Читать книгу The Bachelor - Marie Ferrarella - Страница 11

J enny threw back two extra-strength aspirins, washed them down with water and fervently hoped that they would live up to at least half of their advertising hype. Otherwise, she was ready to surrender now. Death by headache.

It was the kind of morning created by tiny devils gleefully working overtime in the bowels of hell. As far as she saw, there was no other plausible explanation why, when she was such a good person, everything that could go wrong today had. One right after the other.

Her alarm failed to go off, and for one of the few rare mornings of her life, she’d overslept. Then the toaster emitted flames instead of toast. That, luckily, had been handled by the fire extinguisher she’d had the presence of mind to keep in her cupboard. Cole’s baby-sitter, a woman who thrived on punctuality and took pride in being early, was late. To top it off, her less than reliable car decided that it’d had enough of the distributor cap—the one her mechanic had put in just last month—and burned a hole through it.

Needless to say, that left her without a means of transportation to use in order to get to her downtown office. There wasn’t even time to see about getting the evil car towed to her mechanic’s shop. Telling herself she wasn’t going to have a nervous breakdown, she just left the vehicle parked in the carport and hurried back to her apartment to call a taxi.

When she’d arrived at her office, there were a pile of messages already on her desk, threatening to breed if left unread. And her appointments were backing up.

On mornings like this that life of leisure her mother kept advocating began to sound awfully tempting.

Still waiting for the aspirins to kick in and do their magic, Jenny was only one third through her pile of messages and in between the battalion of clients when the secretary she shared with the other attorneys who made up Advocate Aid, Inc.—a title she’d come up with because it was short and to the point, unlike her life—called out across the communal space they all shared.

“Line three’s for you, Jenny.”

Jenny cringed. She felt as if an anvil had just been dropped on top of her head. There was such a thing as physically and mentally reaching a limit and she had well surpassed hers. She’d stayed up last night to work on the Ortiz case, but then one of Cole’s nightmares had brought her rushing to his side. She’d remained there, consoling him, until he’d fallen asleep.

Unfortunately, so had she.

Slumbering in Cole’s undersized junior bed while assuming a position made popular by early Christian martyrs had given her a phenomenal crick in her neck. One that refused to go away even when bombarded with an extra three minutes worth of hot water in the shower.

She rubbed it now, telling herself that this, too, shall pass, as she called back, “Tell them I died.”

“Really?”

She’d forgotten that Betty was a woman who took you at your word. Literally. She was completely devoid of any sense of humor, droll or otherwise.

“No,” Jenny sighed, “not really.”

Rotating her neck from side to side, she picked up the receiver. As she placed it to her ear, Jenny struggled with the sinking feeling that she was going to regret not sticking to her original instruction.

Trying to sound as cheerful as she could under the circumstances, she said, “Hello, this is Jennifer Hall.”

“Mother called me last night.”

Tension temporarily slid out of her body as she recognized her brother’s voice. Jordan represented a moment’s respite from her otherwise miserable day. “My condolences.”

She heard him chuckle before he continued. “She said that you were chairing that fund-raising bachelor auction again.”

Undoubtedly her mother had probably said a lot of other things, as well, about the situation, bemoaning the fact that once again, the daughter she’d raised for great things and adoring men was once more on the sidelines. Camille in her deathbed scene definitely had nothing on her mother. Mingling amid men had always come easy for her mother. The woman didn’t understand that not everyone was granted that gift.

“Those that can, do. Those that can’t, auction,” Jenny replied glibly.

Her brother surprised her with the serious note in his voice. “Don’t knock yourself down, Jenny. The only reason you’re not out there every night is because you choose not to be.”

“Right.” Never mind the fact that she was plain, she thought, and that no one without some grievance to file would give her the time of day, much less the time of her life.

The natives along the wall were getting restless and she had several people to see before she could leave for court. “Listen, Jordy, I’d love to talk, but—”

He got to the crux of his call, or at least, the beginning of it. “I’ve called to volunteer my services for the auction.”

Again she was surprised. She scribbled her brother’s name on the side of her blotter with a note about the bachelor auction. One thing that went right today. Maybe it would start a trend.

“Fantastic, Jordy. This means I don’t have to badger you.” Although she was only going to turn to him if she couldn’t get anyone else. She knew that this was not high on Jordan’s list of favorite things to do.

“No, but you might have to do a little persuading with the two other candidates I lined up for you.”

That stopped her cold. “Oh?”

Intrigued, she turned her swivel chair away from the lineup against the far wall. She didn’t exactly have time for this now, but she was going to have to make time later. The auction was less than two weeks away and she still needed more bodies to fill the quota. Especially since Emerson Davis just dropped out due to a sudden marriage that no one but the bartender who’d kept refilling Emerson’s glass in the Vegas club saw coming.

Still, she knew when to be cautious. “Exactly who did you ‘line up’ for me?”

“Peter Logan and his brother.” Peter Logan had two brothers as well as two sisters. Jordan paused significantly, as if waiting for a drumroll, before he finally said, “Eric.”

Eric.

Beautiful Eric.

Eric with the soulful brown eyes and thick, luscious brown hair. Eric who still, after all these years, popped up in her dreams just often enough to remind her that she had never quite gotten over that crush she’d had on him all those years ago.

Everyone had an impossible dream. Eric was hers. But dreams, Jenny had learned, did not arbitrarily come true, especially if you did nothing to make them come true. And she, un-swanlike as she was, had kept her distance from Eric Logan. The man was accustomed to drop-dead gorgeous women, a label she knew in her heart would never be applied to her, not even by a myopic, tender-hearted man.

She felt herself growing warm at the mere sound of Eric’s name. She really hoped that a blush wasn’t working its way up her neck to her face, although it probably was, if that look from the man seated against the wall, waiting to speak to her, was any indication.

“Jenny? Are you there?” Jordan asked as the silence stretched out between them.

She cleared her throat, silently calling herself a dunce. “You, um, you talked to them?”

“I talked to Peter. He suggested Eric join us, and thought that an appeal from you might cinch the deal.”

“Appeal to Eric,” she repeated as if in a trance.

“You might.”

And then she laughed. “Yeah, right.”

The next moment, she came to her senses and realized she’d taken that in the wrong context. God knew she would have given her right arm to appeal to Eric, but she wasn’t his type. She had far more of a chance of winning the Kentucky Derby than she had of appealing to Eric.

There was silence again and she was quick to remedy it. “You’re his best friend, Jordan. You talk to him.”

“Can’t.”

“Why?”

“Because, as his best friend, Eric wouldn’t be uncomfortable saying no to me. But he won’t say no to you. Especially since his parents have donated a considerable amount of money to your cause as well as to the Children’s Connection,” he told her, mentioning the name of the adoption organization associated with both Portland General Hospital and PAN itself. “He just needs a little convincing.”

She knew all about the Logans’ generosity, as well as what Eric did and didn’t do. She made it a point to keep tabs on him, even if he was completely unattainable. “And you think I can do that.”

“Hey, you’re the chairlady. I can’t do all your work for you. Besides, you’re the one who can argue the ears off an Indian Elephant.”

She supposed that was a compliment, although she’d had better. “Lovely image.”

“You’ll find him at Logan Corporation. I know he’s free this afternoon about one.” Jordan paused. “He’s expecting you.”

She was due in court by three o’clock. That gave her a small margin of time if she juggled it right and had lunch at her desk.

So what else was new?

Jenny felt her heart hammering as she echoed incredulously, “He’s expecting me?”

“Uh-huh. I told Eric that you might drop by to try to convince him to jump on the bandwagon, so to speak.”

Jenny felt her mouth becoming completely dry. That was because all the moisture in her body had suddenly rerouted itself straight to her hands and then condensed there.

She heard herself saying with more than a little disbelief, “Then I guess one o’clock it is.”

“Great. Talk to you about the details later.”

She wasn’t sure if her brother was referring to the details involved in his taking part in the auction, or the details of what was probably going to prove to be her latest mortifying experience, but she didn’t have the opportunity to ask. Jordan had hung up.

Gripping both sides of the desk, she rose from behind it on shaky legs that had suddenly been rented out to someone else. In a gait she knew had to approximate that of Frankenstein’s monster as he took his first unattended steps, she began to cross to the hall.

“Hey, your next appointment is here,” Betty hissed to her as Jenny strode past the younger woman’s cluttered desk.

Jenny didn’t even spare Betty a look. She couldn’t. Moving her head to the left or right might carry dangerous consequences with it.

“Tell them I’ll be right back.”

Getting accustomed to her new wooden legs, Jenny quickened her steps as she hurried to the bathroom. To throw up.

For a second after she exited the cab, Jenny stood on the curb, looking up at the tall edifice before her. The building that was owned by and housed the Logan Corporation. With effort, she gathered together the last drops of her courage. She needed all the help she could get.

Despite her last appointment running over, she’d made it to the Logan Corporation building with a few minutes to spare.

All the way over to the shining thirty-story edifice she had practiced what she was going to say to Eric once she was alone with him. But, unlike when she was preparing to deliver summations in court, no amount of rehearsal seemed to improve her performance. The moment she went through her arguments, they melted from her brain like lone snowflakes out on a June sidewalk.

He was just a man, she told herself as she rode up the elevator to his floor. Two legs, two arms, one body in between to hold the limbs together. Beneath his tanned skin he had the same skeletal structure as millions of other men.

But oh, that skin, Jenny caught herself thinking. And growing warmer.

This thinking was going to get her nowhere. Worse, if she wasn’t careful, it would lose the auction a potential and incredibly desirable bachelor. The fewer bachelors, the less money would be raised. Any fool could see that having Eric Logan on the block would raise the organization a very pretty penny.

There were no two ways about it. She had to think of him as just another body.

Focus, focus, she ordered herself as she stepped off the elevator and walked down the hallway to the inner sanctum that was the gateway to his office.

His office lay just behind the massive double doors. As the VP of Marketing & Sales for the Logan Corporation, Eric occupied an impressive suite. She had no doubts that the entire staff of Advocate Aid, Inc. could easily fit into it with room to spare, desks and all.

She presented herself to the keeper of the gate. “I’m Jennifer Hall. Mr. Logan is expecting me.”

Unlike Betty, who came to work in jeans that had seen a better century, the woman she addressed looked as if she had been forged out of a mold that was labeled: Perfect Secretary.

The woman smiled distantly but politely, then checked a list before her.

“Yes, he is,” she replied coolly. “If you’ll come this way.” Rising to her feet, the secretary led the way back. She knocked on the door, then turned the knob, opening the door just wide enough to allow Jenny to slip through. “Ms. Hall to see you, sir.”

Nodding her thanks to the woman, Jenny crossed the threshold. When the door closed again behind her, Jenny concentrated on not sinking to the floor in a heap.

She looked like the personification of efficiency, Eric thought as he rose to his feet to greet Jenny. Every light brown hair was pulled back and in place, except for one wayward wisp at her right temple that seemed to have rebelliously disengaged itself from the rest.

It made her look more human, he thought, his eyes sweeping over the rest of her. Jordan’s sister was wearing a light gray suit that appeared just large enough to hide her figure.

Was there a figure beneath all that, or was she shapeless?

Didn’t matter one way or another. He reminded himself that this was his best friend’s sister and not another conquest to be won over. This was strictly business, not pleasure. If anything, he was doing a favor for a friend. A friend to whom he’d ultimately lost a handball game to yesterday.

“Sit down.” He gestured toward the comfortable chair before his desk.

“Thank you for seeing me.”

The words were uttered slowly, distinctly. She wasn’t enunciating so much as trying to work around a tongue that felt as if it had swollen to three times its normal size. Sitting, she leaned her briefcase against the back of the desk and placed her hands on either armrest, praying she wouldn’t leave damp streaks on them. Her palms felt as if they were more than one half water.

Taking a deep breath, she launched into her campaign, fervently hoping she wouldn’t sound like a blithering idiot to him.

“I realize that your time is precious, Eric—” She could call him Eric, couldn’t she? After all, they did go way back, technically. “But this is a very worthy cause.” Her palms grew damper, her speech rate increased. “Since 1989, PAN—that’s the Parent Adoption Network—has been able to help—”

Was she trying to convince him? he wondered. He was under the impression, after talking to Jordan, that this was a done deal. “Yes.”

The single word pulled her up short. She felt like someone slamming on the brake and skidding back and forth along the road, trying not to hit something. “Yes?”

Was there something he wasn’t getting? Or had Jordan failed to tell her that he had agreed to this? “Yes, I’ll be part of the bachelor auction. That’s what you were leading up to, wasn’t it?”

“Yes.” She blew out a breath, her mind a sudden blank with nothing available in the immediate area with which to fill it. She flushed. “Wow, that certainly takes the wind out of my sails.”

He found pink was an appealing color on her. Maybe she wasn’t quite as plain as how she first came across. Jenny did have beautiful blue eyes. “Why? Didn’t you want me to say yes?”

“Yes.” She liked the sound of that word in her ear, the taste of it on her tongue. Yes… There were so many scenarios she wanted Eric and herself to agree on….

Yanking herself out of her mental revelry, she tried to backtrack. She wasn’t going to suffer death by headache today. No, if she was going to die today, it was going to be death by sheer idiocy. “I mean, I’ve been looking for the right words to persuade you, practicing speeches.” Because Eric was looking at her so intently, she flushed again. She tried not to contemplate what was going through his mind. “The cabby must have thought I was crazy.”

“Cabby?”

Jenny nodded. “I had to take a cab to get here. Actually, I had to take a cab to get anywhere today. My car died.” She felt her tongue tangling more and more and waved a hand at her words. She’d gone off on a tangent again. It was what happened when her brain wasn’t operating properly. “Never mind, you don’t want to hear about that.”

Eric smiled at her. Jenny found her knees dissolving like sugar cubes in a hot cup of coffee. Any second now she was going to turn into a complete puddle.

“I’ve been subjected to worse things,” he confided. Glancing over at his day planner, Eric made a decision. “Why don’t we grab a cup of coffee somewhere and talk over exactly what you want me to do?”

Oh, if you only knew. Jenny grabbed her thoughts before they could bolt from the corral and go off running.

This was a bad idea, she thought.

Her confidence didn’t come into play in this arena the way it did when she was in the courtroom. There she was completely prepared, knew her case’s strengths, its weaknesses. Here, the only weakness she was acutely aware of was her own.

This wasn’t about her, Jenny upbraided herself. This was about charity. She had to stop thinking like an adolescent and start thinking and behaving like the mature twenty-six-year-old woman she was. A twenty-six-year-old woman who was a damn good attorney and had graduated at the top of her class within a highly competitive academic forum.

A twenty-six-year old woman-slash-attorney who was turning into mush while looking up into warm chocolate-brown eyes that reminded her of her favorite pudding.

Enough.

Exercising tremendous self-control, Jenny forced herself to think practically, not an easy matter under the circumstances. She had to be in court by three, which meant she needed to be inside a cab by two-fifteen. That in turn meant calling a cab by one forty-five. Since it was a little after one o’clock now, that gave her approximately forty-five minutes.

Forty-five minutes to bask in Eric Logan’s smile and try very, very hard not to behave like a living brain donor. It was a challenge.

“Sounds good to me.” She slowly peeled the words off the roof of her mouth one by one.

The next moment, Jenny looked away from the even wider smile that was now gracing Eric’s lips. She had to. She knew she wasn’t about to regain the use of her knees any other way.