"And you, too, of course, sweetie." After handing Benjamin her books, Zara lifted her face for a kiss. As always, Benjamin made it a big one.
"But I have to get some work done, sweets," Zara protested weakly, when he let her come up for air. "I have a three-page paper, two problem sets, and five chapters."
"And I've got a million dollars to round up before I can even dare submit a proposal to the government," Benjamin countered, bending over her again. "We'll both go back to work after one more kiss."
Chuckling, Aletheia patted Felix's hand, then let go to fetch Zara's large dark roast, guaranteed to keep a student awake until midnight. Aletheia was just popping a top on the drink when the phone rang. She picked it up.
"Oh, good, it's you." Meredith's voice was relieved. "Is it okay for a huge moving truck to come tonight? That sculpture of Parker's I sold last week, the horse? Well, apparently the client can't wait for our regular delivery guy, wants a special."
"I'm sure that won't be a problem," Aletheia replied. "Though it sure is lucky for Parker he's got you untangling all these finicky arrangements people want."
"And taking care of the contracts, the sales, and the marketing," Meredith boasted.
She could have boasted even more, Aletheia thought. Not only had Meredith taken over Parker's fledgling business of selling his art, she'd managed to involve both elderly aunts, Cousin George, Sophie, and even Aletheia's father in the project. The entire family now felt as though they were contributing.
"But Parker still makes the meals." Aletheia humorously tried to stand up for her cousin, who did not take care of his own business arrangements. "What's on the menu for tonight, do you know?"
"Big state secret." Meredith sounded amused.
"I don't get it."
Meredith's amusement expanded. "Yeah, right, see, Parker's guessing Felix plans to pop the question to you on your big trip to France, so he's fixing to one-up the guy and ask me first, tonight."
Aletheia was astounded. "You think so?"
"Parker may seem laid-back, but he's all male." Meredith sounded equal parts annoyed and proud of the fact. "Competitive to the bone."
"Oh." Aletheia stuck her tongue in her cheek. "And when he asks, what are you going to tell him?"
"Well, let's see... What are you planning to tell Felix?" Meredith laughed. "I wouldn't miss dinner tonight, if I were you. I have a feeling Parker's going to outdo himself."
"We'll be there." With her lips quirking, Aletheia hung up the phone. She picked up Zara's coffee and started toward their table, but stopped when she noticed Benjamin grinning at her. He'd evidently listened to the whole call, and deduced its content. He inclined his head toward Zara, who was hunched over an open textbook. Then he winked.
"What?" Aletheia blurted out loud. "You, too?"
Laughing silently, Benjamin put a finger to his lips.
Zara looked up. "What's going on?" she complained. "I'm trying to work here for crissake." But as she bent back over her textbook, Aletheia could see a tiny smile at the edges of her mouth. Benjamin was not going to be surprising her.
Aletheia smiled, a bone-deep smile. It looked like her large family would be getting a little larger. And even happier.
The End
About the Author
Alyssa Kress completed her first novel at age six, an unlikely romance between a lion and a jackal. Despite earning two degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and spending nearly a decade in the construction industry, she's yet to see her feet stay firmly on the ground. She now lives in Southern California, together with her husband and two children.
You can learn more about Alyssa Kress and her other novels at http://www.alyssakress.com.
Other books by Alyssa Kress:
Marriage by Mistake
The Heart Heist
The Indiscreet Ladies of Green Ivy Way
Asking For It
Love and the Millionairess
Working on a Full House
Your Scheming Heart
Preview of The Fiancée Fiasco
"What you really need, Win, is a wife."
Hearing her boss say these words stopped Roseanne halfway through the door into his downtown Seattle office. Her long-fingered hand halted on the polished brass knob of the door. Damn. George wasn't alone. She'd counted on discussing her plan with him this afternoon, her strategy for finally making partner at the Covington March law firm this year.
Instead she was interrupting something clearly personal...if unquestionably intriguing. Win, Win...did she know that name? It sounded awfully familiar, but she couldn't place it.
Reluctantly, she backed out the door. Politeness did not come naturally to her, but for George she tried.
"Surely you're joking, George," spoke a male voice in a deep Texas twang. "Members of the female sex are generally worse than a good dose of poison."
Roseanne's disappointed retreat halted. Cracking the door open wider, she gazed boldly into the room. A tall, lean man stood poised by her boss's twelfth-floor window. He was several inches taller than herself, even in her high-heeled shoes. He was obviously Win, and the source of the statement she'd just heard.
Tilting her head, Roseanne wondered if she could manage to push the fellow through the window and, if so, would the act be considered a crime. Heck, what was a man like this doing with her boss?
"Roseanne?" George apparently caught sight of her.
So did the man by the window. He froze, and then had the decency to blush. "Beggin' your pardon, ma'am."
"Oh, Roseanne understands," George claimed, with complete inaccuracy. Heavyset and balding, he sat genially behind his big office desk. "Come on in, Roz. I'd like you to meet my good friend, Winthrop Carruthers."
Good friend? Oh, no. George couldn't have called him that. Because now Roseanne had placed the name, together with the Texas accent. Winthrop Carruthers was infamous at Covington March. But she could hardly escape now. Raising her eyebrows, she strode through the door. "Roseanne Archer." She paused and smiled dryly. "A pleasure."
The tall man, dressed in off-white trousers and a white dress shirt, winced. "I do apologize," he mumbled. "Probably not all women. But no wife," he added, turning back to George. 'Sakes. Gettin' rid of the last one was no easy task." Carruthers pointed to the top of George's desk. "And it looks like I'm not done with her yet."
So that was the problem. Winthrop Carruthers' ex-wife was giving him grief. From what Roseanne knew about the situation, this sounded perfectly reasonable.
The only question was why George was giving the fellow the time of day. Four years ago Carruthers had abruptly fired Covington March. The loss of the corporate contract for his big aeronautical firm had been serious. George had been the one blamed.
But George didn't look one speck pissed, irritated, or resentful. If Roseanne weren't mistaken, her soft-hearted boss actually looked concerned—on Carruthers' behalf. From his desktop, he picked up a newspaper clipping. "I understand your annoyance with this article, Win. But unfortunately, it's simply not actionable."
Win glanced toward Roseanne, possibly implying she should leave them in privacy, but she wasn't budging. It sounded like George was handing out legal advice, for free, to a person who should be his worst enemy. If she could put a monkey wrench in these proceedings, she was doing it.
Apparently giving up on privacy, Win turned back to George. "Are you saying I can't sue?"
George spread his hands. "Well, there's nothing defamatory in the piece. All it says is that you and your ex-wife, Sylvia, are considering a reconciliation."
"It isn't true."
Roseanne, on her way to George's desk to take a gander at the article, paused at the vehemence in Mr. Carruthers' tone.
George seemed struck by it, too. "Of course not," he said, and set the news clipping down with a thoughtful expression.
Roseanne didn't like that expression. Bad enough Mr. Carruthers was horning in on the hour she'd counted on spending with Ge
orge. She wasn't letting him talk George into wasting his time on some thankless project.
"Defamation requires more than simply printing an untruth," she interjected. Reaching George's desk, she looked down at the article, though she obviously didn't have time to read it. She didn't need to. She knew the details. Carruthers hadn't merely divorced his wife, but ditched her, callously, on the eve of his success. The minute he'd made a go of his aeronautics company, his wife had become history.
"To sue would require damages to have occurred," Roseanne now informed him. "If all the article states is that you're getting back together with your ex-wife, it would be hard to prove that's caused you any monetary loss."
Glancing helplessly at George, and then out the window, Carruthers ran a hand through his sandy hair. "Damn."
There, Roseanne thought. Now the crumb would leave.
But George, unbelievably, continued handing out advice. "The best way to handle something like this is simply to call the newspaper." He leaned back in his seat and reached for a reassuring manner. "Explain they made a mistake and ask them to print a retraction. I'd be surprised if they didn't do it."
"Yeah, sure, and they'll print it in small type on page sixty-five," Winthrop grumbled. He turned and pointed to the offending article. "That was printed on page two. With a photograph!"
A photo? Roseanne took a closer look at the newspaper clipping. She now saw it included a formal wedding portrait, dated ten years before. Carruthers' bride had been a real stunner, blond, curvy and sensual—the exact opposite of her own dark-haired, lanky self. The woman's smile was slight and coy.
The groom, on the other hand, was grinning like an idiot. Roseanne had never seen a better portrait of sheer, unadulterated joy. The photograph gave him the appearance of an overeager greyhound, what with that smile and his rather long nose.
The man now standing by George's office window was thinner, and his lean face harsher than the man in the photograph. Under his closely groomed hair, his expression was taciturn and far from joyful.
Now he left his perch by the window and approached the desk. Scooping up the newspaper article, he stuffed it into the front pocket of his trousers. "Doesn't matter." Looking defeated, he sighed. "By now the damage is done."
He was giving up. Finally! Just a minute more, and he'd be out the door.
But George stopped any departure once again, giving Win a strange, deep look. "Like I said to begin with, Win, if you didn't live like such a hermit these stories would die an early death. In fact, they'd have a hard time getting started in the first place."
Win gave a noncommittal grunt, shoved his hands in the pockets of his pants, and turned away. Both men seemed to have forgotten Roseanne's existence.
She, meanwhile, found herself frowning. Carruthers hadn't made the classic move of the heartless wife-deserter and embarked on a life of decadent womanizing?
"It's only natural for people to assume you're still in love with Sylvia," George went on. "You haven't dated a single woman since the divorce, have you?"
Not one, Roseanne thought?
Carruthers' shoulders stiffened. "But that doesn't mean it follows I'm in love with Sylvia." He hesitated before adding, "I couldn't be. You know that."
George opened his mouth, as if on the verge of adding his own two cents on the subject.
Fortunately, before George could upset Roseanne with some fantasy about Winthrop Carruthers' sensitive nature, or she could upset the men with a rather unscrupulous idea that had just occurred to her, her boss remembered she was in the room. "Ah, Roseanne, I'm sorry. You came in— Did you need me for something?"
Roseanne lowered her lashes. Oh, no. Nothing urgent. Only a magic elixir for convincing the dirty dozen, the current partners at Covington March, to recognize her talents and make her a partner this year. If only she could get that partnership she'd feel like she'd finally made it, achieved the security and independence that was her life goal. Coincidentally, she craved that independence because of a man who'd behaved a lot like Winthrop Carruthers.
With a wry smile, Roseanne narrowed her eyes at her boss. "I was kinda thinking maybe you needed some help, George. You know, if you had something useful you wanted to accomplish this afternoon?"
Instead of getting her hint—it was Carruthers who owed George, not the other way around—George gave her a sweet smile. "No, I'm fine, just going to chat with Win for a while, before he flies back home to Houston."
Roseanne drew in a long breath. Her boss was much too nice. Didn't he care this was the very man who'd stopped his career midstream? After the loss of the Carruthers Engineering contract, George had never been treated with full respect by the other partners at the law firm.
Besides that, George had to be Carruthers' complete opposite, a devoted husband of twenty-five years and the loving father of three. George had gone far to restoring Roseanne's faith in the male of the species. Carruthers, on the other hand, confirmed everything she'd learned from her father.
With her too-thin lips pressed even thinner, Roseanne turned toward George's 'old friend,' now standing next to her in front of George's desk. "Pleasure to meet you," she cooed in a tone clearly implying the opposite.
"Likewise," Carruthers drawled, his eyes hooding.
Thinking about George, Roseanne held out her hand. Hell, if she couldn't plot her own career advance this afternoon, she could possibly do something for her boss's.
Carruthers, at least a gentleman in form, took her invitation, surrounding her long fingers with his much bigger hand.
Much bigger and...stronger.
But Roseanne was not to be distracted by irrelevant details. She took her shot. "And we all hope," she told Carruthers, "that you'll consider rejoining us here at Covington March."
Carruthers' eyes came up, surprised, an intense hit of blue.
"It sure would mean a lot to George," Roseanne said, hammering it in.
Those eyes then flicked to the side, toward George, a quick glance, puzzling it out.
Was it possible, Roseanne wondered, the big gadoof didn't even realize what he'd done to George four years ago?
"Much obliged for the sentiment," he murmured, and released her hand. But his eyes remained intent upon her face.
She'd wanted to prick him, to rock his self-centered world a little bit, but instead she discovered it was a very odd sensation to be under the scrutiny of Carruthers' penetrating blue eyes. He almost seemed to be...questioning her sincerity.
As if he had the right!
Frowning, Roseanne glanced away. "I'll be in my office," she told George.
George gave her a why-did-you-do-that smile and waved her toward the door.
Roseanne stepped out and into the hall, but she had to admit, she felt oddly off balance.
If she didn't know better, she could have sworn there was a kind of...integrity behind that gaze of Carruthers.' And even— But no. That couldn't be. Shaking her head at herself, Roseanne stepped across the carpeted hall. A man who'd deserted his wife had no integrity; he had no feelings. Roseanne knew. At the age of eleven she'd found out.
She pushed open her office door, the one with "Associate" written on it. Deliberately, she dismissed the lingering image in her mind of Winthrop Carruthers' deep blue eyes. The momentary impression of...pain.
Roseanne shook her head. This was one man she was sure didn't deserve a moment's pity. In fact, for his sake, Roseanne hoped Mr. Texas Businessman-Slash-Engineer would be winging his way back down to Houston—or was it Dallas?—very soon. Because if he pestered George one more time she'd be tempted to do something drastic.
~~~
"There must be someone we can call." Roseanne's anxious law clerk made this protest the following afternoon. She tried to peer over Roseanne's desk to see what her boss was doing.
"There's no one to call." Roseanne had wrestled her desk chair to the ground and was on the knees of her expensive pantyhose, trying to examine what had gone wrong with the wheels at the base of the
thing. "In this case, as in most of life, we're on our own, baby."
"But surely building maintenance--"
"Couldn't care less about private office chairs."
Roseanne came to the conclusion that only by unfastening her smart wool jacket, swinging the buttons out of the way, and then lowering onto her belly could she really get a good look at what was going on with the wheel. The damn chair had nearly thrown her when she'd attempted sitting down a moment ago. It hadn't been a very dignified moment, not to mention the danger she'd face the next time she tried to sit down to get some legal work done, instead of wasting her time in court.
Roseanne would have loved to stop wasting time in court, but that would necessitate the powers-that-be at Covington March finally seeing her true talent and making her a partner this year. The decisions on the three openings would be made in July—less than two months away. It wasn't much time in which to pull off the kind of miracle that would convince them she had the right stuff, but Roseanne was determined.
Somehow she'd show them she could do what was most important of all: bring in money.
"The office janitor, then," her law clerk persisted, clearly dubious about Roseanne's mechanical abilities. She made the mistake of adding, "At least let's get a man to look at it."
Roseanne's head came up so quickly she nearly bumped it into one of the air-borne legs of the chair. "Oh, no!" She shook her silky black hair. "That isn't the proper attitude. Not at all."
On the other side of the desk, the law clerk groaned.
The poor girl had heard this lecture more than once, but that wasn't about to stop Roseanne. She made her voice stern as she lowered back down to the floor. "The problem with asking men for help is that one starts to depend upon them. The only reliable person to depend upon is oneself."
Roseanne turned her attention back to the wheel. On her stomach with her knees bent, her feet dangled over her back. It was possible that thingamabobber was the problem. It looked different on this wheel from the others. Roseanne shoved an experimental fingernail at the object, hoping she could avoid breaking it. The fingernail, that was.
I Gotta Feeling Page 29