Millionaire Boss

He tossed her bag into the back, then opened the passenger door and shot her a wink as he held it open. “No true cowboy would be caught dead driving anything else.”

When she continued to hesitate, nervously eyeing the gaping distance between the ground and the running board created by the six-inch lift he’d added to the truck’s original design, he realized the cause of her concern. Short of hiking her skirt up around her waist, there was no way she was going to negotiate the climb.

Though he thought that scenario might be worth observing, he resolved her problem by wrapping an arm around her waist and swinging her up. She squealed as he swept her from the ground, then clung to him as he planted her conservative little pumps on the floorboard and her fanny on the passenger seat.

Dusting off his hands, he took a step back. “Comfortable?” he asked, trying hard not to smile.

She stared at him, her green eyes wide and unblinking, her face pale but for two bright spots of color high on her cheeks. A wisp of carrot-red hair had escaped her bun and now brushed her temple. A sense of déjà vu swept over him. Had he seen those eyes before, that face? Had he enacted this scene before?

A frown puckered his brow as he narrowed an eye at her. “Have we—”

She tore her gaze from his and turned to face the front. “Quite comfortable,” she replied, cutting him off. “Thank you.”

Erik frowned a moment longer, then lifted his shoulder and headed for the driver’s side of his truck.

Penny stole a peek at Erik, who sat slumped in the seat next to hers, his head tipped back, his eyes closed, his lips slightly parted in sleep. Though the private jet’s cabin was dimly lit, the overhead reading lamp and the glow from his laptop computer screen provided enough light to illuminate features she’d always considered too perfect to be human.

Taking advantage of this rare opportunity to study him unawares, she leaned for a closer look. He hasn’t changed all that much, she noted. The squint lines fanning from the corners of his eyes were a little deeper than she remembered and his cheeks were a little more lean, but basically he looked the same as the memory she’d kept locked away in her heart for the past ten years.

She caught her lower lip between her teeth, wondering what he would say if she were to tell him that she’d fantasized about him throughout the years, weaving dreams about him that made her blush even now to think about them.

He’d probably laugh, she thought, swallowing back the disappointment. He’d never given her a moment’s notice in college, treating her much as he did now, as if she were nothing but a robot programmed to do his work. Then her purpose had been to earn him an A in English. Now it was to take care of all the little details in his business and personal life.

So what exactly is it about this man that you find so irresistible?

Shying away from the question, she plucked a piece of lint from the sleeve of his T-shirt…then, unable to resist, let her fingers linger on the gentle swell of biceps. The memory of him scooping her up into his arms and plunking her into his truck, settled like a heavy mist over her mind and her heart. Unconsciously she let her fingers drift down his sleeve, shivering when she encountered warm flesh. Then, realizing what she was doing, she snatched back her hand and squeezed her eyes shut.

Oh, Lord, she cried silently. I’ll never survive a whole week without jumping him like some sex-starved nymphomaniac!

In spite of her determination to do otherwise, she stole another peek at him and had to grip her hands over the armrests to keep from reaching out and brushing back the endearing lock of hair that drooped over his forehead.

He’s too handsome, she thought, feeling the panic rising higher. Too worldly, too sexy…too everything!

And she was plain-as-a-copper-penny Penny Rawley, a dried-up old maid who’d barely ventured farther than fifty miles from the ranch she’d grown up on.

Disheartened by the reminder, she lifted a hand to turn off the overhead light, not trusting herself to look at him any longer without touching him again.

But just as her finger brushed the light’s button, an electronic alarm beeped shrilly on his laptop computer. Frozen in place by the chilling sound, she watched the screen flash red.

Erik bolted upright, knocking his forehead against the hand she still held aloft. He blinked twice, then shoved her arm from in front of his face and grabbed for his laptop, drawing it to the edge of the portable desk.

“I didn’t touch it,” she said quickly, fearing the dark scowl that creased his brow was an indication that he thought she’d done something to harm his precious computer. “I swear. I just reached up to turn off your light.”

“It’s him,” he muttered, ignoring her, his eyes riveted on the screen.

“Him?” she repeated, turning to stare at the screen. “Him who?”

Eyes narrowed, his fingers fairly flying over the keyboard, he replied, “Boy Wonder.”

She stared, watching as window after window popped into view, the information that flashed on each as foreign to her as Erik’s reference to Boy Wonder.

“He’s just down the street.” He set his jaw as he increased the size of one window and scrolled through the garbled lines of data registered there.

“Down the street?” she repeated, wondering if he realized they were presently flying 30,000 feet above the ground.

“From the office,” he snapped impatiently, then swore and slammed a fist down on the edge of the portable desk, making the laptop, as well as Penny, jump. “He’s gone,” he said, then swore again. “That sneaky hacker slipped through the cracks again.”

Frightened by his anger, she asked uneasily, “Who is Boy Wonder?”

“If I knew who he was,” he growled, “I wouldn’t be sitting here listening to you yap. I’d be hauling his butt to jail.”

Resenting his contemptuous reply to what she considered a simple and justifiable question, Penny flounced around in her seat and slapped her arms across her chest. “Well, excuse me. It isn’t as if I’m aware of every detail of your life and business. I’ve only worked for your company a month, you know.”

Erik whipped his head around, prepared to lambast his secretary…but when he saw her face, his scathing retort dried up in his mouth.

Those were tears in her eyes, he realized, his stomach clenching at the sight of them. Big alligator-size tears that looked as if they might overflow her eyes and slide down her cheeks at any moment. A twinge of something close to guilt—an emotion Erik rarely indulged in—pricked at him and he tore his gaze from her.

Not your fault, he told himself as he shut down his laptop. She’s a mouse. A crybaby. Totally incapable of handling the stress her job entailed.

“Cry and you’re fired,” he warned as he shoved the laptop under his seat. “I won’t have a crybaby working for me.”

Penny turned her head again, this time away to face the opposite bank of windows, blinking furiously. “I’m not a crybaby.”

“Could’ve fooled me.”

She graced him with the coldest, most damning look she could muster under the circumstances. “I’m not a crybaby,” she repeated tersely. “But you, on the other hand, are undoubtedly the rudest, most self-possessed, most linguistically challenged man I’ve ever met.”

“Never said I wasn’t,” he replied easily, then frowned. “Linguistically challenged? What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

Jutting her chin, she smoothed the hem of her skirt over her knees. “My point exactly.”

His frown deepening, he shoved back his seat and closed his eyes. “You are, too, a crybaby,” he muttered, then held up a hand in warning, as if anticipating a comeback from her. “I’m going to sleep,” he informed her. “And I’d advise you to do the same. We’ve got a lot of work to do once we reach California.”

Moaning softly, Penny sat up straighter in her chair and pressed a hand to her lower back, arching against it as she tried to ease the dull ache there. After more than six hours sitting before a monitor, entering and tracking data for her employer, her eyes burned from the strain of staring at a glowing screen, and every muscle in her body screamed from sitting in the inappropriately designed chair.

Erik certainly hadn’t exaggerated when he’d warned her that they’d have a lot of work to do once they reached California, she thought wearily.

Sighing, she rose and crossed to the wet bar in the hotel’s penthouse suite in search of something to drink. “Would you like a soda?” she asked. “Or something to eat? We never got around to eating lunch,” she reminded him.

When he didn’t respond, she glanced his way. He sat slumped on the overstuffed sofa as he had all day, his cowboy boots propped on the coffee table, his laptop balanced on jean-clad thighs. His forehead looked like a freshly plowed field, the furrows that ran across it deep and wavy, a testament to the level and intensity of his concentration.

The man is a machine, she thought in disgust, a suspicion she’d formed before their trip to California, but now knew for a fact.

They’d arrived in California a little after ten the night before and were at their hotel by eleven, where she’d discovered to her dismay that he intended that they share a suite. She hadn’t had time to recover from the shock of that nerve-warping discovery before Erik had hustled her onto a glass elevator and to a penthouse on the hotel’s uppermost floor.

Once there she lost her ability to speak when confronted with the elaborately appointed and spacious suite—which, thankfully, she’d discovered consisted of a living area and two large bedrooms, each with its own private and luxurious bath. Erik hadn’t shared her starry-eyed fascination with the suite’s opulence and its ceiling-to-floor view of San Diego’s skyline, or her desire to explore. Instead he had immediately mumbled a curt good-night and gone straight to his room and to bed.

Disappointed, Penny had gone to her room, as well. But when she’d awakened that morning, she’d found herself alone in the suite—though, not for long. She’d barely had time to shower and don a fresh suit before Erik had returned, carrying a briefcase filled with a thick stack of reports. Without a word of greeting or explanation as to his whereabouts, he’d given her clipped orders to enter the data from the reports into a computer he’d set up for her on the suite’s only desk.