by Eliza Watson
“That would be licorice tea.”
“Sounds good.”
He was actually admitting he liked tea?
“Have a seat and I’ll make it.” She gestured toward the back table.
She whipped up a mug of tea and an apple cider for herself. She brought them over to the table and sat, her foot kicking something over. They peered under the table to find the set of red taper candles toppled over on the floor.
Lucy.
“Aren’t those supposed to go on the table?” he asked.
“No, they aren’t.” She ignored them, removing the papers from her briefcase. Having him complete the personality questionnaire was more important than the interview. The marketing department would run the women’s forms against Ryan’s and rank their compatibility. “I’ll start by asking you questions about your potential partner. For each characteristic you answer not important, somewhat important, or very important.”
“A rather odd way to interview.”
“This is the questionnaire.”
“Wouldn’t it be easier if I took that with me and filled it out, and we concentrate on the interview?”
“It’ll go much faster if I take the first answer that pops into your head and you don’t spend time thinking about it. The first answer is always the most honest. Besides, I really need it today.”
He shifted in the chair, no doubt uncomfortable with the idea of providing her directly with the answers.
She removed the cinnamon stick from her cider and gently sucked on it, waiting for the beverage to cool while scanning the questionnaire and reviewing the format. She glanced over at Ryan to find him watching her with interest. Her lower lip started pulsating. She slid the stick from her mouth and stuck it back in the mug.
She straightened in her chair, taking on a professional tone. “Okay, first question. My partner’s honesty.”
“Very important.”
She filled in the corresponding circle. “The similarities between my partner and me.”
“Somewhat important.”
She glanced over at him. “Somewhat important? Thought you wanted a driven, financially stable woman with a career in finance. A clone of yourself.”
He pointed to the questionnaire. “Aren’t you going to mark my answer?”
She grudgingly filled in the circle. “My partner’s love of children.”
“Somewhat important.”
“Thought you didn’t want kids?”
He shrugged. “Doesn’t mean I don’t want her to like them. Wasn’t your reading the questions supposed to expedite things?”
She filled in the circle. “Her family background.”
“Somewhat important.”
“Somewhat—” She snapped her mouth shut. “Her capacity for emotional intimacy.”
“Very important.”
Very? With the way he kept everyone but the staff at a distance?
“Her physical appearance.”
“Somewhat important.”
She clamped down on her lower lip, grinding her pencil into the paper, filling in the circle.
“The chemistry between my partner and me.”
When he didn’t respond, she peered over to find him staring at her. She could see the illicit thoughts in his mind. They matched hers. Heat rose to her face, along with the steam from her cider. She slid the mug away.
The corners of his mouth slowly curled, and a sexy dimple creased his cheek. “Very important.”
She stared at the paper, heart racing.
“Aren’t you going to mark that?”
She hastily filled in the circle, then sprang from her chair. “How about some water? Hot tea really isn’t practical in this heat.”
“I’m fine.”
She bolted over to the refrigerator and grabbed a bottled water. Get a grip. She was a professional. This was a business meeting. Remember what happened last time you let the line between work and pleasure blur? Yeah, she’d had sex.
“Is everything all right?” Ryan looked over at her.
“Just great.” She chugged the bottle of water as she returned to her seat. She picked up the questionnaire and started where she’d left off. “Okay, now then, our sexual compatibility.” Her gaze darted over and met his. “Not our compatibility, of course.” She let out an uneasy laugh. “The questions were written in the first person, as if you were taking the test yourself…” she rambled on incessantly while he stared at her in amusement.
“Extremely important.”
Their sexual compatibility, or his partner’s and his?
Mental shake. His partner’s, of course.
“Very important,” she said, filling in the circle.
“No, I said extremely important.” He leaned over the table toward her. “You need to add a box.”
“Sorry, no altering the questionnaire.”
What was with all the sex questions? She skimmed a finger over the questions until she came across a safe topic.
“Her fun-loving nature.”
He eyed the questionnaire. “Why did you skip ahead? What happened to not altering the questionnaire?”
“Yes, well”—she glanced at her watch—“in order to expedite things, I’ve decided to eliminate redundant or unnecessary questions.”
He snatched the papers from her hands. She attempted to grab them, but he relaxed smugly back in his chair, out of reach.
He scanned the questions she’d avoided. “My partner’s sexual drive.” He arched an inquisitive brow, staring over at her. “Well?”
She reluctantly offered him the pencil. “Fine, fill it out yourself.”
“No, I’m asking you. How important is your partner’s sex drive?”
She pressed her hands out in front of her. Whoa. “I’m not the one being interviewed here.”
“So, I have to disclose my feelings, but you don’t? A little hypocritical, isn’t it?”
“I’m not looking for a spouse.”
“So you don’t believe in sex before marriage?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Oh, your morals are just too high to have meaningless sex.”
“I could have meaningless sex right now if I wanted to.”
He glanced around at their intimate surroundings and the fact that they were the only two there.
“Well, not right this moment, like here and now…with you.”
“If it’s meaningless, what’s the difference who it’s with?”
Good question. What would it hurt? Her. If she had sex with Ryan, she’d definitely be swapping out those women’s applications. She certainly couldn’t remain objective after that.
“I wouldn’t have sex with a client.”
He leaned over the table toward her, and she instinctively drew closer. “Then consider yourself fired.”
The thought of them going at it on the table made her upper thighs melt.
“Don’t worry. I’ll rehire you afterward.”
That was the least of her concerns.
She straightened, attempting to regain a semblance of professionalism when all she wanted to do was rip his clothes off. “Do you use coercion when seducing all your women?”
“Never had to use any tactics before.” His tone was matter-of-fact rather than arrogant, but it still ticked her off. As if he could have her right then and there because he could get any woman he wanted. Well, he couldn’t.
“Fine, you’ve proven your point. I wouldn’t have meaningless sex.” However, she was fairly certain sex with Ryan would be anything but meaningless, for her anyway. She just wasn’t certain what it would mean. She popped up from her chair and grabbed her briefcase. “You’re right, this is taking too long. It would go much faster if you just completed it yourself.”
“What about the interview?”
“I know all I need to know.”
Except exactly how she felt about Ryan.
* * *
“You’re going to make some woman a good wife.” Alex peered at
Ryan across the snack bar in the kitchen.
“I’m certainly not going to make her a good husband.” Ryan pounded a chicken breast with a meat mallet, preparing it for chicken cordon bleu. He enjoyed cooking but didn’t do it often. Cooking for one wasn’t much fun.
“Not true, but speaking of which, how’d your meeting with Cassidy go this afternoon? Get a lot accomplished?”
Ryan nodded faintly.
Not as much as he’d have liked. What started as innocent flirting had turned serious, real fast. At least for him. He’d never come on so strongly to a woman. Never had to. Sounded arrogant, but women, for their own selfish reasons, didn’t turn down his advances. Cassidy was different. An attractive yet annoying quality at times—like today. She was too damn ethical to sleep with a client. At least he wanted to believe her excuse and that it wasn’t just him.
“I’m completing that questionnaire, so hopefully she’ll back off and stop bugging me.” She was getting too damn close. It was too easy to open up to her, and he couldn’t think clearly around her.
Alex spread Brie on a cracker. “Sure you want her to back off? Why not give this fiancée thing an honest try? Maybe you won’t want to divorce the woman after a year.”
“What makes you think I plan on divorcing her?”
Alex shrugged. “Something Cassidy said. And I know you.”
Ryan set down the mallet. “What exactly did she say?”
“That you plan on divorcing the woman.”
And here he thought she’d actually kept quiet because he’d asked her to.
“Don’t get pissed off. The comment slipped out, and it was actually quite endearing the way she tried to cover your ass. But I figured she was serious. The staff and I aren’t going to let you marry a woman only to divorce her a year later.”
“Precisely why I didn’t tell you.”
“When were you planning on telling your fiancée?”
“Before she becomes my fiancée.”
“Why not take this seriously? Take a risk?”
“Take a risk? I’m a stockbroker, for chrissake. I take risks on a daily basis.”
“You’re the most conservative broker I know.”
“Thanks to my conservatism, my aunt didn’t go bankrupt.”
Fifteen years ago, Aggie had been well on her way to losing her fortune. She wouldn’t trust professionals to handle her money, yet she’d trusted fly-by-night investment scams and con artists. Like some guy in “Botswana” who’d e-mailed her claiming his family was being held prisoner by rebel forces. He was long gone with her ten grand before Ryan had discovered what she’d done. She hadn’t been stupid, merely too compassionate.
“Yeah, lucky thing for Aggie you became a broker. A blessing in disguise that you got injured.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
Alex stuck the knife in the wheel of Brie. “C’mon, I knew you were never seriously hurt. I’m not dumb.”
“Only an idiot would fake an injury and give up his dream.”
“Aggie never would have let you give it up otherwise.”
“Maybe I was afraid I wasn’t good enough. That was my way out. Maybe I’m not as heroic as you think. Besides, I could have given her my inheritance from my parents if she went broke.”
“She’d never have accepted it.”
A heavy weight slowly lifted from his shoulders. He’d never confided in anyone about his bogus injury, since they’d have tried to talk him out of it. Keeping secrets from the ones he loved sucked, but he did whatever it took to protect them.
“Yeah, well, I owed her.”
“Because she took you in and loved you like a son? You gave her a sense of purpose in life. Gave her some roots, some stability. When are you going to stop hiding behind a sense of duty and live your life? When your aunt’s entire staff dies, and their secrets die with them? Fiona may very well outlive you. The woman’s too damn stubborn to die.”
“I don’t hide behind a sense of duty.”
“If you’re so hell-bent on doing right by your aunt, why not take her dying wish seriously?”
“See, there are some things I do for myself.” He rubbed the back of his neck, but it did little to relieve the tension from his entire body. He polished off a half glass of cabernet. The smooth, oaky flavor washed through him, relaxing his muscles. “So have you found anything out on this Nick Winston?”
“You just asked me to check on him two days ago.”
“Forget it, I’ll hire a detective. You don’t have time to be messing around with this.”
Alex let out a defeated groan, dropping his head back. “You don’t have to hire a detective.” He peered over at Ryan. “He’s her ex-fiancé. His family owns To Have and To Hold where she used to work.”
Sleeping with a client was off-limits, but she’d slept with her boss, or at least her boss’s son? Maybe it was merely Ryan she didn’t want to make love with.
He gave the chicken breast a solid whack.
“I think it’s dead,” Alex said.
“So if she quit her job after they broke up, why not go to work for a different company? Planning themed funerals seems like a step back in her career.”
Alex shrugged, popping a cracker in his mouth. His nonchalant attitude was a dead giveaway.
Ryan shook the mallet at him. “You’re a shitty liar.”
Alex eyed the mallet. “Are you going to beat it out of me?”
“If I have to.”
Alex pinched the bridge of his nose, gathering his thoughts. “There was some sort of scandal within the company, and she was used as the scapegoat. It’s not even worth getting into the details. Wasn’t easy for her to get a job after that. I honestly believe she got screwed.”
Ryan’s grip tightened around the handle of the meat mallet until his knuckles turned white. His first impulse was to drive over to Cassidy’s old company and rip off that Nick’s head and cram it down his throat. How could he have treated her so unjustly? Ryan didn’t even know what the scandal involved, but he wanted to believe Cassidy was innocent.
“Don’t be upset with her. I told her not to say anything.”
Ryan’s gaze narrowed. “How do you know all this?”
“She told me.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“You have enough going on right now. I didn’t want to concern you with it. Even if it does come out, I don’t foresee it causing any problems.”
This definitely caused problems. He wasn’t sure if he could trust Cassidy to keep his secrets, but she was more than capable of keeping her own. Had she not confided in him about the scandal because she was guilty? Yet she’d chosen to tell Alex both secrets. She could have at least been up front about her personal relationship with Nick that night at the museum. She was attracted enough to Ryan to kiss him, but not enough to confide in him? To let him believe that Nick was merely a competitor, not an ex-fiancé who’d destroyed her career? The sick feeling of betrayal wrenched his gut as did the impact of what this meant.
Cassidy had as much at stake in this whole farce as he did. The exposure of being his matchmaker and wedding planner could impact her ability to return to an industry she’d been wrongly forced out of. She was relying on him to succeed.
Shit. What the hell had he gotten himself into?
Chapter Twenty-One
“Here’s the file Ryan left for you.” Melanie handed Cassidy the sealed envelope.
She stared at the envelope. How had he answered the remaining questions pertaining to sex and emotional intimacy? Part of her wanted to rip open the envelope and devour his answers, but she was still hurt that he’d treated her like one of his bimbos. Like she should jump at the chance to have sex with him.
She was falling for Ryan Mitchell.
A man who stood against everything sacred love and marriage should symbolize. Who cared about money more than love? A man who, like her father and Nick, would always put work first.
“So how’s the
search going?” Melanie asked.
“Good. We’ve been flooded with applications.”
“Guess the tea leaves have been working.” Melanie walked over to the couch and lifted a cushion. There lay the pink thong and a blanketing of tea leaves.
“It’s Damiana tea, also known as the love tea. Its name comes from the Greek aphrodisiakos, for Aphrodite, the goddess of love. It’s great for a man’s libido. It works on a deeper level to bring harmony to your body and makes you feel in love with life, and others. And I mixed some catnip tea with it.”
“Catnip?”
“It helps stress, and it might help attract a woman who likes cats.”
Erica Turner had a picture of her and her cat on her social media page.
“That’s a critical quality in a woman for Ryan. I’ve been giving him this tea in the morning, and I figure having the office immersed in the scent can’t hurt.”
When Melanie offered to help, Cassidy figured that meant keeping her secret about the whole feng shui thing and her playing matchmaker. She hadn’t expected her to become so actively involved. Not to mention, she seemed too…practical to believe in tea leaves.
Cassidy sniffed the air. “Aren’t you afraid Ryan might ask what the smell is?”
“I told him it was the new carpet freshener.” She led Cassidy over to a potted plant in the corner and lifted the foliage, revealing dried leaves scattered on top of the soil. “Ginseng and rose hips. Since your friend brought the tea the other day, I’ve been studying up on it.”
Everybody had different ideas on how to find true love. Tea leaves, feng shui, compatibility tests. Cassidy was willing to try anything to get Ryan married off and out of her life. The sooner, the better.
“I think it’s working,” Melanie said. “He already seems different.”
“Different how?”
Melanie gestured toward the window. “A bird defaced the glass last Thursday, and he still hasn’t noticed. He’s been drinking the tea without complaining, and he hasn’t been working as long of hours. He wasn’t in the office all weekend. I can’t remember the last time that happened.”
Why the sudden changes? Was Ryan becoming more receptive to finding a fiancée? He’d completed the questionnaire quite willingly. She should be happy about his change of heart. It made her job all that much easier.
