The Boss, the Baby and Me

The Boss, the Baby and Me
Raye Morgan

In this secretary's opinion, Allman Industries' newest bigwig was a snake in the grass!After all, the feud simmering between the rival Allman and McLaughlin clans had divided Chivaree, Texas, for over a century. So why in tarnation had Kurt McLaughlin switched sides to work for Jodie Allman's family-run business…as her boss no less?Although Jodie harbored a forbidden attraction to the disarmingly handsome thorn in her side, she didn't trust him. Then, in a twist of fate, she found herself playing house with the sidelined single dad - and her heart melted at the sight of Kurt doting on his angelic baby girl. Would Jodie be satisfied with mending fences with the enemy after a taste of family bliss had given her an appetite for so much more?

“I can’t go back to work for at least two weeks,” Kurt said cryptically.

“Oh. That’s too bad.” Jodie had visions of working without him around to distract her. Her spirits brightened. Maybe things were looking up after all.

“I’m going to have to work at home—and that’s where you will come in,” he said.

She blinked. “I will?”

“Sure. You can work with me here.”

The nerve of that man.

“No way!” she exclaimed.

He laughed softly. “Jodie, calm down. This is the way I want it. You’re going to have to comply.”

His gaze was dark and fathomless, and his jaw was set. He was all boss right now. He was giving orders.

The problem was, she wasn’t all that good at taking them.

The Boss, the Baby and Me

Raye Morgan

RAYE MORGAN

has spent almost two decades, while writing over fifty novels, searching for the answer to that elusive question: Just what is that special magic that happens when a man and a woman fall in love? Every time she thinks she has the answer, a new wrinkle pops up, necessitating another book! Meanwhile, after living in Holland, Guam, Japan and Washington, D.C., she currently makes her home in Southern California with her husband and two of her four boys.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter One

The man had to go.

Jodie Allman glared at Kurt McLaughlin, head of the marketing department of Allman Industries, as he went on talking earnestly to Mabel Norton. Office hours were long over and Mabel was on her way home, her handbag slung over her shoulder. Kurt didn’t glance Jodie’s way as he conversed with the director of Hospitality Services, but she knew that he knew she was standing there across the office floor, waiting for further instructions.

“One…two…three…” she whispered to herself, tapping her foot as she counted. Counting to ten was a primitive but well-honored way of keeping control of her temper. It was probably time she moved on to more sophisticated methods—such as finding a way to get the man out of her life.

“It’s such a simple thing,” she told herself for the hundredth time that week, pushing her thick, blond hair back behind her ear in a gesture of impatience. “My father owns this company. Why the heck can’t I get him to announce one particular layoff?”

Of course, she hadn’t actually tried. Thinking about having Kurt thrown out on his ear was infinitely satisfying. But actually watching him pack up his meager belongings in a cardboard box and carry them sadly to his truck while the female support staff sobbed helplessly and shot daggers at Jodie would be another thing entirely. She wasn’t nearly the tough-as-nails independent woman she would like to pretend.

The frustrating thing was, it really seemed that no one else could see through Kurt McLaughlin the way she could. Even the others in her family didn’t seem to take the threat he posed seriously. And all her coworkers around here adored him. The fact that he was over six feet tall with a build right out of a woman’s fantasy and a face handsome enough to turn heads in the cafeteria didn’t hurt. The auburn hair that always looked a little wind-ruffled, and the green eyes that seemed to scan a woman right down to her heart and soul, were added attractions that muddied the waters for most females. They were so busy being bowled over by his admitted charms that they didn’t notice what he was up to.

She’d only been back in town and working for him for a few weeks, but she’d gotten his number right away. Once you realized what his game was, it was just so obvious.

Suddenly she noticed he was looking up at her, though he was still talking to Mabel. And to her astonishment, he was crooking his finger in her direction. Crooking his finger!

Well, that did it. There was no way she was dashing up, like a little, woolly dog, to a man who crooked his finger at her. She wasn’t going to wait around any longer, either. It was way past time to go home. The three of them were probably the only people left in this ancient building, as it was. With one last baleful look in his direction, she turned on her heel and strode for the elevator, heading back up to her office to get her things.

“Hey.”

It took her a moment to realize he was coming after her. Quickly, she jabbed at the Close Door button, and the doors began to move. But he was too fast for her, stepping into the elevator, and reaching across her to jab at the “stop” button. She hit the Close Door button again, just for emphasis, and he turned to grin at her as the doors opened, closed and opened again, before finally grounding together with a screeching of gears.

His grin faded fast.

“Uh-oh,” he said, turning to look at the control panel.

The elevator shot up a dozen feet or so, then shuddered to a stop, complaining loudly.

“Uh-oh,” Jodie echoed, agreeing with him for the first time in recent memory.

An eerie silence reigned while they both stared at the control panel, hoping for a sign of life. Then Kurt sprang forward and tried one button after another, getting absolutely no response. Alarmed, Jodie stepped forward, as well, and did the same, pushing every button twice. There was absolutely no indication that the buttons were connected to anything.

“Look what you did,” Kurt muttered darkly. “We’re stuck.”

“What I did?” she responded, throwing him a smoldering glare. “You’re the one who forced your way onto my elevator ride.”

“I had to do that. You were trying to escape.”

“Escape!” she choked, as she fought back the retort she was tempted to make. She took a deep breath.

Calm. We must remain calm. This is, after all, your current boss. Such as he may be.

“I was standing there waiting for you, trying to catch your attention for ages, but you were talking away to Mabel Norton as though it was the most important thing you’d done all day.”

“It was. The most important thing in my world, at any rate.” His face softened. “I was getting some advice on finding child care for Katy.”

“Oh.” She winced, knowing only too well how he felt about his young daughter.

“I’ve been having some trouble finding someone to care for her during the day.” His look sharpened. “You wouldn’t happen to know anyone who might like a baby-sitting job, would you?”

She backed away, hands out. “Sorry. I don’t know much about babies. Or about those who like to care for them, for that matter.”

“Yes, I realized you weren’t big on babies from the first,” he said dryly.

That startled her a bit. She didn’t know what she’d done to give him that impression, and something about the unemotional way he’d put it made her uncomfortable. But let’s face it, babies made her uncomfortable.

Still, that was hardly the point. They had larger problems at the moment. Here they were, caught together in an old elevator in a building that should have been torn down years ago. But it was considered a historic landmark by the mavens of this Texas cow-country town of Chivaree. Things like this just didn’t happen. Did they?

It seemed they did. But everything had been a little out of whack ever since she’d returned to her hometown after an absence of almost ten years and found a McLaughlin in a position at Allman Industries that she never would have expected a McLaughlin to have. And then she’d been told she’d be working for him. That had certainly gone against the grain.

She’d grown up thinking of all McLaughlins as the elitist enemy, the rich people up on the hill, looking down their noses at the Allmans and their ilk. Yes, “ilk” had been a word she’d heard used about her family. She’d never been too clear on what it meant, but she did know it was a way of being condescending toward her kind. And she knew enough about some pretty unsavory incidents in the far past that had poisoned relations between the two clans—and probably always would.

Throughout her childhood, the Allmans had always been scrambling for pennies while the McLaughlins were happily buying up the entire town. There had been times when her family might even have skimmed the edges of the law just a bit here and there. But knowing that had only hardened the resentment she’d felt when others in this town whispered that the Allmans were a shiftless rabble always out for a fast buck.