Читать книгу Ten Ways To Win Her Man - Beverly Bird - Страница 9

He entered her life at 6:22 on a Tuesday evening, and suddenly nothing was the same.

The sky outside her office window rolled with gray-black clouds at the time, uncertain if it wanted to weep, or spit late-season ice. Until it made up its mind, Danielle Dempsey Harrington chose to ignore it. She maneuvered a toy car along the miniature driveway that surrounded the elaborate model of the newest Harrington resort and she frowned.

The plans were solid, and construction would begin in twenty-six days, but now she wondered whether the grand entrance loggia should face the sea or the mountains. It was just last-minute jitters, she thought, but she fretted. The sea would be more dramatic. The mountains, dignified and majestic.

“Eeny, meeny, miney, mo,” she murmured aloud. “Front or back? Beach or mountains?” And what would her project supervisor do if she changed her mind now?

“So this is how the movers and shakers get things done.”

Danielle yelped at the unexpected voice behind her. She spun away from the model, and the little car sailed from her hand. It landed on her desk—amazingly, wheels down—and raced across the polished ebony surface. The man caught it in one hand just as it nosedived off the far edge. He looked down at it as it lay nestled in his palm.

“More lives saved,” he murmured. “It’s my calling.”

Then Danielle knew who he was.

She stared at him. She couldn’t breathe, she realized distractedly, then she dragged in air. Nothing—nothing—could have prepared her for Maxwell Padgett in the flesh, if only because that flesh was so incredible.

She’d known of him, of course, though she had never actually met him face-to-face before now. He was the boon of the newly elected Senator Stan Roberson’s recent campaign. She thought they might be related somehow, but she couldn’t remember the details. It didn’t matter. Max Padgett was a force to be reckoned with on his own. She knew. His Coalition for Wildlife, Fields and Streams had been hammering at her for months now, mostly through correspondence and political maneuvering. His effort to have half a million dollars worth of Harrington land taken by eminent domain had been his most brazen bid. He’d lost, but not before costing her a small fortune in legal fees.

For that alone she should have detested him. And she had, for months. But as he stood smiling at her now, her anger and irritation siphoned out of her and left her mind blank.

“Cat got your tongue?” he asked.

Danielle opened her mouth to respond. She snapped it shut again and looked from the car, to his face, to the car again. She needed a snappy comeback but she couldn’t dredge one up because, that quickly her gaze got stuck on his hands.

They were get-things-done hands, she thought a little dazedly. Not soft, not pampered, not manicured, but with a force and presence all their own. Suddenly she imagined them on her skin—a searing image that came out of nowhere and couldn’t have been more alien to her nature than pigtails and a pitchfork, yet flashed through her mind nonetheless. Her heart began moving with alarming, unnatural urgency.

Hands? This was happening to her because of his hands? Then again, there was still the matter of the rest of him. His impact wasn’t diminishing despite the amount of time he’d already spent in her office.

“What do you want?” She opened her mouth, and the words fell out, blunt and rattled.

“A few minutes of your time.” He closed the distance between them and placed the car back on the model driveway. He did it the way he might handle one of the birds he was so hell-bent on saving lately—the ones he’d tried to grab her land for. He had gentle, forceful hands, Danielle thought, and she shivered.

She hadn’t shivered in, well, maybe forever. She was losing her mind.

“Here’s the part where you acknowledge my request,” he suggested. “A simple yes or no will suffice.”

Danielle cleared her throat. “You can have fifteen minutes.”

“I’ll use it wisely then.” He slid those hands into his trouser pockets. “You know, I thought you’d be more glib. A wizard with words. A great verbal fencer. That’s what they say about you.”

Danielle recovered a little more. “I am, but you just walked right in.” She frowned. “You startled me, and that put me at a disadvantage.”

“Ah.” He made the word vibrate with pure masculine satisfaction. “I did that, yes.”

“It was rude.” What, she wondered, was that cologne he was wearing?

“Should I go out and come back in? Start all over again and do it right?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Danielle tried for her trademark glib charm and waved a hand. “Have a seat. My secretary’s gone for the day. That means there’s no coffee.” She wanted to mention that most people met on matters such as this during regular business hours. But to be fair, he’d requested several appointments with her and she’d declined all of them.

Danielle went to an entertainment center of gleaming black wood built into the wall next to the windows. She stooped to the lower level and opened a small snack bar there, half of it given over to a compact refrigerator. “I can offer you bottled water, a soft drink, papaya juice or scotch.” She straightened again to face him. She had herself together now.

“Good scotch?” he asked.

“Absolutely.”

“And you’re having?”

She heard Richard’s voice whispering in her mind, imparting implacable lessons as he always had. He had been gone for three years now but he could still pop into her head at times like this. Never drink while you’re doing business, my dear. Just pretend you are, in order to be sociable. You don’t want your head to get muddled. She wouldn’t mind Max Padgett’s mind going a little soft for the next fifteen minutes or so, Danielle decided. She didn’t intend for him to stay any longer than that. “Scotch,” she said.

Max Padgett nodded. “I’ll join you.”

She took two crystal glasses from an overhead shelf and began to make the drinks. Max watched her, contemplating this turn of events.

He’d expected her to show him the door, maybe call security to make sure he went on his way, not offer him a drink. Grace under fire, he thought, appreciating it. She wasn’t much like he’d anticipated at all.

He’d seen her picture in the papers a few times. None of them had done her justice. Her hair was inky black and reasonably short, curling gently at her collar. She wore it tucked behind seashell ears that wore large diamond studs. She was surprisingly petite—all the photographs he had seen of her had given the impression of more stature. She couldn’t be more than five foot two. She was slender as a reed and moved like one giving way to the wind. She wore gold-rimmed eyeglasses that kept trying to slide down her nose as she looked into the scotch tumblers. Cute.

She put a bare splash of scotch in her own glass, more than an inch and a half in his, and topped both off with water at the wet bar. Max grinned to himself. Petite or not, she wanted an edge here, and she was enough the corporate warrior to do what she had to do to get it.

When she made a move toward her desk, he settled into the deep leather chair in front of it. He accepted the glass she passed to him and watched her relax into her own chair. She leaned back coolly, one very elegant leg coming up to cross over the other. She held her own glass in her lap with both hands, and her long, manicured fingers wrapped around it with a smooth ease that gave him a moment’s pause and kicked at his pulse.

Damned if the lady didn’t have an effect on him. It would make their war interesting, he thought.

“Where were we?” she asked.

“Hmm, we were about to discuss birds.”

She nodded sagely. “Let me start for you.”

“By all means.” So civilized, he thought.

“You’re here to fight for your little plovers.”

She was too polished to sneer, he realized, but on any other woman, that was what her expression would be called. “Semipalmated,” he added.

“Palm what?” Danielle jolted. She looked back at his hands again, watching one lift his drink to his mouth, suddenly mesmerized, just as she’d begun to get her footing. She drank from her own glass quickly and deeply.

“My little plovers are the semipalmated variety,” Max explained.

“Of course.”

“They’re currently reduced to a population of less than five thousand. But you knew that.”

“You’ve pointed it out to me in your many, many letters.”

“Enterprises such as yours are killing them off.”

“I’m sorry.” What was she saying? He was getting to her. She knew better than to show any edge of weakness. Danielle rallied. “I have one little enterprise. There are obscene gobs of them up and down the California coast. Why don’t you go pick on someone else?”

“Because those resorts are already in existence. That damage is done. You I can stop. You haven’t broken ground yet.”

Her chin came up like a challenge. “We’ll do it on May first.”

“Not if I can help it.”

“That’s my point. You can’t. I’ve met all zoning ordinances and every other requirement. There’s no sense in bickering about this any longer. I won.”

“Oh, I agree. The bickering stage is over. Now it’s time for some hand-to-hand combat.”

Hand-to-hand? Danielle felt the room spin away.

She looked into his eyes, a cool, gentle blue beneath dark hair. They seemed amused now. For a single, gripping moment she wondered if he somehow knew how he was affecting her, what she was thinking.

Her office was unbearably warm. Her secretary must have nudged the thermostat up again. Danielle got to her feet to check. The thermostat was set at sixty-eight.

“I’d appeal to your good will,” he continued, speaking to her over his shoulder, “but you don’t have any.”

“Of course I do.”

“No one has mentioned it.” He leaned forward to place his drink on her desk. “Let me tell you what I know about you, then we can get back to my plovers.”

“Palm plovers.”

“Semipalmated.” He grinned again and got to his feet to pace her office. Danielle went quickly to sit.

“You’re shrewd, calculating and you always land on your feet,” he began. “You married Richard Harrington when you were twenty-six, straight out of Stanford with your M.B.A. He was twenty years your elder. Your mother passed away when you were twelve. Your father—Michael Dempsey—was a labor union leader of some renown. You made the rounds with him. You were his shadow all through your youth. You learned the ropes early on.”

“Thank you.”

Max raised a brow at that, not sure if she was appreciative of his comments regarding her father or herself. Something happened briefly to her eyes. He thought a shadow moved there. “Richard—your husband—taught you everything he knew,” he continued, watching her closely.

“I only wish.”

“He died three years ago and you inherited from him obscene business assets.”

“His daughter got a portion.”

“But you bought her out.”

She engaged his eyes, then took another quick sip of scotch. “True.”

“Now you’re the uncontroverted CEO of Harrington Resorts and Enterprises, Ltd., something you’ve been groomed for all your life.”

“That’s about the size of it,” Danielle agreed. She didn’t tell him that she’d absorbed her father’s teachings almost by osmosis. She’d been by his side mostly for photo opportunities.

“They say all you care about is the bottom line,” Maxwell said.

That stung a little. “Close, but not quite.”

“And you’re alone now.”

She jumped in her chair as though he had touched her, but when she looked at him, he was studying the model of the resort. Her heart kicked. Had he said that—or had she imagined it? Again she had the panicky feeling that he could somehow see inside her head. Alone had been a cold place inside her through too many years of her life to count.

That had definitely gotten a reaction out of her, Max thought, watching her through his peripheral vision. “The Gold Beach resort is the first you’ve done entirely by yourself.”

“Insofar as from start to finish, that’s correct.” But she spoke with less than her usual force, he noticed.

“What a shame. It would have been spectacular.”

“It’s going to be a doozy.”

He laughed aloud. “What do your friends call you?”

“Why?” she asked, startled.

“Danielle? Sir? M’lady?”

“Danielle.”

“Ah.”

This time that single word slid over her skin like warm velvet. “Ah, what?” she asked suspiciously.

“Just, ah. May I call you Dani? I think it suits you more.” Danielle was the woman he’d just described, he thought. Dani would volley about words like doozy.

“No!”

Maxwell laughed again. “Then, m’lady, I will tell you this. Assuming your new resort was actually to come into being, you’d want the entrance to face the sea.”

“I would?” Danielle sat up straighter in her chair, eyeing him.

“Imagine the view during a good storm that keeps people inside.”

He had a point and she liked it.

“Unfortunately,” he continued, “this resort cannot possibly come into being because if it does, it will destroy untold unborn semipalmated plovers. The birds are indigenous to Alaska and western Canada, but they migrate twice yearly to South America and back again. And Gold Beach is one of their very favorite places to stop and nest along the way. Particularly, your section of Gold Beach.”

“They’ll be welcome, of course.” Danielle sat back in her chair again. “Our low-end rooms will start at $175 a night.”

He brought the bottle of scotch back to her desk and topped hers off without adding water. Danielle nudged it away carefully, her hands a little unsteady as he leaned across her desk toward her.

“I think that’s out of their price range,” he murmured.

She forced a shrug. He was too close. “I’m sorry. I can’t help them then.”

“Where else will they go?”

“Jonas Patterson’s place in Monterey?”

He grinned, but this time it was a fast look, gone almost before it started. It showed teeth. “The birds only visit in the spring and fall. They should return to that beach any day now. When you break ground on May first, you’re going to destroy every egg they put down. Don’t kill them off, Dani. Have a heart.”

She shot to her feet. Maybe it was because he had called her Dani. Maybe it was the fact that he’d remained close enough to her to breathe her air. Or maybe it was only because his suggestion was outrageous. “You honestly expect me to scrap a thirty-million-dollar project because of some birds?”

“Honestly,” he agreed.

“You’re crazy!”

“As a loon.”

“How did that species get into this?”

“Actually, I saved them, too, at a lake atop Junipero Sierra Peak five years ago.”

“You’re a regular Birdman of California, aren’t you?”

“I’m an environmental lobbyist.”

“And environmental issues are Stanley J. Roberson’s platform. What a coincidence.”

“Not really.”

That surprised her. He was honest. She liked it. “Maybe you should tell him to stick to the state budget.”

“I can’t save that for him and I never promised I would.” Maxwell finally left her desk and strode across the room, back to the model.

Danielle looked down into her glass. Somehow it had gotten into her hand again and now it was empty. She had probably consumed more scotch in the last half hour than she had in the previous three years combined.

And Max Padgett was looking better by the mouthful.

“This is absurd,” she muttered, not sure if she was speaking of the birds or the way his grin softened his mouth, the way he had her reacting.

“You won’t end up thinking so.”

She looked up again quickly. “Is that a threat?”

“More or less.”

“With what? I’m legal! That sight is clean, totally permitted, ready to go!”

“But it won’t go because deep in your heart you know I’m right about this.” He paused and looked at her steadily. “Take a step back, Dani. Think it over. If you proceed, you’ll have a substantial fight on your hands. This was a courtesy call. After this, things get ugly.”

“You can’t seriously think I’ll accommodate you on this. It makes absolutely no fiscal sense, and I have board members to report to!”

“It was worth a try.”

“So was looking for life on Mars but no one seriously thought they’d find it there.”

“Call me a dreamer.”

And wouldn’t that go with those blue eyes. Danielle shook her head as something soft tried to fill it. “My answer is no.”

“So it’s on to round two then. But Dani.” He trailed off and moved to the door, opened it and looked back at her. “Don’t take anything that happens from here on in personally. Just for the record, it turns out that I like you.”

“That’s m’lady to you.” Her intelligent, calculating, CEO knees nearly buckled.

He chuckled, a sound that was rich and warm and golden, then he stepped through the door again and was gone.

Danielle’s stomach jittered. It felt as if it had suddenly filled with a hundred fluttering…well, plovers. She’d read somewhere—probably in all that literature he’d sent her—that they darted after their food when they were hungry. Her nerves were darting. She sank back down into her chair again, dazed.

What had just happened here? Pure, sizzling, instant chemical attraction, she answered herself. It scared her to death. She didn’t know quite what to do with it.

But she liked it.