She found his newspaper, settled with a cup of coffee at the kitchen table, and raised her feet to the opposite chair, crossing her ankles. She was halfway through the feature section when a second sense made her look up. Buck was standing in the doorway, wearing a pair of jeans slung low over lean hips and nothing else. His rusty hair had been hastily brushed; there were circles under his eyes from his night of no sleep, and his smile held more than a hint of possessiveness that sent a feeling like warm honey directly to the pit of her stomach.
“Good morning,” he said groggily.
“Good morning,” she echoed back.
“Someone seems to have taken my robe.”
She cocked her head back as he came forward to drop a kiss on her mouth. “You can’t be serious. You mean a thief actually came in and ignored all the luxurious goodies in favor of an old, beat-up terry-cloth—”
“Do not be comical first thing in the morning,” he admonished, and kissed her again, his lips lingering on hers this time. He smelled of sleep and mint toothpaste and soap, the most erotic combination ever, she thought. Her hands instinctively splayed on the warm bare flesh of his shoulders, as his slipped inside the robe to stroke the sides of her neck. He half smiled, drawing back from her, but there was a hint of watchfulness in his eyes. “Loren…”
Her smile faded slightly as she stood up. “I’ll get you coffee and then breakfast.”
“I can do that.”
She shook her head and then opened the refrigerator to bring out a carton of eggs. She could feel his eyes on her back, searching, silent. In a moment, she had a bowl out and was whipping a dollop of cream cheese into the cracked eggs, then she poured the mixture into a heated frying pan and scrambled furiously.
“You were up awfully early for a lady who didn’t get any sleep.”
“I was spying on you,” she said cheerfully, continuing to scramble the eggs as if her life depended on it. A cup of coffee was set in front of him, and a brisk kiss was placed on his forehead. “Something that wouldn’t have been any fun at all if you were up and around and knew about it.”
“And what did you discover?” he said wryly, but again he had a watchful look.
“Only the important things. That your maid’s very good, but you don’t allow her in your study. That you’ll stoop to TV dinners, but only the fancier kind. That you don’t miss a month of Penthouse, but Field and Stream has top priority in the magazine pile. That you’re a formidable chemist, and that you’ve tried desperately to accumulate enough shirts so that you don’t have to wash for a month.” She scooped the finished eggs onto two china plates from the cupboard and then settled next to him at the table, bringing forks and knives with her.
“No one has the right to wake up with such perception,” he grumbled, and scooped up a forkful of fluffy eggs. “Anything else of major importance?”
She finished her own eggs in record time before answering, but then she dished out approximately five eggs for him to one for herself. She picked up her coffee cup in both hands, looking squarely at him over the rim. “You’re not kind, Buck,” she said quietly. “You…weren’t kind, earlier last night.”
He waited.
“I love you,” she admitted softly.
He sighed, finished his eggs and reached for his coffee. “You wouldn’t be here this morning if I hadn’t played rough,” he pointed out flatly.
“Not again, though. I won’t be…taken over.” Her voice was clear and definite.
“Are those the only ground rules we need to work out?” he questioned bluntly.
She nodded.
He leaned over, tenderly touching her cheek with his palm. “You may be pint-size, Loren, but you have as much steel in your makeup as I do. I don’t want to take you over; I never did. I want you to stand next me. Haven’t you figured that out yet?”
She relaxed for the first time since she had awakened that morning, but at the back of her mind was the fleeting thought that Buck was honest but did not necessarily know himself very well. He was used to taking over, and he had uncovered a weakness in her that no one else had. He would use it if she wasn’t very careful. And she would lose him if he did.
The conference table took up most of the space in the small room off Frank’s office. A few minutes earlier, it had been completely filled with the supervisory production staff. Loren had been asked to stay a few more minutes beyond the weekly production meeting, as had Tony, the finishing foreman, a very short, round-faced man with receding brown hair. Empty coffee cups still littered the tables. Loren’s eyes were riveted on her boss’s face, but Frank was concentrated on Tony.
“We’re going to have to lay off the entire department. I think you already guessed that from the sales report,” he said gruffly to the brown-haired foreman.
Tony’s face turned ashen. “Yes, sir. I understand.”
“There’s no choice. Not for now. We can extend the finishing work to the press operators and keep those jobs. Work may yet pick up by early summer, just as it always does when the automotive companies start their push for fall. But until then…” Frank averted his gaze from Tony’s steady blue eyes. “There’s no problem with your job, Tony. There’ll still be finishing work that requires supervision; you’ve got your tool-and-die background, and quality control is more important than it’s ever been. It may not be the work you’re used to for a while, but your salary will stay the same.”
Twenty minutes later, Loren walked out with Tony, past the carpeted offices to the production floor. “Come on. I’ll buy you coffee,” she said.
He shook his head, his eyes distracted. “It would just churn in my stomach—particularly machine coffee.”
But he let her buy him the coffee, and not long afterward they were both in the square cubicle that was his office, overlooking the sixteen workers that made up his department. “Mark’s just bought a car,” he said absently. “Johnny’s wife is going to have a baby.”
She listened.
“John White—he’s been footing his mother’s medical bills. She’s in the hospital.”
She listened.
“Brad Howell—I should have kicked him out of here four months ago. He’s nothing but trouble, a complainer. But I swear that guy hasn’t produced a single scrap part since he’s been here. I’ve never had such a perfectionist.” He poured it on. Layoffs were part of the economic climate; unemployment was on the front page of every newspaper. Statistics had nothing to do with working with a man every day, knowing his private life, arguing with and working with and caring about him. Loren knew them all, just as Tony did. And Tony, one of the least emotional men she had ever known—he never raised his voice, never showed temper—had tears in his eyes. “It’s not that I don’t understand there’s no choice. And Frank, bastard that he is…he’s kept the crew on three weeks longer than I thought he was going to.” He shook his head, eyes raised to Loren. “How the hell is Johnny going to manage with that new baby?”
It was a full hour later before Loren made it back to her own office, and then she was in no mood for Janey’s bright smile and determined flag down. “I’ve been paging and paging you—”
“I heard,” she sighed, and half smiled at her efficient secretary. “Unless there was a fire, there were simply more important priorities.” Like easing Tony’s grief. Grief, she thought absently, was exactly the word…and news of a layoff would spread like wildfire in the plant, produce an uneasiness and worry that came under her jurisdiction. She would have to find time this afternoon to be visible in the plant, to provide a measure of reassurance and the right words…and she wasn’t sure she had them.
“The comptroller called. Something about Workers’ Comp. Peters from Wilding on some engineer who used to work here. That OSHA dude’s coming for an inspection on Monday…” Janey grinned broadly, handing Loren the series of notes. “You’ll have to wear flat shoes that day. Unless you’ve got a pair of high heels that come with steel toes. And last though not least…” Again a pert gri
n. “The boss just called. He wants to see you.”
Loren frowned, raking her hands through her hair. “I just saw him less than an hour and a half ago.”
Janey shrugged. “Oh, the whims of the powers-that-be…”
Loren smiled at Janey’s irreverence. Her secretary was the height of propriety in front of those powers-that-be, but alone the two women had an unspoken alliance.
“So hold down the fort a little longer?” Loren requested.
“Catnip for a kitten.”
Loren closeted herself in her office. On the back of the door was a small mirror—yet it was large enough to reflect rusty hair gone askew, a lack of lipstick and a cream complexion that tended to pale when she was troubled. Snatching up her purse, she repaired impatiently, brush, lipstick, blusher…she hesitated at the perfume spray, seeing in the mirror’s reflection a single daffodil on her desk.
It had been delivered anonymously that morning. So had the ones that had arrived every other day since the weekend. Buck was so damned smart, she thought fleetingly. A dozen roses would have raised her defenses, too expensive a thank-you for services rendered. But a single daffodil…how was she supposed to fight such an offering?
She leaned over, smelling the fresh spring perfume of the perfect flower, feeling unaccountably renewed. She wasn’t any less depressed or unhappy about the pending layoff; no amount of flowers could alter that. In a ridiculously feminine way, she just felt better able to cope.
A few minutes later, she stood in the doorway of the office of Frank’s secretary. Rosemary was an attractive woman in her fifties and all but an institution in the plant; she reliably radiated Frank’s moods like a barometer. “He’s absolutely messed up the entire afternoon. I don’t know who’s with him, but he wasn’t scheduled, and I know Frank wants these letters to go out…” Rosemary’s hands lifted from her keyboard. “Trade jobs?”
“But then, do you really want mine?” Loren asked wryly.
“Not on a bet!” Rosemary motioned with a courtly flair toward Frank’s inner door. “Good luck. And, Loren—that mauve dress makes you look good enough to eat.”
“Are you trying to warn me that Frank’s in that kind of mood?”
Rosemary nodded, grinning. “And better you than me.”
Yet a rap on Frank’s door elicited an unexpectedly cheerful, “Come in.” Anticipating Frank to be at his most moody and least manageable, Loren saw a beaming-faced boss who inconceivably showed the courtesy of rising from his chair to greet her. “As usual,” he growled, “I page anyone else in the company but you, and they come running.”
“I was up with Tony…”
“I expected that.” A fleeting frown lined Frank’s temples, reflecting Loren’s own distressed feelings over the layoff; then the frown smoothed to an unexpectedly even smile. “Loren. Say hello to my impromptu visitor this afternoon—”
She glanced beyond Frank with a polite smile that immediately froze. For an instant, she could have sworn that jade-eyed giant was Buck. The next instant, she did swear it. His eyes were gleaming pure mischief, Buck-style, even if the dark brown business suit echoed a commanding assurance that would have put her totally on her toes if he’d been a stranger. He stood up, watching as Loren’s eyes fluttered bewilderedly back to her boss and then to him again.
“Our business is done, Loren,” Frank said pleasantly. “We owe Mr. Leeds a champagne dinner, which I rather gathered you might like to deliver…”
“What on earth are you doing here?” Loren hissed up to Buck as they walked the hall back toward her office.
“Talking shop.”
“Shop? Your business is die cast, and Frank’s is plastics. What possible…?” She moved to close the door to her office; it was a mistake. The moment privacy was even tentatively assured, she found herself spun around, facing up to him. “Are you crazy?” Yet his lips had no problem parting hers, at first coaxing boyishly for that moment of insanity, and then his mouth deepened, drinking as if he’d been thirsty all day. She went up on tiptoe, her fingers suddenly clenching in the fabric of his suit. His hands swept swiftly over the silky fabric of her mauve dress, down her spine, his fingers splaying on her tiny taut buttocks. She could feel the hard brand of his arousal between them and forced herself to draw back, her cheeks flushed and her gray eyes brilliant.
“God in heaven, Buck. I’m at work—”
Janey buzzed, and Loren escaped to the other side of the desk, staring at Buck as she punched the intercom. “Just tell him he can do whatever he wants,” she snapped to Janey distractedly and then rapidly closed her eyes on Buck’s full-bodied chuckle. “No. Of course don’t tell him that. I’ll call him back…”
“Let’s go,” Buck said when she set down the phone.
“I can’t.”
“I’ve already cleared it with Frank.”
But she regained some semblance of control on the other side of the desk. “It isn’t all right with me. I have work I really have to do. I don’t care what Frank says.”
“So I gathered.” His look said enough. In his company, he was boss in all arenas; no one talked back to him. She took in the way his brown suit fit his broad-shouldered frame and had to admit that if this were the boss who had paged her, she would have hit the decks running to answer his call. The glint in his eyes said he wasn’t at all pleased at her no.
“I love the daffodils,” she said softly.
A strange expression chased across his face. “I might just stop sending them if you don’t stop returning the gesture. I hate to tell you what happened when the florist walked in in the middle of a staff meeting to deliver a single daffodil to my desk,” he growled.
“Isn’t a lady allowed a romantic gesture, too, these days?” she questioned whimsically. “You could always toss them out, Buck.”
“They’ll stay on my desk,” he said gruffly. “Do you know, not a single woman has ever given me anything, Loren, beyond perhaps a customary Christmas present?”
She shook her head, smiling.
“I would like to think your gesture was romantic, and not a mere making sure all the giving was exactly equal.” He sighed. “So I can’t spirit you away this minute?”
She shook her head again. “And you still haven’t told me what you were doing in Frank’s office.”
“To hell with your boss. I came to see you.”
“Buck.”
He opened the door, and she went out with him toward the lobby. “When Frank was talking research the other day, it occurred to me that I occasionally cross paths with people who might do business with him at the supply end—as in the supplier of raw materials. As it happens, we do.”
“I see. You just had so much free time floating around that you just decided to drop by and develop a personal relationship with Frank—”
“Personal? No. I have absolutely no interest in a personal relationship with Frank. Actually, I’ve always preferred women,” he said blandly. “Particularly one about a hundred pounds…”
She tried one more time. “So you just happened to know about some plastics raw-material suppliers, even though your business couldn’t be less related—”
“Rarely, very rarely of course, I allow myself to talk to people who aren’t in die cast, yes.”
Loren’s skeptical probing died under Buck’s heavy tones of thorough boredom with a now-dead subject. She sighed, pushing open the door to the front lobby to lead him to his coat. His motivations always had been unpredictable, and where they concerned Frank, it was difficult to keep up an interested momentum. Much more interesting was the way sunlight suddenly caught fire in his hair in the square lobby…and the way he looked at her when he turned around. Instinctively, she moved toward him and then caught sight of the receptionist staring at her from the windowed cubicle. She stepped back with a slightly flushed face.
Buck took her hand, drawing her out of the line of vision. “Weren’t you trying to remember to ask me to dinner Thursday night?”
“Yes,�
�� she agreed, laughing. Then she frowned, just a little. “Buck, I’m rarely home by then—”
“Try.” His knuckles brushed against her cheeks. “I have a friend. He’s having an anniversary party that night. I want you to come; we can leave after dinner.”
Her smile didn’t alter, but the expression in her eyes did. Buck’s wealth was enough of a hurdle, but that social whirl of elite society was another one she wasn’t so willing to bridge. “I really don’t have anything to wear for anything like that anymore—”
“Fine. Come naked.” He brushed a swift kiss to her forehead and was gone.
“Going home?” Janey stopped in the doorway as she put on her raincoat. “It’s past five, Loren.”
“Can’t manage it yet.” Loren smiled from behind the mound of reports on her desk, pausing long enough to press weary fingers to the back of her neck. “In a little while, probably.”
Less than five minutes later, Frank appeared in her doorway, his expression gruff and impatient. “There’s nothing there that won’t wait for tomorrow, Loren. I want you to leave regularly by five from now on, just like the rest of the peons. You’re setting a bad example.”
“Pardon?”
“As in—for me. How does it look if the boss leaves before his employees? Get up and out.” He half turned, tossing back at her, “If you’ve got too much work in this department, I don’t know why the hell you haven’t told me. Recession or no, we could easily have added a part-timer to the staff.”
She opened her mouth and closed it. How many thousands of times had she requested help? She’d stopped asking when the worsening economic climate had hit the front pages of the papers, understanding what Frank simply couldn’t do. “Frank, I can manage,” she started uncertainly.
Kisses From Heaven Page 12
