He looked so peaceful and childlike, she hadn’t the heart to disturb him, so she backed quietly from the room and pulled the door to without a sound. She decided instead to quietly explore her new surroundings.
She went to the door next to Alex’s room and opened it. This room was evidently Alex’s study, as there were heavy wooden filing cabinets flanking a huge mahogany desk. At the far end of the room there sat another, smaller desk placed before a window. The smaller desk was devoid of any ornaments, so she guessed this must be her desk and went over to it.
Sitting down on the chair, Samantha tested it out by swiveling around in it; then she toyed with the pneumatic adjustment until the chair was in her preferred position. After that, she opened each of the drawers, but found nothing of much interest inside them, merely the usual assortment of office supplies. She pulled the stapler out of the top drawer and set it on the desktop, pleased to have her own workspace and glad it was in the same room as Alex’s.
Getting up, she decided to check out the library, which lay next to the study, but there was no connecting door, so she had to go back out through the study and into the living room.
This was the first time she really got a good look at it. It was all lit up in the golden morning sun, with many windows that could be thrown open to the cooling trade winds.
She fell in love at once with the casual opulence of Alex’s house, and glancing across the room quite by chance, she saw him standing in the doorway of her new and as yet unslept-in bedroom, a drowsy grin on his face.
Her own lips parted in a delighted smile
“Good morning,” she said brightly, coming near him. “How’s that bed of mine?”
“Fine.”
“I was just looking around a little. I hope you don’t mind.”
“Of course not. It’s your home, too.”
Her lips twitched upwards and she boldly crossed the room, tugging him back into her bedroom.
“Come and look,” she insisted, leading him first into the sitting room.
“Here are some pillows I made last fall when I still thought I might be getting married,” she told him, picking up one of the needlepoint pillows, remembering with fondness how she’d worked each stitch.
She glanced up at Alex, trying to read his expression.
“This is my tea set,” she continued, moving over to one of the shelves in the bookcase. “My parents got it for me on their vacation to Monterey Bay. I love tea.”
Again their glances met and Alex came closer, lifting a lock of her hair to his nose and breathing in its scent.
“The night I met you, your hair smelled like roses. Do you still have that shampoo?”
“I don’t use it all the time,” she explained. “It’s kind of expensive.”
“Come here,” he said, leading her into the bathroom. He opened a cupboard and withdrew several bottles of the rose-scented shampoo. Peering around his shoulder, Samantha saw that the cupboard was also stocked with rose-scented body lotion and some bubble bath of the same type.
She didn’t know what to say, so she just thanked him and promised to make good use of his shampoo. Secretly, though, she was thrilled he noticed, unused to this kind of male attention. She found her pulse was racing the way it had after her jump into that rock pool on Oahu. She began to understand that maybe it was he who made her pulse race and her heart beat so wildly.
“Will you have dinner with me, here in my room?” she asked him.
“Dinner?”
“I want to do something nice for you now.”
Alex agreed and Samantha accompanied him outside to see the rest of the place.
“Let me give you a tour of the gardens,” he said, and they strolled together down the steps. He opened a wrought-iron gate and Samantha followed him into a walled vegetable garden.
“We always had a kitchen garden when I was a kid,” he told her. “I’m growing most of the stuff I need, but naturally, some plants bolt too quickly because of the heat. Like, I can’t grow cabbage.”
He led the way down a neat row, showing Samantha the herbs.
“Come out here and help yourself to anything you want,” he told her. “I mean inside the house, too. I have an excellent wine cellar and tons of books in the library.”
They left the vegetables and went out the gate, down a brick path lined with mock orange, then flanked behind by pretty scarlet hibiscus bushes.
“Wait ’til you see the rose garden,” he said, an enormous smile of pride on his face. The brick path turned onto a larger one, bordered on either side by well-pruned rose bushes. Samantha saw a rectangular pond ahead, brilliant coral-colored water lilies floating on the water’s surface. Beyond that lay a pergola built from heavy wooden pilings and covered by lush, fragrant climbing roses.
Just then, a sudden movement beneath the pergola caught Samantha’s attention. She stared in fascination as a doe shyly emerged from the roses, a sweet little baby fawn trailing after her.
Enchanted, Samantha ran ahead of Alex like a little girl. The deer fled, terrified, and she whirled around when she reached the boundary of the pond.
“You never told me about the deer,” she exclaimed, amazed. “It’s just like something out of a Fragonard painting.”
Alex joined her, taking her by the hand. They stepped into the shade of the pergola and sat down on a stone bench.
“I love it here,” he agreed. “I often come here to write.”
“What’s that over there?” she asked, pointing to a brick terrace adjoining the house.
“The pool and the hot tub are over there, then my bedroom. Come on, I’ll show you where Albert and Mrs. K. live.”
Behind the main house, about a hundred yards away, lay a small cottage. As they started down the flagstone path, Grandma emerged from her door.
“Good morning, Mr. Alex. Good morning, Missy Samantha.”
She accompanied them back to the main house and the three of them entered through the kitchen. It seemed to Samantha that nearly every room in the house must open onto the gardens. Alex left the women alone to get acquainted.
“I’ll make dinner for Mr. Alex tonight, okay, Grandma? You deserve a break.”
The woman showed Samantha the pantry and together they went through it, Samantha trying to decide what to make for dinner. In the end, she chose two Cornish hens she found in the freezer and went through the pantry again to decide on the side dishes. Mrs. K. was an excellent housekeeper and kept her pantry well stocked. Samantha had no trouble at all finding the necessary ingredients for a special meal.
Grandma left the hens in the sink to defrost and Samantha went to her room to arrange a table and chairs, tablecloth and wineglasses, and a vase for the flowers she meant to gather.
“Does Mr. Alex have any silver?” she asked Grandma, who led her to the butler’s pantry and showed her where the silver was stored. Samantha also found some pretty cutwork napkins and a lovely ceramic platter for her hens and brought all these items into her sitting room.
She set up the small table between the two upholstered chairs and started laying out the dishes, as her mother had taught her to years ago. Once this was done, she went outside to pick some roses for the cut crystal vase she set in the center of the table.
Samantha saw Alex off in the distance with Albert and glanced quickly at her watch. It was almost time for dinner, and she glanced in his direction again. He was still occupied, and she hoped with all her heart he hadn’t forgotten their assignation.
Just in case he did happen to remember, she rushed back into the kitchen, hurriedly arranging the roses in the vase. She then set up the dinner tray, carrying it to her room.
Soon, a knock at the door alerted her to her visitor’s arrival, and sucking in a breath, she crossed the room with great pride and swung the doors wide to
receive her guest.
Alex stood silhouetted in the doorway, dressed in a short-sleeved black silk shirt that played up his rich golden tan.
Samantha, thunderstruck, allowed her eyes to wander, let herself bask in admiration of the sweetness of his mouth, the muscled shoulders beneath the silk, the fit of his trousers.
Her glance met his again and her mouth twitched in a sudden smile. She felt more strongly attracted to him than ever.
“Wow, Alex. You look...devastating.”
Chapter 6
Alex smiled down at her, his eyes sparkling dangerously. She swallowed hard and moved aside to let him enter.
“Please come in,” she said softly, suddenly feeling very shy, unable to meet his gaze. Alex stepped inside to admire her room and nodded in approval. In one short day, she’d brought the room to life with her own personal touches.
He’d never seen it looking so lovely. The guys he hired before had only thought to hang cheap posters of their favorite bands, but Samantha had really done something with it.
She gestured towards the sitting room and asked him to have a seat.
Alex breathed in the lovely aroma of her cooking, eagerly anticipating the meal that awaited him. He suddenly realized just how hungry he was, and since it wasn’t nearly dark enough for candles, he ate dinner with her in the glow of the late afternoon sun, some soft Spanish guitar music playing in the background.
Alex sliced off a neat bit of Cornish hen and popped it into his mouth.
“This is great,” he told her. “What’d you put in it?”
“Lavender and lemon,” she told him, glad he was pleased.
“I’ve never had anything like it before.”
“Please try the pasta. I boiled down the drippings to make you a sauce.”
“Delicious,” he agreed, taking a sip of wine. “You’ll make some man an excellent little wife someday.”
She was absurdly pleased by his compliment.
“You think?”
“Yes. But tomorrow we have to get down to business.”
Her brow wrinkled. “Business?”
“We’ll want to go over things together, and I’ve written about a hundred pages that need to be entered into the computer. I usually write everything in long-hand first, so I hope you can decipher my writing.”
She found it hard to keep her eyes off him.
“Let’s not talk about work tonight, Alex,” she said. “I’ll get up at seven and you can teach me everything I need to know, but for now I just want to enjoy your company.”
“All right. All right, Samantha. Why don’t you tell me some more about yourself?”
“There’s nothing to tell,” she confessed with a smile. “I’ve lived a completely boring life until now.”
“What about college? Surely something must have happened there? Besides that fiancé of yours.”
“Not really, except I met Marianne. She’s the best thing that ever happened to me. I mean, I’ve always wanted to be that kind of girl, but I never had the nerve. They’re the ones who have all the fun. They get all the hot boyfriends and drive the fancy cars.”
She stopped, taking a sip of wine.
“I think that’s why I love Marianne’s leather dress so much,” she admitted. “It makes me feel different, kind of bad.”
She saw that Alex remembered the dress. There was a spark of admiration on his face that made her turn pink and break their eye contact.
For heaven’s sake, Samantha thought, I’m blushing again.
“I don’t know why I’m telling you all this,” she said. “It must sound pretty pathetic to someone like you.”
“Someone like me? What am I like?”
Their glances met. She didn’t trust herself to say a word, so she just sat there smiling inanely instead.
“I don’t know, Alex. You really haven’t told me anything about yourself.”
He swallowed hard, feeling uncomfortable. He’d done a lot of foolish things in his life, but nothing ever troubled him as much as the way he handled the break-up with his ex-wife. He couldn’t tell Samantha about that, for no woman in her right mind would come anywhere near him after hearing that story.
Thinking back, he knew he should’ve listened to his mother when she warned him Jennie was nothing more than a low-class slut, but he was so desperate for a sense of security and belonging that he’d thrown caution to the winds and ignored her.
He hardly dared think what his mom’s opinion of Samantha would be. She’d probably call her a gold-digger, but he knew she’d be wrong, his mom.
Samantha was definitely anything but.
With that in mind, Alex decided it would be wisest to put off telling his mother about his new assistant for as long as humanly possible.
“I’m just a regular guy,” he told Samantha, feeling self-conscious. “I just...somehow, by accident, became a good writer. After a while, people knew who I was, and then that Jesse Dent hit the scene and it all went to hell. Now everybody thinks I’m him, and to be honest, I might as well be, for all the privacy I get.”
He sounded bitter, and Samantha was forced to agree with him. How many times had they been accosted by strangers in the short time she’d known him?
“I know all that, but what about your childhood?” she prompted.
“My childhood? Who cares about that? My dad left us when I was a little kid and my mom worked her butt off trying to make ends meet.”
“Where’s she at now? Can I meet her?”
“She’s a real estate broker in Chicago now. I go out and see her once in a while, and I guess if you want to, you can come with me next time, but it won’t be very glamorous.”
Samantha saw that he was becoming agitated, so she changed the subject, telling Alex she bet his mother was pretty, wished aloud that she, too, was attractive to the opposite sex.
“You think my mom’s slutty?” he asked.
“No. I’m just saying, you’re so good-looking I figured she must be, too.”
He smiled.
“Thank you, Samantha, but what exactly do you think is wrong with you? Don’t you know how pretty you are?”
“No. My nose is too big and I’m kind of plain,” she told him. “I even thought about getting a nose job, but then I saw what it did to that actress Jennifer Grey from Dirty Dancing. It took away all her character, so I said forget that.”
Alex drew back quietly, and carefully put his napkin down before he stood up. For a moment, Samantha was afraid he meant to leave, but instead, he picked up the entire table, food and dishes and all, and moved it aside, then planted himself in front of her chair.
“There’s nothing wrong with you, Samantha,” he said, drawing her to her feet, his eyes boring into hers. “You’re just young. And your nose isn’t so big. In fact, I kind of like it. So give yourself a chance, why don’t you?”
His head bent closer and closer and Samantha, realizing he meant to kiss her, felt her heart pounding in her ribcage.
A sudden surge of passion washed over her, and suddenly Alex’s lips met hers, parting to let his tongue glide into her mouth. She flung her arms around his neck and returned his kiss, forgetting for one brief moment that Alex was her boss.
Her knees weakened and threatened to buckle under her, and she felt the hardness of his erection through the fabric of their clothes as he pressed closer. She wished she could rip off her own clothes and be with him right then and there, but all at once, Alex broke away from her and held her at arm’s length, blinking as if he were dismayed by his own behavior.
“I shouldn’t have done that,” he told her, rather out of breath himself. “I promised not to.”
He released her abruptly and moved toward the door.
“Dinner was wonderful, Samantha. Thank you.”
She didn’t see him again until the next morning, when he tapped softly at her door. True to her word, she was up and dressed, ready to begin work.
Alex showed her to the study and offered her a cup of tea and a croissant. They sat together at his huge desk as he went over some of the details of her job.
“Are you any good at bookkeeping?” he asked her suddenly.
“Well, I did take an accounting class.”
“Do you think maybe you could handle the household expenses for me? I suck at it.”
“Of course, Alex. No problem.”
“Can you do it right now? I mean, I haven’t been able to keep track for a month or more. Here, just open these bills and make out the checks and I’ll sign them. The stamps are in here, and the address labels here.”
Obviously, there was much more to it than simply writing the checks. Samantha found two unopened bank statements and proceeded to balance and reconcile his checkbook for him.
She was staggered by the balance he carried, having never in her life dared to dream of such riches, and wondered that he hadn’t been ripped off by some unscrupulous bookkeeper or assistant from his past.
The financial tangle didn’t extend back any farther than the two months he assigned to her, though, and Samantha felt satisfied that his last assistant had handled the books honestly.
After a while, Alex returned with a dish of scrambled eggs and some fresh tea.
“Things going okay?”
“Yeah, no problem. I got most of this straightened out, but you really do suck at this, don’t you?”
He laughed and pulled up a chair beside her.
“I’m much better at making it and spending it than I am at keeping track of it. Here, eat your eggs.”
Samantha stopped to take a break and eat the breakfast he brought. They chatted for a while, both of them seemingly over the awkwardness of last night’s kiss.
By lunchtime, Samantha was fully occupied entering his newest story into the computer. Alex’s handwriting was actually very neat and readable, so she was able to accomplish quite a bit by lunchtime.
Tropical Temptation Page 7
