IF YOU WANTED THE MOON (4 page)

Grier nodded his head, thinking. “Sounds good, sir. A good plan. I like it. We’l be leaving nothing to chance.”

“Right.”

“But I stil say the problem is Douglas. How can we trust the info if she’s not wired?”

“She can’t be wired. She won’t do it, for one thing, and she won’t be natural even if she does. I know Fred Morton. He’l see right through it if she’s play acting, trying to pump him for information, rather than being her natural self. No. She’s staying in the dark.”

“But how are we going to know if Morton’s teling her anything if she stays out of the loop?” he asked.

“Because she’l tel me,” Ethan replied, sounding more confident than he was. “It’l be the right thing to do and she’l do the right thing.”

Grier started shaking his head. “This part I don’t like, Mr. Chandler. We’l be relying too much on Douglas’s integrity- something neither one of us knows for certain she even has.”

“Agreed. That’s why we’l have to feed her a line.” He said this and then sat pensively, in ful thought, and Grier alowed him time to reflect. When his stark blue eyes looked up again, Grier knew he’d nailed it.

“A promotion,” Ethan said.

“A promotion? For Douglas? We’l promise her a promotion?”

“For Morton. We’l tel her that I’ve been thinking about promoting Morton to the presidency, second in line of succession to me. But I need to know if he’s presidential material, if he’s for the company’s best interests, or just his own. Since Morton seems to have a thing for her, I’l ask her to cozy up to him, al above board and professional, of course, but enough to find out what he’s al about. If I’ve read this Douglas woman correctly, then she’l be loyal enough to the company that pays her salary to at least want its president to be worthy of the post.”

“Or she could forget the company and look out for her own skin,” Grier said. “She could cut some backroom deal with Morton, teling him what you’re requiring of her and then reporting back only

positive things to you. In return, Morton wil become president and she’l get some sweetheart deal of her own.”

“That’s certainly possible,” Ethan said slowly, “except that Morton won’t become president and if Douglas starts feeding me al of this wonderfuly flattering info about Morton, then I’l know what’s up with her, too.”

“I don’t know, boss. It’s a crap shoot.”

“The truth wil be revealed, in any event,” Ethan replied. And more importantly to him, he thought, Douglas’s true self wil be revealed as wel and he’d be able to see for himself if this woman who’d managed, for some unearthly reason, to garner his ful and undivided attention, has his ful attention, was as remarkable, as different a sort of person, as he suspected that she was.

They sat like conjoined triplets at a back booth in Patsy’s, drinking their lattes while Tori did al of the talking. Macy, the real estate agent, seemed mesmerized by the tale. Sheila, the doctor, seemed skeptical. But they listened without interruption until Tori had recited every bit of the few details she could recite. Then they both glanced at each other, and then looked at Tori.

“That’s
it
?” Macy asked. At twenty-five, she and Tori were the same age, both having known each other since high school. But unlike Tori, whom everybody considered a bulwark of perfection, the al-American girl with nary a blemish to her good name, Macy was riddled with blemishes, from her happy-go-lucky lifestyle to her inability to keep her mouth shut. Whereas Sheila, who was realy more Tori’s friend than Macy’s, often found Macy’s style too
ghetto
for her, Tori found it refreshing. With Macy what you see is what you get, a rarity nowadays, in Tori’s view.

“I told you it was crazy,” Tori said. “Did you think I was lying?”

“Of course I don’t think you’re lying,” Macy replied. “I just don’t get it. What reason did Arthur give for Chandler selecting you?”

“That’s the point, Mace. He didn’t have a reason to give. It’s almost as if on a whim Chandler’s forcing me to folow him around, and to some town I never even heard of.” Tori said this as if it was a bad thing. It wasn’t. It would be, in fact, a dream come true for her if only her job wasn’t involved. If only this wasn’t some business trip that was surely going to determine, based solely on how wel she performed this job of hers, whether she kept her good position or had to start over.

“Don’t even try that, Victoria,” Sheila said. “Nobody forces you to do anything and you know it.”

“Yeah, wel, this is different. I can’t lose this job, so you may as wel say I’m being forced.” Tori exhaled. “I don’t know. This is al so crazy to me! Why would he select me? I’m the lady who insulted him to his face the first time I ever laid eyes on him for crying out loud!”

“Wil you stop making it personal, Tori,” Sheila suggested, growing irritable. “Ethan Chandler certainly isn’t. He apparently feels that the head of his logistics department would be a valuable resource on this business trip. That’s how you have to look at it. Stop trying to personalize it.”

“Child please,” Macy chimed in. “It is personal, girl, don’t listen to Sheila. You insulted him, yes, but why did you insult him, ever think about that? You insulted him because he was staring at you.

Staring
at you, Tori!” Macy said this as if that said it al, but Sheila only shook her head.

“What does that have to do with the time of day, I ask you,” she said.

“He was checking Tori out, that’s what it has to do with it. And since he selected her to go to Florida with him, over al his other employees, he apparently liked what he saw.”

Tori smiled at her optimistic friend. “I’m sure that’s not it, Mace. Especialy not after our. . .”

“Not after y’al what, girl?”

Tori hesitated. But what difference did it make now? Besides, she didn’t have to tel them
every
detail. “Especialy not after our second encounter,” she said.

“Don’t tel me you insulted the man again?” Macy asked.

“I didn’t insult him, no. Actualy I think I . . . knocked him off his feet, so to speak.”

Sheila was lost. Macy smiled. “What did you do, Tori?” she asked her.

Tori shook her head. “I’m too embarrassed to even discuss it. Let’s just talk about something else, okay?”

“Something else?” Macy asked incredulously. “Are you out of your mind? You’re teling us that Ethan Chandler, THE Ethan Chandler, has personaly requested that you accompany him al the way to

some romantic island in the Florida Keys, and you want to change the subject? Yeah, right. You’d better fil us in on what’s realy going on, because I know your lil’ butt. There’s more to this tale than what you’re teling.”

“Oh, there’s more,” Tori said. “Way more. And it’s al unpleasant. Which is al the more reason why his selection of me is bizarre to say the least, and why talking about it isn’t going to help a darn thing!”

“Fifteen minutes,” Sheila said as she looked at her watch. Both Macy and Tori looked at her. “That’s al the time I have left before I have to be back at the hospital. Fifteen minutes. So wil you please tel us what happened the second time you ran into this man?”

Tori looked at Sheila. She was beautiful, in an arrogant, insufferable way, with her perfectly permed short cut and her long, slender frame. Unlike Macy, who was short and on the verge of plumpness, Sheila had that model’s physique that drove men wild. Macy only wished she had that gift and Tori just didn’t care whether she did or not. “Wel?” Sheila said. “Tel us what happened the second time you ran into Ethan Chandler.”

“That’s the point,” Tori replied, just thinking about it paining her. “I ran into him.”

Macy laughed. “Literaly?” she asked.

“Literaly,” Tori said.

She was late, as usual, for a meeting she had to co-chair, and was hurrying for the stairwel, her briefcase swinging wildly, her long hair flapping against her back. She pushed open the heavy door swiftly, expecting to run down the usualy empty stairwel without incident.

Ethan Chandler, however, was already on the stairwel that fateful afternoon and as soon as she was pushing the door open, he was reaching for its knob so that he could step onto the very floor she was attempting to exit. The force of the heavy door, not to mention her deliberate push, colided with his face, forcing his body, now off balance, to fly backwards down the stairs until he was able to break his free-fal and land midway down, his back ramming against the rail.

Tori didn’t see the colision, but she heard it, and she immediately looked around the door and saw this big man sitting on the stairs, his expensive suit coat flapped open, his big hand touching the blood that was just beginning to ooze from his bottom lip. When Tori realized at once that it was no poor, unfortunate soul, but Ethan Chandler, her heart dropped.

“Mr.
Chandler
?” she asked, as if she couldn’t believe it. Nobody, not even her, she thought, was this unlucky.

Ethan puled a handkerchief out of his inside coat pocket and placed it against his bottom lip. Then he looked up at his mauler as she stood on the top step, at her shapely brown legs first coming down out of a skirt so short it seemed more like a piece of cloth to Ethan than actual clothing, then he looked up at her face. And he should have known. Her again. That same female he couldn’t seem to stop staring at when he first saw her in Lassiter’s office. She showed some spunk for a kid that day, he thought, insulting him at wil, something he flat wasn’t used to. But there she was in al of her swagger, trying to get a job, a good paying job at that, but she didn’t want it so badly that she’d alow him or anybody else to treat her disrespectfuly.

And the way she looked at him, with such hauntingly sad eyes that seemed to burn his soul, eyes that flashed great confidence although he knew they weren’t; eyes that seemed weary to him when they

should have been bursting with the joy of being young and free, made him certain that he had to keep her around. Not to exploit her or to get her in bed, since he certainly didn’t have to recruit for that, and even if he did she wouldn’t be his target.

But something was teling him to keep her. He handled his businesses the same way. Not by market forecasts or growth potentials or even wel paid expert advice, but by
gut
, as he often told his associates. And his gut was teling him loud and clear that this particular female, he didn’t want to lose.

He told Lassiter to hire her, despite Lassiter’s very legitimate reservations, but he also told himself to stay out of her way once she did get hired. He wasn’t the type to sleep around with his employees, and he wasn’t about to start now. But that didn’t stop him from checking up on her, without her knowledge, whenever those sad brown eyes of hers came across his mind.

“Is that realy you, Mr. Chandler?” Tori added, stil unable to believe her luck. Ethan frowned.

“Of course it’s me,” he said snappishly, and Tori wanted to die. She loved her job, and felt she could do it wel, but she knew she was skating on thin ice now. She therefore decided to give this her al.

Apologize, she thought, until it hurt.

“I am so sorry, Mr. Chandler,” she said as she moved down the steps until she was on the same one with Chandler, her heels clanking loudly against the steel stairs. “I didn’t see you, I assure you I didn’t. I didn’t even hear you come up the stairs!”

“How could you hear anything the way you were rushing?”

“I was . . . late for a meeting, sir,” Tori said less assuredly, his less than forgiving tone unsettling to her.

“Is this meeting more important than your life, Miss Douglas? Or mine, for that matter?”

Tori didn’t know how to respond. He knew her name, which stunned her, but he seemed so unforgiving! And when he removed his handkerchief to fold it over, and she saw the blood from his lip on its

white form, she nearly panicked with concern. “You’re bleeding!” she said excitedly, as if she’d never seen such a sight before.

“I think I’m aware of that,” he said with far less enthusiasm. Then he reached his hand out to her. “Help me up,” he told her. She immediately placed her briefcase and purse down and reached both of her hands for his. She, however, started puling before he realized she would and his big bulk against her smal frame was no match. Instead of puling him up, as she tried to do with al she had, she ended up faling down, literaly, in his lap.

Her rump dropped down so hard that he had to release his handkerchief and grab hold of her before they both slid on down the stairs. This maneuver not only put her in his lap, but cradled her even

further in his arms. She couldn’t believe her clumsiness and looked at him quickly, to gauge his reaction. And just like that his look had changed. Instead of the irritation he had shown previously, there was a calming look to him now. An almost caring, concerned look. And the way his big arms felt encased around her, so warm and possessive, that she began herself to calm down too.

Ethan was also calm, as he held this wonderfuly scented woman in his arms. She was gorgeous, he thought, and so sweet and soft to the touch, that his heart began to pound. And when he looked at her lips, her ful, sexy, moist lips, he wanted to kiss her. To kiss his employee, for crying out loud!

Tori didn’t know what to make of their closeness either. He was her boss, first and last, and she couldn’t afford to do anything to lose her job. They she sniffed his sweet cologne scent, looked deep into his beautiful bright blue eyes, and she suddenly understood why she had been so fascinated by him. He even puled her closer against him, in a kind of al is forgiven truce, she suspected, but when he looked down, at her breasts, and looked back up with a heavy-lidded gaze, it finaly registered with her just what kind of
concerned
look he was realy giving her. She immediately removed herself from his grasp.

Only she removed herself so quickly, jumping up as if his lap was a fire bed, that her high heel accidentaly came crashing down on his hand, causing him to snatch it back and scream out in pain.