“I’m not. I’m taking my friend Miranda.”
“Friend?”
Connor shrugged nonchalantly. “I realize friends has a slightly different connotation than business associate, but I promise to keep my hands and lips to myself, as you requested in my office a couple of weeks back.”
Miranda blushed. “You make me sound like I’m some ninny afraid her boss is going to chase her around his desk.”
“It was a temptation,” he said, deadpan, and the redness in Miranda’s cheeks deepened.
“But it isn’t now?”
Right now the biggest temptation Connor faced was not pushing his way into her apartment and kissing her until her entire body was the same shade of red as her cheeks. Until she was breathing heavily from the exertion of being horizontal with him in her bed or on her couch or the living room floor.
Of course, saying that aloud would ensure she not only didn’t come to Thanksgiving dinner, but that she also might never come back to work. If he could only have Miranda around as a business associate, he would take it.
“Right now, my biggest temptation is not returning to my condo to put a pair of sweatpants in the trunk for after dinner. I plan to eat my weight in candied yams before settling in front of the television to watch the late football games.”
“Candied yams?” she asked, and her grip on the door seemed to loosen.
“I’m told that recipe is knew, but Gage swears Callie could make asparagus taste like bacon.”
She sucked her bottom lip between her teeth, and it took all of Connor’s self-control not to put his thumb to her lip to release it.
“I’ll just go change.”
“You look fine,” he said. In truth, she looked amazing. He’d only ever seen Miranda in pencil skirts, heels, and silky blouses. The capris and flip-flops and tee were something new. Something exciting.
“I’m not going to Thanksgiving wearing a T-shirt that I got at a hotdog eating contest in high school.” She stepped back from the door and motioned Connor inside.
“You entered a hotdog eating contest?”
Miranda shrugged. “I didn’t win. All the participants got one.”
“But a hotdog eating contest. That’s slumming it for a girl like you, isn’t it?”
She rolled her eyes. “Girls have been known to do worse to get the attention of a guy.” She motioned to the blue-checked couch. “Five minutes,” she said.
Connor didn’t sit. He picked up a magazine from the glass table and rolled it into a cylinder as he wandered the room. She’d put candles in the fireplace, a ficus in one corner, and some kind of blooming cactus on a side table. A few prints were hung on the white walls, and the floors were hardwood. A peninsula with dark granite counters separated the living area from the kitchen. A little table, chrome and Formica, sat before the sliding glass door that led to the small terrace.
Interesting choices for a woman raised with the kind of wealth he knew she’d been raised with. Small and homey rather than slick and highly designed. His condo held none of the familiar touches that a few plants and a stack of magazines gave a place.
Not that he minded the sterile surroundings of his penthouse. The view was terrific, he didn’t have to worry about dusting a lot of doo-dads, and most of his time was spent at the office, anyway. Still, there was something nice about Miranda’s apartment.
A sound from the hallway where Miranda disappeared a few moments before made Connor turn. And he caught his breath.
Miranda wore narrow black pants that made her legs look about five miles long. She’d traded the Skiers Do It on the Slopes tee for an orange, pleated top that should have clashed horribly with her red hair, but instead seemed to set her hair on fire. The blouse was cinched at her waist with a wide, black belt, and on her feet were a pair of suede booties with the toes cut out. Her toenails were also painted orange, and he wondered if she’d taken the time to match colors or if it was coincidence.
“You look great,” he said, and he knew there was too much appreciation in his voice. This was supposed to be a friendly dinner, he reminded himself. Inviting a business colleague, who would otherwise be alone on a holiday, to spend the day not being alone.
She stepped into the living area, cheeks still slightly pink. “Thank you,” she said.
A few minutes later, Connor left the heavy traffic of Las Vegas behind as they began traveling north toward the ranch. Miranda watched out the window for a few minutes, and he wondered if she had been outside the city at all since she came to Nevada.
“I tried to figure out who the spy was last week,” she said, startling him.
“Spy?”
“Who my father planted inside the company. I figured it had to be someone who was hired around the time I got here, because that’s when the big price gouging started with the advertisers.”
“I didn’t ask you to ferret out the spy.”
“I know.”
“You’re the head of the marketing department, not human resources.”
“I know,” she said. “I just wanted to help, and after my father called, I was pretty sure there was more going on than we realized.”
“Wait, your father called?”
“Two weeks ago. He ordered me back to Denver. I refused to go.”
“And because of that, you think he’s planted a spy?” Connor’s hopes for a quiet day with his family and Miranda faded into the desert surrounding them. She had no right to go into the employee files, and after what they suspected of her father, to have her answer a call from him felt like a betrayal.
“Of course,” she said, and the words seemed almost happy. “He wants me out of the way so that whatever he does next won’t come back to smear the Clayton name.”
“And you’re telling me this so you can be my spy when you go back to work for Daddy?” Was that what this was about? Since that last lunch, it had been hard to catch Miranda at the office, not that he had tried all that hard. But whereas, before the hack, they’d had nearly daily run-ins, post-hack, he sometimes went an entire day without seeing her.
Those days he felt like he didn’t belong in the office.
“I have no intention of going back to Denver, and I told my father that. I’m telling you now because things have been quiet. We’ve had a dozen campaigns signed over the last couple of weeks, our readership numbers continue to tick up, and I wake up nearly every morning hoping this isn’t the day my father does something else to damage Reeves Pub.”
“If you don’t know who it is, why bring it up at all?”
“Because you know the employees, and you need to take the threat seriously.”
“You think this is me taking things lightly?” Connor raised his voice, and when Miranda slunk against the opposite door, he cringed.
“I thought you should know there is a very real possibility there is a spy in the office.” Her voice was quiet in the car. “We have a working relationship. You’re my boss,” she said, and it was as if they were back in his office after that first kiss.
This wasn’t about the spy. This was about Miranda being afraid of the chemistry between them.
He supposed he couldn’t blame her. Neither of those kisses had been anywhere close to lukewarm. And then he’d shown up on her doorstep, uninvited, and asked her to Thanksgiving dinner.
“I’ll look into it,” he said quietly.
• • •
Sitting across the table from Connor’s brother Gage and Gage’s girlfriend, Callie, Miranda felt like a heel. She’d been uncomfortable and nervous from the second Connor showed up on her doorstep. By the time they’d gotten into his Jag, she had been in near-meltdown mode. She’d clasped her hands in her lap and stared out the window so she wouldn’t be tempted to stare at him. To touch his arm or, worse, his strong thigh. The car was too small, the jeans he wore too tight, and the emotions boiling up in her belly had been too much.
So she’d brought up her father, the only topic she was certain would cool whatever emotiona
l lava was about to erupt inside her. Her father and the hack and the fact that there was a very good chance William had put a spy inside Connor’s business. Then she’d insulted him, implying that he wasn’t taking the threat of her father’s takeover seriously when she knew the opposite was true.
And none of that had cooled the electricity that seemed to pulse from his body to hers. It was as if she were wearing both too many and too few clothes, as if she’d lost control of her faculties. Like she was one of the socialites she’d known in Denver who only worried about whom to take to the next big event. There were larger problems in the world than whom she should date.
Jase, the oldest of the Reeves brothers, leaned over the table to carve the turkey while Callie preened under Gage and Connor’s ongoing conversation about how good everything smelled. The foreman, Rollie, grumbled about grilling steaks and the possibilities of missing the late games because of the tryptophan in the turkey. But his eyes grew round when the platter was passed, and she noticed he didn’t skimp on the bird or the gravy or any of the other side dishes.
Sitting at the table, surrounded by Connor’s family, she felt even more uneasy. They were nice people. Gage and Jase and Connor were so similar with the high cheekbones and the defined jawlines. Each stood a little over six feet tall. There was an easiness between them, a familiarity that she’d never felt in the big house in Denver.
As more of the lunch dishes were passed, Miranda filled her plate, watching the flirtation between Gage and Callie, the way Jase sat at the head of the table but didn’t get too involved in the conversation.
“I’m going to stay for a while,” Jase said, and the conversation around the table came to a screeching halt. Connor and Gage looked at Jase as if he’d grown two heads, Callie beamed, and Rollie sat dumbfounded at the other end of the table with his fork halfway to his mouth.
“Stay?” Connor was the first to speak. “You never stay in Vegas.”
Jase shrugged. “I have a couple new game designs to test out, and there aren’t any big tournaments after the January run in Atlantic City. And I’m tired of living in hotel suites.”
“It will be nice to have you around more,” Callie said, and Miranda saw her squeeze Gage’s hand.
The small movement caused a similar squeeze in Miranda’s chest, and she didn’t know why. It wasn’t as if she knew Jase or why he lived in hotel rooms. It wasn’t as if she knew much at all about the Reeves family. But there was something about the way Callie and Gage looked at each other, the way Connor went so still she thought he might have turned to stone, that said Jase coming back to Las Vegas was a very big deal.
After lunch, when the guys went into the living room for the next football game, Miranda helped Callie clear the table. She scraped the plates and stacked them in the massive dishwasher while Callie boxed up leftovers and placed them in the refrigerator.
“Connor told me you and Gage are going to open a destination spa at an old dude ranch nearby. That sounds exciting,” she said after a long moment.
“We’re knee-deep in floor samples and kitchen tile, if you call that exciting.” Callie grinned as she said the words, though. “The big renovations at the cabins will start after New Year’s, and if everything goes well, it will open next summer. Gage tells me you’re responsible for the new Vegas Nightly design and the Bachelor of the Month issues.”
“I burned Connor’s coffee often enough he had to give me something else to do.” Miranda shut off the quiet disposal and water and wiped her hands on the kitchen towel.
“Don’t sell yourself short. Connor’s a maniac about Reeves Pub. It’s his baby.”
Miranda knew and once more mentally castigated herself for picking that fight with him in the car. She needed to apologize.
Callie put the last of the plastic tubs of leftovers into the fridge and washed her hands. “Did he give you the full tour of the house?” Miranda shook her head. “Come on, then. I swear the Reeves brothers have no sense of hospitality. Probably comes from never inviting anyone outside the family out here,” Callie said as she led the way down a back hallway.
She pointed out powder rooms and sitting areas on the main floor, and then they came to a massive space with floor-to-ceiling windows looking out over the desert. There were low sofas and chairs in conversation areas around the room, a bar along the back wall, and a fireplace at the side. It looked like the perfect place to cozy up with a book and a blanket on cool winter evenings, Miranda thought. A yell sounded from the other side of the house.
“Late games must have started,” Callie said as they started up the stairs. There were five bedrooms on the second level, each with an en suite bath. At the far end was the office, which Callie said no one used any longer. She’d turned the space into a library, and Miranda trailed her hands over the book spines as she wandered the room. “This is my favorite spot in the house,” Callie said. “Gage and I have been spending more time out here now that the Heck project is underway.”
“You worked together before? Is that how you know each other?” Miranda asked.
“We grew up together, actually. My parents’ ranch was across the lake from here. I left for school, Gage stayed, I came back.”
“And now you’re together.”
Callie smiled and shrugged a shoulder. She sat in one of the large leather chairs near a window. “Yeah. It scared me to death, the thought of working with Gage and dating Gage. What people might think about the whole thing. I was an idiot. It doesn’t matter what anyone thinks, as long as I know why I’m with him.”
“And that’s because?” Miranda asked, already knowing the answer. She hadn’t known Callie Holliday long, but this wasn’t the type of woman to use anyone.
“Because I love him.” She said the words with confidence, and her smile went gentle. “I loved him when we were kids, and I tried really hard not to love him as an adult. That Reeves charm, it gets you every time.”
Reeves charm. So far Connor hadn’t tried to charm her. He’d been straightforward both times they’d stepped over the boss/employee line. It was clear he was attracted to her as much as she was attracted to him. Still, the thought of completely stepping over the line that separated their business selves from their personal selves made her knees go mushy and her stomach cramp up.
“You like him, don’t you?” Callie asked, and Miranda’s heart seemed to skip a beat.
“He’s my boss.” She shook her head. There was no doubt in her mind that if she did allow herself to go there with Connor, he would keep things as normal as possible between them, and if things went badly, she knew he wouldn’t fire her. But if things did go badly, she also knew she couldn’t continue working with him. Already it was hard to work for him, and all they’d done was share a couple of hot kisses. She couldn’t imagine having sex with Connor and going back to their business only arrangement.
“Connor doesn’t bring women to the ranch. None of them do, so when he asked today if he could bring you out, I knew there was something going on.”
Miranda shifted her weight. She’d assumed … But since when had assuming anything about Connor worked in her favor? She’d thought he would fire her, but he’d given her a second chance. “It’s just work. The hack, the redesign. He knew I didn’t have anywhere to go today, and he didn’t want me to be alone.” The excuses sounded hollow to Miranda’s ears. As attentive a boss as Connor was, she didn’t see the ranch being overrun with pressmen, reporters, or photographers today, and Miranda knew plenty of them were spending the holiday alone. Miranda pointed behind her. “I should, ah, go,” she finished lamely.
Callie crossed her arms over her chest and tilted her head to the side. “Building a personal relationship out of a working one isn’t easy, and I know you have the added baggage of your family, but trust me, Reeves men are worth the struggle. Also, and this is purely for my benefit, it would be nice to have a little more estrogen at the ranch from time to time. Talking football and bull semen collection schedules with Gage a
nd Rollie gets old after a while.”
Miranda had no reply to that. Nothing that wouldn’t allow Callie to see straight through her. She backed out of the library, wandered back along the second floor, and at the railing that looked out over the living room, stopped.
Connor sat in a leather recliner, feet up, a bottle of beer in his hand. Jase and Gage shared the recliner sofa, and all of them cheered when one of the players caught the ball and took off down the sidelines.
Miranda sighed. He looked so comfortable in the big chair, watching the game with his brothers. If she were a different person, more like Callie, maybe, she would join them. Sit with Connor in that big chair and cheer for whatever team the guys liked for the win.
She was Miranda Walker Clayton, though, and Miranda Walker Clayton couldn’t date her boss. Couldn’t give her father the kind of ammunition offered by a personal relationship with Connor Reeves. He already saw her working for Connor as a betrayal. He would see her dating Connor as a declaration of all-out war.
No more late night dinners in the office, no more surprise lunches, and no more getting all weak-kneed just because he had a personal connection with everyone at the office. No matter how hard it was, she had to get a grip on the attraction she felt for Connor. No more family events.
• • •
Connor twisted the cap off a bottle of water and sat down on the back porch. Inside, he could hear Rollie, Gage, and Jase still yelling at the television screen.
Things had been fine before dinner, when he and his brothers were throwing that stupid football around the side yard. During lunch, Callie kept the conversational ball rolling, asking Miranda about Denver and the work at the magazine. Jase made a few bad jokes about dancing penises, but that was to be expected. Then he’d made his announcement about staying in Las Vegas.
Through it all, Connor couldn’t stop thinking about Miranda. How close she was to him at the table. The way she and Callie had started talking and never really stopped. How she’d smelled in his car on the way out, as if she had bathed in sweet magnolia blossoms. He’d wanted to touch her. Laugh with her. Kiss her into oblivion.
What the Heiress Wants Page 9
