Читать книгу Emmy And The Boss - Penny McCusker - Страница 6

Promptly at 8:00 a.m. the following Monday Emmy pushed through the door of Porter and Son, Inc., Practical Jokes and Everyday Gags, and presented herself at the desk of the receptionist. Her name plate said Stella, the expression on her face said she sampled the company’s products on a regular basis and found them highly entertaining, and she was eager to help, which she displayed by saying, “Can I help you?” and folding her hands together as if she were praying Emmy would say yes.

She was so bubbly Emmy took an involuntary step backward, worried the woman might overflow cheerfulness all over her new gray suit. “I’m here to see Nick Porter,” she said, and she handed over a business card—which was where the day began to go south.

Emmy knew her day had just headed south because this was the point at which her first day on a new job always began to go south. The instant they found out who she was.

Stella read the card, then turned it over as if she expected to see a smiley face on the back. And when she didn’t find a “just kidding,” or a disclaimer, or a mitigating explanation of any kind, she looked up at Emmy, mouth agape, eyes wide and filled with horrified fascination, not quite believing anyone was brazen enough to walk bald-faced into a perfectly respectable place of business with a card that read—

“Efficiency Expert,” Stella said, her personality morphing from bubbly to…another word that started with b. “Mr. Porter isn’t here.”

Emmy consulted her watch. Eight-oh-five. No surprise there. “I’ll wait,” she said, hoping Nick would make an appearance soon. Stella looked as though she was sucking on a pickle, and she’d already proven herself the kind of woman who didn’t come equipped with a filter between her feelings and the rest of the world.

“It could be some time before Mr. Porter shows—uh, arrives,” Stella said, frowning when Emmy appropriated one of the faux-leather lobby chairs for her briefcase and the other for her backside. “In fact, I’m almost sure Mr. Porter is out of the city this morning. Far out of the city. Visiting our rubber supplier.”

Emmy lifted her eyes from the paperwork she’d pulled out of her briefcase. “Rubber supplier?”

“Whoopee cushions, balloons, paddle balls. Rubber. What did you think I was talking about?”

A joke that took nine months to get to the punch line. “Nothing,” Emmy said.

“Perhaps you’d like to come back another time. Or better yet, you could call and speak with Mr. Porter. If he’s interested, he’ll set up an appointment.”

Yeah, like that call would go through. “We have—we had—an eight o’clock appointment today.”

A fact he obviously hadn’t shared with his secretary, and if he wasn’t going to tell anyone why he’d hired an efficiency expert, then neither was Emmy. There was no point in trying to ingratiate herself, anyway. No matter what she did, it wouldn’t put a dent in the hostility factor. Employees generally took an immediate dislike to efficiency experts, thinking they came equipped with pink slips and a one-track mind when it came to prettying up a company’s bottom line.

In the current climate of corporate downsizing Emmy could understand the paranoia, but her job was to make the company run more efficiently. It was up to management to decide how to deal with the results. To her mind, the best way to use up the extra capacity that came along with running more efficiently was to increase sales. Unfortunately that took time, and most owners chose to trim payroll until they reached a point where increased sales demanded additional help. And wasn’t it convenient to have an efficiency expert right there to blame?

Nick Porter didn’t seem like that kind of guy, although Emmy had no idea how in the world she’d come up with that assessment of his character after a half-hour-long meeting that had started off strange and grown stranger. Toward the end of it she’d begun to wonder exactly why he’d hired her. At best he’d seemed ambivalent about signing the contract. On the other hand he’d seemed a little too eager to have her around—and not in a professional capacity. He definitely hadn’t looked at her like a man who was hiring a consultant.

She must have lost her mind—she had lost her mind—but she’d really liked the way he’d looked at her.

“He has a girlfriend.”

Emmy wiped the dreamy smile off her face, adding way too observant to Stella’s list of character traits, and crazy to her own.

She had no business thinking about Nick like that when she was still dealing with the aftermath of Roger—Okay, she allowed, that was a bit of an overstatement. She hadn’t thought of Roger more than once or twice in the last couple of days, and she couldn’t say she was all that broken up. It was more of an irritation, actually. Her real problem was the wedding guests. She didn’t know what to tell them. She’d thought about that a lot—until it occurred to her that almost all of them were from Roger’s side, and he could deal with his own friends and relatives.

That harmless bit of retribution felt so good she’d decided to take it another step, namely the wedding itself. She’d made all the arrangements for the ceremony and reception, and since Roger was the one who’d backed out, and the deposit checks had been written against his bank account anyway, he could unarrange it all. And since she was going to dump that unpleasant task on him, the truth was Roger didn’t really leave much of an aftermath.

But she had learned something from him. Stay away from men. She could barely form lasting friendships with women. What made her think she could have an actual long-term relationship with a man? Men were a whole other species.

Not that it was going to be an issue, because she’d already decided to keep her interaction with Nick Porter on a strictly business level. Polite but firm, that was the ticket. Cool and competent and professional. And the next time he looked at her like she was the only woman in the world, or smiled at her like she was the fulfillment of all his fantasies, she was going to tell him—

Nick walked through one of the two doorways beyond Stella’s desk, stopped in front of Emmy, and looked at her with that unnerving intensity. She couldn’t have finished her thought with paste-on letters and explicit instructions.

“Good, you’re here,” he said, and when she simply sat there, he gathered her papers and briefcase, took her by the elbow, and ushered her through the other door behind Stella’s desk. It led to his office, and he talked the whole way. “Tripod went missing this morning. He’s my next-door neighbor’s dog and he only has three legs—the dog, I mean. My neighbor has the usual two.”

He paused expectantly, but Emmy was speechless, and it had nothing to do with the combined leg count of Nick’s neighbor and his dog. She’d forgotten how darned handsome he was. And how warm she felt when he smiled at her.

“Anyway,” he continued, “by the time Tripod turned up I was blocked in because the Martins across the street were getting new dining-room furniture, and I didn’t have the heart to make them move the truck. They’ve been waiting forever for that furniture, so I figured it would be faster to help them unload it instead. And then I had to take another shower.”

And the truly amazing part, at least to Emmy’s mind, was that Nick knew the names of all his neighbors, and their pets and their furniture-buying habits. Nor was it confined to his neighbors.

“When I finally got here I realized Marty Henshaw was late—probably trouble with his car again—so line one was down, and I filled in for a half hour.” He sniffed at his armpit. “Do you think I need another shower?”

“No, you smell pretty…” she said before she could stop herself. “Uh, you’re fine.”

“Pretty fine,” Nick said. “I’ll take that.”

Okay, don’t look at him, Emmy lectured herself. Eye contact with Nick Porter wasn’t in her best interest. Concentrating on work was. “This person who was late—”

“Marty Henshaw. Gosh you look pretty this morning.”

Emmy tried to hold it together, but a sigh slipped out. This situation called for drastic action. She took a sheet of paper from her briefcase and handed it to him. “This is a basic questionnaire, Mr. Porter—”

“Nick.” He brushed a curl off her forehead, his finger grazing her skin.

She began to tremble. And panic. “We have to get a couple of things straight. I’m here to do a job. There’ll be no more compliments and no more touching. And no more smiling.”

He wiped the smile off his face, but the corners of his mouth twitched suspiciously. Emmy got the distinct impression he wasn’t taking her seriously.

“How about after hours?” he asked. “Can I smile then?”

“After hours you can smile at anybody you want. But it won’t be me.”

That did it. The smile was gone completely. Emmy missed it. “I’m sorry, that was rude.”

His eyes began to warm up.

“But I meant it,” she said. “We have to keep business and…”

“Pleasure separate? No problem.”

“No pleasure,” she said firmly, adding watch my words to her mental list of rules governing how to deal with Nick Porter. “There’s only going to be business.”

“Why?”

“Because.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“It’s the only one I have. I don’t want to get involved in anything personal, and since my reasons are, well, personal,” not to mention confusing, even to her, “I’m not getting into them.”

“It’s Roger, isn’t it?”

No. Definitely not Roger. But if she said that, Nick would want to know the real reason. Emmy didn’t know the real reason, but she knew there was fear involved. A lot of fear. And if something about Nick Porter scared her that much, it could only be in her best interest to keep her distance. “I’m madly in love with Roger, and he broke my heart,” she said. “It wouldn’t be fair to get involved with anyone else.”

“Nope. That’s not it.”

“Yes, it is.”

“You only think it’s because of Roger, but really it’s because of me.”

“Because of you?”

“I’m irresistible.”

Emmy knew it would only encourage him, but she couldn’t help laughing.

“It’s true,” he insisted. “Look at me.”

He spread his hands and she followed directions. It wasn’t eye contact, but it wasn’t any less dangerous. He was attractive, no doubt about it, and he was tall which, being tall herself, Emmy considered a definite plus. And he obviously kept in shape; he wasn’t exactly dressed for the executive suite, but if he looked that good in Dockers, he’d be killer in a suit. And she’d be dead meat.

But it wasn’t just his face and body. Nick Porter had that thing, that indefinable quality that made actors movie stars and pretty girls supermodels. You just wanted to be around him, Emmy concluded, and talk to him and look at him. It didn’t make any sense, but that was why they called it the X-factor. There weren’t any words descriptive enough to give it an actual name.

“I’m entertaining, too,” he said, taking her long perusal and the resulting silence as agreement. “I’m funny and dependable—”

“No, you’re not. We’ve only met twice and you’ve been late both times.”

“You’re right, I just said that because I thought it would appeal to an efficiency expert. But punctuality is highly overrated. There’s more to life than work.”

“I know.” She just didn’t like any of the other parts. “But work is what we’re supposed to be doing right now. Besides, you have a girlfriend, and I doubt she’d appreciate your efforts to appeal to me.”

“Let me guess, Stella told you that. She thinks every woman I meet is after my money.”

“You don’t have any money. Your business is in debt.”

“I know. That’s why you’re here. Who would’ve thought being broke would turn into such an advantage? Although I have to admit I’m not actually broke. I have a trust fund.”

“So women are after your money.”

“Sometimes. But the important thing is you’re not, and since I’m not currently dating anyone except you—”

“We’re not dating.”

“Yet. We will be. Eventually I’ll wear you down, and before you know it you’ll be introducing me to your parents. Once I meet your mom you’re toast. Moms love me.”

Emmy didn’t say anything, but she made sure her expression was blank. She didn’t exactly dwell on her childhood, or the foster homes, but she didn’t have any trouble with the memories, either. Her parents—her mother especially—was the one area of her past she couldn’t bear to think about. It hurt too much.

“I said something wrong.”

“My parents are dead.” It looked as though he might reach for her, so Emmy eased away from him. “It happened a long time ago. I barely remember them, and it’s personal. I’m here to talk about your business. Do you want to save it?”

For a minute she didn’t think he was going to respect her boundaries—or agree with her. But then he nodded and she was able to relax. As much, she figured, as she’d ever be able to relax around Nick.

“Good, then let’s get started.”