Hidden Agenda

by Kara Lennox

  He had to wonder…why? Did she need her job this badly? She certainly wasn’t behaving like any assistant he’d had in the past. Maybe she simply took pride in her job. Whatever, it was a refreshing change.

  The birdhouses had turned out to be unnecessary to solving the owl tree problem. But since he had a carful of them in various sizes, he figured it wouldn’t hurt to hang a few to encourage the owls and woodpeckers.

  Besides, if he hadn’t found a job for her to do, she’d have gone back to the motel, and he had this odd desire to keep her where he could watch her.

  Watching her was certainly no hardship. Even in her hiking clothes she was hot. When he’d first shown her how to hang the houses—each kind had to be a specific distance from the ground—he’d gotten an eyeful of canvas pants stretching over her rounded bottom, her soft cotton T-shirt molding to enticingly full breasts…

  Probably implants, he told himself.

  By the time he’d met Chandra, she’d already gone under the knife three times. After they married, she amused herself with makeovers while he traveled. He’d never known for sure whether he would recognize the woman who greeted him at the airport on his homecoming.

  His body didn’t seem to care how Jillian had acquired her perfect physical assets. He got hard every time he so much as looked at her. Damned inconvenient as that was, it didn’t stop him from watching her, even peering at her through the binoculars as she struggled with the unfamiliar tools.

  He was pretty sure she’d never climbed a ladder or hammered a nail in her life, but she didn’t complain, just went after the task as best she could.

  Conner had made a good start on the job of marking by the time the setting sun told him it was time to quit for the day. He loved that about the outdoors, how the earth itself set the pace. No need for watches or clocks or beeping laptops or cell phones. His didn’t get a signal out here, anyway, which was fine with him.

  He capped his latest can of red spray paint, put it in his backpack, and went to collect Jillian. He’d take her out for a steak dinner—she deserved it.

  He stopped at the base of her ladder just as she was climbing down. “Jillian?”

  “Oh!” Startled, she lost her balance and damn near fell into Conner’s arms. At the last second she righted herself, and Conner was surprised at how disappointed he was. “Don’t sneak up on me like that.”

  “Sorry.” Though it was unnecessary, since she’d been climbing up and down the ladder for a couple of hours, he helped her the rest of the way down with one hand at her elbow, the other at her shoulder. All very innocent and proper, but her soft flesh, even through the cloth of her shirt, felt sexy.

  “We’re done for the day,” he said.

  “Okay.” She lowered the extension ladder, and Conner couldn’t help noticing that almost all of her fingernails were broken. He expected to feel some degree of amusement at her expense. It should have been funny, taking a polished city girl like Jillian and thrusting her into the woods, making her perform what was essentially manual labor.

  He’d done it on purpose, he realized. He’d meant to make her uncomfortable, and clearly he had.

  But he wasn’t amused. He had an uneasy ball in the pit of his stomach. Why would he deliberately want to cause a perfectly nice woman discomfort? Was it because she hadn’t once flirted with him? Was his ego smarting?

  “If you can carry the ladder,” she said, “I can get the tools and the last birdhouse. I can hang it tomorrow.”

  “It’s okay, Jillian, you did great. I mean really—you were great today.” Praising a subordinate’s work was so rare for him, it actually felt weird. He’d believed his previous admins were just oversensitive, but really, he must be an awful person to work for.

  “Thank you.”

  “I bet you’ve worked up an appetite. How about a steak dinner with all the trimmings? Stirrup Creek is a tiny town, but I bet there’s a good steak house somewhere around here.”

  “No, thanks. I’d just like to get checked in and spend the evening reading. I checked out some forestry books from the company library.”

  Conner paused to change his grip on the ladder. She was turning down a steak dinner? To study? What had the world come to? No woman had ever turned him down when he offered a steak dinner.

  He was honest enough to know that women found him good-looking. He’d known it since he was fourteen. He’d never had to try with any woman. Even Chandra, Stan Mayall’s only grandchild and heir to his considerable wealth, had been the one to come to him, seduce him.

  So why didn’t Jillian like him?

  Yes, he’d been a bit brusque with her at first, but now that he knew she was good at her job, he was being nice to her.

  And she was being exactly the same as she’d been from the beginning: professional but chilly.

  Listen to him. He should have been nice to her the first day he met her, regardless of her competence. He’d been a jerk to treat her like crap just because she reminded him of his ex-wife and he anticipated her being wrong for the job. She probably saw right through him. She knew she was good, she knew she’d proved her value to him, and now she knew, simply by his change of attitude, how badly he needed her.

  He wished he could figure out what her game was.

  “So, Jillian,” he asked when they were back in the Jeep. “What are your career aspirations? Where do you want to be in five years?”

  She looked at him with evident surprise, but she answered the question. “I’d like to be the assistant to a corporate CEO,” she answered without hesitation. Her answer was textbook perfect for a job interview. He’d been hoping for something a bit more personal from her. “I hope that working for you will broaden my skills.”

  “So you see this job working out for you?”

  “You’re a demanding boss. But your job is interesting, and you have a strong work ethic. I can learn a lot from you.”

  “You think I have a strong work ethic?”

  “It appears so.”

  “I think you just paid me a compliment.”

  “Merely stating facts.”

  “Do you not like me, or are you always this impersonal?” Now, he’d done it. He should have left things alone, quit on a high note.

  “I’ve only been working for you a week. I haven’t formed a strong opinion about whether I like you or not. But that’s immaterial. Regardless of how I feel about you personally, I intend to be the best assistant I know how to be.”

  Which told him exactly nothing.

  “You’d probably like your medal back.” She extracted it from a side pocket and handed it to him.

  “Thanks. Help me remember to get it fixed. My ex gave it to me because I used to travel a lot, and Saint Christopher is the patron saint of travelers.”

  “It means a lot to you, then.”

  Was that a note of disapproval in her voice? Or jealousy? “Not for the reason you think. I’m not still hung up on Chandra.”

  He waited for her to press him for the real reason he wore the medal, but she remained silent.

  He told her anyway. Maybe if she knew more about him, she would like him. “I’m superstitious. I was on an airplane once in India. There was some very bad weather. The plane was going down. When you think you’re going to die, you’re apt to do just about anything. I held that medal and I prayed to Saint Christopher, even though I’m not particularly religious. I told him that if I lived, I would always wear the medal.

  “The plane was about a hundred feet from the ground when suddenly the pilot pulled it up. We made a rough landing in a field, but nobody died. So I wear the medal.”

  As if to prove the medal had no sentimental value, he stuck it in the armrest console of the car rather than carefully packing it away.

  Jillian had reserved two rooms for them at the Traveler’s Rest Inn, which was the only motel in Stirrup Creek, a town that clearly didn’t get a lot of tourism. It was trying to make itself appealing, though; the one-block business district had a ca
fé, a quilt shop, an antiques store, an old-time drugstore and a scrapbooking shop. The old-fashioned streetlights sported banners advertising Historic Stirrup Creek. But the town’s only claim to fame was the world’s shortest gold rush.

  Turned out the claims of gold dust found in the creek were false.

  The motel was a bit shabby, but it was clean.

  Conner and Jillian had rooms next door to each other. She fitted her key into the lock and pushed open the door, switching on the light.

  “Does it look okay?” Conner asked.

  “Yes, it seems fine. If there’s nothing else, I’ll see you in the morning. What time would you like to get started?”

  “Let’s meet at eight o’clock for breakfast at the café. Then you can drop me off at the work site, and drive on back to Houston. Your time would be better spent, um, organizing my office.”

  She couldn’t have faked the delighted expression that swept across her face. He’d never met anyone who loved sorting papers quite as much as Jillian did. But she quickly squelched it. “I’m happy to do that for you. Getting organized will make both of our jobs easier. But how will you get back home?”

  “Don’t worry about me, I’ll manage.” He would borrow a vehicle from one of the loggers and get it back to him somehow.

  “All right, then. Good night.” She started to close the door in his face.

  “Wait, Jillian…”

  “Yes?”

  “Nothing.” He shook his head, trying to clear the cobwebs. “Nothing. Sleep well.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THAT WAS WEIRD. WHAT had Conner been about to say? Maybe he had second thoughts about letting her loose unsupervised in his man cave of an office.

  Oh, surely if he had something to hide, he wouldn’t even think of giving her access to his office.

  Jillian threw the dead bolt on her motel room door, then stripped off her sweaty, filthy clothes and headed straight for the shower.

  Every muscle in her body screamed from the unaccustomed exercise. She worked out religiously at her health club, took Pilates classes and yoga, but apparently none of that rendered a body fit for climbing ladders and nailing birdhouses to the trunks of trees.

  As she stood under the tiny showerhead, letting the hot water soak into her skin, she again wondered what Conner had been about to say to her.

  If he’d found anything about her work lacking, she’d have popped him one. They should give her a special award, Admin of the Year or something, for putting up with his antics.

  He obviously was still trying to find her limits, push her until she screamed, “Stop! No more!” But she wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction. Staying employed at Mayall Lumber meant too much to her.

  Although it wasn’t even eight o’clock, Jillian put on her nightgown, a Victoria’s Secret silk number. She had no idea why she’d packed such fancy pj’s. It wasn’t as though anyone but her would see them. But she had to admit it was nice to slip into something so decadently feminine after a day of wielding man-tools in the woods.

  Now that her phone had a signal again, she saw that she had two messages, one from Daniel and one from Celeste. Daniel normally didn’t call her unless it was something important, and she didn’t blame him. Although his wife, Jamie, had always been nice to her, she wouldn’t be human if she didn’t want Jillian as far removed from her husband as possible.

  Jillian sat on the bed, unwrapped a granola bar and munched on it while she listened to the messages. Her heart warmed as she realized both Daniel and Celeste were worried about her.

  She returned Daniel’s call first. “Jillian. You okay?” He sounded so concerned she almost laughed.

  “Of course I’m okay. What’s wrong?”

  “It’s just that Celeste seemed to think you’d gone off into the woods with a serial killer. Then when you didn’t answer your phone all day…”

  Jillian laughed. “I’m touched she was worried enough to drag you into it, but I’m fine. My new boss had a problem to deal with on a job site and he insisted I come with him.”

  “Your new boss is a murder suspect.”

  “Excuse me? I mean, I’ve heard some gossip, but it sounded like wild speculation to me.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m working angles on this end. It seems Greg Tynes took over the job Conner had before he was promoted. He and Conner never saw eye to eye, and Stan says Conner was going to fire him.”

  “For good reason. You should see what he did to this forest. Clear-cut it, when he was supposed to be taking only select, mature trees.”

  “But he and Conner could have argued. Things could have gotten out of hand…then Conner got scared, hid the body—”

  “In the trunk of his boss’s car?”

  “To get back at his ex-wife. Stan is her grandfather.”

  “No way he killed Greg.” Jillian said. “And, no, I have no hard evidence of Conner’s innocence. It’s just my opinion.”

  “I don’t have any concrete evidence of his guilt,” Daniel countered. “It’s just a theory I’m working on. But you need to be extremely careful around Conner Blake.”

  “Don’t worry, I am.” Careful in more ways than one. Today, he’d made it so easy to admire him. And admiring him was only one small step away from liking him.

  She could not afford that luxury. Even if she took away the hideous history they shared, she couldn’t allow herself even the smallest spark of warmth.

  Jillian knew herself. Though she could be blindingly efficient, deep down she was a romantic with a tendency to develop crushes, for lack of a better word. For her, familiarity bred affection, not contempt.

  So what if Conner wanted to make an owl happy? So what if he got a goofy smile on his face when he looked at an old tree? He was the enemy. The enemy.

  She called Celeste back, too, and reassured the older woman that she hadn’t been fitted with cement shoes and dropped into a lake. She filled in Celeste on the day’s activities.

  “Let me get this straight. You hung birdhouses all afternoon.”

  “Well, I was terribly slow at it. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve used a hammer. My manicure is a lost cause, I’m afraid.”

  “Your words say it was bad, but your tone of voice says you enjoyed it.”

  “Me? No. It was torture. Hell on earth.” Okay, maybe it hadn’t been that bad. She’d never been much of a nature girl, but she did pride herself on her ability to learn new things quickly and adapt to whatever circumstances she found herself in.

  The worst part had been forcing herself to stop watching Conner as he did his tree marking thing. Once, she’d paused her own work for ten whole minutes while she watched how Conner strode through the forest, using some secret criteria to select trees for harvest while leaving others. It wasn’t random, she was sure, not given the way he would sometimes stare at a tree, feel its bark and leaves, or whip out a tape measure and check the circumference of the trunk.

  He was fascinating. Jerk. Bastard.

  “Did you say something?”

  Had she spoken aloud? Oops. “Just cursing a splinter.”

  “Did you plant the bug yet?”

  “In his office. My first day on the job.”

  She still wasn’t sure she could make herself listen to his private conversations. But she would have to get over her squeamishness if she wanted to be an investigator.

  “Good girl,” Celeste said. “You be careful.”

  “If he was going to do away with me on this trip, he’s had plenty of chances. No witnesses except an owl.”

  “Call me when you get back to civilization. And make sure you throw the dead bolt on your motel room door.”

  * * *

  BREAKFAST WITH CONNER had felt a little awkward. In Jillian’s mind, breakfast was the most intimate meal because it was the meal you shared when you spent the night with someone.

  She ate her usual yogurt and fruit while Conner tucked into a huge plate of bacon, eggs and pancakes. He also ordered a ham
sandwich to go, so he could take a lunch break later.

  “Are you sure that’s all you want to eat?” he asked.

  “Yes, I’m sure.”

  “No wonder you’re so tiny.”

  She wasn’t sure he’d meant it as a compliment, but she took it as one. Losing weight in high school had been torture. But after “the incident,” she kept picturing what she must have looked like, running across the football field in nothing but her control-top granny panties, clutching at shreds of the wet, melted dress, dodging the sprinklers someone—probably Conner—had turned on.

  She still remembered how her belly fat had jiggled with every step.

  Wearing a bathing suit for swim team had been embarrassing enough, but at least the one-piece spandex had contained and covered her, and she’d been either in the water or wrapped in a towel most of the time. Plus, nobody except swimmers’ parents showed up for the meets.

  Her half-naked bolt for the locker room had been so, so much worse. That very day she’d vowed to lose the chubby rolls of fat that had plagued her since sixth grade, when an unfortunate addiction to frozen Snickers bars and TV combined with puberty had caused her to pile on some serious pounds.

  “I haven’t always been a size four.” She had no idea what would make her bring up the past. It was dangerous. Except that she still couldn’t believe he didn’t recognize her or at least make the connection with her name.

  “Really.”

  “I, um, gained weight in college. The freshman fifteen.” Daniel had told her to stick to the truth, but she couldn’t tell him she’d been a chubby kid. It might get him to thinking.

  “I would never have guessed. How did you lose the weight? Lap band?”

  “No,” she scoffed. More like lap swimming, but she couldn’t tell him that, either. “The old-fashioned way, diet and exercise. My apartment building has its own work-out room.” And a lap pool. “I still have a tendency to gain weight if I’m not careful.”

  The pool was one reason Jillian had decided to move into the downtown building Daniel owned when she’d left employment at his estate. She’d given up a certain level of luxury, including easy access to an Olympic-size pool and healthy meals prepared by Daniel’s chef. She’d learned to prepare her own meals. But swimming was something she had to have.