Page 61 of The Wrong Boss

And now I stood in the sunshine at a beautiful resort, with the man who’d featured in all my naughtiest dreams walking beside me, and I felt my loneliness so keenly my bones ached.

“If you don’t mind me asking,” I started, tearing my thoughts away from where they’d wandered, “how did your first meeting with your father go? Was it hard?”

Cole huffed. “Yeah, it was hard. He was skeptical at first. I guess I’m not the first person to approach him as a long-lost son.”

“Rich people problems,” I mumbled.

Laughing, Cole tilted his head to agree. “But after I sent through the adoption documents and the photo of my birth mother holding me in the hospital, he agreed to meet with me. That’s when I found out that my birth mother had passed, and he’d poured all his grief and energy into his business.”

“And he offered you a job?”

Cole grinned. “It wasn’t that easy. At the time, he was the director of the company. But yeah. He’d always wanted to keep it in the family, but he never remarried. So I think he wanted to give me a chance, even if it ended up blowing up in his face.”

“Which it didn’t.”

“No,” he said, something strange in his voice. “It didn’t.”

We walked in silence, with the sound of the wind in thepalm trees and the twittering of birds around us. In the distance, the surf crashed against the beach in a steady rhythm.

“What about you?” Cole asked. “How did the past seven years treat you? Did you ever get your mom’s stuff back?”

A lance of sadness pierced my breastbone, but I hid the hurt as best I could. “No,” I told him. “Never got any of it back. And the past seven years probably weren’t as kind to me as they were to you.”

“No?”

“I didn’t end up with a wealthy family and a meteoric career ascension.”

He laughed, the sound buttery and warm. I wanted to live in that laugh, wrap it all around me every day.

Silly desires from my silly mind.

He wasn’t just my hot boss. He wasn’t just a wealthy, attractive man that I felt an undeniable connection to.

He was my child’s father. He didn’t know it yet, but he had the power to blow up my entire life.

“And did your ex come crawling back to you?” he asked, flicking me a quick glance.

“My ex?”

“The one you broke up with right before…” He let the words dangle, but we both knew what he meant.

“He reached out,” I admitted, “but I wasn’t interested. There hasn’t been much time for dating these past few years.”

“No?” His tone was carefully neutral.

We were approaching the vast back patio of the resort. A few bistro tables were set out in front of huge, double-heightFrench doors, with a handful of guests sipping drinks in the late afternoon sunshine.

Before me, two paths opened up. I could continue indulging my attraction to my boss and make my own life more difficult as a result. Or I could give him a kernel of truth and prepare myself for the eventual end of this…whatever this was between us. Camaraderie. Flirtation. Chemistry.

I chose option two, and I explained, “No, not much time for dating when you’re a single mom. Tends to scare off most eligible bachelors and attract the ones that you need to avoid.”

My boss’s steps stumbled on the corner of a raised tile. He caught himself, then looked over at me. “Single mom?—?”

I nodded. “Yeah. I have a daughter.”

“Oh.” He cleared his throat. “Congratulations. That’s—wow.”

His steps were stiff, the distance between us increasing. Good. It was best to start setting better boundaries between us, to make sure we both knew where we stood.

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