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She shivered slightly. Was it possible? She could think of little nice to say about the man, but could he possibly be a murderer?
In high school, when his cruel prank was still fresh in her mind, she’d envisioned all sorts of ways she might make Conner Blake pay for his crime. Her revenge fantasies had included such soap-operatic scenarios as transforming herself into a siren, tricking him into falling in love with her, then jilting him at the altar. Or waiting until he was running for congress, then revealing to the press what he had done to her just days before the election.
She’d grown up and realized how outlandish her fantasies had been, how improbable and immature. But never in her wildest imagination had she envisioned sending him up the river.
Now, that would be payback—sending Conner to prison. The thought brought her no satisfaction. He might be a despicable fathead, but could she really believe he was capable of taking a human life?
She didn’t have to draw conclusions. She only had to report what she found out and Daniel would follow up. Tonight’s report would be a juicy one.
CHAPTER THREE
THE NEXT DAY, when Conner returned from lunch, he found a surprise sitting on his desk. Jillian had delivered a report based on the armload of trash he’d shoved at her only yesterday. The papers were sorted into file folders, neatly stacked on his chair, and a printed report—complete with graphs, charts and a spreadsheet—sat in the middle of his desk.
He was torn when it came to having an assistant. On one hand, he needed someone to keep him organized. Paperwork, scheduling, computers, meetings—he wasn’t terribly good at any of it. But he hated having assistants underfoot. Give him a nice stand of oak trees and he could read them like a book. He could tell a tree’s health just by looking at the color and texture of the bark, the number of branches and how they grew, the gloss of the leaf.
Stick him behind a desk and he was close to useless.
His job performance as director of timber operations was only so-so. This company was only as good as the wood it harvested, and that harvest was only as good as the men and women out in the field finding the stands of trees, evaluating them, negotiating for the purchase and supervising the harvest. From his office he could give his buyers directions, look at photographs and approve purchases or not. But it drove him crazy not to have firsthand knowledge.
And the paperwork—God, how he hated paperwork. All the hoops they had to jump through to keep this certification or that one, proving they adhered to green policies, that they had performed all the correct environmental impact studies. He’d had no idea how hard his predecessor’s job was when he’d accepted the promotion.
It was easy to blame Chandra, but deep down, Conner had no one but himself to hold responsible. He was the one who’d been thinking with his privates, rather than his brain and his heart, when he’d agreed to the corner office. He’d have done anything to keep Chandra happy.
In the end, though, his decision to settle down had backfired. Chandra had fallen in love with an adventurer and world traveler who brought home exotic presents—carved teak boxes, silks and Oriental rugs. She’d seen him as a modern-day Indiana Jones.
But she’d grown weary of his constant travel and had begged her grandfather to promote him. Yes, because of Chandra, he had advanced in the company at lightning speed, bringing home ever-larger paychecks.
But an executive who’d traded in his bullwhip for a smart phone didn’t interest her any longer. The divorce had been executed with surgical precision. Conner had lost his wife, his home, his dog, his savings, and he’d been left with a job he despised.
He wouldn’t be here forever—that was his only consolation. But leaving Stan—a man as dear to him as his own grandfather—in the middle of this hideous controversy over Greg’s murder was unthinkable. With treatment, Stan might beat the cancer. But prison would kill him.
Conner simply couldn’t abandon the sinking ship.
He’d met with Stan’s lawyer, who at Stan’s request had allowed him to go over the evidence collected by the police. One anomaly stood out to Conner right away. Stan wasn’t strong enough to hoist two hundred pounds of deadweight into a car trunk. That was a point in Stan’s favor.
But Conner still had no clue who might have murdered Greg and framed Stan. Any one of the directors, looking to move up, could be responsible. All of them had been interviewed by the police, including Conner. In fact, they’d looked at Conner pretty closely, since he was Greg’s immediate boss. But once they’d zeroed in on Stan, they’d abandoned all their other suspects.
Conner forced his attention back to his job, looking over Jillian’s report. She’d made a few errors, mostly little details that stemmed from a lack of familiarity with the lumber business rather than outright mistakes. He made some notations, then headed for her desk to return it to her.
Maybe he’d finally found an assistant with half a brain who could get things back on track. Someone to whom he could actually delegate responsibilities.
He found her at her desk, shredding a stack of papers he’d given her permission to dispose of.
“You know, you don’t have to do that yourself. Down on the first floor, there’s a whole department devoted to managing waste and recycling. You just hand someone the papers and they’ll take it from there.”
“I prefer to do this myself,” she said, sending another stack of pages through the slot and pausing while the blades whined. “That way, I know for sure it was done. In case a question ever comes up. I assume some of these numbers, the bids and such, are confidential.”
Today she was wearing a slim black skirt and a short-sleeved, lime-green sweater that showed him more of her curves than he’d seen on her first day. Her breasts were fuller than he’d thought at first, and her waist was so narrow he could probably span it with his hands. Twenty-four inches, he’d bet money on it. He had a lot of experience sizing up the circumference of trees.
Not that Jillian’s body looked anything like a tree trunk.
“Is there anything else you’d like me to work on?”
He snapped back to his senses. He had no business thinking about Jillian’s waist, or any other part of her body for that matter.
“Where did you learn to pull together a report like that?” he asked, instead of answering her question.
“I have a business administration degree from Dartmouth,” she said. “Is it satisfactory?”
“There are some mistakes,” he said gruffly, plopping the report in front of her. “Fix them and print it out again.” He turned quickly and walked away before she could see his reaction to her.
Wow. He fell into his office chair and spun it around. Where had that come from? How long had it been since he’d reacted to a woman like that?
No one since Chandra. Chandra, with her traffic-stopping body and long black hair and eyes like cut emeralds, just as sharp, too.
She did nothing for him now, especially since he knew everything about her was fake, from the hair extensions to the augmented breasts to the acrylic nails.
But it wasn’t just her physical self that was insincere. She had lied without conscience, without a second thought, to get what she wanted. She’d perfected the fine art of saying exactly what a man wanted to hear, and he’d fallen for it.
No reason to believe Jillian wasn’t just the same. She was cut from the same cloth—rich, well educated, groomed to manipulate her way to become a rich man’s wife someday.
To be fair, she’d given no indication that she expected him to fill the role of her husband. She’d been nothing if not professional. Even a bit cool.
Which was odd.
Most women responded to him from a…hormonal perspective. The nastier he was to them, the more they tried to win him over. It was the beauty-and-the-beast syndrome. They wanted to tame him.
But not Jillian. She didn’t flutter eyelashes, or lean over so he could get an eyeful of her cleavage, or flip her hair or lick her lips. In fact, he suspected she might be sneering at him behind his back.
It shouldn’t matter. She appeared to be qualified for her job, and that was the only important thing.
She still seemed familiar to him somehow. Who did she remind him of? If she’d grown up wealthy in Houston, chances were good he’d crossed paths with her at some point—a debutante ball, a charity event, even a high school football game. But surely if he’d met her, he’d remember her. Her looks weren’t forgettable.
Pushing thoughts of his new assistant out of his mind, he focused on his email. Great, just what he needed, another screwup with harvesting in East Texas. Unfortunately, Greg Tynes was involved. Dissatisfied with Greg’s job performance abroad, Conner had brought him closer to home, but he’d continued to make mistakes. Apparently he hadn’t understood the protocol and had marked a snag that was a popular owl nesting site. Owls had to be protected not just because they were cute; they were essential to a healthy forest ecosystem.
Conner would have to go there, apologize for the actions of a dead man and smooth some feathers, perhaps literally. But he welcomed any excuse to spend time in the forest, even dealing with disasters.
He had so little time these days. He wondered briefly if he could delegate the trip, then shook his head. Who would he send? Jillian? She might be good with paperwork, but he had his doubts she could manage trees, owls and angry forest rangers.
No, he’d have to go himself. But perhaps he would take Jillian with him. If she was going to stick around for any length of time—and he had to admit, she seemed a good fit for the job—he might as well start teaching her about lumber so she could really be of service to him.
Conner exited his office and strode into Jillian’s area, standing above her desk until she looked up. She was in the process of entering the corrections for the report.
“I’ll need another twenty minutes for the revised report,” she said.
“That’s not why I’m here. Were you apprised, when you took this job, that there might be some travel involved?”
“No, actually, I wasn’t.”
Conner felt a slight sense of relief. She didn’t sound happy. If she refused to travel, he could use that as grounds for firing her.
Not that he wanted to fire her. Not yet. But having a valid reason when he did send her packing would go a long way toward avoiding a wrongful termination lawsuit. He’d made some of his previous admins very unhappy with his admittedly unreasonable demands and capricious, sudden terminations, but so far none of them had sued.
“On occasion I attend meetings in the field with forestry experts, government pencil-pushers, eco groups, landowners. I need someone to make travel arrangements and keep me organized during the trip. I might need you to pack certain documents, a computer for PowerPoint presentations, and also to take notes during the meeting—make an audio recording, too—and transcribe it later. Is that a problem?”
“No, I don’t have a problem with that.”
“Good. Set up a meeting tomorrow afternoon in Stirrup Creek. I’ll forward the email that has the pertinent information. We’ll stay overnight and drive back in the morning. Reserve a Jeep from the company fleet. Do you own a pair of hiking boots?”
“Yes.”
“And you’re physically fit enough to hike into the woods?”
“Yes.”
“Can you operate a digital camera and get decent results?”
“Yes.” She looked up expectantly, her gaze direct and slightly challenging. He simply wasn’t used to this can-do attitude. No whining? No endless questions about what to wear, what to bring, what they would be doing, where they would eat, what kind of rooms she should reserve?
Just yes?
A beautiful woman who said yes. Jillian was dangerous to his libido. Tomorrow, she would show her true colors, he was sure of it. She was probably trying hard to make an extra-good impression, it being her first week and all. But at the first sign of a mosquito she would go ballistic and prove herself inadequate for the job.
“Okay, then.” He spun on his loafers and walked away, but Jillian stopped him.
“Conner?”
“Yes?” he asked without turning to look at her. Here it comes.
“There’s an intercom between our offices. You don’t have to keep walking out the door and around the corner. That seems a waste of your valuable time.”
He returned to stand in front of her desk again, purposely glowering at her. “You don’t like me checking up on you?”
“Is that what you’re doing? Afraid you’ll catch me watching a movie on my phone or talking to my boyfriend on company time?”
Her gutsy comeback took his breath away, as did her mention of a boyfriend. She acted as if she didn’t really need this job. And maybe she didn’t. Her paycheck was probably a drop in the bucket compared to her trust fund.
Or maybe it was her sugar daddy who paid for those expensive clothes. “Do you have a boyfriend?”
“I don’t see how that information is pertinent to my job,” she asked, her tone carefully neutral. No snark. She wanted to please him, but at the same time she wasn’t going to take a whole lot of crap from him.
Good for you, Jillian Whatever-Your-Last-Name-Is.
“Some significant others object to an employee’s travel schedule. I’d like to know whether I’m causing any domestic discord.”
“If there is, I’ll deal with it. But thank you for your concern.”
“I was checking up on you,” he admitted. “It only makes sense that I would keep a close eye on you your first few days.”
She thought about that for a moment, then said, “Yes, it does make sense. Thank you for your honesty. I’ll make the travel arrangements as soon as I receive the email.”
Conner’s skin tingled all over as he returned to his office. She definitely turned him on, which was a damned nuisance. What a brilliant move, insisting she accompany him on a business trip when he couldn’t spend two minutes in the same room with her before sporting a hard-on.
Way to go, Blake.
* * *
“SORRY I’M LATE,” JILLIAN said to Celeste, who was waiting for her on the atrium level overlooking the ice skating rink at The Galleria Mall. “The ogre wanted me to type up some notes of his before I went home.”
“The ogre?” Celeste heaved her faux-lizard bag onto her shoulder.
“My new pet name for him. It’s not enough that he has to terrorize me during work hours. Now he’s making me go on a business trip with him.”
“Whoa, Nellie, what’s that about? He’s trying to put the moves on you already?”
Jillian shook her head. “I don’t think it’s that. He’s testing me. Wants to see how much he can abuse me. Apparently that’s part of the job description they didn’t tell me about—a high tolerance for crap. His former assistants couldn’t handle it, but obviously I have to.”
“If you want any pointers, just ask me. You have no idea the kind of shenanigans I had to endure early in my career. Hateful stuff. The kind of sexist hazing that would get you thrown in jail nowadays.”
“I’m not sure this is sexist.” Jillian watched the handful of skaters buzzing around the ice—the little princesses with their flirty skirts, the gangs of boys racing and cutting up. “He’s trying to prove he’s the alpha, I think.”
“The alpha can mate with any female in the pack,” Celeste pointed out, which didn’t put Jillian at ease. “So what do you need my help with? I’m the shopping queen, but surely you’re at least a princess at it yourself. You’re the best-dressed person I know besides moi.”
Jillian tried to take that as a compliment. Today Celeste wore an ankle-length skirt with frogs printed all over it, a fluorescent orange tank top and a denim jacket with the sleeves ripped out. She’d tied her hair up in a hot-pink zebra-stripe scarf. Her dangle earrings were papier-mâché frogs, which at least matched the skirt in theme if not color.
“I need to buy hiking clothes. And boots. And a digital camera.”
“Ah, I know just the place.”
Celeste dragged her to Cliffs, an upscale sporting goods store, where Jillian purchased two pair of sturdy, canvas pants with lots of pockets, two long-sleeved cotton shirts, thick socks, hiking boots, a wide-brimmed hat, work gloves and a backpack. She also grabbed a handheld GPS, bug repellant, sunscreen, lip balm, a water bottle, granola bars and waterproof matches.
“Matches?” Celeste put her hands on her bony hips. “Oh, come on. Throw in a tent and sleeping bag, and you could hike across the whole country.”
“I don’t want to be caught unprepared. What about this snakebite kit?”
Celeste just gave her a look.
“Well, there are snakes in the woods.” She spotted some machetes hanging on the wall. “Do you think I need one of these, to cut through the brush?”
Celeste walked closer to the display, then tested a machete blade with her thumb. “Sharp. I wonder if this is like the one Leo Simonetti used to cut off his victims’ heads. Remember that case?”
“On second thought, maybe it’s not a good idea for me to be alone in the woods with an infuriating man and sharp objects.” Jillian gathered up her purchases and took her place in the checkout line.
“So, have you made any progress? Finding the real killer, I mean.”
“Well…one of the security guards suspects my boss.”
Celeste’s plucked eyebrows flew up and almost met her hairline. “Your boss? Hot diggity! If he did it, then the evidence must be in his office or his computer, his phone, or his correspondence—he left a trail, they always do. Does he seem…secretive?”
