She jumped and stared as Livia burst in and slammed the door. Grinning broadly, she raced across the floor and squeezed between the two melon-colored guest chairs to plant her hands on Angela’s desk. She glanced at the line of five vases filled with roses on the credenza. “More roses?”
“Yes.” By the third day, she’d guessed what Andres was doing. Each card contained a number.
Five.
Four.
Three.
Two.
One.
A countdown of the days from her not-so-secret admirer.
“Any idea who’s sending them?”
“Not yet,” Angela lied.
“Okay, we’ll get back to that. Did you hear?” Livia asked in an excited whisper.
Angela had never seen the buxom brunette behave this way—at least not at work. She was normally very stoic and professional within the halls of Myers-Gomez, but was known to cut loose during happy hour at any of the local bars.
“Hear what?”
“We have a new client. You’re not going to believe who it is. Trust me, you’ll never guess. Guess.” The words came out in a rush and Livia looked ready to burst with the secret.
Angela pushed back her chair and crossed her legs, taking a good look at her friend. “But you just said I’d never—”
“Guess!”
Angela held back a laugh. She’d never seen her friend so amped up. “Would I be as excited as you?”
“Maybe, maybe not. Come on, guess.” Livia bounced on her feet.
The beige chair squeaked when Angela leaned back. “I can’t possibly guess. It could be anybody.”
“Think outside the box.”
Angela sighed. She had a million more important things to do than play guessing games. “Um…male or female?”
“Male.”
“Okay…a former client coming back?”
Livia sighed with the theatrics of a D-list actor. “I said think outside the box.”
“Why don’t you just tell me and put me out of my misery?” Angela smiled sweetly—too sweetly.
“You’re no fun.” Livia pouted, but just as suddenly, her face cleared. She lowered her voice. “I’ll give you a hint. He’s a prince. Literally. An actual prince wants to talk to Edgar about contracting our services for his firm.” Livia stepped back with a flourish, placed her hands on her hips, and waited for Angela’s reaction.
She had none. She simply froze. “A prince? Who…which prince?” She worked hard to keep the emotion out of her voice.
“Have you ever heard of Prince Andres of Estoria? Oh em gee, he is gorgeous!” Livia sighed. “A few months ago, he was seen bodysurfing in Thailand with Martina Esposito, a pop star from Argentina. And now, he’s here! He wants to contract with our agency, and he’s coming here, personally. Can you believe it?”
Livia paid attention to all the gossip in the magazines and knew more about the private lives of celebrities and socialites than the entertainment reporters and bloggers. To call her a gossip follower would be unkind. She was so much more than that. She could write the entertainment columns and have a lucrative career doing so if she ever decided to leave her job as a consultant.
“Wow. Prince Andres, huh?” Not only had she heard of him, she’d kissed him.
“Yes!”
“How did you find out?”
“You know I’m tight with Edgar’s admin. She told me all about the proposed meeting and asked if I knew about the prince. Which I do, of course! I got her up to speed on him and Estoria.” Livia sighed dramatically. She gazed out the window behind Angela with a faraway look in her eyes. “I hope I get to meet him. I better go check my hair and makeup. One never knows when a prince will be looking for his princess. Toodles!” She grinned and rushed off, slamming the door behind her.
Meanwhile, butterflies charted a course to Angela’s heart, flapping their wings in rapid succession. What exactly did Andres have planned?
Angela stretched and yawned. She’d worked through lunch by eating a tasteless sandwich purchased from the deli across the street. She clicked through files on her computer and wrote a few notes. She needed to call a contact in Vietnam, but because of the time difference, she’d send a message and should have a response by the time she returned to work in the morning.
Her desk phone rang.
“Hello?” she answered.
“Hey, Angela, glad I caught you at your desk.” The voice of Edgar Myers, one of the owners of the company, came down the line. “We have an urgent situation, and I’m going to need your help, pronto.”
“What’s going on?”
“Come up to my office and bring something to write with.”
“I’ll be there in a few minutes.”
Angela grabbed a notepad and pen and made her way down the quiet hallway lined with awards and collages of happy clients from the United States and around the world.
She didn’t run into anyone since most of the staff was gone because of the late hour. She took the elevator to the top floor and knocked briefly before entering Edgar’s office.
“Hi, Edgar.”
She hadn’t seen him in a couple of days. He spent a lot of time behind closed doors or in off-site meetings, drumming up new clients.
“Have a seat.” Standing behind his desk, he frowned at a file in his hand, not looking up.
His office was very different than hers and indicative of his position in the company. It was a corner office and had a dark leather chair, a glass desk, and dark guest chairs. The larger space accommodated a small conference table, and the color scheme was black and white.
Angela sat down in one of the chairs and crossed her legs.
Edgar snapped the file closed and looked at her. He smiled without showing any teeth. In the past few months, more gray had appeared at his temples, his rotund figure had grown smaller as he lost weight, and he appeared more tired than she’d ever seen him before. And she knew why.
They’d been hit with a bombshell earlier this year when his business partner, Raoul Gomez, had taken leave for cancer treatments. He still hadn’t returned, and rumor had it that he might not. Raoul had been the sales guy and the one staff found easiest to talk to, while Edgar handled the finances. Now he filled both roles—working hard to keep morale up and the company on track.
He took a seat and ran his fingers through his dark hair. “We recently landed a high-profile client and he’ll be here within the hour. Ever heard of Prince Andres of Estoria?”
“Um…vaguely,” she answered, sitting up straighter.
His eyes narrowed slightly. “Vaguely, huh? He definitely knows about you. Matter of fact, he asked for you.”
What? Silence, as Angela scrambled to recuperate from that bombshell.
“He did?”
“Yes. Said you were the only one he wanted to talk to.” Edgar did his best to sound indifferent, but curiosity seeped through in his tone and the way he studied Angela.
She laughed. “I only met him once, at a wedding—the one I went to in Africa back in April.”
“Well, he might not have made much of an impression on you, but you sure made an impression on him.”
“Well, that’s good news.”
“It sure is. Excellent news, considering the shit we’ve seen the past few months. Pardon my French. We, you and I, need to meet with him when he gets here. We need to put together a rough presentation on how to boost morale to increase productivity in his company. Throw something together from one of the other presentations you’ve done over the years, and get some help putting it together.”
“You want me to throw together a presentation in an hour?” The question came out more high-pitched than she’d intended.
Edgar raised an eyebrow. “The short notice can’t be helped. His people didn’t give us much of a heads up.”
She adjusted the glasses on her nose. “This is extremely short notice. I don’t know if—”
“Angela, you’re one of my top consultants.” Edgar
leaned forward. “You know the situation we’re in. Half the time I don’t know if I’m coming or going, so I don’t have time to negotiate on this. The fact that he asked for you is a good sign. It means this contract just fell into our laps, without me having to go out there and do what I hate—shake hands and kiss ass. Pardon my French.” He sighed. “Look, I’m pretty sure we have this in the bag. Imagine being able to say that a prince used our consulting firm for his personal business. That’ll be PR gold for years to come. By the way, the company is. . .” He checked his notes. “A. Vasquez International.”
Angela couldn’t deny getting the business of someone as high-profile as Andres was quite a coup, but she simply wasn’t ready to face him on such short notice. She hadn’t had time to prepare!
She forced a smile to her lips. “I understand. Of course you can count on me.”
Angela left the office, jittery and nervous about the meeting ahead. Andres may have stated he was interested in contracting them for his company, but she knew the real reason he’d shown up in Atlanta and called their firm.
He’d come for her.
6
Angela walked across the carpeted floor of the conference room behind Edgar.
There was Andres, looking out at the street. Night after night images of him claimed space in her head, and now he was in her office. She slowly inhaled to calm her nerves.
He turned unhurriedly and looked right at her. The Earth stood still. Ripples of tension covered the space between them and caused her stride to falter.
“Hello, Edgar. Angela.” His voice hit like a blow to the abs, tugging on her belly, simply by the way his accented voice said her name.
Dressed like he was—in a long-sleeved powder-blue shirt and dark slacks—no one would ever know he was a prince. He looked like any other man dressed in business-casual attire. A supervisor, perhaps, because of the haughty angle at which he held his head. Except she’d passed a burly bodyguard right outside the door, and in addition to a driver, there were at least two more guards waiting downstairs. She knew much more about him after doing some online research.
The men shook hands, but Angela hung back. She angled her eyes away from Andres’s penetrating gaze and paid attention to her boss.
“We’re very pleased you chose our firm to address your management concerns,” Edgar said.
“I feel as if I had very little choice in the matter. When I met Angela, she spoke so highly of your organization. I knew that she, and your firm, could provide exactly what I need.”
He was a liar. Myers-Gomez was a great company, but she hadn’t sung their praises. If anything, she complained about her workload.
“Glad to hear that. We pride ourselves on our excellent service and we hire the best consultants in the business. Angela is one of them, as you’re aware.” Edgar smiled at her.
“Yes, I’m very aware,” Andres said.
“Well, let’s get started. Have a seat, and I’ll—”
Andres lifted a hand and stopped Edgar’s words. “There is no need for a long, drawn-out sales pitch. I’m already certain that I want to hire the Myers-Gomez team. I’m not shopping around and getting additional quotes. I told you what I’m looking for, so why don’t we save ourselves some time? Prepare the contract and I’ll sign it.”
Silence filled the room, and Edgar glanced at Angela.
What could he possibly be thinking right now? She wished she could read his mind. Sure, they had a prestigious new client, but it was painfully obvious by the way Andres didn’t bother to take his gaze off her and by his swift willingness to sign on the dotted line—contract unseen—that there was more to her relationship with him than met the eye.
Edgar flashed a grin. “Sounds good to me. I’ll get the contract, and I’ll leave you in Angela’s capable hands. If you have any questions while I’m gone, she can answer them.”
Normally, as the subordinate, she would be the one to get the contract.
Edgar let his gaze shift between the two of them before he exited the room.
The minute the door shut behind her, Andres said, “I like the glasses. They’re very sexy.”
She glared at him. “Why did you contact my job?”
“How else was I to get your attention? You didn’t return a single one of my calls,” he said.
“You should take that as a hint.”
“I’m not very good at taking hints.”
She wanted to flee the room but couldn’t move. He hadn’t touched her, but he held her in place just the same, with dark blue eyes that didn’t leave her face.
“You had no right to come to my job,” she said tightly.
“I wanted to get your attention. I lasted five weeks before coming here, which I think is admirable.”
“You could have found another way. I’m easy enough to find for a man with your resources. Why didn’t you come to my house?”
“If I had done that, I would have scared you off. It would have been too much, yes? So I did the next best thing. I said I wanted your services, and by doing so, I knew you could not avoid me.”
“Whatever you’re planning won’t work.”
“I’m planning to hire your consulting firm. I need advice and recommendations on how to deal with the morale problem at A. Vasquez International. That’s what you do, isn’t it? Advise and recommend?” He arched a brow.
“You know exactly what I do.” Angela placed her hands on her hips. “I’m supposed to believe you’re here about management consulting? There are probably at least a dozen other firms you could contract with.”
“But none of them have Angela Lipscomb on staff.” His disarming smile almost melted her resolve, as well as her panties.
He came forward with graceful steps, and confidence oozed from his pores with each movement of his body. She held her breath, waiting for his next words.
“So, how is your nonexistent boyfriend?”
“My boyfriend is—”
“Don’t lie again. We both know what you’re about to say is not true.”
She paused. “All right, fine. I don’t have a boyfriend. Obviously I lied for a reason.”
“Care to tell me what that reason is? I know it has nothing to do with our chemistry, because you can’t deny, we have plenty.”
No argument there. “I told you already.”
“You don’t date famous men.”
“Yes.”
He blew a frustrated gust of air through his nose. His eyes narrowed. “And what should I do? Forget about us and pretend that nothing happened in Zamibia? I—”
“Nothing happened in Zamibia—”
“I can’t forget. I can’t sleep most nights for thinking about you.” Raw emotion vibrated in his voice. “You’re in my blood, Angela.”
Inexplicable pain wrenched her chest and she took a step back. “You shouldn’t be here, Andres.” She turned from him with a jerky movement and bumped her hip into the conference table. She winced at the pain.
He reached for her and then let his hand drop. “You act like you’re afraid of me. Are you?” His voice sounded strangled.
Not in the way you think. “No.” She rubbed her bruised hip. The tension was getting to her.
He gave her a speculative look. “You’re still angry because I didn’t tell you right away that I am a prince.”
“A little detail you forgot.”
“I was wrong.” He edged closer. “Have dinner with me and explain your feelings. Go into detail about your anger. Then I can beg for your forgiveness and you can put me out of my misery.”
Tempting. Very tempting. She shook her head against the dizzying seduction of his voice. “No.”
Andres may not be very well known in the United States, but he was known throughout Europe. He lived under a microscope. She’d seen how chaotic the life of her friend Dahlia became even before she married Prince Kofi. She saw how the royal family of the UK was hounded by reporters and photographers everywhere they went. That was no life to live. She
wanted no part of it.
Though she complained about her career often, she had a good-paying job, and no one knew about the stains in the fabric of her family background. There were no photographers lurking in the bushes and no reporters rewarded for digging up dirt.
She stepped backward, out of his orbit and the draining battle to lean into him. “If you want to do business with us, that’s fine. Anything else is out of the question.”
Andres studied her for a moment. A rueful smile lifted the corner of his mouth. “What’s between us isn’t over. You know it, and I know it. But for now we’ll focus on the business at hand. How about dinner, to discuss your ideas? Not a date.”
“You’re sure about that?”
“Absolutely. We’ll call it a meeting,” he said with a disarming smile.
“To be clear, I don’t date clients.”
“That’s very wise, but is that rule bendable at all?”
She wanted to laugh but felt she’d be better off being firm with him. She suspected the moment he sensed she was weakening, he’d press even harder and have her second-guessing her no-famous-men rule.
“No,” she said archly.
“Demasiado. Too bad,” he said with a disappointed frown.
She ignored his pitiful face. “Where would you like me to meet you?”
“I’ll pick you up.”
“I can meet you. This isn’t a date.”
“Nonetheless, allow me to be a gentleman and pick you up at your home.”
Edgar chose that moment to reenter the room. “All right, I have the contract right here.”
If he noticed the tension, he didn’t let on. He handed the papers and a pen to Andres, who quickly reviewed the contract. Afterward, he took a seat and signed and initialed everywhere that Edgar told him, set the pen on the table, and then came to his feet again.
“Looks like we’re in business,” Edgar said as they shook hands. “You can expect to hear from Angela by the middle of next week. She’ll do some research and prepare a report with the first steps for you.”
“Sounds good. Before you came in, Angela and I were having a conversation about my schedule. I have a lot of ground to cover while I’m here. I’m in meetings most of the day and have to take a trip to South America. Because of my hectic schedule, she agreed to meet me for dinner to share the report with me. I hope you can accommodate my schedule.”
Princess of Estoria (Royal Brides Book 2) Page 4