“Chips.” He snatched a bag out of the box and held it up.
Kimber came into the room and accepted it, a look of confusion on her face as if she’d been expecting him to say—or do—something else. But no matter how much he’d wanted to say or do that something else, he wouldn’t.
Seducing Kimber wouldn’t be productive. Not for either of them.
CHAPTER FOUR
Landon leaned into the back of the conference room chair, now permanently molded to his body. He flipped his Mont Blanc pen end-over-end on the legal pad in front of him, listening with half an ear to his team rounding the long, oval boardroom table.
He’d climbed into the shower this morning almost amused by the direction of his thoughts last night. He supposed the combination of fatigue and stress could cause the borderline mania he’d experienced. When he’d entered the kitchen to find Kimber making coffee and Lyon kicked back on the living room sofa watching cartoons, he’d felt none of the strange longing he had hours prior. Yes, she was still undeniably attractive, but that… need he’d felt for her was gone.
He hadn’t been able to ignore her beauty but, thank God, he was able to have a normal conversation with her before kissing Lyon’s head and walking out the door. A perfectly normal morning where he hadn’t shot headlong into The Twilight Zone with host Rod Serling.
Hopefully this morning was a predictable trend for the future.
“Red and silver. It’s who they are,” Margaret was arguing.
He tuned in to the chatter around him.
Margaret moved her empty Starbucks cup to the side and flipped around an art board, featuring Windy City’s current packaging, to show Brenda. “They’ve built a brand out of these colors.” She gestured at the beauty shot of the bag next to a heaping bowl of thin, golden potato chips before tapping it twice with her fingernail. Once when she repeated “red” and tapped the red part of the bag, and again when she said “silver.” Brenda leered at her from across the table.
Landon felt a migraine coming on.
“They’ve built a not-so-well-known brand,” Brenda challenged. “For them to stand out, we have to think outside of the box, here. I say we start with tearing the brand down to the studs and rebuilding from scratch.”
“Lay’s has the color yellow cornered,” someone piped up.
And then they went around again. Like they had for the majority of the morning. It became quickly apparent that the direction of this conversation, like the other earlier conversations, wasn’t productive.
Landon drew in a solid breath and spoke for the first time in thirty minutes. Because he only spoke when he needed to, the room quieted when the first syllable exited his lips. “Margaret is right.”
Margaret sat up straighter and batted eyelashes over round cheeks. “Thank you, Mr. Downey.”
He resisted the urge to shake his head, and capped his frustration. His designers were like little puppies, desperately seeking pats on the head. Brenda sent Margaret a sneer. Margaret fluffed her dark hair in an arrogant manner.
Why they took their wins and losses personally, he had no idea. The product won or lost. A lesson for another day, perhaps. One for a day when he wasn’t circling a hellacious headache at the hands of a group of corporate ladder-climbers. He scrubbed his face, aware his thinning patience was not their fault. Not technically. He had a lot riding on nailing Windy City’s brand. Otto Williams had fired his last ad agency. Landon had seen the other agency’s proposal Otto had called “crap on a stick.” Even Landon could admit it hadn’t been half-bad, though he’d kept that opinion to himself.
“The brand’s colors aren’t the issue,” he announced, infusing his voice with authority. “It’s their image that needs updating.” A dozen wide-eyed stares greeted him. Waiting for him to solve this epic conundrum. He threw the problem back at them. “Suggestions?”
They exchanged glances. He rested his elbows on the table and folded his hands, waiting. No one commented. Okay. He pushed himself to standing and a few people shuffled, seemingly confused as to whether the meeting was over. Rather than walk out of the room, he paused at the coffee cart and grabbed a hardening Danish from a tray. He took a bite, chewed, and watched his team expectantly.
“Mr. Downey?” A skinny guy wearing a checkered shirt, his hair shaved into a short Mohawk, spoke up. “I have one.”
Saved by the new hire. God bless him.
Landon licked the frosting from his lips. “Mr. Wilson.”
Kirk Wilson hesitated and glanced nervously around at the older, seasoned—jaded, Landon mentally corrected—team members, as if weighing whether this idea was the right one to share with the table of cannibals.
“When you say image”—Kirk cleared his throat—“you mean like… as in who they are. As a company. Like… as a brand?”
He was going to have to muster more confidence than that to land an idea in this room. Landon tipped his chin in encouragement anyway. Spit it out, kid. He hoped it was good. For Kirk’s sake. Margaret pursed her lips and narrowed her eyes, ready to draw blood.
Kirk swallowed hard, surveyed the room one final time, and addressed his colleagues. “Windy City has a reputation of being the chip that sits next to a sandwich. But what if consumers thought of the sandwich as something that sat next to the chips?”
Margaret’s face pinched. Brenda craned her thin eyebrows. Stephen dropped his pen on his pad and blew out a breath, muttering, “Oh boy.”
Contrarily, a smile slid across Landon’s face. Nailed it. Kirk reminded him a bit of himself when he’d launched into the field of advertising.
Before Margaret opened her mouth, no doubt to chop Kirk’s tender, sapling-like hopes into kindling, Landon cut her off. “Chips as the main course,” he said. “I like it.”
His statement garnered a look of flattered shock from Kirk and one of betrayal from Margaret and Brenda. Look at that. Finally. Those two agree on something.
Landon repressed a chuckle. “Order lunch.” He dropped the petrified pastry into the wastebasket. “No one leaves this room until you’re solid on a concept.” He snatched up his pen and pad and walked to the door, pausing to tap the door frame. “Tomorrow, we’ll reconvene and hammer out the details of the campaign. I want it built around Kirk’s idea. Windy City. The main course.”
He shut the door behind him, and his team’s stone silence erupted into hushed chatter. Kirk was on his own now. Swimming with the sharks. It was the best way to learn.
Good luck, kid.
* * *
Kimber wanted to collapse on her bed and take a nap. She’d spent the morning chasing after Lyon, playing one game or another. First it was hide-and-seek, then tag, then a game he made up, which consisted of him hiding his Superman figurine in the house and charging her with locating it. At least she’d been able to cheat via the video-outfitted baby monitor when Lyon hid the action-figure in his bedroom.
After lunch, when he’d finally wound down, she took the opportunity to clean the kitchen. That task complete, she walked into his room and found him on the floor, Legos scattered around him, his face pleated in concentration as he built Batman’s dark domain, Gotham City.
“Some men like to watch the world burn,” she said in her best Michael Caine voice.
Lyon smiled, a dimple punctuating his beautiful brown skin and lighting his blue-green eyes. He was going to be a real heartbreaker, this one.
“You like that movie?” he asked, attaching a Lego.
“A lot.” Especially the Christian Bale parts. Her cell phone rang and she showed him the display before answering. He smiled at the photo of his aunt.
She put the phone to her ear. “Hi, Aunt Angel.”
“Hi, nanny Kimber. How is my adorable nephew?”
She smiled back at Lyon and answered Angel with a truthful, “He’s great.”
“Sucker. Felled by the Downey charm.”
She thought of Landon last night: his disheveled hair, crooked tie, the accidentally sensual smile gr
acing his firm mouth. You have no idea.
“… wondering if you’d talked to him?”
Oops. She’d tuned out her friend while lusting after Landon. “Not much. He came in late last night and looked really tired. He wasn’t all that conversational,” Kimber answered. “I offered him spaghetti, but he declined. Does Landon like spaghetti?”
Angel was quiet for a beat. “Yes, he does. But I wasn’t asking about Landon. I asked if you’d heard from Evan.”
“Oh!” She let out a nervous laugh. “Evan. Of course. He, uh, he called this morning to talk to Lyon.”
Angel fell quiet again. Kimber checked the screen of her iPhone to be sure the call hadn’t dropped.
When she returned it to her ear, Angel said, “I am so dim!”
Her intuition prickled. Or maybe that was her pride. “What? No you’re not.” She snapped a Lego into place. Lyon pulled it off and put it on again, frowning in concentration. Perfectionist. She thought of his concise, intentional uncle and had no doubt who Lyon had inherited that quality from.
“It’s Landon,” Angel said.
“What’s Landon?” Kimber offered the next piece to Lyon. He took it. She was glad. She couldn’t take the rejection.
“Has it always been Landon?”
Uh-oh.
“I’m hungry.” Lyon pouted and held his stomach.
“You’re always hungry,” she told him before returning to her call. “Angel, what are you—”
“I thought you had a crush on Evan all those years ago.” She gasped and Kimber’s skin erupted into goose bumps. “How could you keep this from me?”
Guilt pinged along her ribs like a pinball had been shot into her chest cavity. “I didn’t mean to. I just… never corrected you when you assumed it was Evan.”
Lyon frowned at the mention of his father’s name. Right. She should watch what she said in front of the little playback machine.
Angel’s good-natured laugh startled her. “Landon’s a good choice,” she said. “He’s single, he’s rich. He’s not what I’d call romantic, so if you’re suffering any chocolates-and-roses fantasies, I think you can hang those out to dry. But he is established. Stable. Lives close to you.”
Only he did bring me chocolates. And potato chips are better than roses. She shut her eyes. That so wasn’t the point. “Angel, I’m not really looking for—”
“Can I have Teddy Grahams?” Lyon flopped to the floor, doing his best impression of a famished child.
“Yes,” she answered him. “Do you need me to get them for you?” And hang up with your prying aunt? But he was already on the move, tapping into a store of energy that sent him bouncing out of the bedroom like Tigger hopped up on Red Bull. “It’s not like that,” she told Angel, raking her fingers through the pile of Legos. “I don’t even know him.”
But her friend wasn’t about to be thwarted. “So get to know him. You live with him. How hard could it be?”
She thought of last night’s conversation. Landon hadn’t answered her when she prompted conversation about Windy City. Then he’d practically drawn a line in the sand when she’d offered him leftovers from dinner. It’s not your job to cook for me.
“I don’t… think he likes me.”
“Pssh! Kimber. You’re beautiful, you’re stylish, and you’re mothering his only nephew. He probably thinks you walk on water in your spare time. I know he seems like a fuddy-duddy, and I’ll admit this whole Lissa situation was… weird.”
Kimber frowned at the mention of Lissa. She wanted to ask, but refused to pry.
“Maybe he needs a real woman,” Angel said. “A woman who knows who she is.”
Whoa. Get ahead of herself much? “I’m here for Lyon,” she reminded both of them. “And a paycheck so I can buy my ex-boyfriend out of my business. I’m not interested in Landon.” She touched the tip of her nose to make sure it hadn’t grown a few inches and sprouted leaves. Because there wasn’t a bigger lie than the one she’d just told. She’d been interested in Landon since she’d laid eyes on him at age sixteen.
Angel sighed. “Fine. I just got all excited. You’d be good for him. Yin to his yang. Butter to his bread. He’s a family man, you know. Underneath that ridiculous arrangement with Lissa, I believe he really wants to be in a stable relationship.”
Ha! If he was looking for stable, he’d stumbled into the wrong nanny. Kimber had no idea where she’d be in five years, five months, or in five minutes. She was spontaneous and fell in love too quickly and made spur-of-the-moment decisions without much rational thought. Like buying Hobo Chic with Mick. Landon, with his details and lists and über-organized penthouse, would go crazy if someone like Kimber were his other half.
Now who’s getting ahead of herself?
Angel covered the phone, muffling her voice. “I know. I’m not!” she called out, probably to Richie. “I’m back. My husband is berating me for playing Cupid. It’s a pastime.”
“Obsession,” Richie said into the phone. Kimber had to laugh.
Angel whispered her next words. “Have a drink with him tonight. You owe yourself a break. Take it. And talk to him. Maybe you’ll have more in common than you imagine.”
She opened her mouth to tell Angel she didn’t think it was a good idea, but then she heard the telltale beeping of the buttons on the microwave.
“I gotta go,” she said, hoofing it down the hallway. No good could come of Lyon operating the microwave.
CHAPTER FIVE
Landon was reading through the e-mail he’d spent the last twenty minutes drafting when his desk phone rang. The button signifying his private line lit. His emergency line.
Lyon.
A myriad of horrific thoughts went through his mind in the nanosecond it took to punch the button and bring the handset to his ear. What if Lyon had broken his arm? Or his leg? Or his neck?
“This is Landon.” The words didn’t come out frantic, but they were stiff.
“This is Angel,” came his sister’s mocking voice.
His panic eased down a notch. If she was joking around, this must not be the emergency he’d feared. He uncurled his clenched fist. “Everything okay?”
“Of course everything’s okay. Why? Is this number hooked to a red phone or something?”
He eased back and leaned an elbow on the arm of his chair. “I assume any call to my direct line is an emergency.”
“Can’t a sister call and talk to her oldest brother for no reason at all?”
“Sure she can. But she doesn’t.” He waited. He was right; he knew it.
An audible sigh confirmed his suspicions. “Fine,” she said. “You got me. I wanted to call and tell you to have a drink with Kimber tonight.”
He straightened his glasses. What was she up to? “A drink.”
“Yeah. Make an effort to talk to her when you get home tonight.”
Had Kimber… said something? He hadn’t been in the greatest of moods last night when he’d come home. He’d been brusque, unintentionally. “Why?” he said, not letting Angel in on any of his thoughts. “She’s a babysitter not an adult-sitter.”
He nearly laughed when she blew out a frustrated grunt. “She’s a nanny. And a professional.”
“I know. Isn’t it best for me to stay out of her way?” he asked, happily needling his only sister. “Let her do her thing?”
“You’re so clueless.” He heard murmuring followed by Angel answering, “Second drawer, Richie!” She addressed Landon again, her voice at normal pitch. “Kimber is marooned in your big, lonely house for the entirety of a week—”
“More like four days at this point,” he interjected.
Angel ignored him. “—and her only company is a six-year-old with a fondness for fart noises. Did you consider she might like to have a conversation that didn’t involve applesauce or Superman?”
She was making her point passionately enough that he began wondering if she had talked to Kimber. Had Kimber filed a grievance with his emotionally unstable sister? “If
she’s unhappy with the job—” he started, about to issue an idle threat.
Angel didn’t let him finish. “She likes you, Landon.”
He blinked at his computer, which had gone into hibernation mode. A Downey Design logo winked on and off in varying locations. So this wasn’t a case of Kimber complaining to Angel. It was a case of his love-struck sister trying to set him up. “Listen, Cupid.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Okay. Angel. You have a Cupid complex. You see matchmaking everywhere you look.”
“Kimber never had a crush on Evan,” she blurted. “It was you. All those years ago when she hung around the basketball court, when she sat next to you at dinner, when she helped you with your English paper.”
What? “Creative writing,” he muttered, semi-stunned.
She huffed. “The point is Kimber liked you. Still likes you, if you ask me.”
He sifted through a memory of her on the patio, winding a red curl around her finger and watching him play basketball with Aiden and Evan. No. No way had she been out there for him. “I was too old for her.” Five years was a huge gap between a sixteen-year-old and a college kid.
“You’re not now.”
He wasn’t. Kimber was thirty-two, her womanly curves as far from her gangly teenage years as possible, and as enticing as they came.
“Fine,” Angel replied when he remained silent. “Don’t believe me.”
He blinked away the vision of Kimber’s long legs wrapped around his waist, those retro shoes crossed at his back. “No worries. I don’t.” He cleared his throat, hoping the rasp in his voice conveyed disbelief rather than lust.
“Just… be nice to her instead of being your rigid, cardboard self.”
He opened his mouth to say he wasn’t rigid and ask what she’d meant by “cardboard.” Was she insisting he was bland? Dry? Stiff? Whatever she’d meant by it, it was unflattering.
She didn’t give him a chance to argue further, forcing him into business mode with a question about a redesigned logo for a senior care facility due tomorrow.
The Millionaire Affair (Love in the Balance) Page 5