Page 8 of Contracted and Claimed By The Boss

Paige counted to five slowly. Amanda was right. She could see the gate, and she knew that schools in Australia didn’t require parent or guardian hand-off. Kids were often dropped in a zone and a teacher supervised their entry.

She weighed up her options and decided that placating Amanda was the most important thing for now. ‘Okay. I’ll stay here.’

‘Good.’

‘Amanda?’

The girl glared at Paige, defensive and prepared. Paige softened her features into a gentle smile. ‘Is there anything in particular you’d like as an after-school snack? A favourite food or drink?’

Amanda’s eyes darted to the left, her expression shifted for the briefest moment before it tightened once more into a mask of anger. ‘What I like after school is privacy. Got it?’

Max was just leaving the house when Paige approached it. Dressed in beige shorts and a white polo shirt with aviator sunglasses and a wide-brimmed hat, he was the picture of rugged, outback masculinity. Her feet slowed and her mouth went dry.

‘Miss Cooper.’ He nodded in her direction, lips compressed in a tight line.

A zing of something ignited in her bloodstream. She ignored it. ‘I want to talk to you about Amanda, Max.’ She deliberately used his first name, and she couldn’t have said why. Only, they were to be living together, and working in some ways as a team when it came to Amanda. It was time to drop the formalities. ‘Do you have a minute?’

He hesitated, eyes flicking in her direction, landing on her face first then travelling the length of her body quickly, like the cracking of a whip.

‘I’m going to the farm,’ was his gruff response. ‘If you want to talk, you’ll have to come with me.’

Consternation flooded Paige. She was curious to see the farm, and desperate to start working on the problem of Amanda’s behaviour, but it would mean being in a car with Max, close to him, being stranded who knew where with him, and each of those considerations lit a strange little fire in Paige’s belly.

‘I—’

‘I don’t have all day. Yes or no?’

She shot him a withering look then changed course, moving towards him. ‘Fine. I’ll come with you.’

He had no idea what had bloody possessed him to issue that invitation. Invitation? Command, more like. He’d backed her into a corner rather than just giving her five minutes to talk—a conversation he actually wanted to have because if this woman had any insights on Amanda then he was desperate to hear them. And yet he’d manoeuvred them into this situation, and he couldn’t say why.

‘Hop in,’ he grunted, gesturing to the front passenger seat of his car.

He slid into the driver’s seat and started the engine, forcing himself not to focus on Paige Cooper’s legs as she climbed into the passenger seat. The morning sun sliced through the tinted windscreen so he noticed for the first time the smattering of freckles across her nose.

Paige turned to face him as she buckled in her seat belt and their eyes met, and the same surge of insanity and desire that had paralysed Max yesterday was back, with a vengeance. He was far too conscious of her physicality. Of her eyes. Her lips. Her ski-jump nose. Her slender, graceful neck. The pulse point in her neck that was undulating visibly. The way the soft fabric of her simple cotton shirt clung to her breasts, the long, silver necklace she wore dangling down low, drawing his attention to the valley of her cleavage. Her sweet fragrance, like vanilla and coconut. His brows drew together, his mind vaguely aware of the strange direction of his thoughts, of the fact he should really be thinking of anything but Paige Cooper, of the fact that, after six years of celibacy, apparently he was like a matchbox flooded with gasoline, just waiting for a single flame to make him explode. And she was the flame.

Paige Cooper, here in his home, and now in the confines of his car, and the intensity between them burned brighter than he’d expected possible.

But it wasn’t really her, so much as his natural proclivities. He’d ignored them for too long, prioritising instead all things Amanda. Wanting to be a good dad. A good parent—he had to be both parents to her, and he’d been determined not to stuff that up. He would do everything he could to parent differently from his own parents—a father who’d been so intently focused on his business he’d neglected his son and a mother who couldn’t bear to see Max after the trauma of her divorce because of how Max reminded her of her husband.

He tore his eyes away from Paige with effort, staring out of the windscreen with a stern expression.

Desiring Paige was inconvenient. Hell, it was about a thousand shades of inconvenient, but it couldn’t be helped. He did desire her. He was aware of her on every level, and there was no sense pretending it wasn’t the case. But no way would he be selfish enough to put his own interests ahead of Amanda’s. Paige was here to help his daughter, Paige clearly wanted to help Amanda, so Max would just have to control his baser instincts. When this was over and Paige had left, presuming Amanda was back to normal by then, he’d change his lifestyle. Let himself start living again, just a little. A weekend in Sydney from time to time, the freedom to remember that he was a red-blooded male.

Paige was conscious of him every single inch of the drive. Even when the view was quite incomparable, she was only vaguely capable of appreciating it, because the man beside her took up so much damned space. Not just physically, though there was that too. His size was awe-inspiring enough in the outdoors, or in a large room like the kitchen, but here, in a car, he seemed twice as big as a regular man, his long legs speaking of athleticism and confidence, his fingers curved around the gearstick drawing her gaze far too often, so she couldn’t help remembering what it had felt like when those same fingers had curved around her hip and held her there, when he’d gripped her chin, tilting her face towards his.

She cracked the window a little, because the air in the car was so full of buzzing electricity, and she needed ventilation to clear her mind. She breathed in, the fragrance of the forest lush and woody. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Max shift his hand from the gearstick to the steering wheel, gripping it tightly, until his knuckles turned white. The silence stretched and Paige’s skin lifted in goosebumps.

She opened her mouth, needing to speak. But Max beat her to it. ‘What made you take on this job?’

She was surprised by the question, because it came close to small talk, but perhaps it was more an addendum to a job interview. He was trusting her to care for his daughter; naturally he had questions.

‘I’ve never been here,’ she said simplistically, leaving out a fair bit of her reasoning—namely, why she wanted to drop off the face of the world.

‘Australia?’

Flashes of memories assaulted her. World premieres in Sydney, Melbourne. Camera flashes. Exhaustion from travelling and being so young. Uncomfortable shoes, late nights, interviews. Her face was pale as she shook her head. ‘I’ve been to Australia.’ Her voice emerged a little high-pitched; Paige cleared her throat. ‘But never somewhere as remote as this. So tropical.’ She lifted her shoulders. ‘I wanted to see it.’

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