What the Heiress Wants

by Kristina Knight

  Connor opened a folder on his computer and submerged his mind in advertiser projections, readership and engagement numbers, and print runs.

  When Miranda breezed into his office an hour later, wearing a navy pencil skirt, a flowy, sleeveless top, and her long hair pulled back into a twist, the murky plan became even murkier. All he could think about now that she was in his office was how long that skirt made her legs look, how delicate the thin, leather straps around her ankles appeared.

  She sat across the desk from him. Good first step. Not that he had initiated it. She crossed one long leg over the other.

  Don’t think about her legs, don’t think about her legs, Connor repeated to himself. This was becoming ridiculous. She was his employee. He didn’t date employees. He didn’t notice employees, not in the way he couldn’t stop noticing Miranda, at any rate.

  “I think we could have the streaming programs up and running within six weeks,” she said.

  “Before New Year’s?”

  “Definitely. And the changes to the print magazine portion are mainly in layout. I mocked up a few pages, but most of the changes will be to how the website is configured. We want to make it simple for readers to comment and share online.”

  “I want the comments sections monitored. None of those nonsensical comments that other sites have.”

  “Simple enough to do,” she said, nodding as she made a notation. “If that’s all—”

  “It isn’t.” Connor wanted to roll his shoulders. Stand. Pace. Something to get his brain off of Miranda’s body and on to her ideas for the publications. He couldn’t do any of those things, though, because the plan called for keeping her across the desk from him. Out of his reach. The plan also called for getting to the bottom of what she wanted from his company.

  “I caught a clerical error in your employment paperwork this morning,” he said. She sat a bit straighter in her chair, something Connor wouldn’t have noticed if he weren’t so attuned to every move she made. Maybe this obsession thing had its benefits. “We require a non-compete clause. For six months after leaving, you’re not allowed to work for a competitor in this market. You didn’t sign it.”

  She swallowed. Connor waited.

  “I, uh, must have missed that page.”

  “You should take care of that with Lila later today.” Damn it. Another thick line under the reasons to fire her, but Connor couldn’t bring himself to do it. Part of it was Caleb’s voice in his head. Part of it was his attraction to her. Part of it was … he couldn’t quite define it. Probably, he was a complete idiot who should just hand Reeves Pub over to Clayton. “Let’s get started on the redesign. You keep mocking up pages, and I’ll start the rebuild.”

  “Now?” Her brown eyes widened in surprise.

  “Now.” He opened a fresh document and began writing a new website format.

  “You code?”

  “Of course. I built the original websites.” She was quiet for a long moment. Connor glanced up and saw her full bottom lip squeezed between two pearly, white teeth. Miranda was worried. “What?”

  She swallowed and the motion of her neck muscles going up and down made Connor grind his teeth together.

  “I, ah, didn’t mean to insult your original design.”

  “You didn’t.”

  “In the past twenty-four hours, I convinced you it wasn’t reader-friendly.”

  “It isn’t. At least, not the way readers are looking at the pages today. My original design is about five years old. That’s ancient in HTML time. It should have been changed long ago.” He waited a second, but when Miranda continued to chew her bottom lip, he decided to plunge deeper into whatever was going on with her. She was usually decisive. Even her coffee, which was technically too weak to be called coffee, was made with efficiency. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” she said, a little too quickly.

  Connor pushed his keyboard away and steepled his hands together. “You think I’m going to fire you because you were honest about the website design?”

  She looked away but didn’t deny it. Connor leaned forward. Had she been fired for offering an opinion? Was that the reason she didn’t work for her father and, instead, worked for him? Had she run seventeen hundred miles, from Denver to Las Vegas, because her opinions were different from her father’s?

  “In case you hadn’t noticed,” he said, “I like collaboration. HR talks to sales, reporters chat with the pressmen, and my door is closed right this second, but it’s usually open. To everyone.” It’s open to Miranda Clayton, as well as to Miranda Walker, as long as Miranda Walker doesn’t try to destroy the place for Miranda Clayton, he wanted to add. But the sentence barely made sense in his mind; he wasn’t sure speaking it aloud would make it any more understandable.

  “I …” she said, but her voice trailed off. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.” Connor pulled his keyboard back within reach. “Now, mock up,” he said.

  Miranda pulled a binder with plain white paper from the stack of folders she’d brought along to their meeting and began to work. They worked in tandem for several hours, with Connor implementing the website changes as soon as Miranda handed the mockups across the big, cherry wood desk. When he glanced at the clock, he saw it was after five. Connor blinked and then looked out the window. The sun had settled low in the western sky, painting the desert outside Vegas in pinks and oranges. They should wrap this up.

  Miranda’s head was bent low over her pad of paper, and her lower lip was again caught between her teeth. This time, though, it was concentration rather than worry that formed her expression. The pen held in her long fingers flew over the page as she designed the main splash page for the celebrity section. A lock of hair had come loose from its twist, and she absently tucked it behind her ear. God, she was pretty. Smart.

  He wanted to trust her. A corporate spy wouldn’t work this hard to strengthen the publication she was tasked with destroying. It might take weeks for readership to tick back up thanks to the changes, and getting the advertisers back on board was a separate issue. But the redesign and the additional streaming video options were good ideas. Ideas he’d considered before Miranda came along, but pushed away as not cost-effective. Yet so far, all it had cost was a few hours of his time.

  Connor opened a new window and motioned Miranda around the desk. “This is just a quickie look at the new front page. The colors and general sizes for the sidebars and link structure.”

  She reached a hand toward the screen, as if she might feel the page. The scent of magnolia blossoms hit Connor’s nose, making it twitch. He flexed his fingers against the hard keyboard, reminding himself where he was. In his office. With his employee. His very off-limits employee.

  “It’s going to be great,” she said, leaning forward. He could see the soft curve of her breasts from the corner of his eye, and his mouth went dry.

  Connor cleared his throat. “We should maybe start this up again tomorrow,” he said, his voice sounding strangled to his own ears. He needed to get her out of his office. Needed to put some kind of distance between them before he did something really stupid.

  “No, let’s keep going.” The smell of her perfume, a note of tropical beneath the magnolia scent, tickled his nose, and it was almost as if he could feel her body heat against his. His hands itched to make connection with her soft flesh. This was not a good idea. This was a supremely bad idea. Connor inched his chair away. “I mean, if you want,” she said, and her voice sounded just a little breathless.

  Bad idea, Connor. Bad, bad, bad idea.

  “If we’re going to work late, we should order something for dinner,” he said, leaning back in his chair. He needed that small amount of space, though, badly. Needed to breathe air that wasn’t scented by her perfume. Just for a moment. Otherwise, he was going to kiss her.

  Connor didn’t kiss his employees.

  Of course, he also didn’t eat meals with them, and he’d basically invited Miranda to stay in his office
for dinner.

  “Chinese? I’ll bet we could get Jasmine or Blossom to deliver,” she said.

  Thirty minutes later, six cardboard containers between them on the low table, they sat overlooking the bustling Las Vegas Boulevard. Below, tourists hurried toward the neon-covered Fremont Street, and cars honked as they slowed to accommodate the walkers.

  “Why a newspaper?” Miranda asked, nibbling on the piece of Kung Pao chicken between her chop sticks. “Reeves Brothers Entertainment has property and game development. Even the best newspapers are struggling with readership—why go willingly into it?”

  “Technically, Reeves Pub came first—at least, the Daily did. I expanded Nightly after Gage’s first big development deal.”

  “Still, building a new entertainment magazine in this business climate? That’s a big gamble.”

  Connor considered the question for a long moment. He finished his lo mein, still wondering how to answer. The short explanation was that he’d wanted to protect the employees. Connor had worked for Ron Billingsley, the original owner of Vegas Daily, through college. He’d never been passionate about newspapers or magazines, but he’d liked them well enough. When Ron decided to close, Connor realized the press workers, reporters, and photographers would be fired. That was just before the 2008 recession, and times were good, but he’d worried about them. None of the workers had a ranch to fall back on like he did, and starting at the bottom rung at one of the casinos wouldn’t have paid many bills.

  But a gamble? He’d never thought of Reeves Pub as a gamble but as a means to an end. Steady money, loyal employees, and security for all of their families. That was a more emotional answer than he wanted to share with Miranda, though.

  “I saw an opportunity to expand the circular from the tourist-centric listing of casino vouchers, shows and restaurants to a publication the whole city would enjoy,” he said. He wanted to believe Miranda was not a corporate spy, but on the chance that she was working for her father, he didn’t want his competition to know he’d gone into this business because he felt sorry for the workers that he barely knew. Men like Clayton understood profit and loss sheets, and used things like loyalty and friendship to get what they wanted.

  “So it was all about business?” she asked, her voice flat.

  He shrugged. “Of course. Isn’t everything, Miss Master’s in Journalism plus Bachelor’s in Business Management?”

  Miranda ate more chicken. “I guess so.” There was a note of something besides agreement in her voice, though.

  “You don’t think everything is about dollars and cents?” He pushed for a better answer. Life always came down to money. His mother, Helena, had been a terrible gambler because she refused to think about the dollars and cents of a losing hand versus a winning hand. His father, Caleb, had only thought about the dollars and cents to building up the ranch. Even when he would chase Helena on one of her gambling binges, he left straight-arrow Rollie in charge. Billingsley had sold Vegas Daily to Connor because of dollars and cents. His workers were loyal because of it, and even though they’d lost some advertisers, they would get them back with dollars and cents.

  “I think there has to be more than money involved.”

  “Money pays your salary,” he pointed out.

  “Yes, but money doesn’t make a person happy.”

  “It also doesn’t make a person unhappy,” he said.

  Miranda frowned, and a small crease appeared between her eyes. “I wouldn’t say that.”

  “Touché.”

  She was right. No amount of poker winnings had made Helena happy. No matter how much she’d lost, and she’d lost plenty of Caleb’s money, she’d always wanted to keep playing, to keep wishing for the giant win that never came.

  When he was a kid, he knew the difference between frugality and being poor. Caleb was frugal so they wouldn’t be poor. Miranda had been born with the proverbial silver spoon in her mouth. Now she was pretending to be someone she wasn’t, making a decent but not amazing salary. Which made her unhappy? The silver spoon of her childhood or the not-million-dollar salary he was paying her?

  “What makes you happy?” he couldn’t resist asking.

  She shot him a surprised look. “Working on the redesign.”

  “Other than work?”

  A little crease appeared between her eyes as she pondered his question. “What makes you happy?” she retorted.

  Connor grinned. “The desert. There’s a spot near a small lake on our property that is the most peaceful place I’ve ever found. I haven’t been out there in a long time.”

  “A peaceful place on a cattle ranch? I didn’t know that could even exist.”

  “You’d be surprised. What about you? Have any favorite hiding places from your childhood?”

  For a long moment, Miranda’s fork stirred her container of chicken. “My parents were … rigid. There were piano and ballet lessons, recitals. They have a huge house in the right neighborhood in Denver. I used to hide, just to see how long it would take them to find me.”

  “And?”

  “They never bothered to look.” The words were flat, and she set the box of chicken on the low table before them. “I doubt the house I grew up in was very much like yours.”

  Conner considered that for a while. The ranch had been Caleb’s, and Caleb had wanted it to be Helena’s, but she had only been at home in casinos and poker parlors. That left him, Jase, and Gage feeling as if they didn’t belong there. Maybe similar to the way Miranda said she didn’t belong in Denver. “You’d be surprised,” was all he said. “So what does journalism have that piano and ballet didn’t?”

  “It isn’t just journalism. For me, I guess it’s … being respected. Being listened to,” Miranda said after a pause. “At work, of course, but outside of work, too. Before I came to Las Vegas, no one listened to me.” She swallowed. “And that is more about poor little Miranda than her boss needs to know.”

  Connor watched her for a long moment. She looked small in the overstuffed leather chair, and she picked up her chicken, studiously avoiding looking at him. Out of embarrassment, maybe, for speaking so candidly a moment before. He thought he detected a bit of annoyance in the set of her shoulders, and she tapped her heel against the soft rug in the sitting area the same way Jase did when he felt as if he were losing control.

  “I get that,” he said, and cursed himself for saying anything. He didn’t know enough about her to tell her any of the things going through his mind. How he’d played peacemaker between Jase and Gage for as long as he could remember. How he’d been the one to sit up wondering if Caleb would manage to get Helena back home. He’d wanted, so many times, to let Gage and Jase beat one another to a pulp, but he hadn’t been able to. Caleb had had enough to deal with in his wife; he didn’t need to add playground fights to the mix. So, while Caleb worried about Helena, Connor worried about his brothers. Now that the three of them were on solid ground, he worried about his employees. There was no way he was telling any of that to Miranda. He’d never told Jase or Gage, and they were the closest people in the world to him.

  “You do?”

  “Middle child. An older brother who could do advanced math before he hit junior high, and a younger brother who was a stud on the football field. Then there was me. I liked reading and history and social studies. I could get lost in my dad’s library for hours before anyone would realize I wasn’t where I was supposed to be.”

  Finally, she looked at him. She smiled, and the action lit up her entire face. The golden flecks in her eyes deepened, the apples of her cheeks turned a deep red. “My favorite place to hide was in my mother’s sitting room. She had this daybed along one wall with a frilly spread over it. I’d crawl under there with a book or my favorite doll and stay for hours.”

  “I guess we’re more alike than we thought,” he said. Connor put the last cardboard container back on the table. “Have any siblings?” He knew she didn’t, but because she had been open to this point, he hoped another que
stion about her past might bring everything out in the open.

  “Only child,” she said. “I always wanted a sister.”

  “I always wanted to be an only child.” Maybe, if it had only been him and not rowdy Jase or whiny Gage, his childhood self had thought at least a thousand times, maybe Helena wouldn’t have run away as often. He knew the thoughts weren’t fair. Jase hadn’t been rowdy so much as energetic, and Gage hadn’t been whiney so much as a typical baby and toddler.

  In the end, did any of that matter? He’d held on to the important things—his brothers and his business—because of both of his parents.

  Miranda stacked the empty cartons in the low box the delivery boy had brought, and took the box into the hallway. “Being an only is overrated,” she said when she returned. “At least with brothers, you had someone to talk to.”

  “Argue with is more to the point.”

  “I’d’ve given anything to have had someone to argue with,” she said wistfully.

  “You held your own pretty well yesterday.”

  She grinned at him. “Because I was desperate to do more than make your coffee and file executed ad campaigns.”

  “I’m not great with delegating,” Connor said, not wanting to go into the reasons he’d turned his new vice president into an errand girl. He should go into the reasons. Confront her about who she was and why she was there rather than asking a few leading questions in the hopes that she would have a sudden need to tell him why she’d lied. He didn’t. Screw the plan. He wasn’t going to bait her or trick her into the truth. Why it was so important that she tell him of her own free will, Connor didn’t care to examine. It simply was. And all this talking was putting them on dangerous ground. He already liked Miranda too much—if she made any more revelations like that “I want to be heard” thing, he might just topple over and give her the company.

  “Well, now that I’ve got you delegating, should we finish the redesign?”