Free Until He Met Meg by Sami Lee

board of his position and that the meeting would likely end without resolution.
    Aside from himself, there was only one other board member who originated from Carlton and Associates. The remainder of the eight-strong board had been installed from Drake International, the larger wealth management company with whom Bryce had merged his own two years ago. The fact that his father had started Carlton and Associates forty years ago and built it into one of the most successful and respected wealth management companies in the country meant Bryce’s seat on the board was assured, as was his position as CEO.
    But it certainly didn’t guarantee smooth sailing when it came to implementing operational decisions of his choice. Most of the board members were a good twenty years older than he and considered him rash and inexperienced. Little did they know how mightily he tried to rein in his rash impulses. Especially where his daughter’s nanny was concerned.
    As much as he tried to put all thought of Meg Lacy from his mind, she remained firmly entrenched in his thoughts after the board meeting broke up and he headed back to his office. He remembered the feel of her skin, sun-warmed and soft against his fingers as he’d held her wrist by the pool on Saturday. He remembered almost admitting in his frustration the real reason behind his reservations about hiring her; that he was immutably attracted to her, despite all his efforts to combat the inconvenient feeling.
    Having her in his house while knowing he could never touch her was a particularly masochistic type of self-torture. Especially when she walked around in those impossibly fitted jeans and jaunty T-shirts of hers, her slim thighs encased in soft denim, her breasts outlined by worn cotton, the imprint of her bra visible…
    Bryce muttered a gruff curse just as his assistant, an elegant woman in her fifties named Claudia Wilkins, knocked on his partially open office door. ‘Mr Carlton, is something wrong?’
    Nothing a long cold shower, or better yet, a willing woman wouldn’t fix. ‘No…nothing out of the ordinary, Claudia,’ he sighed. ‘What can I do for you?’
    ‘I have some papers for you to sign’ She traversed the expanse of plush beige carpet toward his oak desk, carrying a pile of documents. ‘And you have that meeting at four-thirty with Maree from Human Resources.’
    Darn . The meeting had slipped his mind. Something else he had never done before that he was starting to do a lot of lately — forget his schedule. If he weren’t so vexed by persistent fantasies of Meg wearing one of her tiny cotton T-shirts and little else…
    ‘Where is it you buy your outfits, Claudia?’
    His sudden question made his demure, impeccably presented assistant’s jaw drop. Her brown eyes widened behind her frameless spectacles. ‘Excuse me, sir?’
    ‘Your clothes.’ Bryce tilted his head at her prim navy pantsuit and low-heeled shoes. A perfectly modest outfit that didn’t skim the woman’s curves or for that matter let a man know whether she even had any.
    Claudia was almost twenty years older than he was, and he had never thought of her in that way, but he felt quite sure that if Meg wore clothes like that around the house — perfectly staid, perfectly functional and perfectly boring — she would prove not nearly the tenacious distraction she had thus far.
    ‘You want me to tell you where I shop for clothes?’
    Claudia eyed at him warily, as though he were about to go mad and run screaming through the building. Deciding the less explaining he did about his odd query the better, Bryce merely smiled in a way he hoped would assure the woman of his sanity. ‘If you don’t mind.’
    ***
    On Tuesday afternoon, Meg ascended the stairs from her room to the living area, where she found Mrs Dunkirk sitting forward on the edge of the couch, leaning toward the television with a look of avid interest on her face. On the screen a woman was hiding in a cupboard while a shadowy