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I’d like to thank my editors, Katinka Proudfoot
and Suzy Harding, and also
Senior Editor Kim Young, for helping me
turn Grace and Danny’s story into a real keeper.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
EPILOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
“YOU AREN’T planning on driving back to Pittsburgh tonight, are you?”
Danny Carson walked into the third floor office of his Virginia Beach beach house talking to Grace McCartney, his newest employee, who stood behind his desk, hunched over her laptop. A tall brunette with bright violet eyes and a smile that lit the room, Grace was smart, but more than that she was likable and she genuinely liked people. Both of those qualities had helped enormously with the work they’d had to do that weekend.
Grace looked up. “Would you like me to stay?”
“Call it a debriefing.”
She tilted her head to one side, considering the suggestion, then smiled. “Okay.”
This was her real charm. She’d been working every waking minute for three days, forced to spend her entire weekend assisting Danny as he persuaded Orlando Riggs—a poor kid who parlayed a basketball scholarship into a thirty-million-dollar NBA deal—to use Carson Services as his financial management firm. Not only was she away from her home in Pittsburgh and her friends, but she hadn’t gotten to relax on her days off. She could be annoyed that he’d asked her to stay another night. Instead she smiled. Nothing ruffled her feathers.
“Why don’t you go to your room to freshen up? I’ll tell Mrs. Higgins we’ll have dinner in about an hour.”
“Sounds great.”
After Grace left the office, Danny called his housekeeper on the intercom. He checked his e-mail, checked on dinner, walked on the beach and ended up on the deck with a glass of Scotch. Grace took so long that by the time Danny heard the sound of the sliding glass door opening behind him, Mrs. Higgins had already left their salads on the umbrella table and their entrées on the serving cart, and gone for the day. Exhausted from the long weekend of work, and belatedly realizing Grace probably was, too, Danny nearly suggested they forget about dinner and talk in the morning, until he turned and saw Grace.
Wearing a pretty pink sundress that showed off the tan she’d acquired walking on the beach with Orlando, she looked young, fresh-faced and wholesome. He’d already noticed she was pretty, of course. A man would have to be blind not to notice how attractive she was. But this evening, with the rays of the setting sun glistening on her shoulder-length sable-colored hair and the breeze off the ocean lightly ruffling her full skirt, she looked amazing.
Unable to stop himself he said, “Wow.”
She smiled sheepishly. “Thanks. I felt a little like celebrating Orlando signing with Carson Services, and though this isn’t exactly Prada, it’s the best of what I brought.”
Danny walked to her place at the table and pulled out her chair. “It’s perfect.” He thought about his khaki trousers, simple short-sleeved shirt and windblown black hair as he seated her, then wondered why he had. This wasn’t a date. She was an employee. He’d asked her to stay so he could give her a bonus for the good job she’d done that week, and to talk to her long enough to ascertain the position into which he should promote her—also to thank her for doing a good job. What he wore should be of no consequence. The fact that it even entered his head nearly made him laugh.
He seated himself. “Mrs. Higgins has already served dinner.”
“I see.” She frowned, looking at the silver covers on the plates on the serving cart beside the table, then the salads that sat in front of them. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize I had stayed in the tub so long.” She smiled sheepishly again. “I was a little more tired than I thought.”
“Then I’m glad you took the extra time.” Even as the words tumbled out of his mouth, Danny couldn’t believe he was saying them. Yes, he was grateful to her for being so generous and kind with Orlando, making the athlete feel comfortable, but the way Danny had excused her lateness sounded personal, when he hardly knew this woman.
She laughed lightly. “I really liked Orlando. I think he’s a wonderful person. But we were still here to do a job. Both of us had to be on our toes 24/7.”
When she smiled and Danny’s nerve endings crackled to life, he realized he was behaving out of character for a boss because he was attracted to her. He almost shook his head. He was so slow on the uptake that he’d needed an entire weekend to recognize that.
But he didn’t shake his head. He didn’t react at all. He was her boss and he’d already slipped twice. His “wow” when he’d seen her in the dress was inappropriate. His comment about the extra time that she’d taken had been too personal. He excused himself for those because he was tired. But now that he saw what was happening, he could stop it. He didn’t date employees, but also this particular employee had proven herself too valuable to risk losing.
Grace picked up her salad fork. “I’m starved and this looks great.”
“Mrs. Higgins is a gem. I’m lucky to have her.”
“She told me that she enjoys working for you because you’re not here every day. She likes working part-time, even if it is usually weekends.”
“That’s my good fortune,” Danny agreed, then the conversation died as they ate their salads. Oddly something inside of Danny missed the more personal chitchat. It was unusual for him to want to get friendly with an employee, but more than that, this dinner had to stay professional because he had things to discuss with her. Yet he couldn’t stop the surge of disappointment, as if he were missing an unexpected opportunity.
When they finished their salads, he rose to serve the main course. “I hope you like fettuccini alfredo.”
“I love it.”
“Great.” He removed the silver covers. Pushing past the exhaustion that had caused him to wish he could give in and speak openly with her, he served their dinners and immediately got down to business. “Grace, you did an exceptional job this weekend.”
“Thanks. I appreciate the compliment.”
“I intend to do more than compliment you. Your work secured an enormous account for Carson Services. Not only are you getting a bonus, but I would like to promote you.”
She gaped at him. “Are you kidding?”
Pleased with her happy surprise, Danny laughed. “No. Right now you and I need to talk a bit about what you can do and where in the organization you would like to serve. Once we’re clear, I’ll write up the necessary paperwork.”
She continued to stare at him slightly openmouthed, then she said, “You’re going to promote me anywhere I want to go?”
“There is a condition. If a situation like Orlando’s ever comes up again, where we have to do more than our general push to get a client to sign, I want you in on the persuading.”
She frowned. “I’m happy to spend time helping a reluctant investor see the benefits of using your firm, but you don’t need to promote me for that.”
“The promotion is part of my thank-you for your assistance with Orlando.”
She shook her head. “I don’t want it.”
Positive he’d heard wrong, Danny chuckled. “What?”
“I’ve been with your company two weeks. Yet I was the one chosen for a weekend at your beach house with Orlando Riggs—a superstar client most of the men and half of the women on staff were dying to meet. You’ve already given me a perk beyond what employees who have been with you for years have gotten. If there’s an empty position somewhere in the firm, promote Bobby Zapf. He has a wife and three kids and they’re saving for a house. He could use the money, and the boost in confidence from you.”
Danny studied her for a second, then he laughed. “I get it. You’re joking.”
“I’m serious.” She took a deep breath. “Look, everybody understood that you chose me to come with you this weekend because I’m new. I hadn’t worked with you long enough to adopt your opinions, so Orlando knew that when I agreed with just about everything you said I wasn’t spouting the company party line. I hadn’t yet heard the party line. So I was a good choice for this. But I don’t want to be promoted over everybody’s head.”
“You’re worried about jealousy?”
She shook her head. “No! I don’t want to take a job that should go to someone else. Someone who’s worked for you for years.”
“Like Bobby Zapf.”
“In the two weeks I spent at the office, I watched Bobby work harder than anybody else you employ. If you want to promote somebody he’s the one.”
Danny leaned back in his chair. “Okay. Bobby it is.” He paused, toyed with his silverware, then glanced up at her, holding back a smile. He’d never had an employee turn down a promotion—especially not to make sure another person got it. Grace was certainly unique.
“Can I at least give you a bonus?”
She laughed. “Yes! I worked hard for an entire weekend. A bonus is absolutely in order.”
Continuing to hold back a chuckle, Danny cleared his throat. “Okay. Bonus, but no promotion.”
“You could promise to watch my performance over the next year and then promote me because I’d had enough time to prove myself.”
“I could.” He took a bite of his dinner, more pleased with her than anybody he’d ever met. She was right. In his gratitude for a weekend’s work, he had jumped the gun on the promotion. She reeled him in and reminded him of the person who really deserved it. If he hadn’t already been convinced she was a special person, her actions just now would have shown him.
Grace smiled. “Okay. It’s settled. I get a bonus and you’ll watch how well I work.” Then as quickly as she’d recapped their agreement, she changed the subject. “It’s beautiful here.”
Danny glanced around. Darkness had descended. A million stars twinkled overhead. The moon shone like a silver dollar. Water hit the shore in white-foamed waves.
“I like it. I get a lot of work done here because it’s so quiet. But at the end of the day I can also relax.”
“You don’t relax much, do you?”
Lulled by the sounds of the waves and her calming personality, Danny said, “No. I have the fate of a company that’s been around for decades on my shoulders. If I fail the company fails and the legacy my great-grandfather sweated to create crumbles into nothing. So I’m focused on work. Unless relaxation happens naturally, it doesn’t happen.”
“I don’t relax much, either.” She picked up her fork again. “You already heard me tell Orlando I grew up the same way he did. Dirt poor. And in the same away he used his talent to make a place for himself, I intend to make a place for myself, too.”
“Here’s a tip. Maybe you shouldn’t talk your bosses out of promotions?”
“I can’t take what I don’t deserve.” She wiggled her eyebrows comically. “I’ll just have to make my millions the old-fashioned way. I’ll have to earn them.”
Danny laughed and said, “I hate to tell you this, but people who work for someone else rarely get rich. So if you want to make millions, what are you doing working for me?”
“Learning about investing. When I was young I heard the theory that your money should work as hard for you as you work for it. Growing up, I didn’t get any experience seeing how to make money work, so I figured the best place to get the scoop on investing was at an investment firm.” She smiled, then asked, “What about you?”
“What about me?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. Anything. Did you want your family’s business? Were you a happy child? Are you happy now?” She shrugged again. “Anything.”
She asked the questions then took a bite of her dinner, making her inquiry into his life seem casual, offhand. But she’d nonetheless taken the conversation away from herself and to him. Still, she didn’t seem as if she were prying. She seemed genuinely curious, but not like a bloodhound, like someone trying to become a friend.
He licked his suddenly dry lips and his heart rate accelerated as he actually considered answering her. A part of him really wanted to talk. A part of him needed to talk. Two years had passed. So much had happened.
He took a breath, amazed that he contemplated confiding in her, yet knowing he wouldn’t. Though he couldn’t ignore her, he wouldn’t confide. He’d never confide. Not to her. Not to anyone.
He had to take the conversation back where it belonged. To business.
“What you see is who I am. Chairman of the Board and CEO of Carson Services. There isn’t anything to talk about.”
She blinked. “Really?”
“From the time I was six or eight I knew I would take over the company my great-grandfather started. I didn’t have to travel or experiment to figure out what I wanted. My life was pretty much mapped out for me and I simply followed the steps. That’s why there’s not a lot to talk about.”
“You started training as a kid?”
“Not really training, more or less being included in on conversations my dad and grandfather thought were relevant.”
“What if you didn’t like investing?”
“But I did.”
“It just sounds weird.” She flushed. “Sorry. Really. It’s none of my business.”
“Don’t be sorry.” Her honesty made him laugh. More comfortable than he could remember being in years, he picked up his fork and said, “I see what you’re saying. I was lucky that I loved investing. I walked into the job as if it were made for me, but when my son—”
He stopped. His chest tightened. His heart rate kicked into overdrive. He couldn’t believe that had slipped out.
“But your son what?”
“But when my son began to show artistic talent,” he said, thinking quickly because once again the conversation had inadvertently turned too personal. And this time it was his fault. “I suddenly saw that another person might not want to be CEO of our company, might not have the ability to handle the responsibility, or might have gifts and talents that steer him or her in a different direction. Then the company would have to hire someone, and hiring someone of the caliber we would require would involve paying out a huge salary and profit sharing. The family fortune would ultimately deplete.”
She studied him for a second, her gaze so intense Danny knew the mention of his son had her curious. But he wouldn’t say any more about Cory. That part of his life was so far off-limits that he didn’t even let himself think about it. It would be such a cold, frosty day in hell that he’d discuss Cory with another person that he knew that day would never come.
Finally Grace sighed. “I guess you were lucky then—” she turned her attention back to her food “—that you wanted the job.”
Danny relaxed. Once again she’d read him perfectly. She’d seen that though he’d mentioned his son, he hadn’t gone into detail about Cory, and instead had brought the discussion back to Carson Services, so she knew to let the topic go.
They finished their dinner in companionable conversation because Grace began talking about remodeling the small house she’d bought when she got her first job two years before. As they spoke about choosing hardwood and deciding on countertops, Danny acknowledged to himself that she was probably the most sensitive person he’d met. She could read a mood or a situation so well that he didn’t have to worry about what he said in front of her. A person who so easily knew not to pry would never break a confidence.
For that reason alone an intense urge to confide in her bubbled up in him, shocking him. Why the hell would he want to talk about the past? And why would he think that any woman would want to hear her boss’s marital horror stories? No woman would. No person would. Except maybe a gossip. And Grace wasn’t a gossip.
After dinner, they went inside for a drink, but Danny paused beside the stairway that led to his third-floor office suite.
“Bonuses don’t pass through our normal accounting. I write those checks myself. It’s a way to keep them completely between me and the employees who get them. The checkbook’s upstairs. Why don’t we just go up now and give you your bonus?”
Grace grinned. “Sounds good to me.”
Danny motioned for Grace to precede him up the steps. Too late, he realized that was a mistake. Her perfect bottom was directly in his line of vision. He paused, letting her get a few steps ahead of him, only to discover that from this angle he had a view of her shapely calves.
He finished the walk up the stairs with his head down, gaze firmly fixed on the Oriental carpet runner on the steps. When he reached the third floor, she was waiting for him. Moonlight came in through the three tall windows in the back wall of the semidark loft that led to his office, surrounding her with pale light, causing her to look like an angel.
Mesmerized, Danny stared at her. He knew she was a nice person. A good person. He also knew that was why he had the quick mental picture of her as an angel and such a strong sense of companionship for her. But she was an employee. He was her boss. He needed to keep his distance.
He motioned toward his office suite and again she preceded him. Inside, he sat behind the desk and she gingerly sat on the chair in front of it.
“I think Orlando Riggs is the salt of the earth,” Danny said as he pulled out the checkbook he held for the business. “You made him feel very comfortable.”
“I felt very comfortable with him.” She grimaced. “A lot of guys who had just signed a thirty-million-dollar deal with an NBA team would be a little cocky.”
“A little cocky?” Danny said with a laugh. “I’ve met people with a lot less talent than Orlando has and a lot less cash who were total jerks.”
“Orlando seems unaffected.”
“Except that he wants to make sure his family has everything they need.” Danny began writing out the check. “I didn’t even realize he was married.”
“And has two kids.”
Kids.
Danny blinked at the unexpected avalanche of memory just the word kids brought. He remembered how eager he’d been to marry Lydia and have a family. He remembered his naive idea of marital bliss, and his chest swelled from the horrible empty feeling he got every time he realized how close he’d been to fulfilling that dream and how easily it had all been snatched away.
But tonight, with beautiful, sweet-tempered, sincere Grace sitting across the desk, Danny had a surprising moment of clarity. He’d always blamed himself for the breakdown of his marriage, but what if it had been Lydia’s fault? He’d wanted to go to counseling. Lydia had simply wanted to go. Away from him. If he looked at the breakdown of his marriage from that very thin perspective, then the divorce wasn’t his fault.
That almost made him laugh. If he genuinely believed the divorce wasn’t his fault then—
Then he’d wasted years?
No. He’d wasted his life. He didn’t merely feel empty the way he’d been told most people felt when they lost a mate; he felt wholly empty. Almost nonexistent. As if he didn’t have a life. As if every day since his marriage had imploded two years ago, he hadn’t really lived. He hadn’t even really existed. He’d simply expended time.
Finished writing the check, Danny rose from his seat. It seemed odd to think about feeling empty when across the desk, eager, happy Grace radiated life and energy.
“Thank you for your help this weekend.”
As he walked toward her, Grace also rose. He handed her the check. She glanced down at the amount he’d written, then looked up at him. Her beautiful violet eyes filled with shock. Her tongue came out to moisten her lips before she said, “This is too much.”
Caught in the gaze of her hypnotic eyes, seeing the genuine appreciation, Danny could have sworn he felt some of her energy arch to him. If nothing else, he experienced a strong sense of connection. A rightness. Or maybe a purpose. As if there was a reason she was here.
The feeling of connection and intimacy could be nothing more than the result of spending every waking minute from Friday afternoon to Sunday night together, but that didn’t lessen its intensity. It was so strong that his voice softened when he said, “No. It isn’t too much. You deserve it.”
She took a breath that caused her chest to rise and fall, calling his attention to the cleavage peeking out of the pink lace of her dress. She looked soft and feminine, yet she was also smart and sensitive. Which was why she attracted him, tempted him, when in the past two years no other woman had penetrated the pain that had held him hostage. Grace treated him like a person. Not like her rich boss. Not like a good catch. Not even like a guy so far out of her social standing that she should be nervous to spend so much one-on-one time. But just like a man.
“Thanks.” She raised her gaze to his again. This time when Danny experienced the sense of intimacy, he almost couldn’t argue himself out of it because he finally understood it. She felt it, too. He could see it in her eyes. And he didn’t want to walk away from it. He needed her.
But then he saw the check in her hands and he remembered she was an employee. An affair between them had consequences. Especially when it ended. Office gossip would make him look foolish, but it could ruin her. Undoubtedly it would cost her her job. He might be willing to take a risk because his future wasn’t at stake, but he couldn’t make the decision for her.
CHAPTER TWO
DANNY cleared his throat. “You’re welcome. I very much appreciated your help this weekend.” He stepped away and walked toward the office door. “I’m going downstairs to have a drink before I turn in. I’ll see you in the morning.”
Grace watched Danny go, completely confused by what was happening between them. For a few seconds, she could have sworn he was going to kiss her and the whole heck of it was she would have let him.
Let him? She was so attracted to him she darned near kissed him first, and that puzzled her. She should have reminded herself that he was her boss and so wealthy they were barely on the same planet. Forget about being in the same social circle. But thoughts of their different worlds hadn’t even entered her head, and, thinking about them now, Grace couldn’t muster a reason they mattered.
Laughing softly, she combed her fingers through her hair. Whatever the reason, she couldn’t deny the spark between her and Danny. When Orlando left that afternoon, Grace had been disappointed that their weekend together had come to an end. But Danny had asked her to stay one more night, and she couldn’t resist the urge to dress up and hope that he would notice her the way she’d been noticing him. He’d nearly ruined everything by offering her a promotion she didn’t deserve, but he showed her that he trusted her opinion by taking her advice about Bobby Zapf.
The real turning point came when he mentioned his son. He hadn’t wanted to talk about him, but once Danny slipped him into the conversation he hadn’t pretended he hadn’t. She had seen the sadness in his eyes and knew there was a story there. But she also recognized that this wasn’t the time to ask questions. She’d heard the rumor that Danny had gone through an ugly divorce but no report had mentioned a child from his failed marriage. Nasty divorces frequently resulted in child custody battles and his ex-wife could very well make him fight to see his son, which was undoubtedly why he didn’t want to talk about him.
But tonight wasn’t the night for probing into a past that probably only reminded him of unhappy times. Tonight, she had to figure out if he felt for her what she was beginning to feel for him. The last thing she wanted was to be one of those employees who got a crush on her boss and then pined for him for the rest of her career.