Free Hired for the Boss's Bedroom by Cathy Williams

had actually agreed to come into the kitchen, have a cup of coffee and hear her out. She could only think that he must have the attitude of ‘win a few, lose a few’. Or maybe he was so unaccustomed to any form of rejection from a woman that he felt compelled to hear her explain her behaviour.
    Heather had no real idea why he had made a pass at her in the first place. She wasn’t his type. She could only conclude that it was because he was a highly sexed male and he had tuned in to her unconscious fascination with him and interpreted that as availability. Available women were the curse of the wealthy man. He probably hadn’t even stopped to think that he might not be able to just reach out and take whatever he saw and happened to want at that particular point in time, like a kid in a sweet shop with too much pocket money to spend.
    ‘Why did you decide to send Daniel to school here?’ she asked, changing the subject, wanting him to confirm with every sentence why she had been crazy to allow him to creep between the chink in her armour. ‘I mean, why didn’t you keep him with you, in London? There must have been hundreds of schools you could have sent him to.’
    Leo frowned. ‘Where are we going with all this?’
    ‘We’re having a conversation. Is there something wrong with that? I’m just expressing curiosity about the choices you made.’
    ‘I couldn’t have Daniel in London with me,’ Leo told her abruptly. ‘You have to understand that my life there is not tailored for the inclusion of a child.’
    Heather was nodding. She could believe that one, all right.
    ‘Even if there had been a permanent au pair on tap, there would still have remained the question of my working hours. I’m out of the country fifty percent of the time. Empires don’t run themselves; they need a captain at the helm. I’m that captain, and I’m steering a vast ship. I have offices in New York, Madrid and China, to name but a few. There would have been no consistency and that wouldn’t have been fair to Daniel. I felt it far better that he settle in the country where he could have the benefit of my mother being permanently there for him.’
    ‘That sounds incredibly convenient for you.’
    ‘It made sense at the time.’ Leo fought down his impatience, which he knew would get him nowhere fast.
    ‘Did it make sense to Daniel?’
    Leo’s eyes narrowed. ‘Maybe we could leave the question-and-answer session for another day?’
    ‘Is that because you just don’t fancy answering my questions because they make you feel uncomfortable?’
    ‘You’ve already shared your thoughts with me on my relationship with Daniel. Frankly, I don’t see the point of going over old ground.’ He sought to hang on to his good humour, to think of what lay ahead. ‘Today was a good day. The best day I’ve had with him since he came to England, in fact. Why analyse and dissect the past when it’s so much more worth-while to build on the present?’
    ‘Okay.’
    Leo relaxed. This was more like it. Bit of a shame that they were separated by the width of the kitchen table. If they hadn’t been, he would have translated his relaxation into something a little more tangible, would have drawn her into him, seduced her with his mouth and his hands and smothered all her nagging concerns with his lips. Of course, she would have her nagging concerns. She had made those perfectly obvious the first time they had met, and they wouldn’t have evaporated just because it had been a successful day out. He strove to understand and make allowances for someone whose personality was so wildly different from his own.
    She was an innocent, someone whose lack of life experiences had given her a childishly disingenuous outlook on life. It was both charming and disconcerting at the same time. Add to that the sort of bluntness that would send most men running a mile, and the combination was incendiary. Since he wasn’t most men, though, he felt well equipped to deal