Emmy And The Boss. Penny McCusker

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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      “Yes.”

      “Are you sure?” he asked again, because he couldn’t quite believe it. No self-respecting efficiency expert would go around looking so adorable. Efficiency experts carried clipboards and stopwatches and dressed in neat suits, not skirts and sweaters that tried for conservative without any real hope of pulling it off. They didn’t slam back martinis, they nursed gin and tonics to make sure they didn’t consume more than one ounce of alcohol per hour. And they were supposed to be all about work, not about driving every thought of it from a man’s mind.

      “I’m the efficiency expert,” she insisted.

      She was dishonesty in advertising is what she was, Nick decided. All that soft-looking blond hair and those big blue eyes, and she expected him to focus on business? But he took the hand she held out and immediately he was fine with that. “So you’re the efficiency expert,” he said. “Good.” Now he didn’t have to feel guilty for almost blowing off his meeting. Okay, so there wouldn’t have been a whole lot of guilt, since one of his best friends from college—also known as his banker—had strong-armed him into this thing to begin with. It was that or no loan, and he really needed a loan.

      The company he’d taken over from his father had been showing a little red ink lately, but it was just a temporary downturn in business. A loan would do the trick, Nick had decided, help Porter and Son last until the slow economy got back on its feet. Unfortunately, it wasn’t as easy as that. He’d been turned down by nearly every bank in Boston. Except the bank where his friend worked, and even that approval came with a condition. Hire a consultant, get a turnaround plan and use the loan to put it into practice. Nick had no choice but to follow those instructions, at least until he got the damn loan. Then he’d put his own turnaround plan into place. He wasn’t sure exactly what that plan might entail, but he knew that he was going to get his father’s company back on track. And it wasn’t going to take any efficiency expert to do it. All he needed was a great group of employees who’d been with the business for years, and some good old-fashioned hard work and determination….

      He looked into Emmy Jones’s sparkling eyes and forgot all about his plans and his objections and his need to dig deep and find some determination inside himself before it was too late. He forgot about his banker/friend and his employees and the weight of his father’s legacy. When he looked at Emmy Jones his mind went on vacation and the rest of him was left to run the show. Not good. He’d come here to get rid of the efficiency expert; kissing her wouldn’t exactly accomplish that goal. And he wanted, badly, to kiss her. At least for starters.

      “Why don’t we go over the contract?” she suggested.

      Nope, Nick didn’t want to do that, but they had to talk about something or he was going to do something they’d both regret—all right, he wouldn’t regret it, but he’d probably get slapped. “Who’s Roger and why do you have to replace him?” he asked, seizing on the first thing that popped into his head that didn’t have anything to do with his job. Or hers.

      “Roger was my fiancé.”

      “Was?”

      “He backed out of our wedding.”

      “So you came here to replace him?” Nick asked, not wasting his time on sympathy since she didn’t sound too upset. “Maybe you should play the field a little before you jump into another serious relationship. I could help you with that.”

      “Lindy was only joking,” she said. “And even if she wasn’t, you’re a client and I never mix business and personal. And you were late.”

      “Late would have been after the wedding.”

      She frowned at him and even that was cute. Odd, Nick thought, that he should have this strong a reaction to a woman he’d only just met, but the more she tried to set a professional tone for their conversation the more determined he was to get some sort of personal response from her.

      “I’m sorry I was late,” he said, realizing belatedly that he should probably apologize. “Time kind of got away from me.”

      She reached across the table, and took his hand—not to mention his breath. She pushed his sleeve up and brushed her fingers across the back of his wrist. Little black spots danced in front of his eyes.

      “Buy a watch,” she said.

      “Huh?” he croaked.

      “You’re not wearing a watch. It’s hard to be on time if you don’t actually know what time it is.”

      Nick pulled his arm back. “How do you know it’s not on my other wrist?” And how was she not affected by touching him?

      “You’re right-handed, which means you wear your watch on your left wrist.”

      She sounded calm and efficient. But she wasn’t meeting his eyes anymore. Further investigation revealed the pulse pounding wildly in the hollow of her throat. His ego did a few cartwheels. Until he reminded himself that she was clearly a woman who made a decision and stuck to it. And she’d decided not to be interested in him that way.

      So he’d have to change her mind.

      “About your business, Mr. Porter…”

      “We’re not going to have any fun at all if you don’t call me Nick.”

      There she went, frowning again, as though she didn’t know what fun was or how to have it. Maybe she didn’t resemble an efficiency expert on the outside, but she definitely had the inner workings of one. “Look, Emmy, I’m a pretty laid-back guy most of the time. But my dad left me that business, and I…promised him I’d keep it going. It was suggested that I hire an efficiency expert, and you came highly recommended.” By a guy who held Nick’s fate in the palm of his hand. In truth, she’d been foisted on him, Nick decided, because foisting was what happened to you when you had no choice. Nick decided to keep that to himself, though, verbally and, he hoped, expression-wise. It wasn’t much of a challenge, since having Emmy foisted upon him didn’t feel like such a hardship.

      She studied his face for a moment, then, apparently convinced of his sincerity, she opened a ruthlessly organized briefcase and extracted two copies of the contract they’d drawn up and traded via fax. “‘Streamline assembly operations,’” she read. “‘Redesign workflow, organize the office.’ That’s what we agreed on, correct?”

      Nick chewed on all that for a moment. To a man who didn’t so much as plan his next meal in advance, Emmy’s sense of order was astounding. And just a little scary.

      Scary or not, his decision had already been made. He pulled the contract over in front of him, searched his breast pocket and came up empty—probably because there wasn’t any pocket. After a brief and futile internal debate he plucked the pen out of her hand.

      She watched him calmly, and when he slid the paperwork back to her she looked at the illegible scrawl that passed for his signature beneath her precisely written name. “Here’s your copy,” she said, returning one of the signed contracts to him, “and this one is for my files,” and back it went into her briefcase.

      Nick rubbed his damp palms on his thighs and put the contract out of his mind, and so what if it felt as if he was hiring her under false pretenses? They were both getting something out of the deal—his loan, her consulting fee. And more importantly he got to see her again, because as little as he was looking forward to having an efficiency expert underfoot СКАЧАТЬ