скачать книгу бесплатно
How had he come to that conclusion after a fifteen-minute interview? “That’s not what I heard from her references.”
“She’s not going to work out. I need someone who takes initiative. Find me someone else.”
Rachel hid her clenched hands behind her back and concentrated on keeping her shoulders relaxed and tension from her face as her mind worked furiously on an alternative candidate. “I’ll set up someone for you to interview on Monday.”
“Single?”
His question came out of left field and caught her completely off guard. “By law we don’t discuss anyone’s marital status.”
“But they’d be wearing wedding rings. You’d know if they were single or married.”
“I could guess …” She floundered. What did he want? Someone single he could hit on? That didn’t seem right. Max might be a player, but he wouldn’t be unprofessional at work. Seeing he awaited the answer to his earlier question, she heaved a sigh. “She’s single. Does that matter?”
“Your agency has a certain reputation.” He didn’t make that sound like a compliment.
“For providing the best.”
“For matchmaking.”
Rachel wasn’t sure if she’d heard him right. “Matchmaking? Are you out of your mind?” The words erupted before she considered how they might sound. Taking a calming breath, she moderated her tone. “I run an employment agency.”
He nodded. “And how many of your clients have married the assistants you’ve sent them?”
What the hell sort of question was that? “I don’t know.”
“Eight, including Sebastian and Missy.”
Rachel didn’t know what to make of his accusation. Is that why he sounded so annoyed earlier? He thought … She didn’t quite know what he thought. A matchmaking service? Was he insane?
“Don’t look so surprised,” he muttered.
“But I am. How did you know that?”
“A friend of mine has done a fair amount of research on your little enterprise.” He sneered the last word, leaving no doubt about his opinion of her or her company.
Rachel inched forward on the sofa as she wavered between staying and disputing his claims and walking out the door. Fortunately, her business sense kicked in and kept her from acting impulsively.
“I assure you I’m not in the business of matchmaking.” She straightened her spine and leveled a hard look at him. “My agency is strictly professional. If my ability to find the perfect match between executive and assistant means that they’re compatible in other ways, then that’s coincidence.” Serendipity. She grimaced. If word got out that something unprofessional was happening between her clients and her employees, she was finished. “If you’re worried about finding yourself in a similar predicament, I’ll only send you married assistants.”
She recognized her mistake the second the words were out of her mouth. Annoyance tightened his lips and hardened his eyes to tempered steel.
Once upon a time she’d been married, and he’d fallen for her. Well, maybe fallen for her was pushing it a little. They’d enjoyed a spectacular four days together and he’d been interested in pursuing her beyond the weekend.
“Or really old and ugly assistants,” she finished lamely.
One eyebrow twitched upward to meet the lock of wavy brown hair that had fallen onto his forehead.
Rachel’s professionalism came close to crumpling beneath the weight of his enormous sex appeal. Fortunately, the grim set of his mouth reminded her that they hadn’t parted on the best of terms. He wouldn’t appreciate the feminine sigh bottled up in her chest.
“I’ll arrange some candidates for you to interview on Monday,” she said, her heart sinking as she realized she was now stuck acting as Max’s assistant for the indefinite future.
Three
Monday came and went and Max was no closer to liking any of the candidates she’d arranged for him to interview. By the time Rachel pulled into her driveway at six-thirty, she was half-starved and looking forward to her sister’s famous chili. It was Hailey’s night to cook, thank heavens, or they’d be eating around midnight.
She entered the house through the kitchen door and sniffed the air in search of the spicy odors that signaled Rachel was going to need three glasses of milk to get through the meal. No pot bubbled on the stove. No jalapeño cornbread cooled on a rack. Rachel’s stomach growled in disappointment. No pile of dirty dishes awaited her attention in the sink. Why hadn’t Hailey started dinner?
“I’m home,” she called, stripping off her suit coat and setting her briefcase just inside the door. “I’m sorry I’m late. The new boss is a workaholic. Did you …”
Her question trailed away as she entered her small living room and spied her sister’s tense expression. Hailey perched on the edge of their dad’s old recliner, her palms together and tucked between her knees. The chair was the only piece of furniture they’d kept after he died. That and the family’s single photo album were all the Lansing girls had left of their dad.
Hailey’s gaze darted Rachel’s way as she paused just inside the room. Rachel’s stomach gave a sickening wrench at the misery her sister couldn’t hide. Only one person in the world produced the particular combination of alarm and disgust pinching Hailey’s lips together.
Rachel turned her attention from her sister’s stricken gaze to the tall man who dominated her couch. He’d grown fleshy in the four years since she’d last seen him, his boyish good looks warped by overindulgence and the belief that the world owed him something. He still dressed like the son of a wealthy and powerful business owner. Charcoal slacks, a white polo, blue sweater draped over his shoulders. He looked harmless until you got close enough to see the malicious glee in his eye.
“What are you doing here?”
He smiled without warmth. “Is that any way to greet the man you swore to honor and cherish until death you do part?” His gaze slid over her without appreciation. He ran an index finger across his left eyebrow. “You look good enough to eat.”
Devour, more like. And not in a pleasant way. Brody Winslow enjoyed sucking people in with his smooth talk and clever charades, and using them up. Once upon a time, that had been her. She’d been taken in by the expensive car he drove and big house he lived in. Not until it was too late did she realize that some of the best liars came from money.
“What are you doing here?”
“I came to collect the money you owe me.”
“You’ve been paid what I owe you this year. Nothing’s due for another nine months.”
“See, that’s where we’ve got a little bit of a problem. I need the fifty grand now.”
“Fifty …” She crossed her arms over her chest so he wouldn’t notice the way her hands shook. “I can’t pay you the full amount now.”
He looked around her house. “Seems like you’re doing pretty well.”
“I bought the house through a special program that allowed me to put zero money down. I’ve barely got five percent equity and no bank is going to give me a second mortgage for that. You’re just going to have to wait. I’ll get the next installment to you in nine months.”
“That’s not working for me.” He pushed himself off the couch and headed toward her.
She flinched as he brushed past her on his way to the window that overlooked her driveway.
“Nice car. It’s got to be worth something.”
“It’s leased.”
He shot her a look over his shoulder. “What about that business of yours?”
She bit her tongue rather than fire off a sharp retort. Making him mad wasn’t going to get him out of her house or her life. The man was a bully, plain and simple. And he’d figured out where she lived and what she was doing for a living.
“The business is barely breaking even.” A deliberate lie, but it wasn’t as if her simple lifestyle betrayed the nest egg she’d been building. For so much of her adult life, she’d been on the edge of financial disaster. Having a bank balance of several thousand dollars gave her peace, and she’d fight hard not to give that up.
“I get it. Times are tough for you. But I need that money. You’re going to have to figure out how to get it for me or times are going to get even tougher for you and your pretty baby sister.” He patted her cheek and she flinched a second time. “You hear what I’m saying?”
“I hear.”
“And?”
“I’ll get you what I can.” As difficult as it would be to give up her financial cushion and postpone moving Lansing Employment Agency into a bigger, fancier office, she’d make the sacrifice if it meant keeping Brody out of her and Hailey’s life. “Now, get out.”
Brody laughed and headed for the front door.
Rachel followed him across the room and slid the deadbolt home before his tasseled loafers reached her front walk. She didn’t realize how loud her heart thundered in her ears until Hailey spoke. She had trouble hearing her sister’s apology.
“He must have followed me home from work,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s not your fault. We weren’t going to hide from him forever.”
“We’ve managed for four years.”
“Only because he never came looking.” Rachel sat down on the recliner’s arm and hugged her sister. Hailey was shaking. Her confident, bright sister had been alone with Brody and afraid. “Why did you open the door to him?”
“He followed me into the house when I came home from work. I didn’t realize he was there until he shoved me inside.”
Rachel rested her cheek on her sister’s head. “I’m sorry I didn’t get home sooner.”
Hailey shrugged her off. “Why do you owe him fifty thousand dollars?”
“I borrowed some money to start up the employment agency.” It was a lie, but Rachel didn’t want her sister to worry. The burden was hers and hers alone.
“Why would you do that?” Hailey demanded. “You know how he is.”
Rachel shrugged. “No bank is going to lend a high school graduate with big ideas and a sketchy business plan the sort of money I needed. Besides, he owed me something for the five years I put up with him.” She tried to reassure her sister with a smile, but Hailey had regained her spunk now that Brody was gone.
“Those years were worth a lot more than fifty thousand.” Hailey levered herself out of the chair and whirled to confront Rachel. Her brows launched themselves at each other. “What are we going to do? How are we going to come up with the fifty grand?” Hailey’s pitch rose as her anxiety escalated.
Rachel stood and took her sister’s cold hands to rub warmth back into them. “There is no we, Hales. It was my decision to borrow the money and it’s my debt to repay.”
“But—”
“No.” Rachel gave her head an emphatic shake and stood. She could out-stubborn her sister any day. “You are not going to worry about this.”
“You never let me worry about anything,” Hailey complained. “Not how we were going to get by after Aunt Jesse took off, not paying for college, not anything.”
“I’m your big sister. It’s my job to take care of you.”
“I’m twenty-six years old,” Hailey asserted, her tone aggrieved. “I don’t need you to take care of me anymore. Why won’t you let me help?”
“You already helped. You graduated from college with straight As and got a fabulous job at one of Houston’s top CPA firms. You pay for half the groceries, do almost all the cooking and even your own laundry.” Rachel grinned to hide the way her mind was already furiously working on a solution to the Brody problem. “I couldn’t ask for more. Besides, once I pay Brody the money, he’ll be out of our lives once and for all.”
“But how are you going to come up with the money?”
“I’ll try to get a bank loan. They might not have been willing to loan me money four years ago when I was starting up, but Lansing Employment Agency has a profitable track record now.”
Perched on a guest chair in the loan officer’s small cubicle, Rachel knew from the expression on the man’s face what was coming.
“Economic times have hit us hard, Ms. Lansing.” For the last four days she’d been listening to similar rhetoric, a broken record of no’s. “Our small business lending is down to nothing. I wish I had better news for you.”
“Thank you, anyway.” She forced a smile and stood. A quick glance at her watch told her she’d run over her allotted hour lunch break.
This morning she’d wired her twenty-five thousand dollar nest egg to her lawyer with instructions to give the money to Brody. For the last five years, she’d been paying him ten thousand a year, double what she’d agreed to in their divorce settlement. Reimbursement for a debt she didn’t owe. Punishment for divorcing him. No, Rachel amended, punishment for marrying him in the first place.
Returning to the Case Consolidated Holding offices, she slid into her desk and shoved her purse into a bottom drawer a second before Max’s scowl peered at her from his office.
“You’re late.”
Rachel sighed. “Sorry. It won’t happen again. Did you need something?”
“I need you to be at your desk for eight hours.”
She tried again. “Something specific?”
“Get Chuck Weaver on the phone. Tell him I needed his numbers three hours ago.”
“Right away.”
As she was dialing, her cell started to ring. Since Chuck wasn’t answering, she hung up without leaving a voice mail and answered her mobile phone.
Brody’s voice rasped in her ear. “Did you get the money?”
“I wired twenty-five thousand to my lawyer this morning.”
“I said fifty.”
Demanding bastard. “It’s all I could get.” She kept her voice low to keep from being overheard. “You’ll just have to be happy with that.”
“Happy?” He chuckled, the sound low and forced. “You don’t seem to get it. I need the whole fifty thousand now.”
“I get it,” she said. “You’ve been on a losing streak.”
She hadn’t known about his gambling until the second year of their marriage. A shouting match between him and his father clued her in to his destination when he vanished on the weekends. Frankly, she’d been disappointed. She’d thought he was having an affair. Had hoped he’d fallen in love with someone else and would ask for a divorce.
“That’s none of your business.”
“You need to get some help.”
“You need to get me the rest of my money.” He disconnected the call.
Rachel blew out a breath and pushed back from her desk. She had to clear her head. It wasn’t until she stood up that she realized someone watched her. Max wore an inscrutable expression, but his shoulders bunched, tension riding him hard. He had the sexy overworked COO look going today. Coat off, shirt sleeves rolled up and baring muscled forearms. She stared at his gold watch to keep her gaze from wandering to his strong hands, and her mind from venturing into the memory of how gently he’d caressed her skin.
“Chuck Weaver wasn’t in his office,” she said, burying her shaking hands in her pockets. “I’m going to run to the ladies room. I’ll have him paged when I get back.”
