Teresa Medeiros (15 page)

“Hobbes from the
Prattler
is on line three, but for God’s sake, don’t put him through.”

“The minimicroprocesser diode stock just plunged over fifteen points. I’m not going to be the one to tell him. It’s your turn.”

“Like hell. I told him yesterday.”

“Has anyone seen the messenger who’s supposed to pick up the Delaney files? He wanted them sent over an hour ago. Oh, God, I’m dead. Why doesn’t somebody just shoot me now and put me out of my misery?”

The last was uttered by a disheveled young woman who punctuated her plea by banging her forehead on her desk.

“Excuse me,” Arian whispered.

The woman’s head flew up. She peered suspiciously at Arian through the strings of hair that had escaped her once tidy bun. “What the hell do you want?”

Although shocked by the casual profanity, Arian managed a polite smile. “I was wondering if you could direct me to—”

“Praise the Lord, I’m delivered! And so are the Delaney files!” The woman bounded up and snatched Arian’s hand, dragging her through the fray toward a closed door. “What took you so long? That wretched temp is having hysterics and Mr. Lennox is threatening to throw her out the window.”

Before Arian could even form a protest, the woman had thrown open the door and shoved her inside. “Here’s the messenger you’ve been waiting for, honey,”
she called out in a singsong voice that held more than a trace of feline malice. “And you really should invest in a good waterproof mascara.”

The woman slammed the door behind Arian, leaving her alone with a sniveling creature whose red-rimmed eyes were ringed with black smudges. She looked rather like a forlorn raccoon. Some sort of blinking, humming contraption was spitting out pages faster than her trembling hands could catch them.

This room was much more plush than the previous one, with thick mist-colored carpet and a wall of sparkling windows, yet Arian sensed it was only an antechamber for the haven guarded by a pair of ornate mahogany doors on the far wall. The sight gave her an odd shiver. She could not have said if it was anticipation or fear.

“I was looking for Archives,” she blurted out. “Could you help—”

Leaving the curious machine to cough papers into the air, the woman rushed around the desk to clutch Arian’s arm with such pathetic gratitude that Arian hadn’t the heart to finish. “Oh, Gawd, I thought you were neva coming.” She shot the mahogany doors a petrified look before hissing, “He accused me of calling a messenga service in Siberia.”

Arian might have found the woman’s overwrought terror amusing had she not known immediately who “he” was. Before she could explain her own predicament, stacks of cream-colored files were being thrust into her arms. She accepted them with a sigh of surrender. What harm would it do to simply relieve the poor woman of her burden and wait outside until the real messenger arrived? The files kept coming, the stack growing higher and higher until Arian was nearly buried behind them.

She would have never known one of the mahogany doors had swung open if the woman hadn’t spun around
with a horrified shriek, spilling the remainder of the files to the floor.

Arian would have recognized the acerbic purr anywhere. Its silky menace sent a jolt of warning coursing down her own spine. “My dear Miss Cotton, are you aware that you’ve cut off telephone conversations with two of my major stockholders, faxed my accountant’s suggestions for creating tax loopholes to the IRS, and crashed the hard drives of not one, but two state-of-the-art computers?” His voice softened, growing lethal with tenderness. “Tell me, is it a policy of your agency to hire the competence-impaired?”

“He’s a monsta!” the woman wailed. “I quit!” Bursting into tears, she fled the room, slamming the door behind her.

Although the stack of files shielded Arian until there was little visible of her but her sloppy chignon, a pair of legs encased in slim black leggings, and ten bare toes twitching with trepidation, she could still feel Tristan’s scrutiny like a palpable thing. She slowly lowered the files to offer him a tentative grin.

“You!” His eyes narrowed as he peered over her shoulder as if expecting to find Sven lurking behind a potted fern. “Where the hell is Nordgard? If he’s abandoned his post to sneak off to the gym and pump up those damnable pecs of his …”

Tristan left the ominous threat unfinished, but Arian still felt compelled to jump to Sven’s defense. “He’s still in the penthouse. He fell asleep watching an opera.”

Tristan cocked a disbelieving eyebrow. “An opera? I didn’t know Sven’s tastes ran to the sublime. I thought he preferred
American Gladiators.”

“ ’Twas a piece called
Guiding Light
. The music lacked substance, but the drama moved him to tears.”

“Oh,
that
sort of opera.”

Tristan advanced on her, but Arian stood her ground, determined to let him know she could not be bullied or intimidated. She drew in a breath for courage
only to feel her will melting beneath the wintry spice of his cologne.

He leaned down until his nose was less than an inch from hers. Since his sandy lashes tended to fade against his golden skin, Arian had never before noticed just how sinfully long they were. “Can you type?”

“No, but I can milk a cow, clean a cod, churn a wicked tub of butter, and handstitch the entire alphabet on a sampler.”

He blinked at her precisely three times before wheeling away to pace the length of the room. “This is all your fault, you know. If you hadn’t staged that silly broom crash, the press wouldn’t be camped on our doorstep, Lennox Enterprises stock wouldn’t be plunging, and Miss Alonzo would be sitting behind that desk instead of spilling my most intimate secrets to the tabloids.” He threw his watch a helpless glance, then ran a hand through his immaculate hair, rumpling it until he looked nearly as irresistible as the boy he had been. “It’s already four-thirty,” he muttered more to himself than to her. “We can stop answering the phones in half an hour.”

He shot her a speculative glance before removing the files from her arms. His warm, competent hands closed over her shoulders, guiding her to the chair abandoned by the beleaguered Miss Cotton.

“Sit here,” he instructed, his breath teasing the sensitive hairs at her nape. “And don’t move. This is the telephone. If it makes a ringing noise, pick it up, hold it to your ear and say ‘Hello.’ ” He demonstrated. “Tell whoever is on the other end of the line that Mr. Lennox is in a meeting and not taking any calls until tomorrow morning. If they insist on speaking to me, tell them I’m not here. Tell them I went home sick. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And if you simply can’t refrain from disturbing me
in the next thirty minutes, tap this button. I’ll be able to hear everything you say.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And stop calling me sir!”

“If you wish, sir.”

Growling beneath his breath, Tristan retreated to his office, slamming the door so hard it rattled the tasteful prints on the wall. Arian grinned as she leaned back in the chair and propped her bare feet on the desk, thinking she just might have stumbled onto the perfect opportunity to observe Tristan Lennox in his natural environment.

Although she still jumped every time the telephone jangled, Arian did not find her job overly demanding. She told three callers Mr. Lennox was in a meeting, two that he’d left for the afternoon, and one unpleasantly persistent fellow named Hobbes that Mr. Lennox had a mild case of the plague, but would be happy to speak with him on the morrow.

Sooner than she believed possible, the brass clock on the wall read five o’clock. She waited several minutes, but didn’t hear so much as a murmur from the chamber’s inner sanctum. She wandered to the window to discover the sun had dipped below the peaks of the tallest buildings, sending a premature twilight creeping over the city in muted shades of lavender and gray.

“Excuse me?”

Arian turned to discover a woman huddled in the outer doorway. The chaos in the offices beyond had subsided.

The woman was nervously twisting the gold band on the fourth finger of her left hand. “I was wondering if I could speak with Mr. Lennox?”

Arian opened her mouth, then closed it again. Tristan had given her no instructions regarding visitors. “I’m sorry,” she finally said with genuine regret, “but Mr. Lennox is in a meeting.”

The woman sighed, her plump face revealing a trace of weary bitterness. “That’s what he told you to tell me, isn’t it? I guess I can’t blame him. I never had time for him so why should he clear his busy schedule for me?” She squared her shoulders as she turned to go, visibly torn between pride and defeat. “Just tell him to call his mother when he can spare a moment.”

“Wait! Oh, please wait! Don’t go!” Arian cried, rushing around from behind the desk to seize the stranger’s hands. “I had no idea you were Tristan’s mother.”

The woman’s hands were like ice, but she clung to Arian as if she’d been tossed a lifeline on a stormy sea. Knowing that Tristan had grown up in an orphanage, Arian was confused by his mother’s existence. But there was no denying the resemblance. The years might have faded the gold in her teased hair to pale silver, but her eyes still glistened like pools of molten pewter. She was young, Arian realized with a faint shock, not much older than Arian’s own mother would have been had she lived.

The woman’s skirt and blouse looked slightly shabby, but freshly starched. A defiant hint of red tinged her lips. The obvious care she’d taken with her appearance touched Arian in a way she could not explain.

She squeezed the woman’s hands, hoping to put her at ease. “Do come in and wait while I let Tristan know you’re here. I’m certain he’ll be delighted to see you.”

The woman laughed shakily. “I wish I could be so sure.” She cast Arian’s naked feet a glance that was puzzled, but not unkind. “I don’t believe we’ve met, although I must say you’re much nicer than the lady who usually works in this office.”

“I’m new around here,” Arian offered, moving around the desk to tap the button Tristan had shown her. Clearing her throat, she announced with what she hoped was suitable pomp, “Mr. Lennox. Your mother is here to see you.”

Several seconds of ominous silence followed. Arian was beginning to wonder if he’d heard her when a terse “Just a minute” emerged.

They waited in awkward silence, Arian struggling to keep her confident smile intact and Tristan’s mother chewing her lower lip. When the door finally swung open, the first thing Arian noticed was that Tristan had donned his coat and smoothed back his hair. Not a strand was out of place.

“Hello, Brenda,” he said coolly.

Arian recoiled. Had she dared to address her own mama by her Christian name, she would have gotten her mouth smacked for her impertinence.

“Hello, Tristan.” The woman’s stilted reply baffled Arian further.

Tristan consulted the calendar on his watch. “You’re a little early this month, aren’t you? It’s only the twenty-ninth.”

“Please,” the woman whispered, giving her ring a violent wrench. “Could we talk inside?”

Arian held her breath, fearing that Tristan was going to be heartless enough to deny his mother’s request. But he proffered her the door with a mocking flourish. Before he drew it shut behind them, he shot Arian a look of such icy displeasure she was surprised her hair didn’t sprout icicles.

She sank back into the chair, oddly unnerved, then
shot straight up as Tristan’s voice emerged from the box on the desk. “Would you care for a Scotch?”

His mother’s answering murmur was nearly obscured by the clink of ice cubes tumbling into a glass.

Nagged by a twinge of conscience, Arian reached for the button, determined to silence the private exchange before it could progress. She might stoop to snooping through a man’s personal belongings, but eavesdropping on his most intimate conversations was another …

“What is it this time, Brenda?” Arian withdrew her hand, riveted by the note of world-weariness in Tristan’s voice. “An overdue insurance payment? Too many trips to the track? Or did Danny flunk another sobriety test?” Leather creaked and Arian could visualize him settling back in his chair, a tumbler of Scotch dangling from his elegant fingers.

Brenda’s voice sounded suspiciously thick. “You don’t have to be so cold. You might ask me how I’ve been.”

“Why bother when we both know the question isn’t ‘How are you?’ but ‘How much?’ ”

His mother sniffed. “You could try to be a little more civil about it.”

“Sorry.” Tristan’s voice could have cut a diamond. “My mother didn’t teach me any manners.”

Brenda’s sniffling degenerated into heartrending sobs, muffled as if by her bare hand. Arian blinked back tears of her own and waited for Tristan to comfort his mother, as he had so tenderly comforted her when the hell-copter had frightened her.

But when his voice came, it wasn’t gentled by compassion, but edged with desperation. “Christ, Brenda, take my handkerchief. You’d think your allowance would at least be enough to keep you in Kleenex.”

Arian heard a scraping noise, as if a chair had abruptly been pushed back, then Tristan, his voice even
bleaker at a distance. “Stop bawling and tell me what’s wrong.”