"That's what I'm saying."

Caine marched to his desk and picked up his phone. A few seconds later he growled into it, "I got the message you gave Alexa ... Yeah, well, your method of delivery was shittier than mine." If it was possible he looked even angrier at whatever she had to say. "For that you can kiss good-bye that dream position of yours on the art institute's board of directors ... Oh, I can and I will." He hung up and threw his phone on the desk with irritation.

I stood there, unsure what to do or how to react to the fact that he was pissed on my behalf.

Caine lifted his brooding gaze to me, but he started at my feet and slowly worked his way up my body so that by the time he hit my eyes I felt like I was going to come out of my skin. "I didn't think," he murmured.

What? Was he just now realizing I was a woman who, if I may say so myself, was attractive? So I wasn't a knockout like Phoebe Billingham, but I was still a good-looking female employee he sent over to dump her.

Not good.

"It won't happen again."

Okay, that was as close to an apology as I was going to get out of him. And it was more than I'd expected.

I nodded and we held each other's stare until I started to feel like all the air was going out of the room.

I wrenched my eyes from his and immediately felt like I could breathe again. "Would you like coffee?" I asked, my way of saying I accepted his nonapology.

"Yes." He lowered himself into his office chair, no longer meeting my eyes. "And send Linda back in."

CHAPTER 7.

Caine's refrigerator depressed me. It really, really depressed me. Mostly because it would be almost bare if it weren't for a carton of milk, one of OJ, and three eggs.

And I'd just put the OJ and milk in there per his request.

I shut the door and looked around the beautiful kitchen. It was a Saturday and it was the fourth in a row Caine had ruined by asking me to run some errand he could run himself if he weren't trying to deliberately exasperate me. In the past, if Caine was out of groceries he'd counted on his cleaner, Donna, to run out and get those. She visited twice a week and was paid handsomely for the bonus errands. However, since I'd come along I'd gotten the grocery run. He said it was so he could stop inconveniencing Donna, but I knew it was really just so he could start inconveniencing me.

I'd spent the better part of the afternoon running around dropping off dry cleaning, picking up dry cleaning, getting groceries, and choosing a gift for Mrs. Flanagan's seventy-seventh birthday.

I got her this gorgeous emerald green and sapphire blue kimono I found in a little boutique on Charles Street, and I'd left it on his bed along with his dry cleaning. I'd also left him wrapping paper, ribbon, and Scotch tape. He was going to damn well wrap Mrs. Flanagan's birthday present himself.

What got me through the fact that I was running around doing all this personal crap for my boss was that he was a busy guy and usually in the office. But when he'd called me today I could hear Henry in the background asking him when they were going to hit the gym. He wasn't even busy and he was making me do his crap for him! It was official. Caine Carraway was a sadist.

Leaning against the counter, I took everything in. The penthouse was like something out of an interior design magazine-stunning, yes, but no personality had been injected into it yet. I was tempted to snoop and find photographs that I could buy frames for and then just stick 'em out on display and see what Caine did.

Maybe in a month's time.

It still felt too soon to enforce nesting on him.

My focus was drawn to a spot of color on the coffee table at the TV area. Curious, I wandered over and raised an eyebrow at the DVD case Caine had left out. When I picked it up I saw it was a foreign movie based on the events that took place during eighties Berlin. Hmm. I glanced over at the cabinet beneath the television. Opening a cabinet wasn't exactly snooping. Much.

I opened it and discovered something new about Caine. On one side he had a bunch of action movies, and on the other side were all foreign movies.

Action flicks and foreign movies.

Huh.

Smiling, I stood up, adding this new information to the inventory I'd unconsciously started compiling about my boss.

Okay, it was time to let myself out of his apartment while I was ahead of the game. There were still a few hours left of the afternoon. I was sure I could fit in some reading. I mean, it wasn't like I had any other plans, as my social circle had diminished greatly since I lost my job with Benito.

Not that I cared.

Nope.

I let myself out of the apartment and locked up.

Okay, I cared.

Pouting a little, I strode toward the elevator and pressed the button to go down.

I jolted at a sound behind me and I glanced over my shoulder to find Mrs. Flanagan standing in her doorway wearing a diaphanous orange caftan. She was smiling brightly. "Alexa, I'm so glad I caught you. Come in for tea."

"Uh ..." Go home to an empty apartment or have a chat with a funny lady who seemed to know a heck of a lot about Caine? "Sure, sounds great."

Mrs. Flanagan beamed and stepped aside to let me pass. I was immediately hit with how different her penthouse was in comparison to Caine's. It was crammed with traditional, expensive furniture that would probably last for hundreds of years. Photographs cluttered every space, oil paintings every wall, and she had a thick Aubusson carpet taking up most of the floor space in the main room. The layout was like Caine's except Mrs. Flanagan's kitchen was more French country than sleek and modern, and there was a partition wall between the kitchen and the living space that gave an illusion of them being two separate rooms.

"Wow." I grinned at her. "This is amazing." And it was. I could see her whole life in the place. My attention was caught by a black-and-white photo of a beautiful woman staring off into the distance. It looked like a head shot for an Old Hollywood actress. "Is that you?"

Mrs. Flanagan nodded, smiling. "I was Maria in West Side Story on Broadway."

"Really?"

She nodded. "I moved from Boston to New York when I was fourteen to work on Broadway. Met my husband, Nicky, after a show one night. He was a wealthy industrialist from Boston. We married when I was twenty-three." She gestured to a photograph of her in a beautiful wedding dress standing next to a handsome young man. "In love right up until he passed ten years ago. Still in love." She smiled sadly. "Thankfully it was enough because unfortunately babies just weren't in the stars for us."

"I'm sorry, Mrs. Flanagan."

"Don't be, sweetheart. I've had a beautiful life. I still have." She grinned and started waving me toward her dining table. "Sit, sit."

Once she'd prepared tea she returned to sit at the table with me-a table now laden with biscuits and cakes. I helped myself to both.

"So." Mrs. Flanagan poured tea into the gorgeous china cup she'd put in front of me. "Were you running errands for Caine again?"

I snorted. "When am I not?"

"Tsk. That boy." She shook her head, eyes bright with humor and affection. "He's certainly going out of his way to piss you off."

I gave a huff of laughter. "And I bet you think that's deserved."

"Well, you did ambush him at a photo shoot and once again in his office."

My suspicions were correct: Caine told the old bird everything! Intrigued, I leaned forward. "How did you and Caine become friends?"

"Caine, is it?" She threw me a cheeky smile.

"Mr. Carraway," I corrected myself, holding her steady gaze and refusing to give anything away.

She chortled. "You can call him Caine, sweetheart. He's not a god."

"Do you think you could tell him that? Because I don't think he knows."

Mrs. Flanagan threw her head back in laughter. "Oh, Caine was right. You are a smart-ass."

I wrinkled my nose. "I can't help it. He brings it out in me."

"Well, I can see how that might happen, what with him trying to piss you off every chance he gets even though he says he's not." She shook her head. "I don't know what to do with that boy."

"I can take it," I assured her. "I get it."

"You do?" She raised an eyebrow. "Because I don't think you do. I don't even think Caine gets it yet."

"It's about our history. About my father and his mother." I was suddenly suspicious. "I thought you knew all this."

"Oh, I know all about that, and I know it's not your fault, so get that out of your head right now."

"I know it's not my fault, but I get why it's hard for Caine to separate me from it," I admitted. "He's been through so much because of my father and what he did to destroy Caine's family. I guess it would make me feel better if I could see Caine happy. He deserves to be happy, even when he is being a grumpy, relentless, unbending pain in the ass." I took a sip of tea. "Did you meet Phoebe?"

Mrs. Flanagan seemed amused by the question. "Oh no. I've never met any of Caine's lady friends. But Caine told me about her."

"She was perfect for him. He just dumped her," I huffed. "I do not understand that man."

"Well, from what I heard she was all wrong for him."

Shocked, intrigued, I leaned forward. "What did you hear?"

She laughed at my curiosity. "Phoebe was intimidated by him. She downplayed her intelligence around him. Drove him nuts." She leaned forward, her eyes boring into mine with a fierceness I didn't quite understand. "What Caine needs is a woman who is not easily intimidated, persistent, and pretty much okay with bulldozing her way into his life. That's how I struck up my friendship with him. I wouldn't let him take no for an answer, and now that boy is the closest thing I have to a grandson and I'm the closest thing he has to a grandmother."

Uneasiness moved through me. "Maybe he wouldn't want us talking, then. Especially about private stuff."

"Isn't that why you're here?" She gave me a knowing look. "You're digging for some reason. Otherwise you wouldn't be spending your Saturday afternoon with your boss's kooky neighbor lady."

I gave her a sad smile. "Maybe I have nowhere else to be."

Mrs. F looked concerned. "Okay, if that's true, why haven't you got anywhere else to be?"

"My social circle grew smaller when I lost my former job. My friends from college all have kids now and ..." I shrugged. "You know how it is."

"Alexa, you're a gorgeous, funny young woman. You should either be able to strike up friendships with other charming women or have a man on your arm showing you a good time at the weekend."

A man on my arm. Right. "I haven't had one of those in eighteen months and haven't even been interested in looking since my mom passed."

She reached across the table and covered my hand with hers. "I'm sorry about your loss, sweetheart. Caine told me about it after he looked into you."

What the hell? "Caine looked into me?"

"Yeah. After the photo shoot. Found out your mom had just passed. Boating accident, was it? How are you coping with all that? You okay? It must be tough trying to deal with her loss now that you're having to deal with Caine."

To my surprise everything rushed up within me at Mrs. F's genuine sympathy. It was like she really wanted to know, and I guess I hadn't realized until that moment how much I needed someone to care. "You know I haven't been able to talk about it because no one knows the truth about what my father did. The only one who does is Grandpa, and he rarely talks about it. He doesn't want to."

She squeezed my hand. "Well, I know the truth. You can tell me."

I smiled gratefully and put my other hand over hers. "Thanks, Mrs. F."

She smiled encouragingly.

"I guess ..." I exhaled. "It's been rough because of all the resentment I carried toward Mom." I went on to tell Mrs. F all about how much I hero-worshipped my absentee father as a kid, and how I clung to that for as long as I could and when I couldn't anymore I just pretended. "But he shot that to hell when he told us the entire truth. It was Thanksgiving. I was home from college. He sat us down, and he cried as he told us about Caine's mom. And all his secrets came out because of that. I found out I had been illegitimate, that he'd had a wife and son that I knew nothing about, that my mom was just his piece on the side until he had nowhere else to go after his father turned him away. I was disgusted, betrayed, ashamed. Mom was just quiet. Of course she'd known all about the other family, but she knew nothing of Caine's mother or how he'd let her die, or even how that was the real reason he'd come back to her. I asked Mom what she was going to do, if she would leave him over it, and she told me she didn't know. She was shaken up and I had hoped that maybe it would be enough to make her see him for who he really was. My mom spent my entire life giving that man everything he wanted, and he never once tried to give back. I couldn't pretend that wasn't true anymore.

"So after a while, after I realized that he felt guilty but not repentant, I told him I didn't forgive him. I returned to college ... and unfortunately Mom went back to him." I looked up from our hands, tears stinging my eyes as that familiar hurt clawed at my gut. "She put him before me from that moment on. It was always my fault that there was a rift. Never his. I saw her only a couple of times over the last few years, and there was this wall between us we couldn't breach." I swiped at the tears sliding down my cheeks. "And then one day she went out on her friend's boat and a storm hit and that was it. She went overboard and by the time they found her body she was gone. She's gone and I never made it right. But neither did she." And it hurts.

"Oh, sweetheart," Mrs. F sighed. "I'm so sorry."

"I ... I keep remembering when I was a kid and it was just the two of us. She was my whole world, you know. I've never loved anyone the way that I loved her back then. And now I'm just so goddamn mad at her. And I guess when I walked onto that photo shoot weeks ago and saw Caine, it was an opportunity to focus on something, anything, but the fact that my mom is dead and the most powerful feeling I have toward her is anger. I'm just scared that forgiveness and acceptance might never come."

Without another word, Mrs. F got up from her seat and came around to me to pull me into her arms, and for the first time since Mom died, I really and truly let it all out.

A bunch of tissues and two more cups of tea later, I smiled gratefully at Mrs. F. "This is going to sound weird, but thank you."

"For what, sweetheart?"

"For listening." I shrugged. "I feel lighter somehow, like it helped just to admit my anger out loud. I tried to talk to Grandpa about it a while ago, but he just got so mad and then he let slip Caine's name and everything else was shoved to the side at that revelation."

"I'm sorry you didn't have a good shoulder to cry on at the time." Mrs. F actually looked mad about it. "But you can come to me anytime, sweetie. Everybody needs somebody."

"Very true. I'm glad Caine has you."

Curiosity entered her gaze. "You really do want him to be happy, don't you?"

The way she asked it made me wary, like my answer held more meaning than I wanted it to. Finally, though, I nodded.

"Good. Maybe with two of us on the job we'll get it done." She glanced over at the clock. "Oh, look at that, it's dinnertime. And I know the number for a great Chinese. Join me? I have wine."

I laughed. "I would love that."

"Fabulous." She stood up. "Oh, and, Alexa?"

"Yeah."

"You're allowed to be mad at your mom, sweetheart."