Her Impossible Boss Read Online Free PDF

and Mary were focused. In her own good-natured way she had stubbornly refused to be pushed into a way of life which she thought she couldn’t handle. No one had ever bluntly said the things that Matt had said to her, or implied that she was a coward, scared of looking like a failure next to her sisters. She told herself that he knew nothing about her—but his words reverberated in her head like a nest of angry wasps.
    She nearly bumped into him when he stopped at the kitchen door. She stepped past him to see her charge sitting at the kitchen table, hunched over a bowl of cereal which she was playing with—filling the spoon with milk, raising it high above the bowl and then slowly tilting the milk back in, unconcerned that half of it was splashing onto the fine grainy wood of the table.
    Tess didn’t know what she had expected. One thing she really
hadn’t
expected was, glancing sideways, to see the shuttered look of pained confusion on Matt’s face, and for a few powerful seconds she was taken aback by the burst of sympathy she felt for him.
    He was tough and uncompromising and, yes, judgemental of her in a way that left her trembling with anger—yet in the face of his daughter he literally didn’t know what to do.
    Frankly, nor did she. Stubborn, sulky ten year olds had never featured even on her horizon.
    ‘Samantha. Look at me!’ He shoved his hands in his pockets and frowned. ‘This is Tess. I told you about her. She’s going to be your new nanny.’
    Samantha greeted this by propping her chin in her hands and yawning widely. She was probably wearingthe most expensive clothes money could buy, but Tess had never seen a child dressed with such old-fashioned lack of taste. Clumpy brown sandals and a flowered sleeveless frock. Silk, from the look of it. What ten-year-old ever wore silk? Her long hair was braided into two plaits with, of all things, ribbons neatly tied into bows at the ends. She was dark-haired, like her father, with the same stubborn, aristocratic set to her features. She would doubtless be a beauty in time, but just at the moment her face was sullen and set.
    Tess cleared her throat and took a couple of steps forward. ‘Samantha! Hi! Okay, you really don’t have to look at me if you don’t want to…’ She giggled nervously, which earned her a sneaky glance, although the spoon and milk routine was still in full force. ‘But I’m new to this place so…’ She frantically thought of the one thing she and a ten-year-old girl might have in common. ‘Do you fancy exploring the shops with me? My sister doesn’t wear the same stuff that I do, and I’m far too scared to venture into some of those department stores without someone to hold my hand.’
    ‘Well, it went okay.’
    This was the debriefing. When Matt had called her on her mobile, to tell her that he would expect daily reports of progress, she had been at a loss for words. But expect it he did. In his office. Six sharp, after she had handed over her charge to Betsy, the girl who came in to prepare the evening meal.
    The very same car that had collected her in the morning had duly collected her from his apartment and delivered her,like a parcel, to his offices, which occupied some prime real estate in downtown Manhattan.
    Having seen where he lived, Tess had been more blasé about where he worked. She’d been swept up twenty-eight storeys and hadn’t been surprised to find that his office occupied half of the entire floor, with its own sitting room, meeting room, and a massive outer office with chairs and plants, where a middle-aged woman had been busy packing up to go home.
    ‘Define
okay.’
He leaned back into his leather chair and folded his hands behind his head. ‘Take a seat.’
    He could hardly believe how easily and effortlessly she had managed to break the ice with Samantha. Compared to the other nannies he had hired, who had smiled stiffly and tried to shake hands and had thereby seemed to seal their fate.
    Tess shrugged.