The Boss's Unconventional Assistant

CHAPTER THREE

‘OH, GOOD, you’re ready for me. It seems I’ve timed it exactly right.’ Soph pushed the door to her employer’s bedroom wider and stepped through the aperture. They’d eaten their dinner. Afterwards Soph had suggested they watch some television together and had received a blank look followed by a resistant one before Grey had said he had business phone calls to make, excused himself and disappeared into the office.

At least he’d seemed to somewhat enjoy chatting with her over the meal. Not that Soph had needed him to enjoy her company. Nor had she been overly conscious of her boss in the short time they’d spent together. She had worked on her silly, earlier inappropriate awareness of Grey and had that all under control now.

‘Let me put this tray down and I’ll help you get settled in the bed.’

The tray held a ceramic incense burner complete with stand, candle holder and tiny teapot on top, matches and a drinking mug full of steaming liquid. In a trice she placed the tray on to the dresser and turned to face her boss.

Nurse Sophia to the rescue.

Her employer hovered, features frozen, near his bed. He wore green silk pyjama trousers and, well, nothing else actually, which meant Soph had a rather amazing view of his broad shoulders, his chest, the smattering of hair that tapered towards his navel…

‘Ah, it’s warm in here, isn’t it?’ Soph snapped her gaze upward, away from silk, away from his chest, though meeting his gaze wasn’t particularly better. Did he have to look so sensual to go along with his air of fierce affront?

‘I can’t say I’d noticed any particular warmth,’ he snarled, but he also examined her from her hair—piled in a loose, messy knot on top of her head—to her face, her mouth and finally over her body and back up again. His muscles tensed.

Soph wanted to touch him.

No. Soph did not want to touch him.

‘Um, well, you probably put out a lot of body heat.’ She waved vaguely towards him. ‘Hence no need for a shirt to wear to bed.’

A shirt she truly had expected to see on him when she barged in to settle him down for the night. Nurse Sophia, indeed. If she got much hotter from looking at him, she would become a medical emergency.

Temperature far too hot, Doctor. What should we do?

‘Why are you here?’ Grey’s eyes flared for just a moment before he snapped his gaze away from her. When he turned back, the irritation had returned in full force. His eyebrows drew down and a muscle twitched at the base of his jaw. ‘I told you when I stepped out of the office that I planned to retire for the night.’

‘Yes, so I came to help.’ She’d been finished with the telly anyway. Soph tried not to look back at his chest, but it was so…there. And he had looked at her with interest before he’d locked the reaction down.

In the same way Soph needed to reject it. That was the thing. She couldn’t afford to desire her boss, and he clearly didn’t want to desire her.

‘I’m here to work,’ she blurted. ‘I mean, I’m here to work in your room, to put you to bed. I took a shower, gave you time to do whatever it is you might have needed to do, and then came to help you get settled. That’s why I’m in my nightwear. It seemed silly to dress again.’

It didn’t seem silly now, but it was too late. She reached for the incense burner and matches, clutching them tightly because he just might see her hands shaking if she didn’t.

He sent an incredulous stare her way. ‘You came to help me get settled, in my room, without even knocking first.’ He waved his hand towards her. ‘Wearing…a hibiscus caftan and bare feet and who knows what underneath? Did it occur to you I might be buck naked in here?’

Grey Barlow.

Naked.

In this bedroom with the great big bed.

I am not seeing those things in my head…

Anyway, the caftan covered a perfectly respectable tank top and pyjama bottoms. Lots of layers really, even if Soph felt as though he’d just swept his hands along the length of her bare skin.

‘The door was partly open. I don’t think you’d have left it that way if you were…if you weren’t… um…adequately attired.’

This said, she stepped forward and whipped the bedcovers out of the way with her free hand. ‘In you get. You’ll be so pleased with what I’ve brought for you.’

There. They could get back to business now.

Except he didn’t move.

Soph plumped his pillows and patted the mattress. ‘I’ll take the ankle brace off once you’re settled.’ Perhaps he would feel more comfortable if she busied herself while he got in? She turned aside, set the burner down on his bedside table, lit the candle and positioned the unit just so.

Her employer clamped a wad of the covers into his fist and climbed into the bed, where he promptly propped himself against the headboard. ‘You can remove the brace and then remove yourself. I don’t need a nanny.’

He yanked the covers across as much of him as he could while still leaving his ankle exposed. ‘What is that thing, anyway? A miniature fondue set or something?’

‘It’s an incense burner. I’ve put some lovely forest-scented oil in the water. You’ll find it relaxing.’ As she spoke, she perched on the bed beside him, batted his hands away from where he was tugging at the laces on his brace and finished the job for him in a far gentler manner. ‘And I’m not “nannying” you, I’m doing my job.’

Only her job and nothing more, even if she had slipped just a little when she’d first stepped into the room.

‘The incense will help you sleep, and so will this.’ Soph went to the tray again and returned with the steaming cup in her hands. She sat and held it out to him.

His fingers wrapped around the cup, brushing hers.

‘It’s chamomile tea.’ Hopefully, he would doze off and stay asleep until morning. Hopefully, he wouldn’t realise that just a touch from him put a flame to all her nerve endings and hung doubt above her determination to ignore her interest in him. ‘If you’re in pain, though, you must tell me. Do you have some painkillers? I can bring you water…’

‘The ankle is uncomfortable.’ His lashes swept down to conceal his eyes. After a cautious sniff, he took a sip of the tea and then he shrugged his shoulders, a ripple of bone and sinew and flesh that she tried not to see, not to think about. ‘That’s all.’

‘I’m glad it’s tolerable. And…ah…I’ve just realised I’ve forgotten one part of my—’ care package ‘—um…of what I meant to bring in. Drink the tea and wait right here.’ She hurried down the hallway and returned a moment later with a heart-shaped cushion. ‘My sister Chrissy swore by one of these during her pregnancy. I think it will be perfect for your ankle at night.’

‘I really don’t want a bright fluffy cushion.’ He cast a look of distaste towards the offending article.

Soph almost relaxed in the face of that look. It was the usual grumpy Grey. Except that his gaze, when he returned it to meet hers, was not truly grumpy, but deep and green and reluctantly but insistently interested. In her. Not in a cushion.

‘You should leave—’

‘Ah, well, I’ll just—’

They both stopped.

Soph lifted the covers to slip the cushion under his foot. Her hands barely trembled at all and she managed a fair simulation of calm cheerfulness when she pointed out, ‘The cushion isn’t fluffy, anyway. Although I concede it is quite a bright yellow. I bought it to match my car, you see.’

‘Yes, I think I do see. You are, though, fluffy and bright.’ He placed the half empty teacup on his bedside table next to the incense burner. The scent of forest wafted around them. ‘Fluffy jumpers, bright hair, a megawatt smile that makes a man want—’

He didn’t end the thought. Instead, his gaze narrowed. He gestured beyond her, to the laptop computer propped against the wall. ‘You should go to bed, get some rest. You’re so young. The long day has probably exhausted you. If you wouldn’t mind, now I’m settled here…’

‘I don’t mind at all.’ Soph knew what he wanted—his laptop so that he could continue to work into the night.

He also wanted her out of the room because he didn’t desire her—not really, not rationally. She wanted all this distraction over with as much as he did. She did! And he’d just told her she was a baby. Her eyes narrowed.

She stifled the urge to repudiate his statement, though, because he didn’t look at her as though he found her immature.

Not a particularly helpful observation, Soph!

She rose from the bed and reached for the laptop. ‘The candle will burn out after about an hour, so you don’t need to worry about it starting a fire in the house or anything. I’ll be busy downstairs for a while but if you have any urgent needs just yell and I’ll come to you straight away.’

She took the empty tray in one hand and his laptop computer in the other and moved to the door quickly enough that he didn’t have time to realise her intention until it was too late.

With one finger she flipped off his light and then stepped through the door. ‘I’ll leave the laptop downstairs for you so it’ll be there first thing in the morning. No trouble at all—I’m glad you thought of it and asked me. Peaceful dreams to you.’

Soph closed the door and high-tailed it downstairs, telling herself to be relieved to be away from a temptation named Grey Barlow.

Once he got over her taking his laptop away Soph would return to her room. She would sneak a certain rabbit in with her, but Grey had finished work for the night, whether he liked the fact or not. If he followed her downstairs to try to get his laptop back, she would tell him so.

Was Soph finished being attracted to him?

She should be, but she couldn’t say she was. She would have to work on that, get her defences raised properly, and how hard could it be, even though it had proved difficult just now? She’d never had this problem before!

* * *

Grey had fallen asleep as he’d waited for Sophia to return up the staircase so he could demand his laptop computer back. Sassy piece of work—and he wasn’t referring to the laptop. He’d wanted Sophia to stay, sit on the edge of his bed and talk to him.

That wasn’t all he had wanted, though. They had both known that and so he had called her a child, even though she wasn’t and his body had been insisting he take her in his arms and treat her in a very womanly way indeed.

He had told her to leave and for her own reasons she had also decided to go. It had been best.

Grey didn’t want to know those reasons so he could demolish them. She seemed to sense that he wasn’t the right kind of match for her anyway. Clever girl.

No, clever woman, because even if young and sweet and perhaps a little naïve in her determination to care for him, no matter what he wanted, she was all woman.

He muttered a growl. He had slept, too. All the way through, for the first time since he’d lost his footing at the rain-washed construction site and tumbled and tumbled to fall in an ignominious heap and be carted off in a blasted ambulance despite his protestations.

Perhaps her incense and yellow cushion hadn’t been so silly. But there were limits. He must control Sophia Gable so she gave him the assistance he had in mind, not her brand of it. And he would oust the stubborn attraction to her that didn’t want to die.

He would oust this temporary stress level nonsense, too. He swilled down the blood pressure pills with a grimace and swore he’d be off them again in no time. They were an overreaction on the doctor’s part anyway.

The doctor would test his levels again at his checkup, see the readings had been anomalous, probably due to the accident itself, and declare Grey fit again.

With a decisive nod, he moved out of his en suite bathroom and headed downstairs, ankle brace in hand. He’d heard Sophia open the back door of the house earlier, so he knew she was up.

Despite himself, a sense of anticipation rose as he approached the kitchen. What interesting food might she have concocted for their breakfast? What might she be wearing today? Last night’s curry had been death-defying, quite exhilarating, actually, and very, very tasty once he’d got over the initial burn and the unusualness of it and had suppressed the urge to cough until he was red in the face and gasping.

‘You’re getting bored, old man. Some might even say pathetic.’ He muttered the words in disgust. Infatuated with what his assistant cooked and wore? Her food would probably give him ulcers or, at the least, permanent tastebud damage, and her clothing was so bright he needed sunglasses to look at her.

Maybe he was simply infatuated, full stop.

Grey cast that thought aside. He didn’t do infatuation. He made choices in favour of carefully thought out short-term liaisons with no emotions involved.

Yes. On that thought he stomp-hobbled into the kitchen. He would grump his interest in her to a quick death. She might dislike him for it, but that was a small price to pay to make them both forget any attraction they might have felt. He blithely ignored the fact that he had been grumpy since Sophia had arrived and it hadn’t seemed to put her off all that much.

‘You confiscated my laptop last night.’

‘Good morning. You’re up. Did you sleep well?’ She swung around, searching his face while colour crept into her cheeks. It revealed both her guilt and her consciousness of him, and it rattled Grey’s composure far more than he would have thought possible.

They weren’t doing that any more. He’d decided. He had attacked her verbally to ensure there were no reminders. He growled some more. ‘Don’t ignore what I said.’

‘I’m not.’ Her face shone with good humour and a hint of mischief, just as though she didn’t care less about his grouchiness. In fact as though she enjoyed it, which wasn’t exactly what he’d set out to achieve. She couldn’t like him being grumpy?

How did this one bright, fluffy woman manage to undermine him at every turn anyway? Grey’s irritability rose further.

Sophia fiddled with a button on her blouse—the one right at the centre of her breasts. ‘I just put your laptop into the office for you—’

‘Don’t bother with the innocent act.’ And she was driving him insane with that button.

To shore up his defences he said harshly and with abandoned licence, ‘Your face is an open book. I can see everything you’re thinking at any given moment.’

Her eyes widened and her gaze darted about the room in a trapped and guilty fashion. ‘Can you really? My sisters bemoan the fact that I sometimes blurt exactly what’s on my mind, but they haven’t said anything about expressions on my face.’ She glanced once towards the laundry room door, as though she’d like to run through it and keep running. ‘Well, I’m sorry if you were annoyed that I took your laptop away.’ She seemed to deliberately pull herself back to matters at hand. ‘I realise you’re frustrated at present but surely you could tell you needed rest by then? You’ve got injuries, medical conditions that will suffer if you push yourself too hard.’

Yes, he had pushed himself hard yesterday, had paid for it in the pain in his ankle and other general feelings of weariness, but how could he avoid that with a company to run? Now Grey wanted to defend his choices again, instead of focusing on her behaviour. How did she do that to him?

‘If I’d really pushed over the line last night you’d have yelled for your laptop back before I got halfway down the stairs.’ Her confidence said more about her understanding of his limits of tolerance than he had given her credit for.

He also noted the absence of any assurance that she wouldn’t apply similar tactics in the future. Annoying woman. Insightful, too.

His gaze roved over the still crimson-streaked hair, lingering on the ponytail tied with a matching crimson ribbon. A jet-black figure-hugging blouse, cream trousers and yesterday’s crimson boots covered her from head to foot… Was that cat fur on her blouse, just a few little strands of white?

‘Domestic to the core,’ he muttered in a tone that somehow changed from his intended gruffness to almost admiration. With a snort, Grey hobbled forward to sink into a chair at the table. She probably had a dozen cats in her apartment in Melbourne, making her home look cosy and welcoming. Rather, shedding hair all over the place. A non-domestic-seeking man’s nightmare!

Maybe he needed food, fuel for his brain so he could think more clearly.

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t quite hear what you said.’ She took a saucepan off the stove and spooned its contents into two bowls. On the bench, the coffee percolator belched out a scent that wasn’t quite ordinary.

‘It was nothing.’ Grey poured water into his glass and didn’t feel any anticipation about the food whatsoever. He ate to keep up his strength and she was all he had in the way of someone to conveniently provide meals while he focused on other things. She could dish up the blandest most ordinary foods and he would feel no differently.

He’d been off on a flight of some kind of weird, incapacity-induced fancy when he’d thought he anticipated her next meal. Now he had his thoughts under control. He’d reprimanded Sophia, achieved what he’d set out to do.

He’d killed the attraction stone-dead as effectively, hadn’t he, a sarcastic voice in his head put in.

Grey suppressed a second snort and grumbled, ‘What’s for breakfast? I’m hungry. It’s making my head explode. And I brought the brace for you to put on. You seem to feel I shouldn’t do it myself.’

‘No, and I’m sure you want to do everything possible to get better.’ She knelt at his feet and laced him up. Her movements were brisk and impersonal while those big sherry-coloured eyes fixed with way too much focus on first his foot and then his chin, his neck, even his ear.

Anything to avoid looking into his eyes, it seemed.

‘Just one more tug to make sure it’s snug enough.’ She suited actions to words.

In a moment she would get up, move away from him. Then he wouldn’t be able to smell her soft scent, touch the head bent to conceal her expression…

Grey’s hand disengaged itself from his brain function. There could be no other explanation for the fact that he reached out to touch the silken hair on that down-bent head. A feather-light touch she wouldn’t feel, wouldn’t know about.

Yet he felt that touch and reacted to it in a way he couldn’t explain. She had beautiful soft hair and a heart as big as Australia that drove her to send him demented with whatever manage-her-employer plan she had tucked away in that smart and sassy head of hers.

Inexplicably, a knot of something that felt like tenderness filled his chest. Grey yanked his hand back and leaned away from her.

‘How does that feel?’ She raised her gaze as she asked the question.

‘The brace is as comfortable as it will get.’ And her eyes were pools of liquid brown, her mouth soft and temptingly kissable.

She smiled that sunny smile even as she backed away from him and busied herself at the kitchen bench.

‘Uh, here’s breakfast.’ Sophia carried the bowls to the table and avoided looking into his eyes. She placed his bowl in front of him, pushed another of sliced bananas in some sort of brown, sticky sauce his way and returned to the bench to pour mugs of whatever she had brewed in the coffee percolator.

‘The cereal is five grain porridge, slow cooked for forty minutes on the stove—triticale, oats, barley, wheat and rye.’ She ticked the ingredients off on her fingers. ‘I’ve percolated my own blend of morning coffee. It’s decaf, but the cardamom flavour is so good you won’t notice the absence of a caffeine kick.’

‘I usually have toast or one of those snack breakfast bars you can buy off the shelf pre-wrapped and ready to go.’ He always had coffee with breakfast—real coffee—and, yes, his doctor had said he should give it up completely, but surely fewer cups a day would do? ‘I’m not really into coffee substitutes in the morning.’

But she’d already poured two big mugs of the brew. She put his on the table and paused to take the first sip of hers. The look that crossed her face as she absorbed the taste made his muscles clench.

Grey looked away. He had enough to cope with simply trying to control her and not desire her.

‘I’ll have the drink later, at my desk.’ It wasn’t capitulation. He would insist on some real coffee later this morning.