The Boss and the Plain Jayne Bride (Harlequin Romance)

by Heather MacAllister

  He’d assumed they were past the staring stage, but apparently not. Pale-faced, she hadn’t blinked since Waterman had announced him. Assuming a pleasant expression, which he was prepared to hold until she recovered, Garrett advanced into the room.

  “The Charles family incorporated some time ago as Venus, Inc., a modeling firm. Their executive manager has resigned and the Charleses want Pace Waterman to take over as they expand the business.”

  Jayne’s eyes never left his face, Garrett noticed and doubted she’d even heard Waterman’s summary of his situation.

  He sighed inwardly. Years of training allowed him to keep his face in a bland mask until staring females realized what they were doing. Embarrassing them served no purpose except to make everyone feel uncomfortable. Unfortunately Jayne’s boss didn’t have the benefit of that training.

  “Jayne?” A perplexed Waterman glanced from her shocked expression to Garrett and back again.

  “Yes?” Her voice sounded thin and reedy.

  “Are you quite well?”

  Jayne blinked and her face and throat flamed in great patchy blotches. “Yes. I... was just concentrating. You caught me off guard.” She made as if to push herself away from her desk and knocked a computer diskette to the floor. She ducked under the desk to retrieve it.

  “Is now a bad time? I don’t want to disturb you.” Waterman was all solicitousness but Garrett knew he was really saying, “Get your act together, woman! An account with huge potential is on the line here!”

  Jayne knew, too. Her face got even redder and Garrett battled disappointment. He’d hired Pace Waterman solely to work with Jayne. In spite of her rattled behavior around him, he enjoyed watching her as she tackled accounting, a subject she obviously liked, and wanted those in the class to like, too. He’d even enjoyed the other night when she’d gotten carried away and lectured right through the break. Imagine loving numbers that much. Unfortunately he hadn’t been able to apply the lesson to his own books and had been irritated to discover that she’d no longer be teaching the class.

  George Windom, Venus’s longtime business and financial manager, had tendered his resignation and was gone before Garrett could hire a replacement. He’d hoped Jayne could be that replacement, but now, watching as she stood, he decided to request another accountant. A male. But not the one who was now teaching the class. Garrett was on the verge of suggesting he return at another time, when Waterman launched into an unnecessary introduction.

  “Garrett, this is Jayne Nelson, one of our top accountants.” Waterman may have added the last bit to remind himself as well as demonstrate his support of Jayne. “But, of course, you two have already met.”

  “Yes, yes, we have. Already- met. He was in my class. Or the class that was mine, but currently is Bill’s,” Jayne babbled to Waterman, who was now looking at her with real apprehension.

  Visibly steeling herself, Jayne turned her head and met Garrett’s eyes, thrusting out her arm across the desk, presumably to shake his hand.

  They never completed the ritual because Jayne knocked over her pencil holder scattering pencils, paper clips and pens over the surface of her desk.

  “Oh—!”

  Garrett couldn’t hear what she said, but suspected it wasn’t anything profane. Jayne didn’t look like the swearing type.

  Grabbing for the pens that rolled toward the edge, Garrett deliberately knocked into her stacking file baskets, collapsing them on one corner and sending the files over the side.

  Jayne sent him a stunned look—a different stunned look.

  “I’m sorry. And here I was trying to help.” he announced cheerfully, including Waterman in his smile.

  Mr. Waterman’s lips parted, but no sound emerged.

  Jayne scrambled around her desk, banging her shin. Garrett winced at the sound.

  “My, dear!” exclaimed Waterman ineffectually.

  “I’m fine!” Jayne squeaked, grabbed her leg and hobbled a few steps before sinking to the floor at their feet.

  Setting his briefcase well out of the way, Garrett stooped to help her gather the files.

  “Let me help—”

  “I’ll just get these—”

  They both reached for the same folder and their fingers brushed together.

  Jayne jerked back as though she’d touched a live coal and quickly sprang to her feet—too quickly. On the way up, she banged her head on the desktop overhang.

  Gasping, she rubbed her temple, smearing herself with blue ink and dislodging her glasses, which clattered to the desk.

  A flabbergasted Waterman stared at her. “Jayne?”

  “Are you all right?” Garrett asked.

  Jayne stopped rubbing her head, leaving a patriotic red and blue against her white skin. “In spite of evidence to the contrary, I’m fine.”

  Garrett was caught by her naked brown eyes. He’d seen those eyes alight with her passion for numbers, sparkling when someone in the class would involuntarily exclaim, “Now I get it!” He also remembered her embarrassed sympathy when she bashed him with the cart. And of course the mesmerized stare with which she’d greeted his entrances to the conference room.

  But he’d never seen her eyes dark with selfcontempt the way they were now.

  Garrett knew that if he asked for another accountant after what had just happened, Jayne would suffer, maybe even lose her job. After only a few minutes of conversation, Garrett knew Waterman was of the old school of businessmen who resisted the influx of women. Jayne probably was their best accountant, male or female. She’d have to be to have progressed as far as she had with the company.

  And so Garrett smiled reassuringly at Jayne, earning a melted chocolate look in response. He turned to Waterman and offered his hand with more success than Jayne. “Thanks for your time, Mr. Waterman. I’d like to coordinate my calendar with Jayne’s and then I’ll stop by your office before I leave.”

  “Yes, do stop by.” Waterman looked as though he didn’t think it was a good idea to leave a new client with the self-destructive Ms. Nelson, but couldn’t argue in the face of an obvious dismissal. To Jayne he said, “You have ink on your face.”

  Jayne mewled in distress, grabbed a tissue and rubbed at her temple, so Garrett followed Waterman to the door and closed it behind him.

  With huge eyes, Jayne watched his progress back to where she stood in front of her desk.

  Contemplating his next move—and he had no doubt the next move was up to him—Garrett stopped in front of her. Perhaps the direct approach would be best. “Ms. Nelson...Jayne, do I frighten you?”

  “N-no.” Jayne supposed it had been too much to hope that Garrett would ignore her peculiar behavior or attribute it to a momentary, and uncharacteristic, clumsiness. No, he had that darned book cart incident for reference. She fit the leg of the file basket back into the holder. At least he had his clumsy moments, too.

  While she repaired her baskets, Garrett had stooped to gather the scattered files. “I don’t frighten you?” he asked, standing and giving them to her.

  “No.” Jayne spoke more firmly this time. Fascinate, yes, frighten, no. She plopped the papers into the basket, determined to treat Garrett just as she would any other client.

  Garrett studied her a moment then contorted his face and took a sudden step toward her.

  Jayne yelped.

  “Time for you to switch to decaf.” He grinned.

  “Why did you do that?” she demanded, her heart still racing.

  “If you’re going to be so jumpy, you ought to have a real reason.”

  “That’s not a real reason,” Jayne grumbled returning to her chair.

  “Sure it is,” he said cheerfully. “You never know when I’m going to do it again.”

  “You’d deliberately scare me again?”

  “Maybe.” He looked at her, flinched, and Jayne started. Garrett laughed. “And maybe not.”

  Jayne held her hand over her heart. “Okay, you’ve made your point.” An unorthodox method, but surpr
isingly effective. Jayne presumed it was because her body had used its entire store of adrenaline during the past five minutes.

  Garrett pulled over one of the tweed club chairs from the conversation area by the sofa. “Are you always this nervous, or just when you’re around me?”

  “Just around you,” she admitted, surprising herself and apparently Garrett. as well.

  “Interesting.” He leaned forward, his whole body folded attractively, as though he were posing for an advertisement. “Why is that?”

  Jayne knew exactly why, but it didn’t bode well for their future business relationship for her to tell him. “Well, you stare at me all the time” Better to go on the attack. But perhaps a different attack would have been more effective.

  “I ... stare at you?” he asked, staring at her.

  “Yes.” Weak. Jayne. Really weak.

  “I’ll have to remember not to do that,” he murmured, averting his eyes to look down at one manicured hand.

  Or at least Jayne assumed it was manicured. She, herself, had never had a manicure. Too much bother. Besides, she was always snagging her cuticles when she searched through files. She curled her fingers in her lap and tried to deal with the fact that the epitome of masculine pulchritude was sitting on the other side of her desk.

  “I was disappointed when you stopped teaching the class.” He picked at a thread in the piping on the chair arm.

  “You were?” He was?

  Still avoiding her eyes, he nodded. “I’d always intended to hire an accountant and business manager to replace George, the man who resigned.” Garrett glanced up, then back down quickly, making Jayne feel guilty for accusing him of staring. “I still can’t believe he’s gone. He was like a member of the family. Then, when he left so suddenly, I found myself trying to make sense of the firm’s financial records.”

  The part of Jayne’s brain that wasn’t occupied with drooling over Garrett noted what he said and flagged it for further study.

  “I’ve studied business and managerial accounting, but I must be rusty because I still can’t figure out what George was doing.” He gave her an endearingly sheepish smile.

  “Oh, it’s my fault,” Jayne protested, responding to his dimples. “I shouldn’t have given you so much to absorb during the second class.”

  Garrett shook his head. “You’re a fine teacher.”

  “I am?” she breathed, losing herself in his gaze.

  “Yes.” He smiled and Jayne shivered.

  “But,” he continued, reaching into his breast pocket and removing an agenda, “I’d like to go over some points in your bookkeeping lecture again. I’m determined to thoroughly understand what’s been going on at Venus before I turn over the records to anyone else.”

  Which was exactly why Jayne volunteered to teach the courses she did. People gave too much leeway to the business professionals they hired. She hated making decisions on behalf of clients who didn’t understand the risks or the benefits of a particular action. She relaxed a bit. She and Garrett were going to get along just fine.

  Of course, it would be best if they conducted most of their business over the phone so she wouldn’t be distracted by his eyes and lips. And jaw and cheekbones. And the cleft in his—

  “When would be a convenient time for us to meet?” He clicked a gold pen and waited.

  Annnnytime. “Uh, now is fine. I’m not busy.” Jayne punched the memo on the Magruder report into oblivion.

  “You’re sure?” At Jayne’s nod, he returned the agenda and pen to his breast pocket and reached for his silver metal briefcase. “I brought Venus’s most recent ledgers. Maybe if you used those as an example, I could figure out the rest of it myself.”

  “Okay.” Jayne swiveled in her chair and grabbed her calculator. Usually, when a client brought files, Jayne would move to the sofa where they could spread everything out on the coffee table. But just before she mentioned moving, her eye caught the brochure with Garrett’s picture inside. It was the only brochure on the table.

  No need to panic. She’d simply move the brochure aside, preferably before he noticed. And even if he did notice it, there was no reason for him to suspect that she’d been mooning over his picture like a teenager with a celebrity tabloid.

  “Why don’t you bring the books over here where we can spread out,” she suggested, hoping she could at least walk across the room without tripping. She. ought to be able to, since she was still wearing her tennis shoes.

  Garrett followed her to the leather sofa, which Jayne approached without incidence. She reached for the brochure.

  “Going on a trip?” Garrett picked up the brochure before Jayne could. “My last modeling job is in here.”

  “Really?” Her voice sounded too high. She cleared her throat.

  “Yeah, in the promos for the cruise line. I got a nice little trip to Mexico out of the shoot.” He started to thumb through the brochure when it opened right to the page of the people lounging around the swimming pool.

  Jayne wanted to disappear. Instead, her legs gave way and she sat on the sofa with a smack, listening in embarrassment as the air hissed out of the leather cushions.

  The instant the magazine fell open to the pool picture, Garrett knew the brochure hadn’t been on Jayne’s office coffee table by chance. She was obviously embarrassed about being caught with it and wanted to pretend that she didn’t know about his picture.

  He didn’t know why; he wouldn’t have minded her commenting. But for her sake, he’d pretend nothing was out of the ordinary. In fact, maybe if he deglamorized modeling to her, she wouldn’t feel so in awe of him. He sat on the sofa next to her, feeling her tense, and spread the advertisement open. “It was freezing outside when we took this shot. In fact it was so cold, we had to hold our breaths so there wouldn’t be little white clouds in the photographs.”

  “You did?”

  Garrett nodded and pointed to dock buildings in the background. “Computer retouching got rid of the Christmas decorations.”

  “But you’re in swim trunks. Weren’t you cold?”

  “Yes, but it was supposed to be fun in the sun, so we had to look like we were having fun.” He smiled. “It’s worse to model winter wear in the heat, though.”

  “Why don’t you stick with the right seasons?”

  “Magazine lead times run months in advance. Ad campaigns start even before that. We shoot Christmas in July and Father’s Day at Christmas.” He closed the brochure and set it aside. “But thank God I’m out of that end of the business now.”

  Jayne’s eyes widened. “Didn’t you like being a model?”

  He’d hated being a model, but in his family there was nothing else. He’d grown up in a world in which he’d been judged by the smallest details of his appearance. The right look guaranteed prosperity. The wrong look meant unemployment. Photographers and advertisers cared only about the way he and the other members of his family looked, not who they were. They were merely props used to sell a product

  It had taken him six years to extricate himself. Six years to convince his family that he could run and expand the agency. And now he was going to have to trust the business acumen of the young woman sitting next to him. She deserved an honest answer to her question. “No,” he said quietly. “I didn’t enjoy being a model.”

  “Why not?”

  Their thighs were touching. Jayne wondered if Garrett noticed. She noticed. She was afraid to breathe in case the slight movement made him shift away from her. If only there were more nerve endings in thighs. Even the nerve endings in other parts of her body were petitioning to become thigh nerves.

  And she and Gamett were talking. Together. An actual conversation where Jayne asked pertinent questions. Not profound questions, but she wasn’t gaping at him or knocking something over. In another few minutes, he might realize she had a brain. She hoped he liked brains.

  It’s not your brain you want him interested in.

  Where had that hideous, but regrettably correct thought co
me from? She’d been hanging around Sylvia too much.

  “Modeling isn’t the glamorous profession everyone believes it is.” He smiled a brief, perfect smile and turned to the records he’d brought. “Remind me and I’ll tell you all about it sometime.”

  Oh, right. Back to work. He was paying for her expertise, not to have her make goo-goo eyes at him. Annoyed with the unprofessional direction of her thoughts, she scooted a couple of inches away from him and tried to focus on the ledgers. She’d ask about his computer equipment and backups later. “This seems fairly straightforward... where have you been having difficulties?”

  Garrett leaned over to point to a column of figures bringing his face to within inches of hers, but Jayne, after an initial jolt, managed to concentrate on what he was saying. “This is our gross income.”

  “Yes.”

  He flipped to the next section. “These columns tell where it went. Therefore, when I add all the expenses columns together, it should equal the income, right?”

  “Not necessarily,” Jayne began. “It appears your former accountant was escrowing a percentage...” She set her calculator on the table and jabbed in some numbers. “Twenty-seven percent here... thuty-three percent on this deposit, probably for taxes.”

  “I know. But I added that into expenses and compared it with receipts...or tried to. The total amount never completely agreed with the bank statements.”

  Jayne leveled a look at him. “It either agrees or it doesn’t. Incomplete agreement isn’t a choice.”

  He looked as though he wanted to argue the point, but didn’t. “Then the numbers don’t agree.”

  “So we’ll make them agree or find out why they don’t.” Jayne spoke with complete confidence. This was her turf and one she knew well. “Perhaps there’s been a simple math error, or numbers have been transposed. But since your former accountant knew he was leaving the books for someone else to take over, I would expect him to reconcile all accounts prior to his departure, making math errors unlikely.”