It wasn’t working.
She was always there, right at the edges of his mind, waiting for a quiet moment to pop in and torture him. Damn it, he’d managed to work with Rachel—closely—for four long years. In all that time, he’d never looked at her as he would any other wildly attractive woman.
She’d just been there. Like an extension of himself. Part of his office, his work world. And in the last year, since his father had kicked off this ridiculous competition, she’d been the one to give him a kick in the can when he needed it. Hell, she was just as responsible as he for The Buzz winning the competition. Maybe more so. Because Rachel was always on top of things. She’d kept his life running smoothly for four years and he’d never even noticed her beyond being grateful for the help.
How the hell could he have been so blind?
How could he not have noticed her eyes, her mouth, her sense of humor, her legs, her agile mind, her breasts, her loyalty, her behind?
And why was he noticing all of that now?
Muttering darkly, he stalked across his office when the phone started ringing again. But this time, instead of answering, he let it ring and walked to the bank of windows behind his desk.
When the phone stopped ringing, he smiled grimly only to turn and frown at the quick knock on the door. Before he could call out for whoever it was to leave, the door swung open and Rachel was there.
Her blond hair was pulled back and twisted into some sort of elegant braid she usually did. But now he’d seen it hanging loose and waving around her face and that was how he pictured her. In his mind’s eye her plain, pale green business suit was replaced by a skimpy T-shirt and a pair of green sweats.
Oh man, he was in deep trouble here.
“You okay?” she asked, frowning at him.
“Fine.” Or at least, he would be if he could shut off his brain. “What is it?”
Before she could answer, another woman sailed past Rachel into his office and demanded, “What makes you so crabby, I’d like to know?”
“Mom,” he said and felt a smile warm his face.
Maeve Elliott was a tiny woman physically, but her personality made her seem larger than life. She’d married Shane’s father when she was a nineteen-year-old seamstress in Ireland. And, though Shane could take exception to the way Patrick had ignored his children from time to time, the old man had always treated his wife as if she were the most priceless treasure on the planet. Which, Shane admitted silently, she was.
He came around the desk, enfolded her in a quick, tight hug, then stepped back to look at her. Impeccable as always, she wore a Chanel suit of icy-blue and her nearly all-white hair was swept up into an intricate knot on top of her head.
“So,” she said, eyeing her son, “my question stands. Why so crabby, Shane?”
He frowned and shifted a look at Rachel, still standing in the doorway. “Just…busy.”
“Then I won’t keep you long,” his mother said, half turning to motion Rachel into the office. “I just wanted to stop and tell you the news!”
Rachel came closer and Shane swore he caught a whiff of her scent. Just enough to tantalize. To tweak his memory of their last night together. To remind him there wouldn’t be any other nights like it.
He bit back a scowl and focused on his mother, practically vibrating with energy. “What is it?” he teased. “Win the Mrs. America pageant, did you?”
“Ah, you were always the smooth one,” she said, laughing. “No, no. Much better news. Our Erika’s had her baby. A beautiful little girl she is, too. I’m a grandmother!”
“That’s terrific,” Shane said, meaning every word.
“Wonderful,” Rachel added, smiling. “How’s the new mom doing?”
Maeve smiled even wider. “Erika’s doing just fine. It’s Gannon who’s having the breakdown. Poor love. Apparently being a witness to his wife’s labor has left him flattened.”
“Did he faint?” Shane asked, hoping for some good ammunition to tease Gannon with in the future.
“Of course not,” Maeve said with a sniff. “It’s just very hard seeing someone you love in pain.”
“Yeah,” Shane said, slanting a look at Rachel only to find her gaze on him. “It must be.”
A second or two of silence stretched out between them and hummed with energy until even Maeve was affected by it. As she looked from one of them to the other, one perfectly arched brow lifted slightly. Delicately she cleared her throat until she had her son’s attention again.
“I’ll let you get back to work now, Shane darlin’,” she said. “I’m just on my way to see your father and force him to take me to lunch.”
Shane tore his gaze from Rachel and scrambled for equilibrium. Blowing out a breath, he took his mother’s arm and said, “Why don’t I join you? You can tell me all about the new Elliott.”
“That would be lovely,” she said, lifting one hand to touch his cheek. Then she turned to Rachel. “Would you like to accompany us as well, Rachel?”
“No,” she said quickly, with a shake of her head. “I’ll, um, just stay here and get a few things finished.”
“Shame,” Maeve said thoughtfully, then walked from the office, her son and Rachel right behind her.
With Shane gone for at least an hour, Rachel did something she’d never done before in all the four years she’d worked at The Buzz.
She rifled Shane’s desk.
“For pity’s sake, where would he put the blasted thing?” She yanked open the first two drawers in his desk, quickly thumbed through the folders and looked under the books and magazines stored there.
Nothing.
The bottom file drawer yielded no happier results.
She zipped through the stacks of folders atop his desk, her fingers flipping through the pages as her gaze swept the printed pages. But the new Tess column was nowhere to be found. Which left only one possibility.
Her gaze drifted to the locked drawer on the bottom left of the big desk. There was no way for her to get inside it. And if she did lose her mind and try to pick the lock, Shane would notice and then the jig would be up, anyway.
“How could I have been so stupid?” she wondered aloud and just managed to keep from thumping herself in the forehead with the heel of her hand.
Shane would read the column, know exactly who wrote it and would probably fire her on the spot. Of course, since she’d already resigned, it wouldn’t carry a lot of weight. But oh, God. The embarrassment quotient was just too high to think about!
Mentally she raced back over the other columns she’d turned in for publication. All the times she’d talked about her boss in less than stellar terms. All the times she’d complained about his too active social life.
Her toe stopped tapping against the floor and her mouth dropped open. And the last column, where she’d admitted to feeling too much about him.
“This is a disaster.”
Dropping her head into her hands, she wished for a hole to open up under her feet and swallow her.
By the time Shane returned from lunch, tension bubbled inside him like a thick, poisonous brew. Luckily enough, Rachel was gone from her desk, probably taking a late lunch herself. Just as well. He was in no mood for yet another stiff, polite exchange of empty pleasantries.
Especially after spending the last two hours dodging Maeve Elliott’s questions.
God knew he loved his mother, but there was nothing the woman liked better than digging into her children’s lives. Whether they welcomed it or not.
He’d been able to dodge her thinly veiled questions about his and Rachel’s relationship—but just barely. And if his father hadn’t insisted on talking about the company, Maeve wouldn’t have given up until she’d pried every last ounce of information from him.
He stepped into his office, closed the door behind him and gratefully went back to work. At his desk, he unlocked the bottom drawer, pulled out the latest columns sent to him by Production, and leaned back in his chair to flip through them.
<
br /> When he found the Tess column, he smiled to himself, put the other articles aside and started reading. After the first paragraph, he was frowning. At the second, he was muttering to himself.
And by the third paragraph, the words were blurring beneath the red haze covering his vision.
Heart jumping, stomach twisting, temper spiking, Shane crumpled the edges of the paper in his fists and forced himself to keep reading.
Sex with the boss is never a smart move,
Tess wrote,
but in my case, it was imbecilic. I’ve spent the last year or more writing about how hard it is to work with a man who never sees you as anything more than an especially fine tuned piece of office equipment. But now that Shane actually has seen me—naked of all things—the situation is completely untenable.
So here’s a word of warning for all of you assistants out there. When the boss smiles and says “Let’s celebrate,” remember that celebrating usually means hangover.
Or worse.
For your own sakes, if the boss starts looking too good to you…run.
“Rachel,” he muttered thickly, staring at the page in front of him as if he still couldn’t believe what he’d read. “All this time, it’s been her. All this time.”
He swallowed hard, choking back the knot of fury in his throat. When he thought he could speak without growling, he snatched up the phone on his desk and punched in a number.
“Circulation and archives.”
“This is Shane Elliott.”
“Yes, sir,” the female voice snapped out, and he could almost see the woman jerking to attention in her chair.
“Get me a copy of every one of our magazines that contains a Tess Tells All column.”
“Oh, sir, I just love that column.”
“Great,” he muttered, thinking now about all of the people who’d read every word Rachel had ever written about him. Hell, people all over the world had been laughing at him for more than a year.
And he’d wanted to give the mysterious Tess a raise!
“I want those copies here in thirty minutes.”
“Yes, sir.”
Shane tossed the receiver back into the cradle, gave up on trying to rein in the temper nearly strangling him and started reading the most recent column again.
Ten
When Rachel came back from lunch, she was feeling a little better. She’d done a little Christmas shopping, wandered through the windy, cold streets and lost herself in the crowds.
Hard to keep feeling sorry for yourself when you’re reminded that you’re simply one cog in a very large wheel.
Now, back at The Buzz, she was simply determined to survive the rest of her two weeks notice and then move on with her life. Smiling at the people she passed, she headed right for her desk and noticed Shane’s door standing open.
As she glanced inside, she saw that he’d been watching for her. And he didn’t look happy.
“Everything okay?”
“Not really,” he said, waving one hand at her. “Would you come in here please?”
A quick twist of apprehension tightened in her belly before she made a titanic attempt at smoothing it out. Oh, God. He saw the column.
Her brain raced, coming up with explanations, excuses, anything. She’d had a glass of wine at lunch, knowing that this confrontation would be headed her way. Now she wished she’d had two.
She paused long enough to deposit her purse in the bottom drawer of her desk, then steeling herself, walked into Shane’s office and closed the door behind her. “What’s going on?”
A brief, hard smile crossed his face. Standing up, he walked around the edge of his desk. Then folding his arms across his chest, he sat on the corner of the desk and watched her through narrowed eyes.
Rachel now knew how a rabbit felt staring down a snake. Fire flashed in his eyes and a twitch in his jaw told her he was gritting his teeth. No point in pretending ignorance any longer, she thought, and spoke right up. “You’ve seen the article.”
“Not even going to try to deny it?”
“No.”
“So you are Tess.”
She smoothed the fall of her skirt, then clasped her hands together at her waist. Her fingers tightened until her knuckles went white. “Surprise.”
“I can’t believe this.” He shook his head in disgust. “I don’t even know whether to be insulted or flattered that you’ve been writing about me all these months.”
“I didn’t mean for you to find out like this.”
“You mean,” he corrected, pushing off the desk to stalk across the room toward her, “you didn’t mean for me to find out at all.”
“Well,” she hedged, “yes.”
He walked a slow circle around her and Rachel turned slowly, keeping her gaze fixed on him. “Did you enjoy watching me trying to find out ways to identify you? Did you get a laugh out of lying to everyone here? Lying to me?”
She huffed out a breath and mentally scrambled for the right thing to say. But she kept coming up empty. “I wasn’t trying to lie to you, Shane.”
“Ah, so that was just a happy side benefit.”
“I don’t know why you’re making such a big deal about this,” she said, deciding to go on the defensive. “You loved those columns.”
“Yes,” he snapped, coming to a fast stop. “When I thought they were written about some nameless, faceless jerk. I don’t love finding out that I’m the jerk.”
She held up one hand. “I never called you a jerk.”
“You might as well have,” he countered, spinning around and walking back to his desk. He picked up a thick manila file and waved it at her. “I’ve been going over all the old columns. And now that I think about it, I believe I’m more insulted than anything else. You made me look like a fool.”
The knot of tension inside her started to loosen and with it, came a burst of outrage. “I did not. All I did was write about the day-to-day job of working for you.”
“And about the women I date.”
In her own defense, she pointed out, “I wouldn’t have had to write about that if you hadn’t put me in charge of buying your make-up gifts, your break-up gifts. Ordering flowers. Making reservations for you and the Barbies, Bambis and Tawnys of the world.”
“Tawny,” he muttered. “That’s her name.”
“You’re the one who dragged me into your social life, Shane, so you’re hardly in a position to complain about it now, are you?”
“You’re my assistant. Who the hell else would I ask to do all that stuff?”
She hitched one hip higher than the other, folded her arms under her breasts, cocked her head to stare at him and offered, “Oh, I don’t know…yourself?”
He tossed the folder onto his desk and the columns inside scattered across the gleaming surface. “If you hated your job so much, why didn’t you just quit?”
“I did,” she reminded him.
“I mean before,” he blustered, throwing both hands high. “If I’m such a bastard to work for, why did you stay this long?”
Rachel dropped the angry pose, walked forward and dropped down into one of the twin chairs opposite his desk. Looking up at him, she said, “You were never a bastard to work for. And I enjoyed my job. I just got…”
“Jealous?” he asked.
“No.” She jumped to her feet again. “Not jealous, just—I don’t even know what. I started writing those articles as a way to vent my frustration. And hey, apparently there are a lot of admins in the city who know just what I’m talking about.”
“Yes, but—”
“You said yourself only last week that Tess Tells All is the most popular column in the magazine. You wanted to find her. To offer her—me—a weekly column. You wanted to give her a huge raise and bring her—me—on staff.” She watched him and noted the relaxing of his jaw muscles and the tension dropping out of his squared shoulders. “So what’s changed, Shane? Only the fact that you found out who Tess really is.”
“That’
s plenty,” he snapped.
“From your point of view, I guess so,” she acknowledged. “But you have to admit that you laughed at my columns as hard as anyone else.”
“That was before. Now…” He turned from her and walked to the windows. Staring out, he said, “You wrote about our nights together.”
She swallowed hard and met his gaze when he looked over his shoulder at her. “Yes.”
“Why?”
She shrugged and knew that wasn’t an answer. But she wasn’t sure she had one to give him. “I don’t really know.”
“I think I do,” he said, turning back to face her again. “I think you wanted me to find out that you’re Tess.”
“Oh, I don’t think that’s it,” she said, shaking her head slowly.
Shane walked toward her and noted that she took a half step back, as if trying to keep a safe distance between them. Wasn’t going to work. He’d had time to think about this. Time to reread her columns with a clear eye.
“You wanted me to know, Rachel. Otherwise you never would have made the mistake of putting my name in the most recent article.”
“That was a mistake.”
“A Freudian slip.”
“Oh, please,” she said, backing away as he got closer.
“You wanted me to know because you don’t want to quit your job. You don’t want to leave The Buzz. You want your own column. You want to stay here. With me.”
She laughed shortly. “I already turned in my resignation, Shane. And you accepted it.”
“Reluctantly.”
“Whatever. The point is, it’s done.”
She glanced around the room, keeping from looking at him, avoiding meeting his gaze. Shane actually enjoyed watching the usually unflappable Rachel display telltale signs of nervousness.
“No, it’s not,” he said. “I don’t want you to quit, Rachel. I’m willing to offer you the same deal I was going to offer your alter ego.”
Finally she looked at him. “You want me to keep writing about you?”
Dynasties:The Elliots, Books 7-12 Page 80