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

women her age would have felt long ago. Where her sisters had flown the nest and pursued university degrees, then moved to new, exciting cities to begin their illustrious careers, she had remained at home, circulating with more or less the same crowd she had grown up with—a protective little circle that had, she could see now, been comforting and restrictive in equal measure. She felt as though she was finally emerging from cold storage. It was exciting. And who knew what lay round the corner? she thought, with the optimism with which she had always greeted most situations.
    The journey to Pelham Parkway was baking hot, but she had dressed for the heat in a pair of cool linen trousers and flip-flops. It was going to be a long day. The zoo was enormous—one of the largest urban zoos. She had agreed with Matt that she would contact him by text as soon as she arrived, so that they could agree a meeting point, but with this new awareness of him burning a hole in her she found herself texting Samantha instead, and then making her way to a convenient spot where shecould wait for them to finish their animal sightseeing on the monorail.
    On the way, her stomach rumbling, she bought herself a giant hot dog, and was sinking her teeth gratefully into the eight-inch sausage, onion, ketchup and mustard indulgence when she spotted Samantha running towards her.
    Samantha was no longer the primly dressed ten-year-old of a few weeks ago. She was in a pair of trendy cut-off denims, some flat espadrilles and a tee shirt that advertised a teenage musical.
    ‘Have a bite.’ Tess offered the hot dog to her and stood up. ‘I’m never going to finish this.’ She was driven to search out Matt, but resisted the impulse.
    ‘I thought you were giving up junk food.’ Samantha took the hot dog and smiled up at her. ‘Because you were piling on the pounds.’
    ‘Next Monday. I have it pencilled in my diary.’
    ‘Anyway, they’re waiting for us, so we’d better go.’
    ‘They…?’
    ‘Vicky was tired and had to rest, even though she’s been sitting on the monorail for twenty minutes.’ Samantha made a face while Tess confusedly tried to compute a name that meant nothing to her and had never been mentioned before. Was Vicky a relative?
    She hurried after Samantha, and after a few minutes came to a shuddering halt by a café—one of the many that were dotted around the zoo. It was packed. Kids were eating ice cream, infants with more common sense than the adults were howling in pushchairs because they were hot and sticky and wanted to leave. She could easily have missed the couple sitting at the back, becausethey were surrounded by families trying to find somewhere to sit and children being called back to tables by anxious parents. But her eyes were automatically drawn to Matt and she grinned, because he looked just as she would have expected him to look away from the comforts to which he was accustomed. He was a man who took for granted the bliss of air-conditioning in summer and the luxury of personal shoppers who did everything for him and spared him the inconvenience of having to do battle with crowds. It was a real indication of how determined he was to involve himself with his daughter that he would ever have suggested a zoo expedition and accepted this less than luxurious experience as a necessary consequence.
    For a few seconds she found it hard to tear her eyes away from him. In a pair of light tan trousers and a navy blue polo shirt, he looked dark and sexy and dangerous. He was wearing dark sunglasses, which he proceeded to remove, and the thought of his eyes on her as she tried to manoeuvre a path through the crowds sent a little shiver down her spine.
    She could fully understand how he had managed to turn her notion of sexual attraction on its head. She had foolishly assumed that because he represented the sort of man she didn’t find attractive personality wise her body would just fall in line and likewise fail to respond.