“It seemed to mean a lot to him that you have this job, so I went along with it.”
She managed to speak evenly. “You don’t strike me as a man who’d go along with anything that didn’t suit your purposes, Joe.”
“Since that’s pretty much true, I suppose there’s no use in being insulted.” But his jaw was tight as he lifted his glass to his lips. “Let’s just call it the repaying of a debt, and in this case, despite any trouble you might cause, I could hire you for the rest of your life and not make a dent in what I owe him.”
The image of her father came to mind—powerful, busy, always gone. Much as he’d given her in material things, he’d rarely had time for anything else. It was hard to imagine him inspiring this kind of fierce loyalty. “What is this great thing he did for you?”
“He rescued me.” When she just stared at him in surprise, he said, “Twenty years ago, he took a twelve-year-old know-it-all street kid out of an alley where he was about to be killed by a gangbanger for hustling him.”
“Were you the twelve-year-old or the gangbanger?”
He grinned, his first, and it was a stunner. “The former.”
But Caitlin didn’t see the humor. She was horrified, picturing a poor, thin, starving kid fighting off a dangerous thug—no matter she’d thought of Joe as a thug himself earlier that day. “Where were your parents?”
He shrugged broad shoulders. “I never knew my father, and there were six kids. My mother couldn’t feed us all. I’d been pretty much on my own for a couple of years.”
“Oh, Joe. I’m sorry.”
“I turned out all right,” he said, lowering his head and shoveling in more food. He smiled suddenly, and the charm of it surprised her. She kept forgetting how good-looking he was, behind all that attitude. “Edmund cleaned me up and hauled me off to a Laker game.”
Her jaw dropped. To her knowledge, her father had been too busy for sports. He’d certainly never taken her to a game. “He did?”
“Yeah.” He smiled at the memory. “They won, too. Then he dumped me in a tough school designed for…troubled kids.”
“And for really smart ones, too, I’ll bet.”
Joseph’s head jerked up, his eyes hot and defensive. “Yeah,” he said finally, as though it was a hard thing to admit.
Now it made sense, all too well. She knew how attractive a homeless, orphaned, incredibly brilliant boy would have been to her father. Especially when all he’d gotten was a weak, not so smart female. Resentment hit, only to be beaten back by shame.
What would have happened to Joe if her father hadn’t intervened?
“He came for me every weekend, which at first really ticked me off,” Joe admitted. “But he stuck with me until the end.” He met her gaze unwaveringly. “He saved my life, princess. I owe him everything, and in return, I’d do anything for him.”
Including putting up with a secretary he didn’t want. Suddenly feeling a little sick and unbearably lonely even in the middle of a crowded restaurant, Caitlin set down her fork and tried to ignore the tightness in her chest. How pathetic her poor-little-rich-girl story would seem to him. “What happened to your mother?”
He chugged down his water and attacked the basket of bread sticks. “She lives in Vegas. Waitresses occasionally.”
“And the others? Your brothers and sisters?”
His blue eyes became shuttered, and she imagined he masked pain and loneliness. “Scattered around.” His gaze dropped to the bread he held, which he then polished off in one bite.
She learned far more about Joe by watching his eyes than listening to his words. His eyes were much more expressive than he could possibly know. “Do you ever see them?”
“They’re all busy with their own lives. My mother calls me once in a while.”
Caitlin swallowed hard, hurting for the boy who’d grown up too fast. Who’d learned to count only on himself. “You support her, don’t you?”
He stirred, clearly uncomfortable. “Maybe.”
“Why is it so hard to admit you help her?”
“Why is it so hard for you to understand that most people don’t like their lives to be an open book?”
She was beginning to realize the man was all bark, no bite. He liked his distance. Too bad she didn’t do the distance thing so well.
Joe fell silent as he continued to feed himself with obvious relish, making Caitlin wonder where he put all the food. He certainly didn’t have a spare ounce of fat on him. She glanced up, and caught the curious gazes of Vince, Tim and Andy from across the room. The twins grinned at her. Vince’s smile was more subdued, worried.
Sweet, she thought. And chicken. She stuck her tongue out at them, and they laughed.
Joe polished off his plate and glanced at hers. “Are you going to finish?”
If she drew a deep breath, she’d pop the button on her tight skirt. “No.” He continued to gaze longingly at the lasagna left on her plate. Laughing, she pushed it toward him, then watched in amazement as he finished it off.
“To be honest,” Joe told her when he’d finally filled himself. “I never thought you’d actually take the job.”
Here it comes, she thought. His scorn. And after learning about him and his past, she knew she deserved every bit of it. She took a deep breath. “I need this job.”
“Right.”
“It’s true. I’m deeply in debt, and without the income, meager as it is, I’ll be homeless and on the streets just like you once were.”
He stared at her. “No way.”
“Yes way.” She played with her water glass. “Those assets you spoke of that first day, my car and my place, they haven’t been paid for. As you know, they’re far out of my league with what you’re paying me. I’m flat broke.”
“What about the will?”
“What about it? I got nothing.”
“Then why did Edmund stipulate such a low salary? He was the most generous man I know.”
She shrugged, even managed a light smile, but Joe wasn’t fooled. Pain blazed from her eyes.
“Maybe he just didn’t realize?” he suggested.
“Whether he realized or not doesn’t matter,” she said. “The sorry truth is, this job is all I have, and I desperately need it. I know you hate it, Joe, and to tell you the truth, so do I. There’s just not much choice in the matter at the moment.”
Dammit. Dammit all to hell. He didn’t want to feel this quick, inexplicable tug of concern, of protectiveness, shame because he’d gotten from Edmund what his own daughter hadn’t. “He didn’t mean to hurt you.” He could bank on that.
“You think so?” She lifted those huge, liquid eyes to his. “Even when I’m a spoiled princess? Always had the world at my fingertips? Isn’t that what you’ve thought all along?” She smiled humorlessly at his wince. “But you know what? All I really wanted was his time. How’s that for spoiled? He had you, though, and that was all he needed.”
Lunch lodged in his throat. “I gather you weren’t close.”
“Don’t pretend that you two didn’t talk about me. I know what he thought of my lifestyle.”
How to tell her that Edmund had rarely spoken of her at all, and only at the very end? Clearly, he didn’t have to tell her; she’d looked at his face and seen the truth.
“I must seem double