Forbidden Nights With The Boss. Anna J. Stewart

even if the refuge closed, the programme could still run, so it wasn’t that disturbing her …

      Was it because he’d talked of staying on that she’d been thrown into a dither?

      Had she somehow convinced herself that she could put up with the distraction he was causing her body for a couple of months but once the issue of his staying longer had arisen, her brain had gone into meltdown?

      She couldn’t answer either of her questions so she locked her office door, said good-bye to Kate who was working Reception today, and hurried up the steps at the back of the surgery.

      Maybe a shower would help her brain return to normal, but cold or hot she had no confidence in it doing anything to stop her body reacting to her temporary employee.

      It was only a couple of months!

      But could she let him live in his van in the caravan park if he stayed on to run a men’s programme?

      She had the flat …

      Best not to think ahead.

      But for the second day in a row, she put on just a little lipstick.

      Pathetic.

      The refuge was behind one of Crystal Cove’s still functioning churches. It had been the minister’s house—the manse—once, but now the minister lived forty miles up the coast and served a flock spread over a wide area, holding services at the Cove once a fortnight.

      ‘It’s fairly obvious, isn’t it?’ Cam asked as Jo pulled into the driveway.

      She looked around at the high wire fence, the security cameras at the corners of the old wooden residence, the playground equipment out the back.

      Turned back to Cam.

      ‘In what way?’

      ‘Well, I thought they had to be anonymous places, women’s refuges, hidden away—ordinary houses but their use not known even to neighbours.’

      Jo smiled at him—he was so darned easy to smile at.

      And she’d better think about that thought later.

      ‘In bigger towns and cities that might be possible and it’s definitely desirable, but in a town this size? As you’d surmised, towns this size don’t usually have a refuge. We’re lucky because the church not only lets us have the premises rent free, but they pay expenses on it—rates and such. The service clubs did a lot of renovations and they do any maintenance that’s required, so immediately you have several groups of people who know where it is and what it’s for. And it is only two doors from the police station so there’s never any trouble here. ‘

      She frowned now as she added, ‘Am I blathering again?’

      He grinned at her.

      ‘No way. That was a most sensible explanation, very to the point and concise.’

      The grin was her undoing. Any good the shower might have done was undone with that grin—a quirky, amused, sharing kind of grin.

      Good grief! How could she possibly be thinking this way?

      Analysing the man’s grin?

      ‘Let’s go,’ she said, opening her door and leaping down from the high seat of the four-wheel drive that had been her Christmas present to herself last year.

      Good thing, too, she thought, patting the car when she’d shut the door. Having Cam in the big vehicle had been bad enough, she could only imagine how uncomfortable it would have been if they’d been squashed together in a small sedan.

      Lauren Cooper, blonde, beautiful but far too thin and with dark shadows of worry under her eyes, came out of the house to greet them.

      ‘You have to take some time off,’ Jo scolded her best friend.

      ‘I’ll have plenty of time off if we have to close,’ Lauren reminded her quietly, but her dark eyes lit up as she took in the man Jo was introducing to her.

      ‘Well,’ she teased after she’d shaken Cam’s hand, ‘you’ll certainly be a great addition to the male talent in this town.’

      ‘All six of them?’ Jo countered.

      ‘In our age group,’ Lauren agreed, counting on her fingers as she listed the local, older, unattached men. ‘Mike at the police station, Tom at the hospital, that new schoolteacher—’

      ‘He’s got a partner,’ Jo protested, before adding firmly, ‘Anyway, that’s enough. Cam’s already likely to get a swollen head because I’ve been praising his idea of the men’s support programme. We’re here to see the refuge and to talk about how we could run a men’s programme—not to mention whether men might come.’

      ‘It could be court mandated,’ Cam offered, pleased the conversation had shifted from male talent in the town. His body might have reacted to his boss and landlady but after Penny’s fairly brutal rejection, he’d accepted that until the mess in his head was sorted out, it would be unfair to get involved with any woman.

      Although a woman with killer green eyes …

      ‘Wow!’

      His exclamation was involuntary, and his mind right back on the refuge as Lauren led them first into what she called the playroom. Obviously it had been set up with kids in mind, but whoever had conceived and carried through the idea had done an amazing job. Blackboard paint had been used to adult waist height on all the walls so there were chalk drawings everywhere. At one end of the long room—a closed-in veranda, he suspected—was a sitting area with comfy armchairs and bean-bags in front of a television set with a DVD player on top of it. Beside that a cabinet held what must be at least a hundred DVDs.

      The other end of the room was obviously for very small people, blocks and jigsaw puzzles neatly put away on shelves, plastic boxes of farm animals, zoo animals, dinosaurs, toy cars and little dolls stacked further along the shelves.

      ‘It’s incredibly well stocked,’ he said, ‘and so tidy.’

      ‘Well-stocked but not always so tidy,’ Lauren told him. ‘We’ve instituted star charts. Stars for putting away the toys, stars for cleaning teeth, stars for just about everything you can imagine. Once you get a certain number of stars, you get a treat—like dinner at a fast-food outlet of your choice, which is where everyone is tonight. They left early as they’re going on to a movie after their meal. Everyone’s been really good this week!’

      Lauren showed them through the rest of the house, allowing Cam a glimpse into the three big bedrooms that could accommodate up to five people in each.

      ‘So you can have three women with children—no more?’ Cam asked.

      ‘Well, we could arrange to take more if it was necessary, squeeze in a woman on her own, for instance, but the turnover is fairly rapid.’

      ‘So no one is here long term?’ Cam asked.

      Lauren smiled at him, the smile lifting the tiredness from her face and making him wonder why this beautiful woman—smiling at him—had no effect at all on his body, while the small, pert redhead who was usually frowning, glaring or arguing did.

      Not that he needed to give it much thought—he was moving on.

      And even if he stayed, he’d be moving out.

      And then there was the baggage.

      And his lost passion …

      ‘Four weeks.’

      He’d missed the beginning of whatever Lauren was saying but assumed she’d told him the time limit on stays as she led him into the communal lounge, the dining area and finally a well-equipped kitchen.

      ‘You’re really well set up,’ he said, not bothering to keep the admiration out of his voice.

      ‘That’s what makes the thought of it closing so hard.’