Read Online Her Impossible Boss by Cathy Williams - Free Book Online

it came to women was stringent.
    It was essential that they were as focused as he was. Focused and independent, with careers that were demanding enough to stave off any need for them to rely on him to define their lives. Like him, Catrina had come from old money, and her life had consisted offundraisers and charity balls and lunches and all those other little things that had left her with plenty of time to decide that his duty was to provide a never-ending diet of excitement. There had been no need for her to work, and she had, in any case, never been programmed for it. And into the void of all those empty hours when he had been working had crept the seeds of bitterness and disenchantment. She had wanted a rich partner who wanted to play, and he had failed to fulfil the specification. In the aftermath of that experience, and the consequences it came to entail, Matt was diligent in never straying beyond his own self-imposed boundaries.
    Belatedly, because she had been away and contact between them had been sporadic and via e-mail, he remembered Vicky. She was in Hong Kong, getting a taste for the Eastern markets. She was due back in a couple of days’ time. He tried to pull up a memory of what she looked like, but the second he thought of her dark tailored bob and the neat precision of her personality another image of a bubbly, golden-haired girl with a dusting of freckles on her nose and a personality that was all over the place superimposed itself on the woman who claimed to be dying to catch up with him.
    Irritated, he frowned. Then his face cleared and that vague feeling of being out of sorts began to ebb away.
    ‘Tell me your plans for the next few days.’ He pushed himself away from the table and signalled to the waiter for some coffees.
    ‘Plans?’ Still fretting over her tumultuous thoughts, it took Tess a few seconds to register that he had completely changed the subject. ‘A museum, and then a quiet day just relaxing with Samantha tomorrow. Maybe I’llgrab an early evening and catch up with my social life, now that you’ve put that idea into my head.’
    ‘And then on Friday perhaps we might visit the zoo…’ said Matt.
    This was a breakthrough. Instead of just following the tide, he was actually generating an idea of his own! Pure delight was all over her face as she nodded approvingly. She would take a back seat, watch father and daughter together, remind herself that her involvement with them both began and ended as a job.
    And Matt, watching her carefully from under lowered lashes, calculated on Vicky’s presence. The two of them, side by side, would squash uninvited rebellious thoughts for which he had no use. He and Vicky might not be destined for the long haul, but she would be a timely reminder of what he was looking for in the opposite sex.
    Matters sorted satisfactorily, and feeling back in control, he signalled for the bill.

CHAPTER FOUR
    O VER the next two days Tess had ample opportunity to think about herself. Matt had asked some very relevant questions, and had kick-started a chain of thoughts that made her uneasily aware that the things about herself she had always taken for granted might just be built on a certain amount of delusion.
    She had always considered herself a free spirit. Her sisters had been the unfortunate recipients of their parents’ ambitions. Neither of their parents had gone to university. Their mother had worked as a dinner lady at the local school, and their father had held down a job in the accounts department at an electrical company. But, they were both really clever, and in another time and another place would have gone to university and fulfilled all sorts of dreams. They hadn’t, though, and consequently had taken an inordinate interest and delight in Claire and Mary’s superhuman academic achievements.
    Tess had set her own agenda from an early age and had never deviated. Just in case her parents got it into their heads that she was destined to follow the same