Maureen Child - A Bride For The Boss

“It’s already hot,” Vi said. “You are getting air conditioning put in, right?”

“Oh, yeah. Called them at about eight this morning, as soon as the sun came up and started sizzling. They’re backed up, though, so it’ll be a week or two before they can come out here.”

“Well,” Vi said, walking into the kitchen as comfortably as she would at her own house. “If you start melting before then, you can come and stay with Rafe and me at the ranch.”

“Ah, yes,” Andi said, following her friend into her kitchen—which was comfortably stuck in the 1950s. “What a good time. I can be the third wheel with the newlyweds.”

“We don’t have sex in front of people, you know,” Vi told her with a laugh. “We tried, but the housekeeper Rafe hired disapproved.”

She stuck her head in the refrigerator, pulled out a pitcher of tea and sighed with pleasure. “Knew I could count on you to have tea all ready to go. You get glasses. Do you have any cookies?”

“Some Oreos.” They’d been friends for so long, they worked in tandem. “In the pantry.”

“Thank God.”

Laughing, Andi filled two glasses with ice, then poured each of them some tea as Vi hurried into the walk-in pantry and came back out already eating a cookie. She sighed, rolled her eyes and moaned, “God, these are so good.”

Still chuckling, Andi took a seat at the tiny table and watched her friend dig into the cookie bag for another. “Rafe still watching what you eat?”

Vi dropped into the chair opposite her, picked up her tea and took a long drink. “Like a hawk. He found my stash of Hershey’s bars, so they’re gone.” She ate the next cookie with as much relish as she had the first. “I love the man like crazy but he’s making me a little nuts. Although, one thing I’ll say for him, he does keep ice cream stocked for me.”

“Well, that’s something,” Andi agreed, taking a seat opposite her.

“But, wow, I miss cookies. And cake. And brownies. The only bad part about moving to the Wild Aces when I married Rafe? Leaving the Double M and our housekeeper Teresa’s brownies. I swear they’re magic.” Vi sighed and reached for another cookie. “You want to make a batch of brownies?”

Andi really hated to quash the hopeful look on her friend’s face, but said, “Oven doesn’t work.” Andi turned to look at the pastel pink gas stove. The burners worked fine, but the oven had been dead for years, she was willing to bet. “And it’s too hot in here to bake anything.”

“True.” Vi turned her tea glass on the narrow kitchen table, studying the water ring it left behind. “And I didn’t really come here to raid your pantry, either, in spite of the fact that I’m eating all of your Oreos.”

“Okay, then why are you here?”

“I’m a spy,” Violet said, laughing. “And I’m here to report that Mac is really twisted up about you quitting.”

“Is he?” Well, that felt good, didn’t it? She had long known that she was indispensable in the office. Now he knew it, too, and that thought brought her an immense wave of satisfaction. Instantly, a ping of guilt began to echo inside her, but Andi shut it down quickly. After all, it wasn’t as if she wanted Mac to have a hard time. She was only taking the opportunity to enjoy the fact that he was. “How do you know?”

“Well, spy work isn’t easy,” Violet admitted. “We pregnant operatives must rely on information from reliable sources.”

Andi laughed shortly. “You mean gossip.”

“I resent that term,” Violet said with an indignant sniff. Then she shrugged and took another cookie. “Although, it’s accurate. Mac hasn’t actually said anything to me directly. Yet. But Laura called a couple hours ago practically in tears.”

“What happened?” Andi asked. “Mac’s not the kind of man to bring a woman to tears.”

“I don’t know,” Violet said, smiling. “He’s made me cry a few times.”

“Angry tears don’t count.”

“Then Laura’s tears don’t count, either,” Vi told her. “She was really mad—at you for leaving her alone in the office.”

“Probably why she made up the Jamaica story,” Andi muttered.

“Jamaica?”

“Never mind.” She waved one hand to brush that away. “What did Mac do?”

“Nothing new. Just the same old crabby attitude you’ve been dealing with for years. Laura just doesn’t know how to deal with it yet.”

Okay, now she felt a little guilty. Mac could be...difficult. And maybe she should have used her two weeks’ notice to prepare Laura for handling him. But damn it, she’d learned on her own, hadn’t she? Laura was just going to have to suck it up and deal.

“Anyway,” Vi continued, “I told her the best thing to do was stay out of his way when he starts grumbling under his breath. She said that’s exactly what he was doing already and that the office was too small for her to effectively disappear.”

Andi chuckled because she could imagine the woman trying to hunch into invisibility behind her desk. “Poor Laura. I really shouldn’t laugh, though, should I? I sort of left her holding the bag, so to speak, and now she’s having to put up with not only Mac’s demands but the fact that I’m not there to take the heat off.”

“Laura’s tough. She can take it.” Vi picked up a fourth cookie and sighed a little as she bit in. “Or she won’t. Either way, her choice. And if she walks out, too? An even better lesson for Mac.”

“You think?”

“Absolutely,” his sister said, waving her cookie for emphasis before popping it into her mouth and talking around it while she chewed. “The man thinks he’s the center of the universe and all the rest of us are just moons orbiting him.

“Maybe it really started when our parents died and he had to step up. You know, he’s only six years older than me, but he went from big brother to overbearing father figure in a finger snap.” She frowned a little, remembering. “We butted heads a lot, but in the end, Mac always found a way to win.”

Andi knew most of this family history. Over the years, Mac had talked to her about the private plane crash that had claimed his parents and how he’d worked to make sure that Violet felt safe and secure despite the tragedy that had rocked their family. He’d done it, too. Violet was not only a successful, happy adult, she was married and about to become a mother.

Maybe he had been overbearing—and knowing Mac, she really had no doubt of that—but he’d protected his sister, kept the family ranch and even managed to build on the business his parents had left behind until McCallum Enterprises was one of the biggest, most diversified companies in the country.

In all fairness to him, Andi had to say, “Looks to me like he did a good job.”

Violet shrugged and nodded. “Yeah, he did. But the thing is, he’s so used to people snapping to attention whenever he walks into a room, I think it’s good for him that you quit. That he’s finding out he can’t always win. It’ll be a growth moment for him.”

But Andi knew that growth wasn’t always easy. She also knew she should feel bad about being glad that Mac would have a hard time without her.

Apparently, though, she wasn’t that good a person.

* * *

She still wasn’t there.

From the moment Mac walked into the office that morning, a part of him had fully expected to find Andi right where she belonged, at her desk. But she hadn’t been.

Except for a few times when he’d had no other choice, Mac had spent most of the day ignoring Laura as she hunched behind her computer, pretending to be invisible. No doubt she’d been worried how the day would go without Andi there to take care of things.

Well, hell, he had been, too.