucky to have them.

And she was officially on holiday for two weeks. Now that was worth celebrating. Even if she would be spending most of the time painting the company portrait of a very serious-looking businessman. According to his daughter Freya, Dr Lars Elstrom was a quiet academic used to desk work and she had talked him into sitting for his portrait while he was in the office researching some work for a client.

But there was a problem. The painting had to be painted in a specific two-week window in February before her father went back to Italy for the spring. Could she do it?

Piece of cake.

Especially when the cake came decorated with half the fee for the commission in advance.

Thank you, Freya, and thank you, Dr Lars Elstrom.

That fee had bought Amy’s round-the-world plane ticket and was paying to have the boiler replaced in her little house. Hot water! Central heating she could rely on! Bliss. Apparently any tenant thinking of renting her house would expect plumbing that worked. Amazing. Some people had no appreciation of character properties.

Toni glanced out of the dining room window at the flurries of February snow which were forecast to be with them for a few days to come. Not the weather to be modelling fancy lingerie in her freezing terraced house. It might only be thirty minutes away on foot but it might as well be in another world. Brr.

No. Much better to do it here in this nice warm house.

Freya had a lovely home and Toni was going to enjoy living here for the next two weeks rent-free. And with all of the hot water she could use.

She loved patrons who believed in carrying on old traditions! Especially when that tradition meant that the CEO of the company always had their portrait painted by a Baldoni. And since she was the last in the line... Result!

A warm glow of happiness and contentment spread from deep inside her like a furnace that pumped the heat from her heart to the very ends of her fingertips. She had not felt so safe and secure for years. Protected. And cared for and part of a very special community of friends who looked out for one another.

She grinned across at Amy’s best friend, Lucy, who was demonstrating the finer points of how to tie a sarong. They had known one another since they were at primary school together just a few streets away. It was hard to imagine that Amy, Lucy and the other girls parading up and down in various stages of undress would be flying out tomorrow, all ready for trekking through rough terrain in South America.

It was actually happening. Her baby sister was going around the world with her best friends. One month travelling. Four months on an archaeological dig in Peru then another month relaxing. Six months. Three girls. Three boys. All great teenagers she had known for years. But six months? The longest they had lived apart since their parents died was over a year ago, when she’d worked in Paris for five weeks but came home most weekends.

They might have had the training and they all spoke excellent Spanish but the hard reality of what they would be facing made her shudder.

But no sniffles allowed. Time to start living a bit. Right? That was what they’d agreed at some mad hour on New Year’s Day. A new start for both of them. Pity that Amy was insisting that a new boyfriend was part of the package.

Maybe turning twenty-seven was not so bad after all when she had friends like these in her life. So what if she didn’t have a mega career as a fine artist? She had something much better.

And somehow she knew that her father would understand that trying to scrape a living as a portrait painter had never been the life she wanted and never would be. That had been her father’s dearest wish, but it wasn’t hers. No. This portrait for Freya Elstrom would be the last. No more commissions as the last of the Baldoni family. It was time to say goodbye to foolish ideas like that and start focusing totally on her photography career.

Amy sashayed forward with a plate with a cupcake on and leant sideways and rested her head on Toni’s shoulder. ‘I stashed two of the red velvet specials, which I happen to know are your favourite, in the washing machine.’

‘Clever!’ Toni replied and popped a little finger loaded with creamy chocolate icing into her mouth and groaned in delight. ‘Delish. And have I said thank you yet again for arranging all of this? It’s amazing and I love it.’

Amy laughed out loud and gave her a one-armed hug. ‘Several times. It’s the wine, you know. Causes short-term memory loss in older women.’

Then Amy started rubbing her hands together and mumbling under her breath. ‘Now. Back to the important stuff. What totally outrageous thing have you decided to do while I’m away? Remember the rules—it has to be spontaneous, the opposite of what you would normally do, and fun! Points will be awarded for the most ingenious solution!’