A Cowboy in Disguise

by Victoria Ashe

  Stomach still on edge, Alexandra leaned heavily on Scott as he walked her inside, stopping now and again to catch her breath and curse the existence of all shrimp puffs in general. She couldn’t remember having ever felt so sick in her life. Why did it have to be in front of this gorgeous man?

  Her insides convulsed and rebelled, and a fever caused by the bacteria made her feel light-headed. Her entire body ached for that matter. The doctors had given her an I.V. at the hospital because every time she tried to take a sip of water, her stomach rejected it. If she’d felt any better, vanity would have kicked in. But right now, she needed Scott there with her no matter how bad she looked.

  He helped her unzip her dress, and though tempted to peek, he turned politely away while she slipped into a purple nightshirt with script across the front. Cats. Books. What else is there?

  He shook his head. She didn’t have any pets, did she? And he’d also have to ask his father to remind him of exactly what the benefits of being a gentleman were when watching a woman as stunning as Alexandra undress was at stake.

  Scott stretched out on the bed beside her and smoothed back her hair. He ran a cool washcloth along her hot forehead as she drifted off into sleep. Not sure if she even knew he was still there, he kissed her sweetly on top of her head.

  Alexandra smiled. “If you wanted to get me into bed, there had to be an easier way than this,” she murmured.

  Scott laughed and watched over her while she slept. Her thick hair had come out of its style and cascaded softly around her shoulders. Her makeup had long since been wiped away and her face was flushed with fever. Yet even with all that and her obvious lack of minty fresh breath, Alexandra was still the most dazzling woman Scott had ever seen. He couldn’t stop looking at her as she slept. Never once had he felt that way with Mackenzie. In fact, looking back he realized that though he had initially been struck by her cool brand of beauty, the good times he spent with her had been shades of gray compared to even the simplest conversation with Alexandra.

  The contrast was remarkable. Mackenzie feigned warmth, but in reality was the equivalent of a human iceberg. Alexandra feigned reserve to mask the warm, sensitive woman she truly was.

  He brushed his lips against her forehead and said what he couldn’t say when she was awake. “What did I do to deserve you?” he whispered. “I think I’m falling for you, Alexandra Hunter.”

  •

  Mary let herself in the next morning and found Scott, still in his tuxedo shirt and pants, asleep on top of the covers beside Alexandra. Her fingers wrapped securely around his hand as she slept.

  Mary tapped Scott on the shoulder and whispered, “I got your message.” She tilted her head toward the bathroom and tossed him a T-shirt and pair of sweat pants. “Sorry, those were all I could dig up. Go take a shower and get cleaned up. You don’t smell so good.”

  Scott crawled stiffly off of the bed and stumbled into the bathroom. Mary shook her head in amazement. There was no way a man would stay with a woman through a night like that if he didn’t have some very real feelings for her. And from the look of Alexandra, she hadn’t exactly been a prize catch these past few hours.

  Alexandra rolled over in the bed and squinted at Mary standing there. “Scott, you look worse than I do in the morning.”

  “Very funny,” Mary hissed. “Do you know that man stayed with you the entire night?”

  Alexandra nodded, still feeling like she was getting over a case of the flu. “I remember.” The recollection of her gastrointestinal pyrotechnics flashed through her mind and she rolled over and moaned. “What a horrible party.”

  Scott emerged from the shower wearing a pair of sweats that were far too short. “It’s alive,” he announced and then shot Alexandra another tentative look. “Sort of.” He ducked a flying pillow and continued, “I’ve got to get David’s car back to him. I’ll stop by the office and pick up your mail and faxes. How about I bring them by later in the morning? I hope you weren’t thinking of trying to come in.”

  “I think I’ll stay put for another day.” She dropped her head back against the firm mattress, regretting she’d thrown her best pillow at him.

  When Scott had gone, Alexandra stumbled into the bathroom and examined herself in the mirror. She thought of the beautiful, blond Mac Stevens from the evening before.

  “Oh, Alexandra,” she said to herself, “what a nightmare.”

  •

  Scott stood in front of the fax machine that Monday morning, scarcely believing what he’d just read. He held in his hands a memo from Mac Stevens to all of the shortlist presenters. That woman was a real piece of work, he thought. She’d certainly wasted no time distributing the memo after the party. In fact, it looked as if she’d sent it just after he’d left with Alexandra. He considered crumbling the paper up in his hand and pretending it had never arrived.

  The fax announced that the presentation had been postponed yet another two weeks, but that wasn’t the part that troubled him. Alexandra’s role had essentially been wiped out with one simple, manipulative, premeditated request. It seemed Rio Safari wanted to hear only one presenter speak from each company—the most senior ranking member of the team. No one else would be allowed in the room. It was to be Scott facing the review panel without Alexandra. If Rio’s board of directors had known what Mackenzie was up to, they would have never agreed to something so unprofessional.

  He again fought the urge to squash the fax and throw it into the wastebasket. This wasn’t a business decision by any stretch. This was one-hundred-percent Mackenzie Stevens eliminating what she perceived as the female competition—as if Mackenzie could even begin to compete with Alexandra.

  “Sarah,” he called out as he rounded the corner, “could you get Mac Stevens on the line for me?” He tossed her number on Sarah’s desk. “I’ll take it in Alexandra’s office.”

  “Scott, darling,” came the sultry voice on the other end of the phone. “I knew you’d be calling.”

  “I need to see you, Mackenzie.” He shut the door to Alexandra’s office. “We need to talk about this fax I just received.”

  “What’s there to talk about? Some of the Board members and I thought it best to keep the presentation as uncluttered as possible. That’s the way it is. Unless you’re not up to the challenge?”

  “You know that’s not why I called. I know your old moves, Mackenzie, and this one seems very familiar.”

  Mac made an unconcerned little noise. “If you’re prepared, then I can’t imagine what your concern might be, darling. And you know it would be a conflict of interest to meet privately with you at this stage. But, I’ll see you before the presentation and hopefully after …” Her voice held an unwelcome suggestive tone.

  Scott slammed down the phone, picked up his jacket, and headed out to do the inevitable—break the news to Alexandra.

  •

  Alexandra was out of bed and feeling much improved when Scott pulled up in her driveway. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d taken a day of sick leave and just relaxed. But, when Scott came to the door with a single fax in his hand instead of a pile of mail, a feeling of foreboding crept over her.

  His hair was rumpled from where he’d run his hand through it too many times and his expression was far too serious. He tossed his jacket and the fax onto her sofa and pulled Alexandra into his arms, burying his face in her hair.

  “I should never have joined this project. I never should have said yes. I should have known she wasn’t capable of professionalism. What you were afraid of has happened, and I—”

  “Scott …” she started to say as his mouth came down over hers. Her knees weakened as he kissed her until her strength dissolved.

  “Alexandra, do you know what you do to me?”

  She wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him back, her body moving of its own accord tighter against him. “I couldn’t stand seeing her touch you like that,” she whispered. As soon as the words were spoken, a tiny voice in the back of her
mind wondered why she’d confessed that. She pulled slightly away and fought to catch her breath.

  “I would never hurt you, Alex. Never.”

  She leaned in to kiss him again and he moved away reluctantly, remembering the reason he had come before she pushed him past the point of being able to think at all. He traced her lips with his finger. “I hate this. I really do, but you need to take a look at this fax.”

  Still shaking from his touch, Alexandra drew another deep breath and picked up the fax. Slowly she scanned the words on the paper, scarcely believing what she read with her own eyes. There in black and white, her greatest fear from the beginning had taken shape. She’d let down her guard, and somehow, somewhere along the way, this man had infiltrated her project and taken away something she’d put half a year of her life into.

  She sank down onto the sofa. “Get out of here,” she said calmly. “I need to be alone for a while.”

  It all made sense to her now. She remembered Scott and Mac Stevens together at the party. The too-familiar touches, the secret discussion in the corner, their laughter—all of it fit together. Had they intended from the very beginning what she now suspected? Scott knew that securing a multi-million-dollar contract with Rio would be a feather in the cap of any executive. But to steal her project away from her, all the while professing feelings of love? It was unimaginably cruel, this scheme he and Mac must have planned.

  Scott looked at her in confusion. “I knew you’d be angry, which is why I wanted to tell you as soon as I could. We’ll figure out a way to either get around this or fix it. Somehow.”

  His words rang hollow inside her cloud of hurt. “Well, I hope you and the presentation will be very happy together,” she said.

  “Alexandra, surely you don’t think I had anything to do with this?”

  “I saw you two. This was planned all along, wasn’t it? Congratulations.” She sighed as she opened the door behind him.

  “Alex, this is all Mackenzie. I had no idea she’d try something like this.”

  “I asked you to leave.”

  She shut the door behind him and locked it for good measure. Mackenzie Stevens could have him. The two of them were obviously a match made in Hades anyway.

  •

  Alexandra settled into one of the posh leather chairs in David’s office as he leaned on the corner of his desk. She’d thought about her request all morning long and waited until the end of the day to talk to David about it.

  “You want a new assignment?” he asked in surprise.

  “Yes. Considering the way the Rio project has shaken out, it seems my involvement is to be rather limited. I’ve given Falconer all the information I can and short of actually presenting, there’s not much more I can do.”

  David studied her for a moment. So she was back to calling him Falconer, was she? “I was as surprised as you were when Mac Stevens sent that fax limiting our team to one presenter, so I can understand your request.”

  “I’d like to find something to put my energies into. Anything hot right now?”

  David walked around behind his desk and sat down. “If you’d asked me yesterday, that’s exactly what I’d have talked to you about. But this morning I happened to get a call from one of the men on Rio’s board of directors. I wouldn’t say anything to anyone outside this office about how I know this, but it looks like you’re not off the hook just yet.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well,” David said, “I got the impression that this particular Rio board member was none too pleased with the Stevens fax. There have been a lot of inconsistencies in this process, so they’ve scheduled a pre-presentation meeting—sort of a last chance for all the competitors to ask questions and get equal treatment.”

  Equal treatment, she thought. What a joke. “So Falconer and I need to go as a team?”

  David nodded. “He also indicated they’re issuing a follow-up fax today. They don’t want to publicly step on Mac Steven’s toes by inviting the full team to speak again, so they’re instead asking for everyone to be available outside the room in case of questions.”

  “Just what I’ve always wanted to do—sit out in the hall and wait for someone else to present my work.”

  “Try not to take it personally, Alex. Looks like you and Scott are stuck with each other for a few more days. At least we know Rio is keeping a close watch on the whole situation.”

  Alexandra’s heels clicked along the tile floor more slowly than usual on her way back to the office. The sound used to seem filled with a sense of purpose, but now each step only carried her closer to an office cluttered with the corpse of her project.

  •

  Scott saw Alexandra walking down the hall without that sense of lovely determination she always carried so lightly. He cursed Mackenzie under his breath, and then cursed himself. If he hadn’t accepted David’s offer, if David hadn’t heard through the grapevine that he knew Mac personally, then he could have spared Alexandra the anguish she was going through. He should have said no. How stupid had he been to think Mac might be professional, or that the rest of the Board might keep her in line.

  He knew what Alexandra must think of him. Everything he’d promised her would never happen, had happened. Scott also knew what he would have to do. First, he had to find a way to convince Alexandra his professional intentions were honorable, and then he had to find a way to make her fall in love with him. Then he had an idea—a brilliant one he thought.

  Alexandra looked as though her thoughts were far away, so it had to come as even more of a shock when he grabbed her by the arm and pulled. The next thing he knew, she was seated awkwardly beside him atop several boxes of paper inside a small supply closet.

  Scott snapped the door shut and locked it from the inside. He hoped his idea was as brilliant as it first seemed.

  “Are you crazy?” she yelled.

  A single stripe of light from under the door made it hard to see him in the dark. “Shh,” he cautioned. “What do you think people will do if we make noise and they discover us locked together in a supply closet? Could start some pretty nasty rumors.”

  Alexandra imagined the faces of her coworkers and rolled her eyes. “Isn’t this illegal imprisonment or something?” she whispered.

  “Probably. I don’t care. You haven’t exactly been willing to talk to me since that stupid fax arrived.”

  “You mean since you stole my project. Or to use your colorful expression, ‘horned in’ on it.”

  Scott put his hands on her shoulders. “You have to listen to me, Alex. Really hear me. I had nothing to do with that decision. It’s ludicrous, but when Mackenzie saw you walk in that room looking the beautiful, stunning way you did, her claws came out.”

  Alexandra probably had a hard time imagining Mac Stevens feeling threatened by anyone. “I saw you together in the corner conspiring.”

  “Conspiring?” Scott almost laughed. “Is that what you think?” The scent of her perfume oil was intoxicating in the small closet.

  Alexandra stayed silent until she heard the clunk of footsteps outside pass. “You’re going to get us both fired.” The closet was extremely small—getting smaller by the minute—and he was too close to her.

  Alexandra continued. “Let’s look at the facts here. I spent six months on a project only to hear that you’re coming in at the last minute and I need to share it. We work together for a while until I get comfortable with you and then I find out your real connection to the client. And then—oh, this gets better. And then I see you all cozy with your former lover and voilà, Alexandra is off the project and out of the picture two days later. Who has the entire project now? Why, none other than Mr. Scott Falconer.”

  Scott’s jaw dropped. “I suppose you think I deliberately poisoned your shrimp puffs, too.”

  “It’s a distinct possibility.” Her chin was high again. If anything, he knew how to put the fighting spirit back into her.

  He moved closer to her so that her knees brushed against his
thighs. She tried to move farther back on the stack of boxes and couldn’t. He leaned in and placed his hands on the boxes—one on either side of her.

  “Think about this,” he whispered. “If my goal was to take the project, why wouldn’t I have done it from the beginning?” His lips were so close to hers that he could feel her breath. “If there was a big conspiracy, why wouldn’t I have had Mackenzie just send a fax when I was hired and request that I give the presentation right from the start?”

  •

  Alexandra’s anger was treacherously close to melting away from her. How dare he poke holes in her theory this way? He made sense on some level and on another, a sense of shame crept in. She hadn’t treated him fairly, but there was no time to think about it. Scott’s lips had already found hers.

  All she wanted to do was lay back on the boxes and forget everything. She had been so tired, so angry and so untrusting for much too long. Scott had been good to her even when she least deserved it and it felt as if his touched healed her somehow.

  “Do you believe me, Alex?” he murmured against her lips.

  She nodded that she did.

  “I want you to promise me something.” He pulled away and looking deeply into her eyes. “The next time you suspect something sinister or start to distrust me, I want you to wait and give me a chance. Okay?”

  “All right.”

  She gently pushed him away and slid off of the boxes, surprised she could stand without wobbling. “We still have the same problem,” she whispered into his ear. “We work together.”

  Her argument sounded thinner every time she used it.

  Scott wrapped his arms around her tightly and held her against his chest for what seemed hours. “I look at it this way, Alex. A job like mine is easy to find. A woman like you isn’t.”

  Alexandra felt warmth spread from head to foot as she embraced him. “We got off to a really strange start, didn’t we?” She turned her head and looked up at him with eyes that glittered with desire. “After the presentation, we’ll see what happens.”