“Like some small-town bookstore owner wouldn’t jump for joy at this opportunity?”
“Uh, my initial contact would make it seem like Ms. Winton is not exactly jumping. I’m not prepared to risk Vivian Ascot’s displeasure. But it’s more than that. Before you came on board here, we had hit a bit of a bump in the business road. Viv bailed us out. Failure is not an option.”
We’re supposed to seduce her. That had seemed like a very casual term of reference a few days ago.
Not so much now with Jessica Winton standing in front of him, crying.
She really could be a poster child for the small-town girl with her undyed hair pulled primly back, her basically makeup-free face, her guileless expression.
Despite the red jacket—he thought if it had been called burgundy the barge mix-up could have been avoided—there was something very understated about her. He moved in a world where people, and particularly women, drew attention to their assets, not away from them.
She had, he could see, a beautiful figure, and yet if he was to describe her look, he might call it spinster librarian. She’d probably be hurt to know it was exactly the look, had he not been distracted, that he would have assigned to a small-town bookstore owner, though one who was twenty years older than her.
Her expression was one of pure vulnerability: those huge dark tear-filled eyes, her thick lashes studded with diamond tears, the trembling of an unexpectedly tempting mouth.
Everything about her—except maybe that mouth—said wholesome. Fresh. Untainted. Easily hurt.
Which had made her a pretty natural mark for the likes of Debbie and the Gidgets Widgets team, unfortunately.
“It’s going to be okay,” he said and felt something he rarely felt: clumsily inept.
Not unsurprisingly, she was not at all reassured. He recalled he might have used that same expression often in that terrible year after his father had died, and his sister and his mother had not been reassured then either.
Jessica buried her face in her hands and wept.
He froze.
Do something, he snapped at himself.
What? a voice asked back.
Anything.
So, he patted her shoulder. The curve of it was so delicate that it felt as if he had whacked her. He withdrew his hand hastily. She hiccuped noisily. People were glancing at her. And then at him. As if he was supposed to know what to do.
He wanted to protest. She’s a job candidate, not a love interest.
He ordered himself to back off and let her have her cry. It was not unnatural for her to be crying. She was ten minutes into her visit to one of the largest and most sophisticated cities in the world, and she’d been robbed.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “I know it’s a nasty turn of events.”
The wrong thing to say—no surprise, underscoring what he had already deduced, great businessman and emotional moron that he was—as her sobs, muffled by her hands, became louder.
“It’s going to be okay,” he repeated, even though those very words had had no effect on any of the many occasions he had used them.
It occurred to him words—or at least not any he could think of—were simply not going to cut it.
To his own shock, some instinct moved him closer to her, instead of farther away. To his own shock, he tugged her hands from her face, scanned her tearstained cheeks, and then, with a sigh, folded his arms around her, and pulled her to him.
She did not resist, but snuggled into him like a wet kitten rescued from a storm. Nothing could have prepared him for that, either: the softness of her, the warmth of her, the way she was making him feel, well, manly, in a way he was not sure he had ever experienced before.
She sobbed against his chest, her tears leaving a warm patch that was threatening to melt even his ever cynical heart.
He could smell a heady scent coming off her hair, which was tickling the bottom of his chin. What was that? Lavender? Since when did he know what lavender smelled like? And yet it seemed as if he could picture a field full of those tall purple blooms, with her walking through it, her hand grazing the top of the flowers like a blessing.
He gave himself a mental shake and wondered if he should say something to hurry this along before he ended up picturing himself in that field of lavender with her.
There, there seemed too grandfatherly. Pull yourself together seemed too hard and I understand how you’re feeling would have been a stretch.
After what seemed to be at least an hour, the length between the sobs—he was timing them, though he thought that was probably supposed to be for contractions—lengthened and then lengthened a little more, until they stopped and she drew in a long, shuddering sigh.
Finally, she stepped away from him.
His eyes went to one of the airport clocks. Three minutes, not an hour. He looked back at her. Her face was blotchy, her hair was mussed and the front of her blouse, where it had been pressed against him, was creased. Three minutes of crying could cause quite a look of dishevelment in a woman!
“Thanks. I’m sorry.” She looked mortified with herself. She gazed in the region of the wet blotches on his shirt, appalled, and then said, again, “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.”
“I’m tired. And I’m hungry. And basically, I’m a mess. How do you like me, so far?”
Thankfully, she did not seem to be waiting for an answer, because the truth was, he did find her oddly appealing at the same time that he did not think she was cut out for the high-pressure world of JHA.
It was harsh judgment, but there it was. Despite the fact he was supposed to seduce her to take the job, he could feel himself planning the exact opposite. He’d show her around the city, as per plan, gently dissuade her from a career at JHA, then put her back on a plane as soon as
