The Paris Affair (Affairs of the Heart #1)

by Kristi Lea

  The Paris Affair

  Affairs of the Heart, Volume 1

  By Kristi Lea

  Copyright © 2016 by Kristi Lea

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  First Printing, 2011

  ISBN 978-0-9982045-0-5

  www.KristiLea.com

  Acknowledgements

  To my mom, thank you for a lifetime of support and encouragement, first in reading books and now in writing them.

  Thank you especially to Amanda Berry, Dawn Blankenship, Jeannie Lin, and Shawntelle Madison for your weekly kick in the pants, your lack of sympathy for my complaints, and your honesty, support and optimism.

  Table of Contents

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  About the Author

  Also by Kristi Lea

  Chapter 1

  She was new to the building and a blonde. Helmut always noticed the blondes. Especially the long-legged ones.

  She sat on one of the brown leather armchairs in the corner of the ground-floor Starbucks, calmly sipping steaming liquid with ruby-red plump lips. Kissable lips. Her long legs were crossed primly at the knee, but her skirt had ridden up, revealing a tempting glimpse of shapely thighs. One high-heeled pump dangled from her raised toe, playfully.

  Helmut slid his laptop bag to the floor in front of him and surreptitiously studied her as he added sugar and a splash of milk to his coffee. Her hair color looked natural, or else a very expensive salon job. Platinum highlights around her face accentuated a golden tan that was slightly pink around the temples. He could picture her sunning herself on a beach, bikini top unhooked while he massaged tropical-scented oil into her supple skin.

  The image sent a jolt of raw lust shooting through his veins, and he gave himself a mental shake. He needed to clean the cobwebs out of his brain, not waste all of his mental power mooning over a woman. No matter how delectable her tongue looked as it tasted her coffee.

  Focus, Helmut.

  He wondered where she worked and hoped it wasn’t his department. The company had strict policies about “fraternization,” especially when one employee held a position of power over the other. Executives were not allowed to date their secretaries. Not anymore.

  Executives and power reminded Helmut of why he was in the office before seven a.m. instead of recovering from his trip. Midnight flights and predawn phone calls did not mix well.

  The woman set down her coffee and unfurled the pages of this morning’s Tribune. The business section.

  Helmut capped his coffee and slipped on a cardboard sleeve. His assistant was already waiting for him upstairs, ready to fill him in on the upheaval in the company hierarchy from the past two days. The bank of elevators was back and to his left.

  What the hell. May as well start the day with a little fun. It’s all downhill from here. Helmut turned right.

  He slung his bag back over one shoulder, loosened his tie a touch, setting it slightly askew. He reached his hand up and brushed the hair above his forehead—just where a small streak of gray had appeared over the last year—knocking a strand out of place. Perfect.

  Helmut picked up his coffee, hunched his shoulders slightly, and walked over to the blonde, wearing the boyish grin that so many women had been unable to resist.

  “Excuse me, miss?”

  The blonde looked up, dazzling him with eyes like the Caribbean at dawn. His mouth went dry and he nearly tripped over his next words.

  “I wonder if you could help me a minute.”

  She sat her cup down on the side table and studied him, her appraisal cool. She was a little older than he had first guessed, probably late twenties or maybe thirty. Her eyes were too knowing and her face too refined to be a college intern or fresh-faced secretary. Even better.

  “I am meeting my new boss in a few minutes, and I want to make a good impression. How do I look? Is my tie straight?” Helmut tried to make his voice sound a little helpless, like a bachelor in sore need of a woman’s guidance.

  “Your tie is a little crooked.” Her voice was low and smooth, sexy.

  Helmut felt a tightening in his groin, and wanted to hear that voice say his name. He reached one hand up to fix his tie, deliberately knocking it off center the other way. “How is this?”

  She glanced at her watch, then stood. “Here, allow me.”

  Her expression was polite, but her voice held a hint of amusement. As she stepped closer to Helmut, her scent filled his nostrils, light and fruity with a hint of coconut. He held still and as her fingers brushed his lapels, deftly adjusting his tie.

  “Much appreciated. My name is Helmut, by the way, Helmut Forrester. And you are?” He reached out his right hand. She gave it a quick, businesslike shake.

  Those beautiful blue eyes were wide, and her fingers were cool to the touch. Too cool. He usually knew when a woman was attracted to him, but this time he sensed nerves more than lust. Disappointment hit him in the gut, and lower.

  “Claire.” She looked down at her hand, and carefully extracted it from his grasp. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, Helmut Forrester, I have to go.”

  Helmut watched her walk calmly toward the bank of elevators, her posture confident, hips swaying lightly.

  ***

  “Geez, Helmut, lighten up. I said I’d have the revenue numbers done today. It’s only eight thirty.” Ben Lackey reclined back in the boardroom chair, juggling a small stress ball.

  “Which means I have two hours before I have to stand up before the new CEO and explain them. Is the project even in the black?” Helmut snaked one hand out and caught the lightweight ball mid-flight and set it carefully down on the table.

  Ben straightened. “Don’t you trust me? We’ve been friends for what, fifteen years now? What crawled up your ass this morning?”

  “I think it started with a five a.m. phone call informing me that Sheffield was retiring, and his kid was taking over the company.”

  “Afraid the ‘kid’ will take you down a notch, oh holy CFO?”

  Helmut tossed the ball back at his long-time friend.

  Ben ducked and it hit the wall behind him with a soft thud. The ball rolled under the table and bumped into the shoe of one of the regional sales directors. The woman picked it up and handed it back to Helmut with a quirked eyebrow.

  Ben snickered. “How was Palm Beach?”

  “The same as always.” Helmut hadn’t seen so much as a grain of sand. His mother’s house—his childhood home—was in West Palm Beach, thirty minutes from the shore. After she broke her leg last month, Helmut had been pressing his mom to move to a retirement community. Not even assisted living, just a place with a community. Friends. Someone to talk to.

  “If all those beach bunnies couldn’t help you unwind...” Ben wagged his eyebrows up and down.

  “There wasn’t much time for checking out the ‘local wildlife,’ Ben. Familial responsibility. You wouldn’t understand.” He
spent the week alternately chauffeuring her to doctor appointments and standing on one ladder or another, repairing and repainting her house.

  “Oh, I totally understand,” said Ben with mock seriousness. “All of the time you spend crunching numbers has deflated your, er, confidence with the ladies.”

  “Hmph.” Helmut knew why Ben was egging him on. As the two perennial bachelors of the company, they had always jokingly compared their dating track records. Helmut had hit a dry spot the past six months since his promotion, and he knew Ben couldn’t resist rubbing it in.

  “Come on, old man,” Ben continued. “Admit it. Your glory days are long gone. Soon you’ll be scoping out the old folks homes, asking hunched old biddies to rub you down with Vicks Vapo-Rub.”

  Helmut twisted his lips into what he hoped passed for a smile. The image would have been funnier if he didn’t have a stack of retirement community brochures still left to unpack from his suitcase. “There was a hot blonde down in the coffee shop this morning who was checking me out. If I hadn’t been in such a rush to cover for your sorry ass in the presentations today, I might have let her ask me out.”

  Ben sat up straighter. “Hot blonde? About five-eight? Skirt suit? No pantyhose?”

  The boardroom was beginning to fill up with the other high-ranking executives. James Sheffield, the retiring CEO, would be arriving any minute to make the official announcement.

  As his peers began to file in, Helmut lowered his voice a notch. “You know her?”

  “Maybe.” Ben rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “You think you could score with her?”

  “Sure.” Helmut conjured the image of those plump lips. The pink tongue. It was a pleasant fantasy anyway.

  Ben’s eyes flicked around the room and he leaned in. “Care to make a wager on it?”

  “Still sore you lost the last one to me? About your hunting cabin versus my beach house?”

  “I didn’t lose. It’s all in how you interpret the numbers.”

  “And we both know who’s better with numbers.” Helmut reached into his suit pocket and withdrew a pen. He set it gently on the table in front of him, next to the manila folder his secretary had given him.

  “You gonna put your money where your mouth is, or what?”

  “Whatever. Fifty bucks she goes out with me.” Helmut nodded to the Vice President of their European division from across the room. He hadn’t known Pierre was in the States this week. How much notice did the rest of the company get about today?

  “Penny ante. I lost five hundred bucks to you over my mountain hideaway.”

  “It’s not my fault the ladies prefer long walks on the beach to hiking in the mud.”

  Helmut flipped open the folder, and scanned the latest quarterly report. As the CFO of Sheffield & Fox, he would be expected to present the current numbers to their new CEO, CJ Sheffield, son of the newly retired James Sheffield. That was the thirty-second overview his secretary, Betty, had given him over the phone this morning.

  “A thousand.” Ben’s voice was practically a whisper. “You’ve got two weeks.”

  “Think I can’t get a date in two weeks? How washed up do you think I am?”

  “Not just a date. I’m talking carnal knowledge. And for that kind of money, I want proof.”

  Helmut weighed the wager. He’d tossed it out as a joke, but Ben looked serious. A thousand dollars was a relatively small amount compared to the hefty salary his new title afforded him. A salary that he knew Ben envied. Not that Ben’s was paltry by any stretch of the imagination.

  If Helmut lost, then Ben could gloat for weeks, or longer. That would be better than all of the accountant jokes and workaholic cracks he’d been putting up with lately. And if he won...he pictured the woman’s silky blond hair, and wondered if it was as soft to the touch as it had looked.

  “Deal.”

  “Have you met the new CEO yet?” asked Ben.

  Helmut shook his head.

  He hadn’t had a chance to talk to the new guy, but he’d heard a few snatches of gossip already this morning. His new boss had been a rising star at his previous post. He’d taken an Internet startup from his friend’s garage to a multi-million dollar corporation in under six years.

  Sheffield & Fox was a completely different sort of business. Stable, reliable, set in its ways. All of the flash and hype of the Internet wouldn’t help the kid negotiate with employees who had worked the same job since the Kennedy era. He was in for a rude awakening. Hell of a time for James to retire.

  The low murmur of whispers, shuffling papers, and the faint beeping of cell phones hushed to an expectant silence as James Sheffield entered the door at the far end of the room and stepped up to the podium. Helmut quickly set his own phone on vibrate as his boss and mentor stepped up to the microphone.

  “Ladies and Gentlemen, allow me to present your new Chief Executive Officer, Claire James Sheffield.” The room erupted in polite applause as a long-legged blonde stepped to her father’s side.

  “Shit,” Helmut muttered under his breath and glanced back at Ben.

  Ben grinned wolfishly.

  Chapter 2

  Claire rubbed her temples and wished, for the nine thousandth time today, that she had worn her glasses instead of contacts. She blinked twice, attempting to focus on the circle of suits sitting around the small conference room table. She glanced surreptitiously down at her agenda. The manufacturing department. Only two more meet-and-greets left: Finance and Law.

  “...are proud to report that productivity has been increasing steadily since the inception of our new Streamlined Engineering Process,” Ingrid, the regional director, was saying.

  Claire schooled her features into what she hoped passed for an interested expression and tried to pay attention. The last guy had droned on for fifteen minutes about the technical minutiae of various models of engine components in Sheffield & Fox’s product line. Technology was not her forte—business, strategic direction, and people were. But it was only a matter of time, she knew, before she would be speaking the lingo as well.

  Claire hadn’t known a web server from a cocktail waitress before she and her then-boyfriend, Frank, had founded Arachnava ten years ago. Frank had been the technical genius, and Claire didn’t need to know how all the software was created to help drive the business strategy.

  Even after their personal relationship soured last year, they remained business partners until Frank wanted to take the company down a riskier path. One Claire wanted no part of. When the rest of the board—comprised heavily of Frank’s college classmates—agreed, she sold her shares and bailed.

  Her retirement had lasted a whopping three weeks before her father called. Saturday afternoon—was it only two days ago? He simply informed her of her new position. And, like every other demand her father had ever made of her during the past thirty-four years of her life, she obeyed.

  She thought she had long since moved past trying to please the stubborn old man. Or to make him proud of her. Pride was something he reserved for his sons: Chris, the surgeon, and Caleb, the judge. Not for her.

  Father must have been desperate to dump the company this fast, and on Claire of all people. Was it his health? Her stepmother’s health? James had denied both. But he wouldn’t explain his reasons, and that irked Claire. She hated to walk into any job unprepared. And she was afraid of what might be lurking under the veneer of Sheffield & Fox’s shiny corporate office.

  Claire shifted her attention back to the meeting. The department heads were done speaking, and everyone stood to leave. She politely shook hands, repeating names she had memorized when they were introduced. She was exceptionally thankful for that useful skill.

  Claire turned to her executive assistant. “What’s next, Steph?”

  She and Steph had been friends for a long time. Steph’s organizational skills plus Claire’s instincts for business strategies made a lethal combination. Lethal for their competition. Getting her on board at Sheffield and Fox, and with a hefty raise, was
Claire’s one prerequisite to accepting the position.

  “Finance has their own conference room up on the fourteenth floor.” Steph glanced down at Claire’s high-heeled pumps. “Stairs or elevator?”

  “Stairs. I’ll do it barefoot if I have to. My calves are cramping from these heels. I think one of my first acts as CEO will be to implement a casual dress code.”

  Steph led the way out of the conference room and down a short corridor to the fire stairs. Once on the landing, Claire slipped off her shoes and wiggled bare toes on the gray rubber floor.

  “Actually, the official dress code is already casual.”

  Claire looked envyingly at her friend’s sporty brown leather flats.

  “But upper management is traditional.”

  “And there’s no way they’ll take me seriously wearing jeans and tennis shoes.” Claire filled in what Steph had left unspoken. “Especially at my age.”

  Steph’s eyes twinkled. “Three floors up.”

  Claire grinned. “I’ll race you.”

  “Better not. I won’t be able to brief you on the next bunch of guys when you’re thirty feet below me.” Steph grinned back and started up the stairs at an easy pace.

  Claire caught up in three steps. “How many are in the next meeting?”

  “Five. Jim Flanders heads up auditing. Marcy Robinson from contracts. Pete Sampson is the controller. Betty Krank is the executive assistant to the CFO—”

  “Helmut Forrester,” supplied Claire. “We met.”

  “I didn’t think you had time to talk to anyone after the press conference this morning.” Steph had already rounded the landing and was two steps up the next flight.

  “We met in the coffee shop before work. He hit on me.”

  “Oh.” Steph chuckled. “Oh no. What is he like?”

  Beautiful green eyes. Broad shoulders. Nice smile. “Not bad looking, but the come-on was totally corny. He asked me to straighten his tie. Had no clue who I was.”

  Steph giggled outright. “Figures. He has a bit of a reputation around here. As a playboy. Or heartbreaker, depending on how sappy you are about that sort of thing.”