Janet Nye - Boss Meets Her Match

She can’t fall for a guy like him...

With kick-ass-and-take-names flair, hardworking Lena Reyes has everything a successful woman could want. Well...almost. She’s still single, which means her family is practically auditioning guys for Hispanic Bachelor. But none of these guys compare to her newest client: a sexy trust-fund artist who’s making Lena crazy in every way possible.

Born into wealth and privilege, Charles “Matt” Beaumont Matthews V is everything Lena isn’t. So why does she find him so deliciously irresistible? Now their attraction is breaking all kinds of rules. Worse still, Lena’s falling for Matt—hard. He’s either the perfect mistake...or her perfect match.

“Why do you do that?” Lena asked.

“Do what?”

“Every time you get real with me, let me see behind the smart-ass persona, you have to ruin it by being all annoying.”

Matt shifted closer and ran a finger along her jawline. She jerked away. “Lena. Look at me.”

She reluctantly turned to look. He was too close. Too everything. Those eyes. How could such icy blue be so hot?

“This,” he said as he took her hand. “This feeling right here is why you put up with me.”

He traced his fingers lightly across her palm. The sensation bypassed her brain, going straight to the very core of her.

She started to say he was crazy. She started to tell him to get out. But his lips were on hers and her hands were in his hair and oh dear God the man could kiss. He pulled her even closer, deepening the kiss. She kissed him back, ignoring the alarms from some distant rational part of herself.

Right now, she cared about nothing except for how good this felt.

Dear Reader,

Welcome back to beautiful Charleston, SC! I was very excited to have the opportunity to tell Lena’s story. It was also fun to bring Lena and Sadie back together.

For Lena, family is everything. Even when they are driving her crazy. She’s dedicated her life to lifting her family out of poverty, but now that the dream has been realized, she is left wondering, “What next?”

“What” did not include the impossibly annoying and sexy artist Charles Beaumont Matthews the Fifth. Or Matt, as he prefers.

For Matt, family is a touchy subject. A troubled youth led to estrangement and very hard feelings. While he is working to repair the damage, he struggles to accept that to fully live the life he wants, he may have to walk away from his family.

Family, by blood or by choice, is a central theme in my writing. The contrast between Lena’s family, who had been poor in money but rich in love and support, and Matt’s wealthy family, to whom obedience to family tradition is more important than personal fulfillment, is rather stark.

It is somewhere between those two extremes that Lena and Matt will find their HEA.

I hope you enjoy their journey.

Janet

Boss Meets Her Match

Janet Lee Nye

www.millsandboon.co.uk

JANET LEE NYE is a writer by day and a neonatal nurse by night. She loves a good pinot grigio and a well-placed “f-bomb.” She wants to be Helen Mirren when she grows up. She lives in Charleston, SC, with her fella and her felines and spends too much time on Twitter and not enough doing adult things like making doctor’s appointments and dusting.

My love, my strength, my wailing wall, the occasional boot in my rear, my partner in everything: Jason Zwiker. Love you, baby!

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

Dear Reader

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Extract

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

THAT IS THE ugliest thing I have ever seen. Lena leaned forward and squinted at the tiny white sticker in the corner of the painting. Five thousand dollars? Tie a paintbrush to my cat’s tail and she’d do a better job. She shifted on the bench. The sounds of the party echoed loudly from the floor below. Sipping her wine, she wrinkled her nose. Cheap chardonnay.

She didn’t want to be here, which was why she was hiding out on the second floor of the City Gallery. She wanted to go home. Take her shoes off and put pajamas on. Drink some wine that didn’t taste like battery acid. She straightened with a sigh. Might as well get it over with. Dr. Eliot Rutledge, famed neurosurgeon, very old money Charleston—and her first of many clients—was waiting for her.

Footsteps on the hardwood floor caught her attention. A man ambled slowly around the corner, looking at the art exhibited on the walls. Lena cut a glance in his direction. He didn’t fit with the suit-and-cocktail-dress crowd downstairs. His beige linen pants were slightly wrinkled—and that shabby white dress shirt. No. Just no. His dark blond hair was long and tied in a ponytail with a length of leather. A neat beard covered his face. He leaned down, looked at a price tag and whistled. Lena smiled.

“Pretty pricey, huh?” he asked, sliding down on the bench beside her.

She looked directly at him. Damn. That is a fine-looking man. The hair and beard couldn’t hide his high cheekbones and eyes so blue they almost didn’t look real. White teeth appeared as he grinned at her. Her stomach went quivery under that bad boy grin. She looked away and sipped more wine. She didn’t do bad boys anymore.

He gestured at the painting in front of them. It was an abstract, not quite as dense as a Pollock but not as minimalist as Munch. Slashes of red and blue, smears of purple and yellow. “What do you think of this one?”

She shrugged. “Not my style, to be honest.”

“Ah, man. I saw you sitting up here instead of being downstairs with all the mingling and small talk and I thought to myself, now, there’s a woman who doesn’t go for polite society bullshit. Thought you were up here seriously contemplating the meaning of art.”

She tried her perfect one-eyebrow-arch-and-glare trick. “Did you, now?”

All that got her was another of those inappropriate thought-provoking grins. “Indeed I did.”

“I think it’s ugly,” she said, taking another drink. “I think my friend’s nine-year-old could do better.”

His laugh echoed off the narrow corridor. “But one of those people downstairs will buy it.”

“Probably.” She stood. “Excuse me, but I have to find someone.”

“Ah,” Eliot Rutledge said, as he walked around the corner. “You’ve met. Wonderful.”

Lena looked from Dr. Rutledge to the man smiling up at her from the bench. “No,” she said, ice cubes practically dropping from the word. “We have not met.”

“Lena, this is our artist.”

A hot spark of anger flared in her chest and spread to her cheeks. The man stood, still smiling, and held out a hand. “Matt. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Lena.”

“Did you know who I was when you approached me?”

“Nope. Just a happy accident.”

She stared at him until the smile melted from his face. A long string of profanities pushed against her pressed lips. Breathe. Just breathe.