The Bridal Suite. Sandra Marton

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СКАЧАТЬ to waft across the back of Griffin’s neck. “She has green eyes?”

      “Yes, sir. It had been on the tip of my tongue to tell her they were the color of emeralds but, thank the saints, I never got that far. Anyways, I thought I might do well to come and talk with you.”

      “And the lady’s name?” Griffin asked, though he knew. Dammit, he knew.

      “Her friend called her—did I mention there were two young ladies, Mr. McKenna?”

      “Yes. Yes, you did. What did her friend call her, Charlie?”

      “Dana. And if I never see the woman again, it’ll be way too soon. You understand, sir?”

      Did he understand? Griffin smiled tightly as he rose to his feet and offered Charlie his hand.

      “I hope I did the right thing, comin’ to you, sir,” Charlie said. “I don’t want to get the girl—the woman—in any trouble, you understand.”

      “Wipe her from your mind, Charlie. You won’t have any more problems with Dana Anderson.”

      “You’ll have a talk with her, will you? Tell her I didn’t mean to insult her dog?”

      “Indeed,” Griffin said as he eased the old man out the door and shut it after him.

      Oh, yes. He’d have a talk with Ms. Dana Anderson. Damn right, he would. The woman was trying to make Dave look bad, and now she’d upset a nice old man. She was Trouble with a capital T, and eliminating trouble was what Griffin did best.

      Whistling softly between his teeth, he strolled to his desk. His glance fell on the note he’d made about Macy. With a sigh, he grabbed it, crumpled it up and slam-dunked it into the wastepaper basket.

      Macy was a dragon, but she was a dragon who knew how to do her job.

      Dana Anderson was a different story. Let her go make life difficult for somebody else. Let her bake cakes, or sew curtains, take dictation or type letters, let her do a woman’s job instead of storming into the business world and making trouble. And if she couldn’t accept her rightful place in life, then she could go find a bunch of leftover female twit-heads from the seventies, rip off her bra and burn it.

      Griffin caught his breath. An image filled his mind. He saw Dana standing beside a blazing fire, her green eyes locked to his as she let down that mass of streaked golden hair and then, with heart-stopping slowness, took off not just her bra but every stitch she wore, until she had nothing on except her own soft, rose-flushed skin.

      Naked, she’d be even lovelier than he’d dreamed. And yes, dammit, he had dreamed of her, though it galled him to admit it.

      Griffin shut his eyes. The image was so real. He could feel the heat of the fire and hear the soft beat of drums somewhere off in the darkness of the night. He could see Dana smile, then run the tip of her tongue across her lips. Her hands lifted; she thrust them into her hair. Her head fell back and she began to dance. For him. Only for him...

      Griffin blinked, cursed, and grabbed for the telephone.

      “Miss Macy,” he barked. “Send Dana Anderson in here, on the double.”

      “Mr. Forrester’s here. He wants to see you, sir.”

      “All right, send him in. And then get hold of the Anderson woman.”

      “Of course, sir.”

      Griffin sat down. He’d give Forrester five minutes, although, to tell the truth, the man was becoming an annoyance. Still, there was no harm in a little delay. In fact, it would make what came next all the sweeter, when he finally gave the blonde with the green eyes and the disposition of a wet tabby cat exactly what she’d been asking for.

      Smiling, he tipped back his chair and put his feet up on his desk.

      The mere thought of the Anderson babe cooling her heels on the unemployment line was enough to make his day.

      CHAPTER TWO

      DANA was neck-deep in work.

      Unfortunately, none of it was hers. She was too busy fixing up Dave’s disasters to pay any attention to her own stuff.

      Her tiny cubicle was crowded with files, and her desk was strewn with papers. Memos fought for space with a clutter of computer disks and Styrofoam cups. “The Neat Freak,” Dave had dubbed her long before he’d gotten his promotion, but neatness had gone the way of the dodo bird. How could you be neat, when the world was crashing down around your ears?

      She’d spent the past hour hunched over the keyboard, hoping to find a way to debug the latest problem in the code. Dana’s fingers raced across the keyboard. Numbers scrolled down the screen of her monitor. She paused, scanned the numbers, then hit the “enter” key.

      “Please,” she said under her breath, “let it be right.”

      It wasn’t.

      Not that she’d expected it would be. Mistakes, not miracles, were too often the inevitable result in the wonderful world of computing.

      If only Griffin McKenna could get that through his thick skull....

      His thick, handsome skull.

      Dana muttered a word McKenna surely wouldn’t have approved hearing a woman say. She glared at the monitor. Then she sighed, sat back and reached for the closest Styrofoam cup. An inch of black sludge sloshed in the cup’s bottom. She made a face, held her breath, and glugged it down. After a minute, she looked at the monitor again.

      McKenna’s face, complete with its smug, self-confident smirk, seemed to flicker like a ghostly apparition on the screen.

      “That’s right,” she said. “Smile, McKenna. Why wouldn’t you? The world is your oyster.” Angrily, she tapped the keys again, deleting the numbers, but McKenna’s image still lingered. “I should have quit,” she muttered. “I should have told that man exactly what he can do with this job.”

      It wasn’t too late. She could pick up the phone, dial his office...

      She was reaching for the receiver when the phone rang.

      “Hello,” she snarled.

      “Dana?”

      It was Arthur. Dana shut her eyes.

      “Oh,” she said. “It’s you.”

      “Were you expecting someone else, my dear?”

      Dana shot a glance at the monitor, as if she half expected to find McKenna’s face still etched onto the glass.

      “No,” she said. “No, not at all. I just—I’m, ah, I’m awfully busy just now, Arthur, so if you wouldn’t mind—”

      “Of course, Dana. I only wanted to say hello.”

      “Hello, then,” she said, trying not to sound brusque, “and now, if you’ll excuse me...”

      “Will СКАЧАТЬ