A Match Made Under the Mistletoe

by Diana Palmer

  Which was just fine. She had a lot to do and she didn’t need the distraction of dealing with her big, crabby boss.

  In her room, she put Wigs down in front of the window, promised him she would be right back and went out to start hauling everything in, taking care to shut the door as she left so he wouldn’t get out. Jed had said he hated cats. No reason to test his patience right off the bat.

  By seven, she had everything put away and her stomach was growling. Wigs, meanwhile, alternately circled his empty food bowl, chased the cleaning robot she’d started up a few minutes before and made a big show of scratching at his three-level activity center.

  “Okay, okay. I’m on it.” She’d stored his food in the utility room, which had seemed the most logical place for it. She scooped up his food bowls—for wet and for dry—and went out the door again.

  The hallways and great room and kitchen were empty. Very odd. Her first night in his house and Jed had vanished into thin air.

  She considered peeking into his office, or even looking for him upstairs.

  But the thought of wandering through the unfamiliar house trying to track him down made her even more uncomfortable than not having a clue as to where he’d gone. So she went ahead to the utility room to dish up Wigs’s dinner. She was pulling the top off a can when she heard music.

  She shouldn’t snoop.

  But really. Where was he? And, no, wait… A better question was why did she care?

  Well, she cared because…

  Okay, fine. She had no idea why she cared.

  She set the opened can on the counter and stuck her head out into the hall. Yep. Music.

  She followed the faint sound back out into the great room, to the wide central staircase that switched up and back from the lower level to the top floor. It was coming from downstairs, the basement level. She leaned over the railing, listening. It was something with a hard beat, but the sound remained muffled, indistinct. Maybe there was a TV room down there. Her curiosity increased. She left the railing and started down the stairs, catching herself on the second step.

  No, she told herself sternly. Bad idea. Mind your own business.

  So she turned and retraced her steps back to the utility room, where she dished up the food and took it to her hungry cat.

  “Mrow?” Wigs left off stalking the cleaning robot to get to work on his dinner.

  Now what?

  Her stomach growled again. Jed had said that she should make herself at home in the kitchen. She’d grab something to eat and then get up close and intimate with that glorious tub.

  It was weird, raiding the refrigerator of the stranger she now worked for—and lived with, essentially. But the food looked good. She heated up a plate of roast chicken, mashed potatoes and mixed veggies and set herself a place at the table that would have looked just right in the castle of a medieval king. She even poured a glass of the pinot grigio she found in the door of the fridge—hey, the bottle was open. Why not? Pulling back one of the big, studded leather chairs, she sat down and smoothed her napkin in her lap.

  Definitely weird. Just her, all alone at the massive slab of a table in the giant great room.

  She’d just lifted her glass and taken a nice, big gulp of wine when Jed asked from behind her, “You all set up, then?”

  Startled, she choked. Wine sprayed out her nose. Coughing and gagging, she shoved back her chair and pressed her napkin to her face. It wasn’t pretty. Ragged, hacking sounds alternated with desperate wheezing as she tried to catch her breath.

  “Breathe,” he commanded. He was at her back by then, pounding on it with his enormous hand, instructing, “Slow, easy. That’s the way.”

  After a terrifying minute or two wherein she wondered if she would ever breathe again, her throat loosened up. She sucked in a decent breath of air at last.

  “Okay?” he asked warily.

  After wiping the last of the wine from her cheeks, she turned to faced him—and almost choked all over again at the sight of him. Shirtless, he had on a pair of low-riding training shorts that displayed the sculpted tops of sharply cut V lines. His big, chiseled chest was dusted with manly hair and dripping sweat. He had a towel slung around his neck, one end of which he was using to wipe more sweat from his forehead.

  Mystery solved: there was a gym in the basement. She’d heard his workout music.

  Somehow, she managed to croak out accusingly, “Don’t you ever sneak up on me like that again.”

  For that she got a lifted eyebrow and a disdainful “I never sneak.” And then he asked again, “You okay?”

  “Splendid. Thank you.”

  And just like that, he turned and walked away. She stared at his broad, sweaty back as he strode to the staircase. He went up, pausing to look down at her just before he reached the first landing. “Zero-eight-three-zero hours tomorrow. Be ready to work.”

  Like she was some scatterbrained child incapable of remembering the simplest instructions.

  Four thousand a week, she reminded herself. Four thousand and a jetted tub. She nodded, sat back down, picked up her fork and did not glance toward the stairs again.

  * * *

  The next day was just as Elise had expected it to be. Endless.

  She typed and she typed some more while Jed alternately paced and loomed over her, sometimes shouting loud enough that she winced at the sound, now and then murmuring so softly she could barely make out the words. Luckily, she had excellent hearing and managed to get down every whispered word he said. Already, it was something of a point of pride for her that she could keep up with him and never have to speak while at the keyboard, not even to ask him what he’d just said.

  He finished the scene he’d tested her with the day before. Jack McCannon, Jed’s ongoing main character—and, Elise suspected, his alter ego—ended up killing the man at the station, whose name was Gray. Elise felt a moment’s pity for Gray, whom Jack eliminated through the clever use of a ballpoint pen to the throat. Jack, apparently, was quite creative vis-à-vis weaponry. He killed Gray with a Bic and kept fishing line in his pocket. Because who knew when he might need to tie someone up or strangle them with a makeshift garrote?

  After Gray met his end, Jack evaded a pursuer and then met a contact at a café. They drank espresso and Jack received critical information stored in a minichip invisible to the naked eye. The contact, Lilias, caressed his face and transferred the minichip to his cheek. Lilias was gorgeous. Jack had history with her. Intimate history. Jack considered having sex with her again, but decided against it due to time constraints and the fact that he really didn’t trust her. The men Lilias slept with often turned up dead.

  There was a scene at a shooting range. Jack was a crack shot. Who knew, right?

  And, yes, already Elise found herself keeping up a snarky mental commentary on Jed’s work-in-progress as she typed away. The typing really was like breathing. She didn’t have to think about it. Even with the yelling alternating with growls and rumbles, she found Jed’s voice easy to sink into, as if she’d been listening to him all her life, as though some part of her mind knew what he would say before he formed the words. It left her the mental space to have a little fun at Jack McCannon’s expense.

  Not that Jed wasn’t good at what he did. Now and then she got so involved she almost stopped typing to enjoy the story. The action scenes were spectacular—really edge-of-your-seat.

  How many books had Jed written? Four or five, she thought she’d heard. Maybe she’d have to try the first one just for the heck of it. It wouldn’t hurt to have a little background on the job.

  They worked until six thirty that evening. When Jed finally dismissed her, he stayed behind in the office to look over the day’s pages. She fed Wigs his dinner, raided the refrigerator and called Tracy in Seattle to see how she was settling in and report on her new job with Je
d.

  Tracy knew her too well. “But you hate typing,” she pointed out. “What is going on? I really don’t get this.”

  “It’s amazing money and it’s only for four months.”

  “But what about Bravo Catering?”

  As she’d been doing for weeks now whenever she and Tracy talked, Elise evaded the question. “I’m getting there. This came up, is all. And I thought, for this much money, why not?”

  Tracy wasn’t buying. “Just how broke are you? I can lend you—”

  “Trace. Stop. It’s tight, but I’m managing.”

  “I never should have left you.”

  “Yes, you absolutely should have. It was time and you know it.” They’d grown up together, literally. Their mothers had been best friends. She and Tracy had shared the same playpen as babies. Then when Tracy’s parents died in a house fire, Tracy had moved in with the Bravos. In every way that counted, Elise and Tracy were sisters, bonded in the deepest way.

  They’d gone to CU together and had come home to open their catering business and live in adjoining apartments. But Tracy had always been a science nerd and what she’d never told Elise was that her real dream had nothing to do with planning weddings, designing perfect dinner parties or creating tasty menus that stayed fresh on a steam table. Not until after the fire had Tracy finally confessed that she dreamed of a career in molecular biology.

  Well, Tracy was getting her dream now. She’d enrolled in a master’s program at the University of Washington.

  “I should come home, at least for a few weeks. The semester doesn’t start until mid-August.”

  “Come home for what? Not to see me. I’ll be working six days a week, ten hours a day.”

  “That’s insane.”

  “Yeah, it is, a little. It’s also what I want. And I have to tell you, I’m damn good at it, too.”

  Tracy laughed. “I thought you said this was your first day.”

  “I have a talent for it. He went through a whole bunch of assistants before I came along. They couldn’t handle it. I can.”

  “What’s he like?”

  “Jed? Antisocial. Hates cats. Seems to know a lot about deadly weapons.”

  “He sounds awful.”

  “I’ll say this. He’s buff. Looks amazing without his shirt.”

  “I’m not even going to ask.”

  “A wise decision.”

  “You said he hates cats. How’s Mr. Wiggles taking that?”

  “So far, I’ve managed to keep the two of them apart.”

  “Leesie, I just feel bad about deserting you.”

  “Don’t. I mean it. You didn’t desert me. I’m doing just fine. Now, tell me what’s going on with you.”

  Tracy hesitated, but then she did confess that she’d met a guy she liked. On Friday they were going out to a great Greek restaurant and then to hear some hot Seattle band. She had her fall schedule worked out around the TA and lab-assistant jobs she’d found. She loved Seattle. It was her kind of city.

  Elise hung up feeling good about her friend. Yes, she missed her. A lot. But it was about time Tracy came in to her own.

  And so far, working with Jed wasn’t as bad as she’d thought it would be. She grabbed a sexy paperback and headed for the jetted tub.

  * * *

  Elise was waiting at the keyboard when Jed entered his office at 0830 the next morning. He felt a deep satisfaction just at the sight of her there, in knit pants that hugged her fine butt and curvy legs and a pale blue shirt that clung to her round breasts. They got right to work.

  At a little before ten, the cat appeared. The thing was huge. It came and sat in the doorway to the office and watched him with unblinking eyes. Elise had her back to it and had no idea that the creature was there.

  Well, fine. Let the cat stare. Jed went right ahead with the scene they were working on.

  Eventually, the cat yawned, stretched and wandered off down the hall, its long, hairy tale twitching. Jed waited until they broke for lunch to tell Elise that the animal had gotten out.

  She gasped. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

  “We were working,” he replied, though it should have been patently obvious to her.

  “But I don’t get it. I’m sure I closed my door. How did he get out?”

  “Why ask me? You think I left your door open?”

  For that, he got a snippy little glare. She ran out calling, “Wigs! Come here, baby!”

  The damn cat actually answered her. “Mrow? Mrow-mrow?”

  He stepped over into the open doorway in time to watch it bound up the hallway to meet her. She scooped it up and buried her face in its hairy belly. “Bad, bad boy,” she said in a tone that communicated zero displeasure. Jed felt a stab of actual jealousy. He wished she’d bury her nose in his belly like that. “Come on now,” she cooed at the fur ball. “Back to our room…” She slung it over her shoulder and carried it off. The cat, its big hairy paws hanging down her back, watched him smugly through sharp golden eyes, until she turned the corner at the great room and they both disappeared from sight.

  The annoying cat aside, that day went even better than the first, Jed thought. He got twelve usable pages by the time they packed it in at 1815 hours. There was just something about Elise Bravo, something soothing and stimulating simultaneously.

  The woman was smart. She strictly observed his initial instructions and never spoke while he was writing. With her, as with Anna, he could concentrate fully on the next sentence, on the way the story was coming together.

  Plus, every time she got up to stretch, he got to watch. He could write poems to her backside. And those breasts. He would love to get his hands on them. There was something about her, the softness of her, that he wanted to sink into, the way she bit the inside left corner of her mouth when he picked up the pace and the words were flying, her fingers dancing so fast over the keys.

  He liked to move in close and suck in that clean-sheet scent of hers. And he got a kick out of the way she talked to him, sharp and snippy, but somehow with patience, too.

  Elise did it for him in a big way. She wasn’t beautiful. She was so much better than beautiful. She was…the exact definition of what a quality woman should be.

  No, nothing was going to happen between them. They both understood that.

  But that didn’t stop him from enjoying the view, whether she was sitting, stretching or walking away. And he saw no reason he shouldn’t take pleasure in imagining the lusty things he was never going to do to her.

  The next day, the final day of her trial period, he introduced the knives.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Jed found his knives both soothing and stimulating. In that sense, they reminded him of Elise. For him, there were few experiences as calming as a well-thrown knife. He often threw them while he worked. The knives were an integral part of his process. They increased his focus. He liked to send them sailing. And he liked the sound they made when they hit the padded wall that Bravo Construction had installed precisely to his specifications.

  He’d put off introducing the knives to Elise. He dreaded the possibility that she might freak—or worse, walk out and not come back. And there he would be again, with no assistant, his deadline looming.

  Not being all that nice of a guy, he’d often used the knives to get rid of typists who weren’t working out. No, not by stabbing them, but by simply hurling a sleek kunai or a combat bowie knife without warning. More than one unsatisfactory keyboarder had screamed good and loud when surprised in that way.

  But he wanted to keep Elise, so he prepped her.

  When she entered the office for work that day, he was waiting for her, an assortment of knives laid out on the credenza next to the door.

  She said, “Deirdre is here. She says good morning.”
/>   He grunted. Deirdre Keller was a perfectly acceptable cook and housekeeper. Beyond that, he had nothing to say to her. He certainly didn’t require her to tell him “good morning.”

  And Elise had spotted the knives. She caught on immediately. “Okay, I get it now. The padded wall, right?”

  Feeling strangely sheepish, he confessed, “I like to throw while I’m working. It clears my mind.”

  She glanced at the array of knives, then at the wall in question. “What about all the targets? Do you throw darts, too?”

  “Just knives.” She seemed puzzled. So he elaborated, “I throw the knives at the targets sometimes. And sometimes I just send them flying at the wall. It depends.”

  “On…?”

  He hadn’t expected all these questions. But he was willing to indulge her if answering her would keep her happy. “I honestly don’t know what it depends on, why sometimes I want to hit a target and sometimes I just want to throw—the scene I’m writing, I guess. Or the mood I’m in.”

  “Have you ever missed the wall and hit your assistant?”

  “Not once.” He couldn’t resist adding, “Though now and then, I’ve been tempted.”

  A burst of laughter escaped her. He found the happy sound way too charming.

  “Oh, you’re just so scary, Jed.”

  “Yes, I am,” he replied darkly. “And you should remember that.” She had that look, as though she was purposely not rolling her eyes. He added, “And as you can see, your desk is over there.” He gestured in that direction. “And the wall is there.” He indicated the wall. “You won’t be in the path of a throw unless you get up and put yourself between me and the wall.”

  “What about if you get tempted?”

  “I won’t.” Not to throw a knife at you, anyway.

  “Hmm,” she said, as though still suspecting she might end up a target one of these days. And then she asked, “Is this it, then?”