Natural Blond Instincts

by Jill Shalvis

  He put his hand on her arm. “You do realize that the report was done by me only because I’ve been here since the beginning, and that point of view is crucial.”

  “Maybe my point of view is crucial.”

  “Tell me when you’re done and I’ll read what you’ve got.”

  Knowing he meant it somehow added to the pressure to get it right, to actually have a crucial point of view. “Thanks,” she said, liking it better when she’d thought him a jerk.

  THE NEXT DAY was a scheduled managerial meeting. Wes showed up a few minutes early, wanting to be alone long enough to breathe without an audience, but when he entered the conference room, he wasn’t alone at all.

  Kenna had beat him there.

  Engrossed in reading, she didn’t even look up when he entered. “Hey,” he said.

  “Hey, yourself.”

  “What are you up to now?”

  Her expression closed itself off, and he wanted to kick himself for sounding so antagonistic.

  Not surprisingly, she said, “Nothing.”

  Nothing…Kenna was never up to nothing. He wondered what she was tackling and would have asked her about it, but Serena swept into the room.

  “Your latest staff memo on the importance of customer service was brilliant,” she informed Wes. “I thought we could discuss your strategies—”

  “Strategies?” Josh came into the room behind her. “I’ve got strategies. Want to discuss them with me?”

  Serena lifted a brow. “Not in this lifetime.”

  “Baby, you don’t know what you’re missing.”

  “Believe me—”

  “Children,” Wes chided. “Wait for recess.”

  With a snort, Josh turned away and poured a cup of coffee.

  Serena smiled sweetly at Wes. “So…where were we? Oh, yes, your memo—” She broke off when Josh handed her a mug of coffee. She stared down at it, then blinked at him.

  “Say ‘Thank you, Josh’,” Josh said.

  “Thank you, Josh.” She sounded confused.

  Josh just smiled.

  Kenna had buried herself back into her reading, making the occasional note, studying fiercely, and Wes wondered if he should be excited about their next confrontation…

  Or worried.

  She glanced up at him and moistened her lips, which caused his body to jerk to attention. Damn, but the line between work and feelings was being crossed.

  And double crossed.

  Worried, he decided. He should be very worried.

  THE CLOCK in the huge, gleaming hotel kitchen chimed the hour. Twelve times. Midnight took a good long time to sound off, and since the place was empty, and also dark, the sound of it echoed eerily.

  “Good thing I’m not Cinderella,” Kenna muttered around a huge bite of chocolate cake. She stood in front of the large island, fork in hand, digging through a leftover cake with abandon.

  It was what happened to frustrated, confused, over-stimulated and unfulfilled women, she supposed. Women who were frustrated at not being quite as good as they’d expected to be, women who couldn’t tolerate their own learning curve, women feeling just a little pathetic because she…because she wanted her co-VP in an entirely inappropriate way.

  In the name of comfort, she took another four-thousand-calorie bite of cake.

  And then another.

  WES WORKED LATE that night, hunched over his computer, hitting the keys hard, trying to keep his mind focused, but it kept circling back to Kenna.

  When his phone rang, it startled him. Who could be calling at…He checked his watch. Midnight. “Mallory Enterprises.”

  “Weston Roth?”

  “Yes. Who is this?”

  “Ray Panziera, a friend of Kenna’s. Listen, she’s not in her room, I was wondering…is she there in the offices?”

  “Hold on.” He jogged down the hall but Kenna’s office was dark. He went back to his. “She’s not at her desk.”

  “Well, who in their right mind would be?”

  Wes sighed. “Would you like to leave a message?”

  “Oh, just wanted to see if she was up for a late-night drink. We do that sometimes.”

  Wes had no idea why that bugged him, but it did.

  “It’s no biggie,” Ray said. “If I know Kenna, which I do, she’s got the late-night munchies and is somewhere in the hotel stuffing her face. If you happen to see her, you might mention she could have called me to share, the bitch. Ciao.”

  Wes stared at the phone, then hung up. Kenna’s friends were as crazy as she was. He tried to put the call out of his head, tried to get back into work, but it was no good. With a sigh, he walked out of the offices and into the elevator. Downstairs, he moved through the lobby and headed for a house phone. He had no idea why really, but something in him wanted to check on her, to make sure everything was okay. It really was late, and maybe she was sick—

  Just as Ray had said, she didn’t answer her room phone.

  He’d now officially done his best to check on her. No way was he going to search this huge place, not at this hour.

  Nope.

  Dammit. There were two restaurants in the hotel, both closed. He could have tried the bar, but somehow he didn’t think Kenna would go to the bar for a late-night snack.

  He headed for the hotel kitchen.

  The lights at the far end were on, and he strode around huge stacking trays that tomorrow morning would be loaded with baked goods, and came to an abrupt stop in front of the large wooden island.

  Kenna stood on the other side of it, one hand holding a fork, the other steadying an entire sheet cake as she leaned over an opened magazine, engrossed in her reading. If he wasn’t mistaken, her mouth was rimmed with chocolate.

  When she saw him, the fork dropped with a clatter.

  Not the magazine, he noticed, which she pressed to her chest.

  Curious now, he stepped closer, not knowing what he expected. Maybe an article on “How to Drive Your Partner Insane.”

  Hell, even voodoo exercises wouldn’t have surprised him. Pushing his glasses closer to his eyes, he leaned in. “You’re reading…”

  “Nothing.” She hugged the magazine closer, which he could now see was Cosmopolitan. “I’m reading nothing. Why are you here?”

  “Ray called looking for you.”

  “At the office?”

  “At the office.”

  “Oh. He probably wanted to go out, we do that sometimes when neither of us can sleep.” She loosened her arms and started to back away. “Thanks.”

  “Uh-huh.” He blinked in disbelief. “You’re reading…” He cocked his head to get a better look. “‘How to Get Your Sexy Partner from the Board Room to the Bedroom’?”

  13

  UNDER THE GLOW of the harsh lights, Kenna’s cheeks glowed. With heat, embarrassment…Wes had no idea, but he couldn’t stop looking at her.

  “It’s just a magazine,” she said. “I subscribe. It means nothing, honestly. In fact, I read all the articles. Here, look, I just finished this one—” She flipped through the magazine. “See? Right here. ‘How to Get Your Yoga Instructor to Fall for You’, and I don’t even have a yoga instructor.”

  Then she backed away from the island, doing nothing to get rid of the chocolate on her mouth.

  He stared at her lips and reminded himself that eating that chocolate off her mouth would be a very bad move. A very, very bad move. “We need to talk.”

  “I don’t know, I really had my heart set on eating this cake.”

  “Kenna…what are we doing?”

  “I don’t know about you, but I’m eating. I heard this thing calling my name all the way from my hotel room.”

  “Kenna.”

  “Look…why do you care?”

  “That you were eating cake? I don’t. Why do I care that you stay in an office that was never meant for you? That one I’m not sure about. Or that you’re trying so hard at this job, harder than half our employees, which I’ve got to tell you, is impossibly att
ractive. I haven’t a clue, Kenna, not a single one.”

  She stared at him as if he’d lost his mind, not her. “My office is fine.”

  “Are you staying there because you think you deserve it? Because if you are, damn, Kenna…”

  “You don’t understand. You were born for this job.”

  “And you were born into it. It doesn’t matter.”

  “Why are you being so nice?”

  “I’m always nice.”

  “On my second day in this job, you gave me less than an hour to get up to speed with the union stuff. Was that nice?”

  “It was reality. And now the reality is that you’re here, and so am I, and we’re dealing with it. Together.”

  “Together,” she whispered. “What else are we going to do together?” She stared at his mouth and made him hard.

  But he took a big step back, and a bigger mental one. “Right,” she said, shuttering her eyes from him. “This is about work.”

  “Yeah. Goodnight, Kenna,” he said quietly.

  “Sweet dreams.”

  A rough laugh escaped him. “Trust me, there will be nothing sweet about my dreams tonight.”

  THE WEEK flew by for Kenna and suddenly it was Friday. Later tonight was her father’s big annual charity event. All the employees were expected to make a showing, and seeing as the night always raised tens of thousands of dollars for various children’s charities across the county, Kenna couldn’t complain.

  Needing some time to herself first, she actually took a few hours off work. She felt the need to get out, to drive, to walk through Old Town or Balboa Park, where she could wander through the science museum and lose herself. Or even just stand on the beach and breathe, if only for a few minutes before having to come back and stuff herself into a fancy dress and make nice.

  She hit the coast first, loving the cool breeze, the salty air. Ocean Beach, her teen hangout, was packed. She got out and started walking through the sand, wanting to put her toes in the water, but everywhere she looked she saw youth and wealth and beauty sprawled out.

  No one appeared to have a single issue, a single problem in their life, and even though she knew it was an illusion that it was all sun and games and vacation here for these people on this glorious summer day, it left her yearning to be somewhere else, where life wasn’t so pretty, where it was more complicated, more…real.

  She got back into her car and drove to the Teen Zone.

  There were two girls in the yard talking. One held a lit cigarette. They weren’t tanned and pretty and full of zest and exuberance, as she’d seen only moments ago at the beach. Instead they seemed hard and tired. They wore jeans snug in the butt, too long in the leg and so low on their hips Kenna couldn’t imagine what kept them up. Each wore a handkerchief top that didn’t come close to meeting the waistband of the jeans. One of them had a tattoo of a fern low on her spine, making it look as if she had a plant growing out of her butt. Kenna felt too old to understand why that would appeal. Both had pierced eyebrows, upper lips and chins.

  Neither smiled.

  Music poured out the windows of the house, where there were probably more surly, untrusting, tattooed, pierced, attitude-ridden teens.

  And Sarah dealt with this every day.

  Here was life, here was reality, and not understanding what drove her, Kenna got out of the car. Strange as it seemed, she understood these girls, not because she’d had to scrape by just to survive in her youth. Everyone knew she hadn’t. No, she under stood because they didn’t fit in, and neither did she.

  Two insolent gazes met hers as she entered the yard.

  Kenna offered a smile. “Hi.”

  They looked at each other first before reacting. “Hey,” one of them said reluctantly.

  The other just looked at her.

  “Is Sarah here?” Kenna asked.

  “Yes, and she already knows I’m smoking,” Tat too Crack said, but she dropped the cigarette and ground her heel into it. She looked down at the thing a little guiltily before squatting down to dig a hole in the dirt. She then dropped the used cigarette into it, and carefully covered it back up.

  Kenna met her gaze.

  “She really does know,” the girl said, straightening, shoving her hands into her back pockets.

  As one who’d seriously tested the adults in her life at this age, Kenna nodded sagely. “Sure.”

  The girl narrowed her gaze, looking for all the world like a young child trying to be a grown woman. “You’re laughing at me.”

  “Nope. If you want to kill yourself, go right ahead.”

  “Kill myself? Oh, Christ, you’re not referring to those stupid commercials.”

  “I guess I am.”

  “They don’t know what they’re talking about. If smoking is so bad, they should make it illegal.”

  Kenna shook her head. “Should they make every thing bad for you illegal? Because I gotta admit, I’d miss double mochas, caramel popcorn and cheesy omelets.”

  “What?”

  “Caffeine and salt and cholesterol are killers, too.”

  “That’s just stupid.”

  “Yeah. But I figure the only way you could possibly not believe smoking kills is if you live in a hole like the one you just buried your cigarette in.” Kenna smiled. “You know, the one Sarah knew you were smoking.”

  The other girl snickered.

  “Whatever,” said the smoker brilliantly.

  “Nice comeback,” Kenna said.

  “Are you saying I’m dumb?”

  Kenna lifted a shoulder. “Did you hear the word dumb come out of my mouth?”

  “She only smokes to impress Ricky,” the other girl said, rolling her eyes when the smoker chick sent her a bad look. “It’s not like a habit or anything. She’s been walking around with that pack for three months hoping he’ll catch her with it.”

  “Hey!”

  “It’s true, Lyssa.”

  “Ricky sounds like the dumb one,” Kenna said.

  “And anyway, who’d want to impress a guy who smokes?”

  “Well, he’s cute,” Lyssa said slowly.

  “Have you ever kissed a smoker?” Kenna shuddered. “Serious bad breath.”

  Sarah opened the front door. “Kenna!” As if they were old friends, she came down the walk smiling, arms held out.

  “I’m not out of gas,” Kenna said into Sarah’s hair as she found herself wrapped in a bear hug. “I have no idea why I’m here. I was just out driving and—”

  “And you found yourself here, talking to two of my favorite trouble-makers, Lyssa and Debbie.” She smiled at the teen girls, both of whom gave their version of a smile, meaning they bared their teeth.

  “Kenna told us smokers kiss gross,” Debbie said.

  “I said they taste gross,” Kenna corrected, embarrassed to have been caught discussing anything remotely sexual with teenagers. Sarah would probably be annoyed, as Kenna hadn’t any right, but Sarah just nodded very seriously.

  “Not only do they taste bad to others,” she said. “Eventually you lose your own sense of taste entirely.”

  Lyssa looked horrified. “Really?”

  “Really. I just put some snacks out in the kitchen.

  Help yourself girls, while you can still taste.”

  “Ricky is so out of luck,” Lyssa whispered to Debbie on their way inside.

  Sarah laughed and hugged Kenna again. “I’ve been trying to get her to stop carrying those things around for months. You just might have accomplished it in one day. Come on in.”

  “I can’t.” It was time to put on a pair of stockings and make nice for her father.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah, I just came by to…” She lifted a shoulder and laughed at herself. “Say hi.”

  “Well, hi. Come back when you can stay longer. I have a bunch of other kids you can fix for me.”

  “I told you, I’m no role model.”

  “And I told you, you’re wrong. Anyone can help, if they care enoug
h. I’m pretty sure you care enough, Kenna.”

  “Sarah—”

  “Just answer me this. Why did you come today?”

  “To remember how stupid teenagers are?”

  Sarah laughed. “They’re wonderful, aren’t they?”

  Yeah. They were roughed up, screwed up and angry as hell, but they were wonderful.

  And passionate.

  Or maybe that’s how she felt, passionate, in their presence, in a way she hadn’t felt since she’d come to San Diego and Mallory Enterprises.

  God, she hated it when Ray was right.

  KENNA HUSTLED into the huge ballroom, cringing a little because she was late. Late, late, late for an important date.

  Dinner had already begun.

  As if God had a sense of irony, the only seat left was right next to Serena, and directly across from the man who’d headlined her chocolate-cake fantasies the night before, so much so that she’d vowed off chocolate before bedtime.

  At the other end of the table, her father glanced at his watch when she sat down.

  Her mother looked slightly annoyed.

  Serena tsked.

  Wes just looked at her, with who knew what going through his head.

  And Kenna fought the urge to keep running.

  But she was a Mallory. Running wasn’t an option. Screaming maybe, later, but for right now she smiled and sat.

  “Well, doesn’t someone think they’re special,” Serena muttered out of the side of her mouth.

  Kenna ignored her and reached for her wineglass. She was going to need it.

  “You did get the memo that said formal, right?” Serena eyed Kenna’s dress. Short, shimmering and gold, it could have worked on a beach or a café or anywhere in her old life, but to a charity event…apparently not.

  “Never mind.” Serena shrugged. “It leaves more attention for me. You’re going to lose, you know that, right?”

  “Lose what?”

  “What. The man across from you, that’s what.”

  Kenna looked at Wes, who looked incredible in his tux. “This isn’t a competition.”

  Serena laughed, her light, frothy, fake laugh. “Oh, honey. Don’t mess with the queen. Watch this.” She affixed an innocent look on her face. “I’ll get his attention right now, right this minute. I’m…slipping off my shoe and…”