Crazy About Her Impossible Boss

“A resort. Near Daylesford. Called Hanover House. It’s gorgeous. Well, Cat says it’s gorgeous. She did an article on it for a travel blog last year. Super-romantic.”

His Adam’s apple bobbed lightly before he said, “Sounds nice.”

Nice. This from a man who put words together that took businesses from the verge of ruin to stratospheric.

From the outside, Lucinda was certain their conversation seemed reasonable. Polite, even. But she felt as if she was watching it unfold from another dimension. The air crackled between them, voices rippling, words they were steadfastly refusing to utter buffeting against them in steadily increasing waves.

“How about the man himself? Don’t you want to ask who he is? What he does for a living? School grades? Parking tickets? How he votes? You’re usually all over that kind of thing. Figuring people out. Putting them into neat boxes so you know how to deal with them.”

A muscle twitched beneath his right eye.

What are you doing? a voice cried in the furthest recesses of her mind. What do you want from him? Are you looking for a reaction? Are you baiting him to tell you, “no, you can’t go”?

Angus lifted a hand and ran it over his chin, then around behind his neck. “Lucinda,” he said, “If you’re thinking ahead to letting Sonny meet him, then he is no doubt the kind of man both Sonny and I should hero worship. Now, are we done?”

He glanced pointedly at the coffee cups on the tray. His eyebrows rose, as if to remind her what she should be doing with her time rather than nattering with him about her private life.

Wow. Harsh.

They clashed all the time. Telling it like it was was their dynamic. And it worked. In fact, they fed off it. She knew if she walked away things could settle. They always did after such electric, static-fuelled dust-ups.

But, rather than feeling invigorated, she felt twitchy, discomfited and strangely hollow.

She turned and walked towards the door, her feet numb, her face burning.

But when she reached the door she stopped, turned and gave Angus one last look. “One more thing,” she said.

Angus breathed out hard. As if he was clinging to control by a fingernail. His voice was deep and tight as he said, “I think we’ve covered everything. You’re going away. HR has signed off on it. It’s done.”

“Not about the weekend,” she managed, even while storm clouds gathered about her head, lightning flashing with the darkness. “It’s about today. When I asked if I might be given the chance to try to convince Louis to talk to Charlie about Remède’s finances…”

She closed her eyes, shook her head and started afresh. “I get that you have the final word, that as your assistant it’s my job to grease the wheels, keep you fed and watered so that you’re able to perform at your best. But Angus?”

She waited, squeezing a breath into her tight lungs, as it took for ever for him to respond.

“Yes, Lucinda?”

“I’m not your girl.”

With that she took his dirty plates and left.

CHAPTER THREE (#u956244a0-1b45-5a83-acdb-6614758dfe05)

I’M NOT YOUR GIRL.

Lucinda’s words from earlier that day bounced off the inside of Angus’s skull like echoes inside a bell tower.

He hadn’t meant anything by it. She knew it, too. It wasn’t like her to be so pedantic.

A voice that had emerged from the swampier parts of Angus’s subconscious since he’d sat down at the bar around the corner from work said, It’s also not like her to go on a dirty weekend with some guy you’ve never heard of.

A hand slapped down hard on Angus’s shoulder, followed by Fitz’s voice. “You look like hell.”

Angus grabbed his cousin’s fingers and pried them off his shoulder. “Appreciate it.”

“I, on the other hand, am not sure how anyone survives a single day without getting a load of my handsome mug.”

As he dragged out the stool next to Angus, Fitz caught the eye of the bartender, tapping Angus’s drink and asking for one of the same. “So, what’s the haps?”

“Does a man need a reason to have a drink with his favourite cousin?”

Fitz snorted. “Only cousin. And, yes, I don’t think you’ve wasted a single minute in your entire adult life. Then there’s the dark cloud hovering ominously over your head, and the fact your leg looks ready to take off…”

Angus looked down. His left leg was shaking so hard it all but crackled with excess energy. He stopped, only to find he couldn’t, so gave up and let it jiggle for all it was worth.

“Did someone have a better idea than you at work?” Fitz asked.

Angus shot him a look.

“You’re right. What was I thinking? So what? Designers no longer making suits? The cobblers of Spain all out of shoes? Lucinda mad at you?”

Before he could stop it, Angus felt a tightening around his left eye.

Fitz let go a long, high whistle between his teeth. “So, it’s the lovely Lucinda who has you hunched melancholically over your scotch. Interesting. What did you do?”

“I didn’t do anything.”

Fitz snorted. “So what didn’t you do? I know you didn’t miss her birthday, what with the charming gift-a-palooza thing you have going between you. So what?” Fitz slammed a hand against his chest. “Was there another…event? Dare I say, Christmas party?”

A muscle flickered in Angus’s jaw, while every other muscle in his body clenched. Hard. His glass paused before it hit his lips. When the liquid finally spilled down his throat, he relished the burn. “Nothing happened at that damn Christmas party, as I’ve told you a thousand times.”

Yet, every time that night came up, something slippery and uncontrolled uncoiled within him.

“I could say the suspense is killing me, but the truth is I’m actually beginning to bore of—”

“Lucinda’s gone and got herself a new man and they are going away together this weekend.”

Fitz stilled, then burst into laughter. “That’s it? That’s why you look like your doctor just gave you bad news? Because Lucinda has a boyfriend?”

Angus shook his head. He had no better answer.

“Come on, mate. She’s bright, bold and knows more dirty jokes than any man I know. It’s more of a mystery why she hasn’t been snapped up already.”

Angus gripped more tightly to his glass.

He’d thought about this—about why he was reacting the way he was. It wasn’t the fact that she was seeing someone. Or even that she hadn’t told him about it till now. He felt as if his tendons had frozen solid because she had never come close to introducing any man in her life to her son.

Well, his subconscious perked up and responded, apart from you.