Something about the Boss...

“You’ve made a lovely home out of your apartment.”

“Thank you, but it’s still not mine, y’know? Soon I hope to be able to put a deposit on a place of my own. Something small, with a bit of a garden. Somewhere that I can truly call mine.”

And that was another reason why she was so darned worried about Alex Santiago. What if he didn’t come back? Would Zach continue to keep the business running or would he fold things up and go back to where he’d come from? Where would she be then? She earned good money now and her options within Royal to earn the same weren’t bountiful. If she lost her job, that could be the end of her dream of owning her own home—she’d never earn enough to make mortgage payments and to afford extras like the private investigator she’d hired to find her sister.

“And that’s important to you because?” Zach coaxed.

She took a moment to think before answering. “Stability, not being at someone else’s whim or mercy.”

“Sounds like there’s some history there.”

She shrugged. “Isn’t there always?”

“Can you tell me?”

Sophie sighed. It wasn’t something she tended to bandy about, but there was something about Zach’s gentle questioning that made her actually want to tell him.

“Nothing spectacular. My dad died when I was a baby and my mom remarried. They had my sister and life was great for a while, but then a few years later my new dad died in an accident at work and our lives turned upside down. We had to move out of our home and my sister went to live with her aunt, because Mom couldn’t cope with us both with the hours she had to work to make the rent. It was hard for her,” Sophie added just in case Zach felt inclined to be judgmental. “We had to keep moving around, which I hated, but even then I used to keep house to help Mom out. She’d usually juggle two jobs, or pull double shifts when she only had one source of income. Things settled down a bit after I finished college. She met someone new, they married and I moved out and got my own place.”

“They kicked you out?”

Zach sounded defensive and Sophie rushed to disabuse him of that. “No, not at all. But I was ready to stand on my own two feet. Mom and Jim marrying didn’t make any difference to that. No, that’s not entirely true. I felt better about moving to a place of my own, knowing she’d be taken care of.”

* * *

Zach looked at Sophie across the table. She’d talked more personally to him tonight than she ever had in the time they’d worked together, but there was a huge amount she wasn’t saying. Listening to her, he could begin to understand why she was so good at what she did. She was used to keeping things together, keeping things calm. It was a sure bet that she’d done her best to help her mother out at home from an early age—that capable manner of hers was second nature now, but there had probably been a time when it was all about security.

His own upbringing had been completely the opposite. At least up until his dad had been laid off from his job. Even then, forced to take on a menial position at a much lower wage, his father had insisted on paying Zach’s way through college. It was one of the reasons Zach worked so hard now. He didn’t ever want to be in the position his parents had been when his father’s job had been downsized. And he’d made it up to them for all the sacrifices they’d made to ensure he’d had the best opportunities available to him. It didn’t sound like Sophie had been so lucky.

“And your sister? She’s the one in that photo you had with you on Monday, right?”

Sophie inclined her head, her cap of hair swinging gently forward to caress her cheek. His fingers itched to do the same and he reached for the dewy glass in front of him instead.

“You said you don’t stay in touch. How come?”

“Her aunt formally adopted her several months after she took Suzie to live with them. She told Mom they didn’t think it was good for Suzie to continue to have contact with us. Said it was too disruptive.”

There was a world full of hurt and loss in her simply chosen words.

“And your mother agreed to that?” he said incredulously.

Sophie’s eyes flamed. “You have no idea of what it was like for my mother. Don’t you dare judge her.”

Zach put up both hands in surrender. “Whoa, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to touch a nerve there.”

After Anna’s car wreck, he’d fought tooth and nail to keep his son—arguing with doctors and specialists until he was blue in the face. But after Blake had been on life support for six weeks and the doctors had repeatedly told him his son had no brain activity, Zach and Anna had had to let him go. For the life of him he couldn’t understand how a parent could give up a child the way Sophie’s mother had, not when she had every reason to fight to keep her.

“Mom couldn’t work and take care of us both at the same time. I was in school. Mom couldn’t afford day care and Suzie, well, she was a bit of a handful. She had been a demanding baby and that didn’t change as she got older. She was always just that bit more vulnerable than I was, needed that much more attention. Giving Suzie up wasn’t Mom’s first choice, not by any means, but she had to do what was best—for all of us. And Suzie’s aunt, well, family money aside, her late husband had been a very wealthy man. She didn’t have to work and she was childless. Mom knew that Suzie would be the center of her world, that she’d be loved and cared for as she deserved to be—in ways we couldn’t.”

Her choice of words—saying “we” rather than “she”—explained so much about the person she was today. He didn’t doubt that Sophie harbored some guilt that she hadn’t been able to look after her sister enough or to help her mother more so that their small family wouldn’t have to be broken up. He tried to imagine what it would be like growing up feeling like that, and couldn’t.

“Sophie,” he said reaching across the small table to take her trembling hand in his, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to sound judgmental. It must have been tough.”

She hesitated a moment and he could feel her inner battle rage as she fought to drag her emotions back under control. Eventually she pulled her hand out from beneath his.

“It was, but it’s in the past now.”

But it wasn’t in the past. He could see that just by looking at her. The hurts, the loss—they were all still there. Their shadows lingered beneath the calm surface she presented to the rest of the world.

Zach fought the nearly overwhelming urge he had to tell her it would be all right, that he would do what he could to assuage the pain of her past, that he’d fight her dragons for her and lay them at her feet. Grappling to get his own emotions under control, he reminded himself that he’d already taken that road once before, with Anna, and look where that had led them. No, the last thing he needed was to complicate his life with another wounded bird.

He all but welcomed the waiter out loud when the man arrived with their plates of steaming-hot food, and Zach turned the conversation to more general things, including the latest developments at the Texas Cattleman’s Club. He entertained Sophie with a passable impersonation of Beau Hacket’s blustering about the new child-care center. By the time they’d finished their meal and enjoyed dessert and coffee, he thought he’d managed to chase those shadows from her eyes. Even if only for an evening.

He wished he had a reason to make their night last longer. She was good company and, when the conversation stayed well and truly off the personal, a great talker. Even more, she was a perceptive listener—he supposed that was part of why she was so darn good at her job. She was always subconsciously taking note of what was happening around her, always ready to put her hand on what was needed almost before the need arose.

Sophie Beldon appealed to him on an intellectual level, and her subtle beauty was a siren call—from the way her eyes began to sparkle before she would laugh right down to the enticing shadow of her breasts at the V of her neckline. And her mouth. God, her mouth. A jolt of longing shook him to his core. What would it be like to taste her, to feel the softness of those lips against his, to command their surrender?

Zach placed his coffee cup back on its saucer none too gently, a tremor in his hand betraying the need that fought for dominance over his heretofore steely control. Control won in the end as he signaled to the waiter for their check. He slid his card in the wallet and when the waiter returned with the receipt, he signed off with a generous tip.

He had to get Sophie home before he did or said something stupid. Before he went over the invisible line he’d drawn in respect of his working relationship, and only his working relationship, with her.

They made small talk on the short journey to her apartment building, extolling the virtues of the chef at Claire’s and how much they’d enjoyed the food. When they pulled up outside her ground-floor unit, it was second nature to Zach to get out of the car first and open her door for her. He walked her up the short path and waited while she extracted her key from her bag.

“Well, thank you for a lovely meal. I really enjoyed it,” she said simply once the key was in her hand.

Before he could reply, she stepped in closer and leaned up to place a kiss on his cheek. That was all it took for his instincts to kick in, for him to turn his face so that her lips met his instead. His arm curled around her waist to draw her more closely against his body and he angled his head ever so slightly so he could deepen their kiss.

Heat sizzled along his veins. Her lips were every bit as soft and delicious as he’d imagined and the tiny sound she made in the back of her throat sent his pulse racing. This was way more than he’d imagined—this scorching desire combined with the raging need he’d managed to keep firmly under control for so very long. Emotion rocked him, sharp and intense, and he knew their working relationship could never be the same again. He wanted Sophie Beldon from the gleaming top of her blond head to the tips of her dainty feet and everything, yes, definitely everything in between.

His hips flexed lightly against the softness of her belly. Her answering press back against him reminded him of what it felt like to be a man—to want with a gut-aching need so strong that it almost hurt to desire another human being this much.

And then, just like that, it was over. Cool night air swirled in the space between them. She was pulling away, her eyes glittering like whiskey-colored topaz, her lips still moist from their kiss and slightly swollen with the evidence of their all-too-brief passion. She dipped her head in that way she had, closing her eyes briefly.

“Don’t,” he said sharply.

“Don’t?”

“Don’t hide from me. From us.”

“There is no us, is there?” she asked, her voice slightly shaky.

Every cell in his body urged him to say, “Yes, there is an us.” To take her back into his arms again and to repeat the intimacy of what they’d just shared. But reason intruded with harsh reality. They worked together. More than that, they had to hold things together in the office until Alex’s absence could be explained and he, hopefully, returned. And then there was Anna. The reminder was as sobering as an icy-cold shower.

“No, you’re right. I’ll see you Monday?” he said, stepping back from her—away from temptation.

“Yes, Monday.”

He waited by his car until she let herself inside her apartment, and watched as her outside light went out, followed by the living room lights being turned on. Even then he had to force himself to get in his car and to start it up, put it in gear and drive away. He was a fool. He should never have let things get away like that. Never. It went against his code of ethics in so many ways, and yet there was still this invisible thread that pulled between them. A thread that grew tighter with the more distance he put between them.