It was just that she’d had a few painful and best-forgotten experiences with men who had wanted to date her, found out she had a kid, then took the next train to I’m outta here, never to be seen again.
Jake’s expression was still. Dark. Utterly unreadable.
They stared at each other for one lengthy and terrible moment before Jake broke free of whatever had him in its grip. Something about him eased up, making him much less forbidding, and he studied Harry for a second or two.
Harry, all wide-eyed and fat-cheeked behind his cup, stared back.
“So you’re two, eh?” Jake’s lips curled into a half smile. “That makes you old enough to get a job, doesn’t it, little dude?”
Harry darted Charlotte an incredulous glance and squealed with laughter. “A job? No way!”
“Well, you’re welcome to hang out at the office for as long as you need to, anyway. Kids are always welcome here,” Jake informed him.
Charlotte’s jaw dropped.
“We’ll find something for you to do, okay?” Jake continued. “God knows some of the lawyers around here aren’t that much smarter than you. How does that sound?”
Harry grinned, revealing his tiny set of perfectly white teeth. “Great. Yay!”
With a definitive nod, Jake adjusted his cuffs and spared Roger a sidelong look that was none too warm. “I’ll let you two wrap things up.” He paused. “Quickly.”
“Thanks,” Charlotte said.
Jake leveled all of his attention on her, which gave her the uncomfortable sensation of being a butterfly pinned to someone’s board.
“I’ll need to see you in my office,” he said as he strode off. “Five minutes.”
Chapter 3
Jake planted his palms on his desk and leaned into it, struggling to master his thoughts. His thoughts did not want to be mastered. They were, in fact, spinning out of control, as though his head had become a child’s top, ricocheting off walls and furniture legs with no sign of stopping.
After a weekend of high agitation, no sleep and stalking the Starbucks for any sign of her, he’d found his mystery woman.
Well, found wasn’t exactly the right word, was it?
He’d stumbled on to his mystery woman.
He’d discovered that his mystery woman was no real mystery, after all.
She’d been working right here, in this very building, under his very nose, for the past couple years, and he was willing to swear on a stack of Bibles that he’d never seen her before in his life, because how could he have ever laid eyes on a woman like that and forgotten her?
He must have, though.
Which made him a dumbass.
A blind dumbass, to be precise, and that was not a good feeling.
Shit.
Sudden exhaustion made him slump into his leather chair.
Renewed agitation made him get back up again and pace.
Charlotte Evans. A firm employee. And since he was a partner in the firm, that made her his employee.
A man couldn’t go around lusting after his employees, not unless he wanted to get sued for sexual harassment. And if he did enter into a discreet, consensual relationship with Charlotte—a big if, considering he didn’t know the status of her relationship with Dr. Punko out there—word would get out. Word always got out. And what would happen then? Office morale would plummet, for one. And his family would hand him his head on a platter for introducing his personal drama into the workplace, for another.
Double shit.
So where did that leave him?
Screwed, that’s where.
Because he thought about Charlotte Evans, firm employee. He saw her eyes when he didn’t want to. Heard her laugh when he wanted silence. Had been haunted by her all weekend.
Wanted her.
After about the tenth lap of his office, he wore himself out and rested a hip on the edge of his desk. And what about—
There was a soft knock on his ajar door, and Charlotte poked her head inside. “Hi.”
Snapping to attention with an abrupt spike in his pulse rate, he stood. “Come in.”
“Come on, little man.” Tugging Harry’s hand, she ushered him inside the office and tried to steer him toward the tufted leather sofa against the far wall. “I want you to sit right here and be very—”
But Harry had seen the large jar of M&M’s on Jake’s desk.
“Candy, Mommy!”
“Not a chance,” she told him.
No worries. Harry wheeled around, spotted the giant aquarium of tropical fish and plants and veered in that direction with a shout of surprised delight that made Jake grin. “Look, Mommy! Fish!” Harry raced over and pointed at the orange one with black and white stripes. “And look! There’s Nemo! Hi, Nemo!”
Charlotte shot Jake an apologetic look. “Harry ends every sentence with an exclamation point, in case you hadn’t noticed. Don’t tap on the glass, Harry. It disturbs the fish, okay?” It didn’t seem to matter, though, because Harry now had both palms and his nose pressed up against the aquarium and was in toddler rapture, murmuring to the fish. “Sorry about the fingerprints,” she told Jake, lowering her voice. “And I told Roger that I couldn’t have Harry here, but—”
Jake raised a hand, stopping her. “It’s okay. Kids are welcome here.”
“That’s very nice of you, but it’s a law firm, and Harry has no idea what an inside voice is. Oh, and he left a half pound of M&M’s in the potted plant in the reception area, and his typing sucks.”
Jake laughed.
“So I need to get him out of here. And I will. I just need to—”
“I didn’t know you had a child.”
Jake resisted the urge to clap his hand over his big mouth. Whoa. Where had that come from? And why had he said it, even if he was thinking it? He did, thankfully, restrain the follow-up question on the tip of his tongue, which had to do with Harry’s father—who was clearly a punk ass if ever he’d seen one—and whether he and Charlotte had an ongoing romantic relationship.
None of his business, he knew, even if the curiosity was gnawing on his guts with sharp little teeth.
Those striking eyes of hers turned flinty. “Among other things you didn’t know about me, yes.” She seemed to regret her words immediately, because she fidgeted on her feet, checked her watch and then shot a quick glance at Harry to make sure he was staying out of trouble. “Look, I don’t mean to be rude, but I have a brief to finish typing and it’s got to be filed by noon, so I really need to—”
“Yeah. About that.” Jake waved a hand at her employment file, which he’d grabbed from their HR person and flipped through in the past few minutes. “I didn’t know you graduated from Penn with a degree in international relations. Which makes you uniquely overqualified for the typing pool here at the office.”
A subtle flair of panic crossed over her features but, to her credit, she quickly mastered it. “Yes, but I need the full-time work and the benefits are good. I have a mouth to feed. I need a job. I need this job.”
Admiration tugged at his mouth, making him want to smile, but he stifled it because he didn’t think she’d appreciate it. “You don’t get it. Keeping you in the typing pool isn’t making the best use of your talents, which is foolish. And I may be blind, but I’m not foolish.”
She gave him a narrow-eyed stare of suspicion. “You’ll have to help me out here. What does that mean?”
“It means that I’m making you my new paralegal, effective immediately. Thereby sparing myself the time and trouble of interviewing more people. I’ve been pretty unimpressed with the candidates I’ve seen so far, and it’s been a month since my old paralegal relocated to Boston.”
Charlotte blinked at him, working hard to get her jaw up off the floor. “But—”
“Whi
ch means that you get the office next to mine, which has a TV in it for viewing video depositions, but you can use it to let Harry watch kid shows while he’s here.”
Charlotte rubbed her temple and took a moment to get her thoughts together.
“But—” she repeated weakly.
“Mommy!” Harry jumped up and down, pointing into the tank. “It’s a starfish! A STARFISH, Mommy!”
“Wow. I see it,” she answered before turning back to Jake. “What’s going on? I don’t understand this at all.”
Yeah. There was a lot of that going around, apparently, because Jake didn’t understand his attraction to this woman at all, or his strange compulsion to help her out where he could and make her complicated life a little bit easier. Oh, and he also didn’t understand how he thought he’d work closely with her without falling deeper into lust, but he figured he’d tackle that hurdle one day at a time.
“All you need to understand is that I’m giving you a promotion to a job that’s much more educational for a law student. Which comes with a fifty percent raise, by the way. But if you think you’ll miss the tedium of typing for eight or nine hours every day, then feel free to refuse, and I’ll continue my search for a good paralegal. It’s entirely up to you.”
She hesitated.
“Mommy? Mommy! Can we get a fish tank for my bedroom?”
Charlotte rolled her eyes, but Jake wanted to share a high five with the little guy for helping him make his case. Kids were expensive, weren’t they? They needed and wanted things, like food, shoes and fish. A paralegal could afford many more kid things than a secretary could, and Charlotte was more than smart enough to know it.
And if dangling this tempting offer in front of a mother’s nose made Jake a bit of a devil, well, that was a charge he could live with. To get to know her better he could live with it, no problem.
And the fact that he was lusting after a woman who was a mother? Also no problem, he discovered to his own surprise.
However, the fact that he was simultaneously thinking about how he could get closer to Charlotte while issuing himself stern warnings about staying the hell away from her...well, that was a problem.
A big freaking problem.
An even bigger problem was that, the longer he stared at her, the less he cared about problems, big or otherwise.
She was severe today, with her glorious hair scraped back into a bun at the nape of her neck that should be forever consigned to grannies and librarians. Plus, she was buttoned down into a navy blue suit that was so drab it made Jake want to find the designer and bludgeon him.
Even so, there was no hiding the curve of her hips or the hint of cleavage up top. Her long and sexy legs ended in a pair of pointy nude heels, the kind that were a gift to men everywhere, and her ass, in that straight skirt, was nothing short of spectacular.
Her face was tight, her lips thin and her eyes stormy as she struggled with her dilemma. And right there, served up on a silver platter for him, was the answer to one of the questions that had plagued him all weekend.
The prickling electricity he’d felt between them? She felt it, too, and she knew it could very well lead to something complicated...but interesting.
Why else would she hesitate to accept such a great promotion?
Maybe the gentlemanly thing to do would be to give her the promotion as some other attorney’s paralegal. He could snap his fingers, and it would be done.
Too bad he wasn’t feeling gentlemanly.
He was feeling hot and bothered, and he suspected he’d feel that way for a while. Why? Because the only cure he could imagine was unbuttoning all that armor she wore and getting inside her. And, much as he wanted to do just that, he was still rational enough to know it was a bad idea.
But he was feeling pretty irrational, too. “Ticktock,” he murmured, tapping his watch.
The storm behind her eyes had turned to a glare, and her chest was heaving up and down, which was quite the sight to see, even if her ugly jacket blocked the view. She stepped closer, ready to go toe-to-toe with him, even if he was her boss.
He liked that.
“And what’s in it for you?” she demanded, low.
He shrugged. “A good paralegal, I hope,” he said, keeping his tone silky. “What else?”
“You hit on me the other day. Back when you had no idea who I was. I know it doesn’t mean anything, because you probably hit on every woman who stands still long enough for you to ask her what her sign is—”
He scowled. For one, this assessment of his, uh, exuberant dating life cut a little too close to the bone, frankly, and, for another, his fascination with her bore no resemblance to the passing lust he felt for pretty women in general, which disturbed him.
“—but I’m not trying to be the victim of any sexual harassment. So, like I said Saturday, I don’t think our spending time together is a good idea.”
“I’m a professional, Charlotte. Have I done or said anything inappropriate this morning?”
“No, but—”
“You think I want to ruin my career with sexual harassment allegations?”
“Well, no, but—”
“Or maybe you think I’m so taken with you that I can’t think straight or tell right from wrong.”
Her defiant gaze wavered and fell. “Of course not.”
Ironic, eh? His thinking didn’t feel straight at all right now. Good thing she had no idea how his hands twitched for the feel of her.
And he was nothing if not a ruthless negotiator. Striding around his desk, he sank into his chair and turned to his computer, tapping a few random keys like he wanted to check his email or some such.
“Well? Yes or no? I don’t have all day.”
“Harry,” she said sharply. “Get down from that ottoman and push it back where it was. You can’t touch the fish, okay?”
Harry grumbled a response.
Jake spun his chair to face her again and stretched his arms high overhead, as though he didn’t have a care in the world. Victory was close enough that he could almost stick out his tongue and taste its sweetness.
His gaze locked with Charlotte’s and, honest to God, he felt magnetized, as though the pull of her could drag him across his desk and into her arms.
“What about my brief that’s due this morning?” she asked.
Yes.
Triumph swelled inside him, threatening to blow him up like a kid’s balloon.
“I thought I mentioned that. Another secretary is already handling it for you.”
Her lips twisted into a wry smile. “You work fast, don’t you?”
He stared at her, unsmiling. “The key is knowing when to work fast and when to take your time. Don’t you agree?”
A flush ran up her face, making her eyes bright and her cheeks pink.
“I’m not sure this is a good idea.”
Yeah. Neither was he.
“We’re about to find out, aren’t we, Charlotte?”
“I guess we are.”
She turned to walk out, presenting him with her profile, and a chunk of memory hit him. A glimpse of that same profile leaning over the buffet table at some firm party or other. And another memory of that same profile disappearing down the hall, into the kitchen, one day as he was coming out of his office for a bathroom break.
Had he never seen this beautiful face full-on before? Was that it?
Or was it that he’d never taken the time to look?
“Charlotte,” he called.
She’d just reached Harry at the aquarium, but now she paused, looking over her shoulder at him. “Yes?”
“I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
Yeah, genius, for what? How did you plan to put it into words?
He paused, trying to get i
t right. “For never taking the time to see you.”
She quickly looked away, ducking her head. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Yes, it does,” he told her. “It matters a lot.”
* * *
Charlotte sank into the tall leather chair behind the desk in her new office and tried to wrap her brain around the reversal of fortune she’d just undergone. It was impossible. If a genie had swooped out of her morning cup of coffee and granted her three wishes, she couldn’t have been more surprised.
Jake Hamilton, fairy godfather.
Who’d’ve thought?
Adjusting the height of her chair, she eyeballed her son, who was curled into a little nest on the sofa, fast asleep. Thank goodness they still traveled with a diaper bag (the potty training had, thus far, been a resounding failure) and therefore had his blankie and a padded cushion with them at all times. And while she was saying her thanks, she also needed to give a shout-out that the boy was still young enough to need a late-morning nap and had collapsed into an exhausted heap.
Now she had a narrow window of opportunity to get some work done.
Or to reflect a little bit more on her new and improved work situation.
The raise was a dream come true. With more money coming in, she wouldn’t have to agonize about whether she could afford a new humidifier for Jake’s room, or a big boy twin bed so she could get him out of the crib, which he was fast outgrowing.
She could also give Mama a bit more money every month to help with her exorbitant prescription expenses. And if Charlotte saved for several months or so, she’d have enough for a new car. Well, not a new car, obviously, but a used car that wasn’t quite as close to death as the one she had now.
Maybe she could even afford to take another class each semester and thereby manage to graduate from law school while she was still young enough to be able to remember why she wanted to be a lawyer in the first place.
The increased money was a thrill, no doubt.
Case for Seduction (Kimani Romance) Page 4
