Читать книгу His Executive Sweetheart - Christine Rimmer - Страница 11

C elia’s course of action seemed perfectly clear to her when she was waving goodbye on that crisp, snowy Sunday in front of Jane’s wonderful old house.

First she would tell Aaron of her feelings. And depending on how he reacted, maybe she’d consider some of Jillian’s suggestions—if she wasn’t too busy nursing a broken heart while pounding the pavement looking for another job.

It was the “if” part that ruined her resolve.

Because how could she help fearing that the “if” part was reality? She would tell him she loved him. And he would tell her, very gently, because he was a kind man at heart, that he was sure she’d be happier working for someone else.

She’d lose him and her job.

All right, she was miserable now. But she was miserable and employed. She just couldn’t see the tradeoff. If she told him, she’d still be miserable. And she’d be out of work, as well.

“Oh, that’s negative.” She’d lie in bed at night, staring up at the dark ceiling, giving herself advice. “I am so negative.” She would tell herself, “Celia Louise Tuttle, you’ve got to snap out this. You’ve got to give it up, get over him—or tell him how you feel.”

Jillian called on Tuesday. “Well? Did you do it? What did he say? How did it go?”

Celia let too long a pause elapse before answering.

Jillian figured it out. “You didn’t do it.”

“I’m trying.”

“Celia. If you’re going to do it, do it.”

“I will, I will….”

“Tomorrow morning. The minute he comes in the door. Look up from your desk and say, ‘I have to speak with you privately about a personal matter.’ Get him to set a time. Have him come to your suite.”

“Oh, God.”

“Better if it’s on your turf.”

Right, Celia thought. Easier for him to get up and walk out.

“You can do it, Celia.”

“Yes. I can. I know….”

The next morning, when he called her in to go over the calendar, she was ready. She truly was. She stood from her desk and she straightened her fawn-colored skirt—brighter colors, hah! Like wearing fire-engine red and Jolly Rancher green could make him love her. She tucked her yellow legal pad under her arm, grabbed her pencil and her miniature tape recorder and crossed to the high, wide door that led to his private office.

She paused there to smooth her hair and tug on the hem of the jacket that matched the fawn-colored skirt. I’m okay, she thought. Pulled-together. Calm. Collected. Ready to do it.

She pushed open the door and there he was, right where she expected him to be, at his big glass desk in front of the wall of windows, engrossed in something on his computer screen.

She quietly turned and made sure the door was shut. Then she marched across the room and stepped between the two black leather visitors’ chairs that faced his desk, planting herself in front of him.

It took him a moment to stop punching keys and look up. His bronze-kissed dark brows drew together. “Celia?”

That was it. All he said. It was way too much. It was, Is there a problem and do we really need to address it right now?

No. They didn’t.

She sidled to the right, dropped into one of the two chairs, indicated her legal pad and chirped brightly, “Ready when you are.”

Jane called next. On Thursday, after midnight. “Did you do it?”

“Oh, Janie.”

“You didn’t.”

“I almost did.”

“But you didn’t.”

“It’s really…hard for me.”

Jane let out a long breath. “Look. I’ve been thinking….”

Celia clutched the phone as if it were a lifeline. “Yeah?”

“Maybe you’re not up for reality right now. Maybe you’re not ready to face him with the truth.” That was sounding pretty reasonable—until Jane went on. “Maybe you’re enjoying this a little, kind of reveling in your misery.”

“Jane!” That hurt. It really did. And partly because it had the sharp sting of truth.

She was getting kind of…used to being miserable. Yesterday was two weeks since V-day. Two weeks of suffering. She’d kind of gotten into a groove with it now, hadn’t she?

“Celia Louise, you are the classic middle child, you know that you are.”

“Is this a lecture coming on?”

“You are a middle child and you know how to be…ignored. Passed over. You don’t get out and make things happen like a first child. You don’t expect all good to come to you, as the baby in the family always does. You…accept being in the middle. You can easily become stuck.”

“And I’m stuck right now, is that what you’re saying?”

“Yes. You’re stuck in the middle, sitting at the trestle table, clutching your sad little bowl of gruel, knowing when you finish it, you’ll still be very, very hungry—and yet unwilling to get up and ask the headmaster for more.”

“My bowl of gruel?”

“Come on. You remember. Dickens. Oliver Twist. In the orphanage. We read it in Mrs. Oakley’s freshman English class.”

She remembered. “Shall we go into what happened when Oliver actually got up and asked for more?”

Jane was silent for a count of two. “Okay,” she conceded. “Bad analogy.”

“No kidding.”

“But in the end, Oliver succeeded in life. Because he was someone who could get up when he had to and ask for more.”

“Hooray for Oliver.”

Jane made a small sound in her throat—one that spoke of fading patience. “I’m merely saying, if you don’t want to tell him, fine. Maybe you should quit working for him. It wouldn’t be the end of the world for you to have to get another job. And at least that would be taking action, which I sincerely think it’s time for you to do.”

There was no getting around it. Jane had it right. “I’ll tell him. I will.”

“Good. When, exactly?”

“Tomorrow…”

Tomorrow came.

Celia went to the office tower a determined woman.

And when she got there, she learned her boss had taken off for New Jersey on a site-scouting trip with Tony Jarvis. He wasn’t due back until Sunday. He’d left her an e-mail.

TO: Celia Tuttle, clerical/PA

FROM: Aaron Bravo, CEO

SUBJECT: Trip to New Jersey

Back Sunday. Take a three-day weekend. Aaron.

And that meant, unless something came up and he really needed her, she wouldn’t see him face-to-face until Monday.

Reprieved, she thought. And felt mingled relief and despair—tinged faintly with worry. As his assistant, it was part of her job to be at his side when he traveled. Why hadn’t he wanted her presence on this trip?

She told herself not to make something of nothing. Now and then, he traveled without her. This was probably just one of those times.

She considered going home for another weekend. But she didn’t think she could bear facing Jane again until she had done what she’d sworn to do. And there were plenty of projects for her to dig into. She worked all day Friday and half a day on Saturday.

Every time she returned to her rooms, she expected to see the message light blinking on her phone—a call from Jane or Jillian to find out if she’d finally done what she’d vowed to do.

But her friends didn’t call. Maybe they’d given up on her. She could hardly blame them if they had.

Sunday, she woke early, thinking, He’s due back today….

But she didn’t know what time.

And what did it matter what time? She wasn’t going to ask him for a private meeting until tomorrow, anyway.

She lasted until noon and then she called his rooms. His machine picked up. Quietly, stealthily—without leaving a message—she returned the phone to its cradle. Then she went to her computer, logged onto the company system, and used her employee code to look up his itinerary. It was unethical, really. Celia Tuttle, secretary/personal assistant didn’t need to know exactly when her boss would arrive back in town. But Celia Tuttle, woman hopelessly in love, did.

He was due in at eight that night. Which meant he wouldn’t get to his own rooms till nine or ten at the earliest.

It helped to know that. Made it marginally easier not to keep dialing his number and hanging up when his machine answered.

The day dragged by on lead feet. She read the Sunday paper, watched a movie on cable, her mind hardly registering what her eyes were seeing. In the afternoon, she called down to Touch of Gold, High Sierra’s full-service luxury spa, and booked the works—mud bath, massage and two-hour facial. Maybe it would help her relax.

It did, while she was down there. And it took up four hours she would have spent stewing. She didn’t return to her own rooms until after six.

The rest of the evening was downright unbearable. As eight and nine came and went, she wondered.

Where was he now?

Had he reached the hotel yet?

Was he already in his tower suite—or was he down in the casino somewhere, or in one of High Sierra’s luxurious bars or fine restaurants, maybe having a last drink with Tony Jarvis, or possibly courting some recently arrived high rollers?

There was no way to know.

And it didn’t even matter. Wherever he was, whatever he was doing, she had no intention of tracking him down tonight, anyway.

She put on her pajamas and she got into bed.

But sleeping fell under the heading, as if.

She reached for the phone more than once. But she never picked it up. She knew that if he answered, the sound of his voice would send her into a mindless state of pure panic. She’d hang up without identifying herself—and he would know who it was, anyway. After all, there was such a thing as caller ID.

Which she should have considered earlier, before she’d made that first call.

Jane was so right, she thought, as the night wore on and sleep never came. Here I am, at the bare trestle table, clutching my sad, half-empty bowl of gruel, afraid to stand up and ask for more….

Not sleeping and worrying all night long did nothing for her appearance the next day. She troweled on the concealer to cover the dark pouches beneath her eyes and she put on her nicest suit, which was pale blue, of a particularly fine-gauge gabardine and usually looked very nice on her.

Today, well, nothing she could have worn would have made her look anything better than tired and washed out. Her hair, which was a color somewhere between blond and auburn, seemed flat and lusterless as a brown-paper bag. Her skin looked pasty.

Really, she couldn’t help thinking that maybe today just wasn’t the day. Maybe she should get to bed early tonight, get a good night’s sleep for a change. And then, tomorrow, when she felt fresh and didn’t look like the walking dead, she could—

“No!” She glared at her own pasty, pale face in the bathroom mirror. “No more excuses. So you look like hell. You’re telling him. Today.”

She was at her desk when he entered the office suite.

“Good morning, Celia.”

Her heart felt as it if had surged straight up into her throat. She swallowed it down and attempted a smile—one that never quite happened.

He was already past her, approaching the door to his private office. “Give me twenty minutes and we’ll go over the calendar.”

By then, her heart had dropped heavily into her chest again and begun beating so hard and loud she was certain any second she’d go into cardiac arrest. She stood.

“Aaron.”

He paused with his hand on the door and turned back to her. He looked puzzled.

Really, now she thought about it, he’d been looking puzzled way too much lately. Probably because she’d been acting so strangely, he couldn’t help but notice, even oblivious as he was to her as anything but a function most of the time.

He was waiting—waiting for her to tell him whatever it was she had stopped him to say.

“I…uh…” Her voice sounded awful. Tight. Squeaky.

“Yes?”

She coughed into her hand, to loosen her throat. And then, somehow, she was saying the words she’d been vowing she’d say. “I need to talk with you. Alone. It’s a personal matter. I wonder if you would mind stopping by my rooms this evening?” Suggest a time, the part of her mind still capable of rational thought instructed frantically. “Uh. About seven?”

He didn’t answer for a count of five, at least. He just stood there, looking at her through those blue eyes that really didn’t give away much of anything. Finally, he said, rather gently, “Celia. What’s this about?”

“I’d rather…wait. To speak with you alone.”

He gestured at the outer office, which was decorated in cool grays and midnight blues and was empty except for the two of them. “No one here but you and me. It’s as good a time as any to talk. Come on into my office now and we can—”

She put up a hand. “No. Really. I’m sorry, to be so vague about this. But I’d much rather we just kept it to business here in the office. I would honestly appreciate it if you’d just come to my rooms this evening. We’ll discuss it there.”

He looked at her for a long time. It was absolutely awful. What could he be thinking? Undoubtedly that she was inconveniencing him. Just possibly that he was going to have call down to human resources and get them to find him another PA.

Finally, he said in what seemed a half-hearted attempt at humor, “Well. Am I busy?”

She managed a pained smile. “Uh. No. Not at seven. Not as of now, anyway.”

“All right then,” he said. “Your rooms. At seven.” He turned from her and went through the door to his office, closing it quietly behind him.