Dream Man (2 page)

Or had she? After all, it was only legend that Grandma Margaret's six golden bangles would tinkle and jingle when a woman refused to listen to reason—Grandma Margaret's reason—about Mr. Right. It was ridiculous to think that, simply because she wore three of those bangles most of the time, they'd affect her dreams!

Sharon was the one supposed to have inherited all the Gypsy blood, along with the big dark eyes and the sleek black hair. Jeanie had no Gypsy characteristics, and the fact that she had been doing the dreaming about the man, and hearing the jingle of those bangles even when they were safely closed away in her jewelry box, had no bearing on anything she told herself. Maybe Grandma Margaret's supposed powers were weakening, and she'd screwed it up, put the dreams into the wrong sister's head. It was Sharon who needed a husband, not Jeanie!

The practicality she'd inherited from her mother's side of the family told her that she had held the man's hand quite long enough. She pulled free, but she saw in his eyes his reluctance to let her go. Because she prided herself on being sensible, she ignored his look.

“Just a few minutes of your time?” he asked in that soft, velvety voice that wrapped itself around her heart and warmed her from the inside out. Oh, yes! He'd make the ideal … brother-in-law, if she'd still been searching for a man for her sister. But she was not! And she had never been searching for one for herself.

“No,” she said, hoping he wouldn't guess that the high-pitched, ragged tone was not her normal speaking voice. “I don't have time right now. “I'm meeting someone for lunch.”
Grandma Margaret, why are you tempting me this way?

“But she canceled,” said Cindy. “Remember? I told you just a few minutes ago that Mrs. Anthony wouldn't be able to make it and—” As if finally noticing her employer's eloquent stare, she clapped her hand over the lower half of her face for a moment before saying, “I'm sorry, Ms. Leslie. Me and my big mouth, huh? I'm trying to do the right thing, but I mess it up all the time, don't I?”

Jeanie sighed ruefully at the girl's flushed, guilty face. “I know you try hard, Cindy.”

She also suspected that her pesky ancestor might have put the words into the girl's mouth. She switched her gaze to Max. Was this destiny speaking, after all? Was somebody up there other than Grandma Margaret telling her to go with her first instincts and take this man to Sharon against all better judgment? 

What should she do? If he was the answer to Sharon's needs, did she have the right to refuse to hear what he had to say? After all, because she didn't really believe in any old Gypsy predictions and superstitions, her own must be the mind that had conjured him up in the first place. Maybe she should get to know him a little bit, see what he was all about, before she made a firm decision. She drew in a deep breath and nodded. “All right, then, Mr. McKenzie. Please come in. I can spare you a few minutes.”

“Max,” he corrected her once more. “Maybe we could talk over lunch.”

She froze inside. Would that be wise? No! Absolutely not. “No, thank you. I prefer to conduct business in my office,” she said pleasantly. Why he had come, why he wanted to see her, she had no idea, but she doubted it was to tell her that he'd been dreaming for most of the past year about a woman who looked exactly like Sharon. She doubted just as strongly that he was there to tell her he wanted to meet her sister and bring her out of her depression, to make her into a whole and happy human once again, to become the father Jason and Roxanne needed. But whatever it was he wanted from her, she'd feel safer hearing it with the barrier of her big oak desk between them. She flicked another glance at him and he smiled a smile she was utterly powerless to resist. She thought for a crazy moment that if he'd held out his arms to her just then, she'd have walked right into them.

“Since you were on your way out to lunch, obviously you need to eat. So do I. Wouldn't it be so much easier and save time, if we did it together?” he asked.

Jeanie hesitated. The man's logic was irrefutable. She had to eat. She had a table booked already. And she was a big girl, thirty-one years old. She could look after herself, and maybe she'd learn more about him in a less formal atmosphere than her office. She knew she should be as nice to him as possible. After all, she mustn't forget that someone looking just like Max McKenzie had been peopling her dreams, filling her with the certainty that somewhere, sometime she'd find him, and he'd put Sharon's world back together again the way she and all the king's horses hadn't been able to do.

From somewhere, she was certain she heard the faint tinkle of golden bracelets jingling together. She glanced at her wrist. No bangles. But, despite that, she knew she had no choice. If he wanted to have lunch with her, then that was what would happen. Maybe Grandma Margaret was in charge of her mind and events after all, scary as the thought might be. “All right, Mr. McKenzie,” she said. “I can spare you an hour, but no more. This way, please.”

She held the door open for him. Behind them, the receptionist said wistfully, “Have a nice lunch, Ms. Leslie. And don't hurry. Remember, you have no more appointments today.”

“An hour, huh? No more?”

Jeanie had to laugh as she led her companion past the elevator doors and toward the stairs. “Cindy is a temporary maternity-leave replacement,” she said. “But the girl does try very hard. It's just that she's young and impulsive and says anything that comes into her head. I hope to teach her some discretion.”

“I'm sure time will, if you don't,” he said easily as they started down the four flights of stairs. “The elevator worked fine when I came up a few minutes ago.”

“Did it?” she asked. “Exercise is good you, Mr. McKenzie.”

“Max,” he said, taking her arm, drawing in deep breaths of the delicate scent that wafted up from her hair.

“I beg your pardon?” she asked as if she hadn't heard him.

“My name is Max.” He wanted to hear her say his name in that sexy, husky voice of hers. Never had he wanted so much to hear a woman say his name, but she seemed determined to be all business.

“Yes, I know.” She slipped her arm out of his clasp, swung her shoulder bag in between them, and returned his warm smile with a small, cool one of her own. She was, he realized with a slight sense of shock and a large dose of curiosity, completely impervious to that so-called natural charm his brother envied. Why? When his body chemistry reacted so wildly to her, wasn't the feeling supposed to be mutual? She was also, he realized, not going to offer her first name in response to his.

“My car's just around the corner,” he said as they came down the last flight of stairs and into the building's lobby

“Mine's right out here,” said Jeanie, pushing open the door to the staff parking area at the rear of the building, stepping out into a swirl of leaves from the autumn-gold poplars between the lot and the sidewalk. Dream man or not, she wasn't getting into a car with a man she had never met before and knew absolutely nothing about. Not unless she was behind the wheel and in control.

Sharon had taught her that much—and considerably more, Jeanie mused as she drove through the crowded streets of downtown Victoria. It hadn't been easy for Sharon, at eighteen years old, to take up the rearing of a little sister in a small apartment in Toronto, all the two girls could afford while Sharon attended the Royal Conservatory of Music. After their parents died, she and her sister had survived some rough times together.

Her passenger broke into her thoughts. “Nice car. I've always admired Nissan's workmanship.”

“Thank you. I find it comfortable to drive.”

“Yes. I can tell. You're a very smooth driver.” She glanced at him, pleased with the comment, but did not reply. She felt vaguely surprised to learn that he wasn't one of those dinosaurs who hated to have a woman drive him. Sneakily, she watched from the corner of her eye as he sat back, his gaze switching from small glances at her face to the passing scenes of Government Street. When she parked the car, he was out his door and around to her side in a few long-legged paces. He opened her door and helped her out, his hand large and warm on her elbow. As she had on the stairs, she pulled away quickly. She was determined to keep this luncheon on a businesslike plane, especially because the mere touch of his hand had the extraordinary ability to turn her insides to butterscotch pudding. Things like this did not happen to Jeanie Leslie.

When they were seated, had been served ice water with lemon slices, and steaming cups of coffee, and their orders taken, she leaned back in her chair and smiled, hoping her professional calm properly masked her deepening interest in him.

Who was he? Had she seen him somewhere before? She had an active social life. Maybe they'd attended the same party once or twice, she'd seen him across the room and had subconsciously remembered him. That could account for his having figured so largely in her dreams these last months. But even as she thought it, she knew she was trying to fool herself. If she'd seen Max McKenzie, even across a crowded room, she'd have remembered with more than her subconscious. Extreme caution was called for here, she thought. Maybe even a little chicken-hearted cowardice.

“Now, Mr. McKenzie,” she said briskly, wanting to get this meeting over with fast, “how can I help you?”

He considered telling her, but it was far too soon in their relationship for him to say what was uppermost in his mind—that his brother had given him the germ of an idea, and meeting her had given that little seed a helluva big dose of growth hormone. Besides, he was certain that if he gave himself a day or two to reflect, he'd realize the idea was one of the dumbest he'd ever entertained. So what if she was the most beautiful creature he'd ever seen, with her pink and gold skin, tawny-colored hair, smoky eyes? So what if the scent she exuded made his head reel? So what if she walked as if she wore a tiara and long, ermine-trimmed robes? So what if he had, for one wild moment, suddenly felt as though there might be such a thing as love at first sight? It was impossible because love itself was impossible. No, this was purely the worst case of lust he'd ever suffered, exacerbated by her failure to respond to him as women always did. Some devil in him demanded that he break through that cool reserve of hers, make those smoky eyes flare with flames of excitement. Ah, yes. Good, old-fashioned lust. There was nothing to do but wait it out. It would go away in time, especially if he didn't see her again. He remembered once when he was in college he'd gotten so dizzy over the sight and scent of a flight attendant that he'd wanted to ask for oxygen. At least the experience had proven to him that he was capable of going off the deep end momentarily, but that it would also pass. So he said what he'd come to say before he'd had it wiped from his mind by the sight of her tall slender body and slate-gray eyes.

“You can start by telling me your first name.”

“Jeanie.” She gave a tiny shrug, more impressed than she liked to admit when he didn't automatically respond with the usual, “Jeanie with the light brown hair.” It amazed her how that phrase from a long-ago song hung on in the modern vernacular.

“I'd like to know more about the job that requires a mature man who likes children, country life, and classical music, Jeanie.”

To his surprise, her cool facade broke for an instant, and her eyes flared not with excitement or pleasure but with that hint of fear he'd seen before.

She stared at him, reared back slightly in her chair, and said sharply, “No! Absolutely not.”

J
EANIE FELT HER MIND
go blank for a moment, then fill with tangled thoughts. She had known. On the most basic of levels, she had known the moment she saw him that he had come to her for one reason only, weeks late, maybe, but who was she to argue with destiny? Except that now she found she didn't want him to know she had placed that ad personally, or why. What held her back she couldn't say, but maybe it was because he was so right it terrified her. But she realized Sharon would never be able to handle a man like him, not in her present state of mind. He was too strong, too overwhelming. Too … male.

“No!” she said, shocked to hear the incipient panic in her voice. She shook her head to clear it, forced the fear down, and brought herself under tight control. “I'm sorry,” she said pleasantly, but firmly, keeping her gaze on his face, “but that job isn't being offered any longer.”

“Oh?” His brows lifted. “It came over the ExecNet this morning on my brother's fax machine.”

“It did?” Her shock was evident again, but she controlled it even more quickly than before. “If so, then it was sent out by mistake.” She pulled a wry face and sighed dramatically, rolling those gorgeous gray eyes heavenward.

He smiled. “Cindy?”

With a small laugh, she nodded. “I guess so. Poor Cindy.”

“Why not poor you? You have to put up with her.”

She gave him a level stare. “I do not have to put up with her. I choose to. If you had ever been a young woman looking for office work, you'd understand why. So many ads read, Junior office clerk wanted. Must have at least two years' experience. And then they offer a rate of pay so insultingly low that no male would ever be expected to live on it. I used to wonder how and where young women were supposed to gain experience if no one would hire them until they had some. So I take them on right out of school and train them whenever I get a chance and encourage my clients to do the same.”

He smiled and reached across the table to touch the back of her left hand, drawing a blunt, white nail from the base of her ring finger to the tip. “You're a nice woman, Jeanie Leslie.”

She withdrew her hand slowly and looked at him, wondering why she was so fierce in her determination to keep Max and Sharon apart. She didn't usually feel quite so strongly about things of this nature. She was being protective, that was all. She dragged her mind back to their conversation. “Thank you. But I don't do it to be nice. I do it because it's right.”