Who's the Boss? & Her Perfect Stranger: Who's The Boss? / Her Perfect Stranger

Hard to tell, since the ache had settled in his chest, thick and unmovable. Joseph’s world had been lived alone. Always alone. He’d learned early he could rely on no one but himself. No one. Not the authorities, not his friends and certainly not his parents. Anything he’d needed or wanted, he’d gotten on his own.

Like Caitlin, he’d once dreamed about having someone kiss away his pains. No one, to his recollection, had ever given a damn about him, not until her father had come along and dragged him off the fast track to nowhere. Edmund had saved his sorry hide, had been the first one to care, and now his daughter was staring at him with those huge dark eyes, wanting him to feel better even though it’d been she who’d turned his world upside down. “Yeah,” he told her. “It worked.”

Her beaming smile dazzled him, only this time his reaction was far more than just physical. It went deeper, and he didn’t think he liked it.

He didn’t want to feel this strange softening toward her. She was everything he couldn’t stand. Unmotivated. With a serious lack of ambition. Little common sense. With Edmund as her father, she’d had the world at her fingertips and what had she done? Thrown parties. Just remembering these things made him suitably irritated all over again, allowing him to forget that he’d almost, almost, started to like her.

Purposely, he hardened his face into the expression he knew could terrorize the toughest of souls. That should scare her. Keep him safe.

She smiled at him.

Dammit. How was he supposed to deal with that?

Around them, life continued to the music of clinking glasses and tinkling china. Voices sounded, some low and muted, some not. Laughter. And the smells… In another time and place, his surroundings might have fascinated him; he enjoyed watching people.

Today, he had eyes for only one person, and that bugged him. He stayed tucked behind his menu, pretending to scrutinize the list of entrées he had already memorized. What was happening to him?

It was her clothes—that’s what. Her amazing eyes. That infectious laugh. They were all designed to attract a man. Clearly, she enjoyed being looked at.

Knowing this about her helped him control the lust, because if he ever decided he wanted more than a passing fancy with a woman, which he wouldn’t, it would be with one who wanted him. It would be with a woman who didn’t send out signals to anything in pants. A woman who loved him heart and soul—him and only him.

This woman could do none of those things, and telling himself so helped. A little. But nothing could control his lethal curiosity. “Tell me about your father.”

She looked startled, then she shrugged. “You knew him better than me, so there’s nothing to tell.” She set her menu down and before he could continue his line of questioning, she said, “Joe, about your kitchen.”

“Don’t remind me,” he groaned, picking up his glass of water.

“I’ll clean it up.”

“No,” he said quickly, setting down the glass to lift his hands. “I’ll do it.”

“And your zip drive. I’m so sorry.”

“I said forget it.”

“Why didn’t you fire me?”

He’d wanted to. It had been the first thought that popped into his mind at the time, but he couldn’t very well tell her that. He knew he was difficult sometimes, but he never purposely hurt anyone.

“Joe?”

The menu again held his interest for a long moment before he slowly lowered it. “It’s best if we drop this now.”

“Why?”

The waitress came up to them, and because they both knew what they wanted, she took their menu shields, leaving Joe feeling strangely exposed. Vulnerable.

“Why, Joe?”

Spreading his big hands on the table, he stared at them. “I’ll tell you on one condition. No, make that two. First, you don’t take this personally, and second, after I tell you, you have to be honest back and tell me why someone with your wealth and means would want this job in the first place.”

Humiliating as it would be to disclose her predicament, she had to know. “Deal.”

His light blue eyes penetrated hers. “I can’t fire you. I promised your father I’d give you a job. It’s in the will.”

The waitress brought their food, and Joe dug in.

Caitlin stared at him helplessly. “I don’t understand. The will doesn’t say ‘for as long as I want it.’ All it says is that you’ll hire me.”

“So much for not taking this personally.” He sighed and set down his fork. “Yes, but I promised him.”

“When?”

“Before he died. He’d been having health problems.”

He’d never told her. She’d never asked. Guilt stabbed at her.

“It seemed to mean a lot to him that you have this job, so I went along with it.”

She managed to speak evenly. “You don’t strike me as a man who’d go along with anything that didn’t suit your purposes, Joe.”

“Since that’s pretty much true, I suppose there’s no use in being insulted.” But his jaw was tight as he lifted his glass to his lips. “Let’s just call it the repaying of a debt, and in this case, despite any trouble you might cause, I could hire you for the rest of your life and not make a dent in what I owe him.”

The image of her father came to mind—powerful, busy, always gone. Much as he’d given her in material things, he’d rarely had time for anything else. It was hard to imagine him inspiring this kind of fierce loyalty. “What is this great thing he did for you?”

“He rescued me.” When she just stared at him in surprise, he said, “Twenty years ago, he took a twelve-year-old know-it-all street kid out of an alley where he was about to be killed by a gangbanger for hustling him.”

“Were you the twelve-year-old or the gangbanger?”

He grinned, his first, and it was a stunner. “The former.”

But Caitlin didn’t see the humor. She was horrified, picturing a poor, thin, starving kid fighting off a dangerous thug—no matter she’d thought of Joe as a thug himself earlier that day. “Where were your parents?”

He shrugged broad shoulders. “I never knew my father, and there were six kids. My mother couldn’t feed us all. I’d been pretty much on my own for a couple of years.”

“Oh, Joe. I’m sorry.”

“I turned out all right,” he said, lowering his head and shoveling in more food. He smiled suddenly, and the charm of it surprised her. She kept forgetting how good-looking he was, behind all that attitude. “Edmund cleaned me up and hauled me off to a Laker game.”

Her jaw dropped. To her knowledge, her father had been too busy for sports. He’d certainly never taken her to a game. “He did?”

“Yeah.” He smiled at the memory. “They won, too. Then he dumped me in a tough school designed for…troubled kids.”

“And for really smart ones, too, I’ll bet.”

Joseph’s head jerked up, his eyes hot and defensive. “Yeah,” he said finally, as though it was a hard thing to admit.

Now it made sense, all too well. She knew how attractive a homeless, orphaned, incredibly brilliant boy would have been to her father. Especially when all he’d gotten was a weak, not so smart female. Resentment hit, only to be beaten back by shame.