Married to His Business / Six-Month Mistress: Married to His Business. Elizabeth Bevarly

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СКАЧАТЬ word returned when she entered her room…until she discovered it was actually a suite appointed with more pine walls and more exposed ceiling beams and more Native American rugs. In the main room, French doors opened onto a spacious balcony that offered a glorious view of the lake, which was picked up again in the bedroom by a broad picture window. The bathroom boasted a jacuzzi and small television, and there was a wet bar tucked into the far side of the living room. An enormous basket of fresh fruit and wine sat at the center of the dining table, and a massive bouquet of flowers, fragrant and splashy, was perched on the desk. Envelopes bearing her name—her first name—were tucked into each.

      “Still think DeGallo wants you only for your MBA and your business savvy?”

      Kendall spun around with a start at the question to find Matthias leaning in the still-open door to her room. Her lips parted in surprise, but not entirely because of his unexpected arrival. He looked…different. And not just because he was casually dressed in clay-colored trousers and a navy-blue polo, where she was more accustomed to seeing him in suits. She’d seen him dressed for non-business-related functions before, everything from rugby in the park to black-tie opening nights. It wasn’t Matthias’s clothing that looked off today. It was Matthias.

      His clothes were a little wrinkled, his hair was a little shaggy, and his eyes were a little shadowed, as if he wasn’t getting quite enough sleep. In fact, his whole face looked a little shadowed, a little leaner, a little rougher. And Matthias had never been “a little” anything. He was an all-or-nothing kind of man, emphasis on the all, especially where his physical appearance went.

      She ignored the little pang of concern that pinched her at seeing him in his less-tidy-than-usual state. It was none of her business if he was working too much. None of her business if whoever he’d hired to take her place wasn’t keeping him on track the way she had. She wasn’t her boss’s keeper. Especially since Matthias wasn’t even her boss anymore.

      “What are you doing here?” she asked by way of a greeting, congratulating herself on keeping her voice steady, clear and indifferent. “I mean, I know why you’re in Tahoe. But what are you doing here? At my hotel?”

      He raised a shoulder and let it drop, then pushed himself away from the doorjamb. As he strode into the room, he told her, “I made better time driving from San Francisco than I thought I would, so I’m a little ahead of schedule. I don’t have to meet the caretaker for another hour, so I thought I’d drop in and say hello.”

      Kendall eyed him suspiciously. It wasn’t like Matthias to “drop in” on anyone, for any reason. And he must have gone to some lengths to find out where she would be staying and when she would be arriving, because she hadn’t shared any of that information with him. Not to mention they hadn’t exactly parted on the best of terms. They hadn’t spoken to or seen each other since he’d had her escorted out of the building like a common thief. If he was here now, it had to be because he wanted something.

      So she asked him, “What do you want?”

      Matthias looked at Kendall and wondered which of dozens of answers to that question he should give her. He wanted a lot of things, actually. He wanted the Perkins contract. He wanted the Barton Limited stock to go through the roof. He wanted to be worth a billion dollars by the time he was forty. Hell, he even wanted world peace, since it would create so many new business-friendly governments. And, okay, he wanted a new personal assistant, too, since, so far, everyone he’d interviewed had been, at best, unqualified and, at worst, a lobotomy gone tragically wrong.

      Mostly, though, he wanted Kendall to open her eyes and see what was so obvious to him. Talk about a lobotomy. What had happened to the pragmatic, professional, enterprising, efficient woman he’d hired? Looking at Kendall now…

      Well, actually, looking at Kendall now, Matthias wondered what she’d done to herself. The dark blond hair she normally had twisted up out of her way hung loose, cascading past her shoulders in a thick, silky mass. Wow, it was a lot longer than he’d thought—not that he’d ever thought much about Kendall’s hair. But it was long. Thick. Silky. Had he mentioned silky? And long? And thick? Her glasses were gone, too, and he noted with some surprise that her eyes were huge without them. And green. He’d never noticed that Kendall had green eyes. Really green eyes. Pale green. Like bottle glass. And every bit as clear.

      “What do you want, Mr. Barton?” she asked again, bringing his thoughts back to where they needed to be.

      It was a good question, he thought. He wished he had a good answer to go with it. But the fact was, he still wasn’t sure why he was here. Yeah, her hotel was on his way, but even if it hadn’t been, he would have driven the extra miles to see her. He’d done a little checking this week—okay, he’d done a lot of snooping—to find out where Kendall would be staying and the particulars of this “week-long orientation.” But his mole at OmniTech—yes, Matthias had one there, just as he was sure DeGallo had one at Barton Limited—hadn’t been able to uncover much about it.

      Which had just hammered home to Matthias that the guy was up to no good. Had there been a legitimate orientation seminar going on, it would have been a matter of company record. As far as Matthias could tell, however, Kendall was the only new hire of any consequence that Stephen DeGallo had made recently. As he’d told her two weeks ago, the guy didn’t hire outside the company for the kind of position he’d offered her. And any alleged orientation there might have been for her position should have taken place on-site—not in a cozy, romantic little hotel overlooking Lake Tahoe.

      “I’ve come to offer you your job back,” he said, surprising himself as much as he’d obviously surprised Kendall. He really hadn’t been intending to do that at all when he drove into town. He’d just been planning to…

      Okay, he wasn’t exactly sure what he’d been planning to do. But now that he thought more about it, offering Kendall her job back made sense. No one he’d interviewed had come close to matching her qualifications. Matthias was confident that if he made her the right offer, she’d come back on board. Everyone had their price. Kendall was no exception. She’d just been feeling unappreciated, he told himself. He hadn’t emphasized enough how valuable she was to Barton Limited. Oh, sure, he’d given her raises and more benefits. But any good employee needed ego stroking, too. Just because Kendall had never seemed like the kind of person who wanted that kind of thing didn’t mean it wasn’t important to her.

      He didn’t know why he hadn’t thought about that before. At least not consciously. Evidently his brain had been considering it subconsciously, to have thrown out the offer to hire her back. That was probably what had been behind Matthias’s driving into town to find her in the first place. He’d been planning—subconsciously—to renegotiate the terms of her employment and invite her back.

      Yeah, that was it. It had to be. Why else would he have come?

      Kendall, however, didn’t seem to be as open to the idea of her return to Barton Limited as Matthias was, because she didn’t answer him right away. In fact, she was looking at him as if she was kind of indignant.

      No, it must be grateful, he told himself immediately. Indignity, gratitude…those got mixed up all the time. They had a lot of the same letters in common. After all, why would she feel indignant?

      “I have a job,” she said tersely.

      Or maybe she’d said it sweetly. Those got mixed up a lot, too. Matthias was sure of it. The letter thing again.

      “And I’m very excited about it,” she added.

      No, definitely terse, he thought. And not a little shirty.

      Instead СКАЧАТЬ