McKnight in Shining Armor (3 page)

“Figure of speech,” Steve said between clenched teeth.

Darwin became interested in the items on Alec’s desk. He scooted forward on Kelsie’s lap, his fingers reaching out to caress an appointment book, a rough pottery cup filled with pens, a heavy glass paper weight. Each piece he moved, Alec reached out and moved back.

“Animals are very hot right now,” Steve continued. “Darwin could be to Van Bryant’s what Spuds MacKenzie is to Budweiser. And I think the slogan is very catchy and adaptable to all of Van Bryant’s merchandise.” He held his hands up as if he were picturing the slogan on a billboard. “‘When it comes to fashion, don’t monkey around. Van Bryant’s.’”

Millard sucked in a horrified breath, drawing
everyone’s attention. “Darwin is
not
a monkey!” he said emphatically.

Kelsie rushed to placate him, wishing—not for the first time—that Millard Krispin weren’t so unbalanced. “Millard, like Steve said, it’s just a figure of speech. I’m sure everyone will realize Darwin isn’t a monkey. And you’ll have to agree, ‘Don’t chimpanzee around’ doesn’t have quite the right ring to it.”

Millard sat back, breathing heavily. “I guess you’re right, Kelsie.” He pushed his glasses up on his nose and leveled a serious look at Alec. “I’m sorry for my outburst, Mr. McKnight. I hope you understand I’m only looking out for Darwin’s interests. I have to make sure he isn’t exploited in any way.”

“Of course.” Alec nodded gravely, rubbing his temples. This guy belongs in a home for the chronically weird, he decided.

Kelsie reached for her briefcase as Darwin scrambled back to his owner’s lap. “I have a file here with photos of Darwin’s previous ad experience. While he hasn’t worked on television, he’s appeared in newspaper and regional magazine
ads for children’s clothes—which were done by your firm—Metro Animal Hospital, Tanner’s Bookstores, and—” She popped open the lid on the case and her stomach did a cartwheel. Instead of files and papers and photographs, she found bras and garter belts. The words escaped her lips on a thready breath. “Naughty Nighties.”

“I beg your pardon?” Alec leaned forward. He could have sworn she’d said “Naughty Nighties.” How could a monkey advertise nighties? Now, Miss Connors herself…

Before she could slam the lid on the case, Darwin reached in and scooped out most of the contents. With a wild screech, he fired a frilly black bra at Alec slingshot style, catching him full across the face, then bounded across the room, flinging lingerie helter-skelter. Shrieking with delight, he pulled a pair of pink satin panties on over his head and leapt from the back of a cordovan leather sofa to hang from the drapery rod, slamming his feet against the window.

Millard was across the room in a flash, trying to coax the chimp down. “Darwin, what a bad
boy you are! Come down and apologize to Mr. McKnight this instant!”

Steve fell back in his chair, groaning in defeat.

Alec peeled the bra off his face and stared at Kelsie. She had turned fuchsia. It was a good color on her, he thought. She cleared her throat, refusing to meet his gaze, and said, “I seem to have brought the wrong briefcase.”

“Indeed.” He was dying to know the story behind
this
briefcase, but he was sure he didn’t want anyone else around when she told it. A pretty blonde with sexy eyebrows who carried a briefcase full of erotic undies. Intriguing lady.

Millard returned to his seat with Darwin in his arms, the panties still on the chimp’s head. “I’m sorry, Mr. McKnight. Ordinarily Darwin is very professional. I don’t know what came over him. He just lost his head, I think.”

Alec surveyed his usually immaculate office with a pained smile. The drapery rod was bent so the drapes hung at drunken angles. There were monkey prints all over his view of the city. Garter belts hung from the potted palm like tinsel on a
Christmas tree. He felt the last fiber of his temper fuse split but held himself in rigid check.

“Well,” he said, handing the bra back to Kelsie, “the sight of lacy underwear can do that to anyone.”

“Darwin,” Millard said to the chimp, who was holding up a see-through ivory lace teddy. “Apologize to Mr. McKnight. Say, ‘I’m very sorry, Mr. McKnight!’” he said in his childish voice. “Say, ‘I’ve been a very bad boy.’ Go tell him. Go apologize and give him an ‘I’m sorry’ kiss.”

Alec leaned back in his chair, on guard. “That’s really not necessary, Mr. Krispin.”

Millard ignored him, motioning Darwin to do as he was told. The chimpanzee grinned at him, draping the teddy over his owner’s head, then scrambled onto Alec’s desk, snatched up Alec’s coffee mug, and, before Alec could bolt, tossed cold coffee in his face.

Steve wailed and squeezed his eyes shut, visions of the unemployment office dancing in his head.

“Oh, Darwin!” Millard scolded, grabbing the chimp. “No ice cream for you tonight!”

Alec snagged the teddy off Millard’s head and
dried his face with it. Pain was pounding in his temples, and, pretty blonde or no pretty blonde, his temper was about to erupt like Mount St. Helens. First Vena the Vampire, now a madman and his maniac monkey. It was just too much.

“Mr. Krispin,” he said threateningly, “will you please keep that animal under control?”

“Of course,” Millard replied, trying to wrap his arms around Darwin as he sat back in his chair. The chimp wriggled around until he was sitting on Millard’s shoulders and began playing his head like a bongo drum. “I think perhaps he’s been eating too much refined sugar. What do you think?”

Alec stood, bracing his hands on his desk and leaning across it. He stared at Millard and said in a low, tight voice, “I think you’ve got a screw loose.”

Millard gasped.

Kelsie snapped the lid shut on her briefcase of underwear and stood up, driven by a need to leave before she burst into tears and started reciting Chapter Eleven—the bankruptcy code. She had to get Millard and Darwin out of Alec McKnight’s
office before the chimp did any more damage. The last thing she needed was to get embroiled in a lawsuit. As it was, Millard was going to have to pay the cleaning bill on an expensive wool suit and replace a drapery rod.

“Perhaps it would be better if we discussed this at another time,” she said, trying to cling to some tiny shred of hope, “without Darwin being present.”

“But Kelsie—” Millard whined, cutting himself off at a murderous look from his agent.

Alec handed her the lace teddy. “I think not, Miss Connors. I believe I can safely say Van Bryant’s would not be interested in a neurotic monkey with an underwear fetish.”

“How dare you!” Millard exclaimed.

Kelsie turned and gave him a shove toward the door. “Put a cork in it, Millard.”

“M
OM, CAN
I have a ’guana?” Jeffrey asked, trailing after Kelsie as she tried to get her things together for the lingerie party.

“A what?” she asked, shooing Cheevers, the striped cat, out of her tote bag. She had just enough time to get to the hostess’s house in the neighboring suburb of Hopkins and get set up.

“You know, a ’guana. They’re long and green and stick their tongues out.”

Kelsie stopped and thought for a moment. “An
ig
uana!” she exclaimed, dismayed.

“Wow! Great! Thanks, Mom!”

She snagged him by the shoulder of his football jersey before he could make a getaway. “Whoa there! An iguana is a lizard. A lizard is a reptile. You know the rule: No reptiles.”

Her son looked as if she’d just told him he could never eat ice cream again. “But, Mom! Brent has one, and it’s so awesome!”

Kelsie gave him a look that said don’t give me any nonsense while she dug in her purse for her keys. “It’s a snake with legs. No, you may not have one.”

She bent and kissed his cheek. “I’ll be home around eleven. Please behave yourself and don’t fight with your sister.”

She almost made it to the door before the phone rang.

Jeffrey grabbed up the receiver from the phone on the entry table. “Connors residence, Jeffrey Connors speaking. Shoot man, it’s your quarter.” He looked up at his mother’s exasperated face as he listened to the caller. “Miss
Who?
Who wants to know?”

Kelsie rolled her eyes. Jeffrey was his father’s
son when it came to etiquette. She clamped a hand over the mouth of the receiver as he handed it to her. “Who is it?”

He made a face as he wandered toward the couch. “Some night guy.”

Alec waited on the other end of the line, a little bewildered. He certainly hadn’t been expecting a little boy to answer
Miss
Kelsie Connors’s phone. Another bit of intrigue to add to the puzzle of who the lady with the sexy eyebrows was. He’d spent most of his afternoon thinking about her. There was a chemistry between them that deserved exploration. She’d distracted him from thoughts of Vicious Vena, distracted him from work. And she’d seemed interested in him. At least she had until that chimp had made a monkey out of him and he’d totally blown his cool.

After that little scene she probably thought he was a jerk. She probably thought he hated animals. A rude jerk who hated animals. A dog kicker.

He hung his head.

“Kelsie Connors.”

“Kelsie,” he said in his satin voice, instantly
composed and confident, “this is Alec McKnight. Did I catch you at a bad time?”

Her heart pounding, Kelsie glanced at her watch. She was five minutes late. “No, not at all.” Not if it meant getting another shot at the Van Bryant campaign.

“I just wanted to apologize for this morning. I lost my temper. It was very unprofessional of me.”

Kelsie smiled a crooked little smile. “A chimpanzee threw coffee in your face. I think you have every right to be angry. By the way, send the cleaning bill to me, and I’ll have Millard take care of it.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“I’m the one who should apologize—for Darwin’s behavior. He never acts up. I really don’t know what came over him.”

“Probably spending too much time with his owner,” Alec muttered to himself, compulsively straightening the items on the coffee table in front of him.

“What’s that?” Kelsie asked, leaning back
against the wall, noting absently that her living room resembled an abandoned war zone.

“Ah—probably eating too much sugar. Listen, Kelsie,” he began, tugging on his earlobe, a habit he’d had ever since he’d been persuaded to give up thumb-sucking when he was four. “I was wondering if we could maybe get together—”

“Sure!” He was going to give them a second chance! Kelsie looked heavenward and mouthed a heartfelt thank-you. “I’ll be certain to bring the right briefcase this time. I know you’ll be impressed with the work Darwin’s done—”

Alec winced. “I didn’t mean about the campaign. I meant you and me on a date.”

Kelsie’s heart shifted into overdrive. Her knees suddenly felt like marshmallows. “A date?” she asked, as if the word were only vaguely familiar to her.

“You bet.” He smiled his slow, devastating smile, even though she couldn’t see it.

Kelsie shivered from head to toe, then all her nerve endings went numb. If she hadn’t been on such a tight schedule, she might have gotten sick. A date. A date with Alec McKnight with the
million-dollar grin, holder of the fate of her business.

Just the word
date
sent Kelsie into a tailspin. She hadn’t been on ten dates in the past three years. She’d dated only one man before that—her ex-husband. Mere mention of dating turned competent, capable Kelsie into a shy, insecure teenager. Since her divorce, she’d become a master at avoiding dating. It hadn’t been difficult because she hadn’t met anyone she was
that
attracted to. Now a man she
was
that attracted to was asking, and she was paralyzed with panic.

“Kelsie?” Alec asked. Had she hung up on him? Dead silence wasn’t the usual response he got when he asked a lady out. Using his most persuasive tone of voice, he said, “Come on, Kelsie. Let me make this morning up to you. Go out with me.”

Shivers coursed over her as if he’d caressed her. It took no imagination at all to conjure up the image of his direct, penetrating stare. She had to look down at the photograph of her parents that sat on the table to break the imaginary eye contact. “Um—I don’t think so.”

“I’m really sorry about this morning. We got off on the wrong foot. Give me another chance, Kelsie,” he said, smiling to himself. He was too accomplished a bachelor not to know the effect his voice could have on a woman.

“A—gee—a—Alec,” she stammered. In spite of her acute fear of dating, he was actually seducing her with his voice. Before she could succumb to the temptation, she took a deep, sustaining breath and launched into a hundred-mile-per-hour delivery of her usual rejection speech. “I’d like to but I’m afraid I don’t have a lot of time for that kind of thing because between work and my kids and all I’m just really tied up and I’m already late for a lingerie party so I’d better go thanks for calling bye.”

Alec stared at the phone in wide-eyed amazement. He reached down and moved it a quarter of an inch to the right on the immaculately polished antique cherry table that sat beside his smoke-blue sofa.

She’d hung up on him. She’d turned him down flat and hung up on him. Unprecedented. Still, she hadn’t sounded disinterested. Nor had she said
anything about seeing someone else. Talk about mixed signals!

Lingerie party, huh? Now, that sounded like something worth going to. With one finger he lifted the black satin-and-lace waist cincher he’d found behind the couch in his office after Kelsie and company had left, an idea taking shape.

   “Bring on the beefcake!” Paula Budke screamed, dancing around her maid of honor’s living room in a purple peignoir. Shrieks from half a dozen other partygoers egged her on as the party built to a fever pitch in anticipation of the entertainment that was to arrive shortly.

Kelsie forced a smile. She sat on the sidelines nursing a wine cooler and a vise-grip headache. Ordinarily she enjoyed these wedding showers. The women were usually in the mood for having fun and spending money. But the day had taken its toll on her fun-loving abilities. On top of everything else, she’d been fifteen minutes late to the party. The bride-to-be had been half in the bag by then.