Читать книгу Love By Proxy - Diana Palmer - Страница 7

One

Amelia Glenn tugged her beige trench coat closer around her body and tried not to giggle as she got off the elevator on the fourteenth floor of the Chicago office building. If only her fellow office workers at the agricultural equipment company could see her like this! The way that deathly dull job had been going lately, this was more a holiday than a favor for a friend.

She heard her bangles bunch at her wrists with a metallic ring and had to stand very still until they stopped, aware of curious stares from the two businessmen who’d come up with her on the elevator. Wouldn’t they pass out if they knew what was under her coat!

She walked down the hall looking for office suite 1411, where she was due to deliver a special message. Ordinarily, Kerrie did this particular one, but she was out sick and Amanda had been recruited by her friend Marla Sayers to fill in. Marla’s boyfriend was going to play a joke on his associate. It was only one message, after all, and Amelia did have the body for it, or so she was assured.

She was lean and tanned from head to toe, with a figure that could have modeled bikinis year-round. Her long, dark hair swung thickly as she walked, and her pale, dancing eyes were framed by black lashes, in a face whose features were as perfect as a cameo. She could have passed for a teenager.

There was, oddly, no one at the receptionist’s desk when she walked in. Perhaps she was at lunch. Amelia laughed and started toward the office door. She gathered her nerve, because she’d never done this particular stunt before, pinned a smile to her full lips and breezed in.

Apparently there was a small conference going on. A big, very cold-looking man in a patterned shirt and no jacket was leaning over a graph of some kind on a huge oak desk. Around it were two shorter, paler men, hanging on every word. Amelia hadn’t expected Wentworth Carson to be so big. He was as formidable as Marla’s boyfriend had described him. All business, ice cold, nothing in him to attract a woman. Yes, she could have recognized him in a crowd. He wasn’t handsome, not one bit. He had a big nose and bushy eyebrows and a pugnacious chin, and he looked more like a wrestler than an executive. He fit her nebulous image of a construction magnate all the way down to his big feet.

“Yes?” the big man asked coldly, looking up with eyes that were every bit as dark as the straight black hair that fell forward onto a broad forehead.

Amelia smiled wickedly. “Message for you, sir,” she said. And she let the coat drop.

The two men grouped around the desk stared, gaping, with appreciative smiles and big eyes. The bigger man stood erect and looked angry.

Amelia had a passable voice—no threat to the Met, of course, put passable. She began to gyrate in her outlandish belly dancer’s costume to the tune of the birthday song, inching slowly closer to the big, dark man.

He didn’t look very receptive. In fact, he looked as if he’d like to pitch her out the window. That was even better. She laughed huskily as she went closer, her hips twitching, her skirts flying, her arms uplifted with the small cymbals on her fingers to show the high, soft curve of her breasts in their metallic casings.

“Happy birthday, honey,” she added at the end, and just for pure spite, she went on tiptoe to kiss him full on his hard, chiseled mouth with as much enthusiasm as she could muster.

He kept his eyes open. His big body was rigid and he didn’t move, not an eyelash, not a finger, not a breath. His mouth was hard and slightly cool, and totally unresponsive. He allowed the blatant caress for an instant, and then his huge, warm hands caught her bare waist and set her roughly on her feet. They released her immediately, as if he didn’t like the feel of her taut, warm skin.

“What the hell kind of joke is this?” he asked coldly.

“It’s a birthday greeting,” she said, trying not to show how she really felt. Most people reacted in the spirit of fun that the messages intended, but it was a fact that this man wasn’t going to appreciate the offbeat humor of his partner. She almost felt sorry for him. But she had to tell. It was part of the job.

“From whom?” he persisted, oblivious to the amused looks of his co-workers.

“Your partner, Andrew Dedham,” she said.

“Then the joke is on him,” he said coldly. “Because today is not my birthday.”

She glared at him. “Then why didn’t you say so at the beginning?” she challenged. “You surely didn’t think I came in off the streets selling magazine subscriptions!”

His heavy brows lifted. “I wouldn’t buy that kind of magazine,” he said curtly.

Her eyes narrowed icily. “Why not, you look as if you could use some tutoring,” she returned. “Frozen clean through, are we?” she added with a cold smile.

He seemed to grow three inches. “Whatever I am is none of your business. And if you aren’t out that door in three minutes flat, I’ll have you arrested for soliciting.”

“I am not a prostitute,” she told him, sliding into her coat. “But if I were, honey, you wouldn’t be rich enough!”

“I wouldn’t be desperate enough,” he corrected. “Out.”

Just like that, as if she were a dog! She stared holes in him, but he only folded his arms over his formidable chest and glared back. Her eyes fell. She’d never encountered anybody like this giant dead fish, and she never wanted to again. From now on, Marla could do her own messages!

“When you do have your birthday, Mr. North Pole,” Amelia said at the door, “I hope your birthday cake explodes in your face!”

“Just make sure you don’t jump out of it,” he returned coldly.

“I couldn’t,” she replied with a sweet smile. “The heat from all the candles would burn me alive!”

And she closed the door with a hard slam. Her hands trembled as she refastened the coat.

The receptionist came back in with a tray of Styrofoam cups obviously filled with coffee. She smiled in a friendly way. “Are you waiting to see Mr. Carson?” she asked. “Sorry I wasn’t here, I just sneaked out to get them some coffee.”

She remembered belatedly the name of this building. “The…Carson Building…wouldn’t be…?” Amelia faltered.

“Yes, it would. Named for the late Angus. Did you want to see Mr. Carson?”

“I already have,” Amanda said with a rueful laugh. “His poor wife.”

The receptionist blinked. “Wife?”

Amelia was already at the other door, but she turned. “Isn’t he married?”

“Not him,” came the laughing reply. “There isn’t a woman anywhere brave enough.”

“I understand exactly what you mean. So long.”