Barbara Boswell - Who's The Boss?

It was as if he were looming over her, a most unfamiliar sensation. Kylie felt her stomach tighten. At five foot eight, she wasn’t used to feeling small and powerless in a man’s presence, but Cade Austin’s big muscular frame seemed to dwarf her. It was a disconcerting sensation. No wonder Bridget had taken off. At a petite five-two, she was like a mouse facing a lion.

Cade’s face was hard and still, and his hazel eyes watched Kylie with the same concentration said lion might focus on his intended prey. She swallowed and willed herself to maintain her composure. She was no scurrying little mouse.

“I know what you’re doing and it’s not going to work,” she said, summoning up the necessary bravado. A useful trick of the legal trade. How many times had she faked a bold confidence she was far from feeling in the courtroom?

“What am I trying to do, Kylie?”

It didn’t escape her notice that he’d used her first name for the first time. Big deal. Everybody called everybody by their first names these days; formality had gone the way of the TV antenna. So why did Cade’s use of her given name seem to create an aura of intimacy between them?

“You’re trying to physically intimidate me, Cade.” She used his first name in an attempt to counter his effect on her. To turn the disturbing intimacy into everyday, meaningless informality.

“If that’s what you think, I apologize. Physical intimidation isn’t my style.” Even as he spoke the words, his fingers closed around her upper arm. “Come into my office. We have a lot to discuss.”

“May I suggest making your invitations sound less like orders?”

A grin slashed his face. “Now why would I want to do that? There are times when one must be persuasive, Kylie.” He led her into his office, his fingers still encircling her arm.

“I believe you mean coercive. And I don’t appreciate it. Cade.”

She was excruciatingly aware of his hand on her arm, of his nearness as he walked closely alongside her. If he wasn’t physically intimidating, he was certainly physical, and she was reacting to him with a primal feminine awareness.

Inside his office, Cade dropped his hand and closed the door. “Is it true you lost your job?” he asked, as frankly as Bridget had blurted it out.

Kylie winced. “Unfortunately, yes. There were budget cuts—” She paused to see his dark brows arch, his glance unmistakably skeptical.

“It’s true!” she exclaimed, stung. “What did you think, that I’d been fired for—”

“Incompetence? Such a possibility never crossed my mind.”

Right words, wrong tone. He was deliberately baiting her. Kyhe resolved not to rise to it. “I don’t know what, if anything, you knew about my job. But I was with the Public Defender’s office in Philadelphia. The new governor made big cuts in the state budget and left the counties to decide where and how to downsize services.”

“I’m going to take a wild guess that your department was downsized and your job along with it?”

Kylie nodded glumly. “The Philadelphia Public Defender’s office staff was one of the agencies to feel the budget ax. They cut nine full-time investigators and twelve attorneys, on the basis of seniority. I was one of the newest hires, I’d been working there since I graduated from law school two years ago.”

She gazed out the window. Cade’s big corner office had a spectacular view of Lake Erie, which lay in the distance. The nppling waters almost seemed to blend into the cloudy gray skyline. “I don’t know how the people left in the PD’s office will ever get the job done now. Even at full staff, we were shorthanded and had too many cases. Our clients will have to bear the brunt of—”

“I’d better warn you that I’m not a bleeding heart who cries over the rights of all those unfortunate, misunderstood criminals. My sympathies lie with the victims of crimes who are usually forgotten while the legal eagles enjoy their competitive courtroom jousts.”

Kyhe stifled a groan. She’d heard that rhetoric before, too many times to count. She’d given up trying to defend herself against those who had no use for defense attorneys, especially ones paid for by state tax dollars. She stood silently, staring at the lake.

“Don’t I even rate a rebuttal?” Cade was unaccustomed to the silent treatment. He stared at her profile, his eyes lingering on the porcelain texture of her skin, the graceful curve of her neck. He couldn’t keep his eyes off her, he acknowledged resentfully, while she couldn’t seem to tear her eyes away from Lake Erie.

She appeared so aloof and unreachable, very much in control. He felt an inexplicable urge to shatter her poise. To get under her skin, the way she’d so effortlessly gotten under his.

“I’m waiting for your righteous ‘even-the-most-heinous-criminal-has the-right-to-a-lawyer-who’ll-try-to-get-him-off’ spiel.” His tone and stance were as challenging as an opposing counsel’s. “So what if a homicidal psychopath walks on a technicality? It’s all in a day’s work, and then you lawyers go off and have a drink together afterward.”

But he didn’t succeed in putting even a minor dent in Kylie’s composure.

“It’s not like your views toward defense lawyers are unique, you know,” she said dryly. “Even my parents and my brother hated that I wasn’t on the prosecution team. You haven’t said anything I haven’t already heard a few thousand times.”

“I think you just called me a repetitive, predictable bore. Ouch.”

Now what? For the first time in his memory, Cade wasn’t certain what to say or do next. He was floundering and unfocused, just like this meeting. An unheard of lapse in the professional history of Cade Austin. If only she weren’t so attractive, if only she were less verbally adept. If only...

Stalling for time, Cade pressed a button on the intercom. “Donna, bring Miss Brennan and me some coffee,” he ordered. Donna’s coffee was strong enough to power a space shuttle. Hopefully, a dose of it would jolt him out of this uncharacteristic mental morass.

A few moments later Donna entered, carrying a tray with a coffeepot, two cups and containers of cream and sugar. She placed the tray on the wide square table that stood between a charcoal gray leather sofa and two matching armchairs.

“Can I get you anything else?” Donna hovered, solicitous.

“This is fine.” Cade motioned her away, and Donna obediently headed for the door.

“Thank you very much, Donna,” Kylie said, smiling warmly. She did not approve of Cade’s cavalier manner toward his secretary and hoped that she sounded gracious enough to make up for it. He’d ordered Donna around and hadn’t even asked or thanked her properly for the favor she’d done for them!

Cade sat down on the sofa with his coffee. Across the office, Kylie stood stitfly beside his desk, making no move to join him.

He sighed. It was obvious she was displeased. Well, that was par for the course. Brennans were invariably ticked off about something. There was nothing too trivial to escape their wrath. Gene excepted, of course.

“I know you’re upset about something.” He’d decided long ago that the best way to deal with the ever-edgy clan was to be up-front with them. Kyhe was one of them; he better follow his usual procedure. “Are you offended by my opinion of the criminal justice system?”

“Hardly. You’re certainly entitled to your own opinion.”

“I agree. But if that isn’t it, what is? I’m not a mind reader so unless you tell me what’s wrong, we’re at a standstill.”

“I’ll be happy to tell you.” Kylie’s eyes flashed. “It bothers me the way you autocratically make assumptions and then imperiously act on them. For instance, you didn’t ask me if I wanted coffee, you simply demanded that Donna bring it. And when she did, you never even thanked her, you simply flicked her off like she was a—a gnat.”

“I did no such thing!” Cade jumped to his feet, indignant. The hot coffee spilled over the sides of the cup onto his fingers. He muttered a curse under his breath.

“Are you all right? Did you burn yourself?”

“I’m fine!” His fingers felt as if they were on fire as he set the cup on the table, though he would’ve rather faced amputation than to admit pain to her! “As for your accusation, it’s ridiculous and unfair. I treat Donna and everyone else at the company with respect.”

“Of course, you’re denying your dictatorial behavior because it is so ingrained that you aren’t even aware of how you’re perceived.”

“Donna has worked for me for the past six years and I can assure you that she does not perceive me as brushing her off like a gnat!”

“Maybe not.” Kylie shrugged. “Because she’s grown accustomed to such treatment. Just as my cousin Bndget accepted your threat to dock her pay if she didn’t instantly obey your command. It’s obvious to me that your management style is of the ‘when you say jump, the employees must reply how high’ school.”

“My management style is what made this company the success it is today, Miss Brennan. BrenCo is thriving. We’re not only prosperous, we’re the biggest employer in this town. Your uncle certainly had no complaints when I refocused and expanded BrenCo from a small household waste disposal firm to a regional environmental cleanup leader in its field. This past year has been BrenCo’s most lucrative yet, and within the next five to ten years we’ll—”

He abruptly broke off. “Damn, I see where you’re headed. Typical attorney trick, create a smoke screen to obscure the facts. You’re complaining about Donna when what you’re really trying to do is to set up a—”

“Let me set the record straight. I was not using a smoke screen to obscure any facts, Mr. Austin. I was criticizing your management style and being quite forthright about it.”

“Don’t bother to equivocate. I read your agenda loud and clear, lady. You’re in cahoots with your uncles to sell BrenCo,” Cade said harshly. “You know that Gene’s will set up provisions for BrenCo’s management to remain the same until one year after his death. Now the time is up. And here you are.”

Kylie guessed that health workers learning the Ebola virus was in their midst looked a lot like Cade Austin did at this moment, faced with her presence. And he seemed to be waiting for her to say something.

“Here I am,” she agreed, noncommittally.

Her simple statement seemed to further infuriate him. “That this year happened to be the most productive one in the company’s history has only whetted your family’s urge to sell.” Cade glared at her accusingly. “They have delusions of striking it rich when in reality selling the company is akin to killing the goose who laid the golden eggs. Not that I expect the Brennans to grasp the implications of something as intricate as an allegory.”

“I’m a Brennan and I have no trouble understanding allegories,” Kylie countered.

Cade might know her relatives better than she, but they were her relatives and she was getting a little tired of listening to him take verbal swipes at them. “And I’m not in cahoots with anybody. I don’t have a hidden agenda. Are you one of those paranoid types who sees a conspiracy lurking behind every remark and every action? Your motto is Trust No One?”

“If I have a motto, it would be Trust No Brennan.” Cade glowered at her. “Gene excepted, of course.”

“Of course.” Kylie was exasperated. “Sounds like you and Uncle Gene had yourselves a merry old time, sitting around trashing the rest of the Brennans. You delighted in taking offense at perceived slights and misinterpreting everything that was said and done. Yes, I’m beginning to get a very clear picture of things now.”