Who's the Boss? by Jill Shalvis

my place, they haven’t been paid for. As you know, they’re far out of my league with what you’re paying me. I’m flat broke.”
    “What about the will?”
    “What about it? I got nothing.”
    “Then why did Edmund stipulate such a low salary? He was the most generous man I know.”
    She shrugged, even managed a light smile, but Joe wasn’t fooled. Pain blazed from her eyes.
    “Maybe he just didn’t realize?” he suggested.
    “Whether he realized or not doesn’t matter,” she said. “The sorry truth is, this job is all I have, and I desperately need it. I know you hate it, Joe, and to tell you the truth, so do I. There’s just not much choice in the matter at the moment.”
    Dammit. Dammit all to hell. He didn’t want to feel this quick, inexplicable tug of concern, of protectiveness, shame because he’d gotten from Edmund what his own daughter hadn’t. “He didn’t mean to hurt you.” He could bank on that.
    “You think so?” She lifted those huge, liquid eyes to his. “Even when I’m a spoiled princess? Always had the world at my fingertips? Isn’t that what you’ve thought all along?” She smiled humorlessly at his wince. “But you know what? All I really wanted was his time. How’s that for spoiled? He had you, though, and that was all he needed.”
    Lunch lodged in his throat. “I gather you weren’t close.”
    “Don’t pretend that you two didn’t talk about me. I know what he thought of my life-style.”
    How to tell her that Edmund had rarely spoken of her at all, and only at the very end? Clearly, he didn’t have to tell her; she’d looked at his face and seen the truth.
    “I must seem double pathetic now.”
    “No,” he said, leaning close, disturbed by that protectiveness he felt. “Caitlin...”
    “Don’t apologize for him. It was my fault, too. I didn’t see him much because of our respective business schedules. And don’t,” she said quickly, raising a hand. “Don’t make some crack about poor little socialite me. If you’re thinking I had it pretty good, you’re right. I did. I never had to live on the streets, fighting for my life, and I certainly never went hungry or without clothes. But I also never had what I really wanted, which was someone to tell me they loved me.”
    Joe hadn’t thought, hadn’t wondered... all those times he and Edmund spent together, he had never thought to ask about Edmund’s daughter, or where she was. “I’m sorry,” he murmured, well aware of the inadequacy of those words.
    “Don’t be sorry for me.” She tucked a loose wave of hair behind her ear and gave him a look from beneath lowered lashes that he couldn’t quite read. “I’m just glad I still have a job.”
    He looked at the woman who had cheerfully and without complaint thrown herself wholeheartedly into a job that had been forced on her. She’d genuinely tried hard, even when out of her element. She’d given it her all.
    Damn. He pulled his thoughts up short. He’d done it again. Just one bright, open smile and he’d folded. One bat of those long lashes and he was willing to forget that he could hardly tolerate her. Purposefully, he hardened himself. “All I need you to do is answer the phones, Caitlin. Nothing else. Just the phones,” he said, leaning forward to make his point, grabbing her hand when she ignored him. He thought of how his office looked once she’d started to organize it. “Promise me.”
    Her voice filled with wounded pride, she countered, “I can do more, far more, if you’d teach me.”
    The waitress saved him from replying, and he was grateful. She tactfully set down their bill almost in the center of the table, but slightly closer to Joe.
    He picked up the slip, reaching for his wallet and scanning the balance at the same time. “Eighteen-fifty,” he muttered to himself. “With a tip that’s—”
    “Two dollars and seventy-eight cents,” Caitlin whispered politely, leaning forward discreetly. “But leave three-seventy