Back In The Bedroom (The Wrong Bed #29)(20)

“Those are my employees, son.”

Reilly opened the McDonald’s bag. The delicious scent of fast-food wafted up. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you not to mix business with pleasure?”

“No. No one ever told me anything of the sort. I learned the hard way.”

Reilly had heard Eddie’s poor-little-rich-boy story before, how his parents had ignored him all his life for their travels, etc. It didn’t wash. Reilly hadn’t had a father around either, until lately anyway, and no one caught him whining about it.

“And give me some credit for growing up, would you?” Eddie grinned sheepishly. “Better late than never, right?” When Reilly didn’t crack a smile in return, he sighed again. “The women out there really are my employees. I’m taking two of them into my real estate division today, we’re shorthanded. Totally on the up-and-up. The other is a woman I thought you’d recognize.”

Reilly took another look. The woman in the front passenger seat wore sunglasses covering what he knew to be mossy-green eyes that showed her every emotion as soon as she thought it. Her hair was tucked behind her ears, emphasizing her face, which he knew to be soft to the touch.

For one beat their gazes collided and Reilly stood there, inexplicably riveted.

Tessa looked away first.

“Her car wouldn’t start this morning,” Eddie said. “I offered her a ride to her temp job.”

“She’s working today?”

“She’s one tough cookie.” Eddie blocked Reilly’s view of her and dropped the smile. “She insisted on coming in. I don’t know if it’s because she needs the money or if she needs to keep busy.”

Ah, hell. He didn’t want to know this. Aware that he was letting his guard slip, he peered around Eddie. She sat very still, staring straight forward now. “Is this job an easy one?”

Eddie paused so long Reilly took his gaze off Tessa to his father. “Is it?”

Eddie stared at him, then looked away. “No. But I have a feeling she’s going to be all right.”

It was true. She was bright, brave and adventurous. She’d be all right.

“Enjoy the food, son.” Reilly stepped off the porch. “Oh, and I have you on the calendar for a temp through Thursday. Is that right?”

“Yeah.” His business was up and down, up at the moment. His office manager did most of the everyday work. She’d been after him to hire another permanent office staff member, but Reilly wasn’t ready for permanent.

“Want her with the usual prerequisites? Old and grumpy?”

“Funny.”

“Oh, come on, admit it,” Eddie said. “You like old and grumpy.”

“I like experienced.”

“Well, so do I, son. So do I. I’ll see you.” He started to walk away. “Oh, and live a little today, why don’t you. Just for fun.”

When Eddie drove off, Reilly locked his front door and headed down his steps. He’d like to say he forgot all about his father and the women in the BMW, specifically the one woman in the front seat. After all, he was good about forgetting things that got to him.

And there was no doubt, Tessa Delacantro had gotten to him.

The last time he’d let a woman do that, he’d ended up on the wrong side of a beating he’d like to forget, both physically and mentally.

He sure was melancholy today. Flipping on his sunglasses, he slid behind the wheel of his car, cranked up the Metallica CD and drove.

By the time he got to work, he felt better. The food had helped, so had Metallica. Nothing like heavy metal to clear one’s head. His building was in San Marino, a small, exclusive suburb of Los Angeles, where he took up the fifth floor of a small glass-and-brick building overlooking the San Gabriel Mountains to the north and the San Gabriel Valley to the south. To the west lay downtown Los Angeles and its famous skyline, highlighted nicely today by a ring of smog. He didn’t mind the smog because he loved it here. He loved the weather, which came in two choices: hot or hotter. He loved the back-off, laid-back, live-and-let-live attitude.

After his long stint back east on assignments, including even longer stints across the world in uncomfortable time zones and climates, he thought he just might never leave Southern California again.

He rode the elevator up, unlocked the double glass doors that led into his business and stepped inside to utter and complete quiet.

His favorite state of being, utter and complete quiet. Given that it was ten minutes to eight, that left him ten precious minutes to enjoy the solitude before his office manager and temp showed up. He hoped the temp worker was Marge, his favorite of Eddie’s employees. She did her job without flapping her mouth, she was knowledgeable when it came to accounting, and because she was old enough to be his mother, he didn’t have to worry about Eddie’s motives for sending her. She had five kids and two grandchildren and never showed him her family pictures. He loved that about her, and he always asked for her. Eddie usually complied.

Unless he was in a mood to prove to his son that he needed some excitement. Then he’d send a cute young blonde with far more physical assets than mental capabilities. Maybe even a redhead or a brunette, but Reilly always knew when Eddie was messing with him because the temp would bat her eyes and giggle a lot and not know the difference between a debit and a credit, much less what a general ledger was.