IN BED WITH THE BOSS

“Was insensitive, then,” he altered, the chiseled line of his jaw clenching. “But it does not change the fact that your so-called date has either stood you up or is only too happy to leave you to stand around here like a fool!”

“And that is your sensitive side talking?” So close to tears now, she had to push a hand up between them so she could cover her trembling mouth.

A soft curse rattled from him. “I will take you to dinner,” he offered, sounding so driven to say it that Vivian almost snapped the hand up higher to slap his face!

But she didn’t because it would be annoying and juvenile of her to do it! “I can provide my own dinner,” she told him stiffly.”And you already have a date.”

“I did have a date until-” Scott stopped, compressing his lips, then dealt her a glinting glimmer of a look “-until I was stood up too,” he finished dryly.

“You-?” It was like discovering he had a chink in his impenetrable Armour. Vivian was so intrigued by the phenomenon she stopped fighting his grip to stare up at him instead.

“It happens to the best of us,” Scott compounded on his quick-thinking masterpiece of deception. “So shall we find somewhere quieter than this to- commiserate with each other while we eat?”

Like a lamb to the slaughter, he mocked, feeling his conscience pinch him when his beautiful personal assistant dealt him a sympathetic look.

But at least the deal was done.

———–

Twenty minutes later they were being shown to a table in a very exclusive restaurant and the waiter was taking away her jacket while Vivian glanced around. If this was the kind of place Scott tended to frequent, then she was willing to be impressed by its softly lit ambience.

“Have I been here before?” she asked.

“Not to my knowledge,” he replied.

Surprising him with a sudden grin she told him, “If you have not brought me here for one of your business lunches, Scott, then I have not been here. These kinds of places all have a similar look to them, don’t they?”

“Do they?” He glanced around their plush, hushed award-winning surroundings. “Perhaps you’re right.”

Vivian nodded. “They probably look different in the daylight when they are filled with sharp-suited men and women looking serious and intelligent instead of…” Her voice trailed off, even white teeth pressing down into her lower lip to halt the potentially provocative word she had been going to use.

“Intimate.” Scott was not so sensitive. “It’s called good business sense,” he enlightened. “Not the people but the restaurants,” he explained what he’d meant.

“They change their mood with the mood of the city. By day they provide the sharp suits like me with a place to work while we eat.” A dryness entered his voice. “By night they soften their appearance to provide a more relaxed ambience for their more sociable clientele. I love the dress…”

“Oh.” Startled by the sudden and totally unexpected compliment Vivian blushed as she glanced down at the lilac silk dress. “Thank you. It’s just something I threw on.” Critical fingers plucked at the dress’s dipping cleavage. “There used to be a strip of lace here but I unpicked it because I thought it looked less fussy without it.”

A young waiter arrived to offer them menus then. Vivian winged him a warm smile and fell into a brief, friendly conversation with him. Veiling his eyes Scott observed the change in her as she talked. Her voice had taken on a warm and earthy vibrancy Scott had not heard before. The young waiter fell in love with her as Scott watched. She had no idea of the power she was wielding, had not even noticed the waiter’s darkened eyes and the raised color in his face. When her slender hands joined in the conversation the waiter was hooked, his eyes fixed on the creamy cleavage on show behind the expressive fingers.

And Scott felt a sudden blistering urge to punch the young fool! Perhaps he moved, he wasn’t sure, but something made the waiter glance his way. The next second he was rushing out an apology and moving away at lightning speed.

“He’s such a nice fellow” Vivian enlightened him as if he’d not heard their conversation, and with no clue at all what had made the waiter take flight as if someone had set fire to his heels.

Scott knew. He could still feel the trails of it lingering behind his veiling eyelids.

“Yeah, I’m sure he is” he murmured.

“Yes” Settling back into her seat she shook the silky fall of her hair back from her face, then picked up her menu.

When he continued to sit there doing and saying nothing she glanced up at him and frowned, then followed it up with a sigh. “OK, what have I done to annoy you this time?” she demanded. “Have I broken some very important rule of dining that is likely to earn me a plate of cold food?”

“Timothy would call it breaking the rules anyway,” he responded impassively.

“Timothy…? What has he got to do with…” Enlightenment dawned. Vivian flicked a look across the restaurant to where the friendly waiter now stood to attention, striving to keep his eyes away from this corner of the room.

“You are accusing me of flirting,’ she said in a hushed breath of stunned disbelief.

Scott picked up his menu and opened it. “You tied him in knots. For a few interesting seconds I thought he was going to pull out a chair and join us.”

“We were just talking!” Vivian impressed upon him in self-defense.

“I got this really bad feeling that I was about to be sidelined. Not good for my ego at all.” Scott smiled. “Lesson one in the use of social skills, Vivian, concentrate solely on the man you are dining with.”

Not quite sure if she was supposed to laugh at the ridiculous image Scott had constructed of the waiter muscling in on him, he diverted her with, “What would you like to eat?”

Vivian dutifully buried her attention on the menu. A different waiter arrived to take their order. Scott delivered it in the clipped cool tone that did not encourage the waiter to linger.

“Talk to me,” he said abruptly once they were alone again.

Lifting up her face she asked, “What about?” she asked.

“Anything-the wine.” He indicated to her glass.

Dutifully picking up her wine glass Vivian sipped. “Nice,” she said.

“Is that it?” he asked.

“Is this another lesson in social dining?” she dared.

“No.” He almost let a smile catch hold of his mouth. “It is simply a request for you to extend your answer. Come on, you’re an adult. I cannot believe you don’t have a better opinion about wine than just nice.”

Be interesting, in other words, Vivian thought. Well, OK, she could try to do that, Vivian decided, relaxing back into her seat. “When I was much younger… Before my father died, he and I used to make wine from our own grapes,” she announced. “It was just a hobby really, but our wine tasted easily as good as this very expensive wine…” she said with a wave of her glass. “We used to pick and tread the grapes in the traditional manner with skirts held up like so-” she gestured, unaware how entirely she had captured her audience “- and we laughed a lot-it is supposed to be good for the taste. If it was a good year, our neighbors would come to exchange other produce for bottles of our wine. We had some really wonderful old oak barrels…”

Their first course arrived and Vivian kept talking through it, taking a small forkful of sea bass laced with a delicious sauce she had never tasted before.

“Your life back then is obviously very different from the one you’re living now,’ Scott observed when she paused for a breath.Ccontent © exclusive by Nô/vel(D)ra/ma.Org.

Vivian nodded, eyes shadowing as she sat forward to pick up her glass. “Do you visit your family often?”

“Yeah I do. Just my mother and sister though” he said. “It’s good that they are not too far away”

“You guys must be very close, then,” she probed.

“Yeah… yeah. I guess we are. What about you, any other family apart from your father?” As neatly as that he turned the conversation away from him and back on to her.

“Not really. Almost all of them are far away, and I was never really close to any of them” She went on to explain more about her life with her father, in between savoring forkfuls of food. She didn’t notice that Scott barely touched the food on his plate, or that he rarely removed his dark eyes from her face. She was not aware that he kept filling up her wine glass or that her tongue was loosening the more that she drank. By the time their dessert arrived she was feeling so mellow she even reached across the table to spoon up a sample of his untouched dessert and teased him with her laughing eyes as she placed the stolen morsel in her mouth.