Читать книгу Tycoon Takes Revenge - Anna DePalo - Страница 9

Kayla put her hands on Noah’s chest and pushed, but he held firm.

For the next few seconds, several thoughts tumbled through her mind. Who was that guy with the camera? Were any of her co-workers around? She’d be mortified! What the heck was wrong with Noah? However, those thoughts were quickly drowned out by one overwhelming sensation: the feel of Noah’s lips on hers.

He kissed expertly: his lips soft but sure and his focus concentrated on making her feel. His big, solid body pressed against her. He smelled of soap and shaving cream and just plain guy, and tasted of mint and warmth and subtle sweetness. He overloaded all her senses at once, and she was intoxicated.

It was like being kissed by the captain of the football team in front of the entire school—except she was a twenty-seven-year-old woman with a job and rent payments who happened to be standing in front of her office building at exactly the time that her boss or innumerable other people might be happening by.

That last thought brought her back to reality with a thunk!

She pulled her mouth from Noah’s and shoved him away.

Noah loosened his hold on her—the expression on his face a mixture of pleasant surprise and—help—male curiosity.

“What are you doing?” she demanded, then glanced around. The guy with the camera was still there, snapping away. “And, you! Who are you?”

When he lowered his camera, she recognized him as a photographer for the Boston World.

Suddenly she felt ill.

The photographer, who frequently worked with Sybil LaBreck, smiled and waved at her. “Hey, there, Kayla. You know, if I hadn’t just seen it with my own eyes, I’d never have believed the rumor about you and Noah.” He shook his head bemusedly.

She didn’t have a chance to respond because just then she noticed that, striding down the sidewalk toward them, on his way to the office, was Ed O’Neill, managing editor of the Sentinel.

Her boss.

She whirled back to Noah.

One look at his amused face, however, and she realized she hadn’t just been sunk, she’d been torpedoed—or, more precisely, set up.

The irony wasn’t lost on her either: she’d just been photographed apparently kissing him in the same way he’d been snapped apparently kissing Fluffy.

She jabbed a finger into his chest. “You! This was all part of the plan, wasn’t it?”

Noah caught her finger. “Sweetie—” he said, and she knew he was playing to the audience “—is it really so bad to announce our love to the world?”

She yanked her hand away from his.

“Hello, Kayla.”

The two of them turned, and she came face-to-face with Ed, whose expression said he was wondering what the hell was going on.

“Er—hello, Ed.” She smiled brightly.

Noah held out his hand. “Hi, Ed.”

Noah knew her boss?

Ed took it and said gruffly, “Noah. What brings you here first thing in the morning?”

Noah looked amused. “Well—”

“We were just saying goodbye,” Kayla interrupted, then took a step toward the Sentinel’s entrance. “I’ll take the elevator up with you, Ed.”

Ed looked from one to the other of them, then glanced at the photographer at the curb. “Anyone want to explain to me what’s going on?”

She was going to die, right there in front of the Sentinel’s headquarters. She could already see the headline: Ms. Rumor-Has-It Slain by Innuendo.

Noah smiled. “Sorry, Ed. Gotta run.” His eyes met hers. “I’m sure Kayla will explain everything. Won’t you, honey?”

She gritted her teeth while Ed raised his eyebrows at the endearment. “Of course,” she said. “Say hello to Huffy, Fluffy and Buffy for me, won’t you?”

His eyes laughed at her. “Sure.”

To Ed, she said in a low voice, “There’s a Boston World photographer standing at the curb. I’ll explain, but once we’re inside.”

At Ed’s nod, she turned and stalked toward the revolving doors. Later, she promised herself, she’d take some time to throw darts at Noah Whittaker’s picture or burn him in effigy.

The only silver lining to this morning’s catastrophe was that, since he’d now exacted his revenge, with any luck she’d never have anything to do with him again.

Unfortunately, luck happened to be vacationing in Tahiti the next day.

“Ed, you can’t be serious!”

Why were they discussing having her drive over to Whittaker Enterprises to cover a press conference? A press conference at which Noah Whittaker would be presiding!

Hadn’t she explained everything to Ed yesterday? Hadn’t she explained that she and Noah really loathed each other? Did she not detail how the “affair” had just been a rumor generated by Noah as payback for the stories she’d printed about his bad behavior?

The fact that panic roiled through her at the thought of facing Noah Whittaker again had nothing to do with yesterday’s kiss and everything to do with the fact that she couldn’t stand the man. He was altogether too high-and-mighty for her taste.

She regarded Ed levelly. He was her boss but also her mentor—surely he could see that sending her to cover this press conference wasn’t the best allocation of personnel.

Ed scratched his balding pate. It was the second time he’d done so since showing up at her cubicle. “Look, I thought you were gunning for a position covering hard news.”

“I was! I am!” she exclaimed in dismay. She’d gotten into journalism so she could be a business reporter, not so she could write about the latest fashions at debutante balls.

“Well, here’s your chance to prove yourself,” Ed said.

“Rob was supposed to cover this press conference at eleven o’clock, but he’s off on a breaking story and everyone else has a full plate.”

“I know, but Noah Whittaker hates me. He’ll never field a question from me.” Her opportunity to cover hard news wasn’t supposed to arrive like this.

“So?” Ed countered. “When you get there make nice with Noah, smooth over any ruffled feathers, and everything will be fine.”

Kayla wished she could be as confident as Ed that she could make nice. It was more likely she’d wind up conking Noah on the head with her purse: Sybil LaBreck’s column that morning featured a picture of her and Noah kissing in front of the Sentinel’s offices.

“If you do nothing else, just make sure you pick up a copy of the press release that they give out,” Ed said, seeming to take some pity on her. “That’ll give you enough to write a where, what, how, and when article about whatever it is that Whittaker is announcing today.”

She felt her shoulders slump. “Right.”

“Jones,” Ed said gruffly, “I’ve been trying to look out for you since the day you got here. You’ve got enough ambition to fill a football stadium. Now go and put it to good use.”

She should have been grateful for Ed’s little pep talk. Instead, all she could do was manage some weak waves of the cheerleading pom-poms. She smiled wanly. “Thanks, Ed.”

“And,” Ed continued, “if you’re interested in getting a position on the business beat, Noah Whittaker is as good a person as any to start with.”

“What do you mean?”

Ed shrugged. “I mean there have been rumors circulating for a while about some suspicious offshore company in the Cayman Islands linked to Noah Whittaker. It could be nothing, but you never know. If there’s a story there, it would be big because Whittaker has a pristine business reputation.” He added significantly, “A story like that could practically guarantee you the job you want.”

Kayla didn’t have to ask what kind of story Ed meant. She knew that some offshore companies were just tax havens for the wealthy. Others, however, provided excellent cover for money laundering and other shady dealings simply because some localities required very little information to be made public about the companies created there.

Her mind skittered across the idea of Noah connected to something less than completely legal. What could his motivation be? He had all the money he needed. Yet, wasn’t her own biological father proof that greed knew no bounds?

Aloud, she said, “Thanks for the tip.”

Ed nodded curtly. “I’m willing to give you a chance.” Then he nodded at the clock on the wall. “You better get going.”

“Right!” she said with as much enthusiasm as she could muster.

As Ed walked away, she picked up her handbag and grabbed her jacket. Well, what choice did she have? The things she had to do to pay the bills!

Unlike the women Noah dated, and, for that matter, her classmates at the fancy prep school she’d attended, she didn’t have a trust fund to fall back on or family connections to milk to get ahead.

Instead, she’d gotten her foot in the door of the journalism world by getting an entry-level job straight out of college with the Sentinel. It hadn’t mattered too much that the position was with the “Styles” section of the paper; it had been one of the few job offers she’d gotten and the one that paid the best of a rather pathetic lot.

Initially, she’d done a lot of research and fact-checking, with an occasional byline as time went on. She’d written about everything from the latest fashions to museum openings—when she hadn’t been acting as a gofer for Leslie, who’d been the Sentinel’s resident Ms. Rumor-Has-It.

But then Leslie had run off with her paramour—a fiftyish, thrice-divorced millionaire who’d parted with wife number three to elope with Leslie to Paris—and Kayla had been left holding the bag, albeit a snazzy Versace number in black satin.

Kayla had been summoned to the managing editor’s office, which smelled of the Macanudo cigars that Ed O’Neill liked to sneak behind closed doors.

“Jones,” Ed had said, “you’re up at bat. We need someone fast, and you’re perfect—a classy Grace Kelly type with the right prep-school credentials. You’ll fit right in covering your old school pals for the gossip pages.”

And she had. She’d jumped at the chance to replace Leslie, not the least because Ed had dangled a significant salary raise as inducement. For her that had been enough.

So what if becoming Ms. Rumor-Has-It hadn’t been part of her career aspirations? She’d gotten her own column before she’d turned twenty-five and she’d stopped worrying about the rent. There’d be time enough, she’d reasoned, for her to segue to the business-news desk.

But that had been three years ago. She’d done her job, and well. Too well, in some respects. No one was eager to see her move away from the society page.

But, despite the seeming glamour of her job, she’d begun to feel restless. There were only so many canapés that a girl could eat before she felt like regurgitating on Buffy the Man Slayer’s Manolo Blahnik heels.

That’s why she’d recently started to lobby for an opportunity to cover some real news. Because Ed was right about one thing: she was ambitious and refused to be typecast for the rest of her career as perfect for covering fluff. She was determined to go places.

Unfortunately, today the place that she was heading was Noah Whittaker’s front door.

“Well, it’s interesting to see how the tide has turned.”

Across the boardroom table, Noah gave Allison a disgruntled look. He’d just finished explaining how his recent bad press was baseless. “I know you find this hopelessly amusing, but try to contain your glee.”

Allison laughed. “Oh, come on, big brother, don’t tell me you don’t see the hilarity in it all! Women used to chase you the way they’d run to a shoe sale. These days, though, you’re more like last year’s shoes—still wearable, but you’re wondering why you ever bought them.”

Quentin and Matt chuckled.

Noah sighed in exasperation.

It wasn’t often these days that Noah’s whole family was together, but early morning meetings of Whittaker Enterprises’ board of directors afforded them the opportunity from time to time, despite their busy lives.

He looked around the room. They were an impressive bunch, and, though he and his siblings could needle each other mercilessly, they had an unshakable bond.

At the head of the table sat his father, James, who, in his retirement, still chaired the board of directors. His mother, Ava—who’d passed along her coloring of dark brown hair and vivid blue eyes to his brother Matt and his sister Allison—was a respected family court judge. Matt, who was older than Noah by two years, was also a vice president at Whittaker, though he’d increasingly been developing his own business interests. Allison had followed their mother’s footsteps into the legal profession and become an assistant district attorney in Boston. Quentin, the oldest sibling, was CEO of Whittaker Enterprises.

Missing were Quentin’s wife, Liz, who was at home with their baby, Nicholas, and Allison’s husband of one month, Connor Rafferty, who ran his own security business.

Noah supposed, given his siblings’ penchant for ribbing each other, he shouldn’t have been surprised that, once the board meeting had ended, and because they had time to kill before the press conference at eleven, the topic of conversation would turn to the recent headlines about him in the newspapers.

Thanks to Kayla, in the span of two weeks, he’d been branded a philanderer for fooling around with Fluffy, been reported to have had a public scuffle with Huffy during which she’d slapped him and he’d been seen restraining her and, to top it off, been witnessed having an argument with Ms. Rumor-Has-It herself.

He wondered whether Kayla had seen Sybil LaBreck’s column that morning and figured she must have. Sybil’s headline screamed: Kayla and Noah Kiss and Make Up!

Fortunately, Huffy—er, Eve, he corrected himself, annoyed that now he was unintentionally adopting Kayla’s ridiculous names—was in Europe on a modeling shoot and thus probably unaware of the headlines linking her most recent ex to a secret affair with Ms. Rumor-Has-It. Otherwise, he might have had another irate female to contend with.

In any case, he took grim satisfaction in knowing Sybil’s column that day had probably riled Kayla. After all, he had to suffer through grief from his family.

“Well,” Allison continued, “I, for one, would love to congratulate Kayla Jones.” She looked at Quentin and Matt for affirmation. “Unlike those vapid, vampish vixens you sometimes date, she’s smart enough not to be bowled over by your charm, Noah.”

Noah mouthed vapid, vampish vixens incredulously while his brothers stifled their mirth. Then he frowned. “Great. I’ll let Connor know that, if you ever get tired of the D.A.’s office, you can have a second career as a gossip columnist.” He added, “Does family loyalty mean nothing to you?”

“Not since you tried to get me married off to Connor,” Allison returned sweetly. “How did you put it to him?” She pretended to try to remember for a second, then snapped her fingers. “Oh, right. I believe your words were ‘Why don’t you help take her off our hands?’”

Noah grumbled. “Maybe I shouldn’t have put it like that, but you and Connor belonged together. This situation’s different.”

Matt’s lips twitched. “Ms. Rumor-Has-It does seem to have your number, unlike—uh, how did she put it?— Huffy, Fluffy and Buffy. And, on top of it all, your little columnist is undeniably hot.”

Noah quelled the sudden, inexplicable urge to slug the amused look off of his brother’s face. So, Kayla was hot; she was also a menace, and she was not “his” little columnist. “Yeah, and she’s also a consummate teller of tall tales in that fiction column of hers.”

At the head of the table, his father cleared his throat and gave him a level look. “The bottom line is there’s a problem here that you need to fix. Even if there’s not a modicum of truth in the recent headlines, they’re bad for public relations—both yours and Whittaker Enterprises’.”

Quentin nodded. “Dad’s right, as much as I’d like to think otherwise. Some people will believe the press, and even those who don’t will wonder if you’re playing and partying harder than you’re working.”

Noah watched his mother cast him a sympathetic look that nonetheless managed to carry a hint of reproach. “I know I raised you to be respectful toward women, Noah, so I have no doubt that the recent press about you is just an aberration. Nevertheless, darling, I have to agree with your father and brother. You must fix this. No more headlines, and you should try to do something to repair your public image.”

Noah knew his family was right. His philosophy of working hard and playing harder had long worked for him, but then Ms. Rumor-Has-It had come along.

He had to deal with her and the trouble she’d stirred up in his life.

What was she doing here?

Noah stared in disbelief at the figure slinking into a seat at the back of the roomful of assembled reporters, cameramen and photographers awaiting the beginning of the press conference.

As if she could go unnoticed.

Even if she hadn’t been a head-turner with her blond hair falling like a curtain past her shoulders and a figure that was a siren call to every straight guy in the room, she had on a ridiculous outfit consisting of a pale pink sweater made of some clingy material that hugged her breasts, a pencil-thin pinstriped skirt showing off legs that went on and on, and some come-hither heels.

Watching as she got a once-over from the guy next to her while, oblivious to any attention, she pulled out a notepad, Noah smiled grimly: I rest my case.

Much to his annoyance, the memory of their kiss lingered with him. Her lips had been soft, silky and full beneath his, and their effect had gone through him like a shot of brandy. But so what if the woman had proved she could kiss with real feeling?

He frowned. The last thing he needed to be thinking about right now was their kiss. The press conference would start any minute. He’d resolved this morning to deal with her, but he hadn’t expected to be confronted with an opportunity here, now, surrounded by half the press of Greater Boston. Hell.

Anyway, the real question was, what was she doing here? Last time he’d checked, gossip columnists didn’t cover breaking business news.

As the clock on the back wall hit eleven, he strode to the podium at the front of the room. He was going to announce the acquisition by Whittaker Enterprises of Avanti Technologies, a small company located along Route 128, Boston’s high-tech corridor, and because the acquisition of Avanti impacted Whittaker’s computer business—his area of expertise—he’d be doing the initial presentation. Afterward, he and Quentin, as well as the president of Avanti, would field questions.

When Noah got to the microphone, he made a couple of jokes to break the ice, then consulted his notes: “Pleased to announce…welcome the opportunity to work with…corporate synergies involved…”

Throughout his speech, he noticed Kayla kept her gaze fixed somewhere over his left shoulder. Uncomfortable, eh? He wondered again what had brought her here and knew that, as soon as the press conference was over, he was going find out.

Focusing again on the assembled reporters, he concluded by saying that additional copies of Whittaker’s press release were on a table at the back of the room.

Then, when Quentin and the president of Avanti stepped forward to flank him at the mike, he fielded questions from reporters, eventually calling on a guy in jeans.

The reporter stood up, a smirk hovering at the corners of his lips. “The stock for Whittaker Computing has been down recently. Can you comment on the markets’ reaction to the recent bad press about you?”

Noah tensed. Whittaker Computing—one of a handful of companies that made up Whittaker Enterprises—was partly publicly owned. There were any number of reasons why Whittaker Computing’s stock had taken a hit recently, as any half-wit could tell you, but the weasel in front of him was obviously trying to bait him.

Noah gave him a semblance of a smile and then, keeping his tone even, said, “The markets have better things to do than follow any spurious rumors written about me.”

Noah watched as Kayla slunk farther down in her chair at the back of the room. Feeling a tad self-conscious, was she? Well, welcome to the club, babe.

He started to call on another questioner, but the smirking jerk in jeans—probably some overeager new recruit looking to make his mark—persisted. “What about the impression you’ve given that you can’t get along with women? There’s been speculation that this could affect Whittaker’s ability to recruit female executives.”

Noah gripped the sides of the lectern. He’d like to deck the questioning little dweeb. “Maybe it’s a question of the ability of a few particular women to get along with me.”

This earned him a chuckle or two from the audience.

He held the reporter’s gaze until the guy shifted. “Whittaker Enterprises is an equal opportunity employer. We value and welcome female employees. In fact, we’re proud we’ve been rated one of the best places for women to work by a leading Boston magazine. Our on-site day care and flextime schedules are models for the industry. The women at Whittaker who work with me wouldn’t tell you differently.”

Then, determined this time to cut off the smart-ass, Noah turned to look at another part of the room. “Next question.”

Fifteen minutes later, the press conference was over. Immediately, he spotted Kayla scurrying into the hall.

“Excuse me,” he said curtly, shoving his way past the milling press and striding out of the room.

He caught up with her halfway down the hall and captured her elbow. “We need to talk.”

She started and looked up at him guiltily.

“What?” he asked blandly. “Attempting to make your escape?”

“I’m sure we’ve said all there is to say to one another,” she said, her tone cool enough to freeze penguins in their tracks.

“On the contrary, Barbie,” he countered dryly, looking pointedly at her blond hair and pink sweater.

She pulled her elbow away from him. “I’m not going anywhere with you. I may be Barbie, but you’re no Ken, Mr. I-Change-Women-with-the-Seasons Whittaker. Barbie and Ken had a committed, monogamous relationship for over forty years.”

God, she was maddening. She’d just compared him unfavorably to a plastic doll’s main squeeze.

He wondered again why he still found her pulse-poundingly attractive. Sick. He was sick.

“As unpleasant as it is for the both of us, we need to talk and I suggest we do it in private—unless you want our public bloodletting to continue?” He took her elbow again.

She looked around. “I’ll scream.”

Aside from the two of them, no one was in the hallway yet. They were some distance from the room where the press conference had been held, and probably most of the journalists were still gathering their equipment. Still, Noah knew that Kayla could make herself heard.

“I wouldn’t advise it,” he said dryly. “Not unless you want another newspaper headline about us, and I doubt that.”

She opened her mouth.

“Think about it,” he said forcefully. “Our names conjoined in ink. Again. Forever.”