Who’s the Boss?

her, he lifted their joined hands to his lips. “You don’t know the real me. All I care about, all I feel, is a passion for my work. There’s not room for anything else.”

“Or anyone else?”

“I don’t want anyone in my life.” He stared at her hands resting in his. “I really don’t.”

It was hard to reconcile this man with the abrupt, gruff one that she usually saw. Both were passionate, fierce, intelligent. But this Joe…this one she could really like. She told him so.

He let her hands go. “I don’t want you to like me.”

“You can control your computers, Joe,” she said softly. “But you can’t control me.”

“I can control this,” he contradicted her. “I can and I will. Because it would be a mistake, Caitlin. We would be a huge mistake. You’d get hurt, and I…”

“Yes?” she wondered with patience. “You’d what? You’d maybe get hurt, too? Well, isn’t that what life’s all about?”

“Dammit, we’re not talking about me. We’re talking about you, and how you’d feel when it was over. Afterward.”

Now she laughed, though without a lot of humor. “I never said I wanted you, Joe.”

“You do.”

She let out a genuine chuckle. “Okay, maybe I do. But don’t panic-it’s just physical. Pure and simple. I’d be crazy to want more with you.”

But she was crazy, she thought. And she did want more, much more. She sidled up close, batted her lashes at him flirtatiously. “Come on, Joe. Let’s play.”

“No. No way.” He nearly ran to the door.

Just before he shut it, she called out, “So can I have the raise?”

8

CAITLIN SPENT THE WEEKEND in a strange state of awareness. Friday night, she went dancing with Amy, where they met Tim and Andy and had a great time.

Caitlin realized how much more these friends meant to her than any others she’d ever had.

Things had changed for her, she decided. They’d changed with her father’s death, with her new job. Once she’d lived her life casually, without thought to past or future, but no longer.

For the first time, she had people in her life who cared about the real Caitlin, not the spoiled rich one.

Everything else-her financial woes, her worries of what would happen to her future-paled in comparison to that.

Somehow, in the past few months, priorities had shifted.

Now when she looked in the mirror, she no longer saw a pampered woman, but one who lived, laughed, cared…

One who loved.

BY MONDAY CAITLIN WAS already out of money-again-and very tired of taking the bus.

To cheer herself up, she’d spent the last of her pocket change on doughnuts from Amy’s stand. And while this endeared her greatly to Tim and Andy, she didn’t imagine the scale in her bathroom was going to be so kind.

As she went into the small office kitchen, she glanced down at herself and rolled her eyes. Even wearing one of those bras that promised to control and contain-whatever the heck that meant-she still spilled out of whatever she wore. The flowered print dress she had on today dipped a little low in front, emphasizing the problem. And was it her fault her hips strained against the soft cotton? Nope, she decided, taking another bite of a huge chocolate- buttermilk roll. She might as well face it; she was never going to be a waif.

She studied her image in the front of the steel-door refrigerator. Wild blond bob. Red lips. Big eyes.

“You’re beautiful, you know.”

Jumping a little, she faced Vince. He shot her a little smile and gestured to the door she’d been using as a mirror. “You don’t have to check,” he said. “You are.”

“I’d rather be known for my brains.”

She said this with such disgust, he laughed. Then he sobered, stuck his hands into his trouser pockets and came closer. “I saw you and Joe on Friday. You know…in his office.”

So Vince had interrupted their kiss!

“I don’t want to see you get hurt,” he said carefully. He squared his shoulders. He didn’t have a single wrinkle. He was a man who appreciated fine clothes, a man with expensive tastes, a man after her own heart…and she didn’t feel anything but a sisterly sort of affection.

What was wrong with her?

“I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to get involved with him.”

Her brain, protesting the early hour, went on full alert. “Vince, he’s your boss and your friend.”

“I know. And I care about him very much.” Vince met her gaze, and she knew he was genuinely sad. “But I care about you, too. Joseph’s not easy on women, Caitlin. They come in and out of his life in a heartbeat. He rarely looks back.”

Her unease grew. “We shouldn’t be discussing this. It’s not right.”

“I care about you.”

“But I’m a big girl,” she said gently. She reached for his hand and squeezed. “You don’t have to worry about me.”

Everything about him was tense, even as he let out a little laugh. “I can’t seem to help that.”

“Well, seeing as there’s little between me and your friend, except resentment and bad air, you don’t have much to worry about.”

“What I saw between the two of you was a lot more than bad air, Caitlin.”

The kiss again. Well, it had been quite a kiss. Quite a very good kiss. The mother of all kisses. But it had meant nothing to Joe, which was what Vince was trying so gallantly to make sure she understood.

What she really understood was that Joe didn’t want it to mean anything. That he wasn’t comfortable with the intimacy, and she could understand that, as well. Neither was she.

What, she wondered, would Joe say if he knew she’d never experienced any sort of intimacy at all? It wasn’t something she’d set out purposely to do, but she’d never found the right man. Somehow, it had been easy to resist the fast, rich, slick kind of guy her so-called friends had all hung out with. So now, despite her travels and exciting life-style, she was the oldest virgin in the Western Hemisphere. “I’m not going to get my heart broken over one kiss,” she said, more weakly than she would have liked.

“I’m not doing a good job of warning you off him, am I?” Vince asked wryly.

“It’s not your fault. I just never seem to learn what’s good for me.”

“I could be good for you,” he said seriously.

“Oh, Vince.”

He shook his head. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say that so soon.” Softly, he touched her cheek, then walked away.

It didn’t take long to get distracted. She took a call from the mortgage company for the condo her father hadn’t left her. The by-the-book loan officer on the line was not impressed by her employment.

“Look, Ms. Taylor,” he said in a voice bordering on nasty. “I do realize you have a job now, and apparently, you should be commended for that.”

While Caitlin took his not so polite disdain, Joe walked by. He wore the customary faded jeans and T-shirt and was every bit as aloof and dangerously sexy as her dreams had assured her. With his heavily lidded eyes, that perpetual frown on his beautiful, scowling mouth and the rugged, muscled yet lean body, he looked every bit the hoodlum she imagined most mothers warned their daughters from.

But Caitlin didn’t have a mother, and she doubted she would have listened to a mother’s advice, anyway.