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“A mistake,” he agreed with silky satisfaction, folding his arms over the ridiculous breadth of his chest and looking at her, pleased that she had lived up to his every unspoken judgment: rich, useless, frivolous and chased away by the slightest hint of a challenge.
In less than ten seconds, too!
Jessie was compelled to wipe the smirk off his face, even if it meant she closed the escape door. She straightened her shoulders and tilted her chin.
“Oh, I’m not going anywhere,” she said, though of course a split second ago that had been exactly her intent, to cut and run. Aware he was watching her with every ounce of his ill humor returned, she looked for a place to set her purse. She found a tiny corner of clear floor under the desk. Her skirt tightened uncomfortably across her derriere when she bent over, and she straightened hurriedly.
“My specialty is disasters,” she said, with cocky confidence that she was far from feeling. “I can fix a mistake like this one—” she motioned to the office with her hand “—in a week.”
“A week,” he muttered dubiously, and then brightened marginally as he watched her. “Honey, if you last half a day, I’ll eat my shorts.”
“Briefs or boxers?” she asked. And then she added quickly, “And don’t call me honey. It’s tacky.”
“Tacky,” he repeated, stunned, as if one of those precariously leaning boxes had slid off the counter and landed on his toe. Thankfully, he focused on the tacky enough that he didn’t even appear to notice how uncomfortable she was with the uncharacteristically bold remark she had made. Talk about tacky—how about discussing a man’s underwear preference?
“Is there any particular part of this mess you’d like cleaned up first?” she said, eager to shift the focus completely.
They were faced off, and she could see she was somewhat of a surprise to him and not an altogether pleasant one, either.
Oh, why hadn’t she just turned around and walked back out the door while she still had the chance? Oh, no, Little Miss Has-To-Prove-Herself had to pick the worst moment to put in an appearance.
“Miss King, MBA, that’s entirely up to you.”
She should really correct him. She had never said a thing about an MBA. “Good,” she said decisively. “I’ll begin with—”
“No, wait. On second thought, coffee would be a good place to start.”
“Coffee,” she repeated uneasily. She was pretty sure affirmative action meant that she didn’t have to make coffee.
He regarded her rebellious expression cynically, then shook his head.
Something snapped loudly in the vicinity of her desk, and she started, turned and saw nothing. Still, she knew the startle reflex had given away her wee bit of nervousness.
He hadn’t missed it. He smiled grimly. “I’m downgrading. Two hours. That’s how long you’ll make it.”
“I hope they’re boxers,” she shot back. “Those would take you a little longer to eat.”
Good grief, this had to stop! She’d known this man less than ten minutes and she had mentioned his undergarments twice! She and Mitch had never discussed undergarments, ever.
“And just for future reference, for your next job, in the real world work starts at seven, not—” he glanced at his watch “—eight forty-five.”
She wanted to defend herself. Not everyone came in from Harrisonburg, either! But she sensed under these circumstances that excuses, even very legitimate ones, would be wasted.
He picked up a sheaf of papers from a leaning stack on the counter, looked at her once more, shook his head ruefully and headed for the door. The phone started ringing again, and he moved to pick it up, then stopped.
He grinned at her, that grin that made her heart do traitorous and treacherous things. She was glad she was engaged to a man who did not make her feel so topsyturvy. It would be exhausting to feel this way all the time!
“Hey,” he said, his deep voice edged with just a trace of sarcasm, “that would be your job now.”
The door shut behind him, and thankfully he took all his bristling energy with him, though without him in it, the room seemed even more depressing than before, if that was possible.
She went around to the other side of the desk, closed her eyes, tried to concentrate. Surely she must have hit her head harder than she thought. She felt shell-shocked, but she took a deep breath, picked up the phone and said, “K & B Auto.”
She had barely gotten it out when she was assaulted by a description of a malfunctioning carburetor in an accent so deep it was nearly indecipherable.
She loved cars. She always had. She loved how they looked and how they smelled and how they sounded when they were running perfectly. She realized what she loved was the cosmetics of cars, because she was not even entirely sure what a carburetor was. Maybe she had been a little overly confident in telling that annoying man she was going to bring calm to chaos. She wasn’t sure how her master’s degree was going to help her with this challenge.
“Call back. Later. Tomorrow would be good.” She hung up the phone and sank into a padded leather chair in front of a scarred metal desk overflowing with paper.
The connecting door to the work bay swung open.
“That coffee? I like it strong.”
He was zipping himself—very unselfconsciously—into a pair of faded blue coveralls, the jeans and white T-shirt underneath.
The politically correct reply would have been to tell him to make his own damn coffee, but her eyes were mutinously glued to that zipper.
The door shut again before she came to her senses enough to become politically correct.
Coffee. Strong. Now would really be the time to march into the dark cavern of the auto repair bays to tell him he had obviously mistaken her for someone she was not. She might be able to manage an office. But girl Friday? Really that was beneath her dignity! She hadn’t spent the last six years of her life at school so that she could make coffee and fetch doughnuts!
What on earth had her father been thinking? It was totally evident she was going to be a fish out of water in this environment. It was totally evident this had been a mistake.
“My specialty is disasters,” she said, mimicking herself. “I can fix a mistake like this one—in a week.”
She pushed back several leaning stacks of paper to make enough room for her elbows. Then she rested her head in her hands and ordered herself to think. Thinking was generally her specialty, not that she had let even a hint of that show in the encounter she had just survived. Nor was any of her natural intelligence surfacing now. Because instead of formulating a plan of attack for the terrible mess in this office, and the huge coffee machine that gloated at her from its perch on the crowded counter, she was lamenting her choice of outfit.
A terrible choice. A suit, classic Chanel, jacket and straight skirt, in a small plaid pattern that had made her feel exceedingly professional when she had chosen it, along with dark stockings and plain black pumps, this morning. It was the type of outfit her fiancé, Mitch, approved of. Respectable. Mature. Appropriate for someone planning an academic career.
It makes you look fat, a voice inside her head wailed. Plus, it was going to be too hot. Her office space already seemed sauna-like, though in fairness, part of that might be her reaction to Garner Blake.
And her hair! Why had she ever allowed her sister Chelsea to talk her into cutting it? Oh, because Chelsea had talked about bone structure and her eyes and had made her believe, somehow, that having only two inches of hair could make her other features seem extraordinary!
Of course, under Chelsea’s hand—that wheat-blond hair coaxed into a riot of cheerful curls—that had happened. For Brandy’s wedding, Chelsea had also used makeup like an artist used a brush. In moments, Jessie had found herself in possession of startling cheekbones, stunning eyes, a sinfully puffy bottom lip.
But left to her own devices? Jessie felt her new “do” managed to look like she had slept with a demon-possessed rolling pin. Desperate for some semblance of order from her unruly hair she had taken to wetting it down, plastering it against her head and letting it dry like that. Without looking in a mirror, she knew the result was less than stellar, a drowned rat mixed with a helmet-head kind of look.
And makeup? A tiny line of gloss around her lips, a hint of mascara, a touch of blush. The result? Dull. Dull. Dull.
Stop it, Jessie commanded herself. The order of business was not to sit here wishing for another opportunity to make that all-important first impression. If she had it to do again, she should not waste her wishes on beauty. Why should she care if Garner Blake thought she was attractive? She was already taken, engaged, not available for the man-woman game anymore. She was relieved about that. The rules and procedures had always seemed just a little nebulous. She was a disaster at interchanges with the opposite sex, and she was darned lucky to have found Mitch, who appreciated her for her mind.
No, if she was throwing wishes around, she should opt for a chance to look brilliant.
Just a year from her doctoral degree, if she chose to continue her prairie dog study, and she had managed to present herself as a complete imbecile from the moment she had stepped out of her smoking car.
She had confidently proclaimed her master’s degree qualified her to look after his office, and she could clearly see it would take something much more than that.
“A combination of the Queen of Clean and Trump,” she muttered out loud.
Sitting at this horribly messy desk in a building that smelled of grease and other mysterious and extremely masculine substances, and that was heating up more by the second, it occurred to her she should have asked more questions of her father.
Still, he hadn’t really given her much opportunity. He had passed her off to James to get details like location, date and time. She remembered her father had sounded frail in a way that had made her uneasy—and eager to please.
She might not like this job, but she was not letting her father down!
And she was not letting that arrogant ass—who happened to be her boss—win!
“And I am certainly not being defeated by a coffeepot,” she decided, and leapt to her feet. She focused furiously on her task, ignoring the almost constant jangling of the phone. The pot was a huge silver monstrosity that did not bear any resemblance to the one she had at home on her kitchen counter. She found grounds, dumped in approximately enough to sink the Titanic, found the on switch and got it working.
“‘I like it strong.’” She mimicked his deep voice.
Still, when the office began to fill with the smell of coffee, Jessica King felt inordinately pleased with herself.
“There’s no problem so great a good mind can’t solve it,” she said to herself, quoting Mitch. With new confidence she picked up the ringing telephone.
Okay, she might be in the shadow of her gorgeous younger sister, Chelsea, who the world and the press could not get enough of. And she was definitely in the shadow of Brandy, who was so bold and adventuresome.
But Jessie had her talents. She was the brainy princess, and K & B Auto—and Garner Blake—were about to find that out! That good-looking oaf didn’t think she could do it. She couldn’t think of a pleasure greater than proving him wrong.
“So, uh, Garner, what do you think?”
He didn’t have to ask, “About what?” Clive, the best mechanic in his shop, looked like a biker and was as mild and shy as a groundhog fresh out of its hole. He and his wife had just had their first baby. Garner had been named godfather.
“She makes lousy coffee,” he said, couching his answer in carefully diplomatic terms. What he was thinking was I hate rich girls.
In just a few moments of acquaintance she had called him mucky and tacky. The business he had spent his whole life building had been reduced to a mess and a mistake. She hadn’t even known she was being insulting. She’d just been exercising that unconscious superiority of the very rich.
“I like the coffee,” Clive said with just a touch of stubbornness. “Garner, you try being nice for a change, or she’ll up and quit like all the rest of them.”
We can only hope. Garner had chosen not to mention to these guys that their new office manager was one of those Kings. It would bring up a whole lot of questions that he didn’t know how to answer.
“I ain’t working here another week if you keep on trying to do all the jobs, including billing, booking and answering the phone.”
Garner tried not to groan. Clive was going to make his stand over this girl, the one he needed to get rid of? Resentfully, he reminded himself that his loyalty to this man who was threatening to quit was part of the reason he found himself in this predicament in the first place.
“Look, I’ll run the business, you pull the wrenches.”
“I miss your aunt,” Clive said glumly.
Garner’s aunt Mattie had done the office managing since he was a child. She was old and efficient and not the least distracting. Imagine her abandoning K & B for the dubious pleasure of marrying Arnold Hefflinger and moving to Quartzsite, Arizona! She’d given fair notice, but somehow Garner hadn’t taken her seriously, or understood exactly how much she did and how hard she was going to be to replace, until it was too late.
“Them last two gals left in tears,” Clive said, faint warning in the look he sent Garner.
But Garner could only hope it had been good practice for getting rid of this one. Though even as he thought it, he knew he didn’t ever want to see Jessica King’s big green eyes filming with tears.
Spitting with anger was another thing altogether.
“The second one looked awful good in a miniskirt,” Clive remembered wistfully.
Garner sighed. Something they weren’t going to have to worry about with Jessica King. She wasn’t the miniskirt kind. In fact she looked like she had taken a wrong turn on the way to finding her kindergarten class—not what he’d expected at all. But those rich kids could be real good at that—the wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing game.
Still, he’d expected, as a King princess, she would have been a whole lot flashier. Manicure, makeup, clothes, hair, jewelry. Jessica’s hair had been a pretty color, but short, flattened to her head in a very unflattering manner. The boxy, refrigeratorlike design of the suit had successfully disguised any lines beneath it, which was a good thing. Her nails had been neat and filed. The only jewelry had been that ring.
She had the attitude, though, in spades. Mucky, tacky and messy, he reminded himself.
“I hope she brings cookies to work,” Clive said.
“That girl hasn’t ever baked a cookie in her life,” Garner said.
“What would make you say that?” Clive asked innocently.
Garner stifled a snort. One thing he knew for sure: Rich girls did not bake cookies.
But Clive saved him from having to reply by shuffling off to his bay, where Mrs. Fannie Klippenhopper’s thirty-year-old Impala was up on the hoist.
Aunt Mattie, of course, had provided cookies. Cookies and comfort. She had been part den mother and part drill sergeant and the sad fact of the matter was she was going to be irreplaceable as the office manager of K & B Auto.
He was willing to bet Jake King’s daughter not only hadn’t ever baked a cookie, she hadn’t ever canned peaches, ridden a public bus or worried over a bill, either. Despite her rather surprising academic achievement, normal—like working the front end of a garage—would not be in her life experience. Normal to her was probably denting a very expensive car and walking away from it with a shrug and an oh well.
Unwillingly, the look on her face when he’d zipped up his coveralls in front of her came to mind.
If he didn’t know better he would have called it hunger.
She had poked a rather delectable tongue out between lips that he’d already been misguided enough to touch. Those lips had been plump and sensuous, and that had been before she licked them.
“Sheesh,” he said to himself.
From the size of that rock on her finger, she was very engaged.
Dumb was bad for an office manager, but complicated was way, way worse.
And complicated was his mind insisting on asking questions that were none of his business. Like why did a girl wearing a ring like that look so, well, not in love? None of that telltale glow and way too interested in a man who was not her fiancé zipping up his pants. Plus chocolate before nine in the morning? That woman was not happy.
Rich women were never happy.
His mother had been the first to teach him that lesson, but he’d insisted on repeating it several times, most recently with Kathy-Anne Rice-Chapman.
Besides, the plain fact of the matter was, even without the complication of Jessica being Jake King’s daughter, Garner did not consider himself good at reading the intricacies of the female of his species, with the possible exception of Aunt Mattie. Though he’d even misread his good aunt. He’d thought she was staying forever, pure and simple. Though his daddy had warned him, a long, long time ago there was no such thing as a woman who stayed forever, and Garner’s mother had been a case in point.
Jessica King had been here only moments, and Garner realized he was contemplating the most miserable moments of his life. It was not a good omen.
Garner Blake was good with cars. He read cars the way scholars read books. He could rebuild an old one until it purred like a kitten. He could ferret out the most elusive of mechanical problems. When parts didn’t exist he could manufacture them. There was a science of sorts to cars. As far as he could tell, women did not come with the same predictable set of rules as the mechanical workings underneath the hood.
He had spent two days getting out every old box of files and bills he could find to scare Jessica King right off his place. Now he had upped the ante by daring her to last more than two hours. Of course, hearing the mousetrap go off under her desk had made him up his bet.
“Rich girls do not like rodents,” Garner said cheerfully. He consulted his watch. One hour and fifty-one more minutes to go.
Garner sank down at his desk, took a sip of coffee and winced. As ungrateful as Clive would be for it, he felt responsible for Clive’s child, or at least for the livelihood of that child’s father. He had not missed the veiled threat in Jake King’s voice during that last phone call. But if she left on her own, gave up, tossed in the towel…
