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“No.” He smiled back.
Rusty felt magic in the air—sheer magic that was three parts romance and one part sex. She desperately wanted him to kiss her, and, when he didn’t right away, swayed ever so slightly in his direction to encourage him.
Brad took the hint. Swiftly eliminating the space between them, he covered her lips with his in a kiss so all-consuming that her head actually spun, and time, place, everything else but him receded into black.
His mouth moved seductively over hers; his fingers brushed over her bare shoulders, then slid down her arms. Rusty shivered in anticipation of where he might touch next, all the while doing a little digital exploration of her own—his rugged jawline, his broad shoulders, the crisp cotton barrier of the shirt covering his chest.
She wished time could stand still. That she and Brad could spend forever—or at least another hour—all alone in this aromatic garden with beautiful music playing softly inside the building.
“Rusty? Are you out here?”
It was Jade...damn the luck. And even as Rusty considered ignoring the hissed words, Brad abruptly ended the kiss.
“I think I heard someone call your name.”
“My friend, Jade.” Reluctantly Rusty stood. “I’ll just go see what she wants. Shouldn’t take but a second.”
“Then I’ll wait right here.”
Good...no, excellent, she decided as she left him and slipped, shoeless, back through the flowers to the veranda. There stood Jade, clearly agitated.
“What are you doing out here all alone?” she instantly demanded, her voice breathless and low. “I’ve been looking for you for at least thirty minutes.”
Rusty grinned. “Actually, I’m not alone.”
“Oh, my God,” Jade exclaimed, grabbing Rusty’s arm in a painful clench. “Are you with him?”
“Him who?”
“The guy I saw you with at the buffet table. The one who gave you a cup of punch.”
“That’s exactly who I’m with, and you’ll never, ever guess who he is.”
“I don’t have to guess,” Jade said. “I know. He’s Reo Sampson, CEO of Sampson Enterprises.”
Rusty hooted with laughter at that ridiculous statement. “He is not, silly. His name is Brad Turner...the very same Brad I offered to buy a beer for this afternoon. Remember my telling you about the mail room guy?”
Jade shook her head and began to drag Rusty toward the door. “I don’t know any Brad. I do know that the man I saw you with a while ago is Reo Sampson, former boyfriend of Colleen O’Shaunessy, my boss.”
Rusty dug her stockinged heels into the veranda, bringing them both to an abrupt halt. “You’re confused.”
“No, darling, you are,” Jade retorted, once again tugging on Rusty’s arm. “And that means we’ve got to get out of here and quick.” They were at the French doors now. Jade glanced back toward the garden, gasped as if she’d seen a ghost, then lunged through the doorway, pulling Rusty along behind. Spinning, she shut and locked the door.
“What on earth are y—” Rusty tripped on her dress, too long now that she’d abandoned the high heels. Torn between retrieving her shoes and following Jade, Rusty stood frozen in indecision. Jade, however, never looked back as she rapidly circumvented the crowd of guests by keeping to the walls. With a huff of exasperation, Rusty came to an abrupt decision and scurried after her.
In seconds they reached an exit, both breathless. Jade yanked open the door and slipped outside, once again hauling Rusty after her. Only when the heavy door clicked shut behind them did the brunette pause for breath, stepping past Rusty to sag against the brick building, squashing her bare toe in the process.
“Ow!” Rusty raised the hem of her skirt and peered down at her foot, fully expecting to find the toe smashed to smithereens.
“Where are your shoes?”
“Back in the garden with Brad.”
“His name is not Brad. It’s Reo. Reo Sampson.”
Rusty studied Jade, noting that she seemed as sincere as she was out of breath. “You’re really sure?”
“Of course I’m sure. I saw the man just this morning in O’Shaunessy’s reception room. They were fighting because he wouldn’t go with her to the fund-raiser.”
“What fund-raiser?”
“This fund-raiser.”
“And was the fight just a silly fuss or were they really angry with each other?”
“They ended their professional and personal relationships before my eyes, Rusty. What do you think?” Jade sounded a little put out at Rusty for her curiosity.
Rusty didn’t care. She had to be sure she hadn’t just kissed some other woman’s man. “So why would Brad, er, Reo lie to me about his identity?”
“I’m afraid it might have something to do with me.”
“that?”
“Look, Rusty. We really need to go.”
“But—”
“I can see the car from here. If we cut through that flower bed—”
“I’m barefoot!”
“And climb that fence—”
“In this gown?”
. “We’ll be outta here in no time!” That said, the everathletic Jade hiked up her skirt past her knees and loped across the grass to a flower bed, through which she plunged without hesitation and without consideration for the poor landscaper who’d surely labored for days to make it look so pretty.
Rusty stared after her in disbelief for maybe a heartbeat before she, too, lifted the hem of her skirt and dashed across the lawn.
Jade owed her answers. Rusty intended to get them.
Panting by the time they reached the car, Jade jabbed her key in the lock, swung open the door and slipped behind the wheel. With a click of a switch, she unlocked the passenger door.
“Hurry!” she ordered even as Rusty dropped into the seat.
Seconds later, tires squealed as Jade drove out of the lot.
“Talk,” Rusty demanded as soon as they lost sight of the country club.
“I can’t talk and drive.”
“Since when?”
“Since tonight,” Jade snapped, shaking her head, then adding, “Oh, God, what a mess. Why did this have to happen?”
“What, exactly, has happened?”
Jade shifted her eyes from the road and gave Rusty a long, appraising look. “If I tell you the truth, will you still be my friend?”
Rusty, who hadn’t heard those words since the two of them were grade school buddies, winced. “Oh, Jade, is it that bad?” Jade had always had a knack for getting into mischief.
Jade nodded.
Rusty sighed and responded with her part of the litany. “You’ll be my friend forever.” Even if you did sell your body to buy tonight’s tickets.
“I think Reo Sampson knows I fished our fund-raiser tickets out of Colleen O’Shaunessy’s trash.”
“Excuse me?”
It was Jade’s turn to sigh. “When Reo Sampson and my boss had their fight this morning, she threw the two tickets she’d bought for this party into her wastebasket. As soon as they cleared out of the room, I rescued the tickets.”
“Oh, Jade, you didn’t.”
“This is the social event of the year, Rusty. I’ve always wanted to attend. She obviously didn’t. Why waste the tickets?”
“How much did she pay for them?”
“A thousand dollars each.”
“Ach!”
“Yeah, but she can afford it. Heck, she pays that much for her hair barrettes.”
“That’s not the point. You stole those tickets. We went to that fund-raiser under false pretenses.” “And Reo Sampson is aware of it. I’m going to lose my job. I just know it, and you can certainly forget the man ever calling you for a date.”
Just my luck, Rusty thought. Then logic waved a red flag before her eyes. “Wait...how could he possibly suspect you took the tickets?”
“He’s no idiot, Rusty. He watched me watch her throw the tickets in the waste can. He’s well aware I could never afford to pay for even one of them and probably even saw the greedy gleam in my eye. Two trashed tickets. Me and you appearing at his party—”
“His party?”
“Well, not literally, but he does donate big bucks to this charity and attends this fund-raiser every year. I’m certain he has a say in who’s invited. He surely knows you and I were not on the list.”
“How could you have thought for one second that you’d get away with this, Jade Martinelli? I mean, you knew the man was going to be here. Didn’t it occur to you that he might see you, recognize you, wonder how in the hell you got in the door?”
“You don’t understand. I heard him tell O’Shaunessy that he had other plans tonight. How was I supposed to know he just meant he preferred going to this thing stag instead of with her?”
“Use your head, Jade. Your boss was undoubtedly trying to impress Reo by buying tickets to an event he always attends. When he refused to accompany her, she knew they were through—the reason for the fight.”
“Oh.” Jade began to chew on her bottom lip, a little-girl expression of angst that had survived her childhood. “I’m sorry, OK? I never thought...”
And that, of course, was the problem. Jade never did think. Probably never would. Rusty held up a hand, halting what was surely going to be a nonstop flow of apologies that would not even be heard by the man who needed to hear it. Meanwhile, he undoubtedly thought she was partner to Jade’s crime.
So much for romance with a good-looking mail clerk. And so much for romance with a good-looking rich man. If he ever dialed the phone number she’d given him it would be a miracle.
Not that she even wanted him to now. Rusty knew first- and secondhand about rich businessmen who, when they weren’t having affairs with close friends’ wives, spent way too much time at the office getting richer. Hadn’t she just witnessed the heartbreak of her very own sister, once married to a man who’d risen from clerk to company president? “Damn!”
Jade nearly ran off the road at the sound of Rusty’s blurted curse. Successfully startled into silence, she glanced hesitantly over at her passenger, who now floundered in the wave of yet another ramification to tonight’s folly.
Come Monday, Rusty was scheduled to meet with Angie Mallett’s boss at Sampson Enterprises to finalize the business arrangements for the most exciting—and lucrative—assignment of her life.
And just who was Angie’s boss?
Why, the CEO of that company...none other than Reo Sampson himself!
Chapter Three
Alone in his study, Reo Sampson sat at the massive desk that once belonged to his maternal grandfather and frowned at the pair of women’s shoes he held, one in each hand. They were high heels—strappy, black numbers with 7 1/2 M imprinted on the inside.
Foolish shoes worn by a mystery woman he’d met mere hours ago on an elevator and could not seem to forget.
She called herself Rusty. Her eyes were green. Her figure could keep a man up all night—Reo grinned at his pun—wondering what it would be like to love her.
Love her? Oh no, not that. Never that.
Make love to her? Much more like it, since his crazy, undeniable attraction to Rusty was fleeting and physical—nothing more. How could it be when she was so flighty, a trait he abhorred in anyone? There were other traits that made her unsuitable for romantic pursuit, Reo assured himself, well aware that if unpredictability were her only fault, his body might yet win over his common sense, and he might dial the phone number he’d unwittingly put to memory.
Knowing he thought best on paper, he reached for a piece of stationery embossed with the company logo and an ink pen, the kind that used real ink from a bottle and produced bold, black strokes. Laying the paper on the desk, he drew a line from the top of the page to the bottom. The left column he labeled “Know”; the right, he labeled “Don’t Know.”
Reo then began to list exactly what he could or couldn’t say for certain about Miz Rusty, so that he could discourage what he believed could become a full-blown obsession with her. Under “Know” he wrote “hair color, eye color, shoe size, profession, phone number, name....” Here Reo paused. Unless Miz were her first name and Rusty her last, he didn’t know her name at all. Besides that, “Rusty” had to be a nickname based on hair color. Reo shook his head, wondering exactly how he and this unnamed woman wound up together in the garden at Ten Oaks Country Club, sharing one hot kiss.
Things had moved much too fast since the moment they met yesterday. And he had a funny feeling that the two of them might have shared more than just a kiss last night if her friend Jade hadn’t suddenly appeared and dragged her away.
Jade. Frowning, Reo wrote something else under “Know”: “Shares house with woman named Jade.”
Now why did that name—and the statuesque brunette to whom it belonged—seem so familiar? he wondered, even as he visualized a nameplate on a desk in an office in which he’d been more than once.
“Well, hell!” Reo suddenly exclaimed, slapping his palm to his forehead. Obviously Witch Rusty had put a spell on him. Why else would he not realize at once that Jade—a woman who dressed like an expensive but classy hooker, flirted shamelessly with all male clients and typed faster than humanly possible—worked for Colleen O’Shaunessy.
Jade had also not only witnessed his uncivilized split with Colleen, but knew his real name. At once Reo felt foolish for not having told Rusty the truth the first time she’d called him Brad. He had his reasons, of course, not the least of which was the novelty of being appreciated for something besides his money.
Was his real identity, then, the reason Miz Rusty had run last night? Reo hoped not. The idea that she’d run from instead of to when she learned who he was thoroughly intrigued him. He could feel his curiosity piquing, and he ruthlessly squashed it by reminding himself that the reason she’d fled was undoubtedly because Jade had told her about Colleen.
But no...Jade, who’d watched the fight, knew Reo and the lawyer were no longer a pair, knew he was free to kiss any woman he wanted.
Reo sighed his frustration. Second-guessing a female was pretty darned tricky—not a skill at which he excelled. He honestly couldn’t think of a single good reason why Jade would warn Rusty away...unless ... unless Colleen O’Shaunessy had shared confidential information about his grandfather’s possible indiscretion.
Such a scandal might put Rusty off, Reo realized. And God only knew Colleen desperately wanted to keep her skillful receptionist in her employ. Why, that forktongued lawyer had probably gone right back out in the reception area after Reo’s departure and lambasted the Sampson name. As a result, Jade had simply tried to save Rusty, a friend, from a fate worse than death.
