Christmas with her Boss

she’d applied for the job with him.

‘I need to spend more time with my family,’ she’d said and he hadn’t asked more.

Her private life wasn’t his business.

Only now it was his business. He should have asked more questions. He was trapped with her family, whoever her family turned out to be.

While back in New York…

He needed to contact Elinor, urgently, but he couldn’t call her now. It was three in the morning her time. It’d have to wait.

The thought of contacting her made him feel ill. To give such disappointment…

‘There’s less than an hour to go,’ Meg called across the aisle and, to his astonishment, she sounded cheerful. ‘Dandle a baby if you’re bored. I’m sure the lady beside you would be grateful.’

‘I couldn’t let him do that.’ The young mother beside him looked shocked. ‘I’d spoil his lovely suit.’

He winced. He’d taken off his jacket but he still looked corporate and he knew it. He had suits and gym gear. Nothing else.

Surely that couldn’t be a problem. But…

Where were they going?

He’d had visions of a suburban house with a comfortable spare room where he could lock himself in and work for three days. He’d pay, so he wouldn’t have to be social; something he’d be forced to be if he stayed with any of Melbourne’s social set. But now… Where was she taking him?

He was a billionaire. He did not have problems like this.

How did you get off a train?

There was a no alcohol policy on the train, which was just as well as the carriage was starting to look like a party. It was full of commuters going home for Christmas, holidaymakers, everyone escaping the city and heading bush.

Someone started a Christmas singalong, which was ridiculous, but somehow Meg found herself singing along too.

Was she punch-drunk?

No. She was someone who’d lost the plot but there was nothing she could do about it. She had no illusions about her job. She’d messed things up and, even though she was doing the best she could, William McMaster had been denied his Christmas and she was responsible.

Worse, she was taking him home. He hadn’t asked where home was. He wasn’t interested.

She glanced across the aisle at him and thought he so didn’t belong on this train. He looked…

Fabulous, she admitted to herself, and there it was, the thing she’d carefully suppressed since she’d taken this job. W S McMaster was awesome. He was brilliant and powerful and more. He worked her hard but he paid magnificently; he expected the best from her and he got it.

And he was so-o-o sexy. If she wasn’t careful, she knew she stood every chance of having a major crush on the guy. But she’d realised that from the start, from that first interview, so she’d carefully compartmentalised her life. He was her boss. Any other sensation had to be carefully put aside.

And she’d learned from him. W S McMaster had compartments down to a fine art. There was never any hint of personal interaction between employer and employee.

But now there needed to be personal interaction. W S McMaster was coming home to her family.

He’d better be nice to Scotty.

He didn’t have to be nice to anyone.

Yes, he did, she thought. For the next few days her boundaries needed to shift. Not to be taken away, she reminded herself hastily. Just moved a little. She needed to stop thinking about him as her boss and start thinking about him as someone who should be grateful to her for providing emergency accommodation.

She’d made a start, deliberately getting rid of her corporate gear, making a statement that this weekend wasn’t entirely an extension of their work relationship.

He could lock himself in his room for the duration, she thought. She’d sent a flurry of texts to Letty on the subject of which room they’d put him in. The attic was best. There was a good bed and a desk and a comfy chair. It had its own small bathroom. The man was a serious workaholic. Maybe he’d even take his meals in his room.

‘He’s not singing,’ the elderly woman beside her said. Meg had struck up an intermittent conversation with her, so she knew the connection. ‘Your boss. Is he not happy?’

‘He’s stuck in Australia because of the airline strike,’ Meg said. ‘I suspect he’s homesick.’

Homesick. She’d spoken loudly because of the singing, but there was a sudden lull between verses and somehow her words hit silence. Suddenly everyone was looking at William.

‘Homesick,’ the woman beside Meg breathed, loud enough for everyone to hear; loud enough to catch William’s attention. ‘Oh, that’s awful. Do you have a wife and kiddies back home?’

‘I…no,’ William said, clearly astonished that a stranger could be so familiar.

‘So it’ll just be your parents missing you,’ the woman said. ‘Oh, I couldn’t bear it. Where’s home?’

‘New York.’ The two syllables were said with bluntness bordering on rudeness, but the woman wasn’t to be deflected.

‘New York City?’ she breathed. ‘Oh, where? Near Central Park?’

‘My apartment overlooks Central Park,’ he conceded, and there was an awed hush.

‘Will it be snowing there?’ someone asked, and Meg looked at her boss’s grim face and answered for him. She’d checked the forecast. It was part of her job.

‘The forecast is for snow.’

‘Oh, and the temperature here’s going to be boiling.’ The woman doing the questioning looked as if she might burst into tears on his behalf. ‘You could have made snowmen in Central Park.’

‘I don’t…’

‘Or thrown snowballs,’ someone added.

‘Or made a Snowman Santa.’

‘Hey, did you see that movie where they fell down and made snow angels?’

‘He could do that here in the dust.’

There was general laughter, but it was sympathetic, and then the next carol started and William was mercifully left alone.

Um…maybe she should have protected him from that. Maybe she shouldn’t have told anyone he was her boss. Meg looked across at William-immersed in his work again-and thought-I’m taking my boss home for Christmas and all we’re offering is dust angels. He could be having a white Christmas in Central Park.

With who?

She didn’t know, and she was not going to feel bad about that, she decided. Not until he told her that he was missing a person in particular. If he was simply going to sit in a luxury penthouse and have lobster and caviar and truffles and open gifts to himself…

She was going home to Scotty and Grandma and a hundred cows.

That was a good thought. No matter how appallingly she’d messed up, she was still going home for Christmas.

She was very noble to share, she told herself.

Hold that thought.

Tandaroit wasn’t so much a station as a rail head. There’d been talk of closing it down but Letty had immediately presented a petition with over five thousand names on it to their local parliamentarian. No matter that Letty, Scotty and Meg seemed to be the only ones who used it-and that the names on the petition had been garnered by Letty, dressed in gumboots and overalls, sitting on the corner of one of Melbourne’s major pedestrian malls in Scotty’s now discarded wheelchair. She’d been holding an enormous photograph of a huge-eyed calf with a logo saying ‘Save Your Country Cousins’ superimposed.

Tandaroit Station stayed.

When Letty wanted something she generally got it. Her energy was legendary. The death of her son and daughter-in-law four years ago had left her shattered, but afterwards she’d hugged Meg and she’d said, ‘There’s