She nodded slowly, earning herself a bright look of gratitude as Richard dove into the fray to find the bags he and his boss had brought with them for their stay.
Heaven help me, she thought to herself. He was too good-looking and charming for his own good, and he knew it too. She would have to stay on guard with this one.
The way her knees buckled at his smile in her direction made her wonder if she’d even want to resist much if he continued charming her like this.
“He’s here to work, Ms. Ash.”
She turned to Fortescue in surprise.
He didn’t even look up at her from the newspaper he’d stuck his nose in earlier.
“Excuse me?”
He turned his eyes to face hers for a moment before he looked in Richard’s direction. “You can’t distract him like that. He gets too easily distracted from his work, and he’s here less than a week. Don’t get too attached.”
Distracted? Cindy’s heart rate sped up. Who exactly had been distracting whom? She certainly wasn’t taking responsibility for the way this Richard Prince was messing with her normally level-headed productivity.
“I’m—I’m not getting attached! I’m just trying to be polite.”
He raised a graying eyebrow as he returned his attention to his newspaper. She turned back to the baggage carousel only to find Richard looking back toward her with a jovial smile before he turned back to finding the luggage he’d been tasked to locate.
Cindy swallowed as a distracted smile pulled at her lips.
CHAPTER THREE
“Sit where you like. It’ll be about thirty minutes before we arrive downtown.”
Cindy closed the hatchback of her car. Richard had easily placed the luggage he and Mr. Fortescue had traveled with in the space behind Cindy’s backseat alongside her purse and her overnight bag.
Before she had a chance to reach for the driver’s side door, Richard’s hand was on the handle. He offered her a small smile as he held the door open for her.
Color touched Cindy’s cheeks, and she hoped that she could pass it off not as a romantic response to the action but as the natural reaction from having spent a few minutes in below freezing temperatures.
“Thank you.”
She slipped into the car, and as she stuck her keys into the ignition, she looked up into the reflection of the rearview mirror.
“How are you enjoying Kansas City so far, Mr. Fortescue?”
Alastair didn’t look up from his newspaper. “I haven’t spent more than a few minutes here, so I can’t say.”
Cindy sighed in frustration. Obviously, this was going very well.
The door across from her opened, and Richard slipped into the passenger seat beside her. He blew into his hands as she prepared to put the car into Reverse and pull out of the parking spot. “Baby, it’s cold outside!”
Cindy felt the tiniest smile tug at her lips with his song reference. If she hadn’t had Mr. British Comportment in her backseat, she might have said something about not being his “Baby,” but she wasn’t about to start flirting again—not after Mr. Fortescue’s insinuation that she was acting unprofessionally.
“I want to go straight to the office.”
Cindy blinked as she looked up into the rearview mirror. “Are you sure, Mr. Fortescue? You’ve been traveling. Even Margaret—I mean, Ms. Stone—expected it would be after lunch at least before you went into the office.”
She pulled up to the parking attendant and handed him her stamped slip from entering. Red electronic numbers informed her of the charge from the side of the attendant’s window.
“We don’t really have a lot of time here in Kansas City.” Richard handed her a bill large enough to cover the parking. She passed it along to the attendant who offered her the change. “We really need to get right to it if we’re going to make our deadline.”
Cindy bit her lip. “Are you sure that you can tell all you need to know about the company in that short amount of time?”
She received a harrumph from the backseat, and she felt her spirits fall. Somehow, she had stepped in it again. She really should just close her mouth, and let the ride commence in silence.
“Mr. Fortescue has a very well-developed business acumen. This isn’t the first time he’s made such a quick executive decision.”
As reassuring as Richard meant that to be, Cindy felt her pulse quicken. Three days. How could anyone know anything worth knowing about a company of any size in three days?
She forced a smile to her lips. “Well, I’m sure Ms. Stone will be happy to show you whatever you need to know. The rest of the firm is rather interested in meeting you as well.”
There was no response from Mr. Fortescue, and Richard chuckled to himself before he leaned in toward Cindy. “You’d do better to talk to me. He’s pretty reclusive and quiet.”
“I don’t think he likes me.”
“I don’t think he likes anybody,” Richard whispered.
He won himself another harrumph from the backseat which caused Cindy to bite back an avalanche of giggles as she pulled onto the freeway.
“All joking aside, I really want to thank you for going out of your way to pick us up,” Richard said as they drove through the Tiffany Springs business area. “It can’t have been all that pleasant to sit and wait for our plane to come in.”
Cindy shrugged as she merged into the center lane of the freeway. “I figure that you can survive anything if you have a good book in your hand.”
“Ah, yes,” he exclaimed, drawing Cindy’s attention from the road for a moment. “Harry Potter! I only read the series through when I was a child, but I have to admit that JK Rowling is a master.”
Cindy nodded. “I read it through as a kid too.”
A lump in her throat caught on the thought of her father. Had it just been her mother’s emotion that had spilled over to her? Had it been staying the night in the house where he had last lived?
She swallowed the lump down. The preciousness of her father and their relationship with one another was not something she was willing to trivialize in getting to know her new boss or his charming assistant.
“And you refresh your memory every Christmas,” he said as if eager to show her that he had been paying attention.
She bobbed her head once as she pointed out the window at the crowns and lights which were traditional at the Zona Rosa Shopping Complex. “Look out there.”
Richard’s eyes widened. “That’s gorgeous! It’s been a while since I’ve been here, and I don’t remember anything like this except downtown.”
Cindy let a melancholy smile soften her features as she caught a quick glimpse of the Barnes and Noble where she and her dad would stand in line somewhere around ten at night for the newest copies of the Harry Potter books in July when they were released. The crowns reminded her of their drives the first few Christmases after the shopping center had been built when they would drive around the sprawling outdoor space and gasp at the beauty of the golden crowns under which the cars would pass. “Yeah, they really tried to make Zona Rosa as much of a draw as the Plaza.”
“And did they succeed?” Richard asked as he looked back over at her.
She shrugged. “I’ve only been to the Plaza a few times. The shops always struck me as pretentious and overpriced, but Zona Rosa has more memories for me.”
“So, you would choose Zona Rosa over the Plaza,” he said as if he could read her mind.
She turned an appreciative glance toward him before turning her eyes back to the road. “Well, I live nearer to the Plaza now, so I guess it all depends on what I’m trying to do.”
He nodded thoughtfully as he settled into his seat.
She glanced over at him and briefly wondered if he was as tired as she imagined he was. “It’ll be about a half hour before we get downtown as long as we don’t run into any ice or traffic. Feel free to take a nap if you need to. I’m pretty low-maintenance when it comes to company in the car.”
Richard chuckle
d to himself. “Oddly enough, I’m not nearly as tired as I thought I would be.”
He looked out the window which was starting to fog over with a small degree of condensation. “So, tell me about yourself, Cindy Ash. What brought you to Fortescue Publishing?”
Cindy relaxed against her seat as she settled into the flow of traffic on her familiar trip downtown. “You know, there are some days when I’m not sure exactly how it all happened.”
His eyebrows lifted upward in interest as he turned back to look at her. “That sounds like a story. Now, you have to tell me.”
“It’s not nearly the story you’re expecting,” she said, dryly.
She let her mind drift back through the years. “I was just about to graduate from UMKC with a degree in English Literature, and I was wondering what exactly I had done to myself since I had no desire to be either a journalist or a high school teacher. I had an adjunct professor who taught night classes one semester. Her class was so popular because she was a real-life editor with a Kansas City publishing firm, and I signed up for the class on a whim.”
She could almost hear the laughter which had often come as the undergraduates had read the articles which Charlotte had put in front of them. No matter how serious the editing would be, Charlotte often had them seeing either humor or positive growth in the end result. She missed that feeling as she now worked with Margaret Stone who often made it seem like a failure of moral character to make a mistake of even the tiniest scope.
“So, this professor?” Richard prompted, and Cindy realized she’d gone quiet in her ruminations.
“Her name was Charlotte LaRoche, and she was a senior editor with Fortescue Publishing. She was my mentor those last few months of my undergraduate degree, and even though she wasn’t a professor during my graduate studies, she fostered my talent. She offered me an internship with the company during my graduate work, and she was willing to work with me when I had class or when I was a TA. After I graduated, she was apologetic because she only had an opening for a personal assistant, but she was confident that she’d have an opening for an editor come up soon.”
Cindy bit the inside of her cheek. “I guess I took the job because I couldn’t pass up a chance to work with Charlotte.”
“And where’s Charlotte now?” Richard asked as they drove past the exit which would have taken Cindy to her mother’s house.
His voice was strange as if he was trying to pretend to be casual in his questioning. She wondered if he was trying to downplay his interest in her story so he didn’t scare her off.
He must have caught the strain in his voice because he shrugged off the awkwardness. “I mean, you work for Margaret Stone now, don’t you?”
Her throat felt dry as she remembered how she had come to work for Margaret. “Staff shuffling.”
She turned on the radio to silence Richard’s questions. At the very least, she hoped he’d concentrate on something less personal than her mentor. There was too much pain there, too much betrayal.
“You said you’ve been to Kansas City before?”
She could feel Richard’s green eyes, as soft as a dewy grass on a summer morning, study her for a moment. She didn’t know how she could tell, but she suspected that he was trying to decide whether or not to take her new direction in conversation, but she breathed a sigh of relief when he inhaled and sat back in his seat casually again.
“Yeah, I lived here for a few years. I mean, I was just a kid really when we moved. My parents divorced when I was a kid, and I moved to New York with my mom.”
“Oh,” she breathed as she sneaked a peek at him. One look at his face could tell her a lot about what questions to ask and how to react.
He caught her gaze with a knowing look in his eye, and she darted her gaze back to the road. “It’s okay, you know. I mean, divorce is pretty common these days.”
Cindy bobbed her head once, her face turning hot from him catching her glance in his direction. Eyes on the road, Cindy, she reminded herself in the tone her mother had used to scold her years ago.
He sighed heavily as he turned his gaze out the window to look at the greenery as they drove past. “I mean, it was rough when I was a kid. I spent a few weeks here and there with my old man, but even then, he was wrapped up in his job. I suspect that’s really what my parents’ divorce was about.”
He paused for a moment as he traced a design on the foggy window. “When I was a teenager, I secretly wondered if maybe my dad had an affair with a woman from work—if that had been the catalyst which had led to their divorce.”
Cindy’s jaw hung in surprise. She couldn’t imagine how painful that would be for a child to wonder if such a breach of trust was in his father’s character. Without thinking about it, she reached out a hand to his arm and offered him an empathetic smile. “No matter how commonplace divorce has become, it always has a few painful side effects.”
He nodded as he reached a hand over and wrapped it around her hand. “Yeah.”
The spark of electricity when their fingers touched was something that left her trembling inside with the surprise of it all.
A sound from the backseat which Cindy couldn’t identify as either a harrumph or a snore made Cindy jump. In an odd way, she was grateful for the distraction because it helped to jumpstart her professionalism once again. No way was Mr. Fortescue going to get another chance to call her unprofessional.
She swallowed down the sensitive emotions which were welling up in her. She was a survivor, and survivors were tough. She hadn’t put up with Margaret’s ridiculous demands only to go soft when another personal assistant arrived and made her melt inside.
She pulled her hand back to the wheel, pretending like she needed to merge into another lane which would signal her need for her hand back.
She could feel Richard’s confused expression linger on her for a moment before he turned away.
Yeah, you stay on your side of the car, and I’ll stay on mine, she thought to herself with a smug smile. None of that silver tongue now. I don’t need that in my life right now.
Unfortunately, her heart hadn’t gotten the memo. It ached with a yearning that surprised her. Who was this stranger that he should have such an effect on her so instantaneously?
CHAPTER FOUR
Margaret Stone was standing ready at the elevator when Cindy, Richard, and Alastair exited. She offered a charming smile to Alastair. “Mr. Fortescue, thank you for coming into the office so soon after your arrival. I hope you had a pleasant trip.”
Cindy rolled her eyes as both the ever-pleasant Alastair Fortescue and Margaret shook hands and exchanged pleasantries.
“I thought that maybe we could start with a quick tour of the office while Cindy reminds the staff of the staff meeting at three o’clock this afternoon,” Margaret said as she steered the gentlemen toward the rest of the office.
Richard looked back toward her with a somewhat stormy look of concern, but Cindy sank into her office chair with a sigh of relief. She didn’t care how unprofessional it might have seemed. For once, she was grateful for Margaret’s subtle way of giving her the next round of marching orders. She could easily send out a quick email reminder of the meeting while she enjoyed the solitude of her desk.
Finally, back to some sort of routine where she didn’t have to worry about the butterflies in her stomach kicking in every time a certain pair of green eyes turned toward her. She was still trembling from all of the emotion which had come up in the drive to the office this morning. She was entirely unprepared for how to handle it.
She opened up her browser and began writing the email to remind the staff about the meeting Margaret had scheduled for three o’clock where she had planned to introduce the entire staff to Mr. Fortescue and pass along the information about the individual interviews he had planned.
Even as she began the email, she realized she should probably make a lunch order since she knew that neither Mr. Fortescue nor Richard had eaten since they had landed. She made a note that she
should catch the men somewhere along the tour and ask them to look at the menu from the New York deli down the street so that she could place the order.
“You were holding out on me.” Gillian’s voice disrupted Cindy’s thoughts as a disposable cup of steaming liquid was put in front of her.
The aroma of warm milk and caramel wafted toward her, and Cindy smiled at her friend in gratitude. “You have no idea what a life saver you are today,” she murmured as she took the cup in her hands. Then, she registered her friend’s words as she took a sip. “How was I holding out on you?”
Gillian sighed as she looked back at the entourage making their way through the office corridor. “He’s gorgeous!”
Richard, who was speaking to one of the editors down the hall, caught Cindy’s furtive glance toward him and offered her a small smile in return.
Immediately, she turned back to Gillian, shame creeping up her cheeks in a blush as she prayed that Mr. Fortescue hadn’t seen them. She turned back to the typing she had started before Gillian’s interruption. “He thinks he’s God’s gift to women is what he thinks. An indiscriminate flirt.”
She sent the composed email as Gillian sat beside her, her face falling with her disappointment. “Mr. Fortescue is really that awful?”
“Mr. Fortescue?” Cindy’s eyes bugged out of her head.
Gillian’s brow furrowed as she looked at her friend. “Yes, Mr. Fortescue. Who did you think I meant?”
Cindy felt the blood rush to her cheeks as she thought immediately of Richard’s chiseled jaw and broad smile. She shook her head. “No one.”
Cindy looked over at Mr. Fortescue again, trying to see what Gillian saw in the man. Sure, he could be off-putting, but she supposed he could be considered classically handsome if one was into the tall, dark, and handsome style of man.
“He looks a little like Benedict Cumberbatch,” she said with a giggle. “You know when he plays the wizard in the superhero movies with the little bit of gray?”
She feathered her fingers over her temples as if to indicate where there was a streak of gray in the actor’s persona in the film.
A Little Christmas Pretense Page 3
