Out of Hours...Boardroom Seductions

She wrote the client’s choice in the book, hung up the phone and realized that Christo was standing in the door to his office staring at her.

“What?” she said.

He shook his head. “Three out of four of them couldn’t find the appointment book. Two of them said it should be on the computer.”

“My mother wouldn’t keep the primary schedule on the computer.”

“I know.” He rocked back and forth on his heels. For a moment he didn’t say anything else. Then he said, “Suppose you find the Duffy file then.”

“Did my mother file it?” Natalie asked.

He shrugged. “God knows.”

Life in the office got almost instantly better—and simultaneously worse.

It was better in the sense that Christo didn’t have to quit what he was doing to rescue and detraumatize young clients whom Tuesday’s martinet had pointed to chairs, fixed with a steely stare and commanded, “Sit there and don’t move.”

Natalie found the books and puzzles and toys her mother kept in the cabinet, and if a parent with children or a child he was representing had to wait for him, she saw that they were calm and engaged until Christo could see them.

She fielded phone calls without interrupting him. She took legible notes and reported conversations accurately. It took her a while to find the Duffy file—because it hadn’t been filed at all, but had been shuffled in with another case’s pre-trial motions.

When he was terse and demanding, which admittedly he sometimes was, she didn’t take it personally and burst into tears. She simply did what needed to be done. And more. When he missed lunch to attend a meeting, for example, he found a sandwich sitting on his desk when he got back.

As far as Christo could tell, by the end of the afternoon Natalie was up to speed and every bit as capable as her mother at juggling three opposing counsels, two cranky judges, one school social worker and, for all he knew, a partridge in a pear tree.

Workwise, then, Natalie Ross was everything he could ask for—her work wasn’t a problem at all.

Seeing her was.

When he opened the door to his office that afternoon, he felt an instant punch in the gut seeing Natalie at Laura’s desk. Her mother was an attractive woman, but Natalie was beautiful. And there was a light and a vitality about Natalie that took her beauty to a whole different level. She was smiling up at Madeleine Dirksen, one of his weepier clients, while at the same time bouncing Madeleine’s two-year-old on her knee.

“You can come in now,” he said to Madeleine.

“I’ll keep Jacob for you,” Natalie offered.

Madeleine gave her a grateful smile. “Would you mind?”

“Not at all,” Natalie assured her and slanted a quick glance in Christo’s direction. “He can help me file.”

Christo ushered Madeleine into his office, fully expecting to hear Jacob start howling or, before long, bookcases crashing. But no untoward sounds reached his ears. And when he and Madeleine emerged an hour later it was to find Natalie with the phone tucked between her ear and her shoulder while she scribbled notes with one hand and kept the other wrapped around Jacob who, thumb in his mouth, was sound asleep on her lap.

Madeleine blinked back her tears and gave her a wobbly wet smile. “Ah, wonderful.”

“He is,” Natalie agreed. “I’ll carry him out to your car if you’d like. That way he may not wake up.”

When she got back she had a question about one of the letters he’d wanted typed. “Here,” she said. “This doesn’t make sense to me.” She rattled off some of his legalese, pointing at it on the computer screen.

He crossed the room to have a look, and discovered that if the sight of Natalie rattled him, breathing in the scent of her distracted the hell out of him.

As he leaned over her shoulder to have a look at what she didn’t understand, he caught the scent of some wild-flowery sort of shampoo. Not a strong scent; it was barely evident, in fact. He stepped closer, breathed deeper. Shut his eyes.

“Did you leave a word out?” Natalie turned her head to look up at him so their faces were scant inches apart.

Christo jumped back. “What? What word?”

“I don’t know, do I?” she said with some aspersion. “You’re the one who’s writing the letter.”

“Er.” He had to step closer then to try to make sense of his words on the screen, to see what he’d been saying, to recapture his train of thought. And he caught another whiff of wildflowers. He stiffened and held his breath.

Natalie turned once more, her brows drawn together. “Are you catching a cold?”

“What?”

“You’re sniffling. Do you have allergies?”

“No, damn it. I don’t have allergies.” He spun away and stalked back into his office. “Forget it. I’ll do it tomorrow.”

“We’re working tomorrow?”

“Not you. Me.” He’d need his Saturday morning in the office just to catch up from the week’s earlier disasters—not to mention from proximity to Natalie.

He shut the door, sank into his chair and pinched the bridge of his nose. Why the hell had he ever asked her to find him a secretary?

Why the hell had she agreed to do it?

He knew the answers. Or at least the acceptable ones. But three more days of this?

Be careful what you wish for, his Brazilian grandmother always used to tell him.

Now he really understood exactly what she meant.

“You’re still here.” The words were more accusation than question. Christo, arms braced on either side of the open doorway, collar unbuttoned, tie loose, was glowering at her as if she were doing something wrong. “It’s past six o’clock.”

Natalie shrugged. “I still had work to do.” She forbore pointing out that he was still here, too. “My mother taught me not to leave things undone.” She picked up the last of the papers she was filing and concentrated on finding the proper folder in the drawer, not allowing herself to look again at the man across the room.

The theory behind vaccinations—the one that had brought her here to work for him today—was that if you introduced a small dose of something dire into your system, you would develop antibodies that would help you resist the Big Bad Real Thing.

Good idea for resisting polio and smallpox and influenza. It didn’t help with resisting Christo Savas one bit.

A little exposure to Christo simply made her want more. And the more chance she had to look at him, the more her eyes tried to follow his every move. The more he demanded, the more she was determined to prove equal to the task. And as he shoved away from the door and came toward her, she found herself leaning toward him.

God, was gravity against her, too?

Certainly her own inclinations were. Far from getting over him, she was as attracted as ever. Possibly more, because Christo the litigator had been a brilliant incisive attractive man. But this Christo, who took time with weeping women and who had spent half an hour putting a puzzle together with a shy little girl before he ever got her to say a word—this Christo was even more appealing. He was kind, he was compassionate. He was caring. He was human.

He was everything she’d once believed him to be—except available to fall in love with.

“I’m going now,” she said, slipping the last file into the correct folder and shutting the drawer with a firm push. She plucked her blazer off the coat rack and put it on, feeling a sudden need for armor again under the intensity of his hooded gaze. “You don’t want me to come in tomorrow?”

“No.”

That was certainly clear enough. “Right.” She picked up her briefcase. “Well, I’ll see you Monday, then.” She opened the door.

“Natalie.” Her name on his lips stopped her in her tracks. She looked back.

He sucked in a breath. “Your mother would be proud.”

She smiled faintly. “I hope so.”

She left quickly, closing the door behind her. Three years ago she thought she’d made the biggest mistake of her life. Today—coming to work for Christo—she wondered if she might have made a bigger one.

Saturdays were catch-up day.

Christo didn’t work at his office every Saturday. But when things piled up during the week and he needed quiet time to work out his arguments, to think outside the box and get new perspectives on cases, he headed for his office.

There were no clients demanding attention on Saturdays. There were no judges or other attorneys calling, and there were no household chores to distract him.

Saturday at the office was, hands-down, the best day and the best place for productive, intense, focused work.

Or it had been until now.

Now, the minute he walked in the door he caught a hint of Natalie’s elusive wildflower shampoo. Her handwriting was on a note on the top of his pile of things-to-do. He found himself prowling through his file drawers looking into folders she’d filed, studying notes she’d made. Ostensibly it was because he needed the information.

But he couldn’t quite lie to himself well enough to believe it didn’t have something to do with his preoccupation with Natalie.

He shut the file drawer and went back to his desk, but he didn’t sit down. He paced the length of his office and asked himself, not for the first time, what the hell it was about Natalie that got under his skin?

Or was it simply that she was the one who’d got away?

She didn’t get away, he reminded himself irritably. She’d turned up in his bed and he’d effectively tossed her out. End of story.

Except it wasn’t the end of the story. And however hard he tried to concentrate on the argument he was trying to write, memories of Natalie kept niggling in his brain.

Instead of an annoyance it was a relief when his cell phone rang to distract him. And when he saw the number calling his mood lightened at once. “Avó!”

“Ah, Christo. I miss you.”

The sound of his Brazilian grandmother’s voice could always make him smile. He missed her, too. “What’s up?”

She was a dynamo, his grandmother, always involved in a hundred different things. He tipped back in his chair now and put his feet on the desk, letting her voice carry him back to the place she called home. She told him about the crops—it was a farm as well as an estate of note these days. She told him all about her neighbors and the extended family and her many bridge games. She kept him up to date on where his father was.

“In Buenos Aires this week,” she said. “Last week in Paris.”

Par for the course as far as Christo was concerned. Xantiago Azevedo, whom he’d never called Dad or Papa or anything other than Xanti, the name on the back of his father’s soccer shirt, had been on the move all of Christo’s life.

He hadn’t even met his father until he was nearly six. And then it had been a surprise to both of them.

Xanti had come to play in a match in L.A., and he’d had a night to kill before his plane left for Sao Paulo the next day. At loose ends, he’d apparently decided to look up an old flame. Probably, Christo realized later, he had decided to see if Aurora Savas wanted a roll in the hay for old time’s sake.

Xanti hadn’t actually said that in so many words—not that Christo would have understood them at the time if he had—but he’d definitely blinked in surprise when the door had been opened by a boy who looked just like him.

“Who’re you?” Xanti had demanded.

Before Christo could say more than his first name, his mother had come up behind him. “Meet your son, Xanti,” she’d said to his dumbstruck father. “Want to take him home with you for the summer?”

Surprisingly enough, Xanti had.

But not before he’d married Aurora.

“Of course, we will marry,” he’d said, adding with the foolish nobility Xanti generally approached things with in the short run, “It is my duty.”

Maybe. But his commitment to it didn’t last. It was the long run Xanti was never able to handle, which is why the whirlwind marriage had lasted barely two months.

Still, it had given Christo a grandmother who loved him and a home away from home in Brazil. Widowed Lucia Azevedo had welcomed her only grandchild with open arms. With her husband deceased and Xanti, her only child, jetting around the world playing soccer and sleeping with women, this unexpected grandchild quickly became the light of her life.

And Christo, after a week of determined indifference, found his resolve undermined by Avó’s equally determined love. Her gentle smiles and calm acceptance undid his resolution to remain aloof from this new world he’d been thrust into—a world in which he didn’t even speak the language.

“No matter,” Avó had said. “We will learn each other.”

Teach, she’d meant. But “learn each other” was exactly what they’d done. Now, twenty-six years later, Christo spoke with her in the same mixture of English and Portuguese that they’d come to then.

“’Stas bem?” he asked her. “Are you okay?” because she’d had fainting spells recently.

“Sim, sim. Muito bem. Perfeita.” She dismissed his concerns. “And you? Have you met the girl yet?”

Abruptly the idyll was over and a vision of Natalie popped back into his head.

He sat up and jerked his feet off the desk. “No.”

Ordinarily he brushed off the question with a laugh. It wasn’t as if she didn’t regularly ask him.

Having given up on Xanti ever settling down—though he’d been with the same woman, Katia, for almost a year now—Lucia had made it clear she was counting on Christo to marry and settle down and give her babies to dote on.

He’d never told her he had no intention of marrying because it would upset her. She would think it was her fault, that she hadn’t taught him well enough about love and family and the value of marriage. But today he felt edgier than he usually did.

And his grandmother picked up on it. “You are looking though, sim?”

“I—” Damn it, no. And he didn’t intend to.

“I had a good marriage with your grandfather,” she reminded him. “If he had lived, maybe Xanti—” And then her voice trailed off. “No matter,” she said briskly after a moment. “Xanti is who he is. But you—you will find her, Christo,” she assured him, her voice strong again. “Or I will find her for you.”

Since he’d turned thirty, two years ago, she’d been offering to do that regularly.

“Não é necessário,” he assured her again now.

“Alicia, she would be good for you. She is going to be a lawyer, too,” his grandmother went on as if she hadn’t heard. “So you will have something to talk about.”

Christo let her talk. He didn’t discourage her ever. He’d tried that, but it made her despondent and led to despairing comments like, “What have I done wrong? It’s not just your father who can’t settle down. Now you, too!”

“You want to meet her?” his grandmother asked hopefully.

Not really. “I’m busy,” Christo said. “I don’t know when I’ll be back to Brazil.” He was in no hurry to go down for a visit if Avó was planning to set him up with dates when he did.

“Sim, I know.” She sounded sad now. “It has been a year.”

“I’ll get there, I promise.”

“As Xanti promises.”

He heard a weary resignation in her tone. Christo’s jaw tightened. “Yes, but I keep mine,” he reminded her.

“I know you do.” Her voice was gentle. “So you will come.”

“I will,” Christo said firmly. “Before Christmas. I’ll call you in a couple of weeks and we can talk about it.”

“Of course we can. You are my favorite grandson.” It was what she always said.

“I’m your only grandson,” he reminded her with a grin.

“That is so,” she agreed. “I love you, my Christo.”

“You, too. Tchau, ‘Vó. Beijos.”

He hung up, slumped in his chair and tipped his head back. Now visions of his doting grandmother overlaid those of Natalie in his mind. Avó would like Natalie. Natalie would like his grandmother as well.

It didn’t bear thinking about.

CHAPTER THREE

THERE were no hot looks from Christo on Monday morning. No glances that lingered. No politeness even.

Well, Natalie supposed he was polite enough. But he was absolutely businesslike, curt and remote every time he spoke to her. The intense awareness she’d felt on Friday was more like a determined deep freeze today. He didn’t even meet her eyes, but looked out the window all the time he was giving her instructions.

She remembered her mother saying more than once, “Christo is such a pleasure to work for. He’s always so even-tempered.”

Even-tempered, as in his range of emotions went from stern to dour? He smiled enough at his clients. But he scarcely looked at her.

He wouldn’t even take the time after his nine-thirty appointment left to come and look at a scan of a handwritten document she had up on the computer screen.

“You can figure it out,” he said curtly and stayed at his desk, not looking up as he flipped through papers and sorted them into folders. Natalie knew he had two pre-trial conferences in L.A. in the afternoon. She supposed he was preoccupied with them.

He saw two more clients, then came out of his office shortly before one. “I won’t be back until late.” He was shrugging into his suit coat and his tie was once more neatly knotted, his hair just combed.

“Anything else I should do while you’re gone?” Natalie asked.

“Take a lunch break.”

She blinked.

“You didn’t on Friday. You went out and grabbed sandwiches.” It sounded more like an accusation than a comment. “So today, go eat. I won’t be back until late,” he went on. “So I don’t need you bringing me sandwiches.”

So the sandwich had offended him, had it? Why? Had it made him think she was making another bid for attention? As if! She had simply done what she knew her mother would have done.

But she didn’t say that. She gave a light shrug, as if it didn’t matter one way or the other to her. It didn’t. It really didn’t.

Christo opened the door, then looked back over his shoulder. “You don’t need to stay late, either.”

Natalie didn’t even deign to reply to that.

She would stay late if she had work to finish. If she didn’t, she’d leave. And he could take his handsome face and his bloodymindedness and go stuff them both where they’d do some good.

“Whatever you say, boss,” she muttered. But he was gone and didn’t hear her.

Just as well. She finished the letter she was working on, then at quarter past one, took her lunch break, as ordered. She didn’t leave the office, but ate her tuna fish sandwich sitting at her mother’s desk. She did, however, spend the time catching up on her own work for Rent-a-Wife.

Sophy had done the scheduling this week, but Natalie still had the billing to do. If Mr. Stickler Savas wanted everything in businesslike boxes from here on out, that was fine with her. She’d do her work now and start back on his after lunch.

Her brother Dan called to ask if she would like his daughter Jamii to come for the weekend. “Kelly and I got invited to visit a high-school friend of hers in Sausalito. They live on a houseboat. We thought it would be cool. But if you’d rather not…”

“No, I’d like it,” Natalie said. Her eight-year-old niece would be a welcome distraction from the man who was currently occupying most every waking thought—to no avail.

“Great!” Dan was delighted. “We’ll drop her off after work on Friday and pick her up before dinner on Sunday. You can come out to dinner with us.”

“Sounds good.”

“If Kelly has anything she wants to add, I’ll have her call you.”

He rang off and, after a quick glance at her watch that showed she still had ten minutes of Rent-a-Wife time, she went back to work.

Immediately the office phone rang.

She could have let the answering machine get it, she thought grimly even as she reached to pick it up. But however annoying Christo was being, she couldn’t inconvenience his clients that way.

“Savas Law Office.”

“Thank God you’re there. I need you to bring me a folder.”

No question who it was. Natalie nearly choked on her tuna-fish.

“It’s in my office. It has to be,” he went on. “I spent an hour Saturday morning making sure I had all of it in one place after those temps screwed things up.” He sounded as though he wanted to strangle someone. So much for Mr. Cool-and-Remote.

“Which folder?”

“Eamon Duffy’s. His is the second of the two conferences I have this afternoon. And his original birth certificate, the custody agreement and the divorce decree aren’t here.”

“Can’t the judge just pull them up on the computer?”

“They’re from out of state. I don’t know where the hell they are! Did you misfile them?”

“Would I know if I had?” Natalie countered acerbically.

“Sorry,” he muttered. But he didn’t sound sorry. He sounded at the end of his rope.

“I’ll look,” Natalie was already heading into his office.

“You’ll have to tear the place apart.”

“Not likely,” Natalie said, seeing them on the tabletop under the mirror where he’d probably set them when he’d straightened his tie and combed his hair. “Where are you?”

“You found them?”

“Yes. Where are you?”

He gave her the address and directions to the court building. He was waiting when she got there and took the folder gratefully. He even looked at her. And it was back—the electricity. She could feel it. It was almost a relief—as if the world had righted itself.

“Need anything else?” she asked, her tone gently mocking, when she handed it to him. “A sandwich perhaps?”

His mouth twisted wryly.

She shrugged and was turning to leave when his voice halted her.

“Natalie.”

She glanced back, met his gaze. Oh, God, yes, you could light the whole city of Los Angeles with the electricity now. “Hmm?”

“Thanks.”

Some things, Natalie decided, were just not a good idea.

One of them had been agreeing to work for Christo. Not that she didn’t enjoy it. She did. Too much. She liked the work, liked interacting with many of his clients, liked the variety and the challenge.

Liked being able to look up or across the room and see Christo himself.

That she probably relished more than anything else. But it wasn’t the salutary experience she’d hoped it would be—or at least not salutary in the way she’d hoped. It wasn’t helping her get over him at all. In fact, by Wednesday, her last day in the office, she knew she needed to get out.

It wasn’t that she was afraid she would disgrace herself again. It was how badly she wanted to.

Well, not really to disgrace herself. But she did want Christo Savas with a deep, profound, gut-level desire unlike any she’d ever known. And she shouldn’t.

It was pathetic. She was pathetic, and she knew it.

“Get over it,” she told herself. “You’ve been down this road before.”

So she tried. But she kept looking up to feast her eyes on him every time he came into the reception area. She welcomed every opportunity to go into his office when he was there.

She found herself memorizing the way his brows drew together when he was studying an argument and how he tapped his pen against his teeth when he was reading. She had an image in her mind of the way he always tilted his head and listened so intently when one of his clients was speaking, and how he always crouched down so he was on eye level with the children as he was doing now with eight-year-old Derek Hartman who was showing Christo baseball cards instead of talking about his parents’ divorce.

She wondered what he’d be like with children of his own. And the vision of Christo with little green-eyed boys and dark-haired girls pierced so sharply that she had to catch her breath.

“Don’t,” she said sharply.

Christo, just straightening up to take Derek into the conference room, looked around at her. “Did you say something?”

“No—” her cheeks were burning “—I just—no. Never mind. Made a mistake.” She waved in the general direction of the letter she was supposed to be typing. “Just…muttering.”