She shook her head and took a step back from him with her chin high. “I’m saying no, Buck, because it won’t work. It can’t work, with my life. I’m asking you to understand,” she said pleadingly. “I’m asking you to honor that I mean it.”
He stared at her for a long minute and then moved on and out, leaving her to close the door behind him.
Loren dialed the phone with the eraser end of her pencil, nodding a thank-you as Janey entered with the day’s letters to be signed. She angled the phone between ear and shoulder as she signed her name on the pages, too certain of her secretary’s typing skills to check her work. The phone rang at the other end…and rang, and rang.
It was more than three minutes before she could force herself to hang up. Another Friday afternoon and Angela had absolutely sworn she would stay home; Loren had even bribed her sister with the use of the van for the evening… Janey buzzed her, and Loren pressed her intercom button.
“There’s a first-aid call from the boiler room, and Ralph’s not answering,” the secretary explained.
“If there was a drop of blood involved, Ralph’s probably fainted,” Loren said dryly. “Okay, Janey, on my way.”
Snatching up her tortoise-shell safety glasses, Loren bolted through three sets of revolving doors. Past the foremen’s offices, past the divisional managers and production, and suddenly there were two dozen monster presses, the steady whoosh and hiss as they opened and closed blending with the acrid smell of hot plastic. A variety of greetings were shouted at Loren as she passed. She was distinctly the only one in a feminine cream blouse with ruffles at the throat, a camel skirt and three-and-a-half-inch heels that were illegal plant attire in every way. Most of the time she found it both ironic and amusing to be the plant’s sole sex symbol, but for now she ignored the affectionate catcalls.
The boiler room was spotless, but the noise level just barely met standard. Loren resisted the urge to cover her ears as she crouched down by the reclining man and motioned away the four or five onlookers. “It’s just a nosebleed, boys. Johnny has them all the time…”
With help, she got Johnny to the first-aid room, and a half hour later she was dabbing a cold wet cloth at the red spot on her shoulder as she walked toward the offices. Two doors later, she whirled around a corner to collide with a short, stocky, whiskered man, who laughed as he grabbed at her shoulders.
“Matt!”
“I’ve been trying to find you, sexy. I feel bad about leaving you with a double workload…”
“I thought you’d already left on vacation—”
“I’m leaving, I’m leaving. But I told Frank he was taking advantage, Loren. He loads work on you as though you’re some kind of bottomless pit…”
Loren laughed and perched her glasses on top of her head. “Don’t be silly. I can manage. Now don’t you be worried; just give us a kiss and get out of here while you still can.”
The kiss was a swift smack of affection, but from around the side of Matt’s shoulder, she suddenly saw one hell of a broad-shouldered redhead and his sidekick, a smallish white-haired man whose eyes were pale blue—and sober, very sober. The two men were glaring at her.
“Have a super time, Matt. I have to go—”
“Be good, honey.”
Matt was gone, and relief filled Loren’s heart because Gramps was here, sober and safe, and there would be no trauma at that horrid bar this Friday. She threw her arms around him, her joy and relief so explosive there were almost tears in her eyes. “I’m so glad to see you! But what are you doing here, darling?”
“Yes. Well, what kind of a place is this you’re working in? You kiss strange men in the middle of the hallways, and I heard what he called you…”
Loren’s arm dropped. “What did who call me?” she asked, bewildered.
“I won’t repeat it in mixed company,” Bill Shephard said irritably. “Buck is mixed company, Loren. Now say hello and show us to your office. I want to talk to you.”
The reason why Bill Shephard was sober this Friday had ice-cold, very dark green eyes. Loren hadn’t expected to see him again. She’d given him a clear-cut no, and she’d given it twice. “Buck,” she acknowledged softly.
Fleetingly, she wished that he had listened to her because suddenly all those sensible, practical reasons why she couldn’t pursue a relationship seemed to elude her. Glad to see him? She felt ill, an attack of spring fever when it was still winter, a feeling of euphoric intoxication for no reason at all.
Truthfully, the look of him didn’t justify those feelings. He wore a forest-green sweater that matched his eyes, gray flannel slacks and a long grayish jacket, unbuttoned. His rusty hair was disheveled from the wind outside, and the steel in his sideburns was reflected in his expression. Don’t push me, the set of his jaw told her, and she hadn’t done anything at all.
“Your office,” he reminded her.
Chapter Five
Loren could sense Buck appraising her office the moment she closed the door. The gold carpet and chairs set up for interviews were office standard. So was the gray metal desk—except that hers was painted yellow; splashes of yellow and orange hung from the picture behind it; and her philodendron was gradually stealing up the window. She saw just a slip of the ice in him thaw as he glanced around, and then his eyes settled on her. She thought wryly that he saw too much. Her tan skirt was…office standard. The pale ivory blouse was ruffled—her own brand of femininity, as in to hell with office protocol. Safety glasses functioned as a hair band rather than eye protection, and her heels were predictably high. Frank had fought a losing battle the first two years she’d worked here, trying to fit her to the mold.
“You go around kissing a whole lot of these employees of yours?” Bill Shephard said belligerently.
“Gramps, don’t be silly. Matt’s married. He has three children and another on the way. I’ve been working for him for more than four years—”
“And what about what he called you?”
“Honey?” Loren guessed, knowing Matt.
“You tell her, Buck.”
“Sexy,” Buck supplied readily.
Her soft charcoal eyes lifted uncertainly to his. His gaze still radiated the hardness of jade…yet he’d come back. Unconsciously she sensed he was half-angry at just being here, that he’d never in his life even considered pursuing a woman who’d told him no.
“I should have been paying more attention when you first took this job—”
Loren wrenched here eyes from Buck’s back to her grandfather. “Gramps, the people who work here are all very nice—”
“By people I assume you mean men. I haven’t seen a woman since we passed the receptionist at the front door. Are there any other women working here?” Gramps demanded.
“I keep most of them hidden in the back room,” Loren said dryly.
“Loren, I’m in no mood for your brand of humor—”
“Well, you’re touching on a sore point. Women. I mean, how ironic it would be for me, in my job, to be sexist. It took six months for the foremen to even consider putting a woman on a press, only to discover that women weren’t exactly lining up to lift fifty pounds on piece rate and risk their fingernails in the presses—”
“We weren’t in the plant. We were in the offices—”
“So you passed by Engineering. Most of that department was staffed long before Lee lost the war. The Civil War. Back when women couldn’t vote, and all those poor whales got killed to make corsets…”
“Loren.”
She would have liked to tell him how rough it had been four years ago to be hired as the token female manager. Unfortunately, Gramps seemed definitely hung up on kisses in hallways. She glanced at Buck again. The ice was half-thawed; the corners of his mouth were even fighting a smile. She thought fleetingly that he could easily have gotten her out of this nonsensical war between the generations, that surely he had not mistaken a simple gesture of affection for something else. Yet he did nothing.
Gramps con
tinued, “We may need money, Loren, but if I had known the kind of job you were going to take—”
She kissed her grandfather warmly on the cheek. “I don’t know why you’re so upset. I only kiss them in the morning before their shifts start,” she said innocently. “It’s in my job description: ‘Develop through one’s own initiative a variety of programs to motivate employees.’ Production is definitely up—”
Bill threw up his hands. “Buck, I’m too darned old to take her over my knee. Why don’t you try and wipe that smile off her face?”
“I think,” Buck interjected dryly, “that Loren would like to show us her plant.”
The tour took a half hour, from the spotless tool room to the noisy roar of the production floor to shipping. They dodged forklifts, rolling carts of raw material, bins of finished product. Loren was suddenly very serious, knowledgeably discussing press capacities and parts’ tolerances, enumerating all the phases of production beginning with the product designed at an engineer’s drawing board and ending with the finished containers loaded on a semi truck for shipping. She was stopped—the janitor had a picture of his new grandchild; the maintenance foreman had a problem with one of his electrical apprentices; a word had to be said to the press operator who broke the month’s production record.
It was her turf, and she showed it off with pride. It was Gramps’s arm she hung on to—and delighted at seeing him sober on a Friday afternoon—but it was Buck she was conscious of. His hand at the small of her back as they dodged machinery, his face close when she was trying to talk over the roar of the presses, the feel of his rough wool sweater and the muscle beneath it when she touched his arm, steering him in another direction. He fired off questions almost as if he cared, as if he knew something about raw materials and production schedules. Only occasionally did she see a flicker in his eyes that communicated the same physical awareness that felt to her like an assault…a very gentle assault. In his eyes, she saw respect, and she valued it.
“Well, what did you think?” Loren demanded as they again passed through the revolving doors to her office. “I wish I’d asked you to see the place before, Gramps. I never thought you’d be interested.”
“Loren? I’ve been trying to catch you since lunch. I’ve got—”
Frank stood in the doorway, a sheaf of papers under his right arm, running his hand through the hair that wasn’t there as he always did. He halted when he saw her two visitors.
“Frank, this is my grandfather, William Shephard. And a friend of ours, Buck…Smith,” Loren improvised. “Gramps, Buck, this is my boss, Frank Humphreys.”
Frank stepped into the office and shifted the papers to under his left arm to extend his right hand in greeting, first to Bill, then to Buck. There was a pleasant moment of simple chitchat, and Loren watched, feeling oddly unsurprised to see Buck take over the conversation. Research was Frank’s secret passion; Buck had ferreted it out within minutes, the two of them discussing futures markets as if they were tennis pros discussing Adidas. Why wasn’t she surprised? she wondered fleetingly. She didn’t really know Buck, not his background, or anything about his family, not even his last name. Yet she couldn’t help thinking that Buck would have been so much better than Frank at the helm of this company, that he would never allow himself to invest too much time and money in one arena, as Frank did…
Frank beamed at her as he moved to leave, then remembered the papers under his arm. “You take the rest of the afternoon off, honey. You’ve earned it. Take your group out to dinner, why don’t you? But I was wondering if you wouldn’t mind taking these home to look over on the weekend. I just haven’t the time—”
“Of course.” There was just a trace of irony in her voice. Frank never handed out roses in one hand without thorns in the other. Or had he forgotten she had two jobs on her plate for the next two weeks without having any “little extras” added to it?
“Is he a decent boss to work for?” her grandfather asked as the three of them went out to the parking lot.
“Since he lets me do just about anything I want, I have to say yes,” Loren answered thoughtfully. “It wasn’t that way at first. I think originally he hired me with a view toward speedily firing me. And he did fire me. About forty-seven times. For everything from wearing sandals in the plant to talking back to him. No one else does that.” She paused. “Someone has to do it. Otherwise, he’d be all tied up in research, and he’d never see what else was going on.”
“So you’re bossy on the job as well as at home,” her grandfather grunted.
“Sad but true,” Loren teased, and hugged the old man. She glanced up at Buck to find his eyes gleaming with amusement. “Have I been showing off too much?”
He nodded, she chuckled. “Okay, where are you two gentlemen taking me out to dinner? And what are we driving in, by the way?”
They were driving in a very sleek dark green Town Car, not exactly the obvious choice of vehicle for an out-of-work redhead. She told herself not to ask questions about something that didn’t matter and slipped into the comfortable front seat as Gramps settled in the back. It was a lovely restaurant they went to, one of the few better places in the city that still didn’t offer liquor. She appreciated Buck all over again for his sensitivity, and though she had no illusions about an immediate permanent change in her grandfather’s habits, he seemed to be coping all right for the afternoon. They talked sulky races and politics and weather and the way it used to be, all Gramps’s topics, with Buck keeping the ball rolling nicely. He’d slipped next to her in the booth and had his arm around the back of it until dinner arrived, so that she had to touch him if she so much as breathed.
She breathed. He felt warm and solid, and every time she looked up at him to say something, she felt a little warmer and a little less solid herself, and a great deal more quiet. She found herself ravenous over dinner, and there wasn’t a shadow of tension until it was over. It was bound to be a little awkward when she paid for the meal, but Buck, after all, was unemployed, and she felt she owed him anyway because he had spent his afternoon watching Gramps for her. A little awkward was one thing, but…
“Just put it away, Loren. I can handle it,” Buck growled.
“Of course you can,” she said smoothly, yet clearly skeptical. “But I need the practice—women are paying for their meals these days, you know. It’s not anything to…”
When the waiter returned, she had both of her hands pinned beneath the table with the bills still in them, and when the waiter was gone with Buck’s money, her wrists emerged white from his grip. “For heaven’s sake,” she muttered to him furiously as they headed out of the restaurant.
“And the last name is not Smith,” he muttered back to her. “The game was all well and good, Loren, but it’s past time it stopped.”
They were home by seven. Angela, predictably on a Friday night, was out with David. Bill challenged Buck to a game of chess, and Loren puttered around the house doing the little clean-up jobs she always did when she came home—a few dishes, lamps turned on, coffee made.
When that was done, she settled on the couch with the cost studies Frank had given, her, the monstrous heels finally off, legs up, ankles crossed. The two men were playing their game at a table a few feet from her, engrossed in kings and pawns. She could still get Frank’s work done this evening…but she didn’t.
Her eyes kept wandering to the profile of the man concentrating on the queen his hand was about to move. He was crouched on a low chair, his legs separated and his elbows resting on his knees as he viewed the chessboard. Under the soft lamplight, his hair was a burnished brown, its red highlights muted, and there was a strong streak of silver near his temples. Small lines were etched around his eyes, deeper ones between his brows; he had a beak nose and a very strong profile. The only soft feature in his entire face was his mouth, which she remembered with sudden fleeting intensity had been very soft. She wondered about the two scars on his face; his eyebrow half-hid the small one on his forehead, but the cr
escent on his cheek…
Their eyes suddenly met, and his held a challenge, a question. She’d asked him not to come back, and he had. She tried to tell him with her eyes that she was grateful for Gramps, and no more, but instead her traitorous gaze told him that he was a compellingly sexual man, that she was afraid, that there was a mortifying tension between her thighs, that she was very, very glad he had come back…
She sat up and tucked her legs beneath her. When she glanced back, his small smile was gone, and he was still staring at her, the desire in his eyes frank, sober, silent.
“Checkmate,” Gramps chortled. “And I do believe I’ve finally had enough. I never thought I could beat you after you slaughtered me the first game, Buck. You must not have had your mind on this one.”
“Nonsense. You beat me fair and square,” Buck answered easily, but his eyes were still on Loren.
“Well, I, for one, am going to bed. A good night, Loren…”
She rose to brush a soft kiss on her grandfather’s wrinkled cheek. “I’ll put away the chessboard, darling.”
“But don’t think I’m not going to talk to you again in the morning about that job of yours,” he warned her gruffly.
Buck disappeared for a moment while Loren put away the chessboard, and when he came back, he stood leaning against the doorjamb.
“I owe you,” she said hesitantly. “For Gramps today. I mean, for taking care—”
“I like Bill, Loren. But I didn’t come here for him.”
She nodded. “I know that. But it’s still a cause for celebration.” She took a breath and suddenly smiled. “Come on.” She crooked a finger, insisting he follow her through the hall and kitchen to the stairs that led to the basement.
“We’re going—where?” he demanded.
“To see Joan.”
The basement had been partitioned into half a dozen rooms for storage. Loren switched on the naked lightbulbs she needed to see and finally opened the door to a room where she and Angela stored their summer clothes. She burrowed between hangers and fabrics and finally emerged with a dusty bottle of wine in her hand. “It’s a Château Lafite Rothschild, left over from my parents’ era. Gramps would never look in our clothes, you see. That’s why…”
Kisses From Heaven Page 5