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The message conveyed was unmistakable. He wasn’t just talking about the handcuffs...he was talking about the attraction between them.
She firmed her mouth, taking a step backward. “I think that’s an excellent idea. Exactly what I was thinking this morning.”
“Good.” He waved a hand toward the door. “Back in five. Can we go over the day then?”
She nodded. “Should I really? Call you Harrison, I mean?”
“Tessa does...so yes.”
Frankie watched him go, then sat down with the loose limbs of a prisoner who’d just escaped execution and was profoundly grateful for the fact. She found her notebook, carried her tea into Harrison’s office and was pondering why Cecily Hargrove hadn’t been named Mrs. Harrison Grant yet if he really did have a sense of humor along with the brooding sex appeal, when the phone rang.
She went and picked up the call at her own desk. Leonid Aristov’s assistant announced herself briskly and rather snootily. Frankie shifted into Russian, feeling a tug of satisfaction when the other woman paused, took the development in and continued on in her own language. “Mr. Aristov,” Tatiana Yankov stated, “would like to have a meeting with Mr. Grant in London next week.”
Frankie glanced at Harrison’s schedule. “Impossible,” she regretted smoothly. If he had time to go to the bathroom it would be a miracle. “Perhaps the last week of August?”
“If Mr. Grant would like to discuss closing this deal with Mr. Aristov, which I believe he is eager to do, he needs to be in London, next week,” the other woman repeated, as if unconvinced of her command of the language.
Frankie kept her tone perfectly modulated. “Could you tell me what this meeting is to be about? That way I can discuss it with Mr. Grant.”
“I couldn’t say,” came the distant response. “Mr. Aristov simply asked me to schedule the meeting. Call me back when you have a date.” Tatiana rattled off a London phone number.
Frankie jotted the number down. “I can’t schedule a meeting without knowing what it’s a—” A dial tone sounded in her ear. She held the phone away from her and stared at it. She had not just done that. She was still staring at the phone when Harrison walked past her desk, a steaming cup of coffee in his hand. “Ready?”
She followed him into his office. “That was Leonid Aristov’s assistant on the phone.”
He wheeled around, coffee sloshing in his mug. Frankie’s gaze flew to the boiling liquid as it skimmed the rim of the cup, wavered there like the high seas, then elected to stay in.
“What did she want?”
Frankie returned her gaze to his face. “Aristov wants a meeting next week.”
“A meeting?” A frown furrowed his brow. “He’s already agreed to everything in principle. Did you ask what the meeting was for?”
“I did. She wouldn’t give me anything. She just said Aristov wanted the meeting and it had to be next week.”
“Have you had a look at my schedule?” He trained his gaze on her as if she had an IQ of fifty. “This deal is scheduled to pass regulatory authorities next month, Ms. Masseria. I don’t fly around the world on a whim because Leonid Aristov wants me to.”
Great, they were back to Ms. Masseria... She closed her eyes and drew a deep breath. “I’m not suggesting you should. But she was very rude. She hung up on me.”
He blinked at her. “Why would she hang up on you?”
“She seemed busy. I was trying to probe for more information when she cut me off and hung up.”
He impaled her on that razor-sharp gaze of his that had turned him from beauty to the beast in the space of a round second. Then he thrust out an elegant hand. “Give me the number.”
She held on to it. “I can call her back. Just give me some direc—”
“Give me the number.”
Frankie went back to her desk, grabbed the pink message pad, marched into his office and gave it to him. And called him a bad name in her head. A big, bad one. She had liked him so much five minutes ago. She really had.
He was dialing the ice queen back when she left. She put her head down and started working through his email. God forbid she’d missed something they’d need for their briefing.
He came out minutes later. She suppressed a victorious thrill at the dark scowl on his face. “Cancel everything for Thursday and Friday of next week. We’ll fly to London Wednesday night, meet with Aristov Thursday morning then leave ourselves a buffer day in case we have more to talk about with him.”
“Did you find out what the meeting is for?”
“No,” he said icily. “It’s all going to be a pleasant surprise.”
Frankie kept her eyes on the notepad she was scribbling on. “You said Wednesday night we fly out?”
“Yes. Do you have a problem with that?”
‘Yes— No—” She lifted her gaze to his in a pained look. “It’s just that I have a special—commitment Wednesday night.”
His expression darkened. “Taking into account you actually want this job, Ms. Masseria, you will learn to eat, breathe and sleep it for the next six months. So I suggest you...uncommit yourself.”
She bit her lip and nodded. If there was one event this year she didn’t want to miss, it was Tomasino Giardelli’s eightieth birthday party. But this was her job and she needed it. And it had gotten off to a rocky enough start as it was.
“May I ask a question?”
He waved a hand at her.
“I’ve been working through that last bit of research you wanted Tessa to compile for the Aristov deal. I get what you’re asking for, but, well, Coburn always counseled me to understand the big picture so I can visualize what you need in the end product. Give you my best work... What I don’t get,” she ventured frowning, “is why Grant Industries is buying a company that mirrors the exact capabilities of one of our subsidiaries...”
His jaw went lax. She had the distinct impression he didn’t know how to answer her question from the silence that followed. But of course he did, didn’t he?
“Coburn,” he rasped finally, “and I have different management styles, Ms. Masseria. Coburn likes to collaborate, to involve people in decisions. I don’t. I prefer people to do what I tell them. That’s what works for me.”
Not a tyrant? Blood rushed to her face as if he’d physically slapped her. “Fine,” she agreed quietly. “If I have a specific question I’ll ask it.”
“Excellent.” He scraped a hand through his hair, looking weary for a man who hadn’t yet hit lunch. “Book us a suite at the Chatsfield so we can work.”
She nodded. Then, unable to help herself because she needed to get the rules straight, she asked, “Would you prefer me to use Mr. Grant instead of Harrison now that you seem to have reverted to Ms. Masseria?”
He gave her a long, hard look. Frankie’s stomach dipped but she held her ground with a lifted chin.
“My slip,” he stated in a lethally quiet voice. “First names are fine.”
She nodded and turned back to her PC. Harrison started toward his office, then paused outside it. She looked up expectantly.
“We are pursuing Siberius because it commands alternate markets to the ones we already have control of with Taladan. It makes business sense.”
“Got it.”
He turned to go. She shifted her gaze back to her computer.
“Oh, and, Francesca?”
She looked up.
“Please don’t write on the bottom half of these.” He waved the pink message pad at her. “It distracts me.”
He disappeared into his office. Frankie raised her gaze heavenward. Not only did she have to survive life with Harrison Grant for six months, which must prove she was doing penance for something she wasn’t yet aware of, she now had to fly across the Atlantic with him for a crucial meeting that seemed shaky in nature.
Nothing could go wrong with that scenario, could it?
At least there weren’t air marshals on privately chartered flights...
CHAPTER THREE (#u0e140246-1a69-5adc-862e-4bafba8f68a9)
FRANKIE ARRIVED AT Teterboro Airport in New Jersey on Wednesday night of the following week as bruised and battered as Rocky Balboa himself after going fifteen rounds with Harrison Grant over the past week. He’d been tense and edgy ever since that call from Leonid Aristov’s assistant, pushing them both to the limits of their endurance in ensuring every i was dotted and every t crossed in advance of their meeting.
She was dead on her feet and they hadn’t even left yet. Plus, she didn’t sleep on planes...
The limousine pulled to a stop on the runway in front of the black-and-red-logoed Grant Industries jet. She slid out and waited while the driver deposited her luggage on the asphalt. If she was curious as to why her boss was obsessed with a deal that, in the great scheme of things, would be a minor acquisition for a behemoth like Grant Industries, she didn’t voice her thoughts. She was paid to do, apparently. That was all. And if that made her frustratingly aware she wasn’t turning in her best work, if she knew she’d do better had he been just a bit more collaborative and explained things fully, there was nothing to be done about it. She had tamed her natural instinct to question.
Survival was the game of the day.
Hand arced over her eyes, she searched for her boss in the still blinding final rays of the sun. He was standing by the jet speaking to a gray-haired man in his fifties Frankie thought she recognized as the chairman of the senate committee on foreign affairs. She knew this only because her father loved politics and followed it closely, which meant the entire Masseria clan also did so by virtue of association.
The conversation between Harrison and Oliver Burchell looked like more than a friendly hello. Was he planning a run for the presidency? The Grant family was as connected as any family in the upper echelons of political power so it absolutely made sense they could put Harrison on every ballot in the country as an independent candidate. But he was only thirty-three. He had his hands full running a company that had just gotten back on its feet. Was now the right timing?
Her boss registered her arrival with that ever-watchful gaze of his. He held up two fingers. Frankie nodded and took the time to study him in a brief, unobserved perusal. She hadn’t yet gotten used to how extraordinarily good-looking he was up close. Today, in dark-wash jeans and a crisp white shirt, sleeves rolled up to his elbows to reveal muscular forearms, he looked like her college accounting professor, except where Frankie had considered him nerdily cute, Harrison was a whole other ball game. He was Clark Kent good-looking with his impressive physique and dark designer glasses, as if he was about to dash into a phone booth to go save the world.
Her mouth twisted. Air Force One was about to acquire a whole new sex appeal.
The senator clapped Harrison on the back and moved off toward the plane sitting behind the Grant Industries jet. Frankie pulled in a Harrison-fortifying breath as he strode toward her. “Ready to go?’
“As ready as I’ll ever be,” she said brightly.
He lifted a brow at her as he stopped in front of her. “I’ve been that bad?”
She knew when to keep her thoughts to herself. “I meant I’m not a good flyer. I just need to get this over with.”
“So I should tell the pilot to lock the doors to the cockpit?”
She made a face at the amusement twisting his lips. “We haven’t had one disaster since the coffee incident. Perhaps we can let that joke lie?”
“I’m still keeping my guard up.” He pointed their luggage out to the crew who loaded it on to the plane. “You know, statistically speaking,” he counseled, gesturing for her to proceed him up the stairs, “flying is safer than any other form of travel. You should be more frightened of getting on the freeway.”
“I am frightened of getting on the freeway. And fear of flying is not a rational thing,” she countered, climbing the steps.
“Ah, but I thought that’s what you are...rational Francesca Masseria, who needs to figure out how things work before she fully commits.”
She looked down at him from her higher position on the stairs. Who was he really? The big bad wolf or this intuitive, sardonic version of him who made the occasional visit? And did she dare say what she thought?
She exhaled a breath. “I perform better when I have a clear sense of the objectives. I’m more left-brained than Tessa. I need guidance. I can promise if you offer that to me I will give you what you need.”
His gaze narrowed. The undercurrent between them that always seemed to simmer below the surface sprang to life. A tutelage of a far different type was filtering through that brilliant mind... She would have bet money on it. Heat rose to her cheeks. He studied the twin spots of fire. Then he turned it off with one of those dismissive looks.
“All right, Francesca Masseria,” he drawled. “We’ll give it a shot. You’ve been a good sport this week. I like that about you. You have a question—a good one—ask. I’ll do my best to answer it.”
He strode past her up the stairs and into the jet before she could close her mouth. No way had the beast just thrown her a crumb. She thought maybe they should break out the champagne, particularly when once seated and buckled in opposite Harrison in a bank of four seats, she realized how small the plane was. She’d never flown on a private jet before. Coburn preferred to travel on his own and have her work from the office, and this, this little plane didn’t look hearty enough to carry them across the Atlantic if a storm hit as it had on her last trip to Mexico.
Her shoulders climbed to her ears in protest as the pilot revved the engines.
“Relax,” Harrison ordered, pulling his laptop out of his briefcase. “This is going to be the smoothest ride of your life, trust me.”
“Now you’ve jinxed us,” Frankie said grimly. She picked up her cell phone to turn it off. He waved a hand at her.
“Not necessary on this flight. You can use the Wi-Fi anytime.”
Of course they could. Why waste one usable moment when you could be poring through the stock market? Checking the price of precious metals? She sighed and settled into her seat. Her hope that at some point Harrison’s battery might run out had been wishful thinking.
Her phone pinged with a text message. It was from Danny, who was managing Tomasino’s party in her absence.
The cake’s not here. When is it supposed to arrive?
Frankie frowned and glanced at her watch. An hour ago. Surely her brother hadn’t forgotten?
Call the restaurant, she texted back. I’m sure it’s on the way.
Harrison looked over at her. “Problems?”
She shook her head. “Just this thing I’m supposed to be at. He’ll figure it out.”
The attendant came by to check their seat belts and ask what they’d like to drink once they were airborne. Harrison requested a scotch. Frankie gladly followed suit and asked for a glass of wine. Anything that calmed the anxiety clawing its way up her throat was a good thing.
Another text came in. He hasn’t left yet. Dammit. Frankie sent a text to her brother Salvatore. Get that cake there, now. You owe me.
“Men,” she muttered. Why couldn’t they be as buttoned-down as women?
Her boss glanced up from his laptop. “Trust me, he’ll be fine. If he has any sense he’ll be waiting with an armful of flowers when you get back.”
Frankie gave him an uncomprehending look. “Oh—no, it’s not that. It’s my brother. He’s supposed to be delivering a birthday cake to the party I was hosting and he’s late.”
His dark brows came together. “You were hosting a party?”
“At the church, yes.” The engines roared. She kept talking as her pulse skyrocketed. “I host Wednesday night bingo games for the seniors. I’ve been doing it since I was eighteen. Tomasino Giardelli, whose birthday it is, is like a grandfather to me. It’s his eightieth, so we decided to throw him a party and Mama made Tomasino her special tiramisu cake. Which,” she added darkly, “he is going to love if Salvatore gets his behind over there with it before it’s over. The seniors are wilting as we speak.”
“Salvatore?”
“My brother.”
A sober look crossed his face. “I’m sorry you’re missing the birthday party.”
“You didn’t know.”
