The Intern Affair

by Roxanne St Claire

  Well, she could. The day she left Colorado on this crazy, irresistible fact-finding mission.

  But the only facts she’d found—

  A man talking on a cell phone jostled her, and a woman carrying an armload of shopping bags excused herself as she hustled past Jessie.

  Sighing, she paused at the street corner. Some brave natives were crossing against the light. Someday she might have the nerve to do that. But for now she waited for the green Walk sign.

  When her cell phone beeped out the chorus of “Rocky Mountain High,” she seized it like a starving woman who’d been handed a rare rib-eye.

  “Hi, Dad!” she fairly sang into the phone as she started across Park Avenue, still checking both ways; she didn’t trust those cabbies. “You’ll never guess where I am!”

  “Tell me, angel.” Travis Clayton’s booming baritone sounded as rich as if he were sitting across from her on the patio, gazing at the snow-tipped mountains that surrounded the Silver Moon Ranch.

  “Crossing Park Avenue.” Jessie let out a little laugh. “Pretty cool, huh?”

  “Be careful, honey,” Travis warned. “Those drivers are crazy in New York.”

  She accepted the long-distance parenting without even rolling her eyes, the bittersweet ache of homesickness too sharp to tease her father. “How are you, Daddy? How’s Oscar?”

  “I had him out for a ride today,” he said. “I swear that gelding misses you.”

  Jessie closed her eyes for a moment and imagined climbing into a saddle with a single movement as natural to her as breathing. Another pang of homesickness threatened.

  “Of course he hasn’t forgiven you for that name.”

  Jessie just laughed. “Where are you, Daddy? Out on the porch?”

  “I am. I have to go back over to the barn in a bit, but I thought I’d catch you on your way home from work.”

  “I’m not going home,” she told him. “Get this. I’m about to walk into the Waldorf-Astoria. How does that sound?”

  “Like you’re a long way from Colorado, angel.” She could hear the wistfulness in his voice.

  Even though it had been three years since her mother died, maybe leaving Dad alone in Colorado hadn’t been the smartest thing Jessie’d ever done. It had certainly been the most impulsive. But she had to know.

  “What are you doing at this fancy hotel?”

  A valet opened the door to the Waldorf with one of those appreciative smiles that men in New York gave to pretty women, and Jessie beamed right back and thanked him.

  “I’m having a meeting with the executive editor of the magazine, if you can believe that.” In the softly lit lobby, a vast center table featured a bouquet of fiery and exotic autumn flowers exuding a luscious fragrance.

  “Oh? Think they’re finally going to start paying you?”

  She glanced around for the entrance to the Bull and Bear, and then spotted a silk-covered settee against one wall. She perched on the edge to finish her conversation. “The internship lasts a year and trust me, Dad, any of my classmates at the Art Institute would kill for this opportunity. Don’t worry, I’m watching every penny.”

  “I know, sweetheart.” His voice softened, and Jessie could imagine that his brilliant blue eyes did the same. “Your mother left you money to do anything you want. If living in New York City and working at a big magazine—for free—is making you happy, then it would have made her happy.”

  She closed her eyes and imagined her mother’s face for a moment. Her real mother. The one who raised her, the one who—

  Suddenly, the need to confide in her father squeezed her chest so hard, she thought her heart would pop right out.

  “So what’s this meeting all about, Jess? Do you have time to tell me?”

  She glanced at her watch. How long would it take to tell him the truth? More than the three minutes she had until six o’clock. But, oh, the need to share was sharp.

  “I’ve been offered an opportunity to shadow the editor-in-chief, Finola Elliott.” She deliberately waited a beat to see if he reacted to the name. “But I’m not sure I want to take it.”

  “Why the hell not?” His voice bellowed as though he were hollering to one of the Silver Moon hands. “That sounds like a fantastic break and you wouldn’t have been picked if they didn’t see your brains and talent.”

  She took a deep breath. “I’m just not sure I want to spend that much time with Finola Elliott.”

  “Doesn’t spending time with the boss increase your profile…and the chance that they’ll hire you for a job that actually gets a paycheck?”

  Jessie had to smile. It was killing Dad that the internship was unpaid. “It might,” she agreed.

  “Then why wouldn’t you jump at the chance?”

  “I’m not sure I want to be under Fin’s close scrutiny.”

  “Why not?”

  She took a deep breath, closed her eyes and whispered the words that had been reverberating in her head for almost a year. She had to say them. She had to tell someone.

  “Because Finola Elliott is my birth mother.”

  Two

  Jessie was a full ten minutes late when she entered the darkened atmosphere of the Bull and Bear. Her head still rang with her father’s reaction and warnings, although the room hummed with soft chatter and conversation.

  Don’t expect some sort of hallelujah chorus when she finds out… She’s a city woman who probably wants no part of facing a past she gave up twenty-three years ago… If she wanted a reunion, honey, don’tchya think she’d have found you?

  Even the fact that Finola’s name was listed on an adoption finders Web site didn’t convince Daddy that Jessie’s birth mother may be conducting the same search with the same hope and trepidation that seized Jessie.

  Jessie loved that dream, loved imagining a moment when Fin Elliott would look at her and throw her arms open to exclaim “My baby!”

  But Daddy might be right. After observing Fin for five months, Jessie had seen absolutely nothing that would indicate the thirty-eight-year-old workaholic would be interested in finding, and knowing, and loving, a child she’d given up for adoption when she was only fifteen years old.

  Revealing the truth could be a huge error in judgment, one of those prayers that are best left unanswered.

  The sight of a golden-haired god at a corner table brought Jessie back to the moment. From the day she’d walked into Cade McMann’s office for an interview five months ago, Jessie had felt a tickle of…desire. At first it was just his looks—six perfect feet of solid muscle, dark blond hair that in the summer he’d let grow over his collar, and those see-right-through-you smoke-gray eyes. And it didn’t take long for Jessie to get past the great looks and realize that Cade also had a leader’s sense of order and a survivor’s sense of humor.

  From the sidelines, she’d watched a man who thought through every decision he made, who considered all the angles and rarely, if ever, made a mistake.

  So why, then, would he ask an intern out for drinks?

  And why was he standing there now, looking at her like a man who wanted something? What could he want?

  His handsome face broke into a slow smile, and her heart skittered around for a second. She wasn’t sure what he wanted, but she sure wished it was her.

  “Sorry I’m late,” she said as he pulled out a chair for her.

  “Don’t tell me. Scarlet called from the photo shoot with twenty things for you to do before you could leave.”

  She put her purse on the floor next to her and touched the frame of her glasses to make sure they completely covered her green eyes. Even in the dim light of the bar, he might recognize the similarity in shape and color to the woman he worked for.

  “Actually, I was on the phone with my father and didn’t have the heart to hang up on him.”

  He raised his eyebrows in interest. “He’s in Colorado, right?”

  Did he remember that from her interview? Or had he been checking on her background? “Yep. We have a cattle
ranch not far from Colorado Springs.”

  He signaled for a waiter, who took their orders for drinks. Jessie planned to slowly sip a chardonnay; the last thing she needed was to lose control. Anyway, just being this close and personal with a man she’d been admiring—okay, lusting after—for five months was about all the intoxication she needed.

  After they ordered, Cade slipped off his suit jacket and tossed it casually over the back of a chair. Jessie congratulated herself on keeping her gaze from meandering over the solid muscles that strained the crisp white linen of his custom-tailored shirt.

  “So how exactly did a girl raised on a ranch in Colorado land in the jungles of New York City?” he asked, leaning back in his chair and absently running a hand over his jaw. By the end of every day, he had just enough stubble to make her want to rub it.

  “I mentioned this in my interview,” she reminded him gently. “I graduated from the Art Institute of Colorado with a bachelor’s degree in graphic design. But all my minor classes were in fashion. Where else would I go but New York?”

  “To combine your love of art and fashion?” he prompted.

  “I’ve been reading Charisma since I was fourteen,” she admitted. “I’ve always loved the magazine and always loved fashion.” But the day she found out that her birth mother was the editor-in-chief was the day her world changed forever.

  “So this is your dream job,” he said.

  “You could say that.”

  “Except for the pay.” He winked and it sent a little quiver through her body.

  The waiter brought her wine and a beer for Cade.

  She gave a nod to his Coors. “The Colorado girl in me says thanks for that.”

  He smiled and tilted his head toward the bar. “Mostly martini drinkers in here.”

  “It is more old-world than new-age.” She adjusted the napkin under her wineglass. “Why did you pick this place?”

  “I knew there wouldn’t be any EPH people here.” He poured the beer into a glass, then looked up at her, his gray gaze direct and meaningful. “The other magazines have spies everywhere, you know.”

  “I wouldn’t know,” she said, lifting her glass. “But I hope Charisma wins.” She forced herself to add, “For Finola’s sake.”

  He tapped her glass with his. “We plan on winning,” he said, his voice rich with confidence.

  As she sipped, he asked, “Did you interview at the other magazines before you came to Charisma? Snap has a great internship program and Pulse is one of the most respected newsmagazines in the business.”

  “I didn’t even consider the other magazines,” she said, eliciting a flash of surprise on his face. “While the celebrities covered in Snap are appealing and I’m impressed with what Michael Elliott’s done with Pulse, my heart has always been in fashion.”

  A statement that was the absolute, honest truth. And when she discovered that her birth mother was the editor-in-chief of her very favorite magazine, Jessie had been in an emotional upheaval that even two-hour-long rides on Oscar hadn’t calmed.

  “The week after I graduated,” she continued, “I came to New York and Charisma is the very first place I interviewed.”

  “How did your parents feel about you going so far away?”

  She touched her glasses. They’d become her favorite crutch ever since she saw Lainie wearing a pair, and Jessie discovered she could disguise her eye color and look somewhat hip at the same time.

  “My father,” she said softly. “My mother passed away three years ago.”

  “I’m sorry.” His fingertips grazed her knuckles. It was the most natural gesture in the world, but the contact sent a wholly different rush through her.

  “Thank you. She had an aneurism. It was sudden, and difficult.”

  “My father died five years ago,” he said, surprising her with the gentleness in his voice. “It was really hard on my mother and the girls.”

  “The girls being the four younger sisters I’ve heard about.” She relaxed a little, hoping the spotlight would be on him for a few minutes. “Where are they?”

  “Near my mother. Believe me, I’ve got my own cheering section at home in Chicago.”

  “No wonder you’re so good with all the ladies at Charisma. You know your way around a sorority house.”

  “I’m lucky that way.” He took a sip of beer, then set the glass down with a thud. “But no changing the subject, which is you. Do you have brothers and sisters?”

  “I’m an only child.” Should she tell him she was adopted? Or might that send up a warning flare? Did anyone know about Finola’s past? She had been trying to find that out since she’d arrived in New York. She lowered her voice and added a purposeful glint to her eyes. “You want to know a secret?”

  He leaned forward as though she had him on a string and had tugged it. “You have no idea how much.”

  “This is the first time I’ve been east of the Rockies.”

  He dropped back in his chair. “No way.”

  She nodded, enjoying the unbroken eye contact and the glimmer of a smile tipping the corners of his lips. Had she ever really noticed just how perfectly shaped his mouth was?

  Oh yeah. Several times, as a matter of fact.

  “You’re acclimating very well, then,” he said.

  She crinkled her nose. “Well, I still can’t cross the street unless there’s a Walk sign.”

  He “tsked” as though he were disappointed in her. “Are you hailing taxis yet?”

  “I can’t afford cabs.” She tapped his knuckles playfully just for the fun of touching him again. “You don’t pay me, remember?”

  “Oh, yeah.” He regarded her for a minute. “So how can you afford a Manhattan apartment? And clothes? And food?”

  She spun the stem of her wineglass, then slid her fingers up and down it thoughtfully. “My mother left me some money and I’ve decided to use it to support myself while I learn this business. I room in a rent-controlled studio with Lainie Sinclair, the proofreader and keeper of The Closet keys.” She gave him a knowing smile, since it was common knowledge that the only perk for the low-ranking staff was the chance to borrow clothes from Charisma’s well-stocked fashion closet. “And I don’t eat much.”

  Still, he didn’t say anything, and Jessie suddenly wondered if he doubted her. The way he looked at her…it was almost as if he didn’t think she was telling the truth.

  “Do I look like I eat a lot?” she asked with a half smile.

  He shook his head slowly. “No.”

  “Then why are you staring at me as though I’m guilty of something?”

  He laughed self-consciously. “I’m just thinking about where I should take you to dinner. Somewhere great, since you don’t get to eat much. What do you like?”

  You, she thought daringly. I like you.

  “French. Mexican. Japanese. Fusion. I’m a starving intern. I’ll eat anything.”

  Had she just accepted a dinner date with her boss’s boss—and Fin Elliott’s right-hand man?

  By the look on his face, he was as surprised and pleased as she was.

  This wasn’t going at all as he had planned. While Jessie visited the ladies’ room and he paid for their drinks, Cade took a deep breath and remembered that his goal was to find out why she was avoiding Fin, what she was hiding.

  Not how far one date could actually go.

  Get a grip, man. Falling into the sack with an intern might not be forbidden, but it was definitely less than professional.

  It could be a mistake.

  And he hadn’t plowed to the head of the class, the top of the team and the pinnacle of a career by making mistakes. But something about Jessie Clayton made him want to take chances.

  She’d confirmed everything in her file from the school she’d attended to the fact that there were no other interviews at the other magazines in the personnel computer system. He even knew that her mother had passed away three years ago, while she was studying at the Art Institute. So she wasn’t lying about her
background.

  But still Cade’s sixth sense screamed that Jessie Clayton was hiding something. And with the competition hot and furious among the four top magazines of EPH, he didn’t put anything past the Elliotts.

  Elliotts played to win and that was why Cade liked being around them. But would they be conniving enough to pick an innocent girl from Colorado to spy for them?

  He had to find out.

  And that was why he asked her to dinner.

  It didn’t have anything to do with that flashy smile or a laugh that sounded like…like the prettiest thing he’d ever heard.

  He stood and grabbed his jacket, catching sight of her returning to their table. Of course she wore those glasses and she must have rebraided her hair before she left the office, because it was held securely back now. And although her simple black skirt and white blouse was classic, it certainly didn’t have the au couture flair of some of the models and society girls he’d dated in the past few years. Even though she had the long, lean body for it.

  Must be all that horseback riding. The thought tightened his gut, and a few muscles below that.

  Easy, boy. No mistakes. This is research.

  She flashed him that easy, genuine smile as she approached, as vivacious and bubbly as she was in staff meetings.

  Maybe she was hiding something; but if she was, she had hidden it in a beguiling package. There was something so unaffected and real about her. Something he’d missed with the women he’d been seeing.

  Not that this was a date.

  “So what’ll it be, Cade?” Jessie asked as she picked up her handbag. “French, Japanese, Fusion? I know this great Chinese place in Times Square.”

  He had to keep this focused on research. “You know, it’s amazing you’d never been to New York before, and you just arrive, get an apartment, a job, friends…”

  She gave him a sidelong glance as they walked toward the lobby. “Actually, I got the job before the apartment,” she said. “After I interviewed, I was chatting with Lainie who mentioned that her roommate was getting married. That was pure serendipity.”