Melissa James - Daring to Date the Boss / The Tycoon Who Healed Her Heart - Daring to Date the Boss / The Tycoon Who Healed Her Heart

Aching to ask if she’d contacted her parents in the past few weeks, he forced himself not to reply to her secrets at all—she’d only hate him later if he did. Instead he asked, softly but in clear challenge, ‘What would you say to a patient that refused to try a new experience before even attempting it?’

At that, she stilled. Slowly, she mumbled something he couldn’t hear.

‘I have you safe with me,’ he went on, still gentle, persuasive. ‘I won’t let go.’

She gave a little, almost plaintive sigh. It was answer enough, since he could feel her disbelief beating from her, as strong and sure as her racing pulse.

Armand wondered if anyone had ever stayed the distance, not with her but for her. Had anyone ever put Rachel’s needs first?

‘Look around, Rachel,’ he murmured to distract her. ‘See how beautiful it all is.’

A small quiver ran through her. ‘I can’t. My eyes …’

With tenderness foreign to him until now, Armand lifted her face from the terrified contemplation of the snowboard and saw her goggles were totally fogged. ‘Are you so cold?’ Or worse, he thought to himself, had he frightened her into crying and not even noticed?

‘I’m from Texas. It reaches freezing there in winter.’

Her semi-defiant tone, and the way she pulled her face from his hold, filled him with relief. She was a fighter, all right. ‘And how long has it been since you visited in winter? LA’s climate hasn’t reached freezing probably since the last ice age.’

She turned away. ‘Good point,’ she said lightly enough, but something in her voice disturbed him.

‘How long has it been since you visited Texas at all?’ he asked quietly.

For a moment she neither moved nor spoke. Then she said, ‘How long has it been since you visited your father’s grave?’

She’d hit him with the carelessness of a drive-by shot into a crowd. How could he possibly have expected a wound so sudden and deep from a woman that until now had seemed as empathetic as she was helpless? And how could she possibly know?

Answer: she couldn’t. Just as he didn’t know anything about her. They were two people forced into a strange proximity, knowing only what they saw—strangers in the night, each giving the other something they needed. And that was how it had to stay. He should have known the ‘defenceless kitten’ thing was only part of her woman’s repertoire. Her segment of the Dr Pete show proved she had far too much perception for any man’s comfort.

‘Interesting question,’ he said, his voice calm and steady, not even a tremor to betray him. ‘Now, shall we continue, or are you going to let your fears win … Dr Rinaldi?’

Her back tightened, notch by notch, even in the heavy ski jacket. ‘My name,’ she said with slow, deliberate disgust, ‘Is Chase.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry, I wasn’t certain which of your current names to call you,’ he retorted in the blandest tone he’d ever used, injury added to insult. ‘So has Rinaldi served its purpose? You can throw it away without regret?’

She wobbled on the snowboard as she turned fully back to him, hanging onto him for balance. Yet it didn’t seem funny at all. ‘The name Rhonda Braithwaite got me out of LA without his PI finding me. From Paris, I changed to Rachel Chase.’ With a heavily gloved hand she pulled the goggles from her face. Her eyes were red-rimmed, watery, but she faced him from her ten-inch disadvantage with quaint dignity. ‘If you’d ever had your wrist and ribs broken by someone you’d once trusted and loved, you’d know why I want to leave his name behind me—why it hurts so much to hear it. But believe me when I say I will never forget, no matter how many names I take on, or how many times I reinvent myself.’

It was a battle-axe blow to his sword-thrust—and a knockout punch for honesty. And, though he was looking into her eyes, he saw three pairs of phantom eyes beside her, behind her. Because he’d seen that look before: with Maman, Johanna and Carla when they had waved goodbye to him, the day he’d started boarding school. They’d been left alone with a husband and father who drank and gambled too much and took out his anger on his family, without their big brother to protect them.

He cursed himself in silence, then said, ‘Rachel, I—’

She put up a hand. ‘I’ve heard enough apologies lately to last me a while. Now are you going to cure me of one of my less rational fears or not, Dr Bollinger? You said something about not letting me go, I believe?’

Her eyes were twinkling now. Even though he knew it was a thin blanket covering the pain beneath, it was taking them from dangerous waters to the safer ebb-tide. So he smiled back. ‘So I did, Mademoiselle Chase,’ he acknowledged with mock gravity, bowing his head, sweeping a hand around them to their very private night-ski-run he’d arranged. ‘But not until you have at least appreciated all the trouble I went to for you. All this beauty surrounds us, and so far you’ve only looked at the snowboard.’

As he spoke, he pulled out a clean tissue—when skiing, he always kept a packet on hand—gently wiped her eyes and the goggles hanging around her neck.

‘Would you like to wipe my nose as well, Papa Bear?’ she retorted with a loud, theatrical sniff, and he laughed. He laughed because it was cute; laughed because no woman had sniffed with him before unless it was in rage or for effect, using tears to get her way. No matter how badly he ached to take this a step further, Rachel wanted nothing from him but a skiing lesson. Despite the disappointment, it was a liberating feeling: no expectation, no neediness, just two sort-of-friends having a night-snowboarding session.

With gravity, he put the tissue to her nose and with laughing eyes she made a loud raspberry sound with her mouth, pretending to blow. They both laughed.

‘Oh …’

Looking at her—what was it about her that made it so hard to look away?—he saw she was looking into the night. There was wonder in those big eyes as she took in the scattered cloud in the star-filled night, the poles with the burning bags lighting up the night, the soft-dancing snowflakes and the white-laden fir trees along the slope. And, though it was all she said, she’d made all the trouble to surprise her more than worthwhile.

‘You’re welcome,’ he said, resisting the urge to touch that cold, snowy cheek or to bend and kiss those bitten pink lips, half-open as she drank in the night.

Had his voice sounded as hoarse as it felt to him? Did she know how much he longed to just taste her mouth once, to move his hands over her skin and see those beautiful eyes come alive for him?

Stop it. The last thing she needs right now is to start something I’ve never wanted to finish. I’m her emotional umbrella, nothing more. In a few weeks she’ll be moving on.

For the first time, a woman would be walking away from him and he would have no choice but to let her. So, struggling to ignore the stupid physical ache to touch that was part and parcel of being a man, he swirled his snowboard around, facing down the slope with her body fitting into his, sweet and snug. He ached again and again. It felt as if the ache would never end.

Rachel; this is for Rachel. She deserves to know there’s one man she can turn to without his demands, without regrets. He had to be a better man than he’d ever been. For Rachel.

‘Trust me?’ he asked softly.

After the briefest of hesitations, and a tiny wobble, she whispered, ‘I’m trying to.’

‘I won’t hurt you, Rachel.’ Why did the light, teasing tone he’d employed to such effect in the past suddenly sound like a solemn vow? ‘I won’t let you fall.’

Her expression turned sad for a moment, even as she kept hanging onto him for the balance that seemed so elusive for her. ‘There are some falls nobody can control, some hurts that can’t be prevented.’ Then she grinned again. ‘But if I end up in hospital in traction you are so dead, Bollinger.’