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That really came out of nowhere. “What?”
The suggestion of a frown tugged a fine line between her eyes. “You’re calling him a hoodlum, but you don’t know why that door was open or why he was here. You also know that he thought you were the hoodlum, and he thought he was protecting me from…” Those green eyes skimmed over him. “…a huge man dressed all in black sneaking around in the dark.”
“The light switch didn’t work, and I wasn’t sneaking anywhere.” He stopped, wondering why he was the one justifying his actions in this situation. “The boy’s the problem, a problem waiting to happen and we probably won’t have to wait much longer.”
“There you go again. You don’t even know him.”
He had to admit that she was good at keeping him on the defensive. “Well, he didn’t come back, no matter how much you trusted he would. And I’ve seen that type before, the way I’ve seen too many Brittany Lewis types.”
Those green eyes narrowed. “Oh, so you know Brittany Lewis that well, do you?”
“No, and I don’t want to,” he admitted with a grimace. “But I know the type.”
She shook her head as if she was exasperated with him. “That’s a really bad habit you have there, Mr. Terrel.”
“It’s Matt, and what are you talking about?”
“Okay, Matt. You’re forming opinions, no, making judgments, without knowing all the facts.”
They’d started as adversaries when she’d attacked him, and it just kept going. “That’s what you’re doing, isn’t it?” he asked, moving a bit closer to her.
He was used to people reacting to his size and presence. It was a given that he was intimidating, but she didn’t back down as he got closer. “What are you talking about?”
“You don’t know me. You don’t know how I do things, how I form opinions. But you’ve got your opinion of me and you’re passing judgment on me. So, answer me this, who’s worse, you or me?”
“The question is, who’s wrong, you or me?” she countered without missing a beat.
“You, definitely you. You’re wrong, dead wrong about me.”
“So, you can’t admit to being wrong, either.”
He had always liked a skirmish, and this was starting to intrigue him. The first time she’d ended up under him. Not a bad start, and he wondered how this would end. “Oh, and you can admit to being wrong?” he asked, not bothering to stop the smile that was starting to grow at this exchange.
She stared at him hard, then turned away. For a moment he felt disappointed that she was going to give up after all, that he’d read her wrong. But she made a pretext of looking at the ridiculous tree and spoke in a low voice. “Of course I can admit I’m wrong, if or when I’m wrong,” she said in an even voice. Then she turned and there was something in her expression, and it had nothing to do with humor. She thought she was going in for the kill. “Which, of course, isn’t that often.”
He shook his head slowly as he went close enough to her to see that her lashes were incredibly lush, and her lips were their natural color, owing nothing to any lipstick. Damn it, this was getting to be fun. That was something he hadn’t even considered with a woman before. Sex, conversation, even possibly mutual interests. But fun? That was a new thing for him, and he found it very endearing. “Oh, I get it. This is an aberration, you being wrong?”
“No, it’s not, because I’m not. And that being said, I’ve only got until tomorrow to get my ideas down for Mrs. Blake and nail this job. I just wish…”
Her voice trailed off, and he found himself interested in what she would wish for. “So, you’re a person who wishes? The next thing I know, you’ll say you believe in Santa Claus.”
“And you don’t.” It was a statement, not a question. “That’s too bad.”
“It’s not smart to sit around waiting for someone to drop presents in your lap,” he muttered, annoyed that her words had made him sound like Scrooge. “So, what were you wishing for?”
“More time with Mrs. Blake. I have such a vague idea of this place, and I want to get this job.”
“Amy’s easy, don’t worry. And it has to go by me, anyway.”
She tilted her head slightly to one side and those lashes lowered a fraction of an inch as she studied him for a long moment. “And you must have a full working knowledge of this place, what it’s going to be, what the vision is for it?”
He didn’t know where she was going, but he went along willingly. “I don’t know if I’d get visionary. Imagination isn’t my strong suit, but I’ve seen all the projections, the ideas and their budget.”
She came a bit closer, and he could feel whatever control he’d thought he’d had in this encounter evaporating. She was less than two feet from him, bringing with her a soft fragrance that he remembered from their collision, a subtly seductive fragrance that he could almost name. Almost. But not quite. “Okay, you have this knowledge about the day-care center, and I don’t know much, except it’s for the kids.”
He waited, feeling something coming, knowing it was coming, but not about to ask her for a map. He knew on some level that if he asked her directly, she’d gain even more control. So, he just waited.
Finally she spoke and upset his balance again. “Do you have a car here?”
He nodded, waiting.
“Do you drive?”
“Since I was twelve.”
At least that took her back a bit, her green eyes widening slightly. “What?”
“I took a car for a joyride when I was twelve, went ten miles before I was stopped. That was the beginning of my life of crime.”
He had no idea why he’d just said what he said. It was the truth, but it wasn’t something he ever told anyone about. Not even Zane. But before he could backtrack, he was faced with her smile, an expression that quite literally lit up the world at that moment. It was all he could do to concentrate on what she was saying now. “Oh, sure, and I just bet you did time in Sing-Sing, too.”
God, she was beautiful when she smiled, and that angered him just a bit. He was very happy for women to exist on the fringes of his world. That was comfortable for him, and nonintrusive. He’d never welcomed distractions, especially not with a possible employee, and he really did have a lot of work to do. He still had control. And that control was the fact that he could walk away whenever he wanted. He spoke quickly, looking at his watch as an excuse not to look at B.J. for a moment. “No, I missed Sing-Sing on the tour, but I really am running late. My timetable’s shot to hell.”
“The car?”
He looked back at her, the smile was gone, but its shadow lingered in her eyes. “Excuse me?”
“The car. Your car?”
“I told you I have a car, but what does that have to do with anything?”
“Well, I don’t have a car. I took a taxi to get here, and I’m short on time, and I need to know more about this place.” She hesitated. “So, simply put, the solution is for you to give me a ride, and we can talk on the way.”
He knew that if he drove away from here with her, nothing would be simple. “I don’t know.” He hesitated. “I don’t even know where you live.”
“Where do you live?” she countered.
“Do you ever answer a question directly?”
“I like to get all the facts before I speak,” she said, that smile playing around her lips again.
“Okay,” he murmured. “I live in a loft in a converted warehouse near the industrial district. I’ve barely moved in, but it’s got lots of space.”
“Well, that was more information than I needed,” she said. “I just wanted to know what area of the city you lived in. South, north, in the middle, east or west?”
“Okay, to be exact, west of the middle of the city in the area that they’re trying to redevelop. Now, where do you live?”
“Around that area.”
“Where exactly?”
She hesitated, the first time he’d seen her stop to think of an answer before she answered him. “A town house complex—yes, the Fortress—no, the Forestry. No, shoot, the Forest Lane complex.” She almost seemed flustered and color brushed her cheeks. “I’m sorry, I haven’t lived there very long. Do you know where that is?”
He knew. He passed by there most days. A park-like area of town houses being refurbished for upscale tenants. And it was close enough to his place to be “on the way,” if he took a slightly circuitous route. “Yes, I know where it is.”
“Then can I have a ride?”
He looked at her, his response as strong as it had been at first. It wasn’t diminishing. It had to be hormones, or maybe the fact that he’d been alone for quite a while now, he reasoned. Or lust. Maybe that was what this was all about. This woman was made to be lusted after, that was for sure. He could deal with that. Lust was a fiery explosion that faded almost as quickly as it came. He knew that from his own experiences in the past. Gone and forgotten. And he could deal with it easily.
“Okay, I’m parked in the parking garage.”
“Great,” she murmured and headed into the back hallway. When he got to the door, she was there, pushing it open and stepping out of the building.
He reached for the nearest light switch, flipped it, but it didn’t do anything. He’d have to go back to find a switch that worked, and he wasn’t going to take the time. Leaving the lights on, he went out after her, letting the door slam tightly behind him.
She’d stopped a few feet from the exit, looking back at him questioningly, and his whole body tightened. Yes, lust. Pure and simple. “Over there,” he said, pointing to his car. “The black Jeep.”
Brittany turned and walked quickly toward the car he’d pointed out before she lost her nerve or came to her senses. Her first lie about her name had come with amazing ease, but lying about where she lived was unsettling. She’d had to think fast, to remember where an old friend had lived in that area. Thank goodness, the complex was still there. But she still didn’t have a clue what she’d do when they got there. Fooling Matthew Terrel wasn’t a simple process.
She’d take his ride, learn whatever she could about the center. When he’d asked her about liking kids, she could have easily said she was totally ignorant of them. She’d never even thought about having any. There hadn’t even been a center the last time she’d been at LynTech. But with Matt’s information and her imagination, she knew she could do this. She approached his car; it fitted its owner perfectly. It was a huge sports utility vehicle with a perfect shine, chrome rims on huge tires, and darkly tinted windows. Strong and mysterious looking.
Matt hit the remote, the door locks clicked open, then he was reaching past her to grip the handle and open the door. Despite being fairly tall, Brittany had to step up and pull on a leather strap to get into the gray leather of the passenger seat. While she settled, she watched Matt stride around the front to get in behind the wheel, and she found herself looking at him, blocking out that response he immediately brought. She wasn’t going to look at him as a man. He was a means to an end. Pure and simple.
She looked away from him as he started the car, and she remembered what he’d said about Brittany Lewis just minutes ago. She let his snide remarks settle in her mind, and grabbed at the anger that had come with them. She stared hard out the window at the almost empty structure. The car moved and Matt spoke as they approached the exit ramp.
“Do you want to get started?” he asked.
“Excuse me?” she said as they left the garage.
“I thought you wanted to talk?”
“Yes, of course. I was wondering about that tree.” She said the first thing that came to her mind. “What’s the idea behind it?”
“Sort of a jungle gym, I guess. Tunnels in the trunk to climb in, and the platforms for play and napping. Part of the fantasy theme that Lindsey, the director, wanted. Personally, it would scare me to death if I was four years old waking from a nap and finding myself in there.”
She made the mistake of turning to look at him. If she’d thought he was disturbing before, in the close confines of the car he was downright dangerous. The low lights from the dash cut angles and planes of shadows on his face, and the sexiness was magnified. She turned back quickly, staring straight ahead. She would not make the mistake she’d made so many times in her life. That way she had of meeting someone, seeing something in him that blinded her, then, somewhere down the road, realizing that he was simply a stranger. Matt Terrel was a stranger.
“With the right backdrop, the tree could be magical,” she murmured.
“And that’s where you come in, turning a nightmare into a…” He paused. “What would you call it?”
“Just what you did, a fantasy, and one that revolves around the children. Or the children around it.” She braced herself, then looked back at Matt. She was thankful that he was turned away from her, looking to his left up the street at the stream of traffic. “The children dancing around it, laughing, enjoying the magic.”
He exhaled, still staring to his left. “Sounds good to me. Lots of kids’ stuff that reeks of make-believe.”
She could see the way his jaw was working, and she had no idea where that cynicism came from, any more than she had any idea why he had seemed so negative about the boy involved in their “incident.” “That sounds cynical to me.”
He turned to her as they waited for an opening in the traffic that filled the street done up in Christmas finery. “Cynical? No, just realistic,” he murmured.
“There’s a big difference between cynical and realistic.”
“Oh?” His eyes flicked to hers, narrowed in the softness of the lights. “And you’re going to enlighten me? Go ahead.”
“Well, a realist looks at that tree and figures it’s a toy, a plaything and isn’t expected to look like a real tree and accepts that. A cynic looks at the tree and figures it would scare any four-year-old and wants to tear it down.”
“I never said I wanted to tear it down,” he said as he managed to finally merge into traffic.
“Would you?”
“That’s not an option. It cost an arm and a leg, so it’s staying.”
“Money’s the bottom line?”
“Isn’t it always?”
“Cynical, cynical, cynical,” she murmured.
A Santa clone walked right in front of the Jeep to weave his way across the street, and Matt braked to a stop. “No, if I was that cynical, I would have taken out Santa Claus,” he muttered.
“No one would take out Santa,” she said. “Not even a world-class cynic.”
Matt laughed then, a sound that both startled and disturbed Brittany. It was soft and rich, wrapping itself around her in the close confines of the black car, an enticing pleasure that she wanted to push away. “I guess I’m not world-class,” he said, starting to drive again, but so slowly that they could have walked faster. “Just cynic enough to look at LynTech realistically and try to make it viable.
“There’s viable and there’s viable. Right now LynTech has more money leaks than a sieve, and it has subsidiaries that aren’t exactly stable.” He eased into the next lane behind a car decorated with flashing Christmas lights around its rear window. “If we can get some cash flow from new investors, we might survive. If not, it’s a lost cause.”
She knew LynTech hadn’t been in top form when it changed hands. It had been a source of real pain for her father. After he’d spent years building the company, it had started to fail and he didn’t have the time or the energy left to pull it back up. And she hadn’t been there to help. Her sense of business would have sunk the company completely. “Can I ask you something?”
“I have no idea how many years it’s going to take to get out of this traffic,” Matt said.
The traffic was incredible, people out shopping or going off to dinner. “Why did you and what’s-his-name, Holden, walk into Lyntech and take it over, if it was on the brink of corporate suicide?”
He finally made it to the corner and turned onto the main street in front of LynTech. “Corporate suicide? What did you do, take a class to learn sound bites for the business world?”
“I’m just asking a question.”
He shrugged as he fingered the leather-covered steering wheel. “We got involved because we figured if someone was at the helm who wasn’t attached to the company, someone who could make solid, unemotional decisions, it could be viable.”
She’d heard enough about Matt and Zane Holden during the change of power. Her father’s reluctance to hand the corporation over to them had been there, but he hadn’t had a choice. He’d had to get out, otherwise there would have been an ugly takeover from some other sources. “Slice and dice” her dad had called the two of them, “but bright.” He’d chosen the ones to take it, and Matt and Zane Holden had been that choice.
“Didn’t you acquire LynTech with the intent to disassemble it, sell off the parts, pocket the money and get out of town?”
The traffic had stopped again, and horns were being sounded when Matt looked at her. “You claim to be an artist, and talk about magic and fantasy, then in the next breath, you’re talking like some corporate shark. What are you, an artistic business person?”
He was so far off the mark that she could have almost laughed. “I’m just an artist.”
“And I’m just impressed. Most people at LynTech thought we were horrible, especially after kindly Mr. Lewis and the way he coddled them. They couldn’t understand our actions, still can’t, in some measure. But you do.”
She’d absorbed it, but had had little interest in it until she saw how it had affected her father. Now she knew the slice-and-dice concept forward and backward, along with her father’s hopes for the company after he’d learned that Matt and Holden were staying on. His relief had been immense when he’d found out they weren’t disassembling it at all.
