Three Blind-Date Brides: Nine-to-Five Bride

‘I should get on, if that was all.’ She reached for the pile of letters to be mailed, began to calmly fold them into the window envelopes she had waiting on her desk.

Dismissed by his temporary assistant. Rick gave a snort of amusement and reluctant admiration before he swung away. ‘I’ll be in my office and … er … I promise there won’t be any more correspondence brought out for you to type today. I know your tray is still loaded.’

‘No.’ She didn’t look up. ‘You’ll just hold it over for tomorrow so I won’t get stressed out. I won’t anyway, but that’s okay. I understand the tactic. Gordon does the same thing.’

Now he’d been compared to a fifty-year-old.

Rick disappeared into his office, pushed the door closed so he wouldn’t be tempted to listen to Marissa taking phone calls or watch her as she worked, and decided that it was very different working with her rather than Tom.

That explained his ongoing interest in her. He half convinced himself he believed this. Well, maybe a quarter. He immersed himself in his work.

At twenty minutes to six that evening Marissa stuck her head around his door. ‘Your presence is requested at an emergency conference.’

He’d started to believe they might have nearly caught up on their workload. So much for that idea. ‘Which department heads? What’s the problem?’

She pushed the door open fully and read a spiel of information from her steno pad.

Rick gave a mild curse. ‘Where? Have they assembled already?’

‘Conference Room Two, and yes.’ She had her tote bag on her shoulder and a determined glint in her eyes. Her computer was shut down and her desk cleared. Whatever work she had remaining she had tidied away. ‘I assume you’ll want us to join them immediately. If it ends quickly, we can come back.’

He got to his feet. ‘I’ll secure my office.’

She swept in beside him while he sorted files and locked them away. ‘Anything on screen that needs to be saved before I shut this down?’

‘No. Nothing, but I can do that.’ He locked the final cabinet and swung round.

She’d clicked out of applications as he spoke and she stood there now, bent at the waist, leaning in to press the button on the back of the computer.

Rick’s senses kicked him hard. She would have to possess the most appealing bottom to go with those equally devastating legs, wouldn’t she? And he would have to notice it instead of being completely unaware of her, as he needed to be. He didn’t want to notice her, or be impressed or intrigued by her or find her different or interesting or highly attractive!

If he’d thought it would help, he’d replace her with someone from another department but no other personal secretary had a boss on holiday. He certainly wasn’t about to subject himself to some child from the general pool again. And, for goodness’ sake, he could control this.

He always controlled the way he reacted to women. There was no reason why this situation should be any different. In fact, because she worked for him and he never, ever, mixed work with his social interactions that way, it should be easier still.

Yes, and it’s been dead easy so far, hasn’t it?

‘Let’s move.’ He hid a grimace in his chin. ‘Here’s hoping the meeting doesn’t go on too long.’

CHAPTER FOUR

MARISSA followed Rick along the corridor and tried not to look at the breadth of his shoulders, the shape of the back of his head or … other parts of him.

Not to mention the man was seriously compelling as a go-getter businessman … but what was she thinking? The terms ‘go-getter’, ‘businessman’ and ‘compelling’ were mutually exclusive in her vocabulary!

And just because he’d been kind to his secretary and had phoned in again to check on the man and declared he wanted to be told if anything—anything—needed to be done for Tom while he was recuperating, just because he’d treated Marissa herself with the utmost consideration he could manage within the demands of his work …

She still wanted a nice ordinary guy—hello? Fine, so maybe Rick did have a degree of niceness. His career outlook made him totally out of bounds for her.

Maybe he’s a total playboy, she thought with a hint of desperation, remembering the Julia lunch date that hadn’t involved lunch. A cad, a womaniser, a toad on a lily pad on a pond full of scum.

You don’t think you’re judging him ever so slightly on Michael Unsworth’s record without getting to know the man first? Without even knowing just who this Julia is to him?

No. She didn’t think that, and she wasn’t grasping at mental straws to keep her hormones under control either. Rick Morgan wasn’t for her. She’d road-tested one corporate man and decided that brand didn’t suit her, and that was all there was to it.

‘Sit here beside me.’ He held the chair for her while the six men in the room glanced their way. ‘You know what to do with the notes.’

She nodded to acknowledge the others’ presence and Rick’s words, and tried not to notice the brush of his hand against her back as he pushed her chair in for her.

The boss simply had nice manners, and so did a lot of accountants and shop assistants.

Butchers and bakers and candlestick-makers.

Marissa jabbed her pencil onto the page and locked her gaze onto its tip. ‘I’m ready.’

To get the meeting over with. To go home for the day and log onto Blinddatebrides.com and read at least ten new profiles, answer any invitations she’d received and be really positive about them. And she had been positive to this point. It wasn’t her fault if no spark of true interest had happened when she’d met any of her dates so far.

Unlike the spark that immediately happened when she’d met Rick Morgan.

Not a helpful thought!

The meeting went beyond long.

‘So we find a way to meet the changes to the fire safety code without compromising on design integrity.’ Rick referred to a skyscraper monstrosity the company was building on the city’s shoreline. ‘We’ll simply present our clients with choices that surpass what they wanted initially.’

He raised several possibilities. While general discussion ensued, Marissa snatched at the momentary respite in note-taking. She should have eaten something more substantial than a salad for her lunch. Instead, she drew one of two bottles of raspberry lemonade from her tote bag and consumed half of it in a series of swallows. She’d planned to take both bottles in her bag home but at least it gave her an energy burst.

The conference moved on. Marissa consumed the rest of the drink, continued her work. Wished she could get up and walk around. Her right foot wanted to go to sleep. Another sign of impending old age?

There is no old age occurring here!

‘It seems to me Phil’s presented you with a workable resolution to the issue with the reservoir, Fred.’ Rick caught the stare of the man at the other end of the oval table.

Marissa vaguely noted that Rick’s beard shadow had really grown in now. Did he shave twice a day? Would he have a mat of dark hair on his chest as well? Her skin tingled in response to the thought.

What was wrong with her? She needed to focus away from the man, not so solidly on him that she noticed almost everything about him and wondered about the rest!

Rick’s face showed no sign of fatigue, though the grooves on either side of his mouth did seem a little deeper.

It wasn’t fair that men just developed character while women fought gravity. Women wrinkled sooner, got older faster. And people had coined entire sayings around the thirtieth birthday. It’s all downhill after thirty …

‘If you don’t want to accept the plans,’ Rick went on, ‘I need to hear a good reason for that. Otherwise, I think we can move onto the next issue.’

Marissa nodded in silent agreement.

Just then Rick glanced her way and their gazes locked before his dropped to her mouth. He stilled and a single swift blast of awareness swept over his face and, very, very briefly, he lost his concentration and stopped speaking.

It was only for a second and probably no one else would have thought anything of it, but in that single moment she had all of his attention—an overwhelming degree of attention, as though he could only focus on her. And, right down to her marrow, she responded with a depth of warmth and interest, curiosity and compulsion that … stunned her.