Temporary Boss...Forever Husband

by Stacy Connelly

  His eyebrows lifted in challenge, Zach caught Allison’s eye, and the day at Bethany’s when they’d talked about her life in New York flashed in her memory. Not about to back down, she put her fingers in her mouth and let out a sharp whistle.

  A few people close by jumped, a dozen or so heads turned in her direction, and silence fell.

  “Thank you, Allison, for that elegant introduction,” Daryl said wryly amid laughter from their coworkers. “I wanted to take a moment to congratulate Zach on a job well done. James Collins has a reputation for outstanding workmanship and customer service. It’s an honor to be working with his company, and we all have Zach to thank.” Lifting the glass he held, Daryl added, “To Zach.”

  Everyone, Allison included, raised a glass, one she nearly spilled when Zach reached out and caught her wrist before she could take a sip and pulled her to his side. She could feel every eye in the place focused on her, and despite her normal refusal to blend in with the rest of the business crowd, she tried to inconspicuously escape from the hold he had on her arm.

  “Zach, what are you doing?” she hissed behind a smile.

  Instead of answering her, Zach addressed the entire room once more. “Thank you, Daryl, and thank you all for coming. The Collins account is an exciting opportunity for our entire company, and as usual, I can’t wait to get started.”

  “Oh, great,” Brett called out from the back of the crowd. “This was all a trick, wasn’t it? You really brought everyone here to work.”

  Laughter filled the room, and Zach grinned at the good-natured teasing. “Yep. So you better drink up. We’ve got a planning meeting in five minutes. Actually, I think we can wait until Monday to get back to work. Tonight is for celebrating, but this celebration wouldn’t be complete—in fact, it wouldn’t even be happening—if not for Allison Warner. Her comments and advice about the presentation were on target. Without her help, I wouldn’t be standing here right now, and we wouldn’t have much to celebrate. So…” Lifting their still-joined hands, he said, “To Allison.”

  Stunned, she lifted her eyes to Zach. Meeting his blue eyes, Daryl and the rest of the employees faded away, leaving behind a world where only she and Zach existed. He squeezed her hand, but he might as well have reached inside her chest and squeezed her heart.

  If the rest of the room felt as shell-shocked as Allison by Zach’s speech, no one let it show. Everyone simply lifted their glasses, ready to finish the toast Daryl had started. “To Allison.”

  The entire room seemed to shrink as the crowd swelled closer, everyone eager to offer congratulations, but Zach quickly ducked his head before they were separated. “You were right, Allison, and I couldn’t have done it without you.”

  “I didn’t—”

  “You did,” he insisted, giving her hand another squeeze.

  She didn’t have the chance to reply before the well-wishers intruded. She accepted their congratulations with a smile, quickly downplaying her role, but she could barely focus on what she or anyone else was saying.

  She didn’t know what shocked her more—Zach taking her advice and using his personal experience to win a client, something he’d sworn he would never do, or his willingness to share the spotlight and give her credit for the idea, something she knew Kevin would never have done.

  “Okay, tell me how ya did it!” Beer in hand, Brett Mitchell threw an arm around Allison’s shoulders. Young and eager, he was one of the wannabe salesmen Zach so despised, but Allison liked the kid. With his blond hair and wide smile, he had a boy-next-door appeal she figured would make him a great salesman once he had a few more years under his belt.

  “How I did what, Brett?” she asked, carefully disengaging from the one-armed hug before she ended up wearing most of his beer.

  “How you managed to knock Zach’s socks off?”

  “Yes, Allison,” a humor-filled female voice chimed in. “How did you manage that?”

  Turning, Allison met Caroline Wilder’s gaze. Judging by the older woman’s smile, Caroline thought Allison had knocked off more intimate apparel than Zach’s socks.

  Looking at Zach right then was the last thing Allison should have done, but her gaze sought him out like a homing beacon. Daryl had already left, but several people still surrounded Zach. He should have been savoring his triumph, basking in the attention. And yet, as if somehow sensing that she watched him, he glanced her way, his eyes locking on hers.

  Allison had never considered herself overly susceptible to the power of suggestion, but with Caroline’s words as the sounding bell, Allison was seconds away from drooling. All too easily, she could imagine stripping away the tie he’d already loosened. Finishing the job he’d started at the collar by unbuttoning the rest of the buttons on his pale blue dress shirt. Stripping away the leather belt and shoes. Pushing down the slate gray trousers and boxers, Allison decided, leaving nothing but his socks to knock off.

  Fortunately, Brett had had enough to drink not to guess the direction of Allison’s thoughts and Caroline—well, Caroline was the evil genius who’d implanted those thoughts in the first place, so it was impossible for Allison to keep them secret from her.

  Still, Allison maintained, “I lucked out, that’s all. I gave Zach some advice, but he’s still the one who came up with the proposal and presented it to James Collins.”

  “Wish I had that kind of luck,” Brett said without an ounce of resentment in his voice.

  “Just give it time, Brett. Your chance will come.”

  “Well, right now, it looks like it’s my chance to hit the bar.”

  Shaking her head as Brett made a beeline for the bar, Allison gazed after the young man longer than necessary. Anything to delay facing Caroline Wilder. Finally, though, she had little choice but to turn toward Zach’s mother. “This is an amazing party. You did a great job.”

  “I think you mean you did a great job.”

  “And I think you and your son are both trying to give me credit where it’s not due. I didn’t have nearly as much to do with tonight’s celebration as either of you are making it sound.”

  “Zach told me about the advice you gave him for the proposal. Until you came along, my son never made personal connections, but I see how he looks at you and how you look at him.”

  With the heated glances they’d exchanged, Allison would have had a hard time denying Caroline’s claim. But that wasn’t about a personal connection so much as it was a physical one. Allison was too realistic to think any relationship with Zach would ever be a lasting one—something that had been far from her mind last night. If he hadn’t thrown out a safety net, she would have taken an emotional tumble right into his bed.

  Well, her bed, technically. And it would have been a mistake.

  Her confrontation with Bethany had left Allison feeling like she’d been dragged across hot asphalt for miles. Her emotions were far too raw and vulnerable to build up the tough skin she’d need to guard her heart against Zach. Knowing she was in love with Zach was one thing; Zach finding out she was in love…

  “I’ve never seen him so happy.”

  “He’s just won the contract of his career,” Allison said. “Of course he’s happy.”

  “Really, Allison,” Caroline said in a chiding rebuke all mothers seemed to have mastered. “I’m sure you’ve figured out by now business does not make Zach happy.”

  Needing some time alone, Allison slipped away from the boisterous crowd to find a secluded table on the outside patio. She could still hear the music and laughter coming from in side, but the sounds were muted and the fresh air was free of the scents of fried food and beer.

  “I guess it’s my turn to find out how angry you are with me.”

  Allison turned in her chair at the sound of Zach’s voice. Her pulse quickened at the sight of him, the faint party lights strung along the patio doing little to dispel the darkness and leaving him cast in mysterious shadow. She tried reminding herself he’d done the right thing in pulling away from her last night, bu
t never before had she wanted something so wrong for her quite so badly…

  Swallowing against a throat as dry as the desert, she asked, “Angry?”

  He pulled a chair out and inched it closer to hers before taking a seat. “That I spilled the beans and told the entire company how brilliant you are. You know Daryl will offer you a full-time position after this.”

  Allison waited for a flare of panic, but for the first time the shots didn’t fire. The camaraderie of the evening reminded her of the pros of working a long time for one company and a situation where one person’s success truly did mean success for all. And she didn’t want to worry about the future right then. She wanted to simply enjoy the evening.

  “I’m not mad. I’m…touched. It really meant a lot to me, Zach,” she added, realizing he couldn’t know how much his acknowledgement meant without knowing more of her past. “The other day, you asked me if it was hard to leave New York, my job…Kevin. The truth is, I didn’t plan to leave. I came back here for my dad’s funeral, but so much had changed.”

  A burst of laughter spilled out from inside the restaurant, a sharp contrast to her somber memories. “My father was gone, Bethany was barely talking to me. My mother would have been the only reason for me to stay, and she encouraged me to go back. I took a leave of absence, but after a few weeks, I did go back to work. I’d just won the cosmetics contract, and I had another half a dozen ads coming due. I was hoping to lose myself in long hours at the office and literally work my way through my grief.”

  Zach nodded silently, and Allison had no doubt he knew exactly what she was talking about. “When I got back to work, I found out my winning the cosmetics line was old news. Kevin had pulled in three new clients while I was gone.” She could still remember being blindsided by the news when she walked into the office. “I was thrilled for him, but I was also surprised. He had an in with head of the company, and well, most of the time, he acted like it. He took on clients handed over to him by the company’s partners, but going after his own accounts wasn’t his thing.”

  Zach shook his head at Allison’s description of her ex’s work ethic. George Hardaway might have given Zach a recommendation when he first hired on as a kid still in high school, but Zach had known from day one that he’d have to work hard to prove himself. He would have been embarrassed, ashamed even, to ever have the older man think he was coasting along instead of working his ass off.

  “Let me guess,” he said, “good old Kev was jealous. The accolades you received for winning the cosmetic account inspired him to get off his butt and do some real work?”

  Allison gave a mocking laugh, her green eyes glittering in the faint lighting. “Oh, I wish I could say I’d inspired Kevin to work hard, even if showing me up had been his motivation. No, I inspired Kevin to steal those ideas…from me.”

  “He stole them?” Sheer incredulity ended up buried by an avalanche of anger for Allison’s sake. He bit back a dozen swear words, knowing his negative opinion of her ex wouldn’t make Allison feel any better. If anything, that reaction might come off as a criticism against her for falling for a loser.

  Allison nodded. “I made it all too easy for him. Back in those days, I worked at home after hours as much as I did at the office. Luckily, I had a laptop that held all my files,” she said with a flinch that told him luck had been all on only Kevin’s side. “I didn’t take it with me when I went home to my father’s funeral, and since Kevin and I were living together…”

  “It was still stealing,” Zach insisted, refusing to let Allison take the blame for trusting the man he assumed she’d loved. “The computer belonged to the company and to you. He had no right to access it, let alone take credit for your campaigns.”

  No wonder Allison was so afraid to succeed. Not only had her father’s death followed her first major professional triumph, so had a personal and professional betrayal—thanks to her jerk of an ex.

  “Tell me you called him on it. From what you said about the guy, someone at the top must have realized Kevin couldn’t pull his own weight let alone pull in new clients.”

  “Oh, I tried. First I confronted Kevin who said it was all my fault. I was supposed to be there to support him, to encourage him, to be his muse. And yes, he really did use that line, if you can believe it. I wasn’t supposed to outshine him, and if I hadn’t shown him up the way I had, he wouldn’t have needed to take my ideas.”

  This time Zach couldn’t hold back his opinion.

  Allison nodded at his colorful description. “And that’s when I got mad. Up until then, I was too hurt and surprised to be angry. I kept waiting for Kevin to apologize and admit what he did was wrong. When he tried to dump all the blame on me…I went to our boss with my notes and earlier versions of those ads. Proof they were mine. Proof Kevin didn’t have. But this was Kevin’s old family friend, the one who had personally hired Kevin, brought him to New York, and was grooming him to be one of the big players in the firm. I was only the girlfriend who’d tagged along. Firing Kevin would have reflected badly on him. It would have meant admitting a mistake. Firing me meant nothing.”

  “Firing you was their loss,” Zach argued. “They deserve Kevin. They didn’t deserve you.”

  His own words prodded Zach’s conscience in way that had him shifting uncomfortably. Allison also deserved better than him. Better than he could offer. He’d thought at first that she was a temporary kind of girl, someone who didn’t do serious and might flit from relationship to relationship in the same way she moved from one job to the next.

  But he’d seen how important family was to her. Her sorrow when she spoke of her father; her regret over the rift in her relationship with her sister; her excitement over the niece or nephew to come. All of it flashed like warning lights signaling danger ahead. Allison wanted family and forever and everything he couldn’t promise. Her bouncing from job to job was nothing more than a safety mechanism to hide her own vulnerability, to keep her from getting hurt… Something that would undoubtedly happen were they to get even more involved.

  Disturbed by the thought, he tried getting back on track, saying, “Their loss was my gain. I meant everything I said up there, Allison. I wouldn’t have won that contract without you.”

  Her gaze searched his as she was undoubtedly trying to figure out what had convinced him to take her advice, and he found himself hoping she wouldn’t ask, not sure what answer he could give. He’d been working the same way for years, an impassable chasm between his professional and personal life, he still wasn’t sure how Allison had bridged that gap and changed his mind. How she’d changed him….

  Those warning signs loomed ever larger on the horizon. Last Chance. Turn Back Now. No Exit Ahead.

  Almost as if sensing his rising panic, Allison said, “Then I guess it’s time for both of us to celebrate, and I know there are still people around who want to congratulate you.”

  “Like the kid?”

  “What kid?”

  “The one who was hanging all over you when you were talking to my mom.”

  “You mean Brett? He’s—” Her eyes widened and her dimple flashed as she teased, “Don’t tell me you’re jealous, Zach Wilder.”

  “Naw,” he said, denying the possibility and the possessive surge he’d felt when the younger man had pulled Allison into a one-armed hug. “He’s not your type.”

  “I have a type?”

  “Sure. First of all, he’s just a kid. Way too much of a push-over for you and not nearly enough of a challenge.”

  “Who says I like challenging men?”

  “I do. You challenge me all the time.”

  One corner of her mouth kicked up in appreciation of his play on words. “Brett’s the newest sales assistant. He started at Knox right before I did.” At Zach’s groan, she added, “I know what you’re thinking, but you might end up liking him.”

  “Yeah, why is that?”

  “Well, he’s pretty much your biggest fan, and there’s something about him that reminds me of
you. Come on. I’ll introduce you,” she said, rising to her feet.

  “Allie—”

  “Come on,” she insisted, proving his point about bossing men around as she ignored his protest, grabbed his arm and led the way back inside and over to Brett.

  He did look hungry, Zach thought as the two of them talked shop for a few minutes, but also earnest and eager to please. And Allison didn’t know what she was talking about comparjavelinaing the two of them. He’d never been like this happy-go-lucky puppy of a kid.

  Yeah, okay, when George Hardaway installed the alarm in his mother’s house a dozen years ago, Zach had asked one or two or…twenty questions about the system, the installation, the tools the man used. And he might have called the guy a few times to remind him of his promise to get Zach a job as an apprentice that first summer. And maybe…Allison was right. Maybe he had been like this kid a long, long time ago.

  And maybe he owed it to George to return the favor the older man had done for him. But it wasn’t George he was thinking of as he offered to take Brett along on his next walk-through of a condo project he’d been working on. It was Allison and the pleasure he took in making her smile.

  Chapter Eleven

  “This is it,” Zach said, and Allison turned her car on to a brick half-circle driveway.

  When Caroline asked Allison to drive Zach home, just to be safe after the few beers he’d had to drink, she’d hesitated for a brief moment. She’d only had one beer along with enough greasy bar food to coat her stomach and hips for weeks to come, so she was certainly capable of fulfilling designated driver duties. It wasn’t the drive part that worried her, but the home part. As in Zach’s home. The two of them alone at Zach’s home.

  Last night, dangerous emotional land mines had kept them from crossing uncharted territory. But what would stop them tonight?