The Bedroom Business
The Bedroom Business
Sandra Marton
Jake McBride is a self-made millionaire, brilliant at business, talented in bed–and cynical about women. Emily Taylor is his personal assistant, terrific in the office…and an innocent when it comes to the opposite sex!But when Jake teaches Emily how to transform herself from shy secretary into sexy siren, he loses his grip on his legendary cool. If she's going to lose her virginity, it has to be to him!
“There are things you need to learn, Emily.”
“Is that the reason you kissed me?” she said quietly.
“Yes. No. Dammit, Em—” Jake drew a ragged breath. “Look, I can help you. I can teach you about men. What they want from women. The male-female thing, the thing you don’t seem to understand at all.”
Emily stared at Jake. He was right. He could teach her. He already had.
“Is that what you want to do?” she said huskily.
It seemed a long time before Jake answered. When he did, his voice sounded low and far away, even to his own ears.
“Yes. Yes, I do. And I promise you, Em, I’ll teach you all you need to know.”
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The Bedroom Business
Sandra Marton
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER ONE
JAKE MCBRIDE was a man under siege.
A woman who’d spent the past couple of months on his arm and in his bed, couldn’t accept the fact that their relationship was over.
“You don’t love me,” she’d wept, just last night.
Well, no. Jake didn’t. He’d told her that days ago, reminded her that he’d never said he loved her, never even hinted that he might love her someday. He knew there were guys who said it in an attempt to score, but he wasn’t one of them. Jake was always honest about his intentions. He made it clear that love, marriage, the “something old, something new, something blue” thing just wasn’t on his agenda.
Besides, the immodest truth was that he didn’t have to.
He was a healthy, heterosexual, thirty-year-old American male. He was six foot three with broad shoulders, a deep chest and a hard, flat belly, thanks to his passion for tough, sweaty workouts at his gym. His hair was dark, thick and wavy; his eyes were what one besotted female had called the color of the Atlantic in midsummer, which even now made him smile because he hardly ever noticed his eyes—what man would?—except when he happened to see them in the mirror while he shaved. He had a square jaw and a firm mouth set beneath a nose that bore a small bump, a souvenir of the year he’d spent working a jackhammer in a Pennsylvania coal mine.
He found it amusing that women seemed to like the faintly misshapen nose. The same babe who’d said his eyes were like the sea had told him it made him look dangerous.
“Whatever turns you on,” Jake had said with a husky laugh, as he rolled her beneath him.
And he had money. Hell, why dance around the issue? He was rich, richer than he’d ever dreamed he could be, and he’d earned every dime himself, transforming a propensity for numbers, a talent for reading the market and a love for taking risks into a career in venture capitalism that was light-years away from the life he’d been born to.
Wasn’t all that enough to make a woman happy? Yes. Yes, it was. He never had difficulty finding a woman.
The trouble was getting rid of them.
Jake winced.
It wasn’t a nice way to think about it but it was the truth.
What he was going through with Brandi wasn’t exactly new. It had happened to him before. A woman would agree, at the start of their affair, that she was no more interested in forever-after than he was. Then, for some unearthly reason, she’d change her mind a few weeks later and get that oh-how-happy-we-could-be gleam in her eye even though any fool could tell that marriage was not man’s natural state.
The whole turnaround was beyond his comprehension but yeah, it happened. And it was happening again, despite his best efforts.
The only person who could save him from disaster was his personal assistant, Emily.
Emily, Jake thought gratefully. What would he do without her? She was smart, efficient, always on her toes. Emily not only kept his office running smoothly, but she protected him from the predations of women like Brandi. It didn’t happen often, thankfully, but when necessary, Emily fielded unwanted calls, kept away unwanted visitors.
Jake wasn’t unkind. That was the reason he’d told Emily to show Brandi into his private office yesterday, even though he knew it was a bad idea. He was right. It had been a miserable idea. All Brandi had wanted to do was tell him that she loved him but he didn’t love her.
“You don’t,” she’d cried, “you don’t, Jake!”
Why would he deny it? “No,” he’d said, “I don’t” He’d handed her his handkerchief. “But I like you,” he’d added earnestly. “A lot.”
Jake sighed, sat down at his desk, leaned his elbows on the gleaming oak surface and massaged his aching temples with his fingertips.
So much for being honest. Brandi had gone from weeping to sobbing while he stood there, feeling like an idiot for not having seen it coming but then, he really never did.
“Hell,” he muttered, and shot to his feet again.
He really did like her. Why else would he have spent the last, what, two months seeing her? Exclusively, of course. He wasn’t into sharing his women and besides, he was always faithful for as long as a relationship lasted. But he wasn’t ready to spend the rest of his life with one woman. Not now, not in the foreseeable future, maybe not ever.
Life had only just begun to open for him in the past few years. Jake had grown up poor, lost his father in a mining accident when he was ten, lost his mother to a stepfather who believed that sparing the rod spoiled the child when he was twelve. At seventeen, he’d quit school and gone to work in the same mine that had taken his father’s life. A year later, after almost dying under two tons of coal, Jake put down his hammer and scrubbed the black dust from his skin even though he’d known he’d never quite get it out of his blood. Then he’d headed east. It had taken a while but a quirky combination of luck, guts and a hard-won university degree had turned his life into a dream.
It was a life he liked, just the way it was.
He had an office in Rockefeller Center, an apartment on Park Avenue, a weekend house in Connecticut and a vintage Corvette.
He had Emily.
Yes, life was good…except for this current mess, with Brandi.
Jake groaned, kicked back his chair and put his feet up on his desk. How come he hadn’t read the signs? Her career was all that mattered, she’d told him, but it wasn’t true. First she gave him a key to her apartment. He hadn’t asked for one, hadn’t offered her the key to his, but she handed hers over, anyway, with a casual smile that would have made him look like an ass not to have accepted it. Then she bought him a tie at Bloomingdale’s. Nobody bought Jake ties except Jake, but she said some hotshot actor had been wearing one just like it when she’d posed in an ad with him, and how could he possibly turn down such a simple gift?
And then, last week, the final touch. He’d taken her home, was in the process of saying good-night—he hadn’t felt like spending the night with her which, in retrospect, he should have recognized as the beginning of the end—when she reached into her pocket, pulled out a pair of airline tickets and waggled them at him.
“Surprise,” she’d said gaily, and explained that she was flying home to Minneapolis for the weekend and he was going with her.
“It’s my parents’ thirty-fifth anniversary, Jake. They’re having the whole family to dinner and they’re just dying to meet you!”
The tie around his neck—the very one she’d bought him, which he hated but had worn that evening because she’d asked him where it was—suddenly felt like a noose, growing tighter and tighter until he stabbed two fingers under the knot and yanked it away from his throat.
“I can’t go,” he’d said, and she’d said yes, yes, he could, and he’d said he couldn’t and she, with her lip trembling, said he could if he wanted to and finally he’d said well, he didn’t want to…
“Oh, Jake,” she’d whispered, and the next thing he’d known, she was crying into his shirt.
What did women want, anyway? Well, not all women. Not the Emilies of this world but then, Emily wasn’t a woman. Not a real one. She was his P.A.
Jake sighed, rose from the chair behind his desk, walked to the window and looked out. Forty stories below, people crowded the street. He hoped Brandi wasn’t one of those people. She’d been there this morning, waiting for him.
“Jake?” she’d said, and before he could decide what the heck to do, whether to pretend he didn’t see her or hustle her into the lobby and up to his office before she started bawling, she’d thrown her arms around him and tried to kiss him.
“Hell,” he whispered, and leaned his forehead against the cool glass.
Still, he had no desire to hurt her. He didn’t want to say anything cruel or unkind…
“Mr. McBride?”
Because she was a nice woman. And even though it was time to move on, that didn’t mean—
“Mr. McBride? Sir?”
Jake swung around. Emily stood in the doorway. For the first time in what felt like hours, he smiled. If only all women were as pragmatic, as sensible, as she.
“Yes, Emily?”
“Sir, I thought you’d like to know that I sent that e-mail memo to John Woods.”
“Fine.”
“His reply just came in. He says he likes your suggestions and hopes you’re free to fly to San Diego to meet with him next week.”
“Am I?”
“Yes, sir. You’re free Monday and Tuesday. You have a meeting Tuesday afternoon but it can be easily postponed.”
Jake nodded. “Make the arrangements, please. What else?”
“A fax from Atlanta. Nothing important, just a confirmation of your conference call.”
“Good, good. Anything else?”
Emily looked down at the notepad in her hand. “You’re having a late lunch with Mr. Carstairs tomorrow at the Oak Room.”
“Ah. Thank you for reminding me.”
“Yes, sir. And you have a dinner appointment this evening. Eight o’clock, at The Palm. You asked me to remind you to mention that new oil field opportunity in Russia.”
Jake smiled and shook his head. “What would I do without you?” he said pleasantly. “You’re the epitome of efficiency.”
“Being efficient is my job, Mr. McBride.”
“Jake, please. I don’t think we need to be so formal. You’ve been working for me for, what, a year?”
“Eleven months and twelve days.” Emily smiled politely. “I’m comfortable calling you Mr. McBride, sir. Unless you find it uncomfortable…?”
“No,” Jake said quickly, “no, that’s fine. Whatever you prefer is okay with me.”
It sure as hell was. He’d never had an assistant like this one. When he looked ahead, he could see Emily Taylor by his side well into the distant future. Emily wouldn’t find a man, get married and quit her job. Her career meant as much to her as his did to him.
He was fairly certain she never even dated.
He supposed he ought to feel guilty for being happy she didn’t, but why should he? Emily was just one of those women who wasn’t interested in men. There was a long and honorable list of them, going back through the centuries. Betty Friedan and the women’s libbers. The Suffragettes. Joan of Arc. They’d all devoted their lives to Causes, not to men.
How could a man feel badly if a woman made a choice like that?
Emily wasn’t even a distraction.
Some of the women he’d interviewed before hiring her had been stunners, but the word for Emily was “average.” Average height. Average weight. Average face. Average brown hair and average brown eyes.
“A little brown sparrow,” Brandi had said after meeting her, with what Jake had recognized as a little purr of relief.
An accurate description, he thought. On his runs through Central Park, he saw lots of birds with flashier plumage but it was the little brown sparrows who were the most industrious.
Emily, Jake thought fondly. His very own little brown sparrow.
He smiled again, folded his arms and hitched a hip onto the edge of his desk. “Emily, how much am I paying you?”
“Sir?”
“Your salary. What is it?”
“Eight hundred a week, Mr. McBride.”
“Well, give yourself a hundred bucks more.”
Emily smiled politely. “Thank you, sir.”
Jake smiled, too. He liked the no-nonsense way she’d accepted her raise. No little squeals of joy, no bouncing up and down, no “Oooh, Jake…” But, of course, she wouldn’t call him “Jake” any more than she’d squeal. Squealing was for the women he dated, who greeted each bouquet of long-stemmed roses, each blue-boxed Tiffany trinket, with shrieks of delight.
“No.” Jake strolled towards her. “No, thank you, Emily.”
He clapped her lightly on the back. That was another thing he liked about his P.A. Her posture. She stood ramrod straight, not slouched or with her hips angled forward. So many women in New York stood that way, as if they were about to stalk down a runway at a fashion show.
Not his Emily.
Idly, he wondered what effect Emily’s perfect stance had on her figure. Did it tilt her breasts forward? He couldn’t tell; summer and winter, she always wore suits. Tweed, for the most part, like this one. Brown tweed, to match her brown hair, with the jacket closed so that her figure was pretty much a mystery. For all he knew, her breasts were the size of Ping-Pong balls. Or casaba melons. Who knew? Who cared? Not him. Yes, it was a definite pleasure to work with a woman who was both efficient and unattractive.
“I mean it,” he said. “You’re the best P.A. I’ve ever had.”
Emily cleared her throat. “In that case, sir…”
“Yes?” Jake grinned. Evidently, the raise he’d just given her wasn’t enough. That surprised him a little; Emily was never pushy but if she thought she deserved more money, she could have it. “Give yourself two hundred more a week. Is that better?”
A light blush suffused her cheeks. “One hundred is fine, Mr. McBride.” She stepped back, her chin lifted, her eyes on his. “But I would much prefer to be called your E.A. instead of your P.A.”
“Huh?”
“Your executive assistant, instead of your personal assistant. It’s a more accurate description of my duties.”
“My exec,” Jake mused. “Well, sure. You want to be called my E.A., that’s fine.”
“Thank you again, sir.”
‘‘You’re welcome.” Jake smiled. “Just as long as you assure me you aren’t changing your title to make your résumé look better.”
“Sir?”
“You’re not thinking of going job-hunting, are you?”
Emily looked horrified. “Certainly not, sir. I merely want an appropriate title.”
Well, well, well. His little sparrow had an ego. Nothing wrong with that. Nothing at all.
“And you deserve it.”
Oh, the sickly-sweet benevolence in his tone. Emily smiled, not an easy thing to do when what she felt like doing was throwing up on Jake McBride’s shiny black shoes. The egotistical goon. If only she could tell him what she thought of him. But she couldn’t. Jobs as good as this one were impossible to find. She had lots of responsibility; the pay was excellent; and, she supposed, as men went, McBride was easy enough to work for. She just wondered if he had any idea, any actual idea, of how invaluable she was to him. Of what a mess he’d be in, without her.
Why wonder? She knew that he didn’t. He was as dense as every other man she’d ever known, as foolishly arrogant as the endless succession of idiots who’d trooped through the house when she was growing up, every last one of them thinking he knew what he was doing and why he was doing it when, in reality, her gorgeous sisters had been leading the jerks around by their…hormones.
Jake McBride was just like those silly stud puppies. He might be rich, he might be handsome—assuming you liked the type, which she certainly didn’t—but he was as much a victim of his hormones as the tongue-tied idiots who’d filled her sisters’ teenaged lives.
His problems with the latest twit was proof of that.
McBride had broken things off. No surprise there. Emily had sensed it coming, long before he had. And, she had to admit, he’d done it with his usual flair. Roses. A little bracelet from Tiffany’s that she knew—after all, she’d placed the order—set him back six thousand dollars. But the brunette with the ditzy name wouldn’t, couldn’t, accept The End. She sent gifts. Notes. She phoned. She’d even taken to dropping by the office.
I’m here to see Jake, she’d whisper, in a voice Marilyn Monroe would have envied.
And Emily would pick up the phone, tell her boss that Miss Carole was here. And McBride would say, oh Lord, just get rid of her, please, Emily.
Emily almost felt sorry for the woman. She certainly didn’t feel sorry for Jake. As if she had nothing better to do than clean up after his messes. Bad enough she’d cleaned up after messes that involved her sisters.
Em, are you sure Billy hasn’t called? Or, Em, I’m so unhappy. Jimmy’s dating another girl. And then, after they both got married, she’d been expected to soothe them through their other disasters. Em, I think Billy’s fooling around. Em, Jimmy just doesn’t love me the way he used to…
They hadn’t learned anything, either, not even after marriages and divorces and affairs…
Ridiculous, the way women set out to snare men and ended up in the trap, themselves.
That had never been what she wanted out of life. A man? A lot of embarrassing slobbering to be endured and then, maybe, a wedding ring and promises of forever-after that wouldn’t even last as long as it took a slice of good-luck wedding cake to go stale, and for what?
For companionship, Emily. For those long winter nights when you think you’ll die if you have to curl up with another book…
Emily bit her lip.
Okay. So, maybe she wasn’t getting any younger. Maybe it might be nice to know what it was like to go on an occasional date. To have some man send her flowers, the way McBride—correction. The way she sent flowers, to his women. It might even be nice to get to see all those elegant New York restaurants from the inside, instead of just telephoning to make reservations for her boss and his latest interest.
What would such an evening be like? To have a man smile across the table at you, have him pick up your hand and bring it to his lips? Even if she really wanted to find out, where would she find a date? Lately, she’d started reading through the Personals in the back of GOTHAM magazine. Just for laughs, of course. She couldn’t imagine ever bringing herself to answer an ad. Or running one. What would she say?
Average-looking mouse searching for gorgeous, sexy, exciting man but will settle for plain, nonsexy, unexciting, av-erage-looking rat…
No. That wouldn’t do at all. Then again, neither would the truth.
Average-looking female interested in average-looking male. Object: to find out what a date is like because said female hasn’t had one in forever. In fact, not since the night of her senior prom, when one of her beautiful sisters conned a would-be boyfriend into being said female’s date and everybody knew it and laughed…
“Emily?”
Okay. That was it. She would run an ad. After all, she wasn’t eighteen anymore. She wasn’t Serena and Angela Taylor’s poor little sister, the one with all the brains and none of the looks. She wasn’t one of Jake McBride’s women, either, with the kind of face and figure men dreamed of, but she could still manage to find herself a date—
“Emily? Are you okay?”
A large, warm hand settled on her shoulder. Emily blinked, focused her eyes on her boss. He was standing a breath away from her, staring at her with a little furrow just between his eyes. And what eyes they were. Dark. Deep. So deep…
“Are you all right? For a minute there, you seemed to drift away.”
“I’m fine,” she said briskly. “Just, uh, just a cold coming on, perhaps.”
His hand slid to her elbow. “Go home,” he said gently, as he propelled her towards the door. “Take a nice hot bath. Make yourself some tea.”
“Honestly, Mr. McBride…”
“Do it,” he said, with a polite, teasing smile, “or I’ll take you home and do it for you.”
An image swam into her head. McBride, in her tiny apartment, so big and masculine against her chintz-covered furniture. McBride, smiling down at her, his hands warm and gentle as he unbuttoned her tweed jacket, unbuttoned her silk blouse. Or, perhaps, his hands not so gentle. Hard, in fact. Rough, maybe, as he ripped the blouse from her and took her into his arms…
Color flooded her face as she stepped back.
“That won’t be necessary, sir. I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself.”
“I know you are,” he said. For one awful minute, she was afraid he was going to pat her on the head. “Now just run along home, Emily. Take that bath, have the tea, pop some vitamin C and get a good night’s rest.”
“But it’s only four forty-five.”
McBride gave her another of those I’m-So-Wonderful-and-You’re-So-Lucky-To-Be-Working-For-Me smiles.
“I can do without you for a little while, I promise. Now, go home. I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Thank you, Mr. McBride.”
“Good night, Emily.”
“Good night, sir.”
Jake shut the door and sat down at his desk. Damn, what dedication. He’d almost had to carry Emily out of the office. Well, that would have been simple enough. She was small. Slender. She’d be light, just like one of those little sparrows. He could carry Emily up the steps in his duplex, to his bedroom, set her down on her feet and find out just what, exactly, lay hidden under all those woolly layers of clothing…
He frowned, pulled a blank pad towards him. What crazy thoughts. Jake chuckled softly. Amazing, the things a man’s brain could conjure up at the end of a long day. Better to spend the next couple of hours profitably, writing some memos to leave on Emily’s desk for her to tackle first thing in the morning.
He worked for a while, went from the memos to sketching out an idea that had just come to him about that meeting in San Diego…
A knock sounded on the door.
Jake looked up, then checked his watch. It was after five. Emily was gone. Nobody else would…
Somebody would.
Brandi, he thought unhappily. She’d called earlier, when Emily was at lunch. He’d picked up the phone just as the answering machine did and he’d heard that little whisper that had once driven him crazy with lust and now just drove him crazy, begging him to see her tonight.
The knock came again. Maybe if he just sat it out, pretended he wasn’t here…
“Jake?”
The door swung open. Jake, caught between deciding whether to duck for cover or tell Brandi to get lost, looked up and grinned in surprise.
“Pete?”
Pete Archer, a guy he’d worked with his first year in New York, opened the door wider and stepped inside.
“Jake, you old son of a gun. What’s the matter? You afraid I’m a bill collector or something?”
Jake got to his feet. “Or something.” He came forward and the men shook hands. They’d never been close friends but it was great to see someone from the past. “Why didn’t you call me? If I’d known you were going to be in town, I’d have rolled out the red carpet.”
“Didn’t know it, until the last minute.” Pete smiled. “You look like life’s treating you well.”
“You, too.” Jake grinned, gave Pete a light jab to the biceps. “How long will you be in town?”
“Just overnight. I have to be back in Chicago tomorrow morning.”
“Too bad. I have a business dinner lined up. Let me call the guy and—”
“No, no, I understand. How about drinks? You have time for that?”
“Great idea. Want to go out, or have something here?”
“Here would be cool. Got any ale?”
Jake laughed. “Some things never change, huh? Ale, it is.”
He went to his built-in mini fridge, took out a couple of bottles and opened them. Pete waved away his offer of a glass. The two men sat across from each other, leaned close enough to clink bottles, took long, thirsty swallows, then smiled.
“So,” Jake said, “how’re things?”
“Couldn’t be better. And you?”
“Terrific.” Jake sighed. “Well, they would be, if…” He leaned forward, across the desk. “You know why I didn’t answer when you knocked? I thought you were a woman.”
Pete laughed. “Don’t tell me you’ve decided you’re giving up babes. I wouldn’t believe it.”
“Let me amend that,” Jake said, smiling. “I thought you were a particular woman.”
“Ah. A bowwow who’s developed a thing for you, huh?”
“No, she’s a definite ten.” Jake grinned, but his grin faded. “But the thing ran its course, you know? She began to hear wedding bells.”
“Oh, yeah. I know what that’s like.” Pete drank some ale. “So, you tried to end it?”
“I’m still trying. Trouble is, she’s determined. She calls. She sends me notes. She shows up at my apartment, she shows up here…”
“Well, you have a secretary, don’t you? Let her do the dirty work.”
“I have an executive assistant,” Jake said, smiling and lifting his eyebrows.
“What’s that mean?”
“It means I’m lucky enough to employ a woman whose only goal in life is to make me happy.”
“Jake, you dog, you! You stocked the front desk with a hot babe!”
‘‘Sorry to burst the bubble, pal, but Emily’s as far from being a hot babe as Arnold Schwarzenegger.”
Pete sighed. “Too bad. I figured her for the fox I just saw at the elevator.”
“Oh, hell,” Jake said, and the color drained from his face. “Brunette?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Big brown eyes?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Great legs? A body meant to send a man straight over the edge?”
Pete shrugged, took a drink of his ale. “Definitely and probably.”
“Probably?” Jake gave a forlorn laugh. “You’d have to be blind or dead not to notice Brandi’s figure.”
“Brandi?”
“Yeah. The lady who’s decided I’m the love of her life. I half-figured she might show up here tonight.”
“Well, she did. And the only reason I didn’t notice her shape was because it was hidden under a layer of tweed.”
“Yeah, well…” Jake stared at Pete. “Tweed? Brandi would sooner be caught during rush hour in a New York subway than in tweed.”
“Either her tastes have changed, or the woman I saw wasn’t…Who’d you say?”
“Brandi,” Jake said automatically. He frowned. “Emily wears tweed.”
“And Emily would be…?”
“I told you about her. She’s my P.A. My E.A.” Jake thought for a second, then shook his head. “Forget it. No way could it have been Emily. I mean, she’s great. She’s efficient. She’s capable. She’s the best assistant I’ve ever had.” He smiled. “But a looker? No way.”
Pete gave a dramatic sigh. “See, that’s where we differ, Jake. I’ve learned to refine my tastes.”
Jake grinned. “Sure.”
“No, I’m serious. I look beyond the obvious.” He leaned forward, gave a leering smirk. “Besides, you know what they say. Still waters run deep.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning,” Pete said smugly, “if a babe doesn’t think she’s a looker, a guy can get into her pants a lot easier.”
Jake shot to his feet. “Not into Emily’s, he can’t.” His voice was cold; he could feel the sudden tension in his muscles.
“Hey.” Pete stood up, too. “We don’t even know it’s Emily we’re talking about.”
“I’m just making a point, Archer. Forget about getting into Emily’s pants.”
“Yeah, but it’s probably not even…Jake. I didn’t…” Pete took a breath. “Listen man, no offence.”
“None taken,” Jake said, and even he could hear the lie in his words. Well, why wouldn’t he be upset? Emily was a fantastic asset. He wasn’t about to end up with a messed-up assistant on his hands. Anyway, it was all academic, he thought, and forced himself to smile. “Not that it matters. That couldn’t have been Emily. She isn’t a looker. You don’t know my Emily but I can tell you, my Emily is average—”
“Your Emily isn’t ‘your Emily,’ Mr. McBride!”
Both men swung around. Emily stood in the open doorway, her face pale except for two spots of crimson high on her cheeks.
“Oh, hell,” Jake said softly. “Emily. Emily, listen, I didn’t mean—”
“You did mean. And I don’t mind being called ‘average.’ It’s what I am.” Her hands bunched into fists, fists she hid in the folds of her tweed skirt. “But I am not your property. You may assume I have no life away from this office, but that does not give you the right to—”
“Emily,” Jake said unhappily, “please—”
“Emily.” Pete’s voice was soft. Smarmy, Jake thought. Gentle, Emily thought, and looked at him. “Emily,” Pete said again, and smiled, “I’m sorry we have to meet under such difficult circumstances.”
“You two were talking about me,” she said stiffly.
Pete walked towards her. “We were, yes. I was telling Jake—Mr. McBride—that I’d just passed you in the hall.”
Jake made a choked sound. “You mean, the woman you were talking about really was—”
“And that I wanted to meet you,” Pete went on, as if Jake hadn’t spoken. He held out his hand. “My name is Pete Archer.”
Emily ignored his outstretched hand. “Why did you want to meet me?”
“Because I’d like to take you to dinner.”
“Nonsense.” Jake’s voice was too loud, too sharp. He knew it but hell, this was his office and his exec. What right did Archer have to…“She can’t go with you,” he said, as he stalked towards the two of them. “She doesn’t want to go with you. She—”
“I’d be delighted,” Emily said firmly.
“Emily, don’t be a fool. Pete’s not really interested in…” Jake bit his lip. If looks could kill, the one she’d just given him would have left him stone-cold and on the way to the mortuary. “For heaven’s sake, where’s your common sense? You, and this man…?”
She shot him a look more vicious than the first, and then she swung towards Pete.
“Shall we go, Mr. Archer?”
“Archer,” Jake roared, “you son of a—”
“The lady’s made her decision, Jake.”
“I have, indeed. You pay my salary, Mr. McBride, but you do not own me. I do as I wish after office hours. If I want to go out on a date, I will.” Her eyes narrowed. “Unless you’d rather I tendered my resignation…?”
Emily waited. Pete did, too. And Jake, totally helpless for the first time in his adult life, could do nothing except stand in the center of his office and watch his former friend and his little brown sparrow flutter her wings as she headed for a night on the town.
CHAPTER TWO
THE city awoke to snow the next morning.
Heavy wet flakes drifted down from the skies.
Fine, Jake thought. Let the sky turn to lead, for all he cared. He was in a mood almost as foul as the weather. Snow that would soon turn to gray slush was just about right this morning.
The doorman greeted him cheerfully. Jake muttered a response, waved off his offer of a taxi. Traffic in Manhattan always verged on gridlock; it would be even worse in weather like this. Besides, walking to work might be a good idea. He figured that the cold air, a brisk pace as he headed crosstown, would improve his mood.
It didn’t.
Some bozo trying to get his truck through a blocked intersection sent a spray of wet, dirty snow flying onto the sidewalk and over Jake’s shoes; a guy on Rollerblades—Rollerblades, on a day like this—damned near rode him down.
By the time he reached Rockefeller Center, Jake’s mood had gone from glum to grim. He gave a cursory look around as he strode into the building but he knew Brandi would be a no-show on a day like this. Not even her sudden determination to keep their affair alive would stand up to the possibility that her hair or makeup might get damaged. It was an unkind thought but, dammit, he was in an unkind frame of mind.
That was what staying awake half the night did to a man. Left him ill-tempered and mean-natured, especially when there was no good reason for him to have spent more time pacing the floors than sleeping.
It had to be the caffeine, Jake thought, as he stepped from the elevator onto the pale gray marble floor and walked to his office. The health food pundits made him edgy, with all their doomsaying. He liked coffee, and steak, and if he’d ever accidentally consumed a bite of tofu in his life, he didn’t want to know it.
Still, what else could have kept him up until almost dawn, if it wasn’t caffeine? Or maybe that Chinese takeout he’d picked up for supper had done him in. Not that he’d eaten much of it. Jake frowned as he reached his office. A hell of a night he’d put in, not eating, not sleeping…
The kid who delivered the mail came skidding around the corner.
“Morning, Mr. McBride,” he said cheerfully. “Here’s your mail.”
Jake, in no mood for cheerful banter or a stack of mail, scowled at the kid.
“What’s the matter?” he growled. “Don’t you deliver it anymore?”
“I am delivering it. See?” The kid shoved an armload of stuff at Jake, who took it grudgingly.
“This goes to my P.A., not to me.”
“Your what?”
“My P.A. My E.A….” Jake’s scowl deepened. “My secretary,” he said. “You’re supposed to hand her the mail.”
“Oh. Emily.”
For reasons unknown, Jake felt his hackles rise. “Her name,” he said coldly, “is Miss Taylor.”
“Uh-huh. Emily, like I said.” The kid grinned. “Nice lady. Pretty eyes.”
What was this? Did every male who walked in the door have to make an appraisal of Emily? What about her eyes? She had two of them. So what? Most people did.
“I always hand the mail right to her. But the door’s locked. It looks like nobody’s home.”
Jake’s scowl turned to a look of disbelief. He shot back the cuffs of his Burberry and his suit jacket, checked his watch and looked at the kid.
“Don’t be ridiculous. Of course someone is home.” He grabbed the doorknob. “It’s after nine. Miss Taylor’s always at her desk by—”
The knob didn’t move. The kid was right. The door was locked.
Jake’s mood, already in the cellar, began digging its way towards China. He shifted the armload of envelopes and magazines, dug out his keys and let himself into his office.
“If Emily is sick or something,” the kid said, “when you talk to her, tell her that Tommy sends—”
Jake slammed the door, stalked across the office and dumped the mail on Emily’s desk. It was, as always, neat as a pin. Even when she was seated behind it, not so much as a paper clip was ever out of place. Still, he could tell she wasn’t there. Her computer monitor stared at him with a cold black eye. The office lights were off, too, and there was no wonderful aroma of fresh coffee in the air.
E.A. or not, Emily had no feminist compunction against making coffee every morning.
Jake turned on the lights, marched into his private office, peeled off his wet coat and dumped it on the back of his chair.
Sick? Emily?
“Ha,” he said.
She hadn’t been sick a day since she’d come to work for him. Yeah, she’d said she felt as if she were coming down with a cold yesterday afternoon but it couldn’t have been much of a cold because not an hour later, she’d leaped at Archer’s invitation to dinner like a trout going after a fly.
“Sick,” Jake muttered.
Sleeping off her big night out, was more like it. Who knew where Archer had taken her for dinner, or what hour he’d gotten her home? Who knew how much wine she’d had to drink or how late she’d gone to bed or if she’d gone to bed at all…
Or if she’d been alone when she got into it.
Not that he cared. What she did, who she did it with, was her business. He’d tell her that, when—if—she deigned to show up this morning. The only question was, should he tell it to her before or after he told her she was fired?
From executive assistant to unemployed, in less than twenty-four hours.
The thought did wonders for his disposition. But why wait for Miss Taylor to put in an appearance? He could just as easily fire her right now.
Jake smiled coldly as he reached for the telephone but his smile changed, went back to being a frown. What was her number? For that matter, where did she live? In the city? In the suburbs? In one of the outlying boroughs? He had all that information. She’d filled out a form when she’d come to work for him. Actually, she’d filled out a zillion forms, thanks to all the tax information everybody required, but he’d be damned if he could remember anything about Emily’s private life.
Why would he? Until Archer stirred things up, she’d been the perfect employee. He’d never had reason to think about her, once he was away from the office. And now he was wasting time, thinking about her instead of sitting down and doing all the things that needed doing today. Not that he was actually “thinking” about Emily. Where she’d gone with Archer. Whether she’d had fun. Whether Archer had come on to her. Whether she was late because, even now, she was lying in the bastard’s arms…
“Son of a bitch,” Jake said, under his breath.
He thumbed open his address book, ran his finger down the list of T’s. There it was, Emily Taylor, the phone number written in Emily’s own, careful hand. Her address was there, too. She lived in Manhattan. Good, he thought grimly as he punched the phone number into the keypad. Then, she could damned well get her tail in here, pronto, and never mind what she was in the middle of doing with Archer.
Let her trudge through the snow. Then, he’d fire her. In person, where he could watch her face become pale as he told her to get out of his life.
Jake waited, tapping his foot impatiently as the phone rang. And rang. And—
“Good morning, Mr. McBride.”
“I’m happy you think so, Miss Taylor,” he said coldly…and suddenly realized that Emily’s voice wasn’t coming from the phone in his hand, it was coming from behind him. Slowly, he put down the telephone and turned around.
She stood in the doorway. Snowflakes glittered in her hair—brown hair, he thought, but with a warm, golden glow that made a man think of dark maple syrup on a winter morning….
Jake’s mouth turned down.
“You’re late.”
“I’m aware of that, sir. And I’m sorry.”
She didn’t sound sorry. Not the least bit. There was a chill to her voice that had nothing to do with the weather.
“And you’re late because…?”
“The trains are running behind schedule.”
“Really.” Jake smiled thinly and folded his arms. “I wonder if that could be because it’s snowing.”
He was gratified to see a light flush color her cheeks. “I’m sure it is, Mr. McBride.”
“In which case, Miss Taylor, you must also know that the trains always run late when it snows. Half the city runs late—or is that news to you?”
Emily looked down and brushed the snow from her coat. Her ankle-length, tweed coat, Jake thought irritably. Was tweed the only item in her wardrobe? Was he ever going to see her legs?
“I know what snow does to New York,” she said calmly. She lifted her eyes to his. “I allowed for that contingency.”
“Ah. You allowed for it.” Jake glanced pointedly at his watch. “Interesting, since you’re almost an hour late.”
Damn, he sounded like an ass. Well, so what? He was the boss. He was entitled to sound like an ass, if he wanted.
“I’m twenty minutes late, sir.” Emily still sounded calm but there was a bite to the “sir.” “And I did allow for the weather. I left my apartment twenty minutes earlier than usual. If I hadn’t, I’d be later than I already am.”
“Does that mean you got out of bed twenty minutes earlier than usual?”
Emily’s eyebrows brows rose. “I beg your pardon?”
“It’s a simple question. I asked if you set your alarm back twenty minutes.”
“I don’t see what that has to do with anything.”
Neither did Jake. What he really wanted to ask was if she’d had to set the alarm back or if something else had awakened her this morning. Somebody. Archer, for instance, moving above her, in her bed…
Hell!
Jake frowned, cleared his throat, went behind his desk and sat down. He reached for his appointment book and looked at the page. Letters and numbers danced before his eyes.
“Never mind,” he said brusquely.
“Never mind, indeed.” Her voice was frigid now; he could almost see the icicles forming on each word. “Perhaps we need to establish some boundaries, Mr. McBride. My private life—”
“So you said, last evening.” Jake waved his hand in dismissal. “I left the mail on your desk. Go through it, see if anything needs my immediate attention and then come back and I’ll dictate some notes.”
She hesitated. He didn’t look up but he didn’t have to. He could all but feel her counting to ten, taking deep breaths, doing what she could to hang onto her composure. Well, wasn’t he doing the same thing? The nerve of her, holding him up for a pay raise and a new title one day and coming in late the next.
“Of course, Mr. McBride.”
The door snicked shut. Jake looked up, glowered at it, and closed his appointment book.
Of course, Mr. McBride, he thought furiously. As if nothing had changed, as if she hadn’t shown up late, been insubordinate, done exactly the opposite of what he’d told her to do and gone off with a man who was only after one thing…
Jake closed his eyes. “Hell,” he said, but with no heat whatsoever.
Emily was right. Her life, outside of the office, wasn’t his business. Who she dated was up to her. What she did with who she dated was up to her, too. Why should he care, as long as she did her work?
Still, it was only human to wonder where she’d gone last night and whether she’d had a good time. He could just ask her. He’d known Emily for almost a year now. They were friends. Well, they were business associates. And he’d been the one who’d put Archer in her path.
Was it so strange he should be vaguely curious about how things had gone last night?
Emily, he could say, I was just wondering, did you have a nice evening? Where’d Archer take you for dinner? Did he take you home? Did you invite him in? What time did he leave?
He did leave, didn’t he?
Jake rubbed his hands over his face.
Not only was her private life none of his business, but even thinking about it was none of his business.
The kid was right, though. She did have nice eyes.
A muscle knotted in Jake’s jaw. He wondered if Archer had been right, too. About her legs. Were they great? He couldn’t tell, not with that coat going straight down to her feet, and he’d certainly never noticed her legs in the past. Why would he? Emily was his P.A. Check that. She was his E.A. She was a well-oiled, well-educated, well-paid employee. Her looks were none of his business.
She was a quiet little sparrow.
His little sparrow.
Jake shoved the appointment book halfway across his desk, swiveled his chair towards the window and gave the falling snow the benefit of his scowl. He knew it was foolish to bristle, but bristling was precisely what he felt like doing.
And it was all Emily’s fault.
Emily took off her coat, shook it briskly and hung it in the closet. Then she sat, bent down and began tugging at her left boot while she told herself that bristling would get her nowhere.
Still, bristling was exactly what she felt like doing.
And it was all McBride’s fault.
The great man was not in a good mood this morning. Too bad. Perhaps he’d had another run-in with the twit, desperate to tell him how wonderful he was.
“Idiot,” Emily said, and gave the stubborn boot a whack.
Or was he still annoyed that she hadn’t let him tell her what to do last night? Don’t go, he’d said, as if he owned her, and the hell of it was she should have listened to him because her evening with his pal had been a disaster. A total, unmitigated disaster. Mr. Peter-Aren’t-You-Fortunate-To-Be-With-Me Archer was so full of himself it was a wonder there’d been room for her at their all-too-cozy table for two in the restaurant he’d chosen.
Emily hung her head and groaned.
Oh, what an awful evening. The wine he’d ordered, even after she’d politely declined a drink. The way he’d leaned close and breathed moistly on her neck. The way he’d tried to feed her a bite of his meal from his fork. Yuck. As if she would want to take the fork into her mouth after it had been in his. And then all that smarmy, double entendre stuff which she’d been too dumb to recognize as smarmy and double entendre, until the waiter happened by just as Archer, the slimeball, said something that made the hapless waiter almost pour the coffee into her lap.
Emily attacked the boot again.
And this man, she reminded herself grimly, this—this human octopus, was Mr. Jake McBride’s friend. His oldest, dearest, closest friend.
So much for thinking her boss was a nice guy even if he was dense. Nice guys didn’t have lifelong buddies like Peter Archer.
Damn this boot! Why wouldn’t it come off?
To think of McBride’s gall, that he was angry with her. Whatever the cause of it, how dare he take it out on her? She’d been, what, fifteen minutes late? When she thought of all the times she’d come in early without McBride so much as saying, Why, Emily, how good of you to be here before nine.
But why would he? She was his personal property. He expected her to be there, at his beck and call.
“The Emperor McBride,” she said, under her breath, and tugged harder. What was with these boots? They might as well be glued on.
“Uh,” she said, and tugged again. “Uh…”
“Having a problem, Emily?”
She sat up so fast that her heel slammed against the carpeted floor. McBride was standing in the doorway, watching her. His arms were folded and one of his dark eyebrows was lifted in what looked like amusement.
“No problem, sir,” she replied briskly.
Of course it was a problem. She’d been bent over, tugging at her boots, and her face was flushed with rosy color. Her hair—a few strands of it, anyway—had come loose of its clip at the nape of her neck and curled gently at her ears. Emily’s hair was curly? He’d never noticed. She always wore it back, and straight.
Jake frowned.
“Here,” he said, advancing towards her, “let me help you.”
“It isn’t necessary. I can—”
Too late. He was already squatting before her, lifting her foot into his lap and tugging.
“Really, Mr. McBride…”
Jake pulled off the boot. No wonder it had been hard to remove. Her boots were made of thin black leather and she was wearing heavy socks. Heavy wool socks, over feet that were attached to long, slender legs.
Oh, yeah. Archer, the bastard, had called it right. Her legs were good. Excellent, as a matter of fact.
“Thank you,” Emily said.
Jake lifted his eyes to her face. “You’re welcome.” He cleared his throat, looked down at the foot, still in his hands, and tried to think of something intelligent to say. “You’re wearing socks.” Brilliant, he thought trying not to wince, just brilliant, McBride. “I mean—you’re wearing—”
“Socks,” she said stiffly. “Wool socks. Double knit. I guess that’s the reason the boots are so hard to get off. I wore them because I thought I might have to walk at least part of the way home, if the snow keeps up, and these boots aren’t really warm…”
Her voice trailed to silence. Why was she telling him all this? He was holding her foot in his hands, looking at it as if he’d never seen a foot before. And she was explaining why she was wearing wool socks, as if it mattered.
“Socks,” he murmured, and looked up at her again. He had such a strange look on his face. That darkness in his eyes.
Maybe he thought she was going to walk around the office in heavy wool socks all day.
“Yes. But I’ll take them off. I have panty hose underneath…”
Oh, good. Now she was telling him about her underwear. Emily colored and pulled her foot from Jake’s hands.
“Thank you again,” she said briskly. “I’ll get to the mail immediately.”
“Not without taking that other boot off.”
“I can manage.”
“I doubt it.”
“Honestly, Mr. McBride—”
Jake knew he could get the boot off with one quick tug but considering the condition she’d put him in, with that comment about her underwear, he figured it was best to take his time.
“There,” he said, when it was safe. He dropped the boot beside its mate and rose to his feet. “All done.”
Emily nodded. “Thank you,” she said again.
“You’re welcome.”
He looked as if he were going to say something more. A few words of apology, maybe, for the way he’d snapped at her before? No such luck. He gave her a quick nod, swung away and went back inside his office.
The door closed silently behind him.
Emily sat motionless. Her feet were tingling. Not the way they’d tingle if the circulation were coming back after they’d been freezing cold. She’d felt that, once, when she was a little girl and she’d missed the school bus and ended up walking home in the snow. No, they were tingling in a very strange way. As if they were still in McBride’s lap. As if his big hands were still holding them. As if he were still looking up at her with his eyes all dark and hungry…
The room seemed to tilt.
Emily dragged air into her lungs. Then she took off her socks, slipped her feet into the shoes she’d brought with her, and got to work.
Hours later, she sighed, blinked owlishly at her computer screen and pushed back from her desk. It was almost one o’clock. Time for lunch, she thought, and rose from her chair. She gave a ladylike stretch, opened the drawer to get her purse…and saw the copy of GOTHAM, still opened to the personal ads.
She made a face, picked up the magazine and dumped it into the wastebasket.
“Goodbye and good riddance,” she said, and dusted off her hands.
Last night had cured her of even thinking about going out for an evening with a man she didn’t know anything about.
On the other hand, choosing a date from the Personals would be different.
She might not really “know” the man, but she wouldn’t go into it blindfolded. At least, she’d have some information about her date beforehand. And she wouldn’t have to waste an entire evening. She could suggest they meet for lunch, or coffee, or for nothing more complicated than a walk in the park. She could control the character of this kind of date and not end up finding out, as she had last night, that the only thing the man in question wanted was to get into her pants.
Emily plucked the discarded magazine from the wastebasket, opened it and laid it on her desk.
Handsome, sexy, successful male, 40, D, Br & Br, ISO beautiful, sexy female, preferably br&br, too…
Handsome, successful, sexy, Romeo, 33, S, BL and bl, looking for his beautiful, sexy Juliet…
Sexy, handsome guy, 38, ND, blond and blue, very successful, ISO sexy, beautiful lady, preferably Br&B…
It was like reading a code. ISO for “in search of.” D for “divorced,” S for “single,” ND for “newly divorced.” B’s for hair and eye color. Unless you had red hair. Or gold. Or…
Oh, this was ridiculous. Advertisements by men for women. Reading them was a joke. They were so phony. If every guy who was dateless in New York was sexy, easy on the eyes and successful, why were they running these ads? She knew better than to fall for all those adjectives. In fact, if she had to come up with the name of a gorgeous, sexy, successful man, the only one she’d be able to muster was that of Jake Mc…
Emily’s heartbeat stumbled. Quickly, she grabbed the telephone, punched in the Personals number, listened impatiently as a recorded female voice offered available options.
To reply to a LoveNote, the voice said nasally, please enter the number of the LoveNote you’ve selected.
Emily entered a number. She waited, heard a husky male voice say “hello,” listened to what was, more or less, a repeat of the ad in the magazine, and waited for the ad to end and the tone to sound. At last, it did. It was time to leave a message for Mr. Handsome, Sexy and Successful, 40, D, brown and brown.
Her mouth was dry as sand. She thought, fleetingly, of the sad red geranium sitting at home on her kitchen table, which she kept forgetting to water…
Beeeep!
Emily swallowed, licked her lips and took a breath. Sound sexy, she told herself.
“Good afternoon.” Great. Just great. She sounded about as sexy as a Girl Scout trying to sell cookies. “Hi,” she said, trying for perky, if not sexy. “Uh, I’m calling to say—to say that I think I might be just the Brrr and Brrr—uh, the Brown and Brown you’re looking for.” She hesitated, checked the ad again. Sexy, it said. And beautiful. Emily chewed on her lip. “Well, maybe not. I mean, I have brown hair. And brown eyes. But I’m not exactly sexy. Or beautiful.” Her voice cracked. “But, really, is that so awful? ‘Beautiful’ means having qualities that delight the senses. I know that because I had to look it up once, in the dictionary. I wanted the exact meaning because I was writing a term paper on Shelley. The poet, you know? Anyway, I’m just saying that beauty is in the eye of the beholder and handsome probably is, too. So even if you’re not as handsome as you say you are, that’s okay because I’m not…” She groaned, put her hand to her forehead. “As for sexy, well, what does ‘sexy’ mean, anyway? Different things in different cultures. For example, when I was studying anthro, I learned that sexual attractiveness varies enormously from tribe to tribe in the Amazon. Some view nudity as the norm. Others, perhaps after they’ve had some contact with the outside world, disdain nudity but see nothing wrong with indulging in coitus with a variety of partners. There’s a particular pygmy tribe—”
A large male hand slammed down on the telephone cradle, breaking the connection. Emily jerked her head up. McBride was standing over her, looking down and glaring.
“Just what in the Sam Hill are you doing?”
Dear God, Emily thought, what was I doing? The telephone buzzed in her ear like an angry bee.
“Miss Taylor?”
“You’ve—you’ve always called me Emily.”
“A mistake,” Jake said coldly, “considering that I’m starting to realize I don’t know the first thing about you.”
He folded his arms over his chest. It was, she thought foolishly, a formidable chest. He’d taken off his suit jacket, loosened his tie, undone the top button of his white shirt and rolled back his sleeves. He did that often; he’d once said he felt choked in a suit and tie. Why was it she’d never before noticed that his arms were dusted with dark, silky-looking hair? That his chest was the width of The Great Wall of China?
“Well, Miss Taylor? What were you doing?”
Emily put the phone down, folded her hands in her lap and tried not to think about how long he might have been standing there.
“I was—I was making a call,” she said carefully.
“To whom?”
“To…” She frowned as she looked up at him again. “It was a personal call, Mr. McBride.”
“Yes.” Jake shot her a predatory smile. “I imagined it was. Somehow or other, I didn’t think you’d be discussing pygmy sex practices with any of my clients.”
She could feel the heat flash into her face. “I was not discussing pygmy sex practices.”
“What were you discussing, then?”
“Would you step back, please,” she said coolly, “so I can stand up?”
“Answer the question, Miss Taylor.”
“I don’t have to.” She could feel her courage rushing back, swirling through her blood in a wave of heat. “As I said, it was personal.”
“Did you ask me if you could make personal calls?”
She blinked. “No. No, I didn’t. But you never said—”
“You never asked.”
Emily glowered up at Jake. “I’ll pay for the call,” she snapped.
“I don’t want your money. I want to know why you were talking about pygmy sex practices, and with whom.”
“Dammit!” She shoved her chair back and shot to her feet, her flushed, angry face lifted to Jake’s. “I wasn’t talking about pygmy sex practices. I told you that. I was leaving a message on an answering machine.”
“An answering machine at the Museum of Natural History?”
God, that infuriating smirk on his face! How had she survived it, all this time?
“An answering machine at a man’s apartment,” she said tightly. Well, it wasn’t a lie. It wasn’t an apartment but Handsome, Sexy and Successful would probably phone in for his messages from his apartment.
“Well, well, well.” Jake’s dark green eyes narrowed. “You’re just full of surprises, Miss Taylor. No wonder ol’ Pete was so eager to take you to dinner last night. He read you just right.”
Emily flung her hands on her hips. “And what is that supposed to mean, Mr. McBride?”
“Never mind what it’s supposed to mean. I’m waiting to hear who you were phoning.”
“Oh, for goodness sake!” She swung away, grabbed the magazine and shoved it into Jake’s flat belly. “You won’t be satisfied until you wring the truth out of me, will you? Okay. Okay, here’s the truth, McBride, and I hope you enjoy getting the last laugh.”
She swung away from him, trembling with anger and humiliation. She could hear Jake reading the ads aloud in a soft, disbelieving voice. There was a long silence before he spoke again.
“You were answering an ad in the personals?”
“Yes.”
“You were telling one of these men you’d go out with him?”
“Yes.”
“You were going to meet a stranger, an asshole who identifies himself as sexy, successful and handsome with…What in hell is Brrr and Brrr? A description of the weather? A new liqueur?”
Emily spun around and faced Jake. Her eyes were huge, her face flushed, and he fought back the sudden, insane desire to take her in his arms and soothe her.
“It’s brown hair and brown eyes,” she snarled. “And for your information, lots of people meet through ads like this.”
“To do what?” Jake said, his eyes getting that narrowed, intense look again.
“To—to go out. On a date. To have dinner together. Take in a movie. Just—just spend a little time with another person…”
Her voice broke. Jake looked bewildered. She thought, for a second, he was reaching towards her and she shook her head and stepped back.
“I don’t expect you to understand. You’re never home alone, unless you want to be. You never have to look at the calendar and say, look at that, it’s the weekend and I don’t have a thing to do except clean my apartment and wash my hair.”
Holy hell, Jake thought.
“That’s what this is all about?” he said slowly. “That you don’t date?”
“That’s what I just said.”
“You don’t have any, uh, any men in your life?”
Emily’s chin lifted to a dangerous angle. “Are we going to have to go through this, line by line?”
“So, that’s why you accepted Archer’s invitation last night? Because you’re lonely?”
“I’m not lonely,” she said defiantly. “I have friends. Hobbies. I have a canary.”
“You’re lonely,” he said. “That’s why you went out with that snake.”
“Are you deaf, Mr. McBride? I am not…” Emily frowned. “You think he’s a snake?”
“Of course.”
“That’s what you’ve always thought?”
“Yes.” Well, it was true if you figured “always” referred to yesterday evening, when Archer had sneaked up on Emily. “I tried to tell you that, but you wouldn’t listen.”
“You didn’t try to tell me anything, except how to run my life.” She cocked her head. “Pete Archer said you and he are best friends.”
“Ha.”
“He said you’ve known each other forever.”
“Only if forever means a year working for the same brokerage firm, a long time back.”
Emily puffed out a breath. “He lied to me.” She looked at Jake. “You’re right, by the way. He is a snake.”
Jake’s face darkened. “Did he—”
“Oh, I can handle men like Pete Archer.” A smile ghosted across her lips. “When I was sixteen, one of my sisters dated a guy who was into karate. He taught me some great moves. I still remember them.”
“Ah.” Jake moistened his lips. “Let me get this straight. You, uh, you’d like to date. To meet some nice guys and go out. Is that it?”
What was the sense in trying to pretend otherwise? Jake McBride knew virtually everything about her now, from her shoe size to her sexless sex life.
“Yes.”
“Well.” He ran his hand through his hair again, turned away from her, paced back and forth, back and forth. “I’ve got it,” he said, and swung towards her. “I know a lot of people. Some of them are nice guys, too. I’ll introduce you.”
“Oh, no. I couldn’t ask you to—”
“You haven’t asked, I’ve volunteered. Look, it’s no big deal.”
Emily collapsed into her chair. “What are you going to do,” she said, with a nervous laugh, “go to a meeting and say, ‘oh, by the way, my personal assistant would like to have a date this weekend’?”
Jake grinned at her. “My executive assistant,” he said. “And I’ll be subtle, I promise. For instance…well, I go to lots of cocktail parties. Business stuff. From now on, you’ll go with me.”
“Mr. McBride, really—”
“I’ll introduce you as my good right hand, you’ll circulate, network…Emily, don’t look at me that way. It’ll work, I know it will.”
“It won’t. I’m—I’m not good at this male-female thing, Mr. McBride.”
“Jake.”
“Jake,” she said, because it was silly, really, to go on with such formality now. “Look, I appreciate your offer but it’s pointless. I’ll feel ridiculous.”
“More ridiculous than you’d have felt if you’d left your number on that answering machine?”
Emily bit her lip. “Even if something came of it…For one thing, I don’t know how to make small talk. ”
“There’s nothing to it. I’ll teach you.”
“Yes, but…” She waved a hand. “It’s more than that. I don’t dress right. My sisters used to tell me I had no idea of style.”
Jake took a step back, looked her over slowly from head to toe. “We can take care of that with ease.”
“I don’t even know how to—” she blushed “—how to handle the, uh, the end of the evening thing.”
“The…?” He colored. “Oh.”
“Exactly. I mean, it was simple enough, last night. When your friend—”
“Archer’s no friend of mine,” Jake said grimly.
“The point is, when he, uh, when he tried to, you know, kiss me, I just put my hands up, the way you do in karate—”
Jake began to laugh. “I’d have given anything to have seen that.”
“But—but if a man tried to kiss me and I wanted him to, I’d just mess it up. I’d—”
He felt his body tighten. “You mean you’ve never…” He cleared his throat, did a mental ten-count, reminded himself that Emily was a sparrow, not a thrush, and his lifelong preference was for songbirds. “Well,” he said briskly, “never mind. I’ll teach you everything you need to know. How to talk with a man. How to dress for him. How to make him want you, and only you.”
“I don’t know. It all seems to—so—”
“I’ll teach you all you need to know, Emily.” Jake’s voice roughened. “Including how to conduct yourself at the end of the evening.”
Color swept into her face. “I can’t believe I told you that,” she whispered. “I feel so foolish!”
“I’ll teach you,” Jake said gently. He reached down, clasped her shoulders and lifted her to her feet. “You’ll see. I’m an excellent teacher.”
So saying, he bent his head, took Emily’s face in his hands, and covered her mouth with his.
CHAPTER THREE
HIS mouth fit hers, perfectly.
His lips were warm, and dry, and pleasant. No tongue, Emily thought dazedly. None of that disgusting swapping spit stuff that the insufferable Pete Archer had tried last night.
Still, why was McBride kissing her? And why was she letting him? That was a better question.
Because he’d caught her by surprise. Why else? she told herself, and she put her hands against his chest and pulled back from his kiss.
“Mr. McBride,” she said, a little breathlessly, “I really don’t think—”
“Call me Jake,” he said hoarsely but before she could call him anything, he put his arms around her, drew her against him and kissed her again.
The kiss wasn’t the same.
She might have known it wouldn’t be. His lips nudged hers, tugged at hers, moved against hers. And, when she tried to protest, to tell him there was no reason for them to kiss and certainly no reason to kiss like this, he used the moment against her and parted her lips with his.
Emily’s hands came up, flattened against Jake’s chest again.
No, she thought, no, please. No tongue, no spit, no awful wet kiss…
He didn’t take the hint. He went right on with what he was doing, changing the rules, changing the kiss. What he was doing now—angling his mouth differently so that she had to tilt her head back as he slipped the tip of his tongue between her lips—what he was doing was—it was—
Oh, it was wonderful.
The feel of his arms around her. The hardness of his body against hers. The taste of his mouth. His hot mouth. His tongue. The glorious, mind-bending, mind-blowing heat and, yes, the wetness of his kiss…
Emily moaned. She curled her fingers into Jake’s shirt, rose on her toes and pressed herself against him.
Was this what a kiss, a real kiss, was like? Was a man supposed to be able to turn a woman into a mindless, breathless, boneless creature with a kiss? Or did Jake know something other men didn’t?
Not that Emily cared about any of the answers. She only knew that she wanted this feeling to go on forever.
Jake did, too.
It was crazy, to get so turned on by a kiss. But turned on, turned up, turned inside out was what he was, all right, and he was aching for more.
Emily wasn’t just kissing him back, she was making the soft little noises a woman made when she wanted more. Her sweet body was pressing against his—grinding against his. Yes, indeed; there were curves under that boxy tweed jacket and bulky skirt, curves and warm, eager flesh.
And then she moved, and moaned, and Jake gave up thinking. He slid one hand down her spine, cupped her bottom, lifted her into the hardness of his arousal, knotted his hand in her skirt, pushed it up, stroked his hand along her thigh, her hot, silken thigh…
Told you, Archer’s voice whispered smugly, way, way in the back of Jake’s mind. Didn’t I say still waters run deep?
Jake shoved Emily’s skirt down, clasped her arms, tore his mouth from hers and stepped back. She swayed unsteadily, her eyes still shut, her lips rosy and parted.
Desire burned hot in his blood.
She wanted him, desired him, as much as he wanted her. And he wanted to assuage that desire. He wanted to reach out for her again, drag her back into his arms, carry her into his office, kick the door shut and rip away the tweed that hid her from his mouth and from his eyes…
But sanity prevailed. The last thing he wanted was an affair with his P.A. Uh, with his E.A. Hell, the last thing, absolutely the last thing, he wanted was an affair with a little brown sparrow who’d undoubtedly confuse sex with love.
Jake tried to speak, cleared his throat and tried again.
“You see?”
Emily blinked and opened her eyes. They were dark with passion and he felt himself teeter on the brink of that upside-down, inside-out feeling all over again.
He took another step back, shoved his hands into his trouser pockets and knotted them so he wouldn’t be an idiot and reach for her.
“See what?” she croaked.
Jake tried for a nonchalant shrug. “I was just showing you that you don’t have anything to worry about. I can teach you everything you need to know. It’s not a problem.”
Emily touched her fingers to her mouth. The simple action almost brought him to his knees.
“Not a problem at all,” he said, and before she could respond, he went back into his office, fixed his tie and shirt, put on his jacket and coat, strode past her and headed out into the snowstorm for his lunch at the Oak Room…
And tried not to think about the kiss, or the fact that she’d been busy at her desk, fingers flying industriously over the keyboard as if the whole thing had never happened, as he went out the door.
Emily paused in her typing when Jake got back.
She looked up, greeted him politely and told him he’d find some faxes on his desk.
“Thank you,” he said, and went straight into his office.
The door swung shut, and she almost collapsed with relief.
He wasn’t going to mention what had happened. Thank God for that.
She’d worried that the kiss would affect their relationship. Foolish her. She should have known that it wouldn’t. The kiss had meant nothing. Jake had, as he’d explained, been establishing his credentials, that was all.
Evidently, that was the way he always kissed a woman.
No wonder the twit wanted to keep him.
Any woman would. Well, not any woman. She wouldn’t. Jake McBride wasn’t her type at all, no more than she was his, and a kiss wouldn’t change that. Not that he’d kissed her for that reason. To change her mind. To get her interested in him. No, it wasn’t like that and a good thing, too, because she wasn’t interested.
Emily looked at her computer screen. Her fingers had been busy but she’d been typing gibberish.
She took a breath, put her hands in her lap and folded them.
Okay. That was it. Enough. This was ridiculous, every bit of it, starting with Jake’s nonsensical idea of introducing her to eligible men. Eligible for what? Was he going to run a Date My Assistant bureau?
All she’d wanted was to know what it was like to look forward to an occasional date but using your employer as a dating service was totally unacceptable. In the seven years since she’d come to New York, she’d heard of some strange employer-employee arrangements. She knew a secretary who baby-sat for her boss’s golden retrievers on weekends, another who read all the books on the New York Times list, then wrote up one paragraph synopses for the man she worked for so he could sound as if he were well-read. She’d once met a P.A. whose boss baked him cookies. Awful cookies, but the poor guy had never worked up the courage to tell her so.
But a boss who got you dates?
No way.
That was what she’d tell Jake, if he brought up the subject again. There wasn’t a way in the world she was going to let her boss play matchmaker for…
“Emily?”
She looked up. Definitely, the kiss had meant nothing. Jake stood in the doorway between his office and hers. He looked the way he always did. Intense. Focused. Just a little bit forbidding.
The wings of hope fluttered in Emily’s breast. Maybe she wouldn’t have to tell him she was declining his offer. With luck, he might say it first.
“Yes, Mr. McBride?”
“Emily, I’ve given this some thought.”
“Yes?”
“And I’ve decided you should leave.”
The wings of hope faltered, folded and were still. “Leave?”
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Sandra Marton
Jake McBride is a self-made millionaire, brilliant at business, talented in bed–and cynical about women. Emily Taylor is his personal assistant, terrific in the office…and an innocent when it comes to the opposite sex!But when Jake teaches Emily how to transform herself from shy secretary into sexy siren, he loses his grip on his legendary cool. If she's going to lose her virginity, it has to be to him!
“There are things you need to learn, Emily.”
“Is that the reason you kissed me?” she said quietly.
“Yes. No. Dammit, Em—” Jake drew a ragged breath. “Look, I can help you. I can teach you about men. What they want from women. The male-female thing, the thing you don’t seem to understand at all.”
Emily stared at Jake. He was right. He could teach her. He already had.
“Is that what you want to do?” she said huskily.
It seemed a long time before Jake answered. When he did, his voice sounded low and far away, even to his own ears.
“Yes. Yes, I do. And I promise you, Em, I’ll teach you all you need to know.”
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The Bedroom Business
Sandra Marton
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER ONE
JAKE MCBRIDE was a man under siege.
A woman who’d spent the past couple of months on his arm and in his bed, couldn’t accept the fact that their relationship was over.
“You don’t love me,” she’d wept, just last night.
Well, no. Jake didn’t. He’d told her that days ago, reminded her that he’d never said he loved her, never even hinted that he might love her someday. He knew there were guys who said it in an attempt to score, but he wasn’t one of them. Jake was always honest about his intentions. He made it clear that love, marriage, the “something old, something new, something blue” thing just wasn’t on his agenda.
Besides, the immodest truth was that he didn’t have to.
He was a healthy, heterosexual, thirty-year-old American male. He was six foot three with broad shoulders, a deep chest and a hard, flat belly, thanks to his passion for tough, sweaty workouts at his gym. His hair was dark, thick and wavy; his eyes were what one besotted female had called the color of the Atlantic in midsummer, which even now made him smile because he hardly ever noticed his eyes—what man would?—except when he happened to see them in the mirror while he shaved. He had a square jaw and a firm mouth set beneath a nose that bore a small bump, a souvenir of the year he’d spent working a jackhammer in a Pennsylvania coal mine.
He found it amusing that women seemed to like the faintly misshapen nose. The same babe who’d said his eyes were like the sea had told him it made him look dangerous.
“Whatever turns you on,” Jake had said with a husky laugh, as he rolled her beneath him.
And he had money. Hell, why dance around the issue? He was rich, richer than he’d ever dreamed he could be, and he’d earned every dime himself, transforming a propensity for numbers, a talent for reading the market and a love for taking risks into a career in venture capitalism that was light-years away from the life he’d been born to.
Wasn’t all that enough to make a woman happy? Yes. Yes, it was. He never had difficulty finding a woman.
The trouble was getting rid of them.
Jake winced.
It wasn’t a nice way to think about it but it was the truth.
What he was going through with Brandi wasn’t exactly new. It had happened to him before. A woman would agree, at the start of their affair, that she was no more interested in forever-after than he was. Then, for some unearthly reason, she’d change her mind a few weeks later and get that oh-how-happy-we-could-be gleam in her eye even though any fool could tell that marriage was not man’s natural state.
The whole turnaround was beyond his comprehension but yeah, it happened. And it was happening again, despite his best efforts.
The only person who could save him from disaster was his personal assistant, Emily.
Emily, Jake thought gratefully. What would he do without her? She was smart, efficient, always on her toes. Emily not only kept his office running smoothly, but she protected him from the predations of women like Brandi. It didn’t happen often, thankfully, but when necessary, Emily fielded unwanted calls, kept away unwanted visitors.
Jake wasn’t unkind. That was the reason he’d told Emily to show Brandi into his private office yesterday, even though he knew it was a bad idea. He was right. It had been a miserable idea. All Brandi had wanted to do was tell him that she loved him but he didn’t love her.
“You don’t,” she’d cried, “you don’t, Jake!”
Why would he deny it? “No,” he’d said, “I don’t” He’d handed her his handkerchief. “But I like you,” he’d added earnestly. “A lot.”
Jake sighed, sat down at his desk, leaned his elbows on the gleaming oak surface and massaged his aching temples with his fingertips.
So much for being honest. Brandi had gone from weeping to sobbing while he stood there, feeling like an idiot for not having seen it coming but then, he really never did.
“Hell,” he muttered, and shot to his feet again.
He really did like her. Why else would he have spent the last, what, two months seeing her? Exclusively, of course. He wasn’t into sharing his women and besides, he was always faithful for as long as a relationship lasted. But he wasn’t ready to spend the rest of his life with one woman. Not now, not in the foreseeable future, maybe not ever.
Life had only just begun to open for him in the past few years. Jake had grown up poor, lost his father in a mining accident when he was ten, lost his mother to a stepfather who believed that sparing the rod spoiled the child when he was twelve. At seventeen, he’d quit school and gone to work in the same mine that had taken his father’s life. A year later, after almost dying under two tons of coal, Jake put down his hammer and scrubbed the black dust from his skin even though he’d known he’d never quite get it out of his blood. Then he’d headed east. It had taken a while but a quirky combination of luck, guts and a hard-won university degree had turned his life into a dream.
It was a life he liked, just the way it was.
He had an office in Rockefeller Center, an apartment on Park Avenue, a weekend house in Connecticut and a vintage Corvette.
He had Emily.
Yes, life was good…except for this current mess, with Brandi.
Jake groaned, kicked back his chair and put his feet up on his desk. How come he hadn’t read the signs? Her career was all that mattered, she’d told him, but it wasn’t true. First she gave him a key to her apartment. He hadn’t asked for one, hadn’t offered her the key to his, but she handed hers over, anyway, with a casual smile that would have made him look like an ass not to have accepted it. Then she bought him a tie at Bloomingdale’s. Nobody bought Jake ties except Jake, but she said some hotshot actor had been wearing one just like it when she’d posed in an ad with him, and how could he possibly turn down such a simple gift?
And then, last week, the final touch. He’d taken her home, was in the process of saying good-night—he hadn’t felt like spending the night with her which, in retrospect, he should have recognized as the beginning of the end—when she reached into her pocket, pulled out a pair of airline tickets and waggled them at him.
“Surprise,” she’d said gaily, and explained that she was flying home to Minneapolis for the weekend and he was going with her.
“It’s my parents’ thirty-fifth anniversary, Jake. They’re having the whole family to dinner and they’re just dying to meet you!”
The tie around his neck—the very one she’d bought him, which he hated but had worn that evening because she’d asked him where it was—suddenly felt like a noose, growing tighter and tighter until he stabbed two fingers under the knot and yanked it away from his throat.
“I can’t go,” he’d said, and she’d said yes, yes, he could, and he’d said he couldn’t and she, with her lip trembling, said he could if he wanted to and finally he’d said well, he didn’t want to…
“Oh, Jake,” she’d whispered, and the next thing he’d known, she was crying into his shirt.
What did women want, anyway? Well, not all women. Not the Emilies of this world but then, Emily wasn’t a woman. Not a real one. She was his P.A.
Jake sighed, rose from the chair behind his desk, walked to the window and looked out. Forty stories below, people crowded the street. He hoped Brandi wasn’t one of those people. She’d been there this morning, waiting for him.
“Jake?” she’d said, and before he could decide what the heck to do, whether to pretend he didn’t see her or hustle her into the lobby and up to his office before she started bawling, she’d thrown her arms around him and tried to kiss him.
“Hell,” he whispered, and leaned his forehead against the cool glass.
Still, he had no desire to hurt her. He didn’t want to say anything cruel or unkind…
“Mr. McBride?”
Because she was a nice woman. And even though it was time to move on, that didn’t mean—
“Mr. McBride? Sir?”
Jake swung around. Emily stood in the doorway. For the first time in what felt like hours, he smiled. If only all women were as pragmatic, as sensible, as she.
“Yes, Emily?”
“Sir, I thought you’d like to know that I sent that e-mail memo to John Woods.”
“Fine.”
“His reply just came in. He says he likes your suggestions and hopes you’re free to fly to San Diego to meet with him next week.”
“Am I?”
“Yes, sir. You’re free Monday and Tuesday. You have a meeting Tuesday afternoon but it can be easily postponed.”
Jake nodded. “Make the arrangements, please. What else?”
“A fax from Atlanta. Nothing important, just a confirmation of your conference call.”
“Good, good. Anything else?”
Emily looked down at the notepad in her hand. “You’re having a late lunch with Mr. Carstairs tomorrow at the Oak Room.”
“Ah. Thank you for reminding me.”
“Yes, sir. And you have a dinner appointment this evening. Eight o’clock, at The Palm. You asked me to remind you to mention that new oil field opportunity in Russia.”
Jake smiled and shook his head. “What would I do without you?” he said pleasantly. “You’re the epitome of efficiency.”
“Being efficient is my job, Mr. McBride.”
“Jake, please. I don’t think we need to be so formal. You’ve been working for me for, what, a year?”
“Eleven months and twelve days.” Emily smiled politely. “I’m comfortable calling you Mr. McBride, sir. Unless you find it uncomfortable…?”
“No,” Jake said quickly, “no, that’s fine. Whatever you prefer is okay with me.”
It sure as hell was. He’d never had an assistant like this one. When he looked ahead, he could see Emily Taylor by his side well into the distant future. Emily wouldn’t find a man, get married and quit her job. Her career meant as much to her as his did to him.
He was fairly certain she never even dated.
He supposed he ought to feel guilty for being happy she didn’t, but why should he? Emily was just one of those women who wasn’t interested in men. There was a long and honorable list of them, going back through the centuries. Betty Friedan and the women’s libbers. The Suffragettes. Joan of Arc. They’d all devoted their lives to Causes, not to men.
How could a man feel badly if a woman made a choice like that?
Emily wasn’t even a distraction.
Some of the women he’d interviewed before hiring her had been stunners, but the word for Emily was “average.” Average height. Average weight. Average face. Average brown hair and average brown eyes.
“A little brown sparrow,” Brandi had said after meeting her, with what Jake had recognized as a little purr of relief.
An accurate description, he thought. On his runs through Central Park, he saw lots of birds with flashier plumage but it was the little brown sparrows who were the most industrious.
Emily, Jake thought fondly. His very own little brown sparrow.
He smiled again, folded his arms and hitched a hip onto the edge of his desk. “Emily, how much am I paying you?”
“Sir?”
“Your salary. What is it?”
“Eight hundred a week, Mr. McBride.”
“Well, give yourself a hundred bucks more.”
Emily smiled politely. “Thank you, sir.”
Jake smiled, too. He liked the no-nonsense way she’d accepted her raise. No little squeals of joy, no bouncing up and down, no “Oooh, Jake…” But, of course, she wouldn’t call him “Jake” any more than she’d squeal. Squealing was for the women he dated, who greeted each bouquet of long-stemmed roses, each blue-boxed Tiffany trinket, with shrieks of delight.
“No.” Jake strolled towards her. “No, thank you, Emily.”
He clapped her lightly on the back. That was another thing he liked about his P.A. Her posture. She stood ramrod straight, not slouched or with her hips angled forward. So many women in New York stood that way, as if they were about to stalk down a runway at a fashion show.
Not his Emily.
Idly, he wondered what effect Emily’s perfect stance had on her figure. Did it tilt her breasts forward? He couldn’t tell; summer and winter, she always wore suits. Tweed, for the most part, like this one. Brown tweed, to match her brown hair, with the jacket closed so that her figure was pretty much a mystery. For all he knew, her breasts were the size of Ping-Pong balls. Or casaba melons. Who knew? Who cared? Not him. Yes, it was a definite pleasure to work with a woman who was both efficient and unattractive.
“I mean it,” he said. “You’re the best P.A. I’ve ever had.”
Emily cleared her throat. “In that case, sir…”
“Yes?” Jake grinned. Evidently, the raise he’d just given her wasn’t enough. That surprised him a little; Emily was never pushy but if she thought she deserved more money, she could have it. “Give yourself two hundred more a week. Is that better?”
A light blush suffused her cheeks. “One hundred is fine, Mr. McBride.” She stepped back, her chin lifted, her eyes on his. “But I would much prefer to be called your E.A. instead of your P.A.”
“Huh?”
“Your executive assistant, instead of your personal assistant. It’s a more accurate description of my duties.”
“My exec,” Jake mused. “Well, sure. You want to be called my E.A., that’s fine.”
“Thank you again, sir.”
‘‘You’re welcome.” Jake smiled. “Just as long as you assure me you aren’t changing your title to make your résumé look better.”
“Sir?”
“You’re not thinking of going job-hunting, are you?”
Emily looked horrified. “Certainly not, sir. I merely want an appropriate title.”
Well, well, well. His little sparrow had an ego. Nothing wrong with that. Nothing at all.
“And you deserve it.”
Oh, the sickly-sweet benevolence in his tone. Emily smiled, not an easy thing to do when what she felt like doing was throwing up on Jake McBride’s shiny black shoes. The egotistical goon. If only she could tell him what she thought of him. But she couldn’t. Jobs as good as this one were impossible to find. She had lots of responsibility; the pay was excellent; and, she supposed, as men went, McBride was easy enough to work for. She just wondered if he had any idea, any actual idea, of how invaluable she was to him. Of what a mess he’d be in, without her.
Why wonder? She knew that he didn’t. He was as dense as every other man she’d ever known, as foolishly arrogant as the endless succession of idiots who’d trooped through the house when she was growing up, every last one of them thinking he knew what he was doing and why he was doing it when, in reality, her gorgeous sisters had been leading the jerks around by their…hormones.
Jake McBride was just like those silly stud puppies. He might be rich, he might be handsome—assuming you liked the type, which she certainly didn’t—but he was as much a victim of his hormones as the tongue-tied idiots who’d filled her sisters’ teenaged lives.
His problems with the latest twit was proof of that.
McBride had broken things off. No surprise there. Emily had sensed it coming, long before he had. And, she had to admit, he’d done it with his usual flair. Roses. A little bracelet from Tiffany’s that she knew—after all, she’d placed the order—set him back six thousand dollars. But the brunette with the ditzy name wouldn’t, couldn’t, accept The End. She sent gifts. Notes. She phoned. She’d even taken to dropping by the office.
I’m here to see Jake, she’d whisper, in a voice Marilyn Monroe would have envied.
And Emily would pick up the phone, tell her boss that Miss Carole was here. And McBride would say, oh Lord, just get rid of her, please, Emily.
Emily almost felt sorry for the woman. She certainly didn’t feel sorry for Jake. As if she had nothing better to do than clean up after his messes. Bad enough she’d cleaned up after messes that involved her sisters.
Em, are you sure Billy hasn’t called? Or, Em, I’m so unhappy. Jimmy’s dating another girl. And then, after they both got married, she’d been expected to soothe them through their other disasters. Em, I think Billy’s fooling around. Em, Jimmy just doesn’t love me the way he used to…
They hadn’t learned anything, either, not even after marriages and divorces and affairs…
Ridiculous, the way women set out to snare men and ended up in the trap, themselves.
That had never been what she wanted out of life. A man? A lot of embarrassing slobbering to be endured and then, maybe, a wedding ring and promises of forever-after that wouldn’t even last as long as it took a slice of good-luck wedding cake to go stale, and for what?
For companionship, Emily. For those long winter nights when you think you’ll die if you have to curl up with another book…
Emily bit her lip.
Okay. So, maybe she wasn’t getting any younger. Maybe it might be nice to know what it was like to go on an occasional date. To have some man send her flowers, the way McBride—correction. The way she sent flowers, to his women. It might even be nice to get to see all those elegant New York restaurants from the inside, instead of just telephoning to make reservations for her boss and his latest interest.
What would such an evening be like? To have a man smile across the table at you, have him pick up your hand and bring it to his lips? Even if she really wanted to find out, where would she find a date? Lately, she’d started reading through the Personals in the back of GOTHAM magazine. Just for laughs, of course. She couldn’t imagine ever bringing herself to answer an ad. Or running one. What would she say?
Average-looking mouse searching for gorgeous, sexy, exciting man but will settle for plain, nonsexy, unexciting, av-erage-looking rat…
No. That wouldn’t do at all. Then again, neither would the truth.
Average-looking female interested in average-looking male. Object: to find out what a date is like because said female hasn’t had one in forever. In fact, not since the night of her senior prom, when one of her beautiful sisters conned a would-be boyfriend into being said female’s date and everybody knew it and laughed…
“Emily?”
Okay. That was it. She would run an ad. After all, she wasn’t eighteen anymore. She wasn’t Serena and Angela Taylor’s poor little sister, the one with all the brains and none of the looks. She wasn’t one of Jake McBride’s women, either, with the kind of face and figure men dreamed of, but she could still manage to find herself a date—
“Emily? Are you okay?”
A large, warm hand settled on her shoulder. Emily blinked, focused her eyes on her boss. He was standing a breath away from her, staring at her with a little furrow just between his eyes. And what eyes they were. Dark. Deep. So deep…
“Are you all right? For a minute there, you seemed to drift away.”
“I’m fine,” she said briskly. “Just, uh, just a cold coming on, perhaps.”
His hand slid to her elbow. “Go home,” he said gently, as he propelled her towards the door. “Take a nice hot bath. Make yourself some tea.”
“Honestly, Mr. McBride…”
“Do it,” he said, with a polite, teasing smile, “or I’ll take you home and do it for you.”
An image swam into her head. McBride, in her tiny apartment, so big and masculine against her chintz-covered furniture. McBride, smiling down at her, his hands warm and gentle as he unbuttoned her tweed jacket, unbuttoned her silk blouse. Or, perhaps, his hands not so gentle. Hard, in fact. Rough, maybe, as he ripped the blouse from her and took her into his arms…
Color flooded her face as she stepped back.
“That won’t be necessary, sir. I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself.”
“I know you are,” he said. For one awful minute, she was afraid he was going to pat her on the head. “Now just run along home, Emily. Take that bath, have the tea, pop some vitamin C and get a good night’s rest.”
“But it’s only four forty-five.”
McBride gave her another of those I’m-So-Wonderful-and-You’re-So-Lucky-To-Be-Working-For-Me smiles.
“I can do without you for a little while, I promise. Now, go home. I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Thank you, Mr. McBride.”
“Good night, Emily.”
“Good night, sir.”
Jake shut the door and sat down at his desk. Damn, what dedication. He’d almost had to carry Emily out of the office. Well, that would have been simple enough. She was small. Slender. She’d be light, just like one of those little sparrows. He could carry Emily up the steps in his duplex, to his bedroom, set her down on her feet and find out just what, exactly, lay hidden under all those woolly layers of clothing…
He frowned, pulled a blank pad towards him. What crazy thoughts. Jake chuckled softly. Amazing, the things a man’s brain could conjure up at the end of a long day. Better to spend the next couple of hours profitably, writing some memos to leave on Emily’s desk for her to tackle first thing in the morning.
He worked for a while, went from the memos to sketching out an idea that had just come to him about that meeting in San Diego…
A knock sounded on the door.
Jake looked up, then checked his watch. It was after five. Emily was gone. Nobody else would…
Somebody would.
Brandi, he thought unhappily. She’d called earlier, when Emily was at lunch. He’d picked up the phone just as the answering machine did and he’d heard that little whisper that had once driven him crazy with lust and now just drove him crazy, begging him to see her tonight.
The knock came again. Maybe if he just sat it out, pretended he wasn’t here…
“Jake?”
The door swung open. Jake, caught between deciding whether to duck for cover or tell Brandi to get lost, looked up and grinned in surprise.
“Pete?”
Pete Archer, a guy he’d worked with his first year in New York, opened the door wider and stepped inside.
“Jake, you old son of a gun. What’s the matter? You afraid I’m a bill collector or something?”
Jake got to his feet. “Or something.” He came forward and the men shook hands. They’d never been close friends but it was great to see someone from the past. “Why didn’t you call me? If I’d known you were going to be in town, I’d have rolled out the red carpet.”
“Didn’t know it, until the last minute.” Pete smiled. “You look like life’s treating you well.”
“You, too.” Jake grinned, gave Pete a light jab to the biceps. “How long will you be in town?”
“Just overnight. I have to be back in Chicago tomorrow morning.”
“Too bad. I have a business dinner lined up. Let me call the guy and—”
“No, no, I understand. How about drinks? You have time for that?”
“Great idea. Want to go out, or have something here?”
“Here would be cool. Got any ale?”
Jake laughed. “Some things never change, huh? Ale, it is.”
He went to his built-in mini fridge, took out a couple of bottles and opened them. Pete waved away his offer of a glass. The two men sat across from each other, leaned close enough to clink bottles, took long, thirsty swallows, then smiled.
“So,” Jake said, “how’re things?”
“Couldn’t be better. And you?”
“Terrific.” Jake sighed. “Well, they would be, if…” He leaned forward, across the desk. “You know why I didn’t answer when you knocked? I thought you were a woman.”
Pete laughed. “Don’t tell me you’ve decided you’re giving up babes. I wouldn’t believe it.”
“Let me amend that,” Jake said, smiling. “I thought you were a particular woman.”
“Ah. A bowwow who’s developed a thing for you, huh?”
“No, she’s a definite ten.” Jake grinned, but his grin faded. “But the thing ran its course, you know? She began to hear wedding bells.”
“Oh, yeah. I know what that’s like.” Pete drank some ale. “So, you tried to end it?”
“I’m still trying. Trouble is, she’s determined. She calls. She sends me notes. She shows up at my apartment, she shows up here…”
“Well, you have a secretary, don’t you? Let her do the dirty work.”
“I have an executive assistant,” Jake said, smiling and lifting his eyebrows.
“What’s that mean?”
“It means I’m lucky enough to employ a woman whose only goal in life is to make me happy.”
“Jake, you dog, you! You stocked the front desk with a hot babe!”
‘‘Sorry to burst the bubble, pal, but Emily’s as far from being a hot babe as Arnold Schwarzenegger.”
Pete sighed. “Too bad. I figured her for the fox I just saw at the elevator.”
“Oh, hell,” Jake said, and the color drained from his face. “Brunette?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Big brown eyes?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Great legs? A body meant to send a man straight over the edge?”
Pete shrugged, took a drink of his ale. “Definitely and probably.”
“Probably?” Jake gave a forlorn laugh. “You’d have to be blind or dead not to notice Brandi’s figure.”
“Brandi?”
“Yeah. The lady who’s decided I’m the love of her life. I half-figured she might show up here tonight.”
“Well, she did. And the only reason I didn’t notice her shape was because it was hidden under a layer of tweed.”
“Yeah, well…” Jake stared at Pete. “Tweed? Brandi would sooner be caught during rush hour in a New York subway than in tweed.”
“Either her tastes have changed, or the woman I saw wasn’t…Who’d you say?”
“Brandi,” Jake said automatically. He frowned. “Emily wears tweed.”
“And Emily would be…?”
“I told you about her. She’s my P.A. My E.A.” Jake thought for a second, then shook his head. “Forget it. No way could it have been Emily. I mean, she’s great. She’s efficient. She’s capable. She’s the best assistant I’ve ever had.” He smiled. “But a looker? No way.”
Pete gave a dramatic sigh. “See, that’s where we differ, Jake. I’ve learned to refine my tastes.”
Jake grinned. “Sure.”
“No, I’m serious. I look beyond the obvious.” He leaned forward, gave a leering smirk. “Besides, you know what they say. Still waters run deep.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning,” Pete said smugly, “if a babe doesn’t think she’s a looker, a guy can get into her pants a lot easier.”
Jake shot to his feet. “Not into Emily’s, he can’t.” His voice was cold; he could feel the sudden tension in his muscles.
“Hey.” Pete stood up, too. “We don’t even know it’s Emily we’re talking about.”
“I’m just making a point, Archer. Forget about getting into Emily’s pants.”
“Yeah, but it’s probably not even…Jake. I didn’t…” Pete took a breath. “Listen man, no offence.”
“None taken,” Jake said, and even he could hear the lie in his words. Well, why wouldn’t he be upset? Emily was a fantastic asset. He wasn’t about to end up with a messed-up assistant on his hands. Anyway, it was all academic, he thought, and forced himself to smile. “Not that it matters. That couldn’t have been Emily. She isn’t a looker. You don’t know my Emily but I can tell you, my Emily is average—”
“Your Emily isn’t ‘your Emily,’ Mr. McBride!”
Both men swung around. Emily stood in the open doorway, her face pale except for two spots of crimson high on her cheeks.
“Oh, hell,” Jake said softly. “Emily. Emily, listen, I didn’t mean—”
“You did mean. And I don’t mind being called ‘average.’ It’s what I am.” Her hands bunched into fists, fists she hid in the folds of her tweed skirt. “But I am not your property. You may assume I have no life away from this office, but that does not give you the right to—”
“Emily,” Jake said unhappily, “please—”
“Emily.” Pete’s voice was soft. Smarmy, Jake thought. Gentle, Emily thought, and looked at him. “Emily,” Pete said again, and smiled, “I’m sorry we have to meet under such difficult circumstances.”
“You two were talking about me,” she said stiffly.
Pete walked towards her. “We were, yes. I was telling Jake—Mr. McBride—that I’d just passed you in the hall.”
Jake made a choked sound. “You mean, the woman you were talking about really was—”
“And that I wanted to meet you,” Pete went on, as if Jake hadn’t spoken. He held out his hand. “My name is Pete Archer.”
Emily ignored his outstretched hand. “Why did you want to meet me?”
“Because I’d like to take you to dinner.”
“Nonsense.” Jake’s voice was too loud, too sharp. He knew it but hell, this was his office and his exec. What right did Archer have to…“She can’t go with you,” he said, as he stalked towards the two of them. “She doesn’t want to go with you. She—”
“I’d be delighted,” Emily said firmly.
“Emily, don’t be a fool. Pete’s not really interested in…” Jake bit his lip. If looks could kill, the one she’d just given him would have left him stone-cold and on the way to the mortuary. “For heaven’s sake, where’s your common sense? You, and this man…?”
She shot him a look more vicious than the first, and then she swung towards Pete.
“Shall we go, Mr. Archer?”
“Archer,” Jake roared, “you son of a—”
“The lady’s made her decision, Jake.”
“I have, indeed. You pay my salary, Mr. McBride, but you do not own me. I do as I wish after office hours. If I want to go out on a date, I will.” Her eyes narrowed. “Unless you’d rather I tendered my resignation…?”
Emily waited. Pete did, too. And Jake, totally helpless for the first time in his adult life, could do nothing except stand in the center of his office and watch his former friend and his little brown sparrow flutter her wings as she headed for a night on the town.
CHAPTER TWO
THE city awoke to snow the next morning.
Heavy wet flakes drifted down from the skies.
Fine, Jake thought. Let the sky turn to lead, for all he cared. He was in a mood almost as foul as the weather. Snow that would soon turn to gray slush was just about right this morning.
The doorman greeted him cheerfully. Jake muttered a response, waved off his offer of a taxi. Traffic in Manhattan always verged on gridlock; it would be even worse in weather like this. Besides, walking to work might be a good idea. He figured that the cold air, a brisk pace as he headed crosstown, would improve his mood.
It didn’t.
Some bozo trying to get his truck through a blocked intersection sent a spray of wet, dirty snow flying onto the sidewalk and over Jake’s shoes; a guy on Rollerblades—Rollerblades, on a day like this—damned near rode him down.
By the time he reached Rockefeller Center, Jake’s mood had gone from glum to grim. He gave a cursory look around as he strode into the building but he knew Brandi would be a no-show on a day like this. Not even her sudden determination to keep their affair alive would stand up to the possibility that her hair or makeup might get damaged. It was an unkind thought but, dammit, he was in an unkind frame of mind.
That was what staying awake half the night did to a man. Left him ill-tempered and mean-natured, especially when there was no good reason for him to have spent more time pacing the floors than sleeping.
It had to be the caffeine, Jake thought, as he stepped from the elevator onto the pale gray marble floor and walked to his office. The health food pundits made him edgy, with all their doomsaying. He liked coffee, and steak, and if he’d ever accidentally consumed a bite of tofu in his life, he didn’t want to know it.
Still, what else could have kept him up until almost dawn, if it wasn’t caffeine? Or maybe that Chinese takeout he’d picked up for supper had done him in. Not that he’d eaten much of it. Jake frowned as he reached his office. A hell of a night he’d put in, not eating, not sleeping…
The kid who delivered the mail came skidding around the corner.
“Morning, Mr. McBride,” he said cheerfully. “Here’s your mail.”
Jake, in no mood for cheerful banter or a stack of mail, scowled at the kid.
“What’s the matter?” he growled. “Don’t you deliver it anymore?”
“I am delivering it. See?” The kid shoved an armload of stuff at Jake, who took it grudgingly.
“This goes to my P.A., not to me.”
“Your what?”
“My P.A. My E.A….” Jake’s scowl deepened. “My secretary,” he said. “You’re supposed to hand her the mail.”
“Oh. Emily.”
For reasons unknown, Jake felt his hackles rise. “Her name,” he said coldly, “is Miss Taylor.”
“Uh-huh. Emily, like I said.” The kid grinned. “Nice lady. Pretty eyes.”
What was this? Did every male who walked in the door have to make an appraisal of Emily? What about her eyes? She had two of them. So what? Most people did.
“I always hand the mail right to her. But the door’s locked. It looks like nobody’s home.”
Jake’s scowl turned to a look of disbelief. He shot back the cuffs of his Burberry and his suit jacket, checked his watch and looked at the kid.
“Don’t be ridiculous. Of course someone is home.” He grabbed the doorknob. “It’s after nine. Miss Taylor’s always at her desk by—”
The knob didn’t move. The kid was right. The door was locked.
Jake’s mood, already in the cellar, began digging its way towards China. He shifted the armload of envelopes and magazines, dug out his keys and let himself into his office.
“If Emily is sick or something,” the kid said, “when you talk to her, tell her that Tommy sends—”
Jake slammed the door, stalked across the office and dumped the mail on Emily’s desk. It was, as always, neat as a pin. Even when she was seated behind it, not so much as a paper clip was ever out of place. Still, he could tell she wasn’t there. Her computer monitor stared at him with a cold black eye. The office lights were off, too, and there was no wonderful aroma of fresh coffee in the air.
E.A. or not, Emily had no feminist compunction against making coffee every morning.
Jake turned on the lights, marched into his private office, peeled off his wet coat and dumped it on the back of his chair.
Sick? Emily?
“Ha,” he said.
She hadn’t been sick a day since she’d come to work for him. Yeah, she’d said she felt as if she were coming down with a cold yesterday afternoon but it couldn’t have been much of a cold because not an hour later, she’d leaped at Archer’s invitation to dinner like a trout going after a fly.
“Sick,” Jake muttered.
Sleeping off her big night out, was more like it. Who knew where Archer had taken her for dinner, or what hour he’d gotten her home? Who knew how much wine she’d had to drink or how late she’d gone to bed or if she’d gone to bed at all…
Or if she’d been alone when she got into it.
Not that he cared. What she did, who she did it with, was her business. He’d tell her that, when—if—she deigned to show up this morning. The only question was, should he tell it to her before or after he told her she was fired?
From executive assistant to unemployed, in less than twenty-four hours.
The thought did wonders for his disposition. But why wait for Miss Taylor to put in an appearance? He could just as easily fire her right now.
Jake smiled coldly as he reached for the telephone but his smile changed, went back to being a frown. What was her number? For that matter, where did she live? In the city? In the suburbs? In one of the outlying boroughs? He had all that information. She’d filled out a form when she’d come to work for him. Actually, she’d filled out a zillion forms, thanks to all the tax information everybody required, but he’d be damned if he could remember anything about Emily’s private life.
Why would he? Until Archer stirred things up, she’d been the perfect employee. He’d never had reason to think about her, once he was away from the office. And now he was wasting time, thinking about her instead of sitting down and doing all the things that needed doing today. Not that he was actually “thinking” about Emily. Where she’d gone with Archer. Whether she’d had fun. Whether Archer had come on to her. Whether she was late because, even now, she was lying in the bastard’s arms…
“Son of a bitch,” Jake said, under his breath.
He thumbed open his address book, ran his finger down the list of T’s. There it was, Emily Taylor, the phone number written in Emily’s own, careful hand. Her address was there, too. She lived in Manhattan. Good, he thought grimly as he punched the phone number into the keypad. Then, she could damned well get her tail in here, pronto, and never mind what she was in the middle of doing with Archer.
Let her trudge through the snow. Then, he’d fire her. In person, where he could watch her face become pale as he told her to get out of his life.
Jake waited, tapping his foot impatiently as the phone rang. And rang. And—
“Good morning, Mr. McBride.”
“I’m happy you think so, Miss Taylor,” he said coldly…and suddenly realized that Emily’s voice wasn’t coming from the phone in his hand, it was coming from behind him. Slowly, he put down the telephone and turned around.
She stood in the doorway. Snowflakes glittered in her hair—brown hair, he thought, but with a warm, golden glow that made a man think of dark maple syrup on a winter morning….
Jake’s mouth turned down.
“You’re late.”
“I’m aware of that, sir. And I’m sorry.”
She didn’t sound sorry. Not the least bit. There was a chill to her voice that had nothing to do with the weather.
“And you’re late because…?”
“The trains are running behind schedule.”
“Really.” Jake smiled thinly and folded his arms. “I wonder if that could be because it’s snowing.”
He was gratified to see a light flush color her cheeks. “I’m sure it is, Mr. McBride.”
“In which case, Miss Taylor, you must also know that the trains always run late when it snows. Half the city runs late—or is that news to you?”
Emily looked down and brushed the snow from her coat. Her ankle-length, tweed coat, Jake thought irritably. Was tweed the only item in her wardrobe? Was he ever going to see her legs?
“I know what snow does to New York,” she said calmly. She lifted her eyes to his. “I allowed for that contingency.”
“Ah. You allowed for it.” Jake glanced pointedly at his watch. “Interesting, since you’re almost an hour late.”
Damn, he sounded like an ass. Well, so what? He was the boss. He was entitled to sound like an ass, if he wanted.
“I’m twenty minutes late, sir.” Emily still sounded calm but there was a bite to the “sir.” “And I did allow for the weather. I left my apartment twenty minutes earlier than usual. If I hadn’t, I’d be later than I already am.”
“Does that mean you got out of bed twenty minutes earlier than usual?”
Emily’s eyebrows brows rose. “I beg your pardon?”
“It’s a simple question. I asked if you set your alarm back twenty minutes.”
“I don’t see what that has to do with anything.”
Neither did Jake. What he really wanted to ask was if she’d had to set the alarm back or if something else had awakened her this morning. Somebody. Archer, for instance, moving above her, in her bed…
Hell!
Jake frowned, cleared his throat, went behind his desk and sat down. He reached for his appointment book and looked at the page. Letters and numbers danced before his eyes.
“Never mind,” he said brusquely.
“Never mind, indeed.” Her voice was frigid now; he could almost see the icicles forming on each word. “Perhaps we need to establish some boundaries, Mr. McBride. My private life—”
“So you said, last evening.” Jake waved his hand in dismissal. “I left the mail on your desk. Go through it, see if anything needs my immediate attention and then come back and I’ll dictate some notes.”
She hesitated. He didn’t look up but he didn’t have to. He could all but feel her counting to ten, taking deep breaths, doing what she could to hang onto her composure. Well, wasn’t he doing the same thing? The nerve of her, holding him up for a pay raise and a new title one day and coming in late the next.
“Of course, Mr. McBride.”
The door snicked shut. Jake looked up, glowered at it, and closed his appointment book.
Of course, Mr. McBride, he thought furiously. As if nothing had changed, as if she hadn’t shown up late, been insubordinate, done exactly the opposite of what he’d told her to do and gone off with a man who was only after one thing…
Jake closed his eyes. “Hell,” he said, but with no heat whatsoever.
Emily was right. Her life, outside of the office, wasn’t his business. Who she dated was up to her. What she did with who she dated was up to her, too. Why should he care, as long as she did her work?
Still, it was only human to wonder where she’d gone last night and whether she’d had a good time. He could just ask her. He’d known Emily for almost a year now. They were friends. Well, they were business associates. And he’d been the one who’d put Archer in her path.
Was it so strange he should be vaguely curious about how things had gone last night?
Emily, he could say, I was just wondering, did you have a nice evening? Where’d Archer take you for dinner? Did he take you home? Did you invite him in? What time did he leave?
He did leave, didn’t he?
Jake rubbed his hands over his face.
Not only was her private life none of his business, but even thinking about it was none of his business.
The kid was right, though. She did have nice eyes.
A muscle knotted in Jake’s jaw. He wondered if Archer had been right, too. About her legs. Were they great? He couldn’t tell, not with that coat going straight down to her feet, and he’d certainly never noticed her legs in the past. Why would he? Emily was his P.A. Check that. She was his E.A. She was a well-oiled, well-educated, well-paid employee. Her looks were none of his business.
She was a quiet little sparrow.
His little sparrow.
Jake shoved the appointment book halfway across his desk, swiveled his chair towards the window and gave the falling snow the benefit of his scowl. He knew it was foolish to bristle, but bristling was precisely what he felt like doing.
And it was all Emily’s fault.
Emily took off her coat, shook it briskly and hung it in the closet. Then she sat, bent down and began tugging at her left boot while she told herself that bristling would get her nowhere.
Still, bristling was exactly what she felt like doing.
And it was all McBride’s fault.
The great man was not in a good mood this morning. Too bad. Perhaps he’d had another run-in with the twit, desperate to tell him how wonderful he was.
“Idiot,” Emily said, and gave the stubborn boot a whack.
Or was he still annoyed that she hadn’t let him tell her what to do last night? Don’t go, he’d said, as if he owned her, and the hell of it was she should have listened to him because her evening with his pal had been a disaster. A total, unmitigated disaster. Mr. Peter-Aren’t-You-Fortunate-To-Be-With-Me Archer was so full of himself it was a wonder there’d been room for her at their all-too-cozy table for two in the restaurant he’d chosen.
Emily hung her head and groaned.
Oh, what an awful evening. The wine he’d ordered, even after she’d politely declined a drink. The way he’d leaned close and breathed moistly on her neck. The way he’d tried to feed her a bite of his meal from his fork. Yuck. As if she would want to take the fork into her mouth after it had been in his. And then all that smarmy, double entendre stuff which she’d been too dumb to recognize as smarmy and double entendre, until the waiter happened by just as Archer, the slimeball, said something that made the hapless waiter almost pour the coffee into her lap.
Emily attacked the boot again.
And this man, she reminded herself grimly, this—this human octopus, was Mr. Jake McBride’s friend. His oldest, dearest, closest friend.
So much for thinking her boss was a nice guy even if he was dense. Nice guys didn’t have lifelong buddies like Peter Archer.
Damn this boot! Why wouldn’t it come off?
To think of McBride’s gall, that he was angry with her. Whatever the cause of it, how dare he take it out on her? She’d been, what, fifteen minutes late? When she thought of all the times she’d come in early without McBride so much as saying, Why, Emily, how good of you to be here before nine.
But why would he? She was his personal property. He expected her to be there, at his beck and call.
“The Emperor McBride,” she said, under her breath, and tugged harder. What was with these boots? They might as well be glued on.
“Uh,” she said, and tugged again. “Uh…”
“Having a problem, Emily?”
She sat up so fast that her heel slammed against the carpeted floor. McBride was standing in the doorway, watching her. His arms were folded and one of his dark eyebrows was lifted in what looked like amusement.
“No problem, sir,” she replied briskly.
Of course it was a problem. She’d been bent over, tugging at her boots, and her face was flushed with rosy color. Her hair—a few strands of it, anyway—had come loose of its clip at the nape of her neck and curled gently at her ears. Emily’s hair was curly? He’d never noticed. She always wore it back, and straight.
Jake frowned.
“Here,” he said, advancing towards her, “let me help you.”
“It isn’t necessary. I can—”
Too late. He was already squatting before her, lifting her foot into his lap and tugging.
“Really, Mr. McBride…”
Jake pulled off the boot. No wonder it had been hard to remove. Her boots were made of thin black leather and she was wearing heavy socks. Heavy wool socks, over feet that were attached to long, slender legs.
Oh, yeah. Archer, the bastard, had called it right. Her legs were good. Excellent, as a matter of fact.
“Thank you,” Emily said.
Jake lifted his eyes to her face. “You’re welcome.” He cleared his throat, looked down at the foot, still in his hands, and tried to think of something intelligent to say. “You’re wearing socks.” Brilliant, he thought trying not to wince, just brilliant, McBride. “I mean—you’re wearing—”
“Socks,” she said stiffly. “Wool socks. Double knit. I guess that’s the reason the boots are so hard to get off. I wore them because I thought I might have to walk at least part of the way home, if the snow keeps up, and these boots aren’t really warm…”
Her voice trailed to silence. Why was she telling him all this? He was holding her foot in his hands, looking at it as if he’d never seen a foot before. And she was explaining why she was wearing wool socks, as if it mattered.
“Socks,” he murmured, and looked up at her again. He had such a strange look on his face. That darkness in his eyes.
Maybe he thought she was going to walk around the office in heavy wool socks all day.
“Yes. But I’ll take them off. I have panty hose underneath…”
Oh, good. Now she was telling him about her underwear. Emily colored and pulled her foot from Jake’s hands.
“Thank you again,” she said briskly. “I’ll get to the mail immediately.”
“Not without taking that other boot off.”
“I can manage.”
“I doubt it.”
“Honestly, Mr. McBride—”
Jake knew he could get the boot off with one quick tug but considering the condition she’d put him in, with that comment about her underwear, he figured it was best to take his time.
“There,” he said, when it was safe. He dropped the boot beside its mate and rose to his feet. “All done.”
Emily nodded. “Thank you,” she said again.
“You’re welcome.”
He looked as if he were going to say something more. A few words of apology, maybe, for the way he’d snapped at her before? No such luck. He gave her a quick nod, swung away and went back inside his office.
The door closed silently behind him.
Emily sat motionless. Her feet were tingling. Not the way they’d tingle if the circulation were coming back after they’d been freezing cold. She’d felt that, once, when she was a little girl and she’d missed the school bus and ended up walking home in the snow. No, they were tingling in a very strange way. As if they were still in McBride’s lap. As if his big hands were still holding them. As if he were still looking up at her with his eyes all dark and hungry…
The room seemed to tilt.
Emily dragged air into her lungs. Then she took off her socks, slipped her feet into the shoes she’d brought with her, and got to work.
Hours later, she sighed, blinked owlishly at her computer screen and pushed back from her desk. It was almost one o’clock. Time for lunch, she thought, and rose from her chair. She gave a ladylike stretch, opened the drawer to get her purse…and saw the copy of GOTHAM, still opened to the personal ads.
She made a face, picked up the magazine and dumped it into the wastebasket.
“Goodbye and good riddance,” she said, and dusted off her hands.
Last night had cured her of even thinking about going out for an evening with a man she didn’t know anything about.
On the other hand, choosing a date from the Personals would be different.
She might not really “know” the man, but she wouldn’t go into it blindfolded. At least, she’d have some information about her date beforehand. And she wouldn’t have to waste an entire evening. She could suggest they meet for lunch, or coffee, or for nothing more complicated than a walk in the park. She could control the character of this kind of date and not end up finding out, as she had last night, that the only thing the man in question wanted was to get into her pants.
Emily plucked the discarded magazine from the wastebasket, opened it and laid it on her desk.
Handsome, sexy, successful male, 40, D, Br & Br, ISO beautiful, sexy female, preferably br&br, too…
Handsome, successful, sexy, Romeo, 33, S, BL and bl, looking for his beautiful, sexy Juliet…
Sexy, handsome guy, 38, ND, blond and blue, very successful, ISO sexy, beautiful lady, preferably Br&B…
It was like reading a code. ISO for “in search of.” D for “divorced,” S for “single,” ND for “newly divorced.” B’s for hair and eye color. Unless you had red hair. Or gold. Or…
Oh, this was ridiculous. Advertisements by men for women. Reading them was a joke. They were so phony. If every guy who was dateless in New York was sexy, easy on the eyes and successful, why were they running these ads? She knew better than to fall for all those adjectives. In fact, if she had to come up with the name of a gorgeous, sexy, successful man, the only one she’d be able to muster was that of Jake Mc…
Emily’s heartbeat stumbled. Quickly, she grabbed the telephone, punched in the Personals number, listened impatiently as a recorded female voice offered available options.
To reply to a LoveNote, the voice said nasally, please enter the number of the LoveNote you’ve selected.
Emily entered a number. She waited, heard a husky male voice say “hello,” listened to what was, more or less, a repeat of the ad in the magazine, and waited for the ad to end and the tone to sound. At last, it did. It was time to leave a message for Mr. Handsome, Sexy and Successful, 40, D, brown and brown.
Her mouth was dry as sand. She thought, fleetingly, of the sad red geranium sitting at home on her kitchen table, which she kept forgetting to water…
Beeeep!
Emily swallowed, licked her lips and took a breath. Sound sexy, she told herself.
“Good afternoon.” Great. Just great. She sounded about as sexy as a Girl Scout trying to sell cookies. “Hi,” she said, trying for perky, if not sexy. “Uh, I’m calling to say—to say that I think I might be just the Brrr and Brrr—uh, the Brown and Brown you’re looking for.” She hesitated, checked the ad again. Sexy, it said. And beautiful. Emily chewed on her lip. “Well, maybe not. I mean, I have brown hair. And brown eyes. But I’m not exactly sexy. Or beautiful.” Her voice cracked. “But, really, is that so awful? ‘Beautiful’ means having qualities that delight the senses. I know that because I had to look it up once, in the dictionary. I wanted the exact meaning because I was writing a term paper on Shelley. The poet, you know? Anyway, I’m just saying that beauty is in the eye of the beholder and handsome probably is, too. So even if you’re not as handsome as you say you are, that’s okay because I’m not…” She groaned, put her hand to her forehead. “As for sexy, well, what does ‘sexy’ mean, anyway? Different things in different cultures. For example, when I was studying anthro, I learned that sexual attractiveness varies enormously from tribe to tribe in the Amazon. Some view nudity as the norm. Others, perhaps after they’ve had some contact with the outside world, disdain nudity but see nothing wrong with indulging in coitus with a variety of partners. There’s a particular pygmy tribe—”
A large male hand slammed down on the telephone cradle, breaking the connection. Emily jerked her head up. McBride was standing over her, looking down and glaring.
“Just what in the Sam Hill are you doing?”
Dear God, Emily thought, what was I doing? The telephone buzzed in her ear like an angry bee.
“Miss Taylor?”
“You’ve—you’ve always called me Emily.”
“A mistake,” Jake said coldly, “considering that I’m starting to realize I don’t know the first thing about you.”
He folded his arms over his chest. It was, she thought foolishly, a formidable chest. He’d taken off his suit jacket, loosened his tie, undone the top button of his white shirt and rolled back his sleeves. He did that often; he’d once said he felt choked in a suit and tie. Why was it she’d never before noticed that his arms were dusted with dark, silky-looking hair? That his chest was the width of The Great Wall of China?
“Well, Miss Taylor? What were you doing?”
Emily put the phone down, folded her hands in her lap and tried not to think about how long he might have been standing there.
“I was—I was making a call,” she said carefully.
“To whom?”
“To…” She frowned as she looked up at him again. “It was a personal call, Mr. McBride.”
“Yes.” Jake shot her a predatory smile. “I imagined it was. Somehow or other, I didn’t think you’d be discussing pygmy sex practices with any of my clients.”
She could feel the heat flash into her face. “I was not discussing pygmy sex practices.”
“What were you discussing, then?”
“Would you step back, please,” she said coolly, “so I can stand up?”
“Answer the question, Miss Taylor.”
“I don’t have to.” She could feel her courage rushing back, swirling through her blood in a wave of heat. “As I said, it was personal.”
“Did you ask me if you could make personal calls?”
She blinked. “No. No, I didn’t. But you never said—”
“You never asked.”
Emily glowered up at Jake. “I’ll pay for the call,” she snapped.
“I don’t want your money. I want to know why you were talking about pygmy sex practices, and with whom.”
“Dammit!” She shoved her chair back and shot to her feet, her flushed, angry face lifted to Jake’s. “I wasn’t talking about pygmy sex practices. I told you that. I was leaving a message on an answering machine.”
“An answering machine at the Museum of Natural History?”
God, that infuriating smirk on his face! How had she survived it, all this time?
“An answering machine at a man’s apartment,” she said tightly. Well, it wasn’t a lie. It wasn’t an apartment but Handsome, Sexy and Successful would probably phone in for his messages from his apartment.
“Well, well, well.” Jake’s dark green eyes narrowed. “You’re just full of surprises, Miss Taylor. No wonder ol’ Pete was so eager to take you to dinner last night. He read you just right.”
Emily flung her hands on her hips. “And what is that supposed to mean, Mr. McBride?”
“Never mind what it’s supposed to mean. I’m waiting to hear who you were phoning.”
“Oh, for goodness sake!” She swung away, grabbed the magazine and shoved it into Jake’s flat belly. “You won’t be satisfied until you wring the truth out of me, will you? Okay. Okay, here’s the truth, McBride, and I hope you enjoy getting the last laugh.”
She swung away from him, trembling with anger and humiliation. She could hear Jake reading the ads aloud in a soft, disbelieving voice. There was a long silence before he spoke again.
“You were answering an ad in the personals?”
“Yes.”
“You were telling one of these men you’d go out with him?”
“Yes.”
“You were going to meet a stranger, an asshole who identifies himself as sexy, successful and handsome with…What in hell is Brrr and Brrr? A description of the weather? A new liqueur?”
Emily spun around and faced Jake. Her eyes were huge, her face flushed, and he fought back the sudden, insane desire to take her in his arms and soothe her.
“It’s brown hair and brown eyes,” she snarled. “And for your information, lots of people meet through ads like this.”
“To do what?” Jake said, his eyes getting that narrowed, intense look again.
“To—to go out. On a date. To have dinner together. Take in a movie. Just—just spend a little time with another person…”
Her voice broke. Jake looked bewildered. She thought, for a second, he was reaching towards her and she shook her head and stepped back.
“I don’t expect you to understand. You’re never home alone, unless you want to be. You never have to look at the calendar and say, look at that, it’s the weekend and I don’t have a thing to do except clean my apartment and wash my hair.”
Holy hell, Jake thought.
“That’s what this is all about?” he said slowly. “That you don’t date?”
“That’s what I just said.”
“You don’t have any, uh, any men in your life?”
Emily’s chin lifted to a dangerous angle. “Are we going to have to go through this, line by line?”
“So, that’s why you accepted Archer’s invitation last night? Because you’re lonely?”
“I’m not lonely,” she said defiantly. “I have friends. Hobbies. I have a canary.”
“You’re lonely,” he said. “That’s why you went out with that snake.”
“Are you deaf, Mr. McBride? I am not…” Emily frowned. “You think he’s a snake?”
“Of course.”
“That’s what you’ve always thought?”
“Yes.” Well, it was true if you figured “always” referred to yesterday evening, when Archer had sneaked up on Emily. “I tried to tell you that, but you wouldn’t listen.”
“You didn’t try to tell me anything, except how to run my life.” She cocked her head. “Pete Archer said you and he are best friends.”
“Ha.”
“He said you’ve known each other forever.”
“Only if forever means a year working for the same brokerage firm, a long time back.”
Emily puffed out a breath. “He lied to me.” She looked at Jake. “You’re right, by the way. He is a snake.”
Jake’s face darkened. “Did he—”
“Oh, I can handle men like Pete Archer.” A smile ghosted across her lips. “When I was sixteen, one of my sisters dated a guy who was into karate. He taught me some great moves. I still remember them.”
“Ah.” Jake moistened his lips. “Let me get this straight. You, uh, you’d like to date. To meet some nice guys and go out. Is that it?”
What was the sense in trying to pretend otherwise? Jake McBride knew virtually everything about her now, from her shoe size to her sexless sex life.
“Yes.”
“Well.” He ran his hand through his hair again, turned away from her, paced back and forth, back and forth. “I’ve got it,” he said, and swung towards her. “I know a lot of people. Some of them are nice guys, too. I’ll introduce you.”
“Oh, no. I couldn’t ask you to—”
“You haven’t asked, I’ve volunteered. Look, it’s no big deal.”
Emily collapsed into her chair. “What are you going to do,” she said, with a nervous laugh, “go to a meeting and say, ‘oh, by the way, my personal assistant would like to have a date this weekend’?”
Jake grinned at her. “My executive assistant,” he said. “And I’ll be subtle, I promise. For instance…well, I go to lots of cocktail parties. Business stuff. From now on, you’ll go with me.”
“Mr. McBride, really—”
“I’ll introduce you as my good right hand, you’ll circulate, network…Emily, don’t look at me that way. It’ll work, I know it will.”
“It won’t. I’m—I’m not good at this male-female thing, Mr. McBride.”
“Jake.”
“Jake,” she said, because it was silly, really, to go on with such formality now. “Look, I appreciate your offer but it’s pointless. I’ll feel ridiculous.”
“More ridiculous than you’d have felt if you’d left your number on that answering machine?”
Emily bit her lip. “Even if something came of it…For one thing, I don’t know how to make small talk. ”
“There’s nothing to it. I’ll teach you.”
“Yes, but…” She waved a hand. “It’s more than that. I don’t dress right. My sisters used to tell me I had no idea of style.”
Jake took a step back, looked her over slowly from head to toe. “We can take care of that with ease.”
“I don’t even know how to—” she blushed “—how to handle the, uh, the end of the evening thing.”
“The…?” He colored. “Oh.”
“Exactly. I mean, it was simple enough, last night. When your friend—”
“Archer’s no friend of mine,” Jake said grimly.
“The point is, when he, uh, when he tried to, you know, kiss me, I just put my hands up, the way you do in karate—”
Jake began to laugh. “I’d have given anything to have seen that.”
“But—but if a man tried to kiss me and I wanted him to, I’d just mess it up. I’d—”
He felt his body tighten. “You mean you’ve never…” He cleared his throat, did a mental ten-count, reminded himself that Emily was a sparrow, not a thrush, and his lifelong preference was for songbirds. “Well,” he said briskly, “never mind. I’ll teach you everything you need to know. How to talk with a man. How to dress for him. How to make him want you, and only you.”
“I don’t know. It all seems to—so—”
“I’ll teach you all you need to know, Emily.” Jake’s voice roughened. “Including how to conduct yourself at the end of the evening.”
Color swept into her face. “I can’t believe I told you that,” she whispered. “I feel so foolish!”
“I’ll teach you,” Jake said gently. He reached down, clasped her shoulders and lifted her to her feet. “You’ll see. I’m an excellent teacher.”
So saying, he bent his head, took Emily’s face in his hands, and covered her mouth with his.
CHAPTER THREE
HIS mouth fit hers, perfectly.
His lips were warm, and dry, and pleasant. No tongue, Emily thought dazedly. None of that disgusting swapping spit stuff that the insufferable Pete Archer had tried last night.
Still, why was McBride kissing her? And why was she letting him? That was a better question.
Because he’d caught her by surprise. Why else? she told herself, and she put her hands against his chest and pulled back from his kiss.
“Mr. McBride,” she said, a little breathlessly, “I really don’t think—”
“Call me Jake,” he said hoarsely but before she could call him anything, he put his arms around her, drew her against him and kissed her again.
The kiss wasn’t the same.
She might have known it wouldn’t be. His lips nudged hers, tugged at hers, moved against hers. And, when she tried to protest, to tell him there was no reason for them to kiss and certainly no reason to kiss like this, he used the moment against her and parted her lips with his.
Emily’s hands came up, flattened against Jake’s chest again.
No, she thought, no, please. No tongue, no spit, no awful wet kiss…
He didn’t take the hint. He went right on with what he was doing, changing the rules, changing the kiss. What he was doing now—angling his mouth differently so that she had to tilt her head back as he slipped the tip of his tongue between her lips—what he was doing was—it was—
Oh, it was wonderful.
The feel of his arms around her. The hardness of his body against hers. The taste of his mouth. His hot mouth. His tongue. The glorious, mind-bending, mind-blowing heat and, yes, the wetness of his kiss…
Emily moaned. She curled her fingers into Jake’s shirt, rose on her toes and pressed herself against him.
Was this what a kiss, a real kiss, was like? Was a man supposed to be able to turn a woman into a mindless, breathless, boneless creature with a kiss? Or did Jake know something other men didn’t?
Not that Emily cared about any of the answers. She only knew that she wanted this feeling to go on forever.
Jake did, too.
It was crazy, to get so turned on by a kiss. But turned on, turned up, turned inside out was what he was, all right, and he was aching for more.
Emily wasn’t just kissing him back, she was making the soft little noises a woman made when she wanted more. Her sweet body was pressing against his—grinding against his. Yes, indeed; there were curves under that boxy tweed jacket and bulky skirt, curves and warm, eager flesh.
And then she moved, and moaned, and Jake gave up thinking. He slid one hand down her spine, cupped her bottom, lifted her into the hardness of his arousal, knotted his hand in her skirt, pushed it up, stroked his hand along her thigh, her hot, silken thigh…
Told you, Archer’s voice whispered smugly, way, way in the back of Jake’s mind. Didn’t I say still waters run deep?
Jake shoved Emily’s skirt down, clasped her arms, tore his mouth from hers and stepped back. She swayed unsteadily, her eyes still shut, her lips rosy and parted.
Desire burned hot in his blood.
She wanted him, desired him, as much as he wanted her. And he wanted to assuage that desire. He wanted to reach out for her again, drag her back into his arms, carry her into his office, kick the door shut and rip away the tweed that hid her from his mouth and from his eyes…
But sanity prevailed. The last thing he wanted was an affair with his P.A. Uh, with his E.A. Hell, the last thing, absolutely the last thing, he wanted was an affair with a little brown sparrow who’d undoubtedly confuse sex with love.
Jake tried to speak, cleared his throat and tried again.
“You see?”
Emily blinked and opened her eyes. They were dark with passion and he felt himself teeter on the brink of that upside-down, inside-out feeling all over again.
He took another step back, shoved his hands into his trouser pockets and knotted them so he wouldn’t be an idiot and reach for her.
“See what?” she croaked.
Jake tried for a nonchalant shrug. “I was just showing you that you don’t have anything to worry about. I can teach you everything you need to know. It’s not a problem.”
Emily touched her fingers to her mouth. The simple action almost brought him to his knees.
“Not a problem at all,” he said, and before she could respond, he went back into his office, fixed his tie and shirt, put on his jacket and coat, strode past her and headed out into the snowstorm for his lunch at the Oak Room…
And tried not to think about the kiss, or the fact that she’d been busy at her desk, fingers flying industriously over the keyboard as if the whole thing had never happened, as he went out the door.
Emily paused in her typing when Jake got back.
She looked up, greeted him politely and told him he’d find some faxes on his desk.
“Thank you,” he said, and went straight into his office.
The door swung shut, and she almost collapsed with relief.
He wasn’t going to mention what had happened. Thank God for that.
She’d worried that the kiss would affect their relationship. Foolish her. She should have known that it wouldn’t. The kiss had meant nothing. Jake had, as he’d explained, been establishing his credentials, that was all.
Evidently, that was the way he always kissed a woman.
No wonder the twit wanted to keep him.
Any woman would. Well, not any woman. She wouldn’t. Jake McBride wasn’t her type at all, no more than she was his, and a kiss wouldn’t change that. Not that he’d kissed her for that reason. To change her mind. To get her interested in him. No, it wasn’t like that and a good thing, too, because she wasn’t interested.
Emily looked at her computer screen. Her fingers had been busy but she’d been typing gibberish.
She took a breath, put her hands in her lap and folded them.
Okay. That was it. Enough. This was ridiculous, every bit of it, starting with Jake’s nonsensical idea of introducing her to eligible men. Eligible for what? Was he going to run a Date My Assistant bureau?
All she’d wanted was to know what it was like to look forward to an occasional date but using your employer as a dating service was totally unacceptable. In the seven years since she’d come to New York, she’d heard of some strange employer-employee arrangements. She knew a secretary who baby-sat for her boss’s golden retrievers on weekends, another who read all the books on the New York Times list, then wrote up one paragraph synopses for the man she worked for so he could sound as if he were well-read. She’d once met a P.A. whose boss baked him cookies. Awful cookies, but the poor guy had never worked up the courage to tell her so.
But a boss who got you dates?
No way.
That was what she’d tell Jake, if he brought up the subject again. There wasn’t a way in the world she was going to let her boss play matchmaker for…
“Emily?”
She looked up. Definitely, the kiss had meant nothing. Jake stood in the doorway between his office and hers. He looked the way he always did. Intense. Focused. Just a little bit forbidding.
The wings of hope fluttered in Emily’s breast. Maybe she wouldn’t have to tell him she was declining his offer. With luck, he might say it first.
“Yes, Mr. McBride?”
“Emily, I’ve given this some thought.”
“Yes?”
“And I’ve decided you should leave.”
The wings of hope faltered, folded and were still. “Leave?”
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Sandra Marton
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: Jake McBride is a self-made millionaire, brilliant at business, talented in bed–and cynical about women. Emily Taylor is his personal assistant, terrific in the office…and an innocent when it comes to the opposite sex!But when Jake teaches Emily how to transform herself from shy secretary into sexy siren, he loses his grip on his legendary cool. If she′s going to lose her virginity, it has to be to him!