A Bride For The Boss. Maureen Child

thought about it for a minute. Ordinarily no, he wouldn’t. His company had been his life for so many years now, he couldn’t really imagine taking two weeks away from it. But if he wanted to keep Andi working for him—and he did—then he’d have to invest the time to convince her to stay. So he shrugged off her comment as if it meant nothing. “When I was a kid, my dad had me out on the ranch painting the barn, the stables, the fence around my mother’s garden. I’m damn good with a paintbrush. And at woodworking. The ranch carpenter taught me a lot back then. I’ve got a fair hand at plumbing, too, though that can be iffy.”

      “Why would you want to use your no doubt impressive skills on my house?”

      Here he gave her a grin and a wink. “What kind of Texan would I be if I didn’t ride to the rescue?”

      Her head snapped back. “Rescue? I don’t need to be rescued, Mac. And now’s a good time to remind you that for the last six years, I’m the one who’s done most of the rescuing.”

      He laughed. Her outrage put fire in her eyes and a rush of color in her cheeks. Her breath was coming fast and furious and her breasts hitched even higher beneath that skimpy tank top. He’d have to remember to make her furious more often.

      “Okay,” he said, “I’ll give you that. You’ve been riding herd on the business and keeping things moving for six years. So now it’s time I paid that back.”

      She shook her head. “I don’t need you to pay me back for doing my job.”

      “Maybe it’s not about what you need,” he said, and felt tension crawl through him as he stared into her gray eyes, where the fire was now banked, simmering low. This woman had been a central part of his life for years and he wasn’t ready for that to end yet. Now that he was here, with her, in this nearly empty house with the dark settling around them, he wanted that even less than when he’d first come here.

      “We’ll work together and at the end of two weeks, if you still want to walk away, so be it.” Sounded reasonable, though Mac had no intention of letting her go. “This is my decision, Andi. And you should know better than anyone else, once I make a call, I stick to it.”