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That Boss Of Mine
Elizabeth Bevarly
MEN of the YEAR MAN of the Month"A romantic? Hardly. I'm far too pragmatic to be romantic." - Wheeler Rush, driven-to-distraction CEO Audrey Finnegan was the most clumsy, unfortunate, beautiful and alluring woman Wheeler Rush had ever met. She was also his temporary secretary. His business was on its last legs and his eyes were on hers!True, she'd come into his life - and his office - like a whirling dervish, and made his hormones spin out of control. He knew he should send her packing, but her heart was in the right place and - oh, Lord - for once in his life, so was his… .Some men are made for lovin' - and you'll love our MAN OF THE MONTH!
MEMORANDUM (#u564e7ffb-9a20-5537-8efe-8d7a91b4491f)Letter to Reader (#uaae500ed-b18c-54b4-84da-1c006d1446d5)Title Page (#uc06301db-6f5e-59dc-accd-610c2f6881c5)ELIZABETH BEVARLY, (#ua161e3e9-17d7-5f27-9016-5e5e26280b60)Dedication (#u2f8d8e34-5145-509d-9e45-c2ab5e4d6c39)Chapter One (#ub71dba4c-b36d-5c2e-a414-f1188dc10567)Chapter Two (#ucebf30dc-a116-589a-bfb1-3c19c35d631b)Chapter Three (#uf78a3193-e0a9-54c9-aa50-232d91511692)Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
MEMORANDUM
To: Audrey Finnegan, my most alluring—and temporary—new secretary
From: Wheeler Rush, your slightly confused boss!
Re: I can’t seem to forget you....
Ms. Finnegan,
Attached please find a proposal designed to renew your tenure here indefinitely. Your secretarial skills are somewhat...rusty. Nonetheless, Ms. Finnegan, I find myself unable to get you off my mind.
You see, Ms. Finnegan, the attraction here is not just your sea-green eyes, your ivory complexion—or your body that just won’t quit. It’s the way you’ve taken hold of my heart—and that despite your claim that bad luck seems to follow you wherever you go, I’ve had nothing but good luck since you crashed—um, walked, into my life.
Therefore, I respectfully request that you accept my proposal—and its accompanying engagement ring. You see, Ms. Finnegan, I happen to love you.
Yours sincerely,
Wheeler Rush
Dear Reader,
Silhouette Desire matches August’s steamy heat with six new powerful, passionate and provocative romances.
Popular Elizabeth Bevarly offers That Boss of Mine as August’s MAN OF THE MONTH. In this irresistible romantic comedy, a CEO falls for his less-than-perfect secretary.
And Silhouette Desire proudly presents a compelling new series, TEXAS CATTLEMAN’S CLUB. The members of this exclusive club are some of the Lone Star State’s sexiest, most powerful men, who go on a mission to rescue a princess and find true love! Bestselling author Dixie Browning launches the series with Texas Millionaire, in which a fresh-faced country beauty is wooed by an older man.
Cait London’s miniseries THE BLAYLOCKS continues with Rio: Man of Destiny, in which the hero’s love leads the heroine to the truth of her family secrets. The BACHELOR BATTALION miniseries by Maureen Child marches on with Mom in Waiting. An amnesiac woman must rediscover her husband in Lost and Found Bride by Modean Moon. And Barbara McCauley’s SECRETS! miniseries offers another scandalous tale with Secret Baby Santos.
August also marks the debut of Silhouette’s original continuity THE FORTUNES OF TEXAS with Maggie Shayne’s Million Dollar Marriage, available now at your local retail outlet.
So indulge yourself this month with some poolside reading—the first of THE FORTUNES OF TEXAS, and all six Silhouette Desire titles!
Enjoy!
Joan Marlow Golan
Senior Editor
Please address questions and book requests to:
Silhouette Reader Service
U.S.: 3010 Walden Ave., P.O. Box 1325, Buffalo, NY 14269
Canadian: P.O. Box 609, Fort Erie, Ont L2A 5X3
Elizabeth Bevarly
That Boss of Mine
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ELIZABETH BEVARLY,
who marks her twenty-fifth book with That Boss of Mine, is an honors graduate of the University of Louisville and achieved her dream of writing full-time before she even turned thirty! At heart, she is also an avid voyager who once helped navigate a friend’s thirty-five-foot sailboat across the Bermuda Triangle. Her dream is to one day have her own sailboat, a beautifully renovated older-model forty-two-footer, and to enjoy the freedom and tranquillity seafaring can bring. Elizabeth likes to think she has a lot in common with the characters she creates—people who know love and life go hand in hand. And she’s getting some firsthand experience with motherhood, as well—she and her husband have a four-year-old son, Eli.
For David and Eli,
my good-luck charms
One
Wheeler Rush braced his elbows on the top of his desk, buried his face in his hands and bit back the barrage of obscenities he really, really wanted to shout. Loudly. On the other side of his desk, in the posh office on a very desirable block of Main Street in downtown Louisville—an office for which he’d signed a lease less than nine months ago—stood two men leaving scattered, colossal footprints in their wake. Two men, he noted as he looked up again, whose brawn genes had exceeded their potential.
The larger of the men, the one who had identified himself as Bruno—that was all, just...Bruno—shifted his massive weight from one beefy foot to the other and scratched the back of his head. At least, Wheeler thought it was the back of the man’s head. Having no neck that way, and with all that scruffy hair springing out from the open collar of his shirt, Wheeler supposed it could have been his back the man was scratching.
“Look, buddy,” Bruno said. “We don’ wanna hafta do this, but we got no choice. When you can’t pay the money you owe, this is what happens. It’s that simple.”
“I won’t submit to this kind of terrorism,” Wheeler insisted, feeling much less confident than he sounded. “Leave now, or I’ll call the police.”
“It ain’t terrorism,” Bruno assured him. “This is bidness, plain and simple. You can’t call the cops. You don’ have a leg to stand on.” He cracked his knuckles menacingly, suggesting that Wheeler really wouldn’t have a leg to stand on, once the other man broke it. “You hear what I’m sayin’?” Bruno continued. “Now stand up and move away from the desk. Hey, you brought this on yourself, pal. Be a man about it, for God’s sake.”
Wheeler narrowed his eyes, hating to hear his manhood impugned in such a way. The last thing he wanted to do was submit to these two goons, but what else could he do? Bruno and company had come for a specific purpose, and they weren’t going to leave until their work was complete. Sick to his stomach, he realized he had no choice but to do exactly as they had instructed. He simply should have shown better judgment in the beginning, when he’d gone into business for himself. Instead, he had played too fast and too loose with money that wasn’t his, and now he was going to have to face the consequences.
“Listen, buddy,” Bruno growled again when Wheeler still hadn’t risen, “I’m sorry for your unfortunate professional downturn, but I got a job to do like any other guy, okay? And me and Harry here got a long day ahead of us. Now stand up and move away from the desk. Don’t make us get ugly.”
Wheeler clamped his lips over the retort that threatened to leap from his mouth, then, reluctantly, he stood up and did as Bruno had requested. “Fine,” he muttered a bit more gruffly than he’d intended. He ran a restive hand through his dark brown hair, tugged anxiously on his necktie and jerked his dark suit jacket from the back of his chair. “Let’s just get this over with. Whatever you do, please...don’t get ugly.” Or rather, he amended to himself, uglier.
Bruno and his missing-link companion stepped forward, stretching their arms out fiercely, and instinctively Wheeler flinched and took a step in retreat. When he did, one man grabbed one end of his desk and the second hefted the other end. Then, effortlessly, the two of them lifted the massive, and very expensive, teakwood, art deco piece of furniture and carried it out the door, presumably into the waiting truck that held the rest of Wheeler’s expensive, teakwood, art deco ex-furniture.
He watched the repo men go, and sighed as if they’d just carried out a childhood friend, feetfirst. Now the contents of his desk and filing cabinets would have to remain against the wall in a long row of cardboard boxes cast off from the wine shop below his newly rented apartment.
The apartment, he recalled, that was barely a tenth the size of the elegant, old, brick Victorian he’d called home as recently as a few months ago. The old, brick Victorian on Tony St. James Court, he further reminded himself ruthlessly, that he’d been forced to sell for less than it was worth in an effort to save his fast-sinking business. Now Wheeler lived in a cramped studio on the top floor of a battered old Federal in the borderline Original Highlands neighborhood.
Damn.
He’d had such high hopes when he’d gone into business for himself. Now, barely nine months after having his name etched in the glass on the outer office door, Rush Commercial Designs, Inc. was already going belly-up.
“Mr. Wheeler?”
He turned his attention to the open door of his office. The unmistakably feminine voice that called out from the reception area beyond was unfamiliar.
“It’s Mr. Rush,” he replied automatically, wearily, his irritation at having his last name used as his first rising nowhere near as quickly as it usually did when that happened. Which was often. “Wheeler Rush,” he added under his breath. When no one came forward at his summons, he cranked up the volume on his voice a few decibels. “I’m in here!”
Just as he shouted the announcement, a woman’s head appeared in the open doorway, about halfway down, as if she were bent at the waist. A shock of blue-black curls was caught at the very top of her head, a few errant corkscrews dangling about her face and neck, the rest of it bobbing wildly from the source of its confinement at her crown. Huge, round sunglasses covered her eyes, and her lips, the color of autumn apples, formed a perfect O.
“Can I help you?” he asked on a halfhearted sigh.
The woman smiled and straightened, then stepped into the doorway. He stifled a gasp when he noted her attire. A very brief, very snug, very red miniskirt hugged her hips, and an even briefer, even snugger, even redder sweater clung to her torso. The combination was big enough to cover what a woman needed to cover in polite society, but not big enough to hide a bare strip of creamy flesh that peeked out between the top and bottom parts of her ensemble. A huge red straw bag, sheer red stockings and red high heels completed the outfit
Wheeler blinked a few times, as if doing so might tone down the color a bit. But when he opened his eyes to consider the woman again, she was still...red. Really, really red.
“Actually,” she said, her smile growing broader, “I think it’s me who’s going to help you.”
Try as he might, he couldn’t for the life of him pull his gaze away from her legs. But then, seeing as how just about every inch of leg was visible—and quite a number of very shapely inches there were, too—that wasn’t altogether surprising.
“I beg your pardon?” he finally managed to ask.
As he watched, those legs began to approach him, the miniskirt at their tops hitching higher and higher with every step forward the woman took. When he darted his gaze back down toward her ankles, he noticed, too late, that she was heading straight for a bump in the lavender-and-yellow dhurrie rug that must have sprung up when Bruno and company left with the last of his repossessed furniture. Before Wheeler could warn the woman to watch her step, her toe connected with the bump, and her body went sailing forward.
She had been extending her hand to him in greeting when it happened, and as she fell, she must have instinctively bent her fingers as if groping for something to grab onto. The action resulted in what basically amounted to her punching Wheeler right in the stomach before she crashed to her knees before him.
He doubled over—more from surprise than from pain—at the impact of her fist driving into his belly right about the same time she began to push herself up from her position on the floor. As a result, their two heads collided with enough force to send the woman back down to her knees and Wheeler snapping backward.
With a quick shake of his head to clear it of its stars, he reached down—gingerly this time—to lend her a hand. But she chose that moment to glance up at him, an action that would have resulted in him poking her in the eye had it not been for her ridiculous sunglasses. Instead he only knocked them from her face, and they went clattering to the floor between them.
Wow.
That was the only thought that came into Wheeler’s head when she looked up at him again. Whoever this red woman was, she had the greenest eyes he’d ever seen. Pale green, like the shallowest part of the ocean, but deep enough to drown a man if he wasn’t careful. Framed by long, sooty lashes and topped with elegant ebony brows, they completely overpowered the rest of her face.
For a long moment he could do nothing but stare at those incredible eyes. Then finally he managed to recapture his balance and the presence of mind to take in the rest of her features, as well.
Pretty.
That was the second thought that went through Wheeler’s mind when he considered her. Really, really pretty. Her ivory complexion was smooth and flawless, a hint of pink riding high on her finely chiseled cheekbones. Her lips—as red and inviting as her outfit—were full and ripe and luscious. And something inside him knotted tight at the sight of her, kneeling there before him in a manner that was in no way appropriate for two strangers. With no small effort, he finally kicked himself into gear and extended a hand cautiously toward her.
As if she were feeling just as wary as he was, she scooped up her sunglasses, then slowly lifted her hand to tuck her fingers into his. Gently, Wheeler tugged her back to a standing position, then pretended he wasn’t noticing as she shoved her skirt and sweater back into place. But he couldn’t quite ignore the scant inch of bare skin that peeked out at him from between the waistband of her skirt and the hem of her sweater. And whatever had knotted tightly inside him grew even more taut, nearly cutting off his breath, wrenching a strangled sound from deep inside him.
“I’m sorry,” she said softly as she gave her sweater one final yank.
Something inside him rejoiced, however, when the sweater bobbed back up again, once more exposing that sleek line of flesh. “No problem,” he replied automatically.
The woman lifted a hand—which he noted absently was decorated with long, red nails and two big Band-Aids—to the curls still dancing wildly about on her head. Then she smoothed her fingers ineffectually over the mass, which bounced right back the moment she completed the gesture, and smiled. “I’m Audrey. Audrey Finnegan? I’m the office temp you requested.”
Wheeler was so caught up in contemplating her flat abdomen that he scarcely heard what she said. “Office temp?” he repeated idly.
“From One-Day-at-a-Timers,” she clarified. “You called them Friday needing someone to start on Monday? Today, I mean?”
It was a question not a statement, and vaguely, way back at the back of his brain, he realized she was waiting for an answer. But, still far too preoccupied by the sight of Miss Audrey Finnegan, all he could manage in that respect was, “I called them Friday?”
Somehow he nudged his gaze from her body to her face, and he realized he’d been doing her a grave disservice to focus on her midsection. As appealing as her torso was—and mind you, it was extremely appealing—her face was infinitely more interesting. Even when she was squinting at him in utter confusion the way she was now.
“Didn’t you call them Friday?” she asked. “Isn’t this Monday? And isn’t this Rush Commercial Designs, Inc.? Or did I come to the wrong place again? I’m pretty sure this is Monday? Isn’t it?”
Did he? Had she? Was it? Oh, yeah, Wheeler finally recalled, shoving his libido to the side. This was definitely Monday, and she’d certainly come to Rush Commercial Designs, Inc. At least, it was still Rush Designs, Inc., for the time being. And he had called for a temp Friday. Right after he’d given his regular secretary, Rosalie, her walking papers and two weeks’ severance. That on the heels of letting go his two associates last month.
As much as he’d hated to lose his staff, Wheeler simply wasn’t able to pay their full salary and benefits anymore. Hell, he couldn’t even pay his own salary and benefits anymore. It was going to strain his newly reworked—and very minuscule—office budget just to have a temp working. But he didn’t have a hope in hell of salvaging his failing business by himself. He was going to need someone to run the day-to-day basics of the office while he focused on his clients and accounts, even if that someone was just a temp.
Clients and accounts, he muttered to himself. Yeah, right. Like he was going to have any of those left by month’s end. They were disappearing faster than leisure suits.
He still couldn’t figure out where he’d gone wrong. When he’d been employed as a commercial designer by a much larger conglomerate, Wheeler had had more work to keep him busy than anyone else at the firm. His designs had been very much in demand, and he’d risen fast and far on the corporate ladder. So fast and so far, in fact, that one day, a year ago, he’d decided to strike out on his own. Hey, he’d built himself an excellent reputation, he’d reasoned then. Why give all the credit to a company that wasn’t his own?
So he’d struck out solo, bringing a number of his old firm’s clients with him. And at first, everything had gone fabulously well. He’d exploded with creativity, had introduced design after design that was cutting edge and savvy. He’d garnered new clients in addition to the old, and had expanded to handle all the new business, hiring two associates to help field their accounts. Rush Commercial Designs, Inc. had left the starting gate at an amazing pace and had been trotting effortlessly right toward the finish line. Until a few months ago, the future had been rosy and warm.
Then...
Well, Wheeler still wasn’t sure what exactly had gone wrong. He’d come home from a long business trip with the flu and had been out of the office for two weeks. In his absence, however, his associates had fared just fine. At least he’d thought they were faring just fine. But upon his return, things hadn’t seemed to run quite as smoothly as they had before. Granted, it had been January, something of a slow month for the business, but still...
His work shouldn’t have come to such a grinding halt the way it had. He’d tried to tell himself it was just one of those slumps that occurred in all types of businesses every now and then, and that they would ultimately pull through it none the worse for wear.
But they didn’t pull through it. The slump became a downturn, and the downturn became a stagnation. One by one Wheeler’s clients had become disenchanted with his ideas. And with every parting account, he had started to feel less and less creative. Ultimately his brain—once a playground for generating original, clever ideas—started to dry up. What few concepts emerged from the muddled pool of his creativity were tired, standard, cliched. And then, even his most faithful clients began to slink quietly away.
It made no sense. In addition to being talented, smart, ambitious and driven, Wheeler Rush had always been just about the luckiest man alive. He’d been born into a close-knit, loving family, one that had never hurt for financial well-being, one whose members were all intelligent, successful, attractive. Not a day of his life had passed that he hadn’t reflected on what a genuinely fortunate person he was. He’d never wanted for anything. He’d always achieved whatever he set his mind to achieving, effortlessly at that. Never once had it crossed his mind that he would be anything but a massive success in life.
At least, it hadn’t crossed his mind until his business had started to go belly-up. Then he hadn’t been able to avoid thinking about his potential for failure. Miserable, humiliating, vicious, rotten, crummy failure.
But that was all about to end, Wheeler told himself now. He was sure of it. Well, pretty sure, anyway. Sort of. In a way. Yes, he’d had to make some serious sacrifices to keep himself from going under. He’d been too overconfident in the beginning, and he wasn’t going to make that mistake twice. He’d pared down what had been an excessive office budget from the start. Hey, you had to spend money to make money, right? Wrong. His newly adopted motto was you had to save money to make money. And that was what Wheeler would do.
Hence, Miss Finnegan. At minimum wage and no benefits, she was a real bargain. The minute he got his business up and running again—and Wheeler vowed then and there that he would get his business up and running again—he could hire back his old staff at their old salaries, provided they were available. If not, he’d hire some new blood. Hey, maybe if Miss Finnegan worked out, he thought magnanimously, he could keep her and Rosalie both.
For now, however, Rush Commercial Designs, Inc. was going to have to work with a two-man team. Or rather, a two-person team. If there was one thing Audrey Finnegan most definitely was not, it was masculine.
“So, where should I start?” she asked when he still had offered no clear answer to her question. Evidently she had decided for herself that she was needed here.
Wheeler looked around. Yeah, he could understand how she would feel that way. No furniture, no clients in the waiting room, no phones ringing off the hook. He definitely needed something. Or somebody.
What the hell, he thought further. For now, Audrey Finnegan would do.
As Audrey stood waiting for an answer to her question—and an answer to any of her questions would do, she thought as she waited some more—she took in her new boss from the tips of his Italian loafers to the tousled dark brown hair atop his head.
What a cutie, she thought. Truly tall, dark and handsome, with broad shoulders, trim hips and chocolate-brown eyes to just curl up and die for. Maybe after twenty-eight years her luck was about to change.
Nah. Who was she kidding? Audrey Finnegan was the most totally jinxed person on the planet, and a new job wasn’t likely to change that. She should know. She started a new job just about every month, and they all ended the same way—badly. But she’d been unlucky all her life—at cards and at love and at everything else—so she wasn’t going to stand here and try to kid herself that things would ever change in that department.
Just this week alone she’d lost her job, her boyfriend, her apartment, her car and her cat. Roxanne, the silver tabby she’d adopted a few months ago, had taken up with a no-good tomcat and hadn’t come back. Audrey’s car had been totaled after the emergency brake had finally given out when she’d parked on a too-steep hill—the old VW bug had rolled downdowndown, crashed into a power pylon and gotten fried into blackened Beetle au gratin.
Then, as if that weren’t enough, her basement apartment had been flooded during a surly spring downpour, ruining all her furniture and forcing her to shack up temporarily with her best buddy, Marlene, with whom she’d never really gotten along. And although Audrey thought she’d been doing great at her job as a grocery store cashier, coming up short fifteen thousand dollars and change that night just didn’t look good on a person’s permanent record.
And as for her boyfriend, well, she would just as soon forget about him. There was nothing like having a guy tell you you were cold as a dead fish to make you think twice about getting involved again. Of course, Brad hadn’t exactly been a pep-rally bonfire himself, Audrey reminded herself, which was only one of the many reasons she’d avoided becoming too intimately involved with him. Still, a woman liked to think that a man would have some regrets about dumping her. But Brad, evidently, would always think of her as sushi.
So with all her bad luck of late—and of her whole life—Audrey didn’t really expect that a change of jobs would do anything about the dark cloud of misfortune that had followed her everywhere she’d ever gone from the day she’d been born—breech and thirteen days late. It was a family curse, common knowledge. All the Finnegans were unlucky, all the way back to her great-grandmother Fiona Finnegan, who fell off the boat that arrived in New York Harbor at the turn of the century.
Literally. She fell off the boat, right into the water. It had been the beginning of a looong line of Finnegan bad luck. Klutzy, ditzy, jinxed, hexed—those were all words that Audrey had heard used to describe her family over the years. And, carrying on the family tradition, she, too, was little more than a bad-luck charm. Wherever she wenteth, mishap followedeth. To put it in the vernacular, she, like the rest of her family, was not exactly a child of fortune. Nothing ever went right for the Finnegans.
Still, she reconsidered as she eyed her new employer, maybe she was due for a spurt of good luck for a change. If nothing else, Mr. Wheeler would be infinitely more appealing to look at than Manny the bag boy had been.
“Um,” he said, by way of response to her earlier question about where to begin. “I suppose I could show you around the office.”
Audrey arced her gaze around the room, taking in one elevated design table with halogen lamp, one high stool of unmistakable saloon origin and numerous boxes holding numerous files. It wasn’t much different from what she’d encountered in the outer office—one generic desk with off-off- off-brand computer, and more boxes full of files. “Okay,” she said, wondering what more there might be to Rush Commercial Designs, Inc.
“This,” Mr. Wheeler said, throwing his arms open wide, “is my office. That—” he waved a hand toward the design table “—is my work area and is not to be touched under any circumstances. Those—” he gestured toward the boxes “—are my files, likewise to be left alone. Out there—” he pointed toward the door through which she’d entered “—is the reception area, where you’ll be working. Beyond that and down the hall—” this time he waved his hand, as if striving to indicate great distance “—there’s a small washroom. It’s near the door to the street, where you first came in.”
That evidently concluded the tour, Audrey thought, because Mr. Wheeler didn’t say anything more.
“Mind if I take a closer look at my desk?” she asked. “My telephone? My computer terminal?”
He must have misunderstood the question, because his expression became absolutely crestfallen, and he dropped his hands to his sides in a posture she could only describe as thoroughly defeated. “Didn’t you see them when you first came in? Don’t tell me Bruno took those, too. Hell, those were paid for.”
“Who’s Bruno?” she asked as she scrambled to follow Mr. Wheeler out of the office, thinking it was the only remark he’d made that she didn’t quite understand.
Too late she realized he had halted only a few steps beyond the door, and, having hastened her step to catch up with him, she barreled into him at a pretty fast clip. Upon impact Mr. Wheeler went bolting forward, stumbling, landing on all fours on the floor. Audrey moved immediately to help him up, but she twisted her ankle just as she was reaching out to him and went hurtling forward herself. Before she knew what has happening, she had landed on his back, straddling him, perched the way a child might be when sitting astride a favorite uncle for a pony ride.
For one split second neither of them moved. Then Mr. Wheeler abruptly spun his body around, landed deftly on his fanny and caught Audrey capably in his lap. He narrowed his eyes at her, as if he wasn’t quite sure what to make of a woman who would ride her boss like a horse. And as she met his gaze, Audrey’s heart went pitty-pat, pitty-pat, pitty-pat. And then he smiled, a halfhearted little smile that indicated he wasn’t all that put off by their situation. After that, her heart went zing-zing-zing-zing-zing.
Oh, my.
He had caught her by the waist, and now his hands were planted firmly atop each of her hips. Only then did Audrey notice that his thumbs were idly grazing the bare skin revealed between her skirt and her top. Braving a glance down, she realized that her clothing was too revealing for mixed company given her new posture. Her skirt was hiked up far enough on one side to reveal the lace of her red panties through the hose beneath. Her sweater, too, was riding high, though thankfully not high enough to underscore the scant red brassiere beneath it.
Thinking back, she supposed she could have chosen something a little less revealing for her first day on the job. But the late-March morning had been surprisingly balmy, and after months of cold, damp winter, she’d longed to feel the warm breeze on as much of her body as she could. Plus, she’d wanted to make a good impression on her new boss. Plus, she’d really been in a red mood today.
Then again, there wasn’t much in her wardrobe that wasn’t revealing. Having started off as a chunky kid, then having bloomed into a chubby adolescent, Audrey had worked and sweated for most of her adult years to drop her weight. Now at twenty-eight years, five feet nine inches, and 127 pounds, she liked to show herself off.
Hey, if you’ve got it, flaunt it, right? she’d thought. Especially if you didn’t have much else going for you. Now, however, she was beginning to think that maybe she shouldn’t have flaunted it quite so majorly in Mr. Wheeler’s direction.
As if he’d read her mind, he cleared his throat indelicately, scattering her thoughts. But with her mind emptied, her insides went all muddled and warm, because she realized he still had both hands around her naked waist. Even more troubling, she had tangled her fingers in the crisp white fabric of his shirt, and beneath her fingertips his heart fairly hummed with anticipation. As discreetly as she could, Audrey unwound the fingers of one hand and moved them to his shoulder. But that only brought into stark, raving focus the chiseled, well-defined musculature lurking beneath.
Simply put, her boss was built. And somehow she found herself wondering if maybe they couldn’t just spend the rest of the day sitting in the middle of the floor this way, just exploring each other’s bodies. Hey, it gave a whole new meaning to employee orientation.
“We, uh, we don’t seem to be having a good day, do we?” he said softly, breaking the odd spell that had begun to descend around them.
Speak for yourself, Audrey thought. This had been the best day she’d had in a long, long time. However, she did concede, “I guess we’re not really starting off as well as we could be.”
He nodded at that but did nothing to alter their position on the floor. Instead, he only continued to gaze into her eyes as if he were looking for something very important there. A warmth spread through her that had nothing to do with the warble of the spring breeze rippling through the open door and everything to do with the gentle back-and-forth motion of her employer’s thumbs across her bare skin.
Her employer. Oh, gosh. Oh, no. Oh, jeez.
Finally it registered on Audrey just how badly she had started off her first day on the job. With as much grace as she could manage, which, granted, under the circumstances wasn’t much, she pushed herself up from her boss’s lap. That, unfortunately, left her kneeling before him—pretty much the second worst position to be in with one’s employer, right after riding him like a pony. Hurriedly she tugged her skirt back down around her thighs as best she could.
Mental note, Audrey, she told herself. Shop for trousers. Big, loose trousers
Unfortunately such a purchase would have to wait until she had more money in her bank account. Or some money, for that matter, since $36.47 wasn’t even enough to earn interest.
She shoved that thought away, too, and with only a marginally more graceful effort, managed to push herself up to standing. Mr. Wheeler, she noted, however, remained on the floor, and she hoped he wasn’t trying to cop a peek up her skirt. Then again, she wondered, why would he bother after the free show she’d just given him?
Finally he rose, too, smoothing his hands down the front of his shirt once he was standing again. Somehow, though, Audrey got the feeling he performed the gesture not because his shirt was wrinkled, but because his palms were sweaty. Then, noting that she was suffering from that exact same malady herself, she gave her skirt one final tug, wiping her own hands dry in the bargain.
Only when they stood facing each other like two—relatively—normal human beings did her new employer speak again.
“Your desk,” he said, throwing a hand to the left in a motion she supposed was meant to look nonchalant
Audrey trained her gaze in the direction he indicated, noting again the cheap-looking piece of furniture accessorized by a chair that appeared to be far from comfortable. The computer terminal atop it was making some very dubious noises, as if it were on its last legs and just waiting for someone to push the right button that would put it out of its misery. She swung her attention back to her boss, not quite able to hide her astonishment at the appalling lack of amenities claimed by Rush Commercial Designs, Inc.
“That’s it?” she asked. “You’ll pardon me for asking, Mr. Wheeler, but—”
“Rush,” he interrupted her.
“What?” she asked, confused.
“It’s Mr. Rush, not Mr. Wheeler. Wheeler is my first name. Rush is my last name. Hence the name of the company being Rush Commercial Designs, Inc.”
She thought about that for a moment. “Oh. Okay. Sorry.”
“No problem.”
“You’ll pardon me for asking,” she said again, “but shouldn’t there be a little more to the office than, well...this?”
He nodded, the gesture clearly one of resignation. “Yes, there should be. But there’s not. You’ve come to work for a failing business that I’m doing my damnedest to save, Miss Finnegan. My luck of late has been quite bad. I apologize for that, but I hope you’re up to the task of working for someone who appears to be jinxed.”
She straightened proudly, throwing her shoulders back, smiling as she smoothed a hand over the tuft of curls atop her head. “Don’t you worry, Mr. Wheeler,” she said, feeling confident for the first time in her entire life. “You and I should get along just fine. Because when it comes to bad luck, Audrey Finnegan wrote the book.”
Two
Wheeler assured himself during the week that followed that his initial introduction to Miss Audrey Finnegan must, without question, have been a fluke. No one, absolutely no one, could possibly be that inept, graceless and unfortunate. Her clumsiness had doubtless resulted from her being nervous about her first day on the job and nothing more. Once she caught on to the routine of his office, then everything would be okay.
Surely, on that first occasion, he told himself, Miss Finnegan had just been having One of Those Days. And surely, afterward, once she got the hang of things, a working relationship with her would ensue that, if not absolutely ideal, was certainly tolerable. That was what Wheeler told himself for the entirety of that first week.
Wheeler, however, was wrong.
Evidently, every day was One of Those Days when it came to Audrey Finnegan. And really, when he reflected back over those first five working days on this, the sixth working day, that first day with her had actually been her best to date. Because after one week of working with Miss Finnegan, Wheeler was fit to be tied. In a straitjacket. To a cement pylon. Near a very short pier.
As he strolled down Main Street toward his office the Monday after hiring his new—and thankfully temporary—secretary, he gradually slowed his pace and eyed his front door with much trepidation. In only five working days, the illustrious Miss Finnegan had managed to upstage every catastrophe that had befallen Wheeler in nine long months.
On Monday she crashed the office computer. Tuesday she trashed the office copier. Wednesday she bashed the office microwave. And Thursday she thrashed the office phone. On Friday, to top the week off, she wrecked her car. Or, rather, her friend’s car, which she had borrowed for the day. Worse, she had wrecked it by slamming it into the back of Wheeler’s car as they were leaving a nearby parking garage for the day. So now he was going to have to ride the bus to work for a while, until he could cough up the two-hundred-and-fifty-dollar deductible to have his car fixed.
And when Miss Finnegan hadn’t been crashing, trashing, bashing and thrashing, she had been working at her desk, which really caused trouble. Simply put, Wheeler’s new secretary had her own way of doing everything, and that way scarcely made sense to anyone other than Miss Finnegan.
At one point, when Wheeler asked her where she had filed the particulars for a design project he was bidding on for a local minimart—whose name began with the letter W—his new secretary retrieved it from where she had filed it under L. And when he had asked her what the letter L had to do with design or minimart or W for that matter, she had looked at him as if he were a complete moron, and then had explained to him, in a tone of voice that indicated she thought he was a complete moron, that L stood for lottery. Miss Finnegan, it would appear, always bought her lottery tickets at a minimart. Thus, it made sense—to her, at least—to file the plans in such a way.
And as for his new secretary’s coffee... Well, suffice it to say that Wheeler never asked for a second cup. In fact, after that first day he’d pretty much foregone the first cup, too. He saw no reason to sample Miss Finnegan’s coffee, unless, perhaps, he would have some reason to be awake for seven hundred hours straight.
Now as he pushed his troubling thoughts aside, he forced his feet to move forward again, carrying him through the brisk morning, past the other pedestrians hurrying to their respective places of business. No one else seemed to be too worried about what the day ahead held for them. No one else seemed to be frightened of what might greet them at their jobs. On the contrary, everyone else seemed to be remarkably bored by whatever might be going through their brains.
Then again, nobody else had to face the day ahead with Audrey Finnegan.
Oh, come on, Rush, he chastised himself as he quickened his step a bit It can’t be as bad as you think Miss Finnegan couldn’t possibly be as horrific as you’re recalling. You just had a rough week yourself, and you’re looking to pin it on her. Be fair.
That’s what Wheeler told himself as he gripped the handle on the office door and inhaled a deep, fortifying breath before entering. Because he’d spent his weekend brooding over his ill fortune, he was naturally starting off his week now feeling more morose and defeated than the average person, and he wanted to blame someone other than himself. It was as simple as that.
So Miss Finnegan had taken out a couple of office machines, he recalled. So what? Wheeler had managed to undo whatever damage she had done, hadn’t he? And sure, it had taken a big bite out of his day to act as computer repairman... and phone repairman... and copier repairman...and microwave repairman. But, seeing as how he hadn’t had any real work to occupy his time anyway, that wasn’t so bad, was it?
And, okay, so now his insurance company was canceling his policy because he was rear-ended by his secretary. He was probably going to have to sell his car soon, anyway, for the few thousand bucks it would bring in.
And, yeah, his files were in such a complete mess that he would probably never be able to figure them out for himself, should Miss Finnegan step in front of a bus and go to her final reward, which, considering the woman’s luck, was not outside the realm of possibility.
There were worse things in life, right?
Right.
So chin up, he told himself further. Hey, after all, when things were this bad, they could only get better, couldn’t they?
In spite of his little pep talk to himself, though, Wheeler felt anything but reassured when, very, very cautiously, he pushed the front door open. He hesitated a moment before entering, just to get a feel for things. No smell of smoke, he noted, heartening some. No strange sounds of mechanical upheaval. No power outages that he could readily discern...
Okay, so everything was fine, he realized with a long sigh of relief. See? He really had been overreacting when it came to memories of the previous week. Heartened some more, Wheeler strode into his outer office with all the confidence of a brass band, and found...
...chaos.
Truly. Chaos. What else could it be called when one’s secretary had one’s number-one client—the very, absolute last of one’s reliable accounts—in a choke hold, clearly striving to throttle the life right out of the man? Because that was exactly what was happening. Audrey Finnegan stood behind and had both arms wrapped resolutely around the neck of Otis Denby, CEO of Denby Associates, and Mr. Denby was turning blue as he fought for his very life. He had gripped both hands around Miss Finnegan’s forearms, but she clearly had the upper hand, pumping his body back and forth as she was with much abandon.
And all Wheeler could think was that he couldn’t possibly allow her to murder Mr. Denby. Denby was, after all, the only client Wheeler had left who paid his bills on time.
“Miss Finnegan!” he shouted at the top of his lungs as he rushed forward. “What on earth do you think you’re doing?”
Without awaiting a response, he gripped her wrists fiercely and yanked her hands free of his client’s throat, pushing her backward as he pulled the other man forward. Immediately Mr. Denby curled one hand around his nape, stretching his neck tight as he rolled his shoulders forward, then back. His face and bald pate were red and mottled, but he didn’t seem to be struggling. Well, not too much, anyway. His barrel chest rose and fell as he inhaled great gulps of breath, and his pale blue eyes widened in what could only be a combination of relief and terror.
And then, much to Wheeler’s surprise, the other man expelled a bark of delighted laughter. “Well I’ll be damned, Miss Finnegan,” he said with a chuckle. “That really did the trick. You’re absolutely amazing. I never would have suspected that a woman of your, uh...your attributes... could have such a gentle touch. Thank you.”
Thank you? Wheeler echoed to himself. Gentle touch? What the hell was going on here?
“What the hell is going on here?” he cried. He glanced first at his client, then at Miss Finnegan, further demanding an explanation.
She shrugged. “I worked for a chiropractor for a while,” she said. She waved a hand negligently through the air. “You pick up little things on your jobs. For example, everything I know about fashion accessories, I learned from just two weeks at The Limited.”
And speaking of fashion accessories, Wheeler noted through narrowed eyes that Miss Finnegan was in a blue mood today. Sapphire blue, to be specific. Her sapphire miniskirt was topped by a sapphire sweater that actually covered her hips. Sapphire hose ended in sapphire boots, and sapphire earrings swung from her ears. Her black hair, as always, was caught atop her head in a riot of curls, but even they seemed to be touched with blue.
Whatever she had learned about fashion during her time at The Limited, it must have been, well...limited. Because one thing he could definitely say about his temp—she was a color palate just waiting to happen. If she ever learned how to mix colors.
Wheeler pushed the thought away. “Just what the devil is going on?” he demanded again.
Before Miss Finnegan could add anything to her earlier explanation, Mr. Denby turned to him instead. “Your new secretary just fixed a back problem I’ve had for decades, Rush. Decades. I can’t tell you how much money I’ve spent on specialists over the years, only to have Miss Finnegan fix me up—” he snapped his fingers merrily “—like that.”
She shrugged again. “My father suffered from the exact same thing,” she said, sidestepping the accomplishment. “You just have to know where to look, that’s all.”
Where Wheeler decided to look was at the ceiling, while he tried not to think about the potential bodily damage his new secretary could have done to Mr. Denby. What on earth was he going to do with her? he wondered. Do with her that wasn’t illegal, he meant.
“You should give her a raise, Rush,” Denby suggested, answering that question, if none of the other numerous ones parading through his brain. “Hell, I might just hire her away from you myself. She’s delightful.”
When Wheeler looked down again, it was to find Miss Finnegan blushing furiously and shaking a teasing finger—one encased in what appeared to be a Scooby-Doo Band-Aid—at Otis Denby. “Oh, now, Mr. Denby, that’s very sweet of you,” she said. “But I couldn’t possibly come to work for you. My first commitment right now is to Mr. Rush. It’s not the One-Day-at-a-Timers’ way to shirk our responsibilities to our employers.”
Shirk, Wheeler commanded her silently. Please. By all means. Shirk to your heart’s content.
But what he said was, “Mr. Denby, did we have an appointment this morning?”
The other man shook his head. “I was in the neighborhood and thought I’d stop by.” He glanced anxiously at Miss Finnegan, then back at Wheeler. “Can we, uh...can we speak privately, Rush?”
Here it comes, Wheeler thought with another sigh. The big kiss-off. Otis Denby, his last, best client, was about to take a powder. “Is that really necessary, sir?” he asked halfheartedly.
Denby nodded fatalistically. “I’m afraid it is,” he said. “We’re long overdue for this... uh...discussion.”
Wheeler sighed heavily again before nodding, and was about to open his mouth to accept defeat, when Miss Finnegan stepped in to interrupt him.
“Mr. Denby,” she said, “do you by any chance know anything about monopodial orchids?”
As questions went, it wasn’t one Wheeler might have expected from his secretary. Or anyone else on the planet, for that matter. But Denby perked right up at the query.
“Why, yes, I do, Miss Finnegan. As a matter of fact, growing orchids is an absolute passion of mine. That’s amazing that you’d share an interest like that, too.”
She nodded. “Actually, it’s more my mother’s hobby than my own, but I think it’s more common than you realize,” she assured him. Then she hurried on, “Before you talk to Mr. Rush, do you mind if I ask you a few questions? Mom is having such a hard time trying to figure out what she’s doing wrong with her Phalaenopsis.”
Denby nodded sagely. “Oh, those are tricky little bastards, aren’t they?”
“Boy, you said it.”
He launched into what promised to be a very technical discussion about the plant in question, then, almost as an afterthought, turned to Wheeler. “You don’t mind, do you, Rush?” he asked in a voice that pretty much answered his own question in the negative. “This won’t take but a minute.”
Wheeler nodded wearily. “Don’t worry about it, Mr. Denby. Just come into my office whenever you and Miss Finnegan are finished. My morning’s pretty much clear.”
Hoo-boy, was that an understatement.
But Denby wasn’t listening to Wheeler, because he had lost himself completely in his conversation with Miss Finnegan. She was pouring him a cup of her infamous coffee—as if Wheeler hadn’t already done enough to terminate his business relationship with Otis Denby—and nodding at something the other man was saying, when Wheeler closed the door behind himself and made his way to the bar stool and drafting table that constituted what was left of his work station.
For some reason, he had the “Death March” stuck in his head, and he just couldn’t shake it. Go figure. That didn’t, however, prevent him from sitting down, making himself comfortable and pretending he had a really good idea as he stared at a blank piece of paper.
Oddly, though, he suddenly did have a really good idea. A remarkably good idea. A startlingly good idea. In fact, the more he thought about it, the more the idea grew. It was revolutionary, truly. The kind of idea he hadn’t had for a very long time. And it would be just perfect for what Otis Denby was looking for in a commercial design. Quickly, before the idea could escape, Wheeler gathered his pens and began to sketch.
What Denby had promised wouldn’t take a minute, in fact, did not take a minute. It took about thirty minutes. But Wheeler scarcely noticed, because he spent the entire length of time sketching madly and enjoying a brainstorm that made Godzilla look like a cute little newt. And when that length of time finally had passed, it wasn’t Denby who entered Wheeler’s office—it was Miss Finnegan. She was humming under her breath an off-key rendition of what sounded like The Flintstones theme song, and carrying two cups of coffee, which, naturally, led Wheeler to believe that one of them was for him.
Damn.
Surprisingly, she only stumbled once as she entered, and even at that, she spilled just a few drops of coffee—merely enough to slightly enlarge two of the half-dozen or so coffee stains that had appeared on his rug over the past week. But he was still preoccupied by the last few drizzlings of his idea, so he barely registered the new stains. When she extended a cup toward him, he noticed that she had an ace bandage wound about her wrist. He was about to ask her what had happened when she spoke up, scattering his thoughts.
“Mr. Denby is a very nice man,” she said.
Wheeler nodded dispassionately, curling his fingers around the coffee cup, which just went to show how suicidal he began to feel at the mention of his former client. “Yep. Denby’s account was the best one I had. I’m hoping maybe this sketch I’m working on now will win him back.”
“Had?” Miss Finnegan echoed. “Win him back? What are you talking about? He’s still your client.”
Wheeler glanced up, surprised. “He is?”
His secretary shrugged. “Sure.”
“Then...why was he here this morning? Other than acting as your orchid mentor, I mean?”
She shrugged, clearly unconcerned by his worry. “He just needed to get a few things straightened out about the new design you’re doing for him, that’s all. Why did you think Mr. Denby wouldn’t be your client anymore?”
He hesitated before answering. Naturally, it hadn’t escaped his notice that Audrey Finnegan wasn’t the most observant human being in the world. But surely even she could see how badly Rush Commercial Designs, Inc. was foundering. He had, after all, pretty much spelled it out for her that first day. And then there was that small matter of him having virtually no furniture, nor any clients. That seemed to him as if it would be kind of a dead giveaway. But then, that was Wheeler. Always assuming the obvious.
“Well,” he began slowly, speaking his thoughts aloud, “there is that small matter of my having lost nearly every other client I have. I shouldn’t think Mr. Denby would be too different in that respect.”
“Oh, that,” Miss Finnegan said as she sipped her coffee. Amazing. She didn’t grimace once. “Mr. Denby is different, actually. And you didn’t need those other clients, anyway.”
Wheeler rather begged to differ, and didn’t hesitate to tell her so. “Oh, I think, Miss Finnegan, that I did need those other clients. Desperately, in fact. I do have bills to pay.” And lots of them, he recalled.
She wrinkled her nose as she shook her head, and Wheeler couldn’t help but think, for some reason, that the gesture was really...very...well, cute came to mind.
“No, you didn’t need them,” she insisted lightly before enjoying—enjoying—another sip of her coffee.
“I didn’t?”
She shook her head again. “Nah. They were alarmists.”
“They were?”
This time she nodded. “Those kinds of people are ready to bail at the slightest sign of adversity. They have no staying power whatsoever. You would have lost them anyway, eventually.”
“I would?”
She offered him an expression that assured him he was dreaming if he thought otherwise. “Oh, yeah. I’ve been going over your files as I’ve been rearranging them, and—”
Wheeler sat up straight at that, eyeing her in a panic. “You...you’ve been rearranging my files?”
She enjoyed another unconcerned sip of coffee. “Well, of course I’ve been rearranging your files. They were a mess—all alphabetical and everything. They made no sense at all. With all due respect to your former secretary, she could have learned a thing or two about filing.”
Wheeler closed his eyes. Rosalie, his former secretary, had been an absolute whiz at organizing his accounts. Although she wasn’t the biggest people person on the planet—okay, so she’d been abrasive, gruff and borderline obnoxious—her filing system would have been the envy of the Pentagon and the IRS. His associates had always considered her a file Nazi, but Wheeler had been a bit more charitable, thinking her more of a file queen. No, scratch that. What Rosalie had been was a file goddess. And now Miss Finnegan, the pretender to the throne, had “fixed” those files.
Oh, no...
“Anyway,” she went on, “I’ve been trying to familiarize myself with your different clients, and, in my opinion at least, a lot of them were just fly-by-nights. I mean, I know you were starting up a new business, so you had to take whatever came your way, but some of these people, Mr. Rush...they just weren’t the kind of clients you need. What you need to do is focus on attracting a more reliable, more stable account base.”
Wheeler narrowed his eyes at her. She sounded, almost, like she knew what she was talking about. “How so?” he ventured.
She waved a negligent hand through the air. “Don’t you worry about that,” she said. “You just focus on your designs. I’ll handle your accounts.”
Oh, no, no, no, no, no. I don’t think so. “Um, Miss Finnegan,” he began, striving for a diplomacy he was nowhere close to feeling in his surging panic, “I appreciate your wanting to take some of the heat, but honestly, I think you should tell me what you’re talking about.”
She smiled, those luscious lips that he just couldn’t quite ignore looking more tempting than ever. “Just trust me,” she said mildly. “I know what I’m doing.”
That, he thought, was open to debate. “But—”
“Is it okay if I take an extra half hour for lunch today?” she interrupted him. “I need to see about Marlene’s car.”
The change of subject nearly gave him mental whiplash. “No, before we talk about that, I think we need to talk about this other thing first.”
She studied him in confusion. “What other thing?”
“This thing with my accounts,” he prodded. “You’re not suggesting that you—”
“I’ll make the half hour up tomorrow,” she said, still not quite grasping the topic he wanted to put first. “I’ll only take thirty minutes for lunch, so it doesn’t mess up the time thing.”
“No, Miss Finnegan, before the time thing, back up to the other thing...the thing we were talking about a minute ago.”
She squinted at him. “Were we talking about another thing a minute ago?” she asked. “What was it? I can’t remember.”
“That thing,” he repeated emphatically. “That account thing. You know... That thing about how I should be attracting a more reliable account base. I want to talk about that.”
She squinted some more. “Did I say something about an account thing?”
He nodded. Vigorously. And he battled the urge to start pulling his hair out by the roots. “Yes. You did. Or, at least, you started to. And it sounded like what you were going to say about the account thing was going to make sense and be very helpful. What was it?”
She thought for a long moment, putting her entire body into the effort. She shifted her weight to one foot, an action that thrust one rounded hip to the side—and hitched up her skirt in a manner that Wheeler simply could not ignore. And then she crossed one hand over her midsection, a gesture that thrust her plump breasts up even higher, in another manner that Wheeler simply could not ignore.
His secretary might not be the most graceful person on the planet when she moved, he thought, but when she was standing still like this, she had the most elegant lines he had ever seen on another human being. And when she started nibbling her lip with great concentration... Well. Suffice it to say that, even though he was eager to hear her take on his state of business affairs, Wheeler was in absolutely no hurry for her to finish up whatever she might be thinking about.
But after several minutes of contemplation, the only comment she offered was, “Huh. How about that? I don’t remember what I was going to say.”
Wheeler closed his eyes again, feeling his last drop of hope dry up. Ah, well. It had probably just been a fluke, anyway. Miss Finnegan didn’t come across as too awfully savvy when it came to the business world. Without thinking, he lifted his coffee to his lips for an idle sip, and, as utter bitterness filled his mouth, he nearly choked to death.
Miss Finnegan immediately jumped to his rescue, which was unfortunate, because in doing so, she instinctively placed her own cup of coffee on his drafting table—his tilted drafting table—and the entire contents tipped over onto his truly revolutionary idea.
Wheeler watched with an almost detached feeling of defeat as what had promised to be the end of his worries was slowly obscured by a growing puddle of brown. And then, when his design was completely covered by the stain, the coffee, as if not quite finished ruining his life, spilled off the table and ran into his lap. Somehow the entire episode just seemed perfectly appropriate, and the only reaction he felt was one of vindication.
“Oh, no,” Miss Finnegan groaned. “I can’t believe I did that. Here, I can fix it. I swear I can.”
Before he had a chance to object, she was fleeing his office, only to return within moments with a massive collection of paper towels. And although Wheeler’s primary concern was for the design on his table, Miss Finnegan, evidently, was far more preoccupied by her concern for his lap. In any event, that was where she immediately focused her attentions.
And, my, but her attentions were...thorough. Nobody had ever gone after Wheeler’s lap quite the way Audrey Finnegan did.
For a moment he was simply too stunned by her actions to do anything to stop them. Then, for another—longer, more delirious—moment, he found himself not really wanting to do anything to stop them. Thankfully, though, sanity stepped in, in that next moment, and somehow he gathered his wits enough to react. Quickly he reached for her hands to remove them from where they had settled, in a place on his upper thighs that was far too likely to rouse suspicion—among other things—should she venture any farther. Then, as gently as he could, he nudged her away.
“Thank you, Miss Finnegan,” he said, “but I think you’ve done enough for one morning.” Or one lifetime, for that matter, he thought further.
“I am so, so sorry,” she told him.
Purely out of habit he replied, “No problem.”
He turned his gaze to the design on which he’d spent the last thirty minutes and sighed heavily. He could salvage it—it was only a rough draft, after all, and the coffee had merely turned it brown, not obliterated it. That, however, wasn’t the problem. The problem was that Miss Audrey Finnegan, with her clumsiness and gracelessness and appalling bad luck—even if she did have luscious lips and beautiful eyes and legs that wouldn’t quit—was going to drive home what few nails were left in Wheeler’s professional coffin. And she was going to do it in half the time it would take him to botch things himself.
He ought to let her go, he thought, strangely saddened by the realization. There really was no other way. He could call One-Day-at-a-Timers and make up some story about his and Miss Finnegan’s incompatibility—he didn’t want to get her into trouble, after all—and ask the temp agency to send someone else in her wake. At this point, anyone they sent would be an improvement.
But when he looked at her face and saw the abject apology and need for atonement in her expression, he couldn’t quite form the words necessary to tell her she was fired. For all her awkwardness and misfortune, she really was very nice. And in spite of her having wrecked most of his office equipment—not to mention the first good idea he’d had in months—she had rather brightened up the place over the past week. Literally, he thought, when he recalled some of her outfits.
And then, of course, there was the small matter of her aforementioned luscious lips and beautiful eyes and legs that wouldn’t quit, which he assured himself only marginally influenced his ultimate decision.
Wheeler sighed. He supposed it wouldn’t kill him to give her a second chance. Surely they’d hit rock bottom by now. Things could only improve from here.
He ignored the little voice in the back of his brain that reminded him how this was a conversation he’d had with himself pretty much daily since taking on Miss Finnegan. So, technically, she had already exhausted her second chances—more than once, in fact—and he had already watched things go from bad to worse—again, more than once.
Still, he did kind of like her. He didn’t know why, but he did. Maybe because both of them seemed to be in the same boat—one that was fast sinking—where misfortune was concerned. Perhaps if he gave her just one more chance....
“Go ahead and take the extra half hour for lunch today,” he said halfheartedly. “You can make it up tomorrow if you want.”
Her eyes widened, making them appear even larger and greener than before—which was saying something. “O-okay,” she replied, obviously confused by his reaction, but evidently unwilling to draw any more attention to her latest debacle than was absolutely necessary. “Um, thanks, Mr. Rush. For everything. I appreciate it.”
He told himself he should ask her to call him Wheeler. Rush Designs, Inc. had never been a particularly formal business. Even when it was a successful one. He and his former secretary had been on a first-name basis from day one. Of course, Rosalie had been a fifty-six-year-old grandmother of three, but that was beside the point. Still, there was no reason for him and Miss Finnegan to stand on ceremony.
Nevertheless, something prevented him from extending the invitation to call him by his first name, and he forced himself not to ask if he could call her by hers. He wasn’t sure why. It just seemed best to keep their relationship as professional as possible. And even an insignificant, invisible barrier like the use of surnames would remind Wheeler that she was, first and foremost, his employee. He told himself it was essential that he keep that reminder planted firmly in his brain.
In spite of that, when she smiled back at him, somewhere deep inside him, in a place he’d never explored before, a little bubble of heat went fizz. It was the oddest sensation he’d ever felt. Before he had a chance to think about it, though, Miss Finnegan spoke again.
“I am so sorry about the coffee,” she repeated her earlier apology. He had noted that first day her propensity for apologizing more than once. “I should have watched where I was putting it. It was an accident, I swear. I really didn’t mean to—”
“Please, Miss Finnegan, don’t worry about it,” he said, interrupting her. “Let’s just both make a pact to be more careful from here on out, all right? And then let’s just forget it ever happened.”
She nodded vigorously. “Okay. I will if you will. And I promise you that nothing like that will happen again. Ever. I won’t let you down, Mr. Rush. I can assure you of that From here on out, with you and me working together, Rush Commercial Designs, Inc., is headed for great, great things.”
Three
Audrey approached her second Tuesday on the job with an air of caution, which was perfectly understandable, all things considered. She told herself that the previous week had been her warm-up, that anything that had gone wrong during those first five days could be excused as new-job jitters or getting a feel for things or just not being familiar with her new surroundings. But by week two, she thought, things really should start to level off. So, naturally she was very much looking forward to surviving, er, rather, enjoying it.
And in some ways, by that second day of week two, things were already starting to level off—hey, that coffee-spilling incident of the day before could have happened to anybody. In spite of her lack of skills where machinery was concerned—and she worked on those by simply avoiding what office machinery she could—Audrey had people capabilities that were way above average.
So she had focused on those talents instead, had spent much of her time last week contacting what was left of Mr. Rush’s client base to update their files and put a few feelers out as to what they were looking for in a design company. She told herself that was probably something her employer would want to do himself, but he had so many other things on his mind, the last thing Audrey wanted to do was make him rehash everything for her.
So she had spoken to his clients herself, to find out what kind of people and businesses they were and what they were looking for in a commercial design company, had chatted amiably about life in general, and had reassured them that Rush Commercial Designs, Inc., was well into recovery and going like gangbusters. As a result, she’d started feeling a little bit like she was a part of the company herself.
And she’d discovered pretty quickly what a nice feeling that was. None of her other jobs had ever made her feel like she was contributing much of anything. None of them had made her feel as if she were necessary. But Mr. Rush was a man in obvious need of help, and Audrey was, by nature, a very helpful person. Plus, when it came to being down on your luck, she knew all the right moves. She was confident, if of nothing else, that she could make a difference here.
And even after only one week of trying, she was already feeling as if she had.
“Good morning, Miss Finnegan.”
She glanced up from her desk to see Mr. Rush striding through the door, carrying, as he was every morning, a huge cup of coffee, which she just couldn’t understand, because she always had a fresh pot waiting for him when he came in.
“Good morning, Mr. Rush,” she replied cheerily. “Good to see you made it in before the rain.”
He arched his eyebrows in surprise. “Is it supposed to rain today?”
She gaped at him. “Didn’t you notice the black clouds? The Weather Channel says it’s going to be a real doozy. There’s even a tornado watch.”
He arched his eyebrows in obvious surprise. “No kidding?”
Boy, did he need looking after, Audrey thought with a slow shake of her head. How on earth had he made it this far in life all by himself?
“Fortunately,” she told him, “you don’t have anything scheduled outside the office, so you can stay nice and dry inside.”
He looked crestfallen at the news. “Yes, well, that scarcely comes as a surprise, does it?”
“I don’t know, does it?”
He expelled a soft sound of distress. “Miss Finnegan, please. You don’t have to pretend. I know the business is on its last legs, and it’s only a matter of time before the last of my clients has pulled out on me. So you don’t—”
“Actually, you picked up a couple of new clients last week,” she reminded him.
“I know,” he conceded, “but they’re not exactly huge corporations bulging with expendable income, are they? The projects they’ve commissioned will barely cover the month’s utility bills.”
“They’re brand-new businesses,” she pointed out, “starting on the ground floor. You have the opportunity to send them sky-high. And just think how grateful they’ll be to you when you do. Someday they’ll be huge, prosperous companies, and they’ll be indebted to you.”
He narrowed his eyes at her, as if he hadn’t thought about it like that. “I suppose you’re right,” he said. “In any event, they’ve paid me money to do work for them, haven’t they? So I’ll do my best by them.”
He started toward his office, then hesitated, slowing his pace until he had stopped completely in his tracks. For one long moment he only stood there, gazing blindly at a blank spot on the wall. Audrey didn’t say anything to disturb him, as he seemed to have his mind fixed intently on something very important that had nothing to do with the nice shade of mauve there. When he turned to look at her, he was smiling, a tentative, secretive little smile that she found very becoming.
“Hold my calls this morning, will you, Miss Finnegan?” he asked quietly, in a voice that told her he was still quite preoccupied. “I think I have an idea for the new Windsor Deli account.” He nodded slowly, then began to walk toward his office again. “Yeah, I do,” he muttered triumphantly. But he didn’t seem to be talking to Audrey. “I have a really, really good idea.”
When he disappeared into his office and closed the door behind him, she smiled with much satisfaction. See? He really did need her. Even if it was just to be a reassuring presence in his life.
She turned in her chair and eyed the computer terminal on her desk with as much confidence as she could muster. Then, after pushing up the sleeves of her fuchsia sweater, she doubled her fists and held them aloft like a prizefighter.
“Okay,” she said to the machine. “You and me, we’re going to have a little session. I’m going to type some letters, and you’re going to let me do it without beeping or booping or going blank on me. Got it?”
The cursor blinked at her benignly, but the computer uttered not a sound. She nodded victoriously. “Good,” she said.
And, humming “You Were Meant for Me” under her breath, Audrey went to work.
It was amazing, really, Wheeler thought some hours later, what you could do with the germ of an idea. As he gazed at the project on his work table, he smiled with much satisfaction. Damn, he was good. He’d forgotten just how good, over the past few months. He remembered now why he’d gone into this line of work to begin with. Because it was interesting. Because it was fun. Because it was what he did best.
He was coming out of his slump now—he could feel it. He didn’t know why or how it had come about, but Rush Commercial Designs, Inc. was about to undergo an upswing. A major upswing. He could feel it. Somehow, he just knew he was on the road to recovery. The two new accounts that had come about last week, even if they were meager, were just the beginning. Best of all, his creativity was back. His brain was functioning again. His talent and skills hadn’t packed up and abandoned him, after all. And now he was ready to recoup the losses he’d suffered.
As if inspired by his optimism, there was a soft rap at Wheeler’s office door that sounded remarkably like opportunity knocking. He smiled at the very idea.
“Yes, Miss Finnegan?” he called out.
The door opened slowly, as if she were being extra careful not to create some debacle that would blow it off its hinges. Thankfully all that happened was that the door got stuck on a bump in the carpet, so she had to shove it a few times—real hard—to get it to open. Unfortunately she wound up putting a bit more effort into her final push than was actually necessary, because the door gave just as her shoulder made contact, an action that resulted in her barreling over the threshold at an alarming speed.
Fortunately—a wild occurrence for her—she recovered herself before she went sprawling onto her knees or into Wheeler—so she ended up only looking a little foolish, and not doing anyone any bodily harm. The bright spots of pink that appeared on her cheeks were almost exactly the same hue as the bright fuchsia outfit she wore—from neck to toe—and he marveled again that when it came to her wardrobe, she was just so terribly...uh...monochromatic. Still, there was a lot to be said for a woman in a hot-pink dress.
“Sorry,” she mumbled after she’d righted herself.
“No problem,” Wheeler replied automatically.
It was, after all, an exchange the two of them shared at least a dozen times daily since her arrival at the office.
“What was it you wanted, Miss Finnegan?”
“Oh. There’s a Mr. Bernardi on the phone,” she said. “I would have buzzed you on the intercom, but I sort of broke it. Again.” She blushed once more, then hurried on, “But this Mr. Bernardi...?”
Wheeler narrowed his eyes at the announcement, recognizing the name—who in Louisville wouldn’t?—but certain his optimism had overtaken his good sense. “Not Charles Bernardi? The CEO of Bernardi Electronics?” he asked, knowing he was foolish to feel so hopeful. It was probably Joe Bernardi, bill collector, leaving a threatening message.
But when Miss Finnegan brightened, Wheeler knew his first assumption must be correct. “Yeah, that’s him,” she said. “He’s a really nice man. His mother and my mother are both in the same bunco club—can you imagine the coincidence?”
“You know Charles Bernardi?” he asked, incredulous. There was no way she could be traveling in the same social circle as Louisville’s foremost businessman and rumored billionaire.
She shook her head. “Oh, gosh, no. At least, I didn’t until a few minutes ago. But he’s very easy to talk to.”
Now Wheeler squeezed his eyes shut. His temp had been out there chatting up Charles Bernardi? Oh, great. So much for hoping for that account.
“Anyway,” she said, “he wants to talk to you. You were recommended by the owner of Windsor Deli, who just happens to be Mr. Bernardi’s daughter.”
“No way,” Wheeler said.
She nodded, smiling. “Big way. So you might want to take the call.”
She didn’t have to tell him twice. Wheeler fairly leaped from his seat and snatched up the telephone.
Twenty minutes later, he had made an appointment to offer a presentation to the biggest employer in town, one that, should he land the account—and even after only twenty minutes on the phone with Charles Bernardi, he was fairly confident he would land the account—would pull his business right up from the bottom of the heap.
And for some reason, all he could think was that Miss Finnegan was somehow partly responsible. He had no idea why such an idea had landed in his head, but it was a feeling he just couldn’t shake. Funny, but ever since he’d taken her on last week, he’d gradually begun to pull out of his slump. He’d had a couple of very good ideas, had signed a handful of new accounts and looked to be this close to closing another, one that would be an absolute lifesaver. Or, at least, a business saver. This was definitely the beginning of good things for Wheeler.
Huh. How about that? he thought. Miss Audrey Finnegan, with all her ill fortune, was turning out to be quite the good-luck charm for him.
Wheeler smiled at the thought. Nah. That was going a bit too far. There was no way a woman like that, with whom bad luck walked hand in hand, could ever be a lucky talisman for anyone. Still, the morning’s events called for a celebration of sorts. So he rose and made his way to the outer office, where he found his secretary muttering something that sounded marginally profane under her breath at the computer.
“Miss Finnegan,” he said.
She jumped at the sound of his voice, spinning around so quickly in her chair that she almost tumbled right out of it. Thankfully, at the last minute, she grabbed the side of her desk and managed—just barely—to stay seated.
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