Diana Palmer - Matt Caldwell: Texas Tycoon

“But you said your father raised him.”

“Matt has had a pretty bad break all around. Our grandparents were killed in a car wreck, and then just a few months later, their house burned down,” he added. “There was some gossip that it was intentional to collect on insurance, but nothing was ever proven. Matt was outside with Beth, in the yard, early that morning when it happened. She’d taken him out to see the roses, a pretty strange and unusual thing for her. Lucky for Matt, though, because he’d have been in the house, and would have died. The insurance settlement was enough for Beth to treat herself to some new clothes and a car. She left Matt with my dad and took off with the first man who came along.” His eyes were full of remembered outrage on Matt’s behalf. “Grandfather left a few shares of stock in a ranch to him, along with a small trust that couldn’t be touched until Matt was twenty-one. That’s the only thing that kept Beth from getting her hands on it. When he inherited it, he seemed to have an instinct for making money. He never looked back.”

“What happened to his mother?” she asked.

“We heard that she died a few years ago. Matt never speaks of her.”

“Poor little boy,” she said aloud.

“Don’t make that mistake,” he said at once. “Matt doesn’t need pity.”

“I guess not. But it’s a shame that he had to grow up so alone.”

“You’d know about that.”

She smiled sadly. “I guess so. My dad died years ago. Mama supported us the best way she could. She wasn’t very intelligent, but she was pretty. She used what she had.” Her eyes were briefly haunted. “I haven’t gotten over what she did. Isn’t it horrible, that in a few seconds you can destroy your own life and several other peoples’ like that? And what was it all for? Jealousy, when there wasn’t even a reason for it. He didn’t care about me—he just wanted to have a good time with an innocent girl, him and his drunk friends.” She shivered at the memory. “Mama thought she loved him. But that jealous rage didn’t get him back. He died.”

“I agree that she shouldn’t have shot him, but it’s hard to defend what he and his friends were doing to you at the time, Leslie.”

She nodded. “I know,” she said simply. “Sometimes kids get the short end of the stick, and it’s up to them to do better with their future.”

All the same, she wished that she’d had a normal upbringing, like so many other kids had.

After their conversation, she felt sorry for Matt Caldwell and wished that they’d started off better. She shouldn’t have overreacted. But it was curious that he’d been so offensive to her, when Ed said that he was the soul of courtesy around women. Perhaps he’d just had a bad day.

Later in the week, Matt was back, and Leslie began to realize how much trouble she’d landed herself in from their first encounter.

He walked into Ed’s office while Ed was out at a meeting, and the ice in his eyes didn’t begin to melt as he watched Leslie typing away at the computer. She hadn’t seen him, and he studied her with profound, if prejudiced, curiosity. She was thin and not much above average height, with short blond hair that curled toward her face. Nice skin, but she was much too pale. He remembered her eyes most of all, wide and full of distaste as he came close. It amazed him that there was a woman on the planet who could find his money repulsive, even if he didn’t appeal to her himself. It was new and unpleasant to discover a woman who didn’t want him. He’d never been repulsed by a woman in his life. It left him feeling inadequate. Worse, it brought back memories of the woman who’d rejected him, who’d given him away at the age of six because she didn’t want him.

She felt his eyes on her and lifted her head. Gray eyes widened and stared as her hands remained suspended just over the black keyboard.

He was wearing a vested gray suit. It looked very expensive, and his eyes were dark and cutting. He had a cigar in his hand, but it wasn’t lit. She hoped he wasn’t going to try to smoke it in the confined space, because she was allergic to tobacco smoke.

“So you’re Ed’s,” he murmured in that deep, cutting tone.

“Ed’s assistant,” she agreed. “Mr. Caldwell…”

“What did you do to land the job?” he continued with a faintly mocking smile. “And how often?”

She wasn’t getting what he implied. She blinked, still staring. “I beg your pardon?”

“Why did Ed bring you in here above ten other more qualified applicants?” he persisted.

“Oh, that.” She hesitated. She couldn’t tell him the real reason, so she told him enough of the truth to distract him. “I have the equivalent of an associate in arts degree in business and I worked as a paralegal for his father for four years in a law office,” she said. “I might not have the bachelor’s degree that was preferred, but I have experience. Or so Ed assured me,” she added, looking worried.

“Why didn’t you finish college?” he persisted.

She swallowed. “I had…some personal problems at the time.”

“You still have some personal problems, Miss Murry,” he replied lazily, but his eyes were cold and alert in a lean, hard face. “You can put me at the top of the list. I had other plans for the position you’re holding. So you’d better be as good as Ed says you are.”

“I’ll give value for money, Mr. Caldwell,” she assured him. “I work for my living. I don’t expect free rides.”

“Don’t you?”

“No, I don’t.”

He lifted the cigar to his mouth, looked at the wet tip, sighed and slipped it back down to dangle, unlit in his fingers.

“Do you smoke?” she asked, having noted the action.

“I try to,” he murmured.

Just as he spoke, a handsome woman in her forties with blond hair in a neat bun and wearing a navy-and-white suit, walked down the hall toward him.

He glared at her as she paused in the open door of Ed’s office. “I need you to sign these, Mr. Caldwell. And Mr. Bailey is waiting in your office to speak to you about that committee you want him on.”

“Thanks, Edna.”

Edna Jones smiled. “Good day, Miss Murry. Keeping busy, are you?”

“Yes, ma’am, thank you,” Leslie replied with a genuine smile.

“Don’t let him light that thing,” Edna continued, gesturing toward the cigar dangling in Matt’s fingers. “If you need one of these—” she held up a small water pistol “— I’ll see that you get one.” She smiled at a fuming Matt. “You’ll be glad to know that I’ve already passed them out to the girls in the other executive offices, Mr. Caldwell. You can count on all of us to help you quit smoking.”

Matt glared at her. She chuckled like a woman twenty years younger, waved to Leslie, and stalked off back to the office. Matt actually started to make a comical lunge after her, but caught himself in time. It wouldn’t do to show weakness to the enemy.

He gave Leslie a cool glance, ignoring the faint amusement in her gray eyes. With a curt nod, he followed Edna down the hall, the damp, expensive cigar still dangling from his lean fingers.

From her first day on the job, Leslie was aware of Matt’s dislike and disapproval of her. He piled the work on Ed, so that it would inevitably drift down to Leslie. A lot of it was really unnecessary, like having her type up old herd records from ten years ago, which had never been converted to computer files. He said it was so that he could check progress on the progeny of his earlier herd sires, but even Ed muttered when Leslie showed him what she was expected to do.

“We have secretaries to do this sort of thing,” Ed grumbled as he stared at the yellowed pages on her desk. “I need you for other projects.”

“Tell him,” Leslie suggested.

He shook his head. “Not in the mood he’s been in lately,” he said with a rueful smile. “He isn’t himself.”

“Did you know that his secretary is armed?” she asked suddenly. “She carries a water pistol around with her.”

Ed chuckled. “Matt asked her to help him stop smoking cigars. Not that he usually did it inside the building,” he was quick to add. “But Mrs. Jones feels that if you can’t light a cigar, you can’t smoke it. She bought a water pistol for herself and armed the other secretaries, too. If Matt even lifts a cigar to his mouth in the executive offices, they shoot him.”

“Dangerous ladies,” she commented.

“You bet. I’ve seen…”

“Nothing to do?” purred a soft, deep voice from behind Ed. The piercing dark eyes didn’t match the bantering tone.

“Sorry, Matt,” Ed said immediately. “I was just passing the time of day with Leslie. Can I do anything for you?”

“I need an update on that lot of cattle we placed with Ballenger,” he said. He stared at Leslie with narrowed eyes. “Your job, I believe?”

She swallowed and nodded, jerking her fingers on the keyboard so that she opened the wrong file and had to push the right buttons to close it again. Normally she wasn’t a nervous person, but he made her ill at ease, standing over her without speaking. Ed seemed to be a little twitchy, himself, because he moved back to his own office the minute the phone rang, placing himself out of the line of fire with an apologetic look that Leslie didn’t see.

“I thought you were experienced with computers,” Matt drawled mockingly as he paused beside her to look over her shoulder.

The feel of his powerful body so close behind her made every muscle tense. Her fingers froze on the keyboard, and she was barely breathing.

With a murmured curse, Matt stepped back to the side of the desk, fighting the most intense emotions he’d ever felt. He stuck his hands deep into the pockets of his slacks and glared at her.

She relaxed, but only enough to be able to pull up the file he wanted and print it for him.

He took it out of the printer tray when it was finished and gave it a slow perusal. He muttered something, and tossed the first page down on Leslie’s desk.

“Half these words are misspelled,” he said curtly.

She looked at it on the computer screen and nodded. “Yes, they are, Mr. Caldwell. I’m sorry, but I didn’t type it.”

Of course she hadn’t typed it, it was ten years old, but something inside him wanted to hold her accountable for it.

He moved away from the desk as he read the rest of the pages. “You can do this file—and the others—over,” he murmured as he skimmed. “The whole damned thing’s illiterate.”

She knew that there were hundreds of records in this particular batch of files, and that it would take days, not minutes or hours, to complete the work. But he owned the place, so he could set the rules. She pursed her lips and glanced at him speculatively. Now that he was physically out of range, she felt safe again. “Your wish is my command, boss,” she murmured dryly, surprising a quick glance from him. “Shall I just put aside all of Ed’s typing and devote the next few months to this?”

Her change of attitude from nervous kid to sassy woman caught him off guard. “I didn’t put a time limit on it,” Matt said curtly. “I only said, do it!”

“Oh, yes, sir,” she agreed at once, and smiled vacantly.

He drew in a short breath and glared down at her. “You’re remarkably eager to please, Miss Murry. Or is it just because I’m the boss?”

“I always try to do what I’m asked to do, Mr. Caldwell,” she assured him. “Well, almost always,” she amended. “Within reason.”

He moved back toward the desk. As he leaned over to put down the papers she’d printed for him, he saw her visibly tense. She was the most confounding woman he’d ever known, a total mystery.