скачать книгу бесплатно
Emily groaned. “I’m doomed!”
“Not really. Not if we think of something to distract him before he starts hooking you up with his senior VPs, or if we come up with a way that makes it impossible for him to play matchmaker.”
“We could just marry off everybody who’s single before my dad gets to them,” Emily said flippantly.
Carmella laughed. “Now, that would be something,” she said, but she paused. “Actually, that would be something.”
“Oh, no!” Emily said. “Don’t you start! This isn’t like Seven Brides for Seven Brothers!”
“You’re right. I don’t think we have that many matches to make.” Carmella rushed around Emily’s desk and reached into the top desk drawer for a copy of the organizational chart. The first block listed Emily’s dad, Lloyd Winters, as CEO and President of Wintersoft, Inc. Nine lines led from that box to the next row of blocks holding the names of the senior vice presidents. Listed below each of them were the names of their staff members.
For the present, Carmella concentrated on the senior vice presidents themselves. “Alan Richards and Chad Evers are already married.”
Carmella watched Emily’s eyes widen as she apparently considered being paired up with either of the fortyish, balding dads, and she laughed. “Dodged a bullet on those two, didn’t you?”
“Very funny.”
“Okay,” Carmella continued, once again pointing to the chart. “Melinda McIntosh, Senior Vice President of Human Resources, is female. So she, Chad and Alan are out. That leaves these five. Matt Burke, Grant Lawson, Brett Hamilton, Nate Leeman, and Jack Devon.” She pointed to one more block. “Reed Connors is only a vice president, but I’m pretty sure he’s about to be promoted to senior vice president, and he’s single. So I don’t think we should leave him out.”
Emily stared at the chart. “I can see why my dad’s striking now. The iron is definitely hot. Except for Jack Devon who’s so elusive even I wouldn’t know where to start with him, any one of these other guys is ripe for the picking.”
“Which means we have our work cut out for us.”
Emily peered at Carmella. “I can’t see how our marrying off six unsuspecting men is any different than my dad marrying me off.”
“It’s very different,” Carmella assured her. “Because we would be smart and careful. We wouldn’t just pair these men up with women willy-nilly. We would approach it like a business problem.”
Thinking that through, Emily sat back in her seat. “Okay. If we handled this the same way we would any business undertaking, we would have to work in earnest to find the right mates for these guys.”
Carmella smiled. “Yes, we would.”
“We would have to be fair, and look out for the best interests of all parties involved.”
“There’s no other way to do this.”
Emily tapped her pencil on her desk blotter. “The only problem is, a plan like this would take lots of time and we might not have lots of time.”
“We can buy a few weeks by having you pretend to be dating someone.”
“If I could just pick a boyfriend off a boyfriend tree, I wouldn’t be in this predicament right now.”
“You could ask Steven Hansen to help us out.”
“Steven? But he’s…”
“From New York City,” Carmella said, stopping Emily before she said what she was about to say because in this case it was irrelevant. Getting them back to the real matter at hand, she added, “I can find most of the background on our guys on the Internet, so we wouldn’t even have to leave the building to do what we need to do.”
Carmella paused and frowned thoughtfully before adding, “But convincing your dad you’re dating Steven probably won’t last beyond the charity ball at the end of the month, so I suggest we go for the obvious one first.” She pointed at a name on the organizational chart.
Emily smiled broadly. “Oh, my gosh! That’s perfect.”
Chapter One
Timing is everything.
Sarah Morris, the executive assistant to the Senior Vice President of Accounting for Wintersoft, looked up from her work when Penny Rutledge, Wintersoft’s petite blond receptionist, set a huge crystal vase containing one dozen long-stemmed white roses on her desk.
“Oh, my! They’re beautiful!”
“Open the card,” Penny said shifting from foot to foot, dancing with excitement.
Sarah pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose, then fingered the practical braid she’d woven her waist-length red hair into as she peered down at her ordinary gray suit. “They’re for me?”
“Of course they’re for you, silly! Open the card.”
The scent of roses filled the air as Sarah fumbled with the envelope. The seal finally gave and she pulled out the brightly colored rectangle and read out loud, “Your Secret Admirer.”
Penny all but swooned. “Ohh!”
“I have a secret admirer?” Sarah said, her voice confused and uncertain. She had moved from North Dakota to Boston a year ago, but didn’t get out much. The only man she knew more than casually was…
An amazing thought occurred to her and she glanced over her shoulder to the office behind her. Her boss, Matt Burke, sat at his desk, making his to-do list for the next workday because that’s what he did every day at five minutes till five. Fridays were no exception.
He diligently scribbled in his calendar, oblivious to her scrutiny, but Sarah drank in every detail of his short, spiky brown hair and handsome face. Because he was writing, she couldn’t see his eyes but knew they were a soft blue, trimmed with unusually long black lashes. More than once she had dreamily gazed into them when he was focused on something else.
It couldn’t be…
Matt wouldn’t…
“So who do you think it is?” Penny asked as she happily rearranged the flowers to make the bouquet perfect.
“I don’t know,” Sarah said, trying not to look behind her again. Working one-on-one the way she and Matt did, they knew enough intimate details of each other’s lives to throw them into the category of friends. But Matt had never shown one ounce of interest in her as a woman.
“No idea at all?” Penny said, smiling as she leaned a hip against Sarah’s desk and got comfortable. “No guy you met at a bar or museum or church on Sunday morning?”
“I don’t go to bars. People don’t usually strike up conversations with me at museums and they are even quieter in church.” Which made it highly unlikely that she would have a secret admirer. And that took her back to Matt. He was the only man who could have sent her these flowers. The question was…why?
“I heard you got roses!” Carmella Lopez said as she walked down the open corridor to Sarah’s workstation. Lloyd Winters’ executive assistant was a beautiful Hispanic woman with short, graying black hair and warm brown eyes. A fifty-something widow with no children, Carmella was also a sweet and sincere office mother hen who read romance novels. It didn’t surprise Sarah that she would be one of the first people in the office to congratulate a woman who got flowers. “Who are they from?”
Sarah glanced at Carmella. “A secret admirer.”
Matt stepped out of his office, and, as always, Sarah’s attention was immediately consumed by him. Tall and broad-shouldered, ruggedly attractive even in his dress shirt and tie, he looked more like one of the employees on Sarah’s dad’s ranch than a quiet, focused senior vice president for a software company. Sarah suspected that was why she had such a crush on him. In her mind, he combined the best of both worlds. He had the masculinity of a cowboy and the brains and conceptualizing ability of a Forbes, Ford or Gates.
His gaze flitted to the roses then swung to hers. “Well, look at this,” he said, his voice filled with that odd tone men used when they tried to be happy about something girlie, but didn’t quite know how to pull it off. Or, when they were in some way faking their response. “Somebody sent you flowers.”
It was him! Sarah thought, tamping down the unrealistic hope that he’d sent her flowers because he was interested in her. The tone of his voice was too patronizing and too brotherly. If he’d sent them, it was to cheer her up. Or—she squeezed her eyes shut then quickly opened them again before anyone noticed—because he felt sorry for her. He knew she didn’t go out on weekends. He knew she hadn’t had a date since she’d arrived in Boston.
“Yes, and aren’t they beautiful?” Carmella fingered a pristine petal. “White is for what?”
“Purity,” Sarah replied, her eyes narrowing. Purity? Purity!
“So some man thinks you’re very sweet,” Matt said, smiling his warm, wonderful, I’m-a-friendly-guy smile and Sarah wanted to deck him. The man she was crazy about thought she was pure. While she daydreamed about his kisses, he saw her as someone inexperienced and naive.
For fifty cents she’d take him to her dad’s ranch where she played poker with the hands and held her own during cattle drives when the cursing was thick and biting. She would show him firsthand that she wasn’t naive, she wasn’t inexperienced and she sure as hell wasn’t pure.
“Well, you can’t leave them here,” Carmella was saying as Sarah forced herself out of her reverie. “They’ll die over the weekend.” She smiled at Sarah. “Besides don’t you want to enjoy them?”
“No,” Sarah said, surprising herself as much as everybody else around her. “I don’t want to enjoy them, because I don’t want them at all. Penny, you can have them.”
“No!”
“No!”
“No!”
Matt, Penny and Carmella said the word simultaneously. Penny said it like a woman who didn’t want the flowers of another woman, no matter how lovely.
Carmella sounded shocked that Sarah would give away such beauty. Matt said it as if she had suggested prematurely withdrawing money from her IRA.
The red numbers on Sarah’s digital clock blinked and 4:59 became 5:00. Sarah opened her bottom desk drawer, withdrew her backpack and rose from her seat. “Then leave them for the cleaning people,” she said as she left her office.
Tears stung her eyes. Her gray skirt shifted across her calves. Her fat braid bounced along her back. Damn it! She was pure. Well, not exactly pure, more like conservative. Well, not even conservative, more like comfortable. She had thick unruly hair that fell to the bottom of her back, so it wasn’t just convenient to wear it in a braid. It was comfortable. Her glasses were less effort than her contacts. And long skirts were all-covering, easy to match and the most logical thing to wear when she was constantly bending and stretching to reach files.
She was dowdy, and conservative by virtue of the fact that she dressed for comfort, and there was no way she would have a secret admirer. She hadn’t even had a date since she’d set foot in this city! Combining her lack of dates with her dowdy clothes, Matt probably saw her as some kind of charity case. Did he know she was still a virgin, too?
Purity flowers took on a whole new meaning, sending anger careening through Sarah’s veins. The probability that Matt had sent those flowers because he felt sorry for her became more and more obvious by the second. By the time she reached the elevator, she just wanted to die.
Matt Burke stood with Carmella and Penny, watching Sarah as she marched, head high, to the elevator. His thoughts were in such turmoil and the situation was so unusual—not to mention uncomfortable—that he wasn’t sure what to do.
“Go after her.”
Matt faced Carmella. “What?”
“Go after her. She can’t leave these beautiful flowers.”
Matt almost said, “Yes, she can,” but he changed his mind. He wasn’t sure why seeing Sarah get flowers caused a tightening in his chest, he only knew it did. Now that he’d gotten over the shock that Sarah would waste perfectly good roses, he wasn’t upset to see her leave them behind. In fact, he had an ungodly urge to toss them out his office window.
“I’ll take them to her,” Penny said, grabbing the flowers and pivoting toward the door.
“No!” Carmella yelped as she caught Penny’s hand, but she lowered her voice and said, “Matt will take them to her.” She paused to lift the vase from Penny’s grasp, and her smile reappeared as she offered the roses to Matt. “You drive by her apartment complex on your way home. You can take them right to her door.”
“Oh, no!” Matt said, backing away from the flowers as if they were poisonous. “She doesn’t want these.”
Carmella chuckled. “So what? If she refuses to take them from you, the worst that could happen is that you’d get stuck with a dozen long-stemmed roses and a beautiful vase.”
Penny said, “Maybe he’s afraid someone will mistake him for a delivery man.”
Matt sighed heavily. “I’m not afraid of anything! I just know she doesn’t want them. I’ll feel like an idiot going to her door with flowers that she doesn’t want.”
Carmella sauntered around Sarah’s desk and picked up the card. “I don’t think she ran because she didn’t want the flowers.”
Matt said, “Huh?”
“I think she ran because she did want the flowers.”
“Ohhhh!” Penny said. “I get it. When I set the roses on her desk she was excited. When she saw the card, she got mad. It’s like she wants flowers from somebody, but she doesn’t know who sent these.”
Carmella nodded. “So she doesn’t know if her secret admirer is the man she wants it to be. And if it is the man she wants it to be, she’s probably angry that he wasn’t mature enough to sign his name.”
“You guys are nuts,” Matt said, though their rationale did make an odd kind of sense. Sarah might be too calm and pragmatic to behave like a swooning female. But if there was somebody she liked, somebody she really, really liked and she wanted to get flowers from him, Matt could see Sarah getting angry that the guy was too chicken to sign his name.
In Matt’s opinion, Sarah was much too good for this coward.
Penny reverently whispered, “She must really like him.”
Carmella only smiled.
Matt felt as though somebody had punched him in the stomach. He couldn’t believe that Sarah had fallen for somebody and that he hadn’t noticed. He couldn’t believe the man she’d fallen for was a spineless idiot who didn’t know how to make a decent move. A move that involved admitting who he was. He couldn’t believe Sarah falling for someone bothered him more than the fact that the guy was a spineless idiot. But he did know it probably wasn’t wise for him to be the person going to her apartment right now.
“A woman should do this.”
“I have a salon appointment,” Carmella said. “Penny lives across town. Besides, she has kids to go home to.”
“I can’t take these to her!”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m not that sensitive. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how to get her to accept these flowers.” And he wasn’t even sure he wanted to. That was the tricky part.
Carmella sighed. “Matt, what day is it?”
“August 29.”
“What’s Monday?”
“September 1.”
“What happens on September 1?”
“It’s Labor Day, but on Tuesday my staff goes to work on the quarterly report.”
Carmella handed him the vase of roses. “A wise man who had a quarterly report due would want his executive assistant at her desk on Tuesday morning. Sarah looked pretty mad when she left. You don’t want her to spend her long weekend brooding and be too tired or too upset to come in.”
Matt groaned.
“Take these flowers to her, make her understand that it doesn’t matter who sent them. What matters is that somebody cares about her.”
Matt shook his head, as affronted as Sarah. “Then why couldn’t he sign his name?”
