That Boss Of Mine

That Boss Of Mine
Elizabeth Bevarly

MEN of the YEAR MAN of the Month"A romantic? Hardly. I'm far too pragmatic to be romantic." - Wheeler Rush, driven-to-distraction CEO Audrey Finnegan was the most clumsy, unfortunate, beautiful and alluring woman Wheeler Rush had ever met. She was also his temporary secretary. His business was on its last legs and his eyes were on hers!True, she'd come into his life - and his office - like a whirling dervish, and made his hormones spin out of control. He knew he should send her packing, but her heart was in the right place and - oh, Lord - for once in his life, so was his… .Some men are made for lovin' - and you'll love our MAN OF THE MONTH!

MEMORANDUM (#u564e7ffb-9a20-5537-8efe-8d7a91b4491f)Letter to Reader (#uaae500ed-b18c-54b4-84da-1c006d1446d5)Title Page (#uc06301db-6f5e-59dc-accd-610c2f6881c5)ELIZABETH BEVARLY, (#ua161e3e9-17d7-5f27-9016-5e5e26280b60)Dedication (#u2f8d8e34-5145-509d-9e45-c2ab5e4d6c39)Chapter One (#ub71dba4c-b36d-5c2e-a414-f1188dc10567)Chapter Two (#ucebf30dc-a116-589a-bfb1-3c19c35d631b)Chapter Three (#uf78a3193-e0a9-54c9-aa50-232d91511692)Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

MEMORANDUM

To: Audrey Finnegan, my most alluring—and temporary—new secretary

From: Wheeler Rush, your slightly confused boss!

Re: I can’t seem to forget you....

Ms. Finnegan,

Attached please find a proposal designed to renew your tenure here indefinitely. Your secretarial skills are somewhat...rusty. Nonetheless, Ms. Finnegan, I find myself unable to get you off my mind.

You see, Ms. Finnegan, the attraction here is not just your sea-green eyes, your ivory complexion—or your body that just won’t quit. It’s the way you’ve taken hold of my heart—and that despite your claim that bad luck seems to follow you wherever you go, I’ve had nothing but good luck since you crashed—um, walked, into my life.

Therefore, I respectfully request that you accept my proposal—and its accompanying engagement ring. You see, Ms. Finnegan, I happen to love you.

Yours sincerely,

Wheeler Rush

Dear Reader,

Silhouette Desire matches August’s steamy heat with six new powerful, passionate and provocative romances.

Popular Elizabeth Bevarly offers That Boss of Mine as August’s MAN OF THE MONTH. In this irresistible romantic comedy, a CEO falls for his less-than-perfect secretary.

And Silhouette Desire proudly presents a compelling new series, TEXAS CATTLEMAN’S CLUB. The members of this exclusive club are some of the Lone Star State’s sexiest, most powerful men, who go on a mission to rescue a princess and find true love! Bestselling author Dixie Browning launches the series with Texas Millionaire, in which a fresh-faced country beauty is wooed by an older man.

Cait London’s miniseries THE BLAYLOCKS continues with Rio: Man of Destiny, in which the hero’s love leads the heroine to the truth of her family secrets. The BACHELOR BATTALION miniseries by Maureen Child marches on with Mom in Waiting. An amnesiac woman must rediscover her husband in Lost and Found Bride by Modean Moon. And Barbara McCauley’s SECRETS! miniseries offers another scandalous tale with Secret Baby Santos.

August also marks the debut of Silhouette’s original continuity THE FORTUNES OF TEXAS with Maggie Shayne’s Million Dollar Marriage, available now at your local retail outlet.

So indulge yourself this month with some poolside reading—the first of THE FORTUNES OF TEXAS, and all six Silhouette Desire titles!

Enjoy!

Joan Marlow Golan

Senior Editor

Please address questions and book requests to:

Silhouette Reader Service

U.S.: 3010 Walden Ave., P.O. Box 1325, Buffalo, NY 14269

Canadian: P.O. Box 609, Fort Erie, Ont L2A 5X3

Elizabeth Bevarly

That Boss of Mine

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

ELIZABETH BEVARLY,

who marks her twenty-fifth book with That Boss of Mine, is an honors graduate of the University of Louisville and achieved her dream of writing full-time before she even turned thirty! At heart, she is also an avid voyager who once helped navigate a friend’s thirty-five-foot sailboat across the Bermuda Triangle. Her dream is to one day have her own sailboat, a beautifully renovated older-model forty-two-footer, and to enjoy the freedom and tranquillity seafaring can bring. Elizabeth likes to think she has a lot in common with the characters she creates—people who know love and life go hand in hand. And she’s getting some firsthand experience with motherhood, as well—she and her husband have a four-year-old son, Eli.

For David and Eli,

my good-luck charms

One

Wheeler Rush braced his elbows on the top of his desk, buried his face in his hands and bit back the barrage of obscenities he really, really wanted to shout. Loudly. On the other side of his desk, in the posh office on a very desirable block of Main Street in downtown Louisville—an office for which he’d signed a lease less than nine months ago—stood two men leaving scattered, colossal footprints in their wake. Two men, he noted as he looked up again, whose brawn genes had exceeded their potential.

The larger of the men, the one who had identified himself as Bruno—that was all, just...Bruno—shifted his massive weight from one beefy foot to the other and scratched the back of his head. At least, Wheeler thought it was the back of the man’s head. Having no neck that way, and with all that scruffy hair springing out from the open collar of his shirt, Wheeler supposed it could have been his back the man was scratching.

“Look, buddy,” Bruno said. “We don’ wanna hafta do this, but we got no choice. When you can’t pay the money you owe, this is what happens. It’s that simple.”

“I won’t submit to this kind of terrorism,” Wheeler insisted, feeling much less confident than he sounded. “Leave now, or I’ll call the police.”

“It ain’t terrorism,” Bruno assured him. “This is bidness, plain and simple. You can’t call the cops. You don’ have a leg to stand on.” He cracked his knuckles menacingly, suggesting that Wheeler really wouldn’t have a leg to stand on, once the other man broke it. “You hear what I’m sayin’?” Bruno continued. “Now stand up and move away from the desk. Hey, you brought this on yourself, pal. Be a man about it, for God’s sake.”

Wheeler narrowed his eyes, hating to hear his manhood impugned in such a way. The last thing he wanted to do was submit to these two goons, but what else could he do? Bruno and company had come for a specific purpose, and they weren’t going to leave until their work was complete. Sick to his stomach, he realized he had no choice but to do exactly as they had instructed. He simply should have shown better judgment in the beginning, when he’d gone into business for himself. Instead, he had played too fast and too loose with money that wasn’t his, and now he was going to have to face the consequences.

“Listen, buddy,” Bruno growled again when Wheeler still hadn’t risen, “I’m sorry for your unfortunate professional downturn, but I got a job to do like any other guy, okay? And me and Harry here got a long day ahead of us. Now stand up and move away from the desk. Don’t make us get ugly.”

Wheeler clamped his lips over the retort that threatened to leap from his mouth, then, reluctantly, he stood up and did as Bruno had requested. “Fine,” he muttered a bit more gruffly than he’d intended. He ran a restive hand through his dark brown hair, tugged anxiously on his necktie and jerked his dark suit jacket from the back of his chair. “Let’s just get this over with. Whatever you do, please...don’t get ugly.” Or rather, he amended to himself, uglier.

Bruno and his missing-link companion stepped forward, stretching their arms out fiercely, and instinctively Wheeler flinched and took a step in retreat. When he did, one man grabbed one end of his desk and the second hefted the other end. Then, effortlessly, the two of them lifted the massive, and very expensive, teakwood, art deco piece of furniture and carried it out the door, presumably into the waiting truck that held the rest of Wheeler’s expensive, teakwood, art deco ex-furniture.

He watched the repo men go, and sighed as if they’d just carried out a childhood friend, feetfirst. Now the contents of his desk and filing cabinets would have to remain against the wall in a long row of cardboard boxes cast off from the wine shop below his newly rented apartment.

The apartment, he recalled, that was barely a tenth the size of the elegant, old, brick Victorian he’d called home as recently as a few months ago. The old, brick Victorian on Tony St. James Court, he further reminded himself ruthlessly, that he’d been forced to sell for less than it was worth in an effort to save his fast-sinking business. Now Wheeler lived in a cramped studio on the top floor of a battered old Federal in the borderline Original Highlands neighborhood.

Damn.

He’d had such high hopes when he’d gone into business for himself. Now, barely nine months after having his name etched in the glass on the outer office door, Rush Commercial Designs, Inc. was already going belly-up.

“Mr. Wheeler?”

He turned his attention to the open door of his office. The unmistakably feminine voice that called out from the reception area beyond was unfamiliar.