by Diana Palmer
A furious spate of Korean echoed from the direction of the kitchen after Kim Sun exploded out of the room and down the hall, both arms waving emphatically.
"He'll quit one day," Ivy assured Ryder.
"He wouldn't dare," he replied smugly. "Where else would he get a cushy job like this and a terrific boss like me?"
Ivy burst out laughing. "Poor Kim Sun."
"Poor me," he sighed. "The minute you leave, he'll hide my coffee."
"I don't really blame him," she said, but she smiled, her dark eyes lingering involuntarily on the strong lines of his face.
Her intent scrutiny made his pulse leap wildly. He returned the long, steady stare and saw the color seep into her cheeks before she jerked her eyes down. Her shyness made him feel protective.
He got up from his chair. "I'll run you home. Can you be ready to go by six Monday morning?" he added, all business in an instant. "We'll have to catch a commuter flight out of Albany so that we can make connections in Atlanta."
"Yes, I can be ready," she assured him. Mentally she was kicking herself for agreeing to work for him. It was probably going to be the worst mistake of her life.
Jean didn't think so. She was all smiles when Ivy told her. "You'll enjoy it, you know you will," she told her daughter. "And Ryder will take care of you."
"I suppose I'm doing the right thing," Ivy sighed.
"Just take it one day at a time, sweetheart," her mother said gently. "And don't worry. All right?"
Ivy smiled and hugged her. "All right."
Ryder picked her up at the house at 6:00 a.m. sharp the following Monday. He looked elegant in a dark blue vested pinstriped suit. A black Stetson and black boots completed his ensemble. She felt much less stylish in a two-year-old black suit with a simple white cotton blouse.
"Did it have to be black?" he muttered after they'd said goodbye to Jean and headed for the Albany airport.
"My suit, you mean?" she faltered. She smoothed a hand over her hair, which was pulled tight into a French twist at her nape. "It was the only one I had…"
"I could have advanced you enough to buy something less morose," he said tightly.
"It isn't morose," she returned. "Basic black is supposed to be very flattering."
His eyes stated his opinion of it. He shifted his gaze back to the road. "I'm sorry to toss you into the deep end like this. Ideally you'd have a few weeks in the office to get used to the routine. But I've got to do some work in Phoenix on site, and you might as well see what we're doing out there. It will help you to understand the work you'll be involved with."
"I've never been to Arizona," she confessed.
"You'll love it or hate it," he said. "Especially the part of it we're going to."
"Sand and rattlesnakes?" she suggested nervously.
He smiled. "Wait and see."
They flew into Phoenix several hours later, and Ivy, who had the window seat, gasped aloud at the height of the jagged mountain ranges they flew over before they landed at the airport.
"I thought it was flat!" she exclaimed.
Ryder chuckled softly. "Did you? This isn't the only surprise you'll get."
He was right. When they got off the plane, she saw mountains rising right off the desert floor. And as they drove out of Phoenix after he picked up the rental car he'd reserved, she realized that what looked like desert from the air was alive with vegetation. It wasn't the green mountains and valleys and abundant streams of Georgia, but the changing colors of the landscape and the variety of plant life were beautiful just the same.
The air was clean and clear away from the city, and the pace of life itself seemed to slow on the long, rolling highways that arrowed toward endless horizon.
Ryder was enjoying Ivy's fascination with her surroundings. She made it new to him, and he watched her face as he pointed out the various types of flora and fauna on the long drive to the town where his retirement complex was planned. He'd reserved rooms in a luxury resort nearby. One, he was careful to point out, that wouldn't be competition for his project.
"It's so much bigger than I thought it would be," she remarked as they drove toward Mesa del Sol, a small grouping of buildings in the distance.
"The land, you mean?" he asked, chuckling. "It's the lack of trees, honey," he explained. "The horizons seem bigger because there's nothing to hide them. If you think Arizona is big, you should see southeastern Montana."
"Are there any ghost towns around here?" she asked suddenly, all eyes.
"As a matter of fact, there are quite a few. I'll try to find time to escort you around one or two of them. Okay?"
She smiled broadly. "Okay!"
They settled in at the hotel, in adjoining rooms with a connecting door, and drove immediately out to the site, where a construction gang had already graded the area, laid the foundation and finished the ground floor of two buildings.
"It's beautiful, Ryder," Ivy commented, approving of the way the stucco design fitted in with the jagged mountains and the desert.
"I think so, too," he agreed. He escorted her to the main building, where the construction foreman—a redheaded giant of a man—was waiting for them.
"This is Hank Jordan," Ryder introduced the other man. "He's in charge of the project. Hank, this is my new assistant, Ivy."
"Nice to meet you," the foreman greeted cordially.
She nodded and smiled shyly.
"How's it going?" Ryder asked his foreman.
While they talked shop, Ivy wandered around what had to be the offices of the complex, enjoying the spaciousness and simple lines of it. She could imagine potted plants and modern furniture filling it, and mentally she approved Ryder's choice of architects.
"What do you think?" Ryder asked eventually, taking her arm to lead her back down the long corridor toward the car. "It will house approximately sixty couples, and include a doctor's building, a restaurant, a theater, a pharmacy, a small grocery store, clothing boutiques and even a hardware store. We'll have our own water and sewage system, not to mention built-in air filters and air conditioning."
"It sounds like something out of the future," she exclaimed.
He smiled down at her. "Hopefully it will be. Space is already at a premium most places. This complex will make the most efficient use of its space, with emphasis on complementing the existing ecosystem around it."
"Greek," she informed him.
"By the time it's finished, you won't think of it as Greek." He slid back his cuff to check the time. "Let's get something to eat. Hungry?"
"I could eat sand," she said heartily.
"Tacos are better. In fact, fajitas are much better. Let's go."
They said goodbye to Hank, and Ryder drove back to Mesa del Sol and the huge motel complex where they were staying. The temperature was surprising. Ivy had dressed for winter, but it was warm, and the heated swimming pool was a real temptation. She wished she'd had the presence of mind to pack a bathing suit.
She changed her suit for jeans and a pink striped shirt with a bulky pink sweater and sneakers. She pinned her hair away from her face but left it loose. When she met Ryder downstairs in the dining room, she found him similarly dressed in casual dark slacks and a burgundy pullover, but he was still wearing the boots and the Stetson that were such a familiar part of his usual dress.
"You look more comfortable," she remarked, smiling up at him.
"So do you, honey. Tired?"
She shook her head. "I can't remember when I've had so much fun," she said, laughing, and meant it. Being with Ryder was an adventure in itself. "I feel dishonest. I should be taking notes or typing or something."
"Plenty of time for that later," he assured her. "I'll feed you and then we'll do some paperwork out by the pool if you like. Did you bring a bathing suit?"
"There was frost back home," she pointed out.
"This is Arizona," he replied. His eyes slid over her body possessively, and a darkness lingered there just momentarily before he seated her at a windo
w table and broke the spell.
They ate tacos and fajitas and refried beans and drank incredibly large glasses of soft drinks. Amazing how thirsty you get out here, Ivy mused. Perhaps it was the evaporation rate on the desert terrain that accounted for it.
Ryder was unusually quiet throughout the meal. When it was over, he excused himself and went to get his briefcase before he joined her at the pool. He seated them at a table with a sheltering umbrella and started pulling out documents. He pushed a pad and pen toward her.
"Time to pay the piper, then we can relax for a while," he said. "I need you to take down some figures for me. If I have a laptop sent up, can you transcribe them this evening?"
"Of course," she said. She couldn't protest. This was why he'd brought her with him. But he'd been tense since they'd arrived in Arizona, and she wondered what was bothering him.
She couldn't know that her proximity was working on him like a drug, making him vulnerable and restless and hungry. He was doing his best to keep it from her, but the way she looked in those tight jeans was making him crazy. Work at least kept his mind where it belonged. Having enticed her into working for him, he couldn't risk losing her again by being impatient.
His eyes fell to her hand on the table. She was still wearing the wedding band Ben had put on her finger. Ryder longed to rip if off and throw it as far as he was able, to purge her of Ben's mark of possession, to make her his own. But even as he thought it, he knew how impossible it would be. Despite Ben's faults, Ivy had loved him. How could he compete with that?
Perhaps in time, she might turn to him. He had to hope that she would. It was all that kept him sane.
Chapter 4
Ivy hardly had time to worry about being in a room adjoining Ryder's. He seemed to be deluged with paperwork and correspondence that had to be answered. The laptop was familiar to her, and it saved quite a lot of time, but it took the better part of her day to transcribe Ryder's terse dictation and produce emails that satisfied him. Often, he rewrote the same email three times before he allowed it to be mailed. He was on the run almost constantly and spent much of each day out at the site. When he was in his room, they were working.
The number of emails was incredible. There were the usual intercompany memos, notices of meetings, updates for his board of directors, problems to be solved overseas that required masses of documents, queries about sites and funding, replies to bank queries…enough to keep three assistants stoop-shouldered.
Ryder eventually noticed that Ivy was having trouble coping.
"It will get easier," he promised early on their third day at the motel. "Just do the best you can with it. When we get back to Albany, I'll commandeer someone from the typing pool to help you. It's been like this ever since Mary quit. She'd been with me for ten years, and she knew every facet of the business. It would be difficult for anyone to step into her shoes immediately, so don't feel threatened. Okay?"
She smiled with pure relief. "Okay. I was beginning to feel a little inadequate."
"You're not. Your typing is above average, and your shorthand is admirable, if unorthodox." He chuckled. "We'll get by. Want to go out and see a ghost town tomorrow?"
"Could we?" she exclaimed. "Will we have time?"
"As hard as you've worked, we'll make time." He checked his watch and grimaced. "God, I forgot, I've got a meeting at the bank. I'll have to rush. Have room service send something up for you, and stay by the phone. I've got a call in to a colleague in London. Take a message if he calls."
"I'll do that." She watched him leave, fascinated by his seemingly inexhaustible supply of energy. He left her breathless with his pace. All the same, it was an exciting, challenging job, and she knew she wouldn't tire of it soon.
The next afternoon, after lunch, he packed her and a cooler of soft drinks into the car and set off toward the north. Both of them were dressed in jeans and boots, and he'd insisted that she take a hat along because of the heat, even at this time of year. She sat next to him in the four-wheel-drive vehicle and smiled at the way they matched, he in his chambray shirt and she in hers, both pale blue. But she had a jaunty red scarf around her neck, and he'd forgone that touch of Western Americana. It was much too warm for jackets, and she knew that the long-sleeved shirts were to protect them from sunburn rather than cold.
"Where are we going?" she asked.
"Off the beaten path," he replied. "You won't find this place on any of the tourist maps. It's an old silver mine that belonged to one of Hank's ancestors. I told him that I was going to tour you through a few ghost towns, and he suggested I bring you here. He gave me the key to the gate."
"That was nice of him," she said, smiling.
"Hank's not immune to women," he remarked, glancing at her with a faint chuckle. "You charmed him."
Her dark eyes widened. "But, I hardly spoke to him," she protested.
"You don't know how potent you are, do you?" he asked, a faint edge on his deep voice. "I've never known a woman so unaware of her own gifts."
She could have told him that Ben had made her that way, finding fault eventually with everything about her. But she didn't say it.
"There were lots of mines in Arizona, weren't there?" she asked.
"Were, and still are," he agreed. "One of the most famous old ones is the Silver King near Superior."
"Wasn't Tombstone originally the site of a silver strike?"
He laughed. "That's right."
"I started reading up on Arizona when you said we were going to come here," she confessed. "But nothing I read prepared me for what I saw. It's like another world out here."
He followed her rapt gaze to the jagged mountains in the distance. "I felt the same way the first time I saw it," he said. "It's an unexpected country. Nothing like back East."
"But so beautiful," she said fervently.
"And deadly. When we get there, make sure you stick to me like glue. You can fall into a mine shaft out here so quickly it isn't funny."
Her eyes mirrored her fear. "You're joking, aren't you?"
"I am not. There are towns around here with buildings that have shifted over the years because of the number of tunnels under them. They have a habit of collapsing. And, yes, people have fallen into abandoned mine shafts."
She shivered, wrapping her thin arms around her body. "What a horrible fate."
"You'll be fine as long as you don't wander around indiscriminately." He glanced her way and smiled. "I'll take care of you, little one."
Her heart jumped. He sounded protective and tender all at once, and she felt herself melting inside. She had to be careful not to give in, not to show how she felt. But it wasn't going to be easy. Just sitting next to him made her tingle all over.
"There are rattlers around, too, so watch where you put your feet."
"Just like back home," she reminded him, tongue-in-cheek.
"Point taken."
A few miles down the highway, he pulled off onto a dirt road and drove to a locked gate. The key Hank had given him unlocked a big padlock that held together the ends of a heavy chain. He refastened it before he continued down the rutted road to a valley that fronted the site of a mine. Tunnels in the mountains told their own stories. There was a stone foundation and a few adobe walls, attesting to the former site of the main office, and the remnants of houses and a smelter.
The wind seemed to blow constantly. She walked beside Ryder, feeling somehow insignificant in this vast nothingness. The ruins were like a reminder that nothing really lasted, least of all people. She took a deep breath of the air and closed her eyes. She could almost hear voices.
"Daydreaming?" he teased.
She shrugged, opening her eyes with a smile. "Just listening to the ghosts. I'll bet they could tell some stories."
"I don't doubt that."
"All those people who worked here, who lived here," she began, bypassing a row of unconnected stone steps to stare up at the mines, "they're dead now. It seems so useless somehow, Ryder. What was it all fo
r?"
"They were prospecting for dreams, I imagine," he said, and for a moment, his eyes were dark with hunger as he looked at her profile. "God knows, some dreams are worth any price."
"Are they?" she murmured absently. She stretched lazily. "I'm starved!"
He chuckled. "That's my line. I'll get the basket."
He went back to the four-wheel-drive, and, minutes later, they were feasting on cold cuts and salad off of paper plates, washing it all down with cold soft drinks from the cooler.
"Paradise," she sighed, smiling across at him. They were sitting on the stone steps, using a wall of the foundation for a makeshift table. Around them, the sun shone brightly and the wind blew. "I'll bet people had picnics here back when the mine was worked. Children probably played on those big boulders," she gestured toward them, "and women walked up from the settlement to shop at the store."
"Store?" he asked, frowning.
"Oh, they had to have one," she said with conviction. "This far from any settlement, with the men at work in the mines, there had to be a store where women could buy cloth and flour and coffee and sugar. There were probably other kinds of places, too. Didn't Jerome have a brothel and several bars?" she added with a shy glance.
He laughed with pure delight. It had been so long since he'd felt so lighthearted, so at peace with himself and the world. Watching Ivy made him feel whole again. She was beautiful, he thought, from her long black hair to her gentle heart. He'd never wanted anything as much as he wanted her.
"Yes, Jerome had its entertainments," he agreed. "But a small settlement like this with close family ties probably wouldn't have tolerated a brothel."
"You mean, the wives wouldn't," she said, grinning at him.
"Absolutely." He pushed his hat back on his head and studied her blatantly. "You look more relaxed than I've seen you in months."
"You haven't seen me in months," she reminded him with gentle humor. She toyed with a long strand of her hair. "I think getting away from home has helped more than anything," she said, smiling at him. "You've been so good to me, Ryder…"
"I don't want gratitude," he said tersely, looking away toward the cliffs. "I needed an assistant, you needed a job. It was business."