The Millionaire And The Glass Slipper

Chapter Three

“You can’t find anything on Jared Taylor?”

“Not a thing,” Amy replied. She set a glass of water and two vitamin-C tablets on Candace’s desk blotter. Candace had buzzed her moments ago, announced that her throat felt scratchy and that she could not afford to come down with a cold, and asked Amy to bring her whatever was available to fend it off.

Grabbing the glass, she downed the tablets. “That doesn’t make any sense,” she insisted, the moment she’d swallowed. “The man said he’s been an architect for years. There has to be a record of him somewhere.”

The Taylor file was open in front of her. Watching Candace’s frown slip to the colorful logos the team would soon present, Amy picked up the empty glass herself.

Candace wore a new black suit today. She wore black well. With her pale hair brushing her shoulders, the contrast was stunning. So was the suit. The short jacket was fastened by half a dozen short, narrow gold chains. Small gold chains linked the buttons at the cuffs. Amy had noticed earlier that the new black sling-back heels she wore were embellished with gold-toned buckles. The look was polished, yet with just enough of an edge to make others take notice. With Jared Taylor on her schedule, she had clearly dressed to impress.

Amy was more interested in undoing the impression she was afraid she’d made on him. Determined to appear totally professional herself, she had chosen a black skirt to wear that morning, too, along with a tailored white silk, French-cuffed blouse that she never would have been able to afford had it not been on sale. She’d thought about wearing heels, only to ax the idea even as she’d reached for a pair of black flats. If she wore heels, not only would her feet be killing her by noon with all the running around she did in the course of a day, but everyone would want to know what the occasion was. Since the only other appointments that day were with a client and vendors who were frequently in and out of the office, Jared’s presence would be the logical conclusion to draw.

No one knew she’d been stuck in the elevator with him. No one knew she’d been stuck at all. When she’d returned that afternoon, everyone had been buzzing about the power having gone out. Everyone had also seemed to assume that she’d already left the building and missed all the excitement.

That was fine with her. Especially since the last thing she wanted now was for anyone to think that he had made any particular impression on her at all. Most especially since Candace had staked her claim. She’d heard her on the phone with one of her girlfriends only an hour ago. Candace had declined an invitation to lunch because she had an “extremely hot” new client coming in and wanted to keep the time-slot open in case he suggested doing lunch himself.

Though they tended to be polar opposites of each other in interests, tastes and temperament, Amy had always been a little in awe of Candace. What the woman wanted, the woman usually got.

Not, Amy mentally insisted, that she was all that interested in Jared herself. She’d admit that not a day had gone by that she hadn’t found herself reliving that hour in the elevator with him. Specifically, the moments when he’d held her and reminded her ever so briefly of the sense of security she so desperately missed. But mostly what she felt for him was a certain sympathy for whatever it was he was losing—or had lost—that had caused him to strike out on his own.

“I’m sure there’s a record somewhere, too,” Amy agreed. “I just need to know more about him to get it. Like I told you the other day, there are several Jared Taylors with various initials listed with Dun and Bradstreet, but none are architects. Same with the credit reporting companies,” she continued, only half-focused on the conversation. Needing to return a call, she glanced at her watch, took a step toward the door. “If you’ll get his full name and an address other than the post office box in Seattle that he gave us, I’ll probably have better luck.”

Pulling a small, compact mirror from her top drawer, Candace quickly checked her lipstick. “Will do. I’m not concerned about the agency getting paid,” she insisted. “We already have his retainer. I’ve just never gone into a preliminary presentation without more background information on a client. I think we’ve done a great job considering what we had to work with,” she concluded, confident as always. “I just wish we’d had more.” The compact snapped shut as she rose to pace. “Did you check international? Maybe nothing turned up here because he works out of the country.”

Obtaining background information on a client was standard operating procedure for the agency. Aside from making sure the client could pay his bills, information about a client’s business history, contacts and vendors could help better serve the client’s needs. That was why Amy had fully intended to research the international possibility yesterday. The day had totally gotten away from her, though. Jill had decided to have her living room furniture reupholstered while she attended a weeklong industry conference in Hawaii. It had taken Amy all day to get her organized, procure samples of the fabrics she’d ordered to make sure the bolt colors still blended with her carpeting, and get her to the airport for her six o’clock flight. First thing that morning, she’d had to let the men from the upholstery company in to pick up a sofa, two overstuffed chairs and an ottoman.

The agency was also still without a receptionist until Jill found the sort of young and attractive candidate she felt personified the agency’s progressive image—which meant Amy was doing her job and the receptionist’s, too. And would be until after Jill returned.

There’s no one I trust more to make sure everything will go smoothly, Amy remembered Jill telling her as the porter had unloaded luggage from Amy’s trunk. Sometimes I don’t know what Candace and I would do without you.

Amy had thought at the time that if she trusted her that much, she’d let her hire a new receptionist herself—at least a temporary one. But Jill didn’t feel that temps had a place on their tightly knit little team. In her defense, the woman did have a real knack for finding the right people for the job.

“I haven’t checked international on him yet. But I can’t imagine I’ll get anything more without a full name and address.”

Her own curiosity about the lack of information on Jared was on temporary hold. The bulk of her interest that morning was with the director of the care facility where her grandma lived. The woman had called wanting to talk to her about something “unfortunate,” just as Candace had buzzed for her the first time.

Amy’d barely had a chance to make sure that her grandmother hadn’t fallen or had been otherwise harmed before Candace had come out insisting that she needed her to fix the projector in the conference room ASAP for the Taylor presentation. That had been an hour ago and she’d been running ever since.

“Your notes in the file only indicate that his work is in Europe and Asia,” Amy reminded her. Both were rather large continents. “Which countries should I check?”

“I have no idea.” Nervous energy now had Jill’s daughter moving from her desk to the window and back again. “I know I asked where he was working, but the subject got changed somehow. I’ll ask him again when I see him.”

“Is that all, then?”

“Is the projector fixed?”

“The conference room is all ready for you.”

“Can you pick up my dry cleaning on your lunch hour?”

“Sure,” Amy murmured, too accustomed to such requests to consider the imposition on her personal time.

With a quick smile, Candace snatched her empty Kelton & Associates coffee mug and handed it to Amy to get it off her desk. “Oh, and when he gets here, give me a few minutes with him before you alert the rest of the team. I’ll buzz you when I’m ready for you to call everyone else.”

Holding the mug, Amy acknowledged the request with the lift of her chin, grabbed the water glass and headed into the hall. Another glance at her watch told her she had ten minutes before Jared Taylor’s appointment. In theory that gave her enough time to make her call to the director now.

“Hey, Amy.” Eric Burke, their electronic media director, strode toward her, five feet ten inches of faintly flamboyant creativity in navy worsted and cranberry cable knit.

“Hey, Eric.”

“Where are you going for lunch?”

“Martinotti’s.” It was closest to the cleaners.

He turned as they passed, still talking as he walked backward. “Bring me back a turkey on multigrain, everything but mayo?”

“No problem,” she assured him, now walking backward, too.

“By the way, love the schoolgirl look you’ve got going there.”

Schoolgirl? she thought. That was so not the image she’d had in mind for today. With a grimace she muttered, “Thanks.”

Savannah poked her head out of her office, her sharp wedge of cinnamon-red hair swinging. “You’re making a deli run?”

Amy barely noted the graphic artist’s hopeful expression before her backward progress was halted by hands on her upper arms. Amber Thuy, one of Savannah’s crew, stepped around her. “I’d love a salad, if you are. Which deli?”

“Martinotti’s,” Eric called, and disappeared into the supply room.

Glancing behind her to make sure she wouldn’t back into anyone else, Amy kept going. “Write down what you want and I’ll order it,” she told the women. “Right now I need to make a call.”

She got a thumbs-up from Savannah, a quick “Thanks” from Amber and hurried into the break room to deposit mug and glass in the sink. Reminding herself to wash them later, she headed to the front desk and punched out the number for Elmwood House, the facility her grandma lived in, before anyone else could delay her.

Kay Colman, the facility’s director, immediately came on the line. Just as she did, the main office door opened.

Jared Taylor walked in, six feet, two inches of long, lean masculinity in a charcoal turtleneck and a tailored black leather jacket. His quicksilver eyes flicked from his watch to the clock on the wall. With the command of a man with an agenda to keep, he kept coming, his focus shifting to where she sat at the reception desk with the phone to her ear.

Her glance had stalled on his broad chest. Realizing that, she jerked her focus to his face to acknowledge him and turned her attention back to her call. Now was not a good time to think about how he’d held her there, next to all that hard, solid muscle.

“I’m so sorry,” she murmured into the phone, “would you hold for just a moment please.”

Suddenly aware of her heartbeat, she put the director on hold. She just wasn’t sure if her pulse felt uneven because of the hesitation and concern she’d just heard in the director’s voice, or because of the easy way Jared smiled at her as he walked up to her desk.

“How’s the weather?”

“The weather?”

“The black cloud that was following you around. You said bad days get better,” he reminded her, sounding as if he might have doubted her optimism somehow. “I just wondered if yours did.”

A faint smile formed. “I think you witnessed the worst of it.”

Torn between her need to get back to the woman waiting on the phone and wanting to know if he was feeling better about the venture that had brought him there, she glanced back to the telephone console. The line she’d just put on hold was blinking. Candace’s line was lit.

“You’re busy.” Sounding as if he might have had something else to say, he nodded toward the hall. “Is she in?”

“She’s on the phone.” He didn’t look any more enthused, she decided. If anything, he just looked tired. “If you want to have a seat, I’m sure she won’t be long.”

The overhead lights caught the gray silvering the dark hair at his temples as he gave her a preoccupied nod. Preoccupied herself, she pulled her attention from his broad shoulders when he turned and reconnected herself with Kay.

“I’m sorry,” she repeated, her voice hushed. “You said earlier that my grandmother is okay.” Her voice dropped another notch. “If she is, then what’s the matter?”

From the corner of one eye, J.T. saw Amy slowly rise from her chair at the curved Lucite desk. He didn’t know if she was trying to keep him from overhearing what she said, or if what she’d just heard had just caught her off guard. Either way, there was no mistaking the disbelief entering the quiet tones of her voice.

“Close? The whole facility?” She paused, listened. “But you said drastic changes aren’t good for her.”

For a long moment she said nothing else as whoever was on the other end of the line etched concern deeper into the delicate lines of her face.

She had her back to the reception area. Her hand covered her face as she rubbed two fingers against her forehead. Even turned away from anyone who might have walked through, there was no mistaking the unease she couldn’t quite mask. That disquiet was in the hushed tones of her voice when she spoke again, and in the furrows of her brow when she turned to write on a notepad.

It was feeling his own brow pinch that made J.T. aware of how blatantly he was eavesdropping on her conversation. He’d caught enough of Amy’s side of it to realize something was going on with the grandmother she was working to support. Edna, he remembered, was the woman’s name. She’d mentioned that while she was trying not to panic in the elevator.

There wasn’t much he didn’t remember about her. More, specifically, about their conversation. He just didn’t want to think about how accurate her insight had been about the new company he might—or might not—start. Or about how he was now feeling the definite need to get on his sloop and disappear for a few days, thanks to how she’d so perfectly described the freedom he felt when it was just him and the water. He would overlook the fact that he’d found no peace in the solitude of the island the last few times he’d been there, and that the challenge of fighting the wind had…lacked. Those were aberrations, he was sure. As it was, he had no spare time to indulge himself. Not for at least a month. With as much as he had to do between now and then, that month felt as if it was a year away.

Telling himself that what he’d overheard was none of his business, he turned his attention to the Blackberry he’d pulled from his pocket and started to check his messages. He’d spent the past eight days in Seattle in conferences with Gray, avoiding Harry and shuffling personnel in his department to make sure the schedule for the warehouse expansions there and in Jansen, Washington, would be met. It was a point of pride with him to come in on time with every project he undertook. The more challenging the project, the better.

High-stakes anything had always attracted him. It didn’t matter if it was sports, cards or real estate. He worked as hard as he played, and much to the bafflement of his infinitely more cerebral father, he freely admitted being drawn to just about anything legal that involved a risk. His reputation for being a player worked well for him in business. Anyone who knew him, knew him as the master of the deal, the man who never flinched. They also knew that where his professional obligations were concerned, he was ruthless in seeing they were met. As for personal obligations, he simply didn’t allow them. He’d felt let down too many times himself to want to disappoint anyone counting on him to be there for them.

With the Seattle project on track, his main focus now was the HuntCom campus outside New Delhi. The expansion there was scheduled for completion next year. Not that falling behind schedule might even matter. With his future hanging on him and his brothers finding brides, it was entirely possible he wouldn’t see that or any other HuntCom project to completion.

Which was all the more reason he should have called Candace for dinner, he mentally muttered. He just hadn’t had the time to come back to Portland until now.

“There’s nothing you can do to get the funds?”

His focus sharpened on the distress in Amy’s furtive tones as she asked how much the person on the other end of her line was talking about. He just couldn’t hear what else she said in the moments before he realized he was eavesdropping again.

Giving up on his messages, he saw her nod as she murmured something into the phone. Her short hair feathered around her face. From what he could see of her profile, her dark eyes looked huge and worried. But it was the strain in her voice that truly betrayed her concern. She seemed more worried now than she had stuck ten floors up in an elevator.

Or so he was thinking when he heard her tell her caller that there had to be something they could do, that she would get back to her when she thought of it, then punched a button on the console to say, “Mr. Taylor is here. Would you like me to bring him back?”

With a quiet, “Okay,” she hung up the phone and took a deep breath. As if totally accustomed to burying her concerns in the time it took most people to blink, she turned a calm smile in his direction.

“Candace will be right out.”

He couldn’t help wonder how often she was required to make that sort of emotional transition. Suspecting from its ease that she’d had considerable practice, he hitched at the knees of his slacks.

“No hurry,” he said, when he usually hated waiting.

He’d never been a man to sit and speculate when an answer was available. He wanted to know what was going on with her; what it was putting the strain in her pretty smile. Figuring the time they’d spent stumbling upon bits of each other’s respective baggage in the elevator allowed him a little license, he was about to ask.

He’d barely approached her desk when Candace emerged in the hallway.

“Jared, I’m so sorry to keep you waiting. It’s good to see you again.”

His intent interrupted, he offered Amy a distracted smile of his own and moved toward her stepsister. The ad exec in the black designer suit moved with the long, leggy grace of a model. She had everything going for her. Beauty. Hair. Dazzling smile. Being male, he couldn’t help but notice it all. Still vaguely preoccupied with her younger stepsister behind him at the desk, that was as far as his thoughts strayed.

“You, too,” he replied, mentally shuffling priorities back to his plan. “You have my preview ready?”

“We have some ideas we’d like to share with you,” she confirmed. “You understand this is all preliminary.”

“Understood.”

“Amy?” Candace arched one perfectly shaped eyebrow. “Will you have the team meet us in the conference room in five minutes, please?”

What J.T. figured would take ten minutes took twenty. The concept and design team presented him with options for logos, all of which were projected on a screen accompanied by an impressive power-point presentation of how each had been designed to make a different statement about him and his own designs. He was offered catch phrases, all incorporating variations of the buzzwords he’d liked when Candace had asked him if he had a mission statement.

He was asked if he would supply photos of buildings he’d designed and executed. Their Web master wanted to catalog them on the Web site he’d mocked up. The art director felt that taking a particularly unusual or impressive element from one of his structures would make a nice background for print copy.

There was more. All of it well done, considering how little he’d given them to work with, a point that was raised ever so tactfully by the quick, decidedly enthusiastic Candace. The woman was clearly a motivating force with her team. The collective effort of that team for the success of the client seemed to be what counted to her. It was also what impressed him most about her right then. He just found himself too distracted through much of the presentation to feel more than polite interest in the offerings. First by the way she dangled one high-heeled shoe from her toes. But mostly by the curiosity and the odd concern he felt for the young woman who was again on the phone when Candace finally escorted him back to the reception area.

On the desk in front of her, Amy had the Yellow Pages open to Realtors. From what he could hear her saying about needing to “get it on the market as soon as possible,” it seemed she was arranging to sell a house.

Candace was talking, too. With his attention divided, he nearly missed the blonde’s question about how long he would be in town.

“I know you have to return to the project you’re working on in Singapore,” she said, trying to catch his eye. “But I can have my assistant make the contract changes we discussed and have the amendment ready for you to sign first thing in the morning. If you’ll still be here,” she added, hinting.

Singapore. She had pressed, politely, to know where he was now working. Since he’d had to come up with a place, he’d mentioned the location everyone at HuntCom thought would be the next logical place to develop a presence. He’d been to that thriving city and he would, hopefully, start checking out potential real estate soon. So he’d let her and the team think he was working on a complex there for a client who didn’t wish to be identified until the project was complete.

He hadn’t wanted her digging around for information on him in India. He had no idea if his name had appeared in any of the business newspapers in New Delhi lately or what the translations would say if it had. There were employees in the company paid to keep track of any mention of HuntCom or those connected with it, but that wasn’t the sort of thing he stayed on top of himself.

He also hadn’t wanted to supply them with pictures of his former projects, all of which could be identified as HuntCom properties. But that had been easier to finesse. He’d simply told the truth; that the properties were designed under the name of the partnership he would soon be leaving. While the designs were his, they were owned by the partnership and he wasn’t at liberty to use the images on his own.

Candace’s people weren’t happy about not having art. But then, he figured they were even. He wasn’t too happy with the reason he’d had to come to them in the first place.

The reminder of why he was being forced to have a fallback company also reminded him he was losing time in his pursuit of a wife.

“I’m staying until tomorrow,” he finally told her, switching gears from Plan B. A muscle in his jaw jerked. He wasn’t at all comfortable with the subterfuge he was being forced to employ. “I have some other business I need to take care of here, so signing tomorrow works fine. If you’re free tonight, I’ll buy you a drink to toast the new campaign. If you’re available I could meet you about seven.”

She didn’t hesitate. Tipping her head, she smiled. “Seven will be perfect.”

“Can you suggest a place?”

“Where are you staying?”

He told her he was staying at The Benson, and caught the immediate, approving lift of her eyebrows at his choice of accommodations. He’d stayed at the beautiful old hotel with its venerable architecture and refined service the last time he’d been there. In one of their penthouses.

His accommodations weren’t quite as spacious now, though. When he’d checked in before, he hadn’t been thinking about the Bride Hunt or the rule about the prospective woman not knowing he had money. This time, he was in a decidedly more modest junior suite. Just in case he invited Candace up.

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