Meg glanced at Judy and they both glared at him.
“The fact that I walked in and made myself at home should stand as a warning. Not that I thought you’d react like that.”
Meg shrugged.
“You have keys,” Judy told him.
“Keys I didn’t need to use to get in here. This isn’t Utah, Judy. Lock the doors and use your sensors to get in and out of the gate and to disable the alarm on the house.”
“I put in the key code,” Meg told him.
“Yeah, I figured it was you, but the codes are meant for the hired help, not you two. It’s important that we know who is home. And unlocked doors are just sloppy.”
“Paranoid much?” Judy asked him.
“There are more people that live on this block than everyone combined in Hilton, Utah. The days of keeping your doors unlocked are over, babe.”
Judy bored holes in him with her glare. Maybe babe wasn’t the best choice of endearments.
“You know, Mr. Annoying, we’re not children.”
Rick flashed his dimpled smile and let his gaze move down her frame. “I can see that, Utah.”
She actually growled at him.
“What would you have done if it was anyone else sitting in here?”
“I would have hit the alarm.”
He paused, smiled. This could be fun.
“All right.” He stood and grasped her hand, ignored the heat of her palm, and placed her in the hall in the spot from which she noticed him the first time.
Meg watched from the other side of the living room while Rick moved back to the sofa and sat.
“Meg, on your call. Judy, let’s see how quickly you can get to that alarm.”
Rick picked up the magazine again and sat back on the sofa, not that any would-be attacker would be as relaxed as he was. Still, he wanted to give Judy a chance.
He thumbed through the pages . . . waiting.
“Go!”
Rick was up, over the coffee table, and had his arm around Judy’s waist, her backside pressed against him before she managed four steps. She struggled in his arms, attempted to elbow his ribs. His steel grip kept her from landing any punches as he pushed her against the wall, immobilizing her. “Your towel would have already fallen, babe,” he whispered.
She relaxed in his arms and he loosened his grip. “Your foreplay needs some work, Rick.”
He laughed and drew in the floral scent of her shampoo before letting her go.
“Well that was entertaining,” Meg said from her perch.
Judy moved out of his reach and smoothed a hand over her torso. Lucky hand!
“Wouldn’t be a bad idea for the two of you to take some self-defense classes,” he told them.
“I doubt we’d stand a chance against a Marine, regardless.”
Rick lost his smile for a moment, not liking the thought of Judy at the mercy of one of his old mates.
“Still not a bad idea.”
Meg pushed off the chair. “How about we just lock the doors and use the right keys?”
“What about when you’re not home?”
“Wow, Rick . . . don’t take the job as hospitality ambassador for the city.”
“It’s a shitty world, Utah. No reason not to be prepared.”
Judy placed her hands on her hips. “I think Meg and I will be just fine, thank you very much. Now if you don’t mind, we were getting ready to go out.”
“Out?” Where?
“Yeah, and before you ask . . . no, you’re not invited.”
It killed him not to ask, but he accepted her dis and moved toward the front door. “Lock the doors and use your key fobs, ladies.”
Judy gave him a mock salute. “Yes, sir.”
Rick narrowed his eyes and walked out of the house. Behind him, he heard the lock click into place.
His motorcycle had a small compartment where he kept a few toys. He found a small tracking device, removed his cell phone from his pocket, and synced the two together.
He moved to Judy’s car, opened the driver’s-side door, and tossed her jean jacket in the front seat. Then he placed his hand on the underside of the steering column and stuck the device where no one would see it.
“I take my job seriously, Utah. Get used to it.”
On a map, Westwood wasn’t a long distance from Mike’s Beverly Hills home. Driving there at seven thirty in the morning, however, would test the patience of a saint.
Wearing a pencil skirt, a silk blouse, and sensible heels, Judy hustled from her car after finding a parking spot near the top of the structure. Her excitement over her first day as an intern was clouded by the mad dash to the elevator and the realization that she was going to be late if there was anyone else attempting to get to the lower floors.
At two minutes after eight, she walked up to the receptionist at Benson & Miller Designs and waited while the lady on the phone finished her call.
“Hi, I’m . . . ah, I’m Judy Gardner. The new intern.”
The blonde behind the desk looked to be in her early twenties and seemed to have a genuine smile. “Is it that time again?” the woman asked.
“Excuse me?”
“Intern time. Seems we just did this.” She picked up the phone and dialed. “Mr. Archer, your intern is here. Great.”
The receptionist hung up the phone and pointed down the hall. “Go down the hall, take the first right, and you’ll see offices lining the left side of the building. Three down and you’ll find Mr. Archer’s office.”
Judy hiked her purse higher on her shoulder and started down the hall.
The phone rang behind her. “Benson and Miller Designs, how may I direct your call?”
The greeting alone brought a smile to Judy’s face. She was here. Chasing a dream of becoming a world-class architect. The soft brown and taupe color palette of the office soothed the space and highlighted some of the more recognizable designs of the talented staff. Each photograph had a spotlight from above, giving the hall a museum quality. She didn’t have time to study the buildings. That would have to come later.
She found Steve Archer standing over his overburdened desk with a phone in his hand. Judy stepped into his office with a smile. “We haven’t heard back from engineering on the soil report, Mason.” While Steve spoke into the phone he had poised between his shoulder and his ear, his hands dug into the pile of paper to the left of his phone. “As soon as I have it I’ll send it to your secretary.” He glanced at his watch. “It’s five minutes after eight. I haven’t even had my coffee yet, let alone checked my e-mails. I know . . . I got it.”
Mr. Archer hung up the phone. “You’re late.”
Judy froze. She really had hoped he wouldn’t have noticed. “Uhm . . . the off-ramp—”
“Is messed up. Yeah, I know, has been for months. Leave fifteen minutes earlier. Interns are expected to be here on time, if not early.” He still fumbled on his desk, searching for something.
“I’m sorry.”
He tossed his hand in the air. “Never apologize and never give any excuses, Lucy. I only want to hear how you’ll fix it so you won’t do it again.”
Right. “I’ll leave twenty minutes early tomorrow.”
“Perfect.”
“And it’s Judy.”
Mr. Archer had to be in his midthirties, but his hair was thinning and though he wore a nice suit, it looked like he’d been in it for several hours. “What?” he asked, never taking his attention off his desk.
“My name, it’s Judy, not Lucy.”
“Right . . . OK.” He found the paper he was looking for and whipped it in front of his eyes with a smile. “There you are.” He moved around the desk and out of his office with swift, determined steps. Judy had nothing else to do but move out of his way and follow behind.
In the center of the office were several cubicles along with a dozen light-table workstations. “You can put your purse here,” he told her, pointing toward an empty cubicle.
Judy tossed her purse under the desk and nearl
y jogged to keep up with her mentor.
“Coffee’s in here.” He pointed toward a small kitchen. “The fridge is for lunches. It’s emptied every Friday so don’t leave anything there over the weekends.”
“OK.”
He kept walking, rounding another corner and down a dark hall. He opened a door and they stepped into a well-lit room with several copy machines.
Steve opened the lid of one, clicked in a command, and waited for the copy to come out the other end. “As you can see, we have paper size, drafting size, and even a blueprint copy machine in here. Did you work on these in school?”
“Not this new, but—”
“There are guide sheets on the side of every machine. If something about the instructions doesn’t make sense, ask someone. You don’t want to be responsible for jamming these machines. It will take you half the day to find the problem and we can’t be without them that long.”
She wanted to ask if they had someone who fixed them in the office, but he was already walking out of the room.
The next door they moved through was the mail room. It was Monday, and the Saturday mail had been delivered and sat in a large bin right below the massive slots with several dozen names.
“This is where you’re starting.”
Judy actually stumbled. She knew being an intern meant she’d be doing a lot of the busy work at first . . . but the mail room?
“Everyone expects their mail ready by nine. If you’re smart, you’ll jump in here again before you leave for the day to get a head start on the next day.” Steve turned to leave her to the daunting task of sorting. “I expect you in my office at nine fifteen. I have a nine thirty meeting and I’ll need a few minutes to tell you what you need to do next.”
And then he was gone.
A blur as he pushed out of the mail room without so much as a Welcome to Benson and Miller.
“Holy shit.” How much coffee did he have this morning?
Chapter Four
“I’m going to find out everything about you, Meg. I do mean everything.”
Meg looked across the table at Samantha Harrison, who looked nothing like Meg had pictured when Judy told her Samantha, or Sam as she liked to be called, was a duchess. Her red hair exploded from the clip holding it back, and even with four-inch heels, she was barely five and a half feet tall. Yeah, she was in casual but expensive clothes and her makeup suited her features perfectly, but she was about as down-to-earth as any of Meg’s old college friends.
“I don’t have much to hide.”
Sam raised one eyebrow and waited.
“Got caught smoking pot in high school once, nearly got tossed out but never bothered to party in school again so they let me stay.”
A slight smile met Sam’s lips and Meg’s confession kept rolling.
“Partied a little in college but my asthma kept me from smoking anything.”
Sam made a note on her pad of paper. “Anything I should know about your parents? Your family?”
“They voted in cannabis for recreational use and grow their own up in Washington. Total throwbacks from the sixties. Dad’s family is Jewish, Mom’s is Catholic . . . never was sure what that makes me.”
Now Sam laughed. “So no strong religious tendencies?”
“More like confused tendencies. Mom would bless the bacon like she’d been taught by my grandmother and put it on everything.”
“Siblings?”
“Only child.”
“What’s your Facebook profile name?”
Meg gave it to her.
“Any other social media platforms?”
Meg’s palms started to sweat. Not that she had any naked photos hanging around out there, but she wasn’t sure of every picture taken over the last four years. “I deleted my MySpace four years ago. Never have figured out Twitter, but I’m on there.”
“How did you meet Judy?”
“Freshman dorms. She was two doors down from me. We often met in the lobby while we waited for our roommates to move their dates along. Didn’t take long for us to switch rooms.”
“Did you know Michael was her brother when you met?”
The questions struck Meg as strange, but she answered them anyway. “Not a clue. She talked about her brothers, but it wasn’t until the rumor mill started up and people were lining up to be her best friend that I was told that Mike was Michael Wolfe.”
Sam made another note.
“So why that question?” Meg asked.
“I need to know how you respond to the rich and famous. Many of our clients are beyond loaded and nearly all of them are famous in their own world.”
That made sense. “Seems everyone in this city thinks they’re famous. I’ve never met so many aspiring everythings in my life.”
Her future boss laughed. “What about you? Ever want to be an aspiring anything?”
“Not enough to pursue it.”
“Not even a singing career?”
Meg shot her eyes to Sam. “How did you know I sing? Did Judy tell you?”
Sam shook her head. “I haven’t talked to Judy . . . yet.”
Shivers ran up Meg’s arms. “What else do you already know about me?”
Sam placed the pen and paper on the table and reached for her coffee.
“Let’s see . . . your student loans top seventy thousand, and as much as your parents would like to help you out they’ve never planned for the future and have less than ten thousand in their savings account.”
“Financial information can’t be terribly hard to discover.” Meg knew there was very little that couldn’t be found out with a click of a mouse.
“Dane Bishop was your high school squeeze.”
Meg froze.
“Kind of an ass from what I could tell. What did you see in him?”
She hadn’t thought of Dane in years. Tried hard not to. “I was young and stupid.”
“And he was a couple of years older and a user.”
Boy was he.
“Like I said, Meg, I will find out everything. My business is rooted in secrecy and trust. There can never be a breach in either if you work for me. So far, everything you’re telling me pans out. If you weren’t looking for a job, I’d attempt to recruit you as a client.”
It was Meg’s turn to grin. “Can’t I be both?”
This is a stupid game, Judy typed into her tablet. I’ve hit the boss six times and still haven’t won once.
She clicked out of the chat room and hit the boss again. The image of Steve Archer and his endless tasks of meaningless shit fueled her desire to win the game in her hands. For five days, she’d played secretary, postman, and useless runner. This was not what she thought an internship meant.
The voice on the house intercom let her know that Meg was home.
She pulled a swig from her beer and hit the boss one last time with the energy level she had in the game.
Match lost.
Damn game.
She moved back into the chat room when Meg sailed into the house, tossing her keys and purse on the coffee table. “I see you’re being as productive as ever.”
“Don’t judge,” Judy scolded, even if her best friend was right. “I’ve had a shit day.”
“Again?”
All Judy could do was growl.
“Well I’ve had a fabulous day.”
Judy closed her tablet and tossed it aside. “I take it you met Sam today?”
Meg opened the fridge and grabbed a beer as she spoke. “I can’t believe she’s a duchess. Are you sure about that?”
“Ask Karen if you think I’m lying.”
“I don’t think you’re lying . . . she just seems, I don’t know, normal.”
Judy laughed. “People say the same thing about Mike. Being a celebrity or royalty doesn’t make you less than normal. Just makes people think you need to be some kind of cartoon character of a real person. So Sam shows up in normal clothes and treats you like a potential employee and suddenly she’s not a duchess?”
<
br /> Meg tilted back her beverage and then sighed. “Yeah. I guess. She’s so . . . I don’t know, normal.”
“A real person.”
“Right.”
Judy pushed off the sofa and tossed her empty bottle in the trash. “I wish my boss was as real as Sam.”
“Is he still calling you Lucy?”
“Yes! Every damn time he does, I tell him my name. I laugh.” Judy demonstrated with a dramatic toss of her hair. “It’s Judy, Mr. Archer.” She paused, then said in a lower voice to mimic her boss, “What? Yeah, yeah . . . file this. Fix this. Do this.”
“Sounds awful.”
“I haven’t seen a blueprint since I walked into the office.” Well, she’d managed to see a work in progress on one of the drafters’ desks. Other than that, she’d seen nothing. Filing, paperwork, and bullshit.
“Sounds like you need a night of confidence. I’ve scoped out the local pool halls.”
Suddenly Judy felt a little more like herself. “Did you say pool hall?”
Penthouse Pool was a dive. Something that would fit in with the college crowd. Too bad the college crowd wasn’t anywhere near Hollywood. The beer was cheap and it only took one round to find someone to buy them their drinks.
“I’m actually really good,” Judy warned the thirtysomething guy and his friend who challenged her to a game.
“I can stand losing twenty bucks,” he told her.
Judy racked up the balls and let Meg hold the money. It took less than five minutes to relieve Phil, or maybe it was Bill, of twenty dollars. Phil/Bill doubled his bet and lost in four minutes. “I warned you.”
Phil/Bill scowled and moved back to the bar, leaving Meg and Judy sitting on the side of the table. If it wasn’t for the music in the jukebox they probably would have left the minute the guys left. It didn’t take long for a couple of other men to take their place. Only these guys were looking to get into something more than a corner pocket, and Judy and Meg both knew better than to challenge them to anything.
“I can sink that ball in your hole,” the scuzzball managed.
Judy laughed, not willing to meet the guy’s gaze.
“We’re lesbians,” Meg announced.
Taken by Tuesday (Weekday Brides Series) Page 4