8
“Ginger, I want you to cancel all my meetings for the rest of the week,” Jordan told his secretary when he called Houston first thing on Monday morning. It was only 8:00 a.m., but he knew she’d already been at her desk for at least half an hour. Most of the time she even beat him to the office and he was an early starter.
“You’re going on your honeymoon,” she guessed, sounding far more pleased than she had when he’d told her about his engagement to Rexanne. “You must have finally talked Kelly into getting married. Congratulations, boss!”
“I wish,” he said dully.
“She hasn’t said yes yet?”
The shock in Ginger’s voice gave him some encouragement. Obviously she thought he was a catch, even if Kelly did not. “Not even maybe,” he admitted.
“Well, for heaven’s sake, boss, you can’t just shut down business on a whim. How long do you expect it to take to persuade her?”
“You’re a woman. You tell me.”
“Did you do like I said? Did you buy some of that French perfume? Did you tell her you loved her?”
Jordan supposed his silence was answer enough, because Ginger gave a little snort of disgust. “Jeez, boss, you’re missing the most obvious things. Perfume is equated with sex, at least the right one is. And every woman wants the man she’s marrying to be crazy in love with her. Stop being so stodgy and do something over the top for a change. Dazzle her.”
“But this is Kelly,” he protested. “We’ve known each other forever. She doesn’t expect all that hearts and flowers sentiment. She’d probably laugh in my face.”
Ginger sighed heavily. “Boss, I hate to say it, but you deserve to remain single. You might as well come on back to Houston now, because if Kelly has a brain in her head, which she obviously does, she’ll boot you out of there sooner or later anyway. You’ll wind up with one of those dull, grasping socialites, who won’t care how you woo them as long as you ultimately give them access to your bank account.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” he said, thoroughly demoralized. “Just cancel the meetings, okay? Or see if one of the others can take them. Mark could probably handle the one with the equipment manufacturer.” He listed others that could be turned over to key members of his staff. “You’ll have to postpone the rest.”
“And what am I supposed to tell people?”
“Tell them I’m working on a major acquisition and it’s taking more of my time than I’d planned.”
Ginger gave another derisive sniff. “Tell Kelly that, why don’t you? That’ll really win her over.”
Jordan wasn’t about to admit to her that his lack of romanticism was already a major bone of contention between Kelly and him. “Just do what I asked, please. I’ll see you next week.”
“Bet it’ll be sooner,” Ginger muttered.
“Goodbye,” he said pointedly. “Call me at Kelly’s if you need me.”
“I think maybe I’ll try reaching you at White Pines first. Odds are that’s where you’ll be.”
She hung up before he could respond to her final, stinging taunt. Damn, what was with women, anyway? They all stuck together. He suspected Jessie would be no different.
Now that he thought about it, maybe that was the real reason he’d driven all the way to Luke’s the night before. He’d wanted a chance to test his thinking on his brother’s wife.
Jessie had always struck him as a sweet, practical, no-nonsense kind of woman. She was very fond of Kelly. Surely she would see the sense in the arrangement he was proposing to Kelly. Like him, Jessie would want what was best for her friend. Someone who would look after her and Dani.
He found Jessie downstairs in the kitchen. The baby was propped up in her high chair and Jessie was spooning something that looked like watered-down oatmeal into her mouth. Most of it appeared to be on Angela’s face and the floor with a goodly portion streaked from Jessie’s face all the way down the front of her blouse. Oddly enough, she didn’t seem to mind.
The minute Jessie spotted him, she stood and shoved the tiny spoon into his hand. “Feed her, would you? I need to check the laundry.”
“Can’t she wait?” he inquired, staring helplessly from Jessie to the baby and back again. Before the words were out of his mouth, Angela balled her tiny hands into fists and began whimpering. Jessie didn’t even glance back.
“Okay, okay,” he murmured, taking a seat opposite the baby. He dipped the spoon into the cereal, if that’s what it was, and aimed at Angela’s mouth. Unfortunately the target moved. The cereal dribbled down her cheek. She seemed pleased, though, that he’d tried. She smiled happily, displaying what might have been the beginnings of a tooth.
“Let’s try this again,” he said, bolstered by that smile. The next spoonful actually made it into her mouth, then dribbled out. He had the strangest suspicion that this was a game she enjoyed playing. Another perverse woman in the making, he decided with a sigh of resignation.
He scooped up more of the disgusting cereal and aimed again. This time she hit the spoon and splattered it back on him. Globs of the white stuff stuck to his shirt. He was forced to admit to a certain admiration for her muscle tone. She’d whacked that spoon with real strength.
Babies were obviously more of a challenge than he’d originally thought. He made up his mind to get the hang of dealing with them. After all, he supposed that sooner or later he and Kelly would want children of their own, baby brothers and sisters for Dani. He hadn’t given a lot of consideration to kids in the past, but his experiences with Dani lately were changing his mind.
“Do you really want this stuff?” he inquired. “Frankly, it looks pretty disgusting to me.”
“You’re not the one eating it,” Jessie retorted, coming back
