His Girl Friday

She felt her cheeks grow warm. “My parents were middle-aged when I came along, and they were and are very conventional people. I was taught that love should mean something more than sex. But I discovered that to most men, love meant a nice dinner followed by a session in bed. Nobody was willing to spend the time it would take to build a relationship, especially when there were so many women who didn’t want one anyway. So I gave up evenings with unpleasant endings and brought Norman home to live with me.”

He frowned. “Norman?”

“Norman, my iguana,” she explained.

He paled and gave her a frankly horrified look. “Your what?”

“My iguana. He’s a nice pet,” she said defensively. “I got him when he was just a baby—”

“An iguana!” He looked quickly around the office as if he thought she’d put Norman in her purse and brought him to work with her. He actually shuddered. “My God, nobody has an iguana for a pet! It’s a snake with legs, for heaven’s sake!”

She glared at him. “He is not! In fact, he looks like a little Chinese dragon. He’s an iguanid; a descendant of dinosaurs, of ancient Iguanodon. He’s quiet and clean and you should see the effect he has on door-to-door salesmen! He’s three feet long, although he’s still just a baby,” she murmured with a smile. Incredible that she’d never told him about Norman, but then, they hardly ever discussed routine things about their private lives. He didn’t even know that she lived with Cousin Jenny, she supposed. She wondered if he even knew that Cousin Jenny worked for his father, or that two years ago, it was Jenny who had told her about this job so that she could apply for it.

“Why do you keep a reptile for a pet? Are you trying to grow your own prince?”

She sighed angrily. “That only works with frogs. Listen, I just keep Norman for a pet, I don’t kiss him.” She frowned. “Well, I used to when he was a baby—”

“Oh, God!” he burst out, shuddering. He stared at her. “No wonder you can’t get dates! No sane man goes around kissing a woman who kisses iguanas!”

“There’s no danger of that,” she sighed to herself, unperturbed on the surface as she fought down the picture in her mind of Mr. Ritter bending her back over an arm and kissing her senseless. That was what she’d thought he was going to do at that Christmas party for one long, ecstatic second, until he came to his senses.

He got up and moved around his desk and sat down heavily. “I can see it now. One night there’ll be a man in your apartment, and you’ll call a press conference to explain how he got there. First you picked up your iguana and kissed it, and all of a sudden, poof! Prince Charming!” He frowned. “Or would you get a king with something as big as an iguana?”

“You’ll be the first to know if it ever happens,” she promised.

He lit a cigarette, grinning at her scowl. “You bought me that smokeless ashtray last Christmas.”

She pushed it toward him with a loud sigh. “I suppose I did.”

“I try to quit.”

“I wouldn’t call going overnight without cigarettes trying to quit smoking,” she murmured dryly. She pushed the mail toward him, a gentle hint that she had plenty of work to do, even if he didn’t.

He smiled indulgently. “I know, I’m procrastinating again. Did I ever tell you how much I hate answering mail? I’m still getting over last night,” he added on a heavy sigh. “Karol wanted to go to a concert. We sat through four hours of chamber music. I hate damned string quartets. I’d rather have gone to a country and western concert, but she doesn’t think fiddles are cultural.”

She had a giggle.

“Why are you giggling?” he demanded. “Surely you realize that fiddles are a big part of the American folk scene, and that sure as hell is cultural!”

“To you, chili is cultural,” she reminded him.

“Of course it is. It’s the only American food I like. Why in God’s name do you button those blouses up to your chin? Are you afraid I’ll go crazy if I get a glimpse of your naked throat? And you haven’t worn your hair down since Christmas.”

Her eyes widened. That was the most personal thing he’d ever said to her and it shocked her. “The blouse…it’s a jabot collar,” she stammered.

“I don’t like it. Can’t you buy something with a V neck?” He glowered. “Failing that, you might try a shirtwaist dress, they button up.”

“What is this fixation about the way I look?” she burst out. “My hair’s wrong, you don’t like my clothes, now I button them wrong…!”

“I don’t know.” He took a draw from the cigarette, his eyes going involuntarily to her long, elegant legs where they were crossed. The skirt came just above her knees, and he admired the fluid lines of her body with new interest. “Maybe my father’s right, and I shouldn’t have a secretary who dresses like a Quaker.”

She stared at him. “Mr. Ritter, do you feel all right?” she asked cautiously.

He sighed half angrily, staring at her again. “I’m frustrated,” he muttered, knocking an ash off his cigarette. “You try going without a woman for four months and see how you manage.”

She felt her face burning, but she glanced down at her notepad and concealed it. “I’ve gone without a woman for twenty-three years, and it hasn’t done me any harm,” she informed him.

“Oh, you know what I mean,” he grumbled.

Unfortunately she did. He was the bluntest man she’d ever known. He said exactly what he thought, no matter how shocking it sounded. He didn’t even pull his punches with language when one of his clients or cohorts made him mad. In fact, during Danetta’s first week on the job, Mr. Ritter had taken exception to a few remarks from a dissatisfied customer, and the unfortunate gentleman had come out of Mr. Ritter’s office headfirst, followed by some of the foulest language Danetta had ever heard. It was a fascinating introduction to her hot-tempered, uninhibited boss.

He narrowed his blue eyes again and searched her face. “You never talk about your love life.”

“I guess I could make up something,” she said, trying not to look and sound as unsophisticated as he made her feel.

“I thought as much.” He was watching her in an odd way. He seemed to do that a lot these days, as if he was curious about something. She wished he’d come out with it. He made her feel like an insect on a pin. “Too many nights alone can make a woman vulnerable, you know. Especially a repressed maidenly type.”

“Are you trying to tell me something, Mr. Ritter?” she asked finally.

“I’m concerned about you,” he said surprisingly. “Ben Meadows, my new sales manager, mentioned this morning that he’d been trying for two weeks to get a date with you, but that you froze him out.” He smiled faintly, and his pale eyes became intent. “He thinks you won’t go out with him because you’ve got a crush on me. In fact,” he added with a stare that was pure speculation, “so does my father.”

She couldn’t help the flush that highlighted her exquisite complexion. Her heart jumped into her throat. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “My gosh!”

He glared. “Well, you don’t have to make it sound like a perversion,” he said shortly. “Women do find me attractive from time to time.”

“A certain type of woman, yes. Not me!”

He sat very still and she wondered if she’d finally gone too far. He didn’t seem to move, but his eyes narrowed and grew cold. “Why not you?”

“That’s personal.”

“So it’s personal. I want an answer,” he said doggedly.

She took a deep breath. She couldn’t lie to him, even if she might have done better to lie. “Because you’re a womanizer, Mr. Ritter,” she said, feeling backed into a corner. He was beginning to look dangerous, and she dropped her eyes to her lap. “I’m sorry, but I don’t find that kind of man very attractive.”

He took a draw from his cigarette and let out a thin cloud of smoke. His eyes grew brooding and even colder. “I suppose I asked for that. I didn’t realize what kind of answer I might get.” He sat up straight. “All right, Dan, you’ve convinced me that my father doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about. Let’s do the mail.”

She felt guilty, but she didn’t dare back down. He respected spirit. She’d learned her first week as his secretary that it was either give it back as good as he gave it out, or spend her life in tears. He didn’t pull his punches, and he didn’t respect anyone who did. As she soon discovered, he needed that toughness to deal with the people who frequented this office. Business was hard, and he was equal to it, even during recessions.

All the same, she had the oddest feeling that she’d wounded him. If a woman he called by a masculine nickname could wound him, that was. Sometimes it cut her to the bone when he called her Dan. He made it sound as if she were his fishing buddy or his tennis partner. He treated her that casually, and it had hurt. Maybe that had prompted her uncharacteristic outburst about his lack of morals.

She wondered why he was so promiscuous. In two years, she’d learned next to nothing about him, except about the type of woman he liked. About his feelings and thoughts, she knew nothing. She knew his mother had died ten years ago, and that his father had remarried a lady named Cynthia. Danetta knew that he spent time with them, but he never talked about them. His father did let a few things slip from time to time when he came into the office, but not enough to satisfy her growing curiosity about the enigmatic man she worked for.

He started dictating, pacing as usual, and she had to work to keep up with him. He wasn’t sparing her. She felt the whip of his voice and the ice in his stare until he was finally through and let her go back to her own desk.

He was unusually silent for the rest of the day. She sent people into his office and buzzed him when he was needed on the telephone, but he didn’t offer her coffee or stop to talk. At quitting time, he was out the door before she was, leaving her to close up without even a goodbye unless she counted the curt jerk of his head as he left, attaché case in hand.

Danetta watched him go with mixed feelings. Perhaps she shouldn’t have opened her mouth. Now she’d really complicated things.