The Taming of Xander Sterne

Sam had brought all the ingredients with her for the meals she would be serving over the weekend, knowing that she wouldn’t have the time, with Darius and Andy’s wedding tomorrow, to go shopping for food until Monday.

She had decided to prepare something simple for Xander’s evening meal today: the asparagus, followed by steak and a fluffy stuffed potato and buttered carrots, and for dessert she had made a pineapple upside-down cake with ice cream; easy to make, but it looked and tasted good. And there was no denying that the kitchen was a dream to work in.

Sam had always liked preparing and cooking food, and it was something she knew she was good at too. Which was why she had been deeply disappointed when Malcolm had refused to allow her to cook for him, insisting that it was what he employed his chef for. The most Sam had been allowed to do in that area was to approve the menus for the week.

Unfortunately, since the separation and divorce Sam’s meagre budget had been a huge deciding factor in the meals she had been able to prepare for Daisy and herself.

Happily, there would be no such limitations in Xander’s household. Sam very much doubted he had ever eaten a bowl of home-made stew in the whole of his privileged life!

‘What did you have in mind?’ He leant back in his chair to look up at her with those dark unfathomable eyes, his only concession to changing for dinner being to replace the black T-shirt of earlier with a white one. But then, he was in his own home, and so perfectly at liberty to wear whatever he chose, whenever he chose. Or not...

It had been a couple of hours since he had dismissed Sam and Daisy from the kitchen, and Sam had made good use of that time, by unpacking their few belongings and putting them away in the empty drawers in their bedrooms. She had also put the food she had brought with her away in the fridge and kitchen cabinets, before preparing dinner.

Sam’s cheeks warmed now as she heard the unmistakeable challenge in his tone. A challenge she chose to ignore. She had been married to a man whose wealth, and the power that wealth gave him, had rendered him both arrogant and selfish, to the point that Malcolm had ridden roughshod over everybody. Including Sam and her romantic dreams of their happy future together.

She had no intentions of so much as acknowledging that Xander Sterne had that bad-boy look off to perfection, in the fitted white T-shirt that stretched tautly over his wide shoulders and chest, and revealing his tanned and muscled arms. Or that she was guilty of having noticed the tautness of his bottom earlier, in those hip-and-thigh-hugging black jeans.

Enough so that it now made Sam’s heart beat faster just to look at all that blatant maleness, her palms feeling slightly damp, a tingling warmth in her breasts and between her thighs.

None of which she wanted to feel for the arrogant man. ‘You made a comment earlier,’ she said coolly. ‘Something about rule number one being null and void?’

‘So I did.’

‘What did you mean by it?’

‘Where’s Daisy?’ He asked a question of his own rather than answer hers. ‘It seems very quiet in the apartment this evening.’ He raised questioning blond brows.

Sam’s hackles were already up in regard to her daughter, but she stiffened defensively now; no matter what this man might think to the contrary, Daisy was not a noisy or a rowdy child. The opposite, in fact. Daisy was introspective rather than outgoing; no doubt a legacy of those early years of her childhood spent with a father who ignored her very existence, and had his own set of rules for ensuring he did so.

A guilt Sam still lived with on a daily basis.

For having ever held out even the fragile hope her marriage would one day return to their first year together, when she and Malcolm had seemed so happy together. For hoping, praying, that Malcolm would one day come to love his beautiful daughter.

She had wasted almost three years hoping and praying for those things, not just of her own life but of Daisy’s too, and on a man Sam had belatedly realised she wasn’t sure she had ever really known, let alone loved. A rich and arrogant man who had seen his much younger wife only as an asset, to be paraded on his arm, and to fill his bed at night. A man who was too selfish, too self-absorbed, to love the beautiful daughter they had made together.

Xander Sterne was even richer and more powerful than Malcolm could ever hope to be, and Sam didn’t even want to acknowledge that he was also far more disturbingly attractive too. That he possessed a sensual magnetism she responded to, however unwillingly.

Her days of allowing herself to be attracted to rich and powerful men were long gone!

Having been forced to live by a set of rules once, Sam wasn’t sure she could now adhere to another set, laid down by Xander Sterne for the time she and Daisy would be staying with him in his apartment.

‘Samantha?’

She blinked before focusing on the man now studying her with piercing eyes beneath long lashes.

‘Sam,’ she invited automatically.

‘I prefer Samantha,’ he dismissed arrogantly—as if that settled the matter.

Which in Xander Sterne’s self-assured eyes, it probably did. And really, what did it matter whether this man called her Sam or Samantha, when in two weeks’ time they would never set eyes on each other again?

‘Whatever you’re comfortable with,’ she allowed disinterestedly. ‘And to answer your question, Daisy has already been fed, bathed, and is now fast asleep in bed.’

Xander had no idea where Samantha’s thoughts had been for the past few moments, but he was pretty sure they couldn’t have been pleasant ones. Her eyes had taken on a haunted look, the hollows of her cheeks paler than ever against the fullness of her rose-coloured lips. ‘It’s only eight o’clock.’

Samantha nodded. ‘Daisy always goes to bed at seven o’clock on schooldays.’

Something else Xander didn’t know about children.

‘Fine.’ He shrugged. ‘Then perhaps you and I can talk about those rules after dinner?’

Her back stiffened. ‘Of course, Mr Sterne.’

‘Xander.’

‘I would prefer that we keep things formal between the two of us.’

‘Does that mean you would really prefer that I call you Mrs Smith?’

‘No, because I’m not Mrs Smith,’ she answered with a humourless twist of her lips.

Xander studied her through narrowed lids. ‘I seem to remember my brother telling me you’re divorced?’

‘I am.’ She nodded tersely. ‘I reverted to my maiden name after the divorce.’

He frowned. ‘Is Daisy’s surname Smith too?’

‘Yes.’ Her mouth tightened defensively.

‘I don’t understand.’

Not many people would understand a situation like hers. One where a father insisted upon, rather than objected to, his child’s surname being changed to her mother’s maiden name after the divorce. Malcolm hadn’t even wanted Daisy to possess his surname.

‘Your food is getting cold, Mr Sterne.’ She pointed out the obvious as she once again avoided meeting his gaze. ‘And I have several things that need my attention in the kitchen,’ she added before he could object. ‘But I’ll be more than happy to have that chat after I’ve served your coffee.’

Xander frowned as he began to eat his cooling asparagus, his attention really on watching her as she left the dining room. He was totally aware of the defensive stiffness of her very straight spine and shoulders, and the vulnerable length of her neck as she tilted her head back just as defensively.

Obviously he had said something to upset her—something else to upset her!

But wasn’t it a little unusual to also change a child’s surname after a divorce?

Not that he was acquainted with divorce on a personal level. His own parents had been unhappily married and probably should have divorced each other, but they hadn’t, so that when Lomax Sterne died, Catherine and her two sons had continued to keep the surname Sterne. His mother had only changed her name to Latimer when she married Charles, Xander’s stepfather.

Xander knew he would object strongly to any woman wanting to change his child’s surname to her own, divorce or no divorce.

Xander gave a shake of his head; he was taking far too much of an interest in the life of his temporary employee.

* * *