Page 9 of Blind Date with the Boss

But then the unsettling light in his eyes suddenly died and his mouth flattened. Clearly, he was extremely embarrassed to be caught in a ridiculous Colin-Firth-Pride-and-Prejudicemoment, dripping wet and as good as naked in a public place.

Sally, equally embarrassed, dropped her gaze to her feet, which seemed to have become the focus of his attention. And she was ridiculously grateful that she’d given herself a pedicure on the weekend and painted her toenails a frosted berry colour.

He looked displeased, however, and she nervously fumbled with her shoes and struggled to slip them on. It was silly to be so self-conscious. Her bare feet weren’t nearly as revealing as Logan’s transparent shirt. Then again, she was still recovering from a nightmare incident, was still edgy with men.

To make matters worse, the schoolboys were watching her with marked curiosity.

‘These are my nephews,’ Logan explained, speaking with cold dignity befitting The Boss in An Awkward Situation. He didn’t offer the boys’ names.

Sally tried to sound cool. ‘Hi guys.’ To her dismay she sounded far too breathless.

‘This is Miss... Miss...’ Logan Black frowned and a muscle in his jaw twitched, but he covered his ignorance quickly. ‘This young lady works at Blackcorp.’

Not for much longer, Sally thought miserably. She seemed to be doomed where this boss was concerned. First, her carelessness had pre-empted Rose’s invasion of his office and now her appearance in the park had distracted him and caused this accident.

‘Shall I pop back to the office and hunt down a towel, Mr Black?’

His frown deepened and he shook his head. ‘No, no. That’s kind of you, but there’s no need.’

It was patently clear that he wanted her to disappear.

Sally took her cue. ‘Well... I must get going or I’ll miss my train.’

With a deliberately cheery wave for the boys, she hurried off, chin high and without a single glance back.

Logan watched her moving swiftly away from him, watched the bounce of her curls lit to a bright sheen in the afternoon sun. Just as he’d anticipated, her hair was exceptionally pretty in the sunlight. Her feet were pretty too, so neatly shaped and smooth-skinned. As for the sway of her hips and the sexy curve of her –

‘Do we have to go home already?’

His nephew’s question pulled Logan back from the brink of an untimely fantasy. He glanced at his watch again, became acutely aware of his dripping clothes. A brisk breeze swept across the park and he felt suddenly cold. Time to snap to his senses.

He wondered suddenly what had come over him. How on earth had he allowed himself to be so distracted by his newest employee that he’d fallen in the damn pond? To make mattersworse, he realised with some alarm that his decision to bring his sisters’ boys to the park had been inspired by the same girl.

When he’d seen her last week on the day she’d applied for the front desk job, he’d sensed a special warmth and closeness between the young woman and the tiny girl and he’d been hit by a strangely inexplicable sense of loneliness – the loneliness of self-imposed isolation.

Very soon after that he’d rung his sister Carissa, knowing that it had been far too long since he’d seen her.

Now, as he drove the boys to their home, he tried to forget the front desk girl. He suffered his sister’s chuckling bewilderment when she saw his drenched clothes, but she was kind enough to offer him a hot shower and a pair of her husband Geoff’s jeans and a T-shirt.

She offered him dinner too. Geoff had been delayed at work, so it was a noisy meal of chicken and pasta in Carissa’s bright kitchen. Logan usually ate alone, defrosting his housekeeper’s frozen meals in the microwave, and he couldn’t remember the last time he’d enjoyed a relaxed, laughter-filled meal like this.

Several times, a picture of the girl in the park flashed into his thoughts. He wondered where she was dining tonight, then quickly scotched that thought. When Logan wanted a woman, he chose wisely from the ambitious and sophisticated businesswomen who were as keen to avoid emotional entanglements as he was.

He couldn’t afford to be sidetracked. He had a five year business plan which didn’t allow for dangerous flirtation with a girl fresh from the country with stars in her eyes.

?CHAPTER FIVE

SALLY told herself that there was no point in letting herself keep going over this afternoon’s encounter. But all evening her mind kept tossing up memories of her boss in the park. She kept seeing the look of unguarded happiness on Logan Black’s face as he played with his nephews. She kept remembering the raw masculine appeal of his body beneath the wet shirt and the shocking heat of her response.

?She shouldn’t be feeling that way about her boss, didn’t want to feel that way about any man. She was still getting over the painful lesson she’d learned on a summer’s night at a ball in the Tarra-Binya Country Club’s Hall. Her mistake on that night had been that she was too trusting, too friendly. Perhaps she’d also been a little too complacent.

?She’d been to so many country dances that she’d felt completely at ease and in her element and, of course, she’d welcomed the excitement of the newcomer, Kyle Francis.

Kyle was handsome, suntanned and tall, with a very trendy hairstyle that screamedCity Man. He also had dreamy blue eyes, a very sexy smile and a glamorous movie star aura and he sent all the girls at the dance atwitter. But almost as soon as he’d arrived, he’d made a beeline for Sally and she’d found it enormously flattering that he was only interested in her.

The dance music that evening had been fabulous – supplied by a band that had come all the way from Tamworth.Kyle had danced superbly and Sally had floated on happiness. She’d wondered later if his expensive aftershave had cast some kind of spell over her, because she’d been totally ensnared by his magnetic allure.

The evening had been so hot that all the doors and windows in the hall had been flung wide open to catch the slightest breeze, so it was incredibly easy to slip outside. Sally had been more than happy to let Kyle kiss her, and when he’d suggested that they take a stroll along the shadowy creek bank where she-oaks shielded them from view, she’d been too excited to pay attention to the niggling warnings of her common sense.

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