“Pass,” he said. “This one?” He pointed toward the doubtful girl. There wasn’t anything wrong with her per se, but something about the arch of her brows and the sharpness of her nose said total bitch, even with the smile she was wearing.
“Mina Mizuki. Works in a nonprofit animal shelter, active member of PETA, enjoys cooking.”
“Pass. Absolutely not. No way.” He was shaking his head before she’d finished her spiel.
“Why? She’s skinny and brunette, and already has a pet charity. That’s kind of perfect for the stay-at-home wife of a gazillionnaire.” Of course she was going to argue about this.
“It isn’t any charity, Andrea. PETA is for vegans. Vegans, Andrea.” He felt pained at the very thought. “Do you think I plan on dating this woman at salad bars, because the menu at Del Frisco’s offends her?”
“I suppose you don’t look like the tofu type, no. But she cooks, didn’t you want that?” She still looked hopeful. This woman was impossible. Why was he explaining himself to an employee?
“PETA is also an organization that prides itself on celebrity endorsements. If I start dating this person, I’ll be her ticket to landing a big name for the next ad campaign. Her cooking or not is beside the point. I’m not interested in being used for my name or status.” Andrea pressed her lips together and held out her hand for another folder.
The other maybe skidded in her direction.
“Melissa Carswell. Dancer. Not very talkative, but seems nice enough.” That sounded promising.
“She’s a possibility. Pull up her home address on Google Earth.”
Drea stared at him in disbelief, but he was not joking. Location, location, location—it wasn’t just a real estate mantra. Where people chose to spend their time said a lot about them.
Once she had located the address, he leaned over her. “I know that neighborhood. Lots of bars. It’s a party area. She’s obviously a drinker. Pass.” He was close enough to smell her shampoo, but also to hear the choice words she muttered about him. He pulled back.
“That leaves us with Jaylene Kim,” she said in her normal voice. He leaned back in, ostensibly to study the picture, but she smelled really nice. Blake idly wondered why he didn’t find excuses to smell her more often.
“Because that would be inappropriate,” Drea was saying.
Oh, dear. Had he said that last thing out loud? “Excuse me?” Please don’t let that have been out loud.
“I was saying it would have been inappropriate for me to have informed your secretary about your date already, but you clearly don’t have many choices left if you plan on meeting anyone this week. Try and keep up.”
“Is Jamie a carnivore?” He picked up the woman’s picture and studied it more closely. She was a stunner. An apple-scented stunner. Wait—that was Drea’s shampoo again. Either way, it left him pleasantly dizzy while he drank in the dark-haired beauty on the page.
“It’s Jaylene, and I believe so.”
“Book Jamie and I a table at Del Frisco’s for Thursday. I’m suddenly in the mood for prime rib.” Blake was back in the B-Zone, confident as hell, stalking around the office and ticking off items on his fingers. “Deal with those shoes. They clash horribly with your skirt. You can have Friday off, since you came in Saturday. We can discuss the date Monday.” He paused. That would be a three-day weekend without seeing Andrea. “Plan to bring me another batch of candidates on Saturday, at my home.”
“Blake.” He faced her, the questioning look on his face a contrast with the stormy one on hers. “Her name is Jaylene. It doesn’t matter how good the steak is, how sweet and submissive the date, no woman will ever want to be with you if you can’t remember her name. Try to have a little respect. For you, a wife is an accessory, but you’re expecting to be someone’s whole life. Also, I forgot my heels, so.”
Even the confidence of the B-Zone couldn’t keep that from stinging. And now he’d have to look at those stupid orange shoes all day. He felt himself deflating. This was unacceptable. He’d have to find a way to gain his control back.
Chapter Eight
Andy awoke with a start when Lacy burst through her bedroom door at—she glanced at the clock—seven forty-three in the morning. Seven forty-three on her day off.
“What the hell, Lacy? I’m sleeping.” Andy pulled the covers up and started to snuggle back into her pillow.
“Your phone, which you left out on the coffee table last night, has been ringing nonstop for fifteen minutes.” Lacy was obviously none too happy about it, too. “When it wouldn’t stop, I answered it. Here—take it.”
Andy sat up and took her cell, wondering who on earth would call her at such a god-awful time of the day, and why her sister didn’t just silence the phone instead of answering it. She glanced at the number on the screen—it was one she didn’t recognize—before putting the cell up to her ear. “Hello?”
“She was gay,” the male voice barked into her ear.
“What?” Andy wasn’t awake enough to register who the caller was let alone the meaning of his words.
“Gay. As in lesbian. As in not fond of men. As in likes to get it on with other women.”
“Blake?” The high-pitched frenzy in his tone didn’t sound quite like her boss’s voice, but the words he was spewing could only belong to Mr. Donovan himself.
“I don’t understand why you would set me up with a gay woman,” he continued without verifying that it was indeed him.
But Andy was sure now. She should have expected this actually. Jaylene had stopped by last night after her date with Blake and already given Andy an earful. Turned out the couple weren’t a match made in heaven as Andy had hoped. They weren’t even a match made for the moment, the pairing had been so ridiculously awful.
Andy took a deep breath. “Jaylene wasn’t gay, Blake.”
“Ah, she had you fooled as well,” he muttered. “Then it was a purposeful snow job. Obviously she was after my money. Or at the very least, a free meal. No more first dates at expensive restaurants. Write that down.”
If she’d been more awake, she may have thought it was comical that Blake thought she carried a notebook around at all times, ready to jot down his latest candidate preferences. But she wasn’t awake. And it was her day off. A day that she’d meant to spend sleeping until noon.
“Blake, Jaylene isn’t gay. She’s a feminist.” It was a fact Andy hadn’t realized until the night before. Definitely not the right woman for Blake, but how the hell was she supposed to have figured that one out? None of the dedicated feminists she’d ever encountered had ever had such traditional women’s jobs—nor did they spend so much time on their makeup.
The fact that Andy had only known one die-hard feminist in her lifetime was beside the point.
“A feminist?” Blake said the word with equal exclamation, equal questioning. “God, that’s even worse.”
“How in the world is feminist worse than lesbian in terms of bride-finding? You know what—don’t answer that.” Andy rubbed at her sleep-crusted eyes. “This is my day off, Blake. Perhaps we can discuss this further on Monday.”
“She drank Sam Adams. She follows baseball. Drea, she had a bob.” Apparently the conversation couldn’t wait until Monday. “I thought in the pictures you showed me that her hair was just up. Nope. It was a full-on bob.”
Andy sifted through the comments lining up in her brain and picked the one least likely to get her fired. “You’ve never mentioned long hair as a prerequisite for your dates, Blake.”
“I would have expected that to be obvious. You did say you had a handle on my preferences.”
That was it. She was not having this conversation. Not on her day off, not without coffee. “Okay, Blake, I’m done now. I’ll talk to you more about this on Monday.”
“She owns a cat, Drea. A diabetic cat.” Blake spat the word cat as if pet-owning were the worst thing he could imagine about a person. “No cats. That’s a rule.”
“I’m jotting it down,” she lied.
“And I’ll jot down more on Monday. Talk to you later.” She’d moved the phone away from her ear when she heard him call back to her.
“We’ll talk tomorrow. The new files you bring had better be more appropriately aligned to my tastes.”
“Got it. Have a great day, Blake.” She clicked END before he could say anything else. After saving the number to her contacts so she’d be warned the next time he called, Andy turned the phone off and fell back into her bed.
Dammit, she hated her job. No, scratch that, she hated her boss. Well, she hated her job and her boss. And she hated mornings. But, dammit again, she was awake now. Besides, she was suddenly worried that the files she had were not appropriately aligned to Blake’s tastes. Which meant she had work to do, namely finding more candidates before she stopped by his house the next day. Well, she’d show him she could find candidates, all right.
Within an hour, she’d showered, dressed, and laid out a plan of where to search for potential brides. Both the coffee shop in the Asian American Civic Association and the Italian Cultural Library seemed like good places to meet exotic women. But even if her scouting for suitable dates was successful, she still had one very huge problem: However would she make Blake Donovan suitable for dating?
Fortunately, she thought she just might have an idea to solve that as well.
* * *
“Your sister’s worried about you, you know.” Lacy’s boss glanced over at Andy from the driver’s seat of his van.
“Oh, my God, Darrin, I have told her over and over that I am not going to screw this one up. Will you please attest to what a great employee I am being?”
His glance traveled over her skeptically. “Well. You are definitely a dedicated employee. Unusual, even. Great…? Jury’s still out.” He chuckled. “I’m pulling for you, Andy.”
“Oh, shut up.” She glared out the window. Despite her words to the contrary, her confidence in the job was somewhat lacking at the moment. She had found some brilliant women on her scouting mission the day before, but she still feared that none of them would succeed in wowing Blake if she didn’t manage to soften him first.
That fear was what led her to her plan. Today’s plan. A glorious plan, she hoped. Though she had the feeling Blake might not see it that way.
No time to doubt herself. According to her Google Maps app, they were almost there.
She nodded to Darrin. “Left here.”
His muscular, tattooed arm flipped the turn signal on. For a guy who perpetually looked like he was on his way to meet Sid Vicious for a bender, Darrin was a surprisingly careful driver.
“I’ve been worried about her, too, of course.” His tone grew serious. “Having to cut her hours on top of everything else made me feel like a complete asshole.”
“Oh, no. We all know music is a precarious business. There are ebbs and flows in the work. You have to keep the studio open. She’d rather have a part-time job than no job at all. Seriously, D, she understands.” He smiled, but hardly looked convinced. “Really. I’m hoping a little less time playing songs for other people will give her a chance to work on some songs of her own. I don’t think she’s done much writing since Lance.”
“I don’t think Lacy has done any writing since Lance. Much as I agree with her that you are out of your mind half the time”—he shot a look toward her lap—“I have to say, the fact that she’s worrying about you is an improvement. For a while it was all I could do to get her to show up to work with her hair brushed. She’s starting to get involved with the world again and not just go through the motions.”
Andy sighed. Darrin was more than a boss to Lacy; he was a good friend. When Lance died, Andy froze. She didn’t know what to do or say, and Lacy pretended none of it was necessary. If Darrin hadn’t stepped in, Andy knew there was a chance she could have lost her sister as well. She’d owe the guy for the rest of her life for that. Which was why she let the crack about being out of her mind slide.
“This is it.” She pointed him into a winding drive.
“This place? It’s a mansion. Shit, girl.” He craned to see through the windshield.
“Did I mention my boss owns the company?”
“Does he have any use for sound recording?” Darrin was still staring openmouthed. Personally, after seeing the coldness of the place, she’d reserve the dropped jaw for its owner.
“Not likely.” She put her hand on the door handle. “Okay, I need to go in there first and talk to him. I’ll be back in twenty minutes. Wait here, please.”
“Jesus H, are you kidding me? This was not part of the plan.”
“I know, I know, but I can’t just walk in there with this. I need to prep the situation. Please, give me just twenty.” Puppy eyes, engage. “I’ll make it up to you. Lacy will work half a shift for free.”
“Don’t make deals you can’t keep, you little brat. Your sister is going to kill you.” He looked sort of delighted at the thought, and Andy knew she had him.
“So you’ll stay?”
“I’m leaving if you aren’t back in fifteen. Your time starts now.”
“Fine. And thank you, Darrin.” Puppy eyes for the win.
“Hey, don’t be trying that feminine wiles stuff on me. It won’t work. I’m doing this because I’m a friend, is all.”
Andy rang the doorbell and was again greeted by Ellen, the housekeeper. “Good morning, Drea. Nice to see you. Mr. Donovan didn’t say you were coming by today.”
Uh-oh. He’d forgotten. Maybe the situation needed more prepping than Andy had hoped.
Then she thought about the time limit Darrin had given her and the present she had waiting in his van. Perhaps this would be one of those occasions that baptism by fire was the appropriate route.
But first, the housekeeper. “Yes. I have some files for Blake. And something else. Could you hold the door open for me a moment?”
Without waiting for Ellen’s response, Andy handed her the stack of folders she’d been carrying and ran back to the van to retrieve her gift. With a wave, she signaled Darrin could leave and returned to the house.
Andy set the surprise on the floor and motioned for Ellen to shut the door behind them.
Ellen then raised an eyebrow skeptically at the gift. “Good luck,” she said.
“Do you think it’s a bad idea?” It was too late now to change her mind even if it was.
“Not at all. I think it’s an excellent idea.” Ellen smiled encouragingly as she handed the files back to Andy. “But I’m still saying good luck.”
“Thanks.” Andy tucked the files under her arm and headed for the stairs. Luck wasn’t what she needed. She needed a goddamn miracle.
* * *
Blake sat at his desk, trying to remember what it was he’d forgotten. He knew it wasn’t a conference call. His secretary would have alerted him if he’d missed something like that. His phone was charged—wasn’t that. Rolling his neck around, he decided the niggle would come to him eventually. In the meantime, it was Saturday. Maybe a long jog outdoors instead of the usual prework treadmill session?
As he rose from his desk to change into gym shorts, a noise came from downstairs. He jumped a mile. Who the hell?
Then, with a rush, he recalled Andrea. Considering he’d completely forgotten about her, the sudden thrill that rolled through his body at the realization she was here took him by surprise. Especially when he realized she’d been the cause of the niggle.
And yet nothing could possibly prepare him for the surprise that came tumbling through his door instead of the woman he expected. A waddling, clumsy, chubby little thing. It was horrifying. It was hideous.
It was a fucking puppy.
“It’s a puppy!” Drea exclaimed the obvious, bursting through behind the creature with a Cheshire-cat grin on her face, her arms stacked with files. “Isn’t he the cutest thing?”
“He’s disgusting.” Though, really, it was kind of cute, in an odd way. “Why is it sniffing me? These shoes were rather pricy and I don’t wan
t them drooled on.”
“It’s just a little puppy slobber. It won’t hurt anything.” Drea’s face was softer than he’d ever seen it, her eyes warm. Because of a four-legged creature?
Perhaps there was benefit to having an animal around.
But then … “Is it—is it peeing? On my desk?” Blake’s moment of consideration returned to alarm. What was happening to his fortress of solitude?
Drea dropped the files on his desk and bent to pet the thing. “Oh, little sweetie! I should have let you go while we were outside. Silly me.” She peered up at Blake. “It’s only a little puppy piddle. Wipes right up.”
Puppy slobber and puppy piddle were not phrases that made the fact that animal bodily fluids were being emitted around his office any cuter. The distracting view of Drea’s cleavage that her crouched-down position gave him didn’t make the situation any better, either.
Well, maybe it helped a little.
But then she stood and reached to the hook behind him. “Can I use this?”
“Wait, that’s my suit jacket, don’t—” It was too late, as a thousand dollars’ worth of Ralph Lauren’s finest gently absorbed the puppy piddle.
“Isn’t he sweet?” Andrea was flushed, holding the furball to her chest and appearing to be utterly charmed by the filthy little thing.
“Sweet is hardly the word I would use to describe it.” Nuisance was more appropriate. A maker of messes. Perhaps, a little charming, but not, well … “What is it?”
She lifted her mouth from where she’d had it nuzzled in the pet’s body. “It’s a corgi, can’t you tell? Look at those big fox-ears! He doesn’t have a tail. Good grief, do you know nothing? Come on, pet him. He’s so soft.”
Before he had a chance to protest, she’d taken his hand and placed it on top of the ball of fluff. The soft texture of the animal was pleasant under his fingers, but nothing compared with the delightful shock that traveled down his body at the feel of Andrea’s skin on his.
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