He’d been fine until halfway to the cottage, she’d wrapped her arms around his neck and snuggled into him. A very unbossly feeling had filled his gut.
And unless he’d like to lose his girlfriend and get slapped with a sexual harassment lawsuit, it was a feeling he needed to squash immediately.
“No problem. Just call next time, okay?” As he moved to sit back down, the phone rang. He reached to answer it, but Maddie was faster.
“Reuben Callahan’s office, can I help you?” She winked at him as she cradled the phone against her shoulder. “Mmmhmmm. I see. Actually, I’m his administrative assistant.” A pause, and she laughed. “Yes, I’m sure of that. I tell you what. Let me take a look at his schedule and give you a call back.”
She jotted something down on a Post-it note and laughed into the phone again. “Yes sir. Thank you for calling. I’ll get back to you.”
Maddie returned the phone to the desk and smiled at him. “Mr. Limberg needs to reschedule your Thursday two-o’clock meeting. Where’s your schedule?”
Reuben fished out a small four-by-six planner overflowing with Post-it notes from under a three-ring binder and handed it to her. “Everything’s in there. Somewhere.”
She shook her head. “I can’t believe you don’t have an electronic calendar. You can just use your e-mail software, you know.”
Did she think he was a complete idiot? “I just haven’t had the time to set it up.”
“I can do for you. I am your assistant, after all.”
“Later. I need my computer right now.”
“Fine.” She picked up a stack of paperwork and began putting them in piles. “You know, you still owe me a desk.”
“I got you a place to sleep last night. Beggars can’t be choosers.”
Her hands paused, and her eyes met his. “Allie and your parents got me a place to stay, if memory serves me correctly. You just came along for the ride.”
Reuben bit down the bitter pill her words flung at him. Gary was not his parent, but if he corrected her, he’d sound petty. “We’ll go tomorrow.”
“You’ve said that every day for the past week. I say we go today.”
“No time.”
She was silent, and he glanced up, his eyes meeting her rock solid gaze. “You’re just going to have to make time, then. They’ll never be a day when you have absolutely nothing you could be doing.”
The irritating thing was, she had a point. Still, he needed to finish reviewing these invoices and send them off to the accountant. “Tomorrow. I promise.”
“Why don’t I just go myself? Give me a price limit, and I’ll stay under it. I’m a bargain shopper, I promise.”
Not that he wouldn’t mind handing off the task, but he did mind handing out his credit card. “The cashier might give you a funny look when you try to use my credit card.”
Her lips tilted upward. “I could lower my voice real low and pretend.” She tucked her chin and cleared her throat. “Like this.”
Reuben bit down the chuckle that threatened to escape. Most days Maddie rankled his every nerve. But she was growing on him. “Okay, so maybe you could pull it off. But I’ll go anyway, just in case. Tomorrow.”
“Today. After lunch.”
Irritating female. “Three o’clock.”
She nodded, a cheesy grin lighting up her face. “Deal.”
Reuben settled back into his desk while Maddie continued to shuffle paperwork. He stole glances at her every few minutes but forced his eyes back on the work at hand. She’d need her own office if this was going to work long-term.
And he still had serious reservations about that too. He needed an assistant, no doubt, but Maddie was not the typical employee. She challenged his every word and her edges were as rough as sandpaper.
And the woman was clumsy. There wasn’t a day that passed that she didn’t trip over something or drop a stapler.
She’d look at him with those dark, troubled eyes and dare him to reprimand her.
He’d give anything to know who had hurt her so much that she’d built a mile-high wall around her, armed with sharp, verbal jabs.
“Reuben?”
He snapped his head up to see Maddie’s questioning glance. “Yes?”
“You okay? I called your name like five times.”
“Sorry. Just concentrating.”
Her eyebrows arched high behind her dark bangs, and when he looked down to see doodled circles on the invoices in front of him, he turned them over and stood. “Changed my mind. Let’s go now.”
“Okay, but I’ve got a few questions first.”
Questions were good. As long as they weren’t anything like the awful “What are you thinking about?” one Livy always flung his way. “Shoot.”
“First, I have a few other office supplies I need. You don’t have a supply stash I don’t know about do you?”
He was good to find a pen that still had ink in it. Office supplies were never top on his list. “What you see is what you get. Make a list on the way.”
“Second question.” She set her elbow on the desk, and put her chin in her hand and smiled. “Do you always doodle so pretty on your invoices?”
He grabbed his keys from the desk. “Just go get in the car.”
Maddie stifled a yawn and looked at her watch. Past ten-thirty, and Tilly had already come in to say good-bye and let them know that they were the last ones there. “You do know you have to pay me overtime, right?”
Reuben’s face flared red as he put his muscle into tightening the last screw. He looked so cute sitting on the floor putting together the desk. She’d tried to convince him to let the store assemble it and deliver, but he’d insisted he could handle it.
Then they’d gotten back to the restaurant to find everything in chaos and Livy in a dither. Two waitresses had called in sick for the lunch shift and a cook had shown up late.
Reuben didn’t start on the assembly until well after six. Four hours, his canceled date, and a ticked-off girlfriend later….
The macho man wiped his brow on his sleeve. “You can leave early tomorrow to make up for it.”
“What a great boss you are, Mr. Tightwad.”
“At least we understand each other.” He tossed the screwdriver back into the toolbox and pulled himself up. She should give him a hand up. It would’ve been the polite thing to do.
Thank goodness she didn’t do polite. Because even though she wanted nothing to do with men, Reuben was proving dangerous.
Just that morning she’d noticed his cologne again. And liked it.
And watching his determined self put together that dumb desk even if it killed him. It was just plain hot, even when he did slip back into jerkdom.
God, help me.
Men were dangerous, and she couldn’t afford to slip up here.
“Here, help me shove this back, will ya?” Having long since given up on his button-up dress shirt, he put a hand to the front of his white T-shirt and gave it a few pulls, unsticking the sweat-soaked cotton from his chest. A smell strong enough to make a skunk gag slammed up Maddie’s nose.
She tried not to cough. The man’s deodorant must have worn off, either that or he’d forgotten to put any on.
Romantic notions officially went down the tubes, where they belonged.
Thank you, God, for making men sweat profusely and stink like dirty gym socks after doing simple tasks.
Maddie grinned. She was getting this ungreedy thing after all.
“You gonna help or not?”
“Yeah, sorry.” She took one side of the desk and helped him slide it into the spot they’d cleared earlier. Her own desk. She was official. A step up from the salon booth at the Cut ‘N’ Style, and even better than the counter she’d sat behind in the college’s office.
“I’ll have another phone installed soon. Mine already links to the phone in the kitchen, so we’ll just add another line.”
Left up to him, it’d be a year before that happened. “Sounds good. Should I
call the phone company in the morning?”
The look on his face was worth a shopping spree at Target. “You can do that for me?”
Maddie ran a finger over the wood veneer of her desk. “I am your assistant.”
“I know. I just didn’t think…. Never mind. You do that, and I’ll work on getting my old laptop up and running for you soon.”
Did he think her a complete technological idiot? “If you bring it in, I can do that too.”
“You know computers?” He asked as if the concept was the strangest he’d ever heard of.
“I’m a product of the technology age same as you, Mister, if not more so. At the age you were fiddling with CDs, I was burning music from iTunes to the iPod Rachel got me for Christmas.”
“Who’s Rachel?”
She hadn’t meant to go there. Rachel wasn’t a topic up for discussion. Ever. Maddie turned her attention to the desk and put the box of pens they’d purchased in the top drawer. “Just a girl my dad used to date.” But she was so much more than that.
Reuben yawned. “I don’t know about you, but I’m ready to head out.”
Maddie grabbed her purse while Reuben flipped off the light and followed him out of the office. Halfway across the dark dining room, she ran into his back. “Reuben—”
He hushed her and put a hand behind him as if to shield her. “I saw something.”
Her arms prickled like tiny ants using her skin as a dance floor to do the cha-cha. “What’d you see?”
Reuben nodded toward the front window. “I thought I saw a person in the window looking in. Or maybe just a shadow.”
A shadow could be anything, right? A stray dog, lost kitty, homeless guy, a big dude with a bazooka ready to blow his way into the restaurant. A girl didn’t grow up on the streets of Chicago without a healthy dose of fear of bad guys.
Reuben motioned her to get back into the office. Not a chance. She hid her face behind his back and grabbed a handful of his shirt. Maybe she’d watched Scooby-Doo too much as a kid, but usually it’s the person that goes to the “safe” place who finds the ghost. No, she’d stay here so Reuben could protect her. Just like Fred did for Velma and Daphne.
Her protector grunted, then dropped to his knees on the floor. Maddie followed suit and crawled up beside him. “Are you sure you saw something?” She whispered as quiet as she could.
He put a finger to his lips and nodded his head, then started to crawl toward the back wall where the waitress station hid them from view. A second later he shoved a cell phone into her hand. “I’m gonna get a closer look. If I yell or anything happens, call 9-1-1, got it?”
Maddie looked from the Blackberry to her boss. “Why don’t we just call them now and let the police come and look?”
“Because it might be nothing. I don’t want everyone talking about how I called the police because I was afraid of the dark and thought I saw a monster.”
Maddie’s stomach lurched. “A monster?”
Reuben took her free hand in his and squeezed. “Not really a monster, but you know how rumors get twisted. Remember, if something happens, call the police.”
She nodded. The plan did not sound like a good one. By the time she heard something, it might be too late. But Reuben already jumped ship … er … waitress counter, and left her to fend for herself. Some protector he was.
Dear God, please send your lightning to strike down whatever bad thing is out there. Unless it really is a stray kitty or dog, then please don’t kill it and help it find a nice loving home. I really do like puppies. Maybe I could get one someday for when Kyle comes home….
A crash and a yell sounded from the dining room. Maddie shrieked and curled into a ball under the counter. With hands shaking, she punched in the three most important numbers she knew.
12
Reuben put his fingers to his temples. The blue and red lights blinded him, and the sirens dumped fuel onto his already frazzled nerves. “No officer. I don’t know what it was. It looked like a person peeking in the window. Since everything was dark, I couldn’t really tell.”
“So no one attacked you?” The cop stood poised to take additional notes.
Would the guy stop asking the same question over and over? “No. Like I already said, I just tripped over the table.”
He scribbled something into his notebook then snapped it shut. “Well, I’m afraid there’s nothing we can do then. There’s no sign someone tried to break in, nothing stolen, and no physical harm.” He nodded toward Reuben’s foot. “Well, not the criminal kind anyway.”
Reuben winced as a paramedic finished wrapping his ankle. What a crazy mess. People must be thinking the worst. And there were quite a few of them across the street, gawkers trying to get a peek at the action.
He tried to move his ankle, but the throbbing pain stopped him. “It isn’t broken, is it?”
“Nope, just a good sprain. You’ll wanna keep off it for a few days, and I’d suggest seeing a doctor in the morning since you won’t let me take you to the hospital to be sure.”
A run to the ER would just add salt to the already gaping wound that was his pride. “Thanks for the offer, but I’ll be okay.”
Reuben glanced at Maddie, who stood against the ambulance door. Her lips were pressed into a straight line as her eyes searched the area as if she were looking for someone.
The paramedic helped him off the gurney. “You really need crutches, sir. At least make sure someone drives you home.”
The officer grunted. “And that’s an order. Can’t be driving with a bum right ankle. You already caused enough stir tonight, no need to add a car accident to your list. In fact, I’ll get one of the men to take you—”
“Really, it’s okay.” No way was he going home in a squad car.
Maddie pushed off from her spot and put her hands to her waist. “I’ll take him home.”
Riding with her wasn’t on the top of his list of things he wanted to do right now either, but no other option presented itself. Unless he wanted to call Allie or his mom, and that just wasn’t happening. And Livy was already hot about him canceling their date. She’d probably just kick him in the other ankle.
With the help of the cop and Maddie, he squeezed into the front seat of her Tracker. His ankle smarted as he settled into the cramped quarters, and he tried to ignore the rips in the black and red seats. The vehicle brought him directly back to his high school days when a Tracker was actually cool to drive.
Maddie jumped into the driver’s seat. “Ready?”
“Yes.” So much more could be said, but he was afraid he’d yell. Loudly.
“You’ll have to give directions.”
He navigated while she drove under the speed limit. Halfway there, he couldn’t stand it anymore. “What are you, a turtle?”
She frowned. “I just don’t want to hurt you more.”
“Your driving wouldn’t hurt a squirrel if you ran into one.”
The Tracker accelerated two miles an hour.
Maddie pulled into his driveway a few minutes later and rushed around to his side to open the door.
He took hold of her arm and heaved himself out of the seat. Biting his lip against the stabbing pain, he attempted to walk by himself but only lasted two steps.
Maddie slipped an arm around his back. “Lean on me. I’ll help you.”
“I think you’ve helped enough tonight.” A sharp prick stung his side. “Did you just pinch me?”
“Yes, I did. Stop being a jerk.”
He hobbled beside her up the sidewalk to the front porch. “Me? You’re the one who caused all this.”
Maddie huffed. “Don’t you blame your ankle on me. You’re the one who wanted to be all macho and brave the shadow yourself.”
It sounded lame when she put it that way. The shadow? Had he really snuck across the dining room because of a little shadow? “You’re still the one who called the police.”
“Yes. After I heard a crash and you yelling.”
“I’d t
ripped over a table for crying out loud. What did you think happened?” They reached the top of the steps, and he grabbed his keys out of his pocket.
“Oh, I don’t know. My boss tells me to call the police if I hear anything weird, then said boss starts to howl louder than a beagle on a scent. What do you think I should assume?”
Irritating female. Especially because she was right. Reuben unlocked the door and allowed her to help him to the couch. He fell back, resting for the first time that day. His muscles would be ticked at him in the morning. Maddie helped him lift his feet onto the couch and prop his ankle on a cushion.
She turned away. “I’ll turn on the light.”
“No.” He barked louder than he meant to, but the thought of light filtering through his eyes to his already pounding skull made him jumpy. He tapped a finger to his forehead. “Head hurts.”
“Right. Well, if you don’t need anything else….”
“Thank you, Maddie.” He couldn’t see her features through the darkness, but he did hear her shift back toward him and could make out her silhouette from the dim moonlight filtering through the front window.
“Don’t get all sappy on me, boss.”
He reached up and snatched her hand. “No. Really, thank you. I was a jerk a while ago and here you are, trying to take care of me. You’ve gone above and beyond.”
She squeezed his palm then wiggled her fingers to withdraw, but he held tight. Now he wished he’d allowed her to turn on the light so he could see her face, those brown eyes that made him want to figure out what was going on behind them.
Maddie coughed. “Do you want me to call somebody to stay with you? Your mom? Allie? Livy?”
“No. I don’t want to wake Mom or Allie, and Livy and I … it wouldn’t look right for her to be here this late. Word’s gonna get around town anyway about all the ruckus. No use giving them anything else to wag their tongues about.”
Maddie tugged at her hand again, and this time he released it. The gossip queens would have a conniption fit if they found out he’d held hands with his assistant, in the dark, in his house, alone.
What was he saying? It wasn’t like he kissed her or anything. Not that she wasn’t kissable. Those adorable lips of hers that puckered when she was deep in thought or twisted to one side when she was being silly, they’d be so easy to kiss—for some other man who was interested in such a thing.
Sandwich, With a Side of Romance Page 7
