Ten Ways To Win Her Man

“Ah.” He made the word vibrate with pure masculine satisfaction. “I did that, yes.”

“It was rude.” What, she wondered, was that cologne he was wearing?

“Should I go out and come back in? Start all over again and do it right?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Danielle tried for her trademark glib charm and waved a hand. “Have a seat. My secretary’s gone for the day. That means there’s no coffee.” She wanted to mention that most people met on matters such as this during regular business hours. But to be fair, he’d requested several appointments with her and she’d declined all of them.

Danielle went to an entertainment center of gleaming black wood built into the wall next to the windows. She stooped to the lower level and opened a small snack bar there, half of it given over to a compact refrigerator. “I can offer you bottled water, a soft drink, papaya juice or scotch.” She straightened again to face him. She had herself together now.

“Good scotch?” he asked.

“Absolutely.”

“And you’re having?”

She heard Richard’s voice whispering in her mind, imparting implacable lessons as he always had. He had been gone for three years now but he could still pop into her head at times like this. Never drink while you’re doing business, my dear. Just pretend you are, in order to be sociable. You don’t want your head to get muddled. She wouldn’t mind Max Padgett’s mind going a little soft for the next fifteen minutes or so, Danielle decided. She didn’t intend for him to stay any longer than that. “Scotch,” she said.

Max Padgett nodded. “I’ll join you.”

She took two crystal glasses from an overhead shelf and began to make the drinks. Max watched her, contemplating this turn of events.

He’d expected her to show him the door, maybe call security to make sure he went on his way, not offer him a drink. Grace under fire, he thought, appreciating it. She wasn’t much like he’d anticipated at all.

He’d seen her picture in the papers a few times. None of them had done her justice. Her hair was inky black and reasonably short, curling gently at her collar. She wore it tucked behind seashell ears that wore large diamond studs. She was surprisingly petite—all the photographs he had seen of her had given the impression of more stature. She couldn’t be more than five foot two. She was slender as a reed and moved like one giving way to the wind. She wore gold-rimmed eyeglasses that kept trying to slide down her nose as she looked into the scotch tumblers. Cute.

She put a bare splash of scotch in her own glass, more than an inch and a half in his, and topped both off with water at the wet bar. Max grinned to himself. Petite or not, she wanted an edge here, and she was enough the corporate warrior to do what she had to do to get it.

When she made a move toward her desk, he settled into the deep leather chair in front of it. He accepted the glass she passed to him and watched her relax into her own chair. She leaned back coolly, one very elegant leg coming up to cross over the other. She held her own glass in her lap with both hands, and her long, manicured fingers wrapped around it with a smooth ease that gave him a moment’s pause and kicked at his pulse.

Damned if the lady didn’t have an effect on him. It would make their war interesting, he thought.

“Where were we?” she asked.

“Hmm, we were about to discuss birds.”

She nodded sagely. “Let me start for you.”

“By all means.” So civilized, he thought.

“You’re here to fight for your little plovers.”

She was too polished to sneer, he realized, but on any other woman, that was what her expression would be called. “Semipalmated,” he added.

“Palm what?” Danielle jolted. She looked back at his hands again, watching one lift his drink to his mouth, suddenly mesmerized, just as she’d begun to get her footing. She drank from her own glass quickly and deeply.

“My little plovers are the semipalmated variety,” Max explained.

“Of course.”

“They’re currently reduced to a population of less than five thousand. But you knew that.”

“You’ve pointed it out to me in your many, many letters.”

“Enterprises such as yours are killing them off.”

“I’m sorry.” What was she saying? He was getting to her. She knew better than to show any edge of weakness. Danielle rallied. “I have one little enterprise. There are obscene gobs of them up and down the California coast. Why don’t you go pick on someone else?”

“Because those resorts are already in existence. That damage is done. You I can stop. You haven’t broken ground yet.”

Her chin came up like a challenge. “We’ll do it on May first.”

“Not if I can help it.”

“That’s my point. You can’t. I’ve met all zoning ordinances and every other requirement. There’s no sense in bickering about this any longer. I won.”

“Oh, I agree. The bickering stage is over. Now it’s time for some hand-to-hand combat.”

Hand-to-hand? Danielle felt the room spin away.

She looked into his eyes, a cool, gentle blue beneath dark hair. They seemed amused now. For a single, gripping moment she wondered if he somehow knew how he was affecting her, what she was thinking.

Her office was unbearably warm. Her secretary must have nudged the thermostat up again. Danielle got to her feet to check. The thermostat was set at sixty-eight.

“I’d appeal to your good will,” he continued, speaking to her over his shoulder, “but you don’t have any.”

“Of course I do.”

“No one has mentioned it.” He leaned forward to place his drink on her desk. “Let me tell you what I know about you, then we can get back to my plovers.”

“Palm plovers.”

“Semipalmated.” He grinned again and got to his feet to pace her office. Danielle went quickly to sit.

“You’re shrewd, calculating and you always land on your feet,” he began. “You married Richard Harrington when you were twenty-six, straight out of Stanford with your M.B.A. He was twenty years your elder. Your mother passed away when you were twelve. Your father—Michael Dempsey—was a labor union leader of some renown. You made the rounds with him. You were his shadow all through your youth. You learned the ropes early on.”

“Thank you.”

Max raised a brow at that, not sure if she was appreciative of his comments regarding her father or herself. Something happened briefly to her eyes. He thought a shadow moved there. “Richard—your husband—taught you everything he knew,” he continued, watching her closely.

“I only wish.”

“He died three years ago and you inherited from him obscene business assets.”

“His daughter got a portion.”

“But you bought her out.”

She engaged his eyes, then took another quick sip of scotch. “True.”