Hired for the Boss's Bedroom by Cathy Williams Page A

anything.’
    ‘You’d be surprised what I’m capable of achieving,’ Leo informed her with such bone-deep, casual conviction that Heather was left in no doubt that he would have a consultant dashing out to see him at the speed of light.
    He was heading towards the kitchen and Heather followed in his wake, rather like an obedient dog waiting to take orders from its master. As he grabbed himself a bottle of water from the fridge and began to drink, he actually snapped his fingers, and she began telling him the sequence of events, concluding by assuring him that his mother was fine, all things considered.
    Leo continued to drink until the water was completely gone, then he looked at her carefully.
    He had been looking forward to seeing her again, having, with a sense of satisfaction, regained control over the situation by realising that her vanishing acts had been a direct consequence of the impact he had made on her—forget all that rubbish about never going near a man like him in a thousand years. If she had been so convinced of her rightness, she wouldn’t have spent the two weekends he had been up on mysterious away-days.
    Of course, he wouldn’t touch her with a barge pole now, but it still made him feel good that he hadn’t been off-target when he had tuned in to that high-voltage sexual awareness he had felt emanating from her.
    Annoyingly, however, he was aware that his body was lagging behind his thoughts for once.
    Not even the alarming dullness of her clothes—a pair of baggy, grey jogging-bottoms, an equally baggy tee shirt and an even baggier cardigan thrown over it—could reduce the surge of adrenaline he had felt the minute she had opened the door to him.
    The fact that she hadn’t been able to conceal her reaction to seeing him was overshadowed by the realisation that he wasn’t quite as much in control of things as he had anticipated.
    ‘Why didn’t you think to call me sooner?’
    Heather counted to ten. ‘Everything was frantic here. By the time things had calmed down and Katherine had been seen to, I called you at your house, but you weren’t there and your mother couldn’t remember your mobile number.’
    ‘It’s programmed into her phone.’
    ‘Which she didn’t think to take with her!’ She took a deep breath.
    ‘She must have asked you to bring it for her once she was at hospital?’
    ‘Katherine doesn’t see her mobile phone as some kind of indispensable appendage, Leo. You might, but she doesn’t. In fact, she very rarely remembers to take it with her when she goes out so, no, it wasn’t on her list of requests when I came back here to fetch her some clothes for the hospital. If I had seen it lying around, then I might have thought to take it in for her, but I didn’t.’
    ‘And I suppose it didn’t occur to you to look for it because it’s not a necessary appendage for you either?’ He raked his fingers through his hair in frustration because he could feel himself getting away from the matter in hand, falling victim to an inexplicable surge of something, some uninvited emotion that he didn’t want or have time for. ‘I might have got here sooner if I had been contacted earlier. How’s Daniel been?’
    ‘How do you think?’ Heather asked, and then she subdued her aggression to add, in a more level voice, ‘He’s been pretty rotten, poor kid. I think he remembers…Well, it might help if you talk to him. He’s asleep now, but in the morning. Just reassure him that everything’s going to be okay.’
    ‘Of course.’ How the hell was he going to do that? Leo wondered. That kind of intimate conversation with his son did not come naturally to him. Maybe, if he’d been a father figure throughout his formative years, he might know how to handle things…But, no; he refused to think of the unpleasant circumstances surrounding that murky issue. In the past month or so, the boy had at least begun to look at him slightly less unforgivingly. He had opened up enough to