Читать книгу Who's on Top? - Karen Kendall - Страница 7

IF ONLY MONDAY WERE A HOT, half-naked man, I wouldn’t mind starting every week with it. Jane O’Toole yawned.

Whether you’re a sanitation worker or a CEO—or in my case, both—Mondays just…suck.

She emptied the last wastebasket into the trash bag, tied a knot into the top of the bag and set it outside the office door, breathing deeply of the crisp October air.

Farmington, Connecticut, was at its most beautiful in autumn, nestling among the fall foliage under royal-blue skies. A town of twenty-one thousand, Farmington personified New England, abundant with neat Cape Cods punctuated with maple, oak and elm trees. Window boxes hadn’t yet lost their colorful blooms to the winter, and the wind sang through leaves of spectacular gold, rich tawny cinnamon, eggplant and even burgundy.

Such a gorgeous day to be stuck in the office. She left the door open to let the sunshine in, bathing the room and its antique-reproduction furniture in gold. Wryly Jane noted that the light also illuminated every dust mote stuck to the dark wood. And the once-pristine arrangement of dried roses on the coffee table looked…hairy.

Is it possible to dust dried flowers? she wondered. If she blew on them, she’d sneeze. If she vacuumed them, she’d be left with headless stems. And surely the duster in the closet would only add blue feathers to the unappetizing hair.

Jane dreamed of a cleaning service one day, but the business was too fragile, too new, to justify the expense right now. She’d conceived Finesse a year ago, while working at her miserable job in corporate employee assistance. Her M.A. in psychology had qualified her to be a glorified babysitter and paper pusher, and after eight years she’d had enough. So had her friends Shannon Shane, a would-be actress, and Lilia London, who’d been a receptionist for a law firm.

Jane had envisioned a business of their own: a training center for personal and career enhancement. Open now for nine months, Finesse did consulting on employee management issues and some general counseling (Jane’s specialty), image/communication (Shannon’s) and business etiquette (Lilia’s).

Thanks to hard work and tireless marketing, they’d enjoyed great success so far—though like any business in its fledgling stage, they had loans to pay off. And salaries? Actual salaries for each of them were still a dream on the horizon.

Jane put off donning those snappy pink rubber gloves and heading for the bathroom. Ugh. She’d do it after she had a doughnut.

She listened with half an ear to Shannon and Lilia discuss the pros and cons of…thong underwear? Yes, she had heard right.

“I don’t see how you can stand it,” Lilia said to Shannon with a shudder. Lilia’s dark hair was demure, as usual, clamped at her neck with a conservative clip. In her well-cut gray silk suit, she looked every inch the etiquette consultant.

Shannon marched to an altogether different drummer. In fact, Jane was pretty sure she had an alternate orchestra. She didn’t look anything like an image consultant—unless it was for rock stars in L.A.

“A thong eliminates the pantie-line problem.” Shannon shrugged, winding her long, curly blond hair into a knot on her head. Her motorcycle jacket hid most of a screaming-orange tank top—just not enough of it for Jane’s taste.

“I haven’t tried them,” Lilia said, “but I’ve heard those new boy shorts hide pantie lines, too.”

“Nope—they crawl.” Shannon was indisputably the authority on undies.

“Better a little ‘crawl’ than…than…rope burn in a private place!” Lilia stood her ground.

“Thongs are really not uncomfortable,” said Shannon. “The only problem I have with them is that I’m forever putting them on sideways, since they’re your basic isosceles triangle.”

Lilia shook her head. “Never. I just can’t go there. Thongs are so…slutty.”

Shannon exchanged a glance with Jane and both started to laugh.

“Ah,” Jane responded in a dry voice. “It’s so much less slutty to wear nothing under your stockings, for fear of those dreaded pantie lines.”

Lilia colored. “That’s not the same thing at all—”

“No,” Shannon chortled in between mouthfuls of a Krispy Kreme doughnut. “It’s worse! Lilia, you fallen woman, you.” She turned to Jane. “Now, execu-babe, tell us all about your unmentionables.”

Jane grinned, dried her just-washed hands and helped herself to what was left of the Krispy Kremes. “The only thing you need to know about my underwear has to do with maintenance. You go into Vicky’s Secret, and let’s say you choose beautiful lace tap pants. Or some sheer panties in chiffon. You feel pretty the first time you wear them. Then you toss them into the washing machine—’

“You didn’t!” gasped Lilia. “Surely the salesgirls told you to hand wash—”

“Yes, like I have all the time in the world to gently swish each of my freakin’ undergarments in the sink. Get real.”

Lilia tsk-tsked.

“So I threw them into the machine. And now they’re wound around the bottom of the post thingy in the washer and I can’t get them out! I’m also afraid to use the darn machine in case they destroy it or set it on fire or something.”

Shannon laughed.

Lilia stated the obvious. “You should call a repair guy.”

“Sure, Lil. You try explaining to a guy your father’s age that the problem lies with your ruby-red lacy tap pants. That it’s going to take a blowtorch and some needle-nose pliers to get them unstuck.”

Lilia’s lips twitched.

Jane mock-glared at her friends before rounding on Shannon. “By the way, thanks for leaving me only the squashed glazed doughnut and significantly less than half of the chocolate-frosted one!”

Shannon rolled her eyes. “I have two adages for you. ‘First come, first served.’ And ‘It’s for your own good, honey.’ Be glad they’re on my hips and not yours.”

“Why?” Jane muttered. “Why have I maintained a twenty-year friendship with the two of you? Not to mention going into business with you. Next Monday I’ll eat all the crème ones before reaching the first traffic light, and you’ll be sorry you treated me this way.”

Lilia said, “Now, girls.”

Shannon stuck her tongue out.

“Speaking of panties and Vicky’s Secret,” Jane went on, stalking to the prissy camelback sofa and retrieving a catalogue. “How on earth is anyone supposed to wear—” she flipped through some pages “—this? It’s only got a—”

Suddenly Shannon made a weird face, rolling her eyes wildly, and Lilia coughed and waggled her index finger behind her ear.

“—string of pearls for a crotch!” Too late she noticed their odd expressions.

Both her business partners closed their eyes and winced.

Slowly Jane lowered the catalogue and looked gingerly behind her, only to behold a Hugh Jackman type in pinstripes—her first client of the day. Oh. My. God. His shoulders filled the doorway and he gazed down at her from a height of at least six foot two. His dark hair was cut short in an attempt to restrain a tendency to curl. Dark eyes gleamed at her over Serengeti shades that he’d tugged down just a bit. Besides his suit, he wore a quizzical expression, and his eyebrows formed two interested, sex-charged squiggles.

She cleared her throat; resisted putting her hands up to her incinerated cheeks; looked at her watch. “You must be Mr. Sayers. I wasn’t expecting you…quite so early.”

DOMINIC SAYERS FROZE IN HIS tracks. String of pearls for a crotch? The concept was undeniably appealing—he was only human, after all. But he could not possibly be in the right place. Had he stumbled into an upscale escort service? He took a step back; looked up at the discreet, silver wooden letters. Huh. He raised a brow and returned his gaze to the rosy cheeks of the woman before him.

“Jane O’Toole? Of…Finesse?” He didn’t try to conceal his irony.

The color in her cheeks deepened to burgundy, but other than that she didn’t bat an eyelash. He was, however, too irritated to admire her composure. He didn’t want to be here.

“Yes, that’s right.” She raised her chin and stuck out her right hand. “A pleasure to meet you, Mr. Sayers.”

“Oh, I doubt it.” His gaze, which he’d meant to keep cool and distant, roved over her body without his permission, dipping into the neatly buttoned but still provocative valley where the plackets of her blouse met—and downward from there. Hmm, pearls…

She blinked. “If you’d like to have a seat, I’ll get you started on some paperwork. Just some simple questions. Your employee ID number for Zantyne Pharmaceuticals, their billing address—that type of thing.”

“Ah, yes. The paper trail,” he said, returning to reality and not bothering to hide his bitterness. But he sat and accepted the pen and file folder she handed to him.

Arianna “the piranha” DuBose was no doubt furiously adding as much as she could to the paper trail that would indicate he should be fired.

The trail would not include certain important information: that Arianna had lied, backstabbed and schmoozed her way into her current position as his boss; that she was extremely threatened by Dom and didn’t want him around to expose her or show her up; and that she’d deliberately picked a fight with him so she could get him some “help” for his “negative attitude” and “tendencies toward insubordination.”

He shouldn’t have fallen for her tricks. Damn it, he knew better. What had gotten into him? Why had he let her anger him? And why hadn’t he made sure someone else was in the room during the entire standoff?

The only blessing Dom could count was that Arianna-the-piranha hadn’t accused him of sexual harassment.

Still, he was here in Jane O’Toole’s office to be evaluated—probably to commence “sensitivity training,” anger management and who knew what else. General kowtowing, he supposed.

In the meantime, he had a market analysis due, the regulators breathing down his neck and the licensing agreements to sign off on. Arianna would be nosing around every step of the way, erasing the dots from his i’s and smudging the crosses on his t’s. Anything she could use to trump up a case against him—she’d latch on to it with those flesh-eating fangs of hers.

Dom realized that Jane O’Toole was saying something to him. “What?” he asked gruffly. “I didn’t catch that.”

His eyes went from her mouth to her neckline, where she was fidgeting with—hoo, boy—a string of pearls. Again his male radar perked up. Hmm…

As soon as she followed his gaze, she dropped them as if they were hot.

He lifted a corner of his mouth. He didn’t mean it as a sneer exactly, but she seemed to take it as one, since she stiffened.

She was extremely attractive, with a mess of dark curly hair. This was cut at a sensible chin length and offset by huge brown eyes. Her cheekbones weren’t high but soft and rounded, blending into a surprisingly strong square chin.

She had plenty of interesting curves, too, though they were mostly hidden by a dark green pantsuit. He had a suspicion that lush, heavy breasts nestled against the lucky lining of her jacket. If Dom had met her in a bar—not that he usually went to bars, except to play pool—well, hell, he might have stiffened, too. So to speak.

His eyes strayed once again to the pearls at her neck, and he fought off an image of them in a darker, duskier place—attached to a scrap of silk.

“I asked you if you’d like a cup of coffee, Mr. Sayers.” The flush in her cheeks had spread down to her neck now, providing an interesting background for her pearls.

“Coffee would be great,” he said. He accepted it with thanks, omitting sugar or cream. He focused on the hot, black stuff and not Jane O’Toole’s possible tastes in lingerie. Grow up, Sayers. But hell, he felt all of thirteen, having been sent to the principal’s office.

Ms. O’Toole mixed her own coffee with as many cancer-causing substances as she could scrape together and stirred the disgusting brew with a long stick, which she tossed into the trash. “Why don’t we go into my office?”

The other two women involved in the kinky undies discussion—a six-foot Harley babe and a prim china doll—had vanished behind their respective doors. Dom shrugged and followed Principal O’Toole into her den of discipline. They might as well get on with his knuckle rapping.

“Have a seat,” she told him. She walked to a filing cabinet and bent over the second drawer, retrieving a sheet of paper from a manila folder. “This is a permission form—I always videotape my first session with a client. Then I’ll make a couple of tapes midway through our course together and one during the very last meeting. It’s just to document progress. I don’t release them to anyone, under any circumstances. But I do need you to sign off on the form.”

Dom folded his arms across his chest and told her he didn’t like the idea at all.

“Why not?” she asked calmly. “Is there something about being taped that threatens you?”

“No, Ms. O’Toole. I don’t feel threatened. But I would like to discuss a few issues with you and I don’t necessarily want them on record.”

She sat in her cushy leather chair opposite him and crossed her legs. Then she folded her hands across a leather-bound notebook in her lap. A pen emerged from the bundle of fingers, punctuating her air of cool disapproval like an exclamation point. Damn Arianna. He’d already been tried, judged and found lacking. But all Jane O’Toole said was, “Fine.”

“I want you to know that I’m not a behavioral problem,” he said. He could hear the anger in his own voice; saw her note it. “I do not have insubordination issues. I am not a chauvinist jerk who is unable to work for a woman. Is that clear?”

“Crystal,” she said. “So now that you’ve told me what you’re not, how about telling me what you are?”

“I’m a red-blooded American guy who doesn’t enjoy being manipulated by a power-hungry bitch.”

Her jaw dropped open and he heard her teeth click together as she shut it. Gotcha.

“Mr. Sayers, I’ve been called a lot of things during the course of my career, but that is a first.”

“I meant Arianna DuBose, not you!”

“I’m relieved to hear it. So tell me more about your working relationship with Ms. DuBose.”

A nice open-ended question. Gave him lots of rope to hang himself. Well, what the hell. He already had. “Ms. DuBose is an ambitious sociopath, and I happened to get in her way.”

“I see.”

“No, I don’t think you do. I was in line for a promotion and should have been a shoo-in. Suddenly the other regional managers were eyeing me uneasily, and Arianna got the job. Now she’s got it in for me. She wants me gone.”

Jane O’Toole took a careful sip of coffee and set her cup down on a side table. She uncrossed and recrossed her legs, unconsciously exhibiting lean, muscular calves. “So you’re battling a certain resentment that Ms. DuBose was promoted ahead of you. I can see how that would make you angry.”

She didn’t believe him. Of course she didn’t. It all sounded like sour grapes to his own ears. And paranoid, to boot. Dom felt tension growing in every muscle, fresh anger seeping through his veins. Arianna had him just where she wanted him: by the short and curlies. But by God, he wasn’t going to let her win. He had to get through to this O’Toole woman.

Charm. Where had his charm gone hiding? He almost growled out loud. Due to the sheer injustice of the situation, his charm had been squished beneath his heel like an old piece of gum. But he’d better figure out how to scrape some off and resurrect it into a nice big pink bubble, or Jane would unwittingly help Arianna destroy his career.

Ugh. The harder Dom thought about charm, the more it eluded him. He was mad, damn it. Justifiably so. And worse, he was embarrassed. How dare Arianna send him to this woman, like a rowdy child in need of a paddling?

He got up out of his chair and paced Jane’s office a couple of times. She just watched him out of those brown eyes, schooled carefully to be dispassionate. But he could sense her judgment, and it wounded his pride.

“Ms. O’Toole, it’s very clear to me that you think I’m a swine.”

The lashes fluttered over those baby browns and she bit her lip. “No, of course not.”

He snorted, walked back to the chair he’d been sitting in and pounded the back of it with his fist. “Come off it. You think I’m a pig.”

She raised a brow. “Your choice of words, not mine.”

Dom bared his teeth at her. “And you’re right. I am angry. But not for the reasons you think. However, I’m too irate to discuss all of this with you at the moment, so I’m going to put an end to our session.” He turned on his heel, walked to the door and opened it.

Jane sat in her chair and made a couple of notes. Then she got up and followed him to where he was standing gazing down at the catalogue she’d tossed on the sofa by the door. He was unable to look away from the tiny silk G-strings available in hot-pink or midnight-black, the ones with the—

He heard the click as she clutched at her necklace. Turned to see the red flash into her cheeks once again. He raised a brow, knowing that he shouldn’t voice the words even as he said them. “It’s always best…not to dangle pearls before swine, Ms. O’Toole.”

JANE REACHED HER LIMIT WITH this comment. She banished the blush from her cheeks and removed her hand from her necklace. “No one dangled anything in front of you, Mr. Sayers. You rooted out the mud all by yourself. And it’s clear to me that you’re trying to knock me off balance so that I’ll let you run away.”

He froze. The faint devilry and arrogance that had risen with his mocking eyebrows disappeared, and his lips flattened. “Run away?”

She nodded and continued on the offensive. “As fast as you can get your snout out the door.” It was the only way to get him back into her office and address the issues at hand.

Sayers’s shoulders seemed to grow wider and a definite glint shone in his eye. “I don’t run from anything, Jane O’Toole. Not sociopathic bosses and not smug little psych majors with an ambition to fix what ain’t broke. Understand?”

Oh, but I will fix you, Mr. Attitude. You just don’t know it yet. All men need to be fixed! “Yes, Dominic Sayers, I believe I do. Now, since we’ve established that you’re not running away, let’s step back into my office—shall we?” Ha! I’ve got you now.

His eyes narrowed. He couldn’t walk out the door and still retain any self-respect. And he knew it. She restrained a smile. Was it her imagination or did every faint pinstripe on the man’s suit indicate a bullet trajectory—all of them aimed right at her?

Jane smiled at his back as he stalked once again toward her office. Hostility and annoyance buzzed around them like a thousand angry horseflies.

She dropped into her chair and made a couple more notes. This made her look official and professional and gave her a moment to think. Continue on the offensive, she told herself. Just take the bull by the horns. Maybe that way he’ll smash some excellent psychological china….

“So, Mr. Sayers. How long have you entertained hostile thoughts toward women? Does this date back to your childhood?”

He fixed her with an extremely black, dangerous stare—and then he began to curse. She ignored the actual words and just let him vent. But in the meantime she couldn’t help but admire the way he filled out his suit, the jump of the muscles in his stern jaw as he got pithy with her and the truly miraculous bone structure of his face. The man had cheekbones that would make a sculptor weep.

When he finally stopped with an insult to her profession, she said graciously, “I’m so glad we’ve had this time together,” and opened her appointment book. “I’d like to visit you at the office on Monday, all right? Nine-ish, shall we say?”

Sayers appeared to choke on that breath he was taking. “Lady, are you out of your mind?”

“No, I’m certainly not. Let’s identify what just happened here. Since you were too proud to walk out that door, when I asked you a question you resented, you exhibited enough hostility that you hoped I’d be horrified and back out of working with you. I’m not going to do that. Of course, again it’s your choice. You can retreat from the battlefield and refuse to work with me.” She watched him carefully for a moment. “But then I’ll have to log that in my evaluation. And if what you say about the, uh, sociopathic Ms. DuBose is true, then won’t you just be playing into her hands?”