Cinderella And The Ceo. SUSAN MEIER

the feel of her lips against his and the taste of her mouth.

      Still, looking into her big green eyes, Deke also knew he couldn’t ignore the fact that a kiss would change things. And he couldn’t afford that. He was excited about the challenge of proving to his family that he was completely, happily, shrewdly capable of running the family empire. But to do that he needed to be focused. He couldn’t be distracted by a pretty woman or a romance.

      He backed away. Laurel stepped to the side and he headed for Audra’s room.

      “Good night,” he said to Laurel, grabbing the door handle to open Audra’s bedroom door. “Good night, Audra,” he called, then closed the door and all but ran away from them.

      “Good night,” Laurel whispered, watching him go, touching her lips, confirming for Deke he had done the right thing. If he had kissed her, this situation would have probably spiraled out of control.

      In her bedroom, Laurel bundled herself in her covers and tossed and turned for two hours.

      She normally didn’t do things like this. She normally didn’t want to kiss her boarder. But this time she wanted to.

      She really wanted to.

      And it scared the life out of her.

      Chapter Three

      The alarm woke Laurel the next morning, and though she quickly silenced it because she didn’t want an ebullient four-year-old girl bouncing into her room, she didn’t get out of bed. Instead, she pulled her comforter over her head and squeezed her eyes shut.

      She would have let that man kiss her last night. A virtual stranger. Another man on the fast track. Heck, she would have happily kissed him first if she thought she could stretch far enough, quickly enough, to reach his mouth before he changed his mind and turned away.

      She knew better than this. That was why she was so comfortable taking in executive-trainee boarders. Her ex-husband had been a well-educated man on the fast track, a man who was working his way to upper management in leaps and bounds, rather than one rung on the corporate ladder at a time. But when Aaron got his big break, a job as president of a manufacturing plant in Texas, he told her that she and Audra didn’t fit into the world he was entering. So he’d left them. The day she discovered she was pregnant with Sophie, he’d left them with a mortgage, a used car and not even grocery money in the bank.

      She filed for child support, and instead of giving it, Aaron waived his rights to the kids. Completely. He had never even seen Sophie. He no longer acknowledged his daughters’ existence, and if the gossip she heard was true, he now had another wife, more kids. Two boys this time. And a corporate-lawyer wife. A woman who made as much money as he did, someone who enhanced his position.

      Yeah, Laurel knew all about executive trainees. She didn’t belong in their world, and they were only passing through hers. She saw the situation for what it was. If she developed anything other than friendship with any one of these guys, she would be walking irresponsibly into another heartbreak.

      Grounded by those realities, Laurel climbed out of bed. Though it was a warm May morning, she slid out of her sleeveless pajamas and put on a one-piece, long-sleeved flannel pair that even had feet, then covered them with a chenille robe. In case Deke had gotten the wrong idea the night before from her concealing, but more flattering summer-weight nightclothes, she nipped that problem in the bud.

      She went to the kitchen and retrieved a filter and ground coffee to make a pot so it would be ready when she got out of the shower. Unfortunately, when she turned from the cabinet to go back to her bedroom, her executive-trainee border was already in the kitchen doorway. Their eyes met for a few seconds, and then Deke’s gaze sort of tumbled from her sleep-tousled hair to her thick robe, to the legs and feet of her flannel pajamas.

      Red flannel pajamas. Sprinkled with Santas. Covered by a robe so thick it could be a winter coat.

      She probably looked like an idiot.

      “Hey, Pajama Mama!”

      Grateful for the interruption, Laurel turned toward the alcove door. “Hey, Sophia Maria,” she said, stooping and opening her arms to let blue-eyed, blond-haired Sophie jump inside for a hug.

      “Are you gonna make me pancakes?” Sophie asked energetically before she gave Laurel a smacking kiss on the cheek.

      “Do you want pancakes?”

      Grinning happily, Sophie nodded.

      “Then pancakes it is,” Laurel said, sliding her four-year-old daughter onto one of the captain’s chairs at the table. “Right after I shower.”

      Accustomed to little delays and disruptions, Sophie again nodded her agreement.

      After a hasty “Good morning. Help yourself to coffee when it’s ready” to Deke, Laurel scrambled out of the kitchen and into her bedroom.

      When she returned a few minutes later, showered and dressed in jeans and another old T-shirt, Deke and Sophie were already eating. Laurel stopped dead in her tracks.

      “I hope you don’t mind,” Deke said, indicating the pancakes with his fork. “Sophie and I were a little hungry.”

      “No. No, that’s fine,” Laurel said, barely able to keep the astonishment out of her voice.

      Deke winced. “You don’t sound like it’s fine.”

      “I’m just surprised,” Laurel said, taking a seat at the table and fixing a plate of pancakes for herself. “The boarders I’ve taken in usually don’t cook.”

      “Lots of small-town minor-league teams like to have their players room with people in the community. It’s good PR,” Deke explained, then took a bite of pancake. After he chewed and swallowed, he added, “But we weren’t supposed to let our hosts wait on us. We were supposed to try to blend in like family. That’s when I learned how to cook.”

      “So you’re used to being a boarder?”

      He shook his head. “Yes and no. I only did it twice, and both families I was assigned to had schedules that conflicted with mine—”

      “Hey, Deke!” Audra said, entering the room. Laurel’s eight-year-old was self-sufficient to the point that she always had herself dressed for school before she came into the kitchen for breakfast. Her sleeveless shirt and jeans made her look too thin and too young to be as independent as she was.

      “Hey, Audra. Ready for practice this afternoon?”

      “Yeah. You make our schedule?”

      “Yeah. You practice that overhand throw I showed you?”

      “Yeah.”

      From there the conversation turned to the softball team. With Deke and Audra talking like longtime friends, and with him having made breakfast for starving Sophie, Laurel knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that this particular fast-tracking executive trainee was nothing like the other men she had housed. Certainly not like her ex-husband.

      In fact, he was so unlike her usual guests that she was having trouble equating him with her ex-husband, and that, she realized, was the problem. She wasn’t a stupid woman, but she wasn’t a blind one, either. The man was gorgeous. And different. Not only was he good to Sophie and right for Audra, but he could cook. None of her executive trainees had ever—ever—volunteered to cook. She could think of only one who had even made a pot of coffee.

      Laurel was losing her natural defenses, and she decided the best way to combat the latest assault on her conviction to stay away from him was the direct approach. Surely there was something wrong with this guy. Something in his past that would make him much less desirable. Once she found out what that was, she would be safe again. And because every female in the plant had been asking her questions about him, she knew exactly how to unearth it quickly, easily and so painfully he would stop giving her those sidelong glances that clearly let her know he found her attractive, red Santa pajamas