he asked, turning around to look at her.
In return she frowned at him. ‘Not yet. I did it in the car on the way over. I mean, I would have had it typed out, but I…I didn’t have time.’
‘Then how do you know that she’s going to go along with any of these schemes?’
‘They’re not schemes’
‘Okay. Ideas. Suggestions. Brainwaves. Call them what you want. How do you know that she’s going to be keen to…let’s say…play a board game for two hours?’
‘Oh. Right. I see what you mean.’
‘I very much doubt that,’ Matt said irritably. ‘Kids these days prefer to sit in front of their computers. It’s how they connect with their friends. Samantha has a very advanced computer. It was one of the first things I bought for her when she came here to live with me.’
‘I’ll do it,’ Tess decided. ‘If you need me around, then I’ll do it.’
Need was a word that didn’t feature heavily in his vocabulary—not insofar as it applied to him, at any rate. He opened his mouth to point that out, and then realised that, like it or not, the prospect of trying to coax a positive reaction from his daughter whilst trying to appear relaxed in front of a game of Scrabble was the equivalent of looking up at an insurmountable precipice and trying to work out how to scale it in a pair of flip-flops.
‘It’s hardly a question of need,’ he stated, frowning.
‘Some men find it difficult to take time out for quality family time.’
‘Spare me the psychobabble, Tess.’
He met her eyes and for a split second she felt almost dizzy. She wondered whether it was because she was just so unused to any of this. Standing up for something and refusing to back down. Telling a man like Matt Strickland—who was her sister’s boss, for goodness’ sake—that he should be doing stuff, when it was obvious that no one ever told him what he should be doing. Getting involved enough to go beyond the call of duty for a job she had been reluctant to accept in the first place.
Her mouth went dry and she found that she was sitting on her hands, leaning forward in her chair. Crazy! ‘It’s not psychobabble,’ she said faintly. ‘It’s the truth! What activity would you…would you like to start with?’
‘Ah. A choice?’ Matt looked at the list. ‘You do realise that choosing to participate in these activities will curtail your free time in the evenings?’
‘That’s okay.’
‘I’ll make sure that you’re paid overtime, of course.’
‘I don’t care about the money,’ Tess muttered, looking in fascination at his downbent head as he continued to frown over the list, as though trying to work out which was the most acceptable of the options on the table.
‘But you might,’ he murmured, not looking at her, ‘regret committing to something that’s going to involve time you might otherwise spend seeing New York…going out and having fun. Isn’t that going to be a problem?’
Quite suddenly he raised his eyes to hers, and there it was again—that giddy feeling as though she was free-falling through space.
‘Why should it be a problem?’ she asked breathlessly.
‘Because,’ Matt murmured, ‘you’re young, and I’ve gathered that you came here to have fun. Since when has your definition of fun been spending time with your employer and his daughter, playing a game of Scrabble?’
Never, Tess thought, confused.
‘Right.’ He stood up, and she hastily followed suit. Her allotted time was over. ‘First of all, you will be reimbursed—whether you like it or not. And as for which activity takes my fancy…having done none of them for longer than I can remember…’
He grinned. A smile of genuine amusement. And for a few heart-stopping seconds he ceased to be Matt Strickland, the man who was employing her, the man who represented just the sort of staid workaholic that she privately abhorred, and was just a man. A suffocatingly sexy man who made her head spin.
‘Your choice. I’ll be home tomorrow by six.’
CHAPTER THREE
‘OKAY. So let me get this straight. You’ve now got yourself a clothes allowance, no limits, and you’re going on a date with my boss.’
‘It’s not a date,’ Tess said irritably, but she was only half concentrating on Claire who was lounging fully clothed in a tight green dress with high heels—also green. Claire was killing time before going out with the guy she had been seeing for the past eighteen months—an investment banker whom Tess had met several times and liked very much, despite the fact that the second he left the room she could never seem to quite remember what he looked like.
‘No? What is it, then? Cosy restaurant? Bottle of Chablis? Candlelight? No one’s ever had a clue as to what Matt Strickland does in his private life, and here you are, less than three weeks in, and you’re on a date.’
Small and black or small and red? Tess was thinking, looking at the selection of outfits she had bought earlier that day. Five seconds of tussling with her moral conscience and she had shamelessly capitulated once inside the fashionable department store to which she had been directed—because, he had told her, he would be taking her to dinner to get her feedback, and she would need something fairly dressy to wear. Were it not for him, she’d reasoned to herself, she wouldn’t have to spend money on clothes for restaurants she wouldn’t be going to. So if he wanted to foot the bill, then why not?
Besides, Samantha had been having fun. They had made a deal. Tess would pretend to yawn inside the toy shops and Samantha would tap the over-sized face of her newly acquired Disney watch in boredom inside the grown-up clothes shops, and then they would break for lunch at a place upon which they had both agreed, and which was based on a menu of pizzas and burgers. Good, fortifying food before they dutifully visited some place of culture in the name of education.
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