Her Impossible Boss

Never, Tess thought, confused.

‘Right.’ He stood up, and she hastily followed suit. Her allotted time was over. ‘First of all, you will be reimbursed—whether you like it or not. And as for which activity takes my fancy…having done none of them for longer than I can remember…’

He grinned. A smile of genuine amusement. And for a few heart-stopping seconds he ceased to be Matt Strickland, the man who was employing her, the man who represented just the sort of staid workaholic that she privately abhorred, and was just a man. A suffocatingly sexy man who made her head spin.

‘Your choice. I’ll be home tomorrow by six.’

CHAPTER THREE

‘OKAY. So let me get this straight. You’ve now got yourself a clothes allowance, no limits, and you’re going on a date with my boss.’

‘It’s not a date,’ Tess said irritably, but she was only half concentrating on Claire who was lounging fully clothed in a tight green dress with high heels—also green. Claire was killing time before going out with the guy she had been seeing for the past eighteen months—an investment banker whom Tess had met several times and liked very much, despite the fact that the second he left the room she could never seem to quite remember what he looked like.

‘No? What is it, then? Cosy restaurant? Bottle of Chablis? Candlelight? No one’s ever had a clue as to what Matt Strickland does in his private life, and here you are, less than three weeks in, and you’re on a date.’

Small and black or small and red? Tess was thinking, looking at the selection of outfits she had bought earlier that day. Five seconds of tussling with her moral conscience and she had shamelessly capitulated once inside the fashionable department store to which she had been directed—because, he had told her, he would be taking her to dinner to get her feedback, and she would need something fairly dressy to wear. Were it not for him, she’d reasoned to herself, she wouldn’t have to spend money on clothes for restaurants she wouldn’t be going to. So if he wanted to foot the bill, then why not?

Besides, Samantha had been having fun. They had made a deal. Tess would pretend to yawn inside the toy shops and Samantha would tap the over-sized face of her newly acquired Disney watch in boredom inside the grown-up clothes shops, and then they would break for lunch at a place upon which they had both agreed, and which was based on a menu of pizzas and burgers. Good, fortifying food before they dutifully visited some place of culture in the name of education.