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“He could, but speaking from personal experience and not being the trusting sort, why would he come back if he’d just been caught where he shouldn’t be and had attacked someone he shouldn’t have attacked?” His eyes flicked over her, making her stomach tighten. “My guess is, it’s just you and me now.”
Brittany took a step back, and knew she didn’t want it to be “just you and me,” with any man, especially not with this giant of a man who was looking at her with an intensity that made her thought processes amazingly scrambled.
She knew she should get out of there. She should run like hell. She looked for her purse, and saw it, right behind the stranger, the heel of his boot either pressing it against the wall or stepping on it. She couldn’t tell. And she wasn’t going closer to get a better look, either.
“Hey, what’s going on here?” someone yelled from behind them.
She turned and saw a security guard rushing into the conference area. “See, I told you he was getting help,” she said to the stranger.
He looked past her. “Not unless he’s wearing overalls now.”
She turned back and saw the guard coming toward them, followed by a tiny, dark-haired woman in pink overalls, but no sign of the kid. The guard stopped when he saw the two of them, but the woman didn’t stop until she was right by them. She looked from Brittany to the stranger, then settled on the man. “I was in the security room when they said you called in. I came to see what was happening.”
“That’s what I was trying to figure out myself.” The man stood a bit straighter and Brittany was vaguely aware that her purse fell to one side.
“Where’s the boy?” Brittany asked as she turned back to the guard.
The middle-aged man in the gray uniform shrugged. “Boy? What boy?”
Brittany looked past him. “A boy, maybe eight or nine years old, in baggy clothes, a baseball cap?” She looked back at the guard. “He went to get you.”
“No, ma’am, never saw a kid.” He motioned to the stranger. “Mr. Terrel here called Security and Mrs. Blake was there when the call came, and then we heard the commotion.”
Mr. Terrel? Brittany turned to those dark eyes still holding steady on her. Matthew Terrel? A C.E.O.? He wasn’t like any C.E.O. she’d met in her life. No three-piece suit or pinstriped shirt. Shoot, and she’d attacked him, the man she was supposed to meet, the man who was going to “watch out for her” for her father. Shoot and double shoot.
“I thought there was a break-in, and I had visions of graffiti all over the place.” The pink-overalled woman looked around as she spoke. “I couldn’t bear it if this was spoiled. That tree’s perfect and everything’s going so well.”
“Amy, don’t worry. I think everything’s okay. I saw the back door was open, called Security then came in to check.” Matthew Terrel looked back at Brittany, and she was startled to see what might have been the shadow of a smile in his dark eyes. He couldn’t be starting to enjoy this. “I barely got inside before I was attacked. Some kid who must have been staying late at the day care got me, right after she did.” He motioned toward Brittany and she barely hid a flinch when his hand almost struck her shoulder. “She came out of the shadows screaming something about a fire.”
“You hit me first,” she said, then realized how truly ridiculous that sounded. Matthew Terrel attacking someone? That was the wrong road to go down, and she knew that it was time to stop the madness. “I’d tried to turn on the lights and couldn’t find a switch that worked, then I ran into someone and he…he grabbed me, and it scared me, and I was just protecting myself.”
“But screaming fire?” he asked, and, yes, she knew that he was on the verge of smiling now.
“I was told to yell fire, because people ignore other things or don’t want to get involved, but if they think they’re going up in smoke, they pay attention.”
The smile came to light then, a lifting of his lips and crinkling of lines at the corners of his dark eyes. “Well, I have to say, you got my attention, Miss…?”
She opened her mouth to say who she was, that she was here to meet with him, that she’d been delayed and maybe even apologize for hitting him. But before she could get anything out, the security guard who had gone to look around was back. “Nothing bothered, Mrs. Blake. Everything looks just fine.”
“Thank goodness,” Amy sighed. “Today has been so crazy, what with the kids and fabric swatches and toy designers.”
“Is there anything else, sir?” the guard asked. He eyed Brittany, then said, “How about her?”
“I’ll take care of this. Just keep an eye on the doors.”
“Yes, sir,” the guard said, then left.
Brittany watched the man, swearing she could catch a hint of the scents that had surrounded her when they’d fallen to the floor together. A mellow aftershave, heat and something else that oddly reminded her of when she was a kid and went to the office with her dad. That was weird. “Are you okay, Matt?” Amy asked.
“I’m fine. I was just trying to get out of here. I had an appointment that never showed, and just destroyed whatever time line I was trying to keep intact.”
“Yeah, I heard about that meeting. She never showed?”
He moved as Amy spoke, lightly brushing Brittany’s arm as he passed her. She moved back a step and watched him cross to the tree base to get his briefcase. He picked it up, then brushed at the expensive leather. “No. Not even a call.” He came back, stopping near Amy. “Not that I expected one. Mr. Lewis said she wasn’t thrilled with having to actually work, but he was sure she’d be here on time. He thought they had an understanding. But he’s the father and probably wants to think the best of his only child.”
Her heart sank. They were talking about her. She saw Amy grin at him, a sense of familiarity between the big man and the tiny woman. They seemed so easy together, so connected as they spoke, and a part of Brittany felt a crazy jealousy that a man and woman could be so comfortable together. Then she remembered that the guard had called her Mrs. Blake. Were they just friends, friends close enough to have an inside joke running about her? She cursed the fact that her face felt hot and she brushed at her cheek as they kept talking.
“Her idea of work is getting engaged,” Amy said. “I doubt that she’ll show up here.”
“I hope she doesn’t. The only reason I agreed to hire her on was that her father’s been so decent about things. And I could tell it meant a lot to him. He’s got the idea that if she just sits behind a desk, that something will kick in and she’ll show what she’s made of.” He laughed then, a rough sound that jarred Brittany. “Poor guy, hope springs eternal, I guess. She’s got to be in her twenties and he’s watching out for her as if she’s a teenager getting summer work.”
“She acts like some spoiled teenager,” Amy said.
“You’ve got that right, and just what I need. Babysitting a recalcitrant brat. If she shows I’ll have Rita put her in an office as far away from me as she can and lock the door.”
Brittany wanted nothing more than to go up to him, slap him across the face and walk out. But that would only feed into what he was saying. How she wished she had her father’s way with words, knowing just the right thing to say to bring grown men to their knees. That was another trait of his that had eluded her.
“He’s her father,” Amy said. “Parents always hope for the best. And maybe she’ll find someone else, get engaged again and this time make it to the altar, then she’ll be another man’s problem, and get her father off the hook.”
“Sure, and pigs fly,” Matt muttered, taking one last swipe at a huge scuff mark on his briefcase.
She’d had enough of their condescending ridicule and she was ready to leave. No agreement with her father was going to make her stay anywhere near this man. She moved quickly, made a grab for her purse, and would have just walked out if Matt hadn’t spoken to her.
“I’m sorry. I got sidetracked.”
She turned and saw thankfully that there was a buffer of space between them. “I guess so,” she muttered.
“I’m Matt Terrel. Now, why were you here?”
“I came to see about a job.”
“In here?”
Before she could say that she’d always thought this was the conference complex and not some crazy area with a fake tree in the middle of it where she’d been told to meet him, a smiling Amy came closer to her.
“Oh gosh, I know who you are.”
But there was no embarrassment for what she’d been saying about her. “You do?”
“Of course I do.” She held out her hand. “I’m Amy Blake, the person you were supposed to meet with. But I left a message for you that I had to cancel and would call and reschedule.”
She glanced at Matt, who was watching her. “I thought you were doing the interview? And I never heard anything about canceling.”
“Me? No, I have a totally hands-off policy when it comes to the day-care center. And I never heard about any of this.”
None of this was making any more sense than their attack scene moments ago. “A day-care center?”
“Well, anyway, you’re here, although I thought you’d come up to see me at the old center.” Amy motioned around the room. “But this is great. You can see the new place. There’s much more space, and the play tree. Lindsey’s idea, actually, for the kids. There’s a real kitchen, two of them and we’re going to have an outside play area when we figure out the best place for it.” The woman was in rapture over the place. “It used to be a conference complex, but Mr. Holden rethought his plans and decided that the conference rooms would be better on the sixth floor and the day-care center could be put down here. They’ve almost got the transition finished. We hope by the new year that we’ll be on track for the switch.”
All of that was of no interest to Brittany. Kids weren’t part of her world, and she certainly wasn’t going to allow Terrel to assign her to do some babysitting chores. “That’s all very nice, but—”
“Oh, of course, this is where you come in,” Amy said, walking to the closest plain white wall. “It’s here.” She motioned to the wall, then the ceiling. “Maybe even the ceilings. The woman who actually started the center wants this place to be magical, to be nourishing for the kids. And to be nearly indestructible.” She came over to Brittany again. “So, what do you think? Tell me it’s doable. It was my idea to hire a graphic designer for this, to get it into professional hands for the murals. Tell me you can make this all happen.”
Brittany pieced together what she thought was going on, that this woman thought she was someone looking for a job doing some graphic art on the walls of this place. She loved art, always had, and in her meandering path through higher education, had had a lot of classes in both traditional art and graphics. The thought was intriguing. It was too bad she wasn’t here for that job instead of a desk job under this man’s eagle eye.
“It’s got real possibilities,” she said, turning slowly in a circle to look at the space.
“You’ve got ideas already?” Amy asked.
As Brittany looked around at the partially domed ceiling over the tree, and the way the branches were suspended toward both side walls, she knew she did have ideas. Ideas that tumbled over each other. “It’s a babysitting thing, like preschool?” she asked.
“Day care. Both all day, and before and after school, so the kids range from babies to preteen.”
It could be great. She looked back at Amy, trying to ignore the man watching her so intently. “You want art on the walls and ceiling?”
“Both, or just the walls, whatever you think would be the most stunning and appropriate. It’s for the kids. Period. It doesn’t have to please adults.”
Pleasing adults. That phrase brought her dad into the picture. She could do this. She knew she could, and her father hadn’t said just what she had to do here. But as she glanced back and caught Matt’s eye, she knew that he’d never let her do this. He’d never turn her loose with paint and bare walls. Never. She looked away from him, glancing at a short hallway that she knew led out to the reception area.
“I could do this,” she said, as much for herself as for them. “I’d like to try.” And as she spoke, she knew this was the only way she’d get a chance without her father stepping in and calling in more favors. “I really would like to try,” she said, looking back at Amy and trying to ignore the man in black. “I’ve got some ideas.”
“Okay, but the last person who came in wanted to do wild animals all over the walls, and…” She motioned to the ceiling. “He wanted to do panthers on the ceiling as if they were coming out of the trees. I don’t mind telling you it gave me the chills. Can you imagine what it would do to a child trying to nap and seeing that?”
Ideas were coming to her fast and furious. “I wasn’t thinking of wild animals.”
“What do you see this all becoming?” Amy asked.
She told her with growing enthusiasm the images she was getting. “If it’s for the kids, I see the kids on the walls, circles of them, dancing, playing. The real kids. You know, the ones who are regulars here. They’d be in the art, part of it, and ringing the walls, as if playing ‘Ring Around the Rosey’ in a play yard.” She looked up. “And the ceiling, it’s the sky, just a simple sky, a pale blue, maybe a rainbow on the far side, and clouds, puffy balls of white cotton suspended by fishing line from the ceiling. All about the kids. As if it was their world.”
She knew she’d gotten carried away, talking quickly, trying to make them see what she could see in her mind, and she was high on excitement. And pleasure that she could do this. That was the best part of all. She saw it, and she could make it happen. She’d never experienced anything like that before. She looked at Amy who was staring overhead.
“Oh, my, that’s wonderful,” Amy said softly, then glanced at Brittany. “I can see it, too. And it’s perfect. The center’s called Just for Kids and it truly would be. I love it.”
“You’ve done a lot of this sort of work?” Matt asked, cutting into her euphoria, and drawing her attention to where he stood with his arms folded on his chest. He wouldn’t let her do anything. As soon as he knew she was Brittany Lewis, he’d laugh her right out of here, and it would be over. And, when he found out who she was, that was the nicest outcome she could imagine.
“No, I haven’t, not really,” she said honestly.
Amy touched her on the arm. “If you’ve got the talent to make it happen, I don’t see what lack of experience has to do with anything. Maybe you’re just finding your gift in art. This could be it.”
It could be it. She wanted it to be it. “I can do it.”
“Maybe we could see your portfolio, Miss—” Amy smiled at her. “I still don’t know your name.”
She stared at Amy, but sensed Matt moving, coming closer to her, stirring the air, and she never said the words, “I’m Brittany Lewis, the spoiled-rotten daughter of Robert Lewis.”
No, she wasn’t going to admit that, not here, not now, and she wasn’t going to let this go, either. She could do it, please her father in the long run, and best of all, if it worked the way she thought it could, she’d prove that she was a viable, worthwhile person, instead of the brat Matt and Amy expected to appear with that name.
She felt an odd fluttering in her middle, and avoided the name thing. “My portfolio, it…” She couldn’t say it was at a chateau south of Paris. “I’m sorry, I forgot to bring it.”
“If you can do what you say you can do, I’d love to have you give us a proposal and I can look at your portfolio then. I need something to send to my boss. Something she can see so she knows where this is going. As far as I’m concerned, you’re the only one in the running for the job at this moment.”
“That’s great,” she said, feeling as if she’d just jumped over an incredible hurdle in her life. She’d been told she had art talent, but qualifications had always gone with the praise: if she could learn to apply herself…if she bothered to use it…if she ever decided what she wanted to do with it. Right then, she knew what she wanted to do. “When do you need it all?”
“As soon as possible. We’re in a bit of a time crunch, but if it’s a problem for you—”
“No, I’ll have something for you by tomorrow. Do I bring it here?”
“No, the workmen will be all over the place. Bring it up to the sixth floor. You’ll see colored doors with Just for Kids written on them. I’ll be in there.” There was a beeping sound, then Amy took a pager out of the pocket of her overalls. She glanced down at it to read the printout on the small LED screen. “Taylor’s awake.” She looked at Brittany. “My daughter. I need to get upstairs or she’ll pitch a fit.”
“Amy?” Matt said to get Amy’s attention before she took off. “I know how much this center means to Lindsey and Zane, but we’re still doing business here.”
“Of course. And we’re within budget, aren’t we?”
“That’s not it. It’s about that kid who was in here. You can’t let them run around without supervision. That little hoodlum that attacked me was probably the one who opened the door, and he was looking for trouble. He needs to be kept under lock and key.”
Amy shook her head. “He can’t be one of our kids. First of all, they’re always supervised, and secondly, the after-school kids are long gone. But I’ll check and if he’s one of ours, it won’t happen again.”
Matt nodded, then Amy turned to Brittany. “I can’t wait for tomorrow.” That smile came again. “And I still don’t know who you are.”
Brittany stared at Amy, and was startled when Matt spoke up. “You do have a name, don’t you?”
Brittany looked at Matt. “Of course I have a name,” she said and remembered something her father had told her many times over the years. “If you want something, you use whatever you need to make it happen.” She wanted this to happen, and she would do whatever it took to prove she wasn’t a spoiled brat. She’d do it and he wouldn’t have to know who she was for now.
“B. J. Smythe,” she said, putting together an old nickname with her mother’s maiden name. “And it’s Smythe, S-M-Y-T-H-E. Not Smith,” she added for good measure.
Chapter Three
“B. J. Smythe not Smith,” Matt said, and she blushed slightly, high color touching her delicate cheekbones. “I’ll remember that,” he murmured, and knew that he wouldn’t have any trouble remembering this woman on any level.
“Great to meet you, B.J.,” Amy said, then hurried toward the doors. She called, “Tomorrow,” over her shoulder, and was gone to get to her daughter.
“Shoot, that’s just great,” Matt heard B.J. mutter as she watched Amy leave.
“Excuse me?”
She shook her head and turned back to him. “Sorry. I just needed to talk to her some more, to get details.”
“Well, she’s long gone. When the children are involved, she’s single-minded, and when it’s her daughter, well…” It was his turn to shrug. “She’s got tunnel vision.”
“She sounds dedicated.”
“She really is. Actually, I hope that kid is one of hers so she can reign him in.”
“You don’t like kids?”
He shrugged at a question that came out of nowhere as far as he was concerned. “I don’t even think about them, until something like this happens.”
“I can’t say I’ve thought much about them, either, but I think you’re hardly being fair to that boy.”
