Prelude to a Wedding (14 page)

"Paul, I have a business to run. Running it
well is important to me. I've worked very long, and very hard to
build it up."

'And you'd hate to lose this 'in' with
Centurian." He'd accepted that from the beginning, known how she
must view the opportunity. It made sense for someone with a master
plan. Still, part of him hoped she'd deny it, to say he was more
important to her.

She met his eyes. "An account with Centurian
would mean a great deal to Top-Line."

"I already told them I highly recommend
Top-Line. So that's not an issue."

"Thank you."

He was the one who broke the look. He was
being an ass. Of course her business was important to her. He
understood that. He thought about telling her how long and hard
he'd worked building his business. But then he remembered the
things he'd told her that first night at Mama Artemis's; she
wouldn't take his protests too seriously. He didn't generally care
to have people know that satisfying his clients, and more
important, his own standards, was an issue of self-respect. But he
wondered if, this time, he'd made a mistake in passing off the
demands of his profession so blithely.

"But you are making it very difficult for me
to run my business well. This sort of turnover in staffing with one
client makes it nearly impossible to schedule so we can meet all
our clients' needs fully—"

She'd exaggerated his impact on her business.
Not only was the sight of her hands twisting in her lap a telltale
signal that she was fibbing, but Darla—who was clearly encouraging
his pursuit of Bette—had told him that to this point he'd been
merely a nuisance, not a roadblock.

His instincts, honed by twelve days of
focusing all too intently on this woman, told him it was her own
hide more than her business that felt threatened. Perhaps in more
ways than one.

"—and since that is what Top-Line has built
its reputation on, your performance this past week has been
dangerous to my business."

"That doesn't explain why you won't go out
with me."

She ignored that. "So if you will tell me
exactly what your needs are—" She paused, but when he opened his
mouth to tell her exactly what his needs were and what he was just
arrogant enough to believe her needs were, her eyes widened in
recognition of the opening she'd left and she rushed on without any
additional oxygen. Her voice came as a whispery spurt that did
something strange to the nerves down his backbone. "In a secretary.
If you will just tell me, I will make every effort to see that
Top-Line fills those requirements."

His nerves settled, and he sighed deeply, the
disappointment unfeigned. She wouldn't be budged. At least not
today. He considered her, sitting there on the couch. The dark
green dress covered her from below her knees to her neck. Yet he
only had to see the way the fabric draped across the slope of her
breast to remember the feel of her amazingly soft skin under his
fingertips, and then to relive the clenching, cramping pleasure in
his gut at the sensation of her beaded nipple in his mouth.

Swallowing a curse, he stifled the urge to
put his feet back up on the edge of the desk.

"All right, if you won't change your mind
today, there's always tomorrow. And the day after that."

"My, my, Paul Monroe thinking as far ahead as
tomorrow?"

"If I have to to get through to you," he shot
back.

Twisting to face him squarely, she leaned
forward and met his look, apparently reading the determination in
it.

"Why don't you just give up this silliness,
Paul?"

"Because I want to go out with you."

"Why?" The question swirled with exasperation
and doubt and perhaps a bit of wonder.

"Because . . ." Did he know? He'd never
indulged in much self-analysis and he wasn't comfortable doing it
now. So what if he acted a little out of character. So what if his
family and friends had taken to allowing oddly knowing silences to
creep into recent telephone conversations. So what if he didn't
know why it was so all-fired important that this particular woman
be convinced to change "no" to "yes."

He looked at her. Her dress glowed like green
jade against her ivory skin. Her hair shone glossier than the
smooth black leather of the couch. He could answer her question by
doing what he wanted most to do at the moment. He wanted to go to
her, to let his lips reacquaint her with what they could do to each
other, to touch her in ways that earned those small, secret sounds
of hers, to stretch her out on that couch, to press her body into
the soft leather with the weight of his own and to feel her
desire.

He said the words that came easiest. "Because
I want you."

For a moment, both too long and too short to
measure by a clock, she remained still. Then she slowly
straightened and stood, her composure complete.

"Goodbye, Paul. I'll send you a new secretary
tomorrow morning."

"Bette—"

She gave him a palm-out gesture with one hand
that stopped him. Just as well. He didn't have a clue what he would
have said, what he could have said.

"Paul, I enjoyed our dinners. I enjoyed
meeting your parents. I've enjoyed our conversation and—" She
flashed him a look, and he wondered if she was thinking of the
kisses and caresses. If so, the thought didn't crack her calm. "But
we're very different. We have different attitudes, approaches . .
." She let the words wind down, then turned and put on her coat,
meticulously adjusting the collar before looking at him again.

A smile tried to turn up the corners of her
mouth.

"There's no future in this, Paul. So let's
just leave it at that, okay? For both our sakes. We're best being
business associates. That's all. Cordial business associates."

She closed the door behind her, then he heard
the click of the outer door. She was gone.

Anger filled the emptiness.

Who the hell had said anything about a
future, anyway? All he wanted was the present. To have fun while
there was fun to be had, to explore this strangely powerful
attraction. That was all. No big deal.

He jammed his feet back against the edge of
the desk, but there was no relief for this new ache he felt. The
ache of an opportunity lost.

* * * *

Six days. One hundred forty-four hours. Eight
thousand six-hundred and forty minutes.

Bette punched numbers into the calculator on
her desk as if jabbing the keys would cure what ailed her, then
wiped out the total before it could come up on the screen. She
didn't want to know how many seconds. That would only make it seem
longer—if that were possible. It was bad enough expressed as six
days. And six nights.

The days she could fill with all the busyness
of running Top-Line Temporaries. Even the weekend had been crammed
with duties and responsibilities, plans and projections. After the
havoc Paul Monroe had wreaked on her life, she'd needed time to
catch up.

They had sent Heather Carlini off to Paul's
office Wednesday morning, and held their breath—though Bette was
honest enough with herself to admit her feelings and Darla's were
not identical in this situation.

Heather Carlini was a knockout. Dark hair,
huge brown eyes, petite but blessed with an abundance of the right
curves, and an apparently innate sense of how best to use them to
her advantage. Bette had assigned her the job with deliberate
intentions, and almost immediate regrets. What if Paul fell for
her? Well, wasn't that the best solution? Yes. No!

Bette felt as if the rumbling in her head
might let loose any second with an explosion to rival Mount St.
Helens.

But there had been no eruptions of any kind.
Not from inside her, not from Paul Monroe. Not Wednesday, not
Thursday, not Friday. Nothing.

"All quiet on the Monroe front," Darla had
said as they closed up Friday night, leaving the words to echo in
Bette's head all weekend. And now it was nearing five o'clock
Monday and all was still peace and quiet.

At least until nighttime came.

Even with all the effort she'd put into work
over the past six days, Bette discovered she still had energy for
tossing and turning each and every one of six nights.

She'd rerun the scene in Paul's office so
many times that the mental tape should have worn out. Instead, in
some ways, it seemed to have become clearer and clearer.

Crystal clear that she'd assessed him
correctly that first night. Intelligent, warm, charming, wry, sexy,
endearingly funny and open. And truly a kid at heart.

He'd practically flinched at the word
future
. In his vocabulary any synonym for forethought was a
bad word. The man ran from plans and schedules as if they came from
the same litter as Godzilla. He looked no farther ahead than the
moment. She'd always wanted—needed—to know that this moment, added
to the next moment and the one following that, was building toward
something.

He'd made no bones about what he looked for
from her. He'd said it right out: I want you. Not that he cared for
her, not that he was interested in the potential of a long-term
relationship with her.

Not that she expected a relationship
immediately. They'd known each other such a short time, and
relationships—lasting relationships—took time to build, to mature.
It took a lot of small steps to reach a goal. But, just as she had
known there was the potential for success before she started
Top-Line Temporaries, she wanted to know that the possibility of a
long-term relationship existed with a man. That after getting to
know each other gradually, step by step, they might think about a
more permanent future.

But that wasn't how Paul Monroe operated. He
wanted her. Right now, for this moment, and let tomorrow be
hanged.

That wasn't her approach to life, so it
couldn't be her approach to—to— The word
love
leaped to
mind, but she shied away from that and substituted one less
volatile. To relationships.

Limiting their contact to a strictly business
association was the only sane thing. So why was sanity driving her
crazy?

Six days, six nights. One hundred forty-four
hours. Eight thousand six-hundred and forty minutes. And for every
one of them, she'd thought of him.

Worse even than the memories was the way her
body reacted to them. Her heartbeat skittered, her breathing turned
jagged, her skin pulsed, her insides heated. Six days without
seeing, smelling, touching or tasting Paul Monroe, and he still
filled her with sensation every one of those six nights.

And, yes, she admitted, sitting in the
rational atmosphere of her office at 4:47 of an ordinary Monday
afternoon, she had wondered if he would ever again try to make
those sensations real. Would he ever call her? Show up at her
office? Arrive at her front door?

Would she ever stop wishing he'd do one of
those things, any of those things, as long as it meant she saw his
dancing eyes, heard his amused voice? She wouldn't tempt the Fates
and her heart with anything more than seeing and hearing him. She'd
only risk enough exposure to him to break this pervasive ache of
isolation.

She shook her head once, emphatically, more
than a little disgusted. Who was she kidding? Did she really think
just seeing and hearing Paul Monroe a little would satisfy her?

Something had to give. She had to either
learn to control these longings and get on with her life or— Darla
pushed open the door, slipped inside and leaned against the closed
panel.

"What is it, Darla?" The grimace drawing her
assistant's face seemed to be the result of trying to stifle some
extreme emotion. Laughter or tears?

"I have some news for you, Bette." Darla
spoke as if trying to prepare her for a shock, to soften a
blow.

"Yes?"

"Heather Carlini is here."

"Oh?" It took a moment for that to sink in.
Six days and six nights can dull the wits. "Oh, no! Not again!"

But even as she said the words, something
inside her exulted. He hadn't fallen for Heather Carlini, long wavy
hair, huge dark eyes, petite curves and all. And he hadn't given
up. Paul Monroe was back in her life. She wanted to shout. She
wanted to sing.

"Yes, again."

She wanted to cry. The urge to grin died of
its own accord. Paul Monroe was back in her life, and she had some
questions to consider. What was Top-Line Temporaries going to do?
What was she going to do?

"But . . . but it seemed to be going so well.
We hadn't beard a peep out of Heather for six days. Six days! That
was twice as long as Norma."

Darla shook her head, and the laughter she'd
fought so hard it contorted her face escaped at last. "There's a
reason for that."

"Well?" The demand was none too patient.

"I asked her if she'd had any trouble last
week, and she said no. So I asked how it could be so terrible to
work for Paul Monroe if she'd breezed through the last three days
of last week with no problems. And Heather said— Heather said . .
." Darla gulped twice and finally seemed to get her voice back in
order, although tears leaked from the corners of her eyes and left
a shiny trail on her dark cheeks. "She said there was a simple
explanation for that. He wasn't—he wasn't there last week."

"What?"

Darla nodded hard, and expelled a sigh that
shimmered with laughter. "That's right. Out of town. In Washington,
D.C. All those days we sat here congratulating ourselves that we'd
finally licked the Paul Monroe Problem, he wasn't even there!"

Bette watched Darla feel for a chair to lower
her laughter-weakened body into, and she tried to assess what it
all meant and what she should do next.

Standing, she carefully closed the folder on
her desk. returned her pencil to its holder and the calculator to
its drawer. Moving automatically, dreamily, she felt as if her
muscles functioned with no direction from her mind. But underneath
she felt a glow of energy such as she had never before felt.