Читать книгу The Boss, the Baby and Me - Raye Morgan - Страница 8

Jodie sat back and looked at her family, gathered around the big, antique kitchen table where they had come together for generations. Funny how it felt so familiar and yet so strange. The main thing missing was her mother, who had died of cancer when Jodie was sixteen. Her little brother Jed was also absent, the only family member Matt and Rita hadn’t managed to find and hog-tie to bring back home.

Rita had cooked an excellent meal—as she always did—of chicken and dumplings in the old style. Jodie glanced down the table at where her sister sat. She watched affectionately as the older woman blew a strand of hair back out of her eyes and looked expectantly from one person to another at the table, obviously trying to gauge how they liked what they were eating. When her gaze met her sister’s, she favored her with a warm smile. At least one good thing had come out of all this. Rita was happy to have most of the family together again.

Rita took care of the house and the family the way their mother would have if she hadn’t died twelve years before. She was a wonderful homemaker, and she deserved to have a loving man in her life and a family of her own. Unfortunately, you didn’t meet many great, un-attached men at the meat counter at the Chivaree supermarket these days. And Rita didn’t often veer much farther from home than that.

Matt had been her partner in reuniting the family. But Matt didn’t look happy, the way Rita did. Matt was the oldest male child in the family. He was the one who had shown up on Jodie’s doorstep, in Dallas, a month before and talked her into coming back home, giving her a long spiel about how they all needed to pull together now that their father was ill. These days, he seemed to care about that almost as much as Rita did.

In many ways, Matt had been Jodie’s original role model. After all, he’d been the first to defy their father and leave town, heading for medical school in Atlanta. He’d worked for years in a large urban hospital, and now he was back in his dumpy little hometown. She noted the brooding look on his handsome face and wondered what had put it there. Something was bothering him. She had no idea what it was.

But she didn’t have to worry about things like that with her sunny brother David, the one she looked the most like. They both had blond hair and brown eyes and a sprinkling of freckles over short noses.

Sitting next to Matt and eating everything he could get on his plate with youthful enthusiasm, David was the one who had never really left. Someone had asked her just the other day why such a handsome, happy-go-lucky young man who looked like he should be on a surfboard in Malibu would stay in Chivaree when there was a whole world out there for him. She’d laughed and said he was too lazy to leave. But that wasn’t true. She supposed she might be the only one who knew the real reason why he stayed. Love made people do strange things sometimes.

And then there was dark-eyed Rafe, the brother who was the same age as Kurt McLaughlin, the one now looking at her with a penetrating gaze that said, Hey, Jodie, don’t try to con me. I can see right through this polite little act you’re putting on. I can read your mind.

She stared right back at him with a half smile, hoping he got the message. Mind your own business!

“Hey, Pop,” David said, greeting their father as he entered the room. “You going to try to eat something?”

Leaning on his cane, the gray-haired man shook his head as Rita jumped up to pull out a chair for him. “No. I can’t eat anything. I just wanted to come out and sit with you all and look at your faces.” He sat down heavily, then made a scan of the table. “My pride and joy,” he muttered in a tone that could have been loving, but sounded a little sarcastic.

Glancing at him and then away, Jodie felt a stew of conflicting emotion—love, resentment, anger, pity. What could you do when you disliked your own parent almost as much as you loved him?

“So you all came back to save the farm for the old man, eh?” He laughed softly. “I guess I raised myself a bunch of good ones after all.”

“Hey, Pop,” Rafe said, leaning forward. “I was talking to our Dallas distributor today. Looks like we might have a shot at getting a contract with the whole Wintergreen Store chain. That could be huge for us.”

Jesse Allman nodded, but he wasn’t looking at Rafe. His gaze was trained on his oldest son. He’d been trying to get Matt to fulfill the role of heir apparent in the business for years, without a lot of success. Though Matt had often helped out in the old days when all they had was the tiny, struggling Allman Winery, he’d been away at college when Jesse had developed the plan to become the distributor for all the little wineries of this part of Texas hill country. That had launched all the success, and it was no secret Jesse thought Matt ought to be involved. “You got a dog in this fight, Matt?” he asked.

Matt looked surprised. “What about?”

“This Wintergreen thing.”

Matt shrugged. “It’s up to you, Pop. You know I’m not into the business side of things.”

Jesse’s eyes narrowed. “You oughta be,” he said shortly.

Matt and Rafe exchanged glances. “Talk to Rafe,” Matt said calmly. “He’s the one who knows what’s going on.”

Jodie sighed. It was the same old story. Did nothing ever change? The Allman family business had grown larger, morphing into Allman Industries, and the Allman family had gotten richer, changing from the old scruffy bunch who seemed to skim along just this side of lawbreaking into this vaguely respectable family that provided a good chunk of the local jobs. But the old emotions still simmered just below the surface. She was beginning to wonder if it hadn’t been a big mistake for her to come back.

“What’s eatin’ you, missy?” her father said, looking at her accusingly. “You still trying to get me to get rid of that McLaughlin boy?”

Jodie winced and put a napkin to her lips. “I never said I wanted you to get rid of him,” she protested. “I just want you to be aware of the danger he poses.”

“Danger?’” David looked up with a grin. “Ole Kurt McLaughlin? He’s a pussycat.”

“I don’t trust the McLaughlins any more than you do,” Matt chimed in. “But I’ve got to admit, Kurt is doing a fine job with marketing. We’re lucky to have him.”

She glanced quickly around the table, realizing with a sense of astonishment that she didn’t have anyone on her side at all. Not one of them understood how dangerous it was to let a man like Kurt into the power structure of their family business.

“I know your game, missy.” Jesse grinned at his daughter. “You’re like me. You can’t forget or forgive.” He slapped the flat of his hand down on the table. “But I’m not getting rid of him. Hell, no. He’s good at what he does. I don’t care if he is a McLaughlin. In fact, I love that he’s a McLaughlin. I love the looks on their pompous faces when I’m in town, or at the chamber of commerce meetings. I can smile at them and say, ‘Your fair-haired boy is workin’ for me now. Because I’m the one who’s making it in this town. You McLaughlins are done for.’”

She was reminded of all the reasons why she’d run away from this man in the first place, when she was a rebellious eighteen-year-old. She’d planned never to come back. And she might have stuck to that plan if Matt hadn’t found her and talked her into coming home again.

“He’s old, Jodie,” Matt had told her earnestly. “Old and sick. He needs us. All of us.”

She noticed with a start that her father’s hands were shaking, and her gaze flew to his face, searching for evidence. To her surprise, her heart began to race with something close to fear. Matt was right. He was old and sick. She might still be angry with him for things he’d done in the past, but he was still her father and, deep down, she cared for him. Okay, it was good that she’d come home. And despite everything, she had to stay, at least for a while.

And that meant she had to deal with Kurt McLaughlin.

A memory sailed into her head of how it had felt with his arms around her in the elevator car, and she almost gasped aloud. She definitely had to harden herself to his lethal charm. She was stuck working for him, and maybe that was for the best. After all, somebody had to look out for the good of the family.

An hour later, she escaped from the tensions in the house and took a brisk walk toward the newly renovated downtown. The sky was velvet-blue, with a full moon rising. The air was warm and dry. She could smell newly cut hay somewhere nearby.

She’d paced these same streets when she was eighteen and trying to figure out what she was going to do. And just around the corner was the little park where she and Jeremy used to meet secretly to plot how they were going to escape from Chivaree together. That seemed so long ago.

Jeremy. Had she ever really loved him? When she looked back now, she saw more excitement than love. They had needed each other for support at the time. But that wasn’t really true. She’d needed him. It turned out he hadn’t needed her at all. But that was always the way with the McLaughlins, wasn’t it?

Her steps slowed as she reached Cabrillo, the main street. The area was less familiar now, with new store-fronts on some of the buildings, and a few new structures housing a boutique and a crafts store. It was good to see the town looking prosperous, she supposed, though it did give her a twinge to see how things had changed.

Millie’s Café was just ahead, and that looked exactly the same. Maybe she would go in and have a cup of coffee and say hello to Millie, the mother of Shelley, her best friend in high school. Lights from the café spilled out onto the sidewalk, and Jodie began to anticipate how warm it was going to be once she’d gone in and snuggled into her old favorite booth.

But as she neared the corner, she got a glimpse of the people inside. It startled her to discover the place was packed. There were people crowding the entryway, waiting for seats, while others filled the booths, and still more sat at the counter. For a fraction of a moment, she got a flashing glimpse of a man who looked enough like Kurt to make her heart jump in dismay. Not wanting another possible run-in with that infuriating man, she just kept walking.

Darn! Was she really going to spend all her time reacting to Kurt? She couldn’t live this way. Looking back over her shoulder, trying to see if that really was him inside the café, she stepped off the curb and started across the street.

The thing was, there had never been a stoplight on that corner when she’d lived in Chivaree before. There had never been enough traffic to warrant one. Somehow, it hadn’t registered with her that there was one there now.

Brakes screeched. Fear flashed through her and she looked up, frozen for a few seconds. Then, she jumped, her whole body moving in a twitch reflex that somehow got her out of the way. But at the same time, her mind processed the fact that Kurt couldn’t be in Millie’s Café because that was Kurt’s face behind the wheel.

Kurt! After veering to miss her, he tried to regain control of his vehicle. And she watched in horror as his truck swerved just enough to get caught by a car coming in the other direction. There was a smash, a crunch, the horrifying shriek of metal in distress.

It wasn’t much more than a fender bender, but Jodie ran forward, apprehension flashing through her system, her heart in her throat. The driver of the car jumped out, swearing. But Kurt didn’t move. Dread building, Jodie yanked at the handle on the truck door. It came open, and she stared at the contorted way Kurt’s body lay in the cab. She gasped, and his green eyes opened.

“Hi,” he said, his wide mouth twisted, obviously in pain. “Uh, Jodie? Think you could call the paramedics? Something’s wrong with my leg.”

She was doomed, that was all there was to it. Every time she turned around, there was Kurt McLaughlin, interfering with her peace of mind. It was enough to make her want to scream.

Or at least complain a bit. But how could you complain about a man when you’d just crippled him?

Looking at him lying in his bed in the cozy house he shared with his baby daughter, Katy, she swallowed hard and wished she were anywhere else. Her brother Matt was using an automatic sander gizmo to smooth out a rough spot in the fiberglass cast he’d applied at the town clinic an hour or so before. Her brother David, who had helped get Kurt home, was standing around with his hands shoved down in the pockets of his jeans, looking very amused with it all. And she was standing in the shadows, between the bookcase and the closet, wishing the earth would open and swallow her whole.

“I knew Jodie had it in for me,” Kurt drawled, his voice half teasing, but with just enough of an edge to set her nerves twitching. “I just didn’t realize how far she was prepared to go.”

She moaned softly, but David couldn’t resist expanding on the joke.

“You know, sis, if you really want to take a guy out, you’re supposed to be the one in the car. He should be the one in the street, running for his life.”

She ignored him. She’d spent too many years fending off the pestering of big brothers—she knew better than to rise to the bait. Besides, she did feel terrible for what had happened, and she wanted to make sure Kurt knew it.

“I just don’t know how I could have been so stupid,” she began, and not for the first time.

Kurt looked up at her and groaned. “Jodie, if you try to tell me how sorry you are one more time, I’m going to have your brother use that surgical tape on your mouth.”

“We’d have to tape up her hands, too, or she’d be using them to give you apologies in sign language,” Matt said with a smirk.

“Do that, and she’ll have to resort to tapping out her pleas for forgiveness in Morse code with the toes of her shoes,” David threw in teasingly. “Let me tell you something. This sister of ours doesn’t give up easily.”

Jodie flushed as they all laughed. It was obvious her brothers both liked Kurt. She didn’t know how they could be so blind.

But another thing that stumped her was how well Kurt had taken the whole thing. She would have expected a little snarling, a few insults about watching where she was going, and a whole lot of swearing. But there had been very little of that. Maybe if he’d been grouchier about it all, she would feel better. At least then she could get mad instead of feeling so wretched.

Kurt had wanted paramedics. She only wished she could have obliged. But there were no paramedics in Chivaree. There was Old Man Cooper, who answered the phone at the fire department and then called around to the volunteers if there was a fire. He supposedly had a little first-aid training. But he certainly wasn’t competent to deal with a broken leg. So she’d called Matt. After all, he was the best physician in town as far as she was concerned. He’d come right away, bringing David with him, and between them they had carried Kurt to the clinic so that Matt could X-ray the leg.

No major bone was broken, but the patella was cracked, a situation that could be very painful and required a cast that held the knee immobile.

“We’ll have to keep you in the cast for a couple of weeks,” Matt had told him. “Then we’ll take it off and do some X-rays to see if you can transfer to a knee brace. That will give you a lot more freedom of movement.”

It had all gone pretty smoothly. They’d brought Kurt back to his house and installed him in his bedroom, where he was right now. Matt had given Kurt some sort of painkiller when he’d worked on him. Maybe that was why Kurt seemed to be taking it so calmly. Maybe he was just groggy from the medicine.

She wanted to go home. She ached to leave this behind. But she couldn’t really leave. After all, the accident had been her fault.

“Jodie is a licensed physical therapist,” Matt was saying. “That will be handy. She can help in your rehabilitation.”

“I’d forgotten that,” Kurt said. He grinned at her, knowing it would bug her. “That will be useful.”

Jodie felt numb. Everything that happened seemed to tie her more firmly to this man in one way or another. As she’d said before, she was doomed.

Matt rose to get something from his bag and, to Jodie’s surprise, he stopped in front of a framed picture of a cute baby girl, that was set on the top of an antique dresser.

“This your daughter?” he asked gruffly.

Kurt looked up and nodded proudly. “Yes, that’s Katy. She’s at my mother’s for the night.”

Matt was still staring at the picture in a way Jodie found a little odd. She couldn’t imagine when her big brother had become a child person. Considering that none of the six siblings in her family, including herself, were married or had children, she’d assumed they all felt pretty much the way she did. She didn’t dislike children, but she felt a lot more comfortable keeping them at a distance, avoiding too much up-close-and-personal interaction. Maybe she’d been wrong about Matt.

“It’s a good thing the baby wasn’t with you when you had the accident,” Matt said with feeling.

“Yes,” Kurt agreed. “That’s one blessing, at least.”

Jodie agreed, though she didn’t say it aloud. Just imagine if she’d been responsible for hurting Kurt’s baby. She shuddered, not wanting to think about it.

Still, Matt lingered, staring at the portrait. “She’s a beautiful baby,” he said. “About how old?”

“Sixteen months.”

“A little over one year.”

“Yes.”

Jodie frowned, wondering what was eating her brother. This just didn’t fit with the image she had of him. Then she turned to look at Kurt lying back against the pillows, and immediately wished she hadn’t. All thoughts of Matt flew out the window, and unwelcome reactions to Kurt took their place.

Since he’d put on cutoff jeans, to leave his damaged leg bare for the cast, she’d wisely been avoiding looking at his beautifully sculpted good leg, which was covered with a sleek pelt of reddish-brown hair. But while she wasn’t paying attention, somehow his shirt had been removed, as well, and now he was displaying a set of sexy muscles and a washboard stomach, all wrapped up in the most deliciously smooth and bronzed skin she’d ever seen.

The man was a damn Greek god! Gazing at him made her feel dangerously warm and fuzzy inside.

Realizing with a start that she’d been staring at his powerfully built chest too long, she glanced up into his bright green eyes and saw that he’d been watching her all along. Turning ten shades of red, she spun on her heel and pretended a sudden fascination with the collection of old first editions in his bookcase.

Matt and Kurt went on talking, but she didn’t hear a word they were saying. Her head was buzzing with a strange vibration, and all she could think of was that his gaze had been so full of awareness of her, it was downright scary. Awareness not only of what she was feeling, but of just what she might be thinking, as well.

Had he understood just how drawn to him she was physically? Had he known she’d ached for him to kiss her in the elevator? It was all so humiliating!

She tried some even breathing, determined to get this silly blushing under control, and to avoid meeting Kurt’s eyes again. And then she took a chance and escaped into the rest of the house, taking a deep breath as she did so. The cool air in the living room was a welcome relief.

She looked around the room. It was nicely furnished in a simple style, but there were toys everywhere. She winced, looking away. Funny. It had been almost ten years, but looking at baby things still brought on a wave of nausea every time. She knew it was silly and self-destructive to let that reaction rule her life, but she hadn’t found a way to fight it yet. Losing a baby was hard, even if that baby hadn’t been born yet at the time.

She turned toward the bookcase, refocusing her attention with a soft sigh. She couldn’t help but wonder why Kurt didn’t live in the old Victorian mansion up on the hill, where the other McLaughlins congregated. If he’d really come back to get help with his daughter, you would think he would have stayed there. It was supposed to be a wonderful house.

She’d never been inside the place herself, never been invited to the parties the other girls in town had attended on Sunday afternoons. In those days, Allmans weren’t welcome at anything put on by a McLaughlin.

“Hey, Jodie.” David came around the corner.

She jumped, startled out of her reverie. “What is it?”

“Matt’s finished.”

“Oh. Good.”

“But Kurt wants to talk to you alone for a few minutes before we go.”

“Alone?” Her hand went instinctively to her throat. “Why? What does he want to talk to me about?”

David gave her a quizzical look. “I don’t know. Work, I guess.” He shrugged and turned back toward the door. “Anyway, we’ll be waiting in the car.”

She swallowed hard. “Okay.”

She made her way back into the bedroom, cringing when she saw Kurt again, looking so helpless on the bed. “Oh, gosh, I’m really…”

“Don’t say it,” he ordered shortly. “I know you wish it hadn’t happened. So do I. But it’s done now. So forget about it.”

Her eyebrows rose as she noted a change in his tone. He’d put on more clothes and abandoned the easygoing attitude. What had happened to the friendly guy who’d traded jokes with her brothers just a few moments before? But the man had just broken his patella. He had to be tired, and probably the pain was coming back. She really ought to cut him a little slack.

“What we have to do now is figure out how to deal with the aftermath,” he was saying.

“The aftermath?” What was there to figure out? He had an injury. Obviously, that was going to put him at a disadvantage for awhile. It might put a crimp in his plans, but it also meant she would be able to keep tabs on him more easily, when you came right down to it.

He was nodding. “Matt says I can’t go back in to work for at least two weeks.”

“Oh. That’s too bad.” She had visions of working without him around to distract her. Her spirits brightened. Maybe things were looking up after all.

“But I’m in the middle of a couple of projects that can’t wait. So I’m going to have to work at home.”

“At home?” she echoed, emotions switching as she began to get a very bad feeling about what was coming next.

“Yes. I’ve got a computer and a fax machine right here. I won’t be able to move around a lot, though. And that’s where you will come in.”

“I will?”

“Sure. You can come work with me here. I’ll probably get twice as much done that way. It will all be for the best.”

“Oh, but…”

“I’ve been thinking it over. You can go in to work at your regular time, clear up anything you have to do there, then bring me anything I need to deal with and work here until lunchtime. You won’t have any problem with that, will you?”

What could she say? This was her fault and she had to help him any way she could. Jodie felt her head begin to ache and she bit her lip. She foresaw long mornings working with Kurt, the two of them alone, their heads together over some sticky problem, intimacy growing…. No! Impossible!

“You know,” she said quickly, “I think it would be better if I got Paula to come over here instead.” Oh, good thinking. Paula was the typist/file clerk they used. “I’m in the middle of a few things, too, you know. I’ll just stay at the office to make sure everything is covered, and Paula can run back and forth, kind of a liaison between us and…”

“That won’t work.”

She blinked. “Why not?”

“Because I want you here.”

Exactly what she was afraid of.

His gaze was dark and fathomless, and his jaw was set. He was all boss right now. He was giving orders. The problem was, she wasn’t all that good at taking orders.

She stared right back at him. “Why me?” she asked.

He frowned. “Are you, or are you not, my assistant?”

“That’s temporary.”

“As far as work goes, let’s live in the moment. Answer the question.”

She wanted to say something sassy and insubordinate but she realized it was going to seem very childish if she did that. But she was having a very hard time bending to his will too easily.

Their gazes locked and held. Jodie felt a surge of anger, but she managed to keep it reined in for the moment. Still, he could tell she was unhappy. To her surprise, that brought the amusement back into his expression.

“Do all your apologies mean nothing?” he asked her softly.

The nerve!

“And I guess you casting aside all my apologies means even less?”

He laughed softly. “Jodie, calm down. This is the way I want it. You’re going to have to comply.”

“Or what? You’ll fire me?”

“Fire you from your father’s company? Never.” His grin was lopsided in a particularly infuriating way. “I could, however, begin giving the better assignments to Paula in order to leave you time for document-copying and coffee-brewing duties.”

She turned away from him, furious, and tempted to head for the door. His tone said it all. Look at this, Jodie. You laid me low, but I’m still in control. She didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of saying she would do as he wished, though she knew she was probably going to have to. But at the same time, a small part of her glowed with satisfaction. She only wished her brothers had been there to see Kurt get autocratic with her.

You see? He is underhanded. He is out to sabotage us in some way. You just wait! I’m not wrong about that.

Come to think of it, maybe it was just as well that she would be hanging around wherever Kurt was working. After all, she was the only one who was clued in to what he was up to. Someone had to keep an eye on him.

She turned back and looked at him. “All right,” she said grudgingly. “I’ll be here.”