“She fell down a flight of stairs. I'm not sure yet just what happened. She's got a concussion and some broken ribs. She'll be out of the office for a few weeks. I'm in charge.”
“Who's going to notice? You told me yourself she doesn't have a lot of clients.”
“As her new assistant, I'm aiming to fix that. I'm going to develop a marketing plan to improve business.”
“Jesus. I can't believe my daughter is working on a marketing plan for a fortune-teller.”
“Dad, I don't want to hear any more nasty comments about my new job. I mean it.”
“All right, all right. Look, Jessie, I'm sorry about Mrs. Valentine, but I don't see how that changes anything concerning tonight.”
“But I'm in charge here now, Dad. Mrs. Valentine is depending on me to hold things together, and there's a ton of stuff that has to be done around here.”
“Tonight?” Vincent demanded skeptically.
Jessie glanced desperately around the empty office, her eye finally falling on the blank pages of the appointment book. She tried to sound firm. “Well, yes, as a matter of fact. I'm going to be very busy getting the files in order and working up my new plan. You should understand. You've never worked anything less than a twelve-hour day in your life. Usually fourteen.”
“Give me a break, Jessie. Running Benedict Fasteners is hardly the same thing as running a fortune-teller's operation.”
“Don't call her a fortune-teller. She's a psychic. A genuine one. Look, Dad. This is a business I'm running here. Just like any other business.” Jessie lowered her voice to an urgent, coaxing level. “So, would you do me a favor and tell Hatch I'm sort of tied up and won't be able to go with him tonight?”
“Hell, no. Tell him yourself.”
“Dad, please, the guy makes me nervous. I've told you that.”
“You make yourself nervous, Jessie. And for no good reason, far as I can tell. You want to stand him up tonight when he's counting on you, go ahead and stand him up. But don't expect me to do your dirty work.”
“Come on, Dad. As a favor to me? I'm really swamped, and I don't have time to track him down.”
“No problem tracking him down. He just walked into my office. Standing right in front of me, in fact. You can explain exactly why you want to leave him stranded without a dinner date two hours before he's set to finalize a major contract.”
Jessie cringed. “Dad, no, wait, please…”
It was too late. Jessie closed her eyes in dismay as she heard her father put his palm over the receiver and speak to someone else in his office.
“It's Jessie,” Vincent snorted. “Trying to wriggle out of dinner with the Galloways tonight. You handle it. You're the CEO around here now.”
Jessie groaned as she sensed the phone being handed into other hands. She summoned up an image of those hands. They were elegant, beautifully masculine. The hands of an artist or a swordsman.
Another voice came on the line, this one as dark and quiet and infinitely deep as the still waters of a midnight sea. It sent a faint sensual chill down Jessie's spine.
“What seems to be the problem, Jessie?” Sam Hatchard asked with a frightening calmness.
Everything Hatch did or said was done calmly, coldly, and with what Jesse thought was a ruthless efficiency. On the surface it appeared the man had ice in his veins, that he was incapable of real emotion. But from the first moment she had met him, Jessie's intuition had warned her otherwise.
“Hello, Hatch.” Jessie took her feet down off the desk and unconsciously began twisting the telephone cord between her fingers. She swallowed and fought to keep her tone crisp and unhurried. “Sorry to spring this on you, but something unforeseen has come up here at the office.”
“How could something unforeseen come up at a psychic's office?”
Jessie blinked. If it had been anyone else besides Hatch, she would have suspected a joke. But she had decided weeks ago that the man had no sense of humor. She glowered at the wall. “I won't be able to help you entertain the Galloways tonight. My boss is in the hospital and I'm in charge around here. I've got an awful lot to do and I've really got to get going. I'll probably have to work most of the evening.”
“It's a little late for me to make other plans, Jessie.”
Jessie coughed to clear her throat. Her fingers clenched around the phone cord. “I apologize for that, but Mrs. Valentine is depending on me.”
“There's a lot of money riding on the Galloway deal.”
“Yes, I know, but—”
“George and Ethel Galloway are looking forward to seeing you again. George made a point of it. I'm not certain how they'll interpret the situation if you fail to show up tonight. They might think there's a buyout in the works or dissension between your father and me if I turn up alone.”
Each word was an invisible blow, nailing shut the escape route she had hoped to use. “Look, Hatch…”
“If Galloway gets the idea that Benedict Fasteners is about to change hands or is in trouble, he might not want to go through with the deal. I would be extremely disappointed to lose this contract.”
Jessie began to feel cornered. This was something Hatch did very, very well. She gazed around the office with a hunted sensation. “Maybe Dad could go with you?”
“That would be a little awkward, don't you think?”
The cold reasonableness of the words heightened Jessie's nervousness. Nobody on earth could make her as nervous as Sam Hatchard did. She twitched the phone cord and began swinging the swivel chair from side to side in a restless movement. “Hatch, I realize this is awfully short notice.”
“And not entirely necessary, I think.” Hatch's voice was very quiet now. “I'm sure Mrs. Valentine doesn't expect you to work nights.”
“Well, not usually, but this is kind of an emergency.”
“Is there really anything there that can't wait until tomorrow?”
Jessie stared helplessly at the pristine work surface of her desk. She had a problem with honesty. When pushed into a corner, she tended to tell the truth. “This isn't the kind of business where you can schedule things, you know.”
“Jessie?”
She swallowed again. She hated it when Hatch gave her the full force of his attention. She was far too vulnerable. “Yes?”
“I was looking forward to seeing you this evening.”
“What?” Jessie straightened as if she had just touched a live electrical wire. The abrupt motion snapped the phone cord taut. The instrument toppled off the desk and landed on the floor with a resounding crash. “Oh, hell.”
“Sounded like you dropped the phone, Jessie,” Hatch observed as he waited patiently for her to come back on the line. “Everything all right?”
“Yes. Yes, everything's fine,” she gasped as she straightened the twisted cord and replaced the telephone on the desk with trembling fingers. She was furious with herself. “Look, Hatch…”
“I'll pick you up at seven,” Hatch told her, sounding preoccupied again, which he probably was.
He frequently did two things at once, both of which were usually business-related. The present situation was a perfect example. Jessie knew that courting her definitely came under the heading of business.
“Hatch, I really can't—”
“Seven o'clock, Jessie. Now, I'm afraid you'll have to excuse me. I've got to go over some final figures on the Galloway deal with your father. Good-bye.” He hung up the phone with a gentle click.
Jessie perched on the edge of the chair and stared numbly at the receiver in her hand as she listened to the whine of the dial tone. Defeated, she dumped the instrument back into its cradle and lowered her forehead onto her folded arms. She should have known there would be no easy way out of the Galloway dinner. The invitation had not been a casual one. Hatch was pursuing her. Nothing had been said yet, but it was no secret that Hatch had marriage in mind.
She was fascinated by Hatch. She might as well admit it. But she knew she dared not give in to his plans to marry her. Fo
r Hatch, the wedding would be no more than the consummation of yet another business deal. This particular contract would guarantee him a lifetime chunk of Benedict Fasteners, which was something he wanted very badly.
At the moment, courting Jessie was near the top of Hatch's list of priorities. She knew she was at least temporarily as important to him as any business maneuver in which he was presently involved. That meant she was in a very treacherous position. There was no denying her own interest in him, and on those occasions when he made her the sole focus of his attention, she was in serious danger of succumbing entirely.
A moth dancing around a flame.
Jessie closed her eyes and conjured up a picture of the man who had become her nemesis during the past two months. His personality was strongly reflected in his physical characteristics. He was built along lean, powerful, curiously graceful lines. His long-figured swordsman's hands went well with his austere, ascetic features.
She had tried to tell herself in the beginning that there was no fire beneath the cold, polite surface of the man, but she had known she was fooling herself right from the start. The problem was that, just as with warriors and saints, the fire in Hatch would never burn for any woman. It burned for an empire—the kingdom he planned to build on the cornerstone of Benedict Fasteners.
Hatch had the full support of Vincent Benedict and the entire Benedict family for his ambitions. He had dangled an irresistible lure in front of all the Benedicts: in exchange for a chunk of the small, thriving regional business that was now Benedict Fasteners, he would take the company into the big time. Benedict Fasteners was a company based quite literally on nuts and bolts. It designed and manufactured a wide variety of products used in construction and manufacturing to hold things together. It had the potential to grow into a giant in the industry, a conglomerate that could dominate a huge market share. All it needed was a man of vision and enterprise at the helm.
Everyone in the family was convinced that Sam Hatchard was that man.
Of course, the only one who had really needed to be convinced was Vincent Benedict, the founder of the firm. And he had taken to Hatch immediately. The relationship that had developed between the two men was as profound as it was inevitable. Jessie had sensed it from the first moment she had seen her father and Hatch together in the same room. Hatch was the son her father had never had. Which might make him an excellent choice to take Benedict Fasteners into the big time but definitely made him lousy husband material, Jessie thought grimly.
Sam Hatchard was thirty-seven. Jessie had concluded that it would probably be another thirty years, if ever, before he mellowed. She was not about to give him that long. She was surely not that big a fool.
But the terrible truth, the heavy burden that weighed her down these days, was the knowledge that although she was running from Hatch, she was not running fast enough, and she knew it. The moth in her was strongly tempted to play with fire. Hatch had sensed the weakness and he was deliberately using it. It was no big secret. Everyone in the family was using it.
In one of the saner corners of her mind, Jessie was well aware that if she allowed herself to fall into Sam Hatchard's clutches she would be condemning herself to a marriage of unbearable frustration and unhappiness. She would be repeating the same mistake her mother had made in marrying Vincent Benedict. She would be tying herself to a driven man, a man who would never find room in his life for a wife and a family.
The end result of all her wallowing about in such a morass of conflicting emotions was, naturally, chaos for Jessie. For the last month, as Hatch's subtle pursuit gradually intensified, she had found herself dancing closer and closer to the flame, unable to resist, yet unable to surrender to what she knew would be disaster. It was ridiculous. She had to put a stop to the bizarre situation.
She had to learn to just say no.
The phone rang in her ear. Jessie started and jerked back in the chair. She automatically stretched a hand out toward the receiver and then hesitated, letting the answering machine take the call. There was a click, a recorded message of her own voice saying that the office was closed but that all calls would be returned as soon as possible, and then her friend Alison Kent came on the line.
Ever since Alison had become a stockbroker, her voice had taken on the upbeat cadences of a professional cheerleader. Jessie could almost see her old friend wearing a short skirt and waving a pom-pom as she made her cold calls.
“Jessie, this is Alison at Caine, Carter, and Peat. Give me a call as soon as possible. I've just found out about an incredible opportunity in a new fat-free cooking-oil product but we're going to have to move fast on this one.”
Jessie sighed as the machine clicked off. For Alison, still new on the job, every deal was the opportunity of a lifetime, and Jessie always had a hard time keeping her distance. She had to admit that her initial enthusiasm had been high when she had agreed to become Alison's first real account at Caine, Carter, and Peat. Visions of making a killing had danced through her head and she had even wondered if she might have an aptitude for playing the market full-time. But a series of recent losses had given Jessie a more realistic view of Wall Street.
She dreaded returning Alison's phone call because when she did she would very likely end up buying a lot of shares in some company that wanted to market fat-free cooking oil.
The phone rang again and this time Jessie heard Lilian Benedict's voice on the answering machine. Her mother's warm, cultured tones poured over Jessie's frayed nerves like rich cream.
“Jessie? This is Lilian. Just checking to see if you'd had a chance to talk to Vincent about the loan for ExCellent Designs yet. Oh, and by the way, enjoy yourself this evening, dear. Wear the little black dress with the V in the back. It's wonderful on you. Give my best to Hatch and the Galloways. Talk to you later.”
There was another click followed by a pregnant silence as Jessie contemplated the fact that even her own mother was trying to push her into the arms of Sam Hatchard.
The situation was getting out of hand. Jessie got to her feet and began to pace the office. Nobody had actually used the word “marriage” yet in her presence, but it did not require Mrs. Valentine's psychic abilities to know what everyone was thinking, including Hatch.
A month ago when Jessie had first begun to realize what was happening, she had actually laughed. She had been so certain she could handle the pressure of the crazy situation. But now she was getting scared. There was no doubt but that she was being gently, steadily, inexorably maneuvered toward an alliance that a hundred years ago would have been baldly labeled exactly what it was, a marriage of convenience.
If she was not very careful, she was going to find herself in very big trouble. People who played with fire frequently wound up in the emergency room with singed fingers.
Jessie glanced at the clock and saw with dismay that it was nearly six. She would have to hurry if she was going to get back to her apartment and get dressed before Hatch showed up on her doorstep.
Hatch was never late.
Hatch pushed the folder of computer printouts across the desk toward Vincent Benedict. “Take a look. I think you'll like what you see.”
Vincent scowled impatiently at the folder. “Of course I will. You're a magician with this kind of deal. Nobody puts a contract together better than you do.”
“Thanks,” Hatch murmured. It was true, he was very good at putting together projects such as the one he had recently completed between Benedict Fasteners and Galloway Engineering, but it was nice to be appreciated. Especially by Vincent Benedict.
Benedict continued to frown thoughtfully across the wide expanse of desk. It occurred to Hatch that Jessie had gotten her eyes from her father. They were a curious feline green, very clear and very intelligent. But there was a vulnerable quality in Jessie's gaze that was definitely not present in her father's eyes.
Vincent was nearing sixty, a vigorous, ruggedly built man whose heavy shoulders were a legacy of his early years in the construction busin
ess. His hair was white and thinning slightly. His face had no doubt softened somewhat over the years, but the hawklike nose and square, strong jaw still reflected the image of a man who had come up in the world the hard way. This was a man who had made most of his own rules in life, but he had played by those rules. If you were honest with Vincent Benedict, he was honest with you. If you crossed him, you paid. Dearly.
Hatch understood that kind of code because he lived by it himself. He had learned it long before he'd entered the corporate world, learned it in the hardworking, hard-playing world of his youth and young manhood, a world where real labor meant working with your hands. It meant ranching, construction, driving trucks.
The code had been drummed into him on the job, and after work it had been reinforced during nights spent in smoky taverns where a man learned to drink beer instead of white wine and where he picked up basic psychology by listening to the words of country-western music.
Hatch had liked Benedict right from the start. There had been an immediate rapport between them, probably because their origins were so similar. Vincent Benedict was one of the very few men Hatch had ever met whom he actually respected; he was also one of the even fewer number whose respect Hatch wanted in return.
“Are you worried about Galloway getting cold feet to-night?” Hatch asked after a minute during which it dawned on him that Vincent was not paying close attention to the figures on the printout.
“No.” Vincent drummed his fingers on the desk in an uncharacteristically restless gesture and scowled.
“Did you have some questions?” Hatch prodded, wondering what the problem was. Benedict was usually nothing if not forthright.
“No. Everything looks fine.”
Hatch shrugged and opened the second folder to scan the numbers inside. He had seen the potential in Benedict Fasteners immediately when Benedict had hired Hatchard Consulting briefly for advice on doing business with a Japanese company. The company had recently opened up a plant in Washington and had wanted to use local suppliers. Most were unable to meet the quality-control demands of the Japanese. Vincent Benedict had been wise enough to see the future could be even more profitable if he found a way to do so.
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