Ryan, Debora - Crimes of the Heart (BookStrand Publishing Romance)

by Debora Ryan

  Her traitorous body reacted physically to the sight of him, but she kept it to herself. Eyeing him as dispassionately as she could, she said, “We have a meeting.” She fled without a backward glance. The dispassion had already begun to melt.

  Her twenty team members, having seen her coming, were already assembled in the meeting room when she arrived. She skipped the preliminaries and gave no excuse for her tardiness. The only person who raised an eyebrow was Anne, but Leah knew Anne would never ask in front of anyone else. She would corner her during lunch.

  Anne’s eyebrow shot even higher when she noticed Will following Leah into the room. Anne was good with names and faces. She no doubt recognized Will from the club.

  Leah motioned to one of the chairs on the periphery of the room. “Sit,” she ordered Will curtly. “If you have questions, write them down and we’ll discuss them later.”

  He obeyed without a word, calmly folding his tall frame into a chair.

  To a person, they eyeballed Will curiously. Leah realized she would need to begin with an introduction. “This is Will Dannaker. He’s going to be shadowing me for a while before nepotism takes him upstairs and out of our hair. He isn’t germane to anything we’re doing this week, so feel free to ignore him. ”

  She sat in the vacant seat at the head of the long conference table. “David, let’s begin with your team.” She listened while the leader of each of her five teams spoke, taking careful notes. Anne went last. When she finished, Leah frowned and looked around for her coffee. She could have sworn she’d brought it with her. From the corner of her eye, she saw Will move toward her. Her eyes narrowed in warning. She did not like when her orders were not followed.

  He set her coffee in front of her and winked before settling himself nearer to her, but still on the periphery of the room.

  It would be very bad manners to not acknowledge him now, not that she had exactly been welcoming before. “Thank you.”

  “No problem,” he said.

  Leah squelched the slight chill that teased her spine when he spoke. Taking a sip, she continued the meeting at a brisk pace, bringing it to a close within an hour of its beginning. “I’ll touch base with each group today. I need David’s group to stay. The rest of you can go.”

  She rose and slid the files from under her planner to distribute to David and his four teammates. “I think you’ll be able to finish up by this weekend. You don’t present to the client until next Friday, but there’s no point in prolonging things. Here is your next project.”

  David spoke up. “Dog food? Seriously? What did I do to piss you off?”

  Leah leveled a stern look at David. The firm specialized in helping struggling companies. They improved products, packaging concepts, and designed marketing plans. “If you don’t give this your best, then you’ll piss me off. They want to begin small. We have to earn their trust. If you do well with this, there’s a very good chance we can convince them to transfer their other accounts to us. This has the potential to become one of our larger accounts. It’s a door, David. Take it or leave it. I can assign this to another team if you don’t feel up to it.”

  The other members of his team shot him daggers with their eyes. David blanched. “No, Leah, we can handle this. You can count on us.”

  Leah smiled benevolently. “That’s what I thought. Open up to the first page.” She took them through the project slowly, stressing the items that were important to the client. After another hour had passed, she dismissed them with strict instructions to have a completed proposal ready by the following Monday.

  When they left, she sat back for a moment to breathe and make some final notes in her planner. Will pulled out the chair next to her and sat down, startling her. She had forgotten about him. His nearness set her pulse racing. This was not good.

  He put a hand on the back of her chair. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  She watched him for a moment without changing her expression. “You don’t scare me.” She resumed writing, trying hard to hide his effect on her.

  “Leah, I think we got off on the wrong foot.”

  “We’re fine.” Her brusque tone communicated impatience. She hoped.

  “About Friday night,” he began.

  “Nothing happened,” she said preemptively.

  “I think I owe you an explanation.”

  Leah stopped what she was doing and looked at Will. “Last Friday didn’t happen. As far as I’m concerned, we met this morning.”

  He studied her for a moment. “Then why are you so hostile?”

  “It’s who I am,” she said.

  “I happen to know that’s not true.” A crease formed between his dark brows. Leah knew Mr. Dannaker was Irish. She had heard Mrs. Dannaker was Greek. It explained Will’s exotically handsome dark features.

  Distant wasn’t working, so she tried for crusty. “I don’t like you.”

  “I wasn’t hitting on your friend.”

  Leah snorted and got up to leave. Will rose with her and grabbed her wrist. “I swear I wasn’t. I was trying to stop my friend from making a mistake. He and his wife had a fight, a really bad one, and…”

  Leah interrupted. “You’re the spoiled, silver-spooned son of my boss. Even if I liked you then, I wouldn’t now.”

  “That’s harsh.”

  “Life is harsh. Let go of me.”

  He didn’t. Instead a muscle worked at his jaw. “You’re judging me based on superficial things.”

  Leah breathed two calming breaths. Looking directly into Will’s eyes, she said in a voice just above a whisper, “I’ll never like you, not the way you want. If you want me to not dislike you, or even to respect you, then you need to prove to me you’re not what I think you are. I work in advertising. I know just how cheap words are.”

  He let go of her and watched as her quick strides took her from the room.

  Leah surreptitiously rubbed at her wrist where he had touched her. She could still feel the heat of his hand on her skin. For the remainder of the day, he followed her, saying nothing at all. Instead, his hand flew over his notepad. She watched him when he wasn’t looking at her. She noticed that he was left-handed, and that his eyes constantly flickered from his pad to different things in the room. Whenever he caught her looking at him, he flashed a slow smile.

  The end of the day found Leah in her office finishing paperwork. Will lounged on her sofa and rested his feet on the coffee table in front of him, his hand still busy on his pad.

  She broke the silence. “Did you have any questions?”

  His hand stopped, and he looked across the room at her. “How often do you have meetings?”

  “Only Monday morning.”

  “Why?”

  “I use them to focus the teams for the week. I check in with each team informally every day to keep track of the little things.”

  “Why not focus them like that every day?”

  “Meeting for the sake of meeting becomes a waste of time. When I call a meeting, they take it seriously. No one is late, and no one misses them. Plus it lets me develop a personal relationship with each person who works under me. The better I know them, the better I can direct them. And they know I value their time.”

  Will nodded absently and went back to his pad. She could swear he was drawing. “Is that all?”

  “Did you go shopping Saturday with your sister?”

  “Serious questions, please.”

  “Are you busy tonight?”

  Leah hesitated. She was busy. Cecelia was expecting her. However, she wanted to squelch his interest in her before it got out of hand. A number of possible replies presented themselves, from the simple to the scathingly brilliant set-down. She settled for a straightforward reply. “Yes.”

  “How about tomorrow night?”

  “Will.” The word was a warning.

  He finally looked back up at her. His expression was innocent. “What?”

  Shaking her head, she opened her closet and removed her jacket from its
hanger. She made a mental note to thank her assistant, Eliza, for hanging it up for her. Will was next to her before she could slip one arm into the sleeve, her jacket magically in his hands. He held it up for her. “That isn’t necessary,” she said, holding her hand out in expectation of him handing it back to her.

  “Humor me,” he said. “The silver-spoon set is old-fashioned.”

  There was nothing servile in his manner. She acquiesced, figuring it was easier to give in at this point. Besides, she needed to save her energy for Cece tonight.

  His thumb brushed against her neck, lingering a bit longer than necessary. Though she flinched away from him rather quickly, she still felt as if he had branded her. How could a human being be so warm? She fought against the urge to rub her wrist where the feeling of his hand had burned her earlier.

  “Leah, are you ready?” Anne had entered without knocking. “I brought magazines for Cece. Oh!” She noticed Will standing close to Leah. “I didn’t know you still had company.”

  “I don’t,” Leah said, straightening her jacket. “Let’s get going. You know how she is when we’re late.” She grabbed her planner from her desk and left without a backward glance.

  * * * *

  Will watched her disappear through the door. While he would have liked to spend the evening with her, his reasons for asking her to dinner weren’t as transparent as she believed.

  Yes, he liked her and he found her attractive. If he had met her here first, he might not have felt such a profound need to get to know her more. Then again, maybe he would have. But he had seen underneath her gruff exterior. Her acting didn’t fool him at all. There was much more to Leah Keenan than she let on.

  However, even that wasn’t his primary motivation. His preliminary analysis of the company’s finances pinpointed her department as the one where nearly six million dollars had fallen into a black hole.

  The chatter coming from outside the office faded. When the floor was quiet and still, he booted up Leah’s computer and accessed the keystroke tracking software he’d installed over the weekend.

  Posing as a management trainee meant he could poke around into virtually anything without people thinking twice. He’d divided his time today between watching Leah and observing the rest of the people working in her department.

  She was every bit as driven and dynamic as his father described. Though she didn’t know it, her flagrant disregard for his father’s wealth and position ratcheted her up a few notches in his esteem. Tom Dannaker hated people who kissed up. He wanted people around him who would help make his company better. Subordinates who agreed with his every whim quickly lost his respect.

  For his part, Will liked Leah even more when he saw she wasn’t awed by his father. Her prickly exterior cut both ways, however. Not only did it earn her respect, it frustrated the hell out of his father, and now it had the same effect on Will.

  Time and effort were required to penetrate her defenses, but he knew the chance at seeing her soft core made the fight more than worth it.

  He hoped to hell she wasn’t the one stealing from his parents’ company.

  “Let’s see what you did today, beautiful Leah,” he muttered to the computer.

  Chapter 4

  The next few days passed without incident. Leah grew used to Will shadowing her. He followed her everywhere except the bathroom. At the end of each day, he asked a few questions. It was enough to let her know he paid careful attention to everything that went on, but not enough to indicate he understood the significance of any particular events.

  On Thursday, he began to venture out on his own. He talked to people without Leah, and several times he left the room she was in for a significant period of time. It was during one of these jaunts Leah saw his notebook on her table. Thinking she would get a jump on his questions, or at least an idea of what he wrote all day long, she picked it up. It was open to the latest page on which he had been writing, but it had been turned face down. Dimly, she felt as if she was violating his privacy.

  The feeling quickly faded. She sank down onto the couch and turned the pages back, carefully studying each one. While words were included on each page, they did not make up the bulk of the ink. He wasn’t taking notes; he was drawing pictures. Most of them were of her, and they showed subtle talent. He had drawn her sitting, standing, speaking, pacing, smiling, laughing, frowning, and thinking. Surrounding each sketch were words relating to the drawing. Some of them were business related. The questions he asked her each day were written in bold, uppercase letters, as were the answers she gave. She decided that he must have taken a few drafting classes.

  Other questions he had not asked were also printed in uppercase letters. In some cases, the answers were also written in. These were things he had realized on his own. She read through them. His insights were amazing. The bulk of the drawings, however, had other kinds of questions swirling around them. They were personal questions about Leah, what she did with her time, why she turned him down. These questions had no answers, only extra question marks.

  A shadow fell across her. She looked up to see Will standing over her. The expression on his face was inscrutable, but his reaction was not. He gently removed the pad from her hands and sat down close to her. She could smell the spiciness of his aftershave. “You know,” he began, “the question-answer thing works both ways. If there are things you want to know, all you need to do is ask.”

  Leah didn’t know what to say. She had accepted his explanation for abandoning her in favor of Anne as a half-truth designed to make their working relationship easier. It appeared he actually was attracted to her and not to Anne. There was not one drawing of Anne, or anyone else, on the pages she’d seen.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you at a loss for words,” Will said. “Do you have plans tonight?”

  She nodded. It was a lie in spirit, but not in fact. She was tired. She planned to go home, heat up some macaroni and cheese and fall asleep before seven, but she knew that wasn’t what he meant.

  “Are you booked through the next week?” he asked. “Perhaps I should go through your planner and find an empty evening.”

  “Will,” she began.

  He smiled, but it was a false smile. “I see you found your voice.”

  “We work together. Dinner isn’t going to happen.”

  “Because I’m the boss’s son?”

  “That’s one reason.”

  “What’s another?”

  “We work together.”

  “We could,” he said, purposely misunderstanding her words.

  She wanted to laugh at his little joke, but more held her back than he could possibly know. It was one thing to steal from her company. It was quite another to also date the man who would eventually be her boss. “You know what I mean.”

  His eyes were exceptionally somber. “If I stopped working here, would you go out with me?”

  “No.”

  He tossed his notebook on the table and turned to fully face Leah, pressing his thigh against hers. Heat radiated through the fabric to warm her thigh. His eyes locked onto hers. “This is ridiculous.”

  “I agree,” she whispered. “Let’s change the topic.”

  He held her captive with his eyes for a while longer. For a moment, she thought he was going to kiss her. She held her breath, but he turned away. He rose and paced the room as restlessly as a caged panther sensing release. Or prey.

  “Perhaps I’m not the best person to train you,” she said carefully.

  He stopped mid-stride and shook his head. “No, Dad was right. You are amazing. There’s a lot I can learn from you. There is a lot I’ve already learned.”

  Leah thought him a passive trainee. He mostly observed, choosing to not do or say much of anything to anyone. “But you haven’t asked very many questions.”

  “I have the gift of logic,” he explained in a voice laced with sarcasm. “And I know you’re under the impression that this is my first job, but it isn’t. I left a very good job i
n New York. I’m here at my parents’ request.” He frowned thoughtfully.

  Leah felt a tiny pang of guilt. She thought this was his first job. While she hadn’t thought him stupid, she had labeled him mentally lazy. It appeared she was wrong on several counts.

  “Where did you learn to draw?”

  He shrugged. “I’ve always done it. I remember things better when I sketch them. It drove some of my teachers insane. I have taken a few classes, but nothing serious.”

  “Why not?” She shouldn’t have asked the question, but she found this side of him fascinating. Despite her unwillingness to get involved with him, the tingles that vibrated up and down her spine every time he looked at her or spoke forced her to admit a strong attraction.

  He frowned at her again. “Are we having a real, substantive conversation here?”

  “No,” she said. The way he made her feel was altogether too unsettling. “I’m urging you to consider an alternate career choice.”

  “Why?” That frown didn’t go away. If anything, it deepened.

  “Because I need my job.”

  He sighed, then picked up his notebook and left. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” He threw the goodbye over his shoulder and left more than a little frustration behind.

  Leah didn’t move for a while. She sat on the sofa, bemused. She didn’t know if that last exchange was a victory or not. It scared her how much she had enjoyed the conversation. He was getting under her skin. If she wasn’t careful, she might find herself having dinner with him one night soon, despite her best intentions.

  Friday passed uneventfully. Will made no reference to their conversation of the previous evening. He caught her in her office, finishing her notes for the Monday meeting. He entered quietly and closed the door behind him.

  “Leah,” he said.

  She wished the way he said her name didn’t affect her the way it did. Without looking up, she responded in kind. “Will.”