The Boss's Unconventional Assistant

With a muttered agreement, Soph hurriedly took up her workload.

CHAPTER TWO

AS THE hours passed Soph learned a number of things. Her new employer knew how to churn out work. The phone wasn’t about to stop ringing simply because she needed to concentrate, and Grey had three stepmothers who all seemed determined to demand his attention. Three!

At twelve-thirty Soph handed her boss the latest phone message, from Leanna Barlow:

‘I’m his stepmother, dear. I hope he’s feeling all right? Good, good. I also need to touch base with him and…um…talk to him about a little problem I have with my credit cards…’

The message followed similar ones from Sharon Barlow and Dawn Barlow, who had both bemoaned Grey’s absence from Melbourne and his idea that he should isolate himself completely in the country for the first phase of his recovery.

They had then said they respectively wanted to—Sharon—use his yacht for a three-month cruise and—Dawn—use the plane the company chartered to fly to Greece because there was this expo on for the next week and a half—something to do with hand-crafted table decorations.

Grey ignored all the messages and carried on with his work.

Soph wanted to get chatty and ask about his family, but refrained. She did, however, help herself to a piece of paper she spotted tucked half under a pile of files on his desk as she stood there after passing him the latest message.

‘Is this your physio outline?’ Exercises he hadn’t done all morning? ‘I can help you with the routine now. It’s lunch time, so we’re due for a break anyway.’

‘I’ll do the exercises before I join you for the meal.’ He held his hand out for the piece of paper. ‘That will give you time to organise some food.’

Soph pretended not to notice his outstretched hand and, instead, walked to the photocopier in the corner of the room and made a copy of the regimen. She then passed the original back to him and disappeared into the kitchen with her page before he could say anything. She studied it as she went.

While the soup heated, Soph rushed out to the back garden via the laundry room door. Alfie was fine, but clearly wanted to play, and to come back inside with her. When she spoke his name—made up when she’d found him because she’d thought he looked like an Alfred and he had had no identification on him—he twitched his nose as though he liked to hear it.

Soph smiled at the thought and gave him as much time as she dared, then returned inside alone. It still didn’t seem a good idea to bring the topic of the rabbit up with her boss.

Grey hobbled into the kitchen moments after she got there.

‘The food is almost ready.’ She gestured towards the table. ‘Please, have a seat.’

He sniffed the air. ‘What can I smell? Sandwiches would have done. There’s shaved double-smoked ham in the fridge, cheese, pickles.’

‘It’s soup. I made it last night.’ Her sisters said her cooking efforts were legendary for all the wrong reasons. Her brothers-in-law agreed, but Soph thought they all just liked to tease her.

After all, she ate her creations and couldn’t discern anything wrong with them. ‘I hope you like roast pumpkin with some other vegetables blended in. I’ve flavoured it with curry paste, Italian herb blend and vanilla bean. I’ll make toasted sandwiches to follow.’

‘I see.’ He lowered himself into a chair and again his weariness showed. ‘It sounds…interesting.’

‘Yes, exactly. Spices add variety to life,’ she said, deliberately rewording the usual saying and smiled at him, then carried the mugs of soup to the table and placed one in front of him before she took her seat opposite. ‘You need good food to help you get well.’

‘Healthy food and quiet surroundings, fresh air and rest and a complete break from all stressors.’ Her employer seemed to quote the words verbatim. No doubt the admonitions had come from his doctor, although it did sound a little over-the-top for these simple injuries.

Grey certainly should get some rest, though, yet had he slowed his workload? If he had, she hated to imagine what it was like normally.

Lips pursed, he took a tentative sip of the orange brew. His nose wrinkled and he sniffed it a second time. Another sip followed, and he frowned and poured himself a glass of water from the jug on the table and quickly drank.

‘I’m glad you understand the concept of rest to help you get better.’ Even if he wasn’t following it very well as far as she could see.

He gave her a sharp glance across the table, but Soph maintained a serene, silent pose. Her boss may not realise it yet, but he really did need her. To chivvy him along, watch out for him.

With a smile still hovering, Soph tasted the soup. Oh, yes, lovely job. She lifted her gaze and waited, eyebrows raised, for him to express his opinion.

Grey cleared his throat. ‘You say you made the soup yourself, especially to bring here?’

‘Yes. Last night. It took a couple of hours, but I wanted to get you off to a good start, and I figured there might not be time to make it today once I got here.’ She had certainly been right about that.

His shoulders shifted in a gesture that seemed to reflect a mental discomfort rather than a physical one. Then, with a deep breath, he raised his soup mug and drank it all down. His eyes sparkled and a flush rose in his cheeks as he set the mug back on the table.

Sunshine broke out all over Soph’s world. She had harboured just the tiniest seed of doubt, but he didn’t know about that and had gulped her food with alacrity anyway.

‘You liked it.’ Pleasure and a hint of gratitude filled her voice. Grey Barlow liked her soup! Soph buried her nose in her mug to hide her grin.

‘It was…very tasty.’ He drank more water.

The water would also benefit him. Soph nodded her approval. Somewhere sweet and warm inside her couldn’t help but soften towards him. They had tastes in common—culinary ones at least—even if he felt a little shy about expressing his compliments to her.

Well, it was probably fine to like him, provided none of those other initial responses resurfaced.

When they finished the toasted sandwiches minutes later, she turned a determined gaze on him. ‘It’s time to do the physio exercise you can’t do by yourself. I’ve looked at the sheet and, if you don’t do it, you’ll miss one of the most helpful exercises on the list. You did do the rest, didn’t you?’

‘I did, and it’s not convenient to do more right now. I have work waiting.’ His lips stopped just shy of a manly pout. ‘Besides, I’ve already replaced the brace and laced it up.’

‘You shouldn’t have done that, either.’ Soph got to her feet and did not think about how kissable his lips might be, shaped in just that particular way.

He wasn’t at all adorable in his prickly splendour, either. He was stubborn and far too protective of his personal space when he’d hired her to get right in it. That was the fact of the matter. ‘Not unless you tied the laces one-handed.’

She searched the kitchen drawers until she found a cloth long enough to suit her purposes. ‘Shall we go? You said you’re in a hurry.’

On those words she bustled into the sitting room before he could argue and hoped he would simply follow. The boss-man needed a little bossing of his own.

‘Why don’t you sit there, on the sofa?’ Sophia gestured without looking at Grey, for all the world as though she hadn’t just ordered him about in his own home. Albeit a second home he visited less often than he would like, when he managed to eke out some free time to climb in the nearby mountains.

Grey wasn’t accustomed to taking orders. He wasn’t accustomed to having his statements ignored, either. He wanted to be able to scale those mountains too, not be stuck just looking at them when he glanced out of the windows. ‘I did say I don’t have time for this.’

‘I know, but we’re here now and it will only take a couple of minutes.’ She blinked guileless sherry-coloured eyes at him.

The lashes were ridiculously long. If he held her to him, cheek to cheek, those lashes would brush his skin. ‘Fine, do your worst. Just get on with it.’

‘First I’ll have to unlace the ankle brace and remove it.’ She waited expectantly.

Grey sat. Controlling her was like trying to trap light in a bottle. He had no idea how to manage her exuberance.

Sophia sat beside him, so close their thighs pressed together. Necessary, he knew, but the knowledge didn’t stop him from tensing as his body catalogued every nuance of that touch, reacted to it and wanted more of it.

She had golden skin and a soft, slender neck, her face a perfect oval with winged brows and a straight little nose and full, generous lips that were right out of a man’s fantasy. His gaze caught on those lips, caught on the smile that lingered there even now.

With a murmured word, Sophia leaned down and made quick work of removing the brace. When finished, she turned that megawatt smile on him again. The breath she drew held just enough of a hitch to tell him she wasn’t unaware of their closeness.

‘There.’ She lifted her hand and almost patted his leg. Almost, before she snatched her wandering appendage back. ‘The brace is off. Let’s get started with the exercise, shall we?’

‘By all means, let’s complete the physio routine.’ Grey didn’t want assistance with his physiotherapy. He didn’t want to be incarcerated in the countryside for the next week either, but Doc Cooper had some bug in his brain that Grey could be on the road to serious trouble.

All because a few readings had come in high on the scale after the accident—it was silly! Just because Grey’s mother had died young of a heart attack, no apparent trigger, and his father had had high cholesterol and high everything else before he, too, had died.

Okay, those weren’t silly, but Grey looked after himself. ‘Bloody doctor probably doesn’t know what he’s on about, anyway.’

‘Your exercises seem sensible to me,’ Sophia offered with a slightly confused look.

Grey ignored it and instead noted the way her hair cupped her face and neck.

Her body was all sweet curves. The sight of her bottom as it had wiggled about beneath his desk had almost made him moan, and Grey wasn’t someone to be affected easily by a woman.

Not unless he chose to be, and never involuntarily. Yet he’d noticed Sophia.

‘How does that feel?’ Her mouth formed the words and Grey could imagine her lips beneath his, lush and generous.

He didn’t want to, damn it.

Because Sophia Gable wasn’t only fluffy and colourful and capable of making a soup that truly defied description; she was a girl some man would take home to his mother. Grey didn’t take women anywhere, other than to bed. He stayed away from the kind who wouldn’t understand that.

As for the idea of him taking a woman to meet his three stepmothers? What a concept.

‘Grey? Your foot?’ Sophia spoke as though to prompt a child. ‘I’m trying not to hurt you.’

‘You’re not hurting me, and you won’t.’ Injuries aside, she had no power to hurt him in other ways. No woman did. Grey had seen to that, yet he wondered at his need to voice the knowledge aloud. Another thought followed.

He could hurt Sophia Gable without trying.

Grey was a hard man, toughened by years in a cutthroat business world. Hardened by his upbringing, too, although that truly was history, aside from the ongoing legacy of his late father’s three bored and at times self-indulgent past wives. He had let himself love them as surrogate mothers, one after another, until he’d finally realised the futility and refused to love anyone at all.

Sophia Gable was too gentle for him, soft and young. She looked as though she would care about anyone who gave her half a chance, and would expect them to care for her in return. Such women were made for marriage—an institution Grey respected when it worked, but would never enter into.

Why hadn’t he dismissed her completely from his awareness, then? Why did the curiosity, the interest, remain?

‘I appreciate your trust in me.’ She misread the meaning behind his words. Luminous eyes smiled at him. ‘My middle sister Chrissy broke two toes once, when we decided to rearrange the furniture in our apartment and she didn’t have her glasses on.’

A chuckle escaped. ‘That was a few years ago, but boy, did Bella, the eldest, get uptight. We all live separately now, but we had some fun times.’

For a moment he thought she looked just the tiniest bit sad, but she went on to work on his ankle, and to prattle about her life in Melbourne, and the thought faded.

A picture of a close-knit family emerged. Two elder sisters, one with a stepdaughter, the other with a nine-month-old baby named Anastasia. The husbands of those sisters. An elderly grandfather they all seemed to have taken to their hearts.

How would it feel to have a family like that? Grey couldn’t begin to imagine. He realised her chatter had died away and she had released his ankle.

‘Are you done already?’ The woman had talked to distract him while she’d put him through the requisite number of stretches. It had worked, and they’d been perfectly undisturbed the whole time. He even felt something close to relaxed—almost sleepy, actually.

Doc Cooper would be pleased.

Grey shuffled the sarcastic thought aside. He had goals to focus on. ‘It’s a wonder the phone hasn’t rung several times by now.’

‘It probably has. I put it on silent ring and sent it to the answering service before I left to make our lunch.’ She didn’t lift her head as she replaced and laced the exoform brace.

His relaxed mood frayed. ‘I need to know of all incoming phone calls the moment they occur. I have a company to control.’ He leaned forward and gave her the benefit of his displeased expression. ‘There could have been something urgent.’ One project in particular had issues right now and could cost him upward of three million dollars if it crashed and burned.

Her gaze locked with his, caught in the glare of his anger. ‘I’m sorry. I thought lunch time would be a break from all of that. I’ll check the messages now.’

The woman sounded disappointed in herself and her mouth looked vulnerable, as it had when she’d watched and waited to see if he liked her bizarrely flavoured soup. It might have grown on him, he supposed, but how could he know for certain? His taste buds had imploded after the first two sips.

Another urge overcame Grey now. For a scant moment in time, he thought of kissing her uncertainties away. Maybe he revealed something of that thought as he looked at her because her gaze flared from curiosity to interest.

Of its own volition, Grey’s body leaned towards hers. She copied his action before she stopped abruptly.

‘I’ll turn the coffee on to brew before I check the messages. I prepared it earlier so it’s only a matter of flicking a switch.’ She removed herself from beside him, didn’t stop until she stood half a room away.

With her hands clasped in front of her she cleared her throat. ‘I assume you’d like coffee?’

‘One cup.’ Damn the doctor’s orders. ‘Not too strong, plenty of milk.’ Grey forced aside other wants—unacceptable wants that had nothing to do with coffee. It must be the country air addling his brain. Not that he’d breathed any of it except for this morning when he’d waited those few minutes on the veranda for Sophia to arrive.

Well, country air or simply the closeness of a woman—he had reacted on instinct, no thought involved. Now he had to engage his brain to override those instincts. Sophia Gable was not someone he should mess with.

‘You could take a nap instead of going straight back to work.’ She fidgeted from one foot to the other, burned into action, perhaps, by his glare.

‘I’m keeping off the foot as much as I can.’ Yes, he’d felt better, but, considering his injuries, that was to be expected. ‘And I’ll turn in at a decent hour tonight.’ Those were the only concessions he would give, and ‘decent hour’ was a relative term.

She sighed. ‘Coffee it is, then.’

Soph did indeed sigh, and repeated the sigh as she hesitated before she left the room. She didn’t want to irritate her employer, truly she didn’t. Rather, she wanted to help him, to be of assistance, to contribute appropriately to the working relationship. He didn’t make that easy. Nor did the way she reacted when in close proximity to him.

‘Are you resting well at night?’ She tried not to picture him in that big bed in the master suite and, yes, she had peeped into the room when she’d first arrived. So sue her.

Grey shook his head, whether as a statement of his lack of rest or resistance to her questions, she couldn’t have said. ‘Perhaps we should concentrate on you, Sophia, and your tendency to make arbitrary decisions about my care without consulting me.’ He got to his feet. ‘I’m not accustomed to that kind of behaviour in my employees.’

‘I won’t do the phone thing again.’ Why did she get all shivery when he put on his growly voice? She pushed the question aside. Maybe it was simply chilly today or something.

And he was annoyed with her. She should think about that. ‘You see, I thought you wanted me to take care of all those things, but that you didn’t want either of us to acknowledge my efforts openly.’

When he didn’t appear to understand, she went on. ‘I thought your pride was stung and, although that would actually be silly, I would still be willing to work with it but you would have to reciprocate. I must be able to take proper care of you.’

Her voice tightened at the end of that statement, because it mattered, blast him. She wanted to succeed at the job. And yes, fine, maybe she also needed to feel useful and know she was giving back, not just receiving. It was called a community consciousness, and lots of people had it.

Certainly it was nothing to do with him personally, or with the fact that he attracted her just a little.

She turned her focus back to what mattered, and cut him a glare to make it clear she meant business right now. ‘The alternative is that I do nothing at all for you. That’s not acceptable to me.’

‘I’m not embarrassed by my injuries.’ Even as he said it, a faint tinge of colour came into his cheeks.

Soph raised her gaze farther and got caught in deep-green eyes that seemed to hold surprise, a hint of unease, and something else.

‘I’ll play back the phone messages while you make the coffee. If anything’s gone amok, I’ll just have to fix it.’ Most of his anger was gone now.

She was glad that he was prepared to let the matter go.

The deep mellow tone of his voice raised goose flesh on her skin despite the distance between them, despite her lofty resolutions. That wasn’t so great.

As though he, too, felt it, he shook his head. ‘Take a few minutes to pre-plan what we’ll eat for dinner tonight.’ Oh, prosaic words, but his gaze held a different story. ‘Perhaps a casserole, so it can cook while we work.’ He made his suggestion without meeting her gaze. ‘There’s a pre-set function on the oven.’

Broad shoulders and slender hips receded from her view while Soph stood there, silent. She told herself to wake up, stop watching, to resist the lure of an interest that couldn’t be allowed to grow.

Already she liked him, was intrigued by him, felt more towards him than she should. That had to stop.

Grey buried himself in work for the rest of the afternoon. He seemed intent on maintaining distance. Those two things were good, Soph decided as she clacked away on the computer keyboard and assured herself that that earlier aberration of feeling was now firmly in the past.

While Grey scattered his emails about the universe, Soph worked her tail off on his tapes.

‘I need to check on the casserole now.’ She took a deep breath and suggested he sit on the veranda in the sunshine. ‘It won’t last much longer, and Vitamin D is good for you. Or is it Vitamin E? Whichever is right, just give it ten minutes. That’s all I’ll need, and I’ll bet it makes you feel good.’

He muttered under his breath as he hobbled out there, taking his dictation recorder with him, but he went. Soph managed the food issues in seven minutes and spent the other three with a lonely and disgruntled Alfie.

‘Taking a “smoko” break?’ Grey asked from the kitchen when she rushed back inside. She almost jumped out of her skin.

‘I’m certainly not. I don’t do that. That is, my sisters would have flayed me if I’d ever decided to try it, and once I grew up I didn’t want to anyway.’ She snapped her jaws shut before any more babble could escape.

‘I just took a breath of fresh air.’ Soph sidled inside. He couldn’t have seen Alfie’s cage, even if he had looked all the way through and out the laundry room door. She moved to step past him and return to the office. ‘You don’t smell cigarette smoke on me, do you?’

What a dumb question. Did she want him to grab her and sniff her hair, her clothing? Not to mention that would be far too close for comfort—witness the problems she’d had after lunch when she’d helped him do ankle stretches.

‘You smell like flowers,’ he pronounced and turned his back and started towards the office once more. ‘I don’t need to get close again to know that.’

Well, certainly not, and no doubt he didn’t want to get close, either. She was simply the hired help, and short-term help at that.

So not in his league, Sophia.

He wasn’t in hers, either.

Nope. Grey Barlow was not ordinary, not a safe bet.

Yet he had noticed the subtle scent she wore. Soph had only dabbed the tiniest bit behind each ear and on her wrists before she’d left home this morning.

So what? She had simply leaned too close to him on the sofa. He couldn’t help but smell her perfume, and probably didn’t even like it.

‘The casserole is doing nicely.’ She needed to get back to matters at hand. ‘It’s a curry, since you enjoy spicy food. I’ll serve rice pilaf with it.’ As though he would even care, but the silence yawned and Soph talked on. ‘You…you smell quite nice, yourself.’

That stopped her, even if it was a little late. With a sharp breath she bustled past him and subsided into her office chair. From then on she focused her attention on her work!

She did, however, draw the line at six o’clock. With a determined air she shut down her computer and tidied the remaining work on her desk. Then she faced her employer and waited until he gave up on whatever he was typing one-handed and lifted his head reluctantly to look at her.

‘It’s after six o’clock. You must have worked since at least seven this morning to churn out so many tapes before I got here. That’s an eleven hour day and far more than you should take on.

‘Would you like your bath before or after dinner, and would you like me to shut down your computer for you while you make your way to the living room and start your next set of physio exercises?’ She asked it all in one stream of words and then waited, arms crossed in front of her.

‘There’s still work for me to do before I finish for the day.’ He gestured towards the computer screen.

‘I think your company can probably survive without your input until tomorrow morning.’ Most of the employees would have gone home by now, wouldn’t they? ‘Unless you work your people in around-the-clock shifts, none of this is going anywhere at this hour, anyway.’

‘Be that as it may…’ he started.

‘I’ll just help you with this.’ Soph leaned across, saved his email into his drafts folder, clicked out of the program and shut his computer off.

He made a half startled, half disbelieving sound and pushed his chair back. It had the unfortunate result that his shoulder brushed against the inside of her outstretched arm and across her breast.

Soph froze. He froze. And then they both hurriedly shifted away from each other.

He got to his feet, swung to face her, wincing as he did so, and the movement put pressure on his ankle. He cradled his arm against his body.