For a moment, he thought she was going to laugh in his face.
“Right,” she said skeptically. “Okay, Mr. Sensitive, empathize this. Tina is a wonderful person. My best friend. She’s had some bad luck and hard knocks, and right now she’s in and out of remission of her cancer and trying to raise her baby on her own.”
“That’s insane,” he interjected coolly. “A woman with that sort of health danger has no business having a child.”
Her eyes widened and she looked at him as though he were a freak. “Sometimes these things are beyond our control.”
“Nothing’s ever beyond control.”
“Oh brother.” She rose from the couch and picked up her coffee cup. “You’re so wrong. I’ve been on a runaway roller coaster for years and I still haven’t found the brakes on the darn thing.”
“Maybe I can help you with that,” he said softly.
She stared at him and he stared right back. She tried so hard to keep a mask of quiet competence in place, but he was beginning to see through it. She wasn’t as good at hiding as she thought.
She went into the kitchen to refill her cup and he followed her.
She turned, startled. “Did you want more coffee?” she asked.
“No, thanks,” he said. “I’ve got to get going.”
She looked up at him and his gaze went to her mouth, then veered quickly away.
“I’ll be expecting you at two,” he said, picking up his hat.
“Why?” she asked simply.
He turned back and looked at her. “Because I want to talk over some possibilities with you. I told you I wanted to find a way to get you back at work at ACW.”
She frowned, obviously suspicious. “Why do you care whether it’s me or someone else?”
He stopped dead, staring at her. “Callie, why don’t you trust me?”
“I trust you.”
“No, you don’t. You’re suspicious of everything I say and do.”
“That’s not really true.”
“What have I done to make you so wary? Or has someone else hurt you?”
Bingo. He saw it in her eyes. But she wasn’t going to admit it.
“This is ridiculous,” she said, turning away. “I like you better as a boss than a therapist.”
“Then we agree,” he said, turning to follow her.
She passed so close he thought he caught the scent of her hair. She was very real, very flesh and blood. She put up a lot of barricades and hid behind defenses, but there was nothing coy or artificial about her.
He liked her. He liked the way she looked and the way she walked and the way she held her head when she talked to him so seriously. He actually liked that she was wary of him. He wouldn’t have respected her if she’d jumped at the things he said too eagerly. She was pretty and smart and classy.
Yes. He had to have her as the mother of his child.
She was perfect. She was the one.
“Will you come?” he asked, resisting the impulse to grab her and sling her over his shoulder.
She looked at him. “I’ll think about it.”
“Two o’clock sharp.”
“I know. I got that.”
He went to the door. “If you don’t show up…”
“You’ll come back and torture my orchid?” she suggested lightly.
“No.” He favored her with a slow grin. “But I will be back.”
He left whistling. She would come. For curiosity’s sake if nothing else.
CHAPTER THREE
IT FELT odd walking down the corridors where Callie had been an employee only one day before. People glanced up and did a double-take when they saw her. She smiled and held her head high. A few smiled back but she hadn’t made many friends outside of her own department-and they were all gone.
Lynnette, Grant Carver’s administrative assistant, didn’t smile. She rose from her desk and ushered Callie into Grant’s office immediately, but she didn’t look happy to do it.
The woman thinks I’m some sort of gold digger, Callie guessed perceptively. Oh well. She was protective of her boss and Callie supposed that was a good thing.
Grant rose in a courtly manner and shook hands with her, establishing the businesslike mood right away. He wore beautiful wool slacks and a crisp white shirt with a sky-blue tie-the picture of the ideal entrepreneur.
“Please have a seat, Ms. Stevens,” he said, gesturing toward the chair he’d pulled up before the desk. “I’m glad you decided to come.”
“Thank you.” She sat down feeling nervous and wondering why she’d let herself wear such a short skirt. No wonder Lynnette was leery.
“Well, let’s get right to it,” he said, barely glancing at her shapely legs before shuffling papers on his desk. “Looking over your record, I see you’ve had a few prelaw courses in college. Were you planning to go to law school?”
She hesitated. Her past was tangled with twists and turns she didn’t want to get into. “At one point, I had hopes along those lines,” she admitted.
He nodded, his gaze cool and reserved. Looking at him, she could hardly believe this was the same man she’d fallen on the night before, the same man who’d thrown her for a loop by taking his shirt off, the same man who’d appeared on her doorstep with doughnuts.
“ACW Properties has a couple of openings, but the one I would think best for you would be a position in the paralegal section of our law department,” he was saying. “Perhaps you’d be interested.”
“I don’t have any paralegal training,” she said quickly. “Don’t they usually want a certificate for that?”
He nodded, his wide mouth twitching at the corners. “They might. But I think I can get a waiver on that. Even personnel tends to do what I tell them to.”
“Oh. Of course.” He was the boss, after all. She just wasn’t used to getting favored treatment from anyone.
“You would start out as an assistant to our paralegal staff,” he said. “We would expect you to develop quickly into a fully qualified paralegal. Here’s the projected salary.”
He wrote the number on a piece of paper and passed it to her. Her eyes widened as she noted the sum.
“It’s a nice raise,” he said.
She looked across the desk, trying to read something in his eyes. It was a nice raise. Too nice. What did he really want?
“This is more than I expected,” she said mistrustfully. “What are you going to want me to do for it?”
His eyes glittered and she realized what she’d at first taken for irritation was actually humor.
“So young and yet so cynical,” he said. “I expect you to do a good job for ACW. A very good job.”
She frowned, searching his eyes. She was usually pretty good at reading people, but for some reason she couldn’t get a handle on his moods and motives today.
“I don’t get it,” she challenged. “This is too much money for a job that’s actually an assistant to an assistant.”
He shrugged. “Why don’t you turn it down, then?” he said softly, watching her like a cat watching a mouse.
“Heck no,” she said, tossing her hair back and looking him straight in the eye. “I need the money badly. I just want to make sure I know what the money is actually buying before I agree to take it.”
“I expect top-notch work and I’m willing to pay for quality.”
Funny, but she was still uneasy, feeling there was something behind what he was saying, something he was holding back. His comment about being willing to pay for quality seemed to have an added significance she just
