Читать книгу Tempted In Texas - HEATHER MACALLISTER, Heather Macallister - Страница 9

MAYBE IT WAS being around Chelsea and Kate and the wedding, or maybe it was the skirt—or more likely Alec and his stupid cutoffs—but Gwen decided she needed to do something active to remind her of her goals.

Or at least fine-tune them a bit. As she unpacked her suitcase, Gwen reflected on what Laurie had said about the intrinsic value of playing caffeine fairy to the office workers in the greater Houston area. In the mornings when people arrived at their jobs after fighting the rush-hour traffic and were absolutely dying for that first cup of coffee, the Kwik Koffee machines were mighty important. And didn’t those cardiologists and astronauts and scientists drink coffee, coffee that her company made sure was fresh, hot and available? Didn’t it put them in the right frame of mind to begin their days of important discoveries and saving lives? Therefore, wasn’t Gwen actually helping the world?

Okay, so that was a stretch, but she’d file it away for the next time Laurie downplayed their importance in the grand scheme of things.

But she’d also realized that climbing up the ladder at her company was really only a means to her true goal: she, Gwen Kempner, wanted to live the life of a man. Not be a man, just get the same advantages.

From where she stood—currently on a chair so she could shove her suitcase onto the top shelf of her closet—men had it pretty good and that was because they had conned women into helping them. They didn’t even have to be married—Gwen had noticed that the single men always seemed to have a girlfriend or even a spare mother to take care of them or wait for various delivery people. Men could even negotiate the after-five delivery times, whereas Gwen always got the, “Don’t you have a neighbor who’s home during the day?” question. Once, and she wasn’t proud of this, she’d taken half a personal day to wait for the cable guy for Eric.

Never again.

She needed somebody to help her, someone to take care of the little things so she didn’t have to.

She needed a wife.

Most career women did, and since they couldn’t have one, the superachievers who could afford to hired nannies, housekeepers and personal assistants. Gwen didn’t need a nanny, and she didn’t mind cleaning her apartment herself. But boy howdy, a personal assistant was sure looking good. The trick was to get the company to pay for one and they weren’t going to pay for a junior member of the regional director’s staff to have an assistant.

So Gwen would just have to become a regional director.

After sorting the clothes she was going to take to the dry cleaners tomorrow, Gwen looked again at the skirt.

No washing instructions. In fact, no label of any kind. She couldn’t exactly call Chelsea on her honeymoon and ask her how the thing was supposed to be cleaned. The skirt looked fine and Gwen decided that Chelsea had cleaned it before she’d passed it on.

Okay, then. Gwen hung it up, got out her laptop, plugged it into the phone line, flipped on the TV and proceeded to check her office e-mail. She’d missed work Friday and it would pay to get a jump on the week instead of spending Monday morning getting up to speed. That’s what people who wanted promotions did.

Assuming there were no coffee crises requiring her immediate attention, she’d spend the rest of the evening coming up with a battle plan that would lead to a promotion. After all, the sooner she got an assistant, the better.

ALEC STUDIED all the laundry detergents and picked the cheapest no-name brand he could find. Passing up fabric softeners—a luxury he hadn’t missed—he headed for the frozen food aisle to see if there were any ninety-nine cent TV dinners or frozen pot pies on sale three for a dollar.

Instead, he found himself tempted by store-brand frozen pizzas. They weren’t big, but they were three for five dollars. However, right next to them—at two for five dollars—he found a more generously sized-and-topped brand. Before he could talk himself out of it, he’d grabbed the pizza and then had the insane impulse to buy a six-pack of domestic beer. His import days were gone for now. Unfortunately, as he stood in front of the cooler, he realized that even a six-pack was out of the question, so he snagged two oversize individual bottles and made his way toward the express checkout lane.

What are you doing? It was the voice of reason, which had been remarkably silent when he’d accepted his grandfather’s gleeful challenge, but which could always be counted on to provide wet-blanket thoughts every time Alec contemplated anything that might be self-indulgent these days.

But Alec knew what he was doing. He’d already done the math and would have enough quarters left for three loads of laundry, though only enough to dry two.

So he’d dredge up fifty cents from somewhere or hang his jeans over the kitchen chairs for a couple of days. No big deal.

Besides stranding Gwen at the airport, he was conscious of having hurt her feelings. Maybe hurt was too strong a word because Gwen didn’t seem the overly sensitive sort and they didn’t have that kind of relationship. But he felt a gesture was called for because he liked Gwen. He counted her as his first woman friend. Not a former girlfriend from whom he’d parted amicably and still ran into from time to time, but a person he’d met and come to know since he’d lived in the apartment on Westheimer. In fact, he thought of her as a person first and a woman after that—if at all—which was why he’d spoken without thinking.

Somehow, they’d skipped all the messy girl-boy stuff and were just casual friends. He was pretty sure she wasn’t currently seeing anyone, though he hardly tracked her every move. He did know that she worked a lot of overtime, but then, so did he.

In fact, he worked all the time. He had a nifty, nobrainer, thirty-hour-a-week job as the clerk in a pager store that was within walking distance of his apartment. The rest of the time he spent trying to get his fledgling business off the ground.

But tonight, he would give it a rest.

Alec handed the grocery clerk the ten-dollar bill, asked for his change in quarters, then shoved them into his pocket, noting a grease smudge on his arm as he did so.

He’d changed the oil in a car. A self-satisfied smile creased his face as he walked toward Gwen’s car in the parking lot. He’d never changed oil before. Just to be on the safe side, he checked under Gwen’s car for any ominous puddles.

Nope. All right!

He’d spent way too much time and had called his brother-in-law three times, but he’d done it—unfortunately, not in time to pick up Gwen from the airport according to the plan. She’d been a real pal about letting him use her car and not making him grovel for it, either. These past few days it had been great to have a car again. He’d filled up the gas tank this morning, which had pretty much tapped him out. But he’d accomplished a lot on Friday. Meeting face-to-face with manufacturers, brochure printers, suppliers and potential customers for his portable exercise equipment was more effective than e-mail and phone. He’d made some good deals and had a couple of new leads, but no money had come his way.

Well, payday from the pager store was tomorrow. Unfortunately, due to Christmas, he’d only worked twenty hours, but on the positive side, he’d already paid January’s rent.

He pulled into Gwen’s usual parking spot, which wasn’t as close to her apartment as she was entitled. Some jerk who lived in the units across the back parked there. Alec had offered to challenge him, but Gwen wouldn’t let him and said that the walk was good for her. In his opinion, Gwen could use a stiffer backbone, but that wasn’t Alec’s business.

He was only passing through.

Alec showered, changed into his last clean T-shirt—a giveaway from some charity 5K run three years ago—grabbed the pizza and beer, and headed for Gwen’s apartment.

He’d already knocked when he replayed their last conversation in his head and suddenly realized how his cheap frozen pizza and single bottle of beer offering would look.

To stay in the running you’ve got to take her to clubs and restaurants and the bill runs up real quick…. Why didn’t he just bang on the door and shout, “You’re not worth it!”? It would be cheaper.

Maybe she wasn’t home. But Gwen opened the door right then. “Hey, how’s the car running?” She held out her hands for the keys.

If she hadn’t been wearing her Scooby-Doo fuzzy slippers, he would have dropped the keys into her palm and taken his pizza with him. But…but he remembered the first time they’d met. He’d heard the Scooby-Doo theme music coming from inside her apartment and they’d discovered a mutual covert obsession with the cartoon character. He couldn’t afford cable and she got the cartoon channel, so there had been a few instances when he’d watched episodes with her. Okay, more than a few.

“The car runs fine.” He gave her the keys, then held up the plastic bags. “I brought pizza and beer. How about dinner?”

She blinked. “Is there a Scooby-Doo marathon on?”

It was his turn to blink. “Not that I know of. I thought it would be…be nice to…” She thought he only wanted to eat with her so he could borrow her TV set. Had he been that much of a moocher?

“To what?”

“You know, eat dinner together.”

They stared at each other amid an unaccustomed awkwardness. What had he done? They’d eaten dinner together before, and yes, they usually ended up watching Gwen’s TV. But this was different somehow. About the time Alec figured out it was because he’d never sought Gwen’s company just for the sake of being with her, and why hadn’t he, she pulled the pizza box out of the bag.

“You need a distraction while you eat this, huh?”

“Hey, that’s the premium store brand,” Alec shot back, relieved to fall into their usual pattern of mock insults and zingers.

“Ooo, the premium brand.”

“Sarcasm? After I make a genuine spontaneous gesture of friendship and sharing—”

“All right, all right. I’ll heat up the oven.” Laughing, she took the pizza into the kitchen.

Back to normal. He exhaled and wandered over to the sofa, noting her open laptop and the papers beside it. “Gwen?”

She looked at him through the kitchen bar.

“If you’re busy—”

“Actually, you can help me. I’d like a man’s opinion.”

“Oh?” He held up one of the beers and she nodded. Twisting off the top, he set the bottle beside her laptop, careful to keep it away from the keyboard. He didn’t mean to pry, but with the words Plan Of Attack written in eighteen-point type, he could hardly avoid reading. She’d made a column of words like “weakness, strength, objective, timeline, ammunition” and so forth. “What’s up?”

“Just a minute.”

He heard a buzz indicating that the oven had reached the baking temperature and then watched Gwen bend down to put the pizza in. Yeah, she was all right. Great female friend material. Twisting off the top of the second bottle, he took a swallow of beer and hoped again she wasn’t too insulted by his pitiful offering.

He thought of her friend Lisa. No—Laurie. Whatever. That wasn’t going anywhere. For a while there Linda—Laurie?—was sending all the right signals and under other circumstances…under other circumstances, Gwen wouldn’t have been standing right beside them.

Why hadn’t she ever looked at him like that?

Gwen threw away the pizza wrappings and came out of the kitchen. “This is really nice of you.” Her smile was maybe a little too wide to be real.

Hell. “Look, Gwen, I know it’s not much, especially after I—”

“You big doofus, you spent all your money, didn’t you?”

Doofus? “Well, yeah.”

She put a hand to her chest. “I’m flattered.”

“Seriously? You are?”

“Yes. Now sit down and quit fussing.”

“Fussing?” He never fussed. But he sat down.

Instead of being insulted, she was flattered. Women. He’d never understand them.

GWEN SAT beside him and handed him a brown foam insulator with the Kwik Koffee logo on it. Just when she’d given up on men, one of them had to go and do something sweet. Trying not to make a big deal out of Alec’s gesture, Gwen nodded to her laptop screen as she fit her bottle into the foam rubber. “I’m going after a promotion,” she said. “And I’ve been trying to think like a man.”

“So you thought military instead of sports?”

“Yes.” She hesitated. “I’m off sports.”

“Works for me.” He tilted back his head and swallowed, yet kept his eyes on her computer screen.

Gwen ruthlessly smothered a sigh and erased the mental image of Alec’s jawline.

He tilted the bottle toward her list. “You haven’t got very far.”

“I know. That’s where you come in. I’m currently on the staff of one of the regional directors. Kwik Koffee’s got seven, but two of the largest regions need to be split and I think that’ll be my best shot for a promotion. Now, visualize the regional directors holed up in a fort under siege. I want in.”

“I’m visualizing and I’m not seeing any women. Are there any women directors—is that the problem?”

“No women.” Gwen shook her head. “But I think that’s coincidence.”

“Maybe. Maybe not.”

“There are two assistant regional directors. Both women.”

“And the fact that women are assistants is just coincidence?”

Gwen frowned. “I don’t want to go there. The assistants are in the biggest regions, so logically, if the regions are split, they should get the promotion. I want you to tell me what an ambitious man would do in my position.”

Alec sat back. “There’s the time-honored, yet slimy, method of joining the same club and bonding in the steam room, a couple of rounds of golf a month, that kind of thing.”

“I don’t play golf.”

“You should learn.”

“I don’t steam, either.”

Alec laughed. “Put ‘find something in common’ on your list. Maybe the guy in charge collects wines or model trains. Or, I know—nothing beats a plate of warm brownies.”

Only the wicked flash in his eye saved him.

“There is a huge difference between a plate of brownies and time in a steam room.”

“That’s a plate of warm brownies—okay!” he conceded when she opened her mouth. “But find out what he likes and give it to him.”

Gwen raised her eyebrow.

He waved his beer bottle impatiently. “You know what I mean. Also, figure out who makes the promotion decisions. You have to make your boss look good to him.”

“Why shouldn’t I make myself look good to him?”

“You will be.”

Gwen dutifully typed his suggestions. “I also know to analyze the work and find something that needs to be done, then volunteer to do it, but I can’t figure out anything that needs to be done that I’m capable of doing. Kwik Koffee seems to run an efficient operation.”

“Think small, but visible. Oh, yeah.” Alec gestured for her to continue typing. “Think cost-cutting. Companies love it when you save money.”

Gwen knew that, but she added it to the list to humor him. He was really getting into this corporate competitiveness.

“Reprice supplies or something. Then you can send a memo detailing what you found. Don’t forget to print out your e-mail.”

“Right, a paper trail.” Gwen made a note to check prices on environmentally friendly coffee filters. They were a great idea, but had been too expensive in the past. Maybe the price had come down enough so that Kwik Koffee could reap the public relations benefit of a switch.

“Do you miss your job?” she asked as she typed. Alec had never gone into detail about his life before he came to live at Oak Villa Apartments, but Gwen got the impression that he’d been fairly high on the corporate ladder in a family-owned company.

He laughed. “I miss the salary! But this experience has forced me to look at life differently, which was no doubt what my granddad had in mind.” He grimaced. “I suppose I’ll have to admit it to him, too.”

Gwen met his eyes. “Were you…fired?” she asked hesitantly.

“No! Hey, didn’t I tell you about Granddad’s big challenge?”

“You just told me you were trying to start your own business.”

Alec took a deep breath and settled back on the sofa. It looked like it was going to be a long story. But that was okay. Gwen liked having Alec around. He wasn’t any trouble. At least not much.

“Granddad came to this country with something like forty bucks in his pocket—I don’t know, the amount is less every time he tells the story. But he started a little lunch-cart business, which grew and now we all work there. My dad and uncle really expanded the company. It was just strictly local and they worked their butts off taking it national.” He stopped talking and looked off into the distance. Gwen had never seen him this somber before.

“Dad wasn’t around much when I was little,” he said, exhaling heavily.

“It must have been rough on your mother, too,” Gwen said.

“I guess so.” The way he said it told Gwen that he’d never considered his mother’s point of view before. Well, he was now.

But apparently only for a second or two. “The thing that gets to me is that Granddad doesn’t even acknowledge what his sons did or what any of us are doing. According to him, we’re all just leeches benefiting from his hard work. And dad just…takes it. Drives me and my cousins nuts.”

“So you quit?”

“Only temporarily. We want to develop the Web site and maybe open some stores in the malls, but Granddad won’t listen to us, soooo…” Alec paused when the buzzer on the oven went off.

Gwen headed for the kitchen. “Keep talking. I can hear you.”

“So we decided that one of us would start a business from the ground up under the same conditions—or as close as we could get—and prove to the old guy that we’re not complete write-offs.”

“And you lost?” She glanced through the bar as she got out plates.

Alec stared down at the beer in his hands, then looked up at her with a half smile. “No. I won.”

Which was a pretty good insight into the male psyche, Gwen told herself. They liked challenges. Enjoyed them, even. She should start thinking that way about her promotion campaign.

“It’s been tough, I won’t kid you. I can’t imagine how desperate and scared my grandfather must have been. At least I’m in the same country—the same city, even.”

Gwen was cutting the pizza and trying to do so quietly so she could hear Alec, but managed to burn her thumb on hot cheese. She dropped the piece halfway between the plate and the cookie sheet and stuck her thumb in her mouth. Part of the topping was on the slice of pizza, the rest was on her counter. She nudged it into place, sort of, then looked up to find that Alec had left the sofa and was leaning his elbows on the bar as he watched her.

“Not much of a cook, are you?” He grinned.

“Like this never happened to you.” She handed him the plate with the good pieces on it.

“Actually, no. Your mistake was in using plates. I just eat from the pan.”

“Barbarian.”

“Bad pizza cooker.”

“That’s the worst thing you can call me?” Gwen sat down and shoved her papers aside, then propped her Scooby-Doo slipper clad feet on the coffee table.

“My brain is running on low.” Alec added his feet to the table, slouched down and propped the pizza plate on his stomach. His flat stomach. “I’ll think of something after a few bites. In the meantime, speaking of Scooby-Doo—”

“Were we?”

“No, but we are now.”

“Why?”

“Well, I’ve heard rumors of a New Year’s Eve marathon.” He gave her look out of the corner of his eye. “Got any party plans?”

Gwen’s heart gave an extra thump. If only he’d stopped right then and there, but no, Alec continued.

“’Cause if you’re going out, I wouldn’t mind keeping an eye on your television for you.” He grinned hopefully.

“I’m sure you wouldn’t.” Not, hey Gwen, let’s spend New Year’s together but I want to watch cartoons on your TV. Gwen took a moment to give herself a mental kick—she’d given up men. This was one of the reasons why.

“Won’t charge you, either.”

Oh no, not that smile, not the one he knew charmed women. She gave him a look to let him know she wasn’t charmed. “Don’t you have any plans? What about your friends? Have they abandoned you?”

Instantly, the smile faded and he looked down at his pizza. “They’re all going to the Uptown Women’s Center benefit ‘gala.’” He used his fingers to make quote marks. “My girlfriend is on the steering committee. It’s occupied her every waking moment since October.”

Girlfriend? Girlfriend? Alec had a girlfriend? Not that it mattered to Gwen. It shouldn’t matter to her. Wouldn’t. Didn’t.

“Have you noticed how nobody just throws a party for the sake of a good time anymore?” Alec was speaking rhetorically, which was a good thing since Gwen had frozen beside him. He hadn’t noticed, which was also a good thing.

“It always has to benefit some organization. Why should we justify wanting to have a good time?”

“The Women’s Center is a very worthy cause,” Gwen managed. She also managed to sound tight-lipped. She wrapped her tight lips around the beer bottle and swallowed.

“Of course it is,” Alec grumbled. “That’s not the point here. The point is guilt-free partying.”

“And so, what? You’re boycotting?”

He mumbled something.

“What?” Gwen cupped her hand around her ear. “Is that a tiny tantrum I hear?”

“No.” He shifted until his head was resting on the back of the sofa. “Stephanie—”

“That would be your girlfriend.”

“Maybe, maybe not. Who knows anymore?”

“Well…this is just a thought…but if I spent hours and hours working on one of those charity things, I might be the teensiest bit put out if my boyfriend refused to go.”

Still leaning against the sofa, he rolled his head to face her. “I can’t afford to. My tux is back at my town house, along with my car, and I don’t have the money to rent either. So no gala-going for me this New Year’s.”

“Wait a minute—you mean you own a car and you have a town—”

Alec held up a hand. “Technically, yes—”

“Is there any other way?”

“My grandfather didn’t have a fancy place to live or his own—”

“It’s fancy?”

“Well…it’s…my cousin’s wife is a decorator and she did the place for me, so it’s okay.”

“It’s just okay.”

“Okay, better than okay.”

“Wood floors?”

“Yeah.”

“Fireplace?”

“Yeah.”

“Dining room?”

“I gotta eat someplace.”

“Whirlpool tub?”

“Aren’t those standard these days?”

“BMW or Mercedes?”

He gave her an exasperated look. “Beemer. Gwen, it doesn’t matter. My grandfather wouldn’t have had any of that stuff, so I can’t either right now. That’s why I traded places with the guy who used to live in the apartment here. Brad’s living it up at my place, and I’m here with his damn cat.” Apparently thoughts of the cat were worth two swallows of beer.

“I see.” She crossed her arms and stared straight ahead. In her line of sight was a framed poster—Alec was no doubt used to original art—and put-it-together-yourself shelving displaying her Scooby-Doo memorabilia, which up to this point she’d thought was charmingly quirky. But now it looked kitschy and cheap.

“Gwen?” There was a hint of uncertainty in his voice, no doubt carefully calculated to elicit the most sympathy. “You understand about all that, don’t you?”

“I’m feeling used,” she declared. “Before, I felt used, but it was for a good cause.”

“I’m still a good cause.”

“You’re a hopeless cause.”

“And you’re as bad as Stephanie.”

Gwen bolted upright and gasped. “What a vile thing to say!”

Alec’s lips quivered and then he started laughing.

She hadn’t been serious, but he shouldn’t have figured it out so quickly. Shaking her head, Gwen cleared away their plates. “At least that explains the cat. You have never struck me as a cat person.”

“Armageddon is not a cat. Armageddon is demon spawn from hell.”

“Poor kitty. With a name like Armageddon, what do you expect?”

“He earned the name. Thirty seconds at my place and he’d sprayed a white silk sofa.”

Gwen rolled her eyes. “No real person has a white silk sofa.”

“I do, or I do if the cleaners did their job. But Army came to the apartment with me that day and has avoided me ever since. He lives under the bed until I go into the bedroom. The rest of the time, he plots his escape.”

Gwen rinsed their plates and put them in the dishwasher. “From what I remember, he’s had a couple of successes.”

“Yeah. Brad comes over and lures him back, though.”

“The poor little thing.”

“Don’t feel sorry for Brad.”

“I was talking about the cat and you know it. He just doesn’t understand.”

“He’s not the only one,” Alec muttered darkly.

Gwen returned to the sofa. “Is that an oblique reference to Stephanie and New Year’s?”

He nodded.

“She doesn’t quite see why you have to maintain the purity of the quest.”

“Or words to that effect.”

“I’ll bet.” Gwen stared at her Scooby-Doo slippers. They stared back. “Your grandfather could have shopped at secondhand stores, right?”

“Oh, yeah. Wearing clothes from the church’s charity box is always a featured part of the story. But if you think—”

“Buy your tux from Brad.”

“What?”

“Offer him five or ten bucks for it. He’s not going to be wearing it and you know it fits.”

“That’s…” Gwen could see the possibilities occur to Alec.

He gave her a slow, admiring smile. “That’s brilliant.”

“I thought so. And if you give me a ride over to my parents’ house, then you can borrow my car.” Sometimes she was too brilliant for her own good.

Alec kissed his fingers toward her. “Gwen, you are a prince among women.”

“Is that anything like being a queen among men?”

He hesitated briefly, but tellingly. Very, very tellingly. “I didn’t mean it to be.” He laughed. If a forced chuckle could be called a laugh.

Gwen could attribute the hesitation to him being slow on the uptake, but Alec wasn’t slow. No, for just a moment there, he’d considered the possibility that they were both sexually oriented in the same direction.

Was this what she was going to have to face? If a woman didn’t want to be with a man, then…then… And just because she wasn’t Alec’s type didn’t mean she wasn’t somebody’s type.

She’d show him. She’d…she’d go put on the skirt, that’s what she’d do. Gwen jumped up. “Hey—I got a new skirt I was thinking of wearing on New Year’s. How about a man’s opinion?”

“Danger. Warning. Woman requesting clothing opinion. Alert, alert.”

“Oh, stop.” She headed for the bedroom. “I just want to know what you think.”

“What I think is that nothing I say will be right,” Alec called after her.

Gwen grabbed the skirt, hanger and all, and went back to her living room. She unsnapped the clamps, then held up the skirt. “I’ll be with Laurie, so…you know.” She hoped he’d fill in the blanks about at least holding her own beside Laurie.

And speaking of blanks—Alec stared at the skirt, then met her eyes. “It’s…it’s just a black skirt. It doesn’t look all that short or tight.”

“So you’re saying that to appeal to a man, a skirt has to be short and tight?”

“Not…yes. Yes, it does.”

She walked closer so he could see how the light made it shimmer, maybe even feel the fabric.

He was clearly unimpressed by shimmer. “Well, Gwen, it’s a nice skirt.”

Nice. Kiss of death.

“I don’t know what you want me to say.”

I want you to be overcome with lust, that’s what. So much for the skirt’s man-attracting potential.

“The sweatpants make it look lumpy. Why don’t you put it on?”

“All right, I will.”

Gwen returned to the bedroom, suspecting that the reason she hadn’t put the skirt on in the first place was because if Alec was overcome with lust, she’d forget that she’d given up men and men like Alec were exactly the reason why. He’d talked about Laurie being high-maintenance, but if he took off his shirt—a pleasant, but distracting prospect—he’d have “high-maintenance” tattooed across his chest.

Already, she’d offered him her car and helped him with his love life—a love life that didn’t include her. Now, she was putting on the skirt after she swore she wouldn’t just so he’d find her attractive. And she’d just cooked dinner for him. Hadn’t she?

Gwen stepped into the skirt, thinking that she probably ought to put on panty hose, and pulled it up. Pulled…now more of an easing…sucked in her stomach…more…gave up on fastening the hook until after the zipper was zipped…zipped two inches and…

And staring in horror as her white, pizza-filled belly remained exposed because her hips and thighs had taken up all the room in the skirt.