Bella's Impossible Boss

‘A new challenge.’

She recognised the evasion. She and Dominic might not have a lot in common, but they both liked to keep their cards close to their chests. And it had to be said, he did have a very nice chest. She shook that thought away. ‘Same here.’

His eyes mocked her. ‘Right.’

She waited for him to challenge her further, but he just shrugged. ‘Do you mean to leave that cat in its cage all day?’

She bit back a sigh and, mug in hand, made for the living room. Setting her mug on the coffee table, she knelt down beside the cage. ‘Hey there, Minky,’ she said in as conciliatory a voice as she could manage. ‘You are going to be a good kitty-cat, aren’t you?’

Soothing and calm, she instructed herself. She needed the cat to feel secure and unthreatened in its new environment. She hunkered down until she was almost eye level with the feline. ‘We’ll take it slow, okay? I’ll open the door and you can wander on out whenever you feel like it to check out your new home. And then I’ll get you some dinner, okay? How’s that sound?’

‘Like far more explanation than anything with four legs needs,’ Dominic drawled.

‘Ignore the nasty man,’ Bella told the cat in the same singsong, hopefully soothing voice.

Minky’s yellow-green eyes glared at her. The tail swished. Good Lord, who was she trying to kid? The cat hated her.

She glanced up at Dominic. ‘I’m not exactly sure how she’ll react. She’s, um, not happy.’

‘It’s a cat,’ he dismissed. ‘It weighs, what? Two kilos at the most? It can’t exactly do that much damage.’

She pointed at him. ‘Famous last words.’ He grinned and it lifted something inside her. With heart thumping, she opened the cage door.

Minky exploded from it like a demented jack-in-the-box on steroids to claw straight up Dominic’s denim-clad legs. He’d moved to stand in front of the cage, Bella presumed so he could get a better view of the show, but he didn’t deserve that.

‘Minky!’ She leapt up.

Yowling, the cat let go and then proceeded to bounce off the sofa, the coffee table and two dining room chairs before settling under the television cabinet, eyes glaring and tail twitching in compulsive malevolence.

Bella armed herself with a cushion before spinning back to Dominic. ‘Did she hurt you?’ Her eyes dropped to his thighs. Five tiny pinpricks of blood stained the denim of his jeans—three on the left thigh and two on the right. Her mouth dropped open. ‘Oh, I am sorry!’

It took all of Dominic’s willpower not to harden under Bella’s dark-eyed gaze. Damn schizoid cat! ‘It’s nothing,’ he dismissed.

Bella glanced at him, at the cat, at the sofa and finally at the rug. Clutching the cushion to her chest, she carefully lowered herself to the floor, one eye firmly on the demon cat from hell. Not that he blamed her. Still, it was obvious she’d rather take her chances on the floor with the cat than on the sofa with him.

A scowl built through him. Her insinuation that he’d slept with whoever had organised this apartment, her obvious suspicion that he attempted to seduce every woman that crossed his path, still stung. The glance she sent him, however, made him feel like the wolf of Red Riding Hood fame. He lowered his frame to the sofa, stretched out his legs and fought a frown. Did she think he meant to jump her the moment she let her guard down? He had more finesse, more style, than that.

Besides, he had no intention of trying to seduce her—regardless of how tantalising the idea might seem. This lady was one complication he didn’t need.

She surveyed him over the rim of her coffee cup. ‘We should set some house rules.’

He shifted back, alternately straightening and slouching, but the sofa refused to give way to the shape of his body. ‘We should?’

‘Sure we should.’

He stuffed a cushion behind his back. ‘Like?’

‘Like, do you have any pet hates other than cats?’

He stopped his shuffling. ‘You’re not going to ask me to do anything for that blasted cat are you?’ He pulled the cushion back out and tossed it to the floor.

‘No.’

Her eyes darted to his thighs again. He bit back a groan and wished he’d kept hold of that sandbag of a cushion. He wanted to make Bella pay for all the heartache she’d caused Marco, but not in that way. Then he recalled the look on her face when she’d whirled around to him and pointed out that he’d been a recipient of Marco’s generosity, too. The lift of her chin when she had claimed the hotel’s success was important to her.

He didn’t know what to make of it.

‘What about you? Any pet hates?’

Her eyes lifted from his thighs and he found he could breathe again, after a fashion. ‘I hate cheerful chat in the mornings. In fact, I’d really rather you didn’t speak to me at all before I’ve had at least one cup of coffee, preferably two.’

‘What constitutes cheerful?’

‘Anything more than a grunt.’

All his tightness dissolved. A laugh built inside him.

‘Seriously, Dominic, I’m not joking.’

The laugh burst free and something shifted inside him, deeper than his desire but not as intense.

A warning bell suddenly went off in his head. Bella had the same soft, melt-a-man-where-he-stood eyes that his father had always fallen for—eyes that turned grown men into pathetic, grovelling saps.

Nobody was turning him into a sap!

‘Mornings aren’t my strong suit.’

He’d bet she’d look deliciously rumpled in the mornings.

‘So what do you hate in a flatmate?’ she persisted.

He snapped to. ‘I don’t know. I’ve never had one.’

Her jaw dropped. She leant forward. ‘What? Never? What about when you were at university?’

‘I lived off campus.’

He’d lived in a caravan park with his father because by then someone had had to look after him, and everyone else had deserted him—including all those doe-eyed women who’d manipulated him time after time until Dominic hadn’t been able to watch any more.

He’d sworn never to let a woman reduce him to that kind of dependence, that kind of pathetic wretchedness and despair. He’d looked after his father throughout his alcoholism and associated dementia. After that he’d decided roommates were a bad idea.

Bella frowned as if she’d read that thought in his face. ‘But you must’ve been on other business trips like this?’

‘Never for this long. If a team of us shot off somewhere, it was only ever for a few days. We’d stay in hotels and have our own rooms.’

She stared at him for a long moment and then shook herself. ‘So how do you want to do things?’

‘What things?’