“But you are making it very difficult for me to run my business well. This sort of turnover in staffing with one client makes it nearly impossible to schedule so we can meet all our clients’ needs -”
She’d exaggerated. Not only was the sight of her hands twisting in her lap a telltale signal that she was fibbing, but Darla - who was clearly encouraging his pursuit of Bette - had told him that to this point he’d been merely a nuisance, not a roadblock.
His instincts, honed by twelve days of focusing all too intently on this woman, told him it was her own hide more than her business that felt threatened. Perhaps in more ways than one.
” - and since that is what Top-Line has built its reputation on, your performance this past week has been dangerous to my business.”
“That doesn’t explain why you won’t go out with me.”
She ignored that. “So if you will tell me exactly what your needs are -” She paused, but when he opened his mouth to tell her exactly what his needs were and what he was just arrogant enough to believe her needs were, her eyes widened in recognition of the opening she’d left and she rushed on without any additional oxygen. Her voice came as a whispery spurt that did something strange to the nerves down his backbone. “In an assistant. If you will just tell me, I will make every effort to see that Top-Line fills those requirements.”
His nerves settled, and he sighed deeply, the disappointment unfeigned. She wouldn’t be budged. At least not today. He considered her, sitting there on the couch. The dark green dress covered her from below her knees to her neck. Yet he only had to see the way the fabric draped across the slope of her breast to remember the feel of her amazingly soft skin under his fingertips, and then to relive the clenching, cramping pleasure in his gut at the sensation of her beaded nipple in his mouth.
Swallowing a curse, he stifled the urge to put his feet back up on the edge of the desk.
“All right, if you won’t change your mind today, there’s always tomorrow. And the day after that.”
“My, my, Paul Monroe thinking as far ahead as tomorrow?”
“If I have to to get through to you,” he shot back.
Twisting to face him squarely, she leaned forward and met his look, apparently reading the determination in it. “Why don’t you just give up this silliness, Paul?”
“Because I want to go out with you.”
“Why?” The question swirled with exasperation, doubt, perhaps a bit of wonder.
“Because …” Did he know? He’d never indulged in much self-analysis and he wasn’t comfortable doing it now.
So what if he acted a little out of character. So what if his family and friends had taken to allowing oddly knowing silences to creep into recent telephone conversations. So what if he didn’t know why it was so all-fired important that this particular woman be convinced to change “no” to “yes.”
He looked at her. Her dress glowed like green jade against her ivory skin. Her hair shone glossier than the smooth black leather of the couch. He could answer her question by doing what he wanted most to do at the moment. He wanted to go to her, to let his lips reacquaint her with what they could do to each other, to touch her in ways that earned those small, secret sounds of hers, to stretch her out on that couch, to press her body into the soft leather with the weight of his own and to feel her desire.
He said the words that came easiest. “Because I want you.”
For a moment, both too long and too short to measure by a clock, she remained still. Then she slowly straightened and stood, her composure complete.
“Goodbye, Paul. I’ll send you a new assistant tomorrow morning.”
“Bette -”
She gave him a palm-out gesture with one hand that stopped him. Just as well. He didn’t have a clue what he would have said, what he could have said.
“Paul, I enjoyed our dinners. I enjoyed meeting your parents. I’ve enjoyed our conversations and -” She flashed him a look, and he wondered if she was thinking of the kisses and caresses. If so, the thought didn’t crack her calm. “But we’re very different. We have different attitudes, approaches …” She let the words wind down, then turned and put on her coat, meticulously adjusting the collar before looking at him again.
A smile tried to turn up the corners of her mouth.
“There’s no future in this, Paul. So let’s just leave it at that, okay? For both our sakes. We’re best being business associates. That’s all. Cordial business associates.”
She closed the door behind her, then he heard the click of the outer door. She was gone.
Who the hell had said anything about a future, anyway? All he wanted was the present. To have fun while there was fun to be had, to explore this strangely powerful attraction. That was all. No big deal.
He jammed his feet back against the edge of the desk, but there was no relief for this new ache he felt. The ache of an opportunity lost.
*
SIX DAYS. ONE hundred forty-four hours. Eight thousand six-hundred and forty minutes.
Bette punched numbers into the calculator as if jabbing the keys would cure what ailed her, then wiped out the total before it could come up on the screen. She didn’t want to know how many seconds. That would only make it seem longer - if that were possible. It was bad enough expressed as six days. And six nights.
The days she could fill with the busyness of running Top-Line Temporaries. Even the weekend had been crammed with duties and responsibilities, plans and projections. After the havoc Paul had wreaked on her life, she’d needed time to catch up.
They had sent Heather Carlini to Paul’s office Wednesday morning, and held their breath - though Bette was honest enough with herself to admit her feelings and Darla’s were not identical in this situation.
Heather Carlini was a knockout. Dark hair, huge brown eyes, petite but blessed with an abundance of the right curves, and an apparently innate sense of how best to use them to her advantage. Bette had assigned her the job with deliberate intentions, and almost immediate regrets. What if Paul fell for her? Well, wasn’t that the best solution? Yes. No!
Bette felt as if the rumbling in her head might let loose any second with an explosion to rival a major volcano.
But there had been no eruptions. Not from inside her, not from Paul. Not Wednesday, not Thursday, not Friday. Nothing.
“All quiet on the Monroe front,” Darla had said as they closed up Friday night, leaving the words to echo in Bette’s head all weekend. And now it was nearing five o’clock Monday and all was still peace and quiet.
At least until nighttime came.
Even with all the effort she’d put into work over the past six days, Bette discovered she still had energy for tossing and turning each and every one of six nights.
She’d rerun the scene in Paul’s office so many times that the mental tape should have worn out. Instead, in some ways, it seemed to have become clearer and clearer.
Crystal clear that she’d assessed him correctly that first night. Intelligent, warm, charming, wry, sexy, endearingly funny and open. And truly a kid at heart.
He’d practically flinched at the word future. In his vocabulary any synonym for forethought was a bad word. The man ran from plans and schedules as if they came from the same litter as Godzilla. He looked no farther ahead than the moment. She’d always wanted - needed - to know that this moment, added to the next moment and the one following that, was building toward something.
He’d made no bones about what he looked for from her. He’d said it right out: I want you. Not that he cared for her, not that he was interested in the potential of a long-term relationship with her.
Not that she expected a relationship immediately. Relationships - lasting relationships - took time to build, to mature. It took a lot of small steps to reach a goal. But, just as she had known there was the potential for success before she started Top-Line Temporaries, she wanted to know that the possibility of a long-term relationship existed with a man. That after getting to know each
other gradually, step by step, they might think about a more permanent future.
But that wasn’t how Paul Monroe operated. He wanted her. Right now, for this moment, and let tomorrow be hanged.
That wasn’t her approach to life, so it couldn’t be her approach to - The word love leaped to mind, but she substituted one less volatile. To relationships.
Limiting their contact to a strictly business association was the only sane approach.
So why was sanity driving her crazy?
Six days, six nights. One hundred forty-four hours. Eight thousand six-hundred and forty minutes. And for every one of them, she’d thought of him.
Worse even than the memories was the way her body reacted to them. Her heartbeat skittered, her breathing turned jagged, her skin pulsed, her insides heated. Six days without seeing, smelling, touching or tasting Paul Monroe, and he still filled her with sensation.
And, yes, she admitted, sitting in the rational atmosphere of her office at 4:47 of an ordinary Monday afternoon, she had wondered if he would ever again try to make those sensations real. Would he call her? Show up at her office? Arrive at her front door?
Would she ever stop wishing he’d do one of those things, any of those things, as long as it meant she saw his dancing eyes, heard his amused voice? She wouldn’t tempt the Fates and her heart with anything more than seeing and hearing. She’d only risk enough exposure to him to break this pervasive ache of isolation.
She shook her head once, emphatically, more than a little disgusted. Who was she kidding? Did she really think just seeing and hearing Paul Monroe a little would satisfy her?
Something had to give. She had to either learn to control these longings and get on with her life or - Darla pushed open the door, slipped inside and leaned against the closed panel.
“What is it, Darla?” The grimace drawing her assistant’s face seemed to be the result of trying to stifle emotion. Laughter or tears?
“I have some news for you, Bette.” Darla spoke as if trying to prepare her for a shock, to soften a blow.
“Yes?”
“Heather Carlini is here.”
“Oh?” It took a moment for that to sink in. Six days and six nights can dull the wits. “Oh, no! Not again!”
But even as she said the words, something inside her exulted. He hadn’t fallen for Heather Carlini, long wavy hair, huge dark eyes, petite curves and all. And he hadn’t given up. Paul Monroe was back in her life. She wanted to shout. She wanted to sing.
“Yes, again.”
She wanted to cry. Paul Monroe was back in her life, and she had some questions to consider. What was Top-Line Temporaries going to do? What was she going to do?
“But … but it seemed to be going so well. We hadn’t heard a peep out of Heather for six days. Six days! That was twice as long as Norma.”
Darla shook her head, and laughter escaped at last. “There’s a reason.”
“Well?” The demand was none too patient.
“I asked her if she’d had any trouble last week, and she said no. So I asked how it could be so terrible to work for him if she’d breezed through the last three days of last week with no problems. And Heather said - Heather said …” Darla gulped twice and finally got her voice back in order, although tears leaked from the corners of her eyes and left a shiny trail on her dark cheeks. “She said there was a simple explanation for that. He wasn’t - he wasn’t there last week.”
“What?”
Darla nodded hard, and expelled a sigh that shimmered with laughter. “That’s right. Out of town. In Washington, D.C. All those days we sat here congratulating ourselves that we’d finally licked the Paul Monroe Problem, he wasn’t there.”
Bette watched Darla feel for a chair to support her laughter-weakened body.
Standing, she carefully closed the folder on her desk, returned her pencil to its holder and shut down her computer. Moving automatically, dreamily, she felt as if her muscles functioned with no direction from her mind. But underneath she felt a glow of energy such as she had never before felt.
She couldn’t consider this feeling too closely. Like looking directly into the sun, it might blind her. Instead, she concentrated on the mundane. She pulled her coat on and took up her purse, some portion of her recognizing the actions as slow-motion reruns from last Tuesday.
The phone rang, as it had last Tuesday.
She looked at Darla, and saw her dark eyes widening with recognition of the repetitions. The phone rang again.
“Tell him I’ll be there in a few minutes, and we’ll settle this,” Bette said, knowing that that, too, was a near repeat of Tuesday.
Only it wasn’t like Tuesday at all, because Tuesday she hadn’t felt this gush of joy, this flooding of relief and fear and anticipation.
Tuesday, she thought as she elected to walk the nine wind-whipped blocks that separated her office from his, she had concentrated only on what his presence was doing to Top-Line Temporaries. Now she knew what Paul Monroe’s absence could do to her.
He’d been out of town. He’d stepped out of her life, stopped harassing her for six days because he was out of town. Not because he no longer wanted to be with her. Not because he’d given up on her.
The relief of it stung her eyes as much as the wind. She might extract some small compensation, some payment for the toll he’d taken on her emotions the past six days. And she had to remember that this situation could have a bearing on her business, though anything to do with business seemed a remote and misty concept right now. She had more immediate concerns.
Like knowing that at the end of this confrontation she would not walk out of his old-fashioned office the way she had Tuesday. She could not turn her back on the fact that he wanted her. On the fact that she wanted him.
Even though it meant, this once, accepting the moment, and letting the future be hanged.
She knew now that Paul Monroe hadn’t given up. And now she knew that neither could she. Whatever happened next.
Chapter Seven
*
BETTE WALKED THROUGH the outer office, devoid once more of an assistant, then hesitated at the door to the inner office. She stared, unfocused, at the wood panels, before giving a small shake to her head.
Don’t be an idiot. What is there to be nervous about? You’re going to go in there to straighten out Paul Monroe, once and for all. Make him see he can’t tie Top-Line Temporaries into knots this way. Make him see he can’t tie Bette Wharton into knots this way.
Methodically, she peeled off her gloves.
Who are you kidding? He did tie you in knots.
Maybe.
Maybe? You were a pretzel! Not an hour ago you were wishing for just this chance to see him, to hear him and - let’s be honest - to touch him. So here it is, now take it.
The hand she stretched out toward the door trembled a little, but she commanded it to grasp the knob and turn it slowly, smoothly. She must have succeeded because the door opened without a sound, and she was inside without betraying her presence to Paul.
He stood in front of the shelves to the left of his desk, consulting a volume so big he’d propped its open spine on the edge of a shelf. He was bending a little to study the page, his light blue shirt molded across his shoulders and upper back, emphasizing their strength. The rolled-back sleeves showed forearms toughened with muscle and sinew under a fuzz of hair the same glinting color that rode over the collar of his shirt. The khaki slacks were conservative, well-fitted and yet hinted at the power beneath them.
Uh-oh . Bette could hear the blood pounding in her ears, almost like a warning.
Facing Paul Monroe was one thing; by now she was almost accustomed to the danger of his dancing eyes and humor-quirked mouth. But from the back he gave a different impression, a view of his strength and sexiness she didn’t think she’d recognized half so clearly before.
The sensations she’d experienced in his arms resulted from her reacting to this aspect of him. And it would happen again, she knew, if
she gave it half a chance.
She’d told herself she wouldn’t consider “what next.” She’d be impulsive. She’d follow this craving for Paul Monroe without considering where it might lead. She could handle it, wherever it led. She would handle it, when the time came. She’d told herself all those things.
But now, catching a hazy glimpse of where her craving might lead, she wasn’t so sure. Maybe she should forget this. Maybe she should back away as silently as she’d entered and let Darla take over.
Maybe she should run.
“Bette?” he said.
He had looked over his shoulder and was staring directly into her eyes.
It felt as if a weight had landed on her chest, so that every breath burned. He was looking at her the same way he had two weeks ago in a moonlight-sliced car in her garage. His eyes held the same intent, the same desire … and the same question.
Only a concerted effort kept her next breath from becoming a gasp, but at least the added air fueled her muscles to movement. Three jerky steps took her to a spot directly in front of his desk. Without looking at him - she couldn’t risk it - she slapped her gloves down on the wooden surface. If she tried her damnedest maybe she could divert some of this emotional energy into anger.
“What in the hell do you think you’re up to, Paul?”
From the corner of her eye she tracked the way he turned back toward the shelves, his head bowed over the book once more. Then the two halves of the book came together in a thud that made her jump. He spun around and strode behind his desk to face her across it.
“The 400E,” he said.
She gaped at him. What was the man talking about?
“The Blue Comet 400E locomotive from Lionel. That’s what I think I’m up to.” He tapped a sheaf of papers on his desk. “That’s how far I’ve gotten with this appraisal.”
“Oh.”
“It’s not as rare as the Black Diamond 400E locomotive he’s got, but the Blue Comet set’s complete, all four passenger cars plus the locomotive. And it looks to be in great condition, so -”
Good Guy Heroes Boxed Set Page 129
