Hers By Request

by Karen Ann Dell

  “I see. Well, in that case, you’re right. We need to get working on this soon. I’ll need to see all the paperwork you have for the last six months of last year and get that sorted out. Then I can set up your books for this year. Your first quarter tax reports for this year won’t be due until April 30, but the corporate return for last year will be due by March fifteenth.”

  “You mean April fifteenth, don’t you?”

  “No. Corporate tax returns are due March fifteenth. You’re thinking of personal tax returns.” She gave him a smile to soften her correction.

  “Ah. I see Mr. Coghill was less than informative on several topics. I’ve never filed corporate tax returns before.”

  “But you have incorporated, right?” she asked a little sharply.

  “I have,” he assured her, and saw her visibly relax. He’d only done it because the lawyer handling the sale told him he should. Guess it was a good idea.

  “Well, now you have someone who’ll tell you everything you need to know in plenty of time. But I’m sorry to tell you that I’ll need a fair amount of your time over the next week or two in order to get things completed on time.”

  She opened her Day-Timer and started jotting notes, a tiny frown marring the perfection of her delicately arched brows. She trapped her lower lip between her teeth as she concentrated, a habit he found compellingly sexy.

  “I hope that won’t be a . . .” She glanced up to catch him staring at her mouth and seemed to lose her train of thought. “. . . a problem?”

  “No problem, Amanda. I’ll devote as much time as you need to get everything set up properly. Other than when I’m on the air, my time is all yours.” He held her gaze as this last statement brought faint color to her cheeks. “Will this interfere with your other plans?”

  “Other plans?” She tilted her head.

  “The party you’re preparing for?” he prompted, keeping the satisfaction he felt at her confusion hidden. He liked the idea he could put a little ripple in the calm, professional aura that surrounded her. He couldn’t resist another glance at her lips and watched the tip of her tongue slip out to moisten the lower one in response.

  “Oh, the party. Yes. I mean, no. No, I can handle your company’s work as well as the party preparations. Assuming we get the job,” she conceded. “Once we do, I’ll have to go over what you’ll need from us for your set-up.” Her smile was pure mischief. “For that, my time will be all yours.” Then she turned serious. “You haven’t told me what you’ll charge to deejay our party.”

  “You mean the discount you offered on my first quarter accounting fee isn’t my compensation for doing your gig?”

  “Oh no. That’s just a little added incentive to convince you to say yes. We would still expect to pay you. On the other hand, my budget is fairly limited, so I’m willing to throw in considerable amounts of my time working on your books for free to sweeten the pot. Cash is what I’m short on, so please take that into consideration when calculating your fee.”

  Her hopeful, and very persuasive, smile almost had him offering to pay her for the chance to work her party. He doubted many men resisted any request from this siren in a suit.

  “Don’t worry, Amanda, my fee will be very reasonable. You’ll have no trouble paying it.” His concentration on her mouth might lead her to think his fee could be taken in kisses. A method of payment he was suddenly highly in favor of. He saw her eyes narrow the tiniest bit and her chin come up. Oops, too much attention paid to those luscious lips. She flattened them into a determined line and he knew he’d better get a grip.

  “Mr. MacMurphy, I want—”

  “Dev,” he interrupted. Her hesitation told him she was suddenly unsure whether being on a first-name basis was a good idea.

  “Dev,” she conceded. She took a breath. “I want to, um . . .”

  “Yes? You want to . . .?”

  “I want to keep our agreement completely professional,” she declared, this time tearing her gaze from his mouth and meeting his eyes.

  “Absolutely, Amanda. I couldn’t agree more,” he assured her. “I haven’t done this deejay business at a party before. I’ll have to do a bit of research before I can quote you a fee.”

  “Oh. Of course.” She bit at her lower lip again.

  He could tell she wasn’t sure whether his intense interest in her lips was real or her imagination.

  “Certainly. Well, then, you do your research and when we meet again, you can tell me what you decide.”

  “Sounds good. When would you like to get together next?”

  “If you have last year’s ledgers handy, I can take them with me today, go over them at home the next few days, and meet with you again on Friday.”

  “Hmm. Ledgers?”

  “Yes. You know, last year’s books.”

  He pointed behind her to a small conference table where five cardboard boxes sat like islands surrounded by a sea of paper. Bills, receipts, purchase orders, and other assorted scraps of multicolored paper, including several napkins with figures scribbled haphazardly across them, covered every available inch of the tabletop.

  She turned, then stood slowly. Her mouth fell open.

  “Please tell me you’re kidding. That’s a joke, right?” She jerked her head toward the document disaster.

  He had the grace to look chagrined. “No. That’s the real deal. I’ve been sorting through it, trying to separate it into categories. Then I was going to order each pile by date . . .” He broke off, cowed by her expression of total disbelief. Okay, so graduating cum laude from the New England Conservatory of Music didn’t include business savvy with the diploma. He’d been winging it, hoping that bastard Coghill would sort everything out.

  She stared at him for a few more seconds, both hands covering her mouth. Her shoulders started to shake, then the laughter she couldn’t hold back erupted. He found himself grinning in response, then chuckling and finally giving in and howling with mirth right along with her. For a few minutes they were convulsed, helpless to stop, tears leaking from both of their eyes.

  Finally, she got herself together enough to say, “Now I understand why Mr. Coghill kept missing his appointments.”

  That set them both off again. She had to sit down eventually, out of breath, but unable to stop smiling at him.

  “I—” he began.

  She put her hand up. “Don’t. Give me a chance to catch my breath or we’ll be calling nine-one-one.” She fished in her purse.

  He opened his desk drawer, produced a box of tissues, and offered it to her. Her glance fell on his glove-covered hand and she looked him a question.

  His hilarity evaporated like drops of sweat in the Iraqi desert.

  “Explosion,” he bit out, the paucity of details meant to close the subject to further discussion.

  “Oh my.” Her eyes darkened to smoke. “What happened?”

  “War.”

  “Oh. I see.”

  He hoped to hell she didn’t.

  “I’m sorry.” There was regret but no pity in the steady regard of those gray eyes.

  “Don’t be.” I deserved this and a whole lot more.

  She seemed surprised at that reply but politely responded to his terse comments by changing the subject. She gestured to the sea of paperwork behind her.

  “Well, I think I may have to deal with this here rather than take it home.”

  “Yeah.” He surveyed the conference table. “I guess I should have given you fair warning before you quoted me your fee. I think I’ll just waive my deejay pay, unless you think that isn’t fair compensation for the extra work you’ll have to do.”

  Then again, maybe she wouldn’t even want him to do the party now that she’d seen his messed-up hand. Good thing he had a long-sleeved shirt and his glove on. She might have thr
own up, or fainted, if she saw the ravages of the burn scars from his shoulder to his fingers. The ever-present ache and tingle in his forearm intensified. He shoved it to the back of his mind. Let’s get this over with as quickly as possible.

  “Amanda, don’t feel any obligation about the party. I completely understand if you’d rather find someone else. In fact, let me talk to a couple of the other announcers here and see if one of them would be willing to do it.”

  “Why would I want someone else?”

  She appeared honestly puzzled. Did he have to actually spell it out? He made a gesture toward his left hand.

  She studied his arm more closely. “Are you trying to tell me that you can’t do the job? Or that you don’t want to do it? Because I would rather have you than anyone else.”

  “No. I can do it. I just wanted to be sure you . . .”

  “Still wanted you? Oh yes, I still want you,” she said emphatically, clearly unimpressed by his perceived handicap.

  “Okay, then. I’m your man,” he affirmed.

  They both listened to the mental echoes of those sentences and found somewhere else to stare for a few seconds.

  “I’ll get started on Project Paperwork tomorrow, if that’s okay. I have other work scheduled for today.”

  “Of course. I’ll be here until about three. Then I usually try to grab a few hours’ sleep before I come back for my tour. You can come . . . anytime. Whenever it’s convenient.”

  She stood and gathered up her coat. “I’ll probably be here early. There’s a lot of work to do.” She rolled her eyes and her lips twitched with the effort not to laugh again.

  He came around the desk and took her coat, holding it so she could slip her arms inside. He couldn’t resist brushing the side of her neck with his fingers and felt the electricity sizzle up his arm.

  “Thanks.”

  Was there a little wobble in that word? Her eyes seemed wider, brighter, almost silvery as she held out her hand to him. “See you tomorrow, then.”

  He clasped hers gently but firmly, foolishly grateful his left hand was the injured one, not his right. “Tomorrow,” he agreed.

  He walked her to his office door and watched the sway of her hips as she went down the hall. Slender and graceful, she had curves in all the right places and a pair of long perfect legs that would wrap around a man with the promise of heaven in their embrace. His jeans got so tight he could feel his heartbeat against the zipper.

  He would see her again tomorrow.

  How long had it been since he anticipated something—anything—with pleasure? So long he couldn’t remember. Since before . . . before he’d killed his best friend.

  Reality crashed down on his anticipation like a cinder block on a soap bubble.

  On the drive home Amanda congratulated herself on the acquisition of another client.

  Blue Point Cove was a small town with a resident population of about eleven hundred. During the summer months tourism swelled the numbers to three times that, but between Labor Day and Memorial Day the sleepy community on the lower Chesapeake Bay settled back into obscurity. With the town empty of tourists, those winter months were lean, frugal times.

  So far she had only a handful of accounting clients, so the next winter would be a struggle unless she found another way to supplement her income. Landing this job with Zoe would be an answer to both of their prayers.

  When her mom had remarried she’d given Amanda the cottage. That put her one step up from Zoe. At least she didn’t have to pay a mortgage. Food, utilities, insurance, and gasoline all added up, though. To say nothing of her student loan. That bill loomed over her every month like a carrion crow, ready to extract its payment in flesh.

  She parked in the gravel area in front of the building whose weathered clapboards matched the gray wings of the sea gulls circling overhead. Unlike the Wyndham’s “Cottage”, her home deserved the name. Two bedrooms, one bath, and a kitchen, dining, living room combo made a small footprint nestled on one of the tiny inlets around the cove. A short dock led to the water, so shallow here that only boats with very low draughts could tie up safely.

  She loved “The Last Call”, as her father had named it, probably because he had loved it, too. She and her dad had shared a special closeness when she was growing up. Until the fateful summer of her eleventh year when one evening he left for work and never came back.

  She dropped the day’s mail on the dining table and took her laptop into the second bedroom, which did double-duty as her office. The machine was old, weighed a ton, and had a battery that barely lasted two hours—if she didn’t stress it too much. She plugged it in and hooked-up her modem. No Wi-Fi out here in the boonies. No fast, broadband service either. Blue Point Cove was a good five years behind the rest of the modern world, a condition the tourists often found charming. As a businesswoman, she’d prefer a little less charm and a bit more speed.

  The connection established, Amanda set the machine to download her email and went back to the kitchen to reheat the remnants of this morning’s coffee. She changed into sweats then laced a mug of hot coffee liberally with French vanilla creamer and walked down the short dock to the water.

  During the summer, sleek little motorboats raced down the center of the channel towing skiers, their boom-boxes blaring the Black Eyed Peas or Cold Play loud enough to be heard over the whine of the outboards. In the chill of late January the water was still as glass and the silence a blessing. She remembered how quiet it was twenty years ago when her parents first brought her here. Now the long summer days were punctuated with the sounds of teenage laughter, rock, pop, and hip-hop. She was glad to have a few more months of solitude before the onslaught.

  Amanda removed the elastic from her braid and ran her fingers through the strands, shaking her head to let the loosened tresses cascade down her back. A noisy flock of seagulls wheeled overhead and turned toward the sea. The sun was about to extinguish itself in the waters of the bay and a breeze set goose bumps chasing up her arms. She hurried back to the relative warmth of her kitchen, refilled her coffee, and went to check her email.

  There was a short note from her mom about plans to visit Annapolis in the spring. She and Amanda’s step-dad lived in San Diego now and enjoyed perfect weather three hundred twenty-five days a year. Amanda was happy for her. Jack was a nice guy and they were well-suited to each other.

  She checked the clipping services she subscribed to in the off chance that one had posted something new about her father’s disappearance. As usual there was no news on that front. Maybe living here full time would give her a chance to do more digging—not that she expected some long undiscovered clue to drop into her lap. But, you never knew. She felt closer to her dad here than anywhere else. With the two men she’d loved and lost watching over her, maybe her luck would change.

  CHAPTER 5

  Amanda had her spreadsheets up on the laptop, adding the costs of items she had priced so far while Zoe sat, cross-legged, on the twin bed next to Amanda’s desk. Sketches covered the bedspread. One of the great things about her friend’s talent was her ability to show prospective clients how the setting for their event would appear. For those with poor visualization these illustrations could make the difference between acceptance of their proposal and a pass.

  “I checked with the local VFW hall about renting their tables and chairs. They’d never done that before but were willing to make some money. They gave us a great deal, especially after I told them we might need to do this again, many times, in the future. They were willing to throw in tablecloths for free but their tablecloths won’t do. Too many stains. I’ll check in Easton or Waldorf and see if I can find covers for the chairs there too. Do you have specific colors in mind or should I go with white?”

  “We’re going formal with this—well, not actually white tie and tails, though I’d love that, but dre
ssy, so I’m keeping the theme to black and white. I’ll use splashes of color—red mostly—to add some zing.” She sorted through her drawings. “White floor-length tablecloths with black toppers. That might mean you could use the VFW linens on the bottoms if we get the black toppers elsewhere.”

  Amanda nodded. “Good idea.” Another money saver.

  “I did want to get red carpet runners down the walkway to the pavilion and for most of the deck so the women won’t be catching their heels in the boards. We’ll need a portable dance floor for the pavilion too.”

  “I’d planned on the dance floor but will have to check on the carpet. We’ll need to measure the walkway and pavilion before I get an accurate quote, but I’ll guesstimate for our proposal. I have prices for glassware and cutlery and alcohol already. I’ve calculated costs for wait staff and a dishwasher. And I’m still working on finding two bartenders. Staffing this first time around will be a bear. Once we’ve done a few events we’ll have accumulated a roster of helpers we can call on.”