to his black trousers. For a man who had sat virtually motionless through the meeting today, he moved with masculine grace.
“You come here regularly?” Ryder’s voice held the first hint of curiosity she’d heard from him. Strange that he hadn’t seemed as curious about her reports—detailing launch expenses in the millions—as her social life.
Macy shrugged one shoulder as she scanned the drinks menu. “Occasionally.”
The live jazz was always exceptional, and sometimes when she’d finished a long day at work, after eating takeaway at her desk, all she wanted was to be lost in a dimly lit crowd for one drink. To unwind before going home.
Ryder didn’t respond for one minute, then two. But she wouldn’t look up from the list of drinks. She could feel him watching her—the air was charged with the tension of it—another tactic that probably worked well for him with employees. She continued to casually read the cocktail options.
Finally, he spoke. “Why do I get the feeling you don’t talk much about yourself?”
She smiled, closed the drinks list and laid it on the silver tabletop. “I’ll have a margarita.”
Without looking around, he held up a finger. Johnny appeared and Ryder ordered her margarita plus a martini, no olive.
Once Johnny left, Ryder cleared his throat. “What made you settle in Melbourne?” “
I like it here.”
“You obviously didn’t move for the weather. Hot as hell today, yet arctic winds on the way over here tonight.” He smiled ruefully.
She recrossed her legs under the table, irritated that he’d been here less than a day and was already finding fault with her adopted home. But annoyance was another reaction she couldn’t show her boss. “Actually, I like the weather. Makes me feel like I’m not stuck in one place all the time. The trick is to dress in layers.”
“Useful local information.”
Johnny returned back with their drinks, and she gave him a quick smile. Waiter and customer—a nice, uncomplicated relationship, just how she liked them.
Then she looked across at her date—a more complicated, tangled relationship she couldn’t imagine. But she smiled at him, too, and accepted her glass. “Thank you.”
“Believe me, it’s my pleasure.” He tasted his martini and winced. “Too dry.”
Macy slowly twirled her glass, looking for the perfect place on the salt-encrusted rim to sample her drink. A much better option than looking at the man across from her. If he’d been anyone other than her boss, this might have been playing out differently … but he was.
He swallowed a mouthful of his drink then sat back in his seat. “Tell me something about yourself.”
Macy sipped her margarita then licked the salt from her lips. This was the exact problem with being out socially with a colleague—the sharing of personal information. The press had shared her personal information with the world most of her life. It’d left a bitter taste in her mouth.
She tapped a fingertip on the stem of her glass. “Ryder, don’t pretend you don’t know who I am.”
Even if her face hardly ever ran in the media nowadays, her name wouldn’t slip past a man as savvy and intelligent as Ryder. Her father worked in a similar industry and her sister was in the glossy magazines most weeks. Her surname was hardly low profile.
His eyes held hers with intensity. “I know what family you come from. I know a little bit about your childhood, like most Americans. But you’re wrong. I don’t know who you are.” Ryder stretched his legs to the side of the table. “But I’d like to.”
Macy expelled a long breath. This farce had gone on long enough. She’d thought she could play this game—one date with the boss, but she’d been wrong. Every moment this went on, she was getting in deeper into her own personal catch-22: she couldn’t get involved with him and she couldn’t rebuff his efforts to get involved. Either way she’d possibly offend him and kiss her promotion goodbye. She had to say something now before she was completely out of her depth.
She flicked her hair over a shoulder and met his gaze. “Ryder, I know I said I’d meet you here tonight, but I have to tell you, I’m uncomfortable about this.”
He straightened in his chair, frowning. “Have I done something to make you uncomfortable?”
Her stomach dipped. Now she had offended him. The man who would decide her promotion.
She held a palm out. “No, that’s the thing—you don’t have to do anything. You’re my boss. You pay my wage and hold a potential promotion in your hands, so I can’t relax.”
Ryder leaned closer. “I understand your concern. I’ve never done this kind of thing before, either.” His voice dipped. “Here and now, I’m not your boss. I’m just a man.”
Macy hesitated. She needed no reminder he was a man. Every feminine instinct she had screamed the fact. But he was her employer, too. “That’s not possible. You’re my boss whether you want to think about it right now or not. It’s inescapable.”
He raised one brow. “What if we don’t try to escape it? What if we try to build on it?” His eyes darkened in a depth of emotion that took her breath away. It transformed his features from rugged to something beautiful. She wanted to reach out and touch his lips, run her hands along his strong jaw. She’d never reacted with this intensity to a man before.
Her body screamed yes, but she didn’t, couldn’t, say the word.
Instead she gave herself an internal shake. Maybe it was time to go home. “I don’t think this is working.”
Ryder inclined his head. “I agree. My understanding of a date includes some small talk about ourselves. If you don’t want to talk about yourself, how about I talk a bit about me?”
Macy hesitated on the edge of her seat, half wanting to leave, half wanting to hear what he’d say. Like her, he was famous for not giving media interviews, and from the comment that one of his staff had made today about him being The Machine, she suspected it wasn’t only the media he refused to be open with.
Apparently taking her silence as consent, Ryder took a sip of his martini, swallowed, then began. “I suspect you know I was born in Rhode Island and that I grew up there and in New York City.”
She nodded, settling back into her seat now he’d made the decision for her about staying. She’d also heard about the open secret of his half brothers—would he go as far as mentioning them? From what she knew of him, it wasn’t likely.
“Although my parents were married, my father was absent, so I was raised by my mother.” A flash of a frown creased his forehead—too quick for her to be completely sure she’d seen it. But something told her that there was carefully guarded pain inside that statement. And the girl inside her who’d lost her mother understood.
She relaxed her face and body into an empathetic smile. “Your mother did a good job.”
One corner of his mouth turned up in acknowledgment of the compliment before he took another mouthful
