Unwrapping Mr. Wright

“If you’re sure.” Justin walked over toward her desk, and Lauren inched the Yellow Pages closer to her body. He frowned. “That’s a great sweater on you. By the way, what are you doing?”

Surely he wasn’t picking this very moment to start being civil by chitchatting with her. “I have an important call to make.” She glanced pointedly at the phone book. “I don’t want to lose my place.”

“Oh.” He tempered his curiosity and gave her a charming smile. Despite her previous imperviousness to him, Lauren flushed more, this time not because she was in an ungraceful position.

No wonder women liked Justin. Even she now had to admit that she wasn’t totally immune to his killer I’ll-melt-that-heart-of-yours grin. Seeing she wasn’t about to elaborate on the details of her phone call, Justin said, “Well, okay, then. I guess I should tell you to have a good weekend and get out of your way.”

Lauren nodded. “You have a good weekend, too.” She watched him leave, and tried to look pleasant when he stopped at the door and turned back around.

“Lauren?” he said.

“Yes?”

“We do have Post-It notes in the supply closet. You know, to hold your place,” he added, and with that he left. She swore she heard him laughing as he closed her door behind him.

She counted to twenty just to make sure he wouldn’t return, and then she sat down and reopened the phone book. She ran her finger down the page and found the number she was looking for. It was time Lauren “before” became Lauren “after,” a femme fatale.

She secured an appointment for Monday, and composed e-mails to Justin and Clint indicating that she was taking a personal day. She frowned as she hit Send. Justin Wright. So different from his brother. He raised every one of her hackles. He had that lethal smile that needed to be outlawed. He…ooh. Jeff was definitely the better of the two men. Definitely.

Satisfaction filled her as she leaned back against the plush leather desk chair. Jeff loved Monday Night Football. They often watched it together, sharing beer and popcorn. But if she had her way—and oh, would she—Jeff Wright wasn’t going to do much football watching this Monday night. Instead, they were going to play. Yes, come December 6, the better of the two men was in for a very big holiday surprise.

Chapter 2

Justin Wright tossed the briefcase down. It landed on his desk with an annoying thump. Mondays should be outlawed, especially Mondays following your mother’s birthday party. “Sylvia!”

“Yes?” His secretary of the past five years poked her head in through the open doorway.

“Where’s Lauren? Didn’t you call for her as I asked you to?”

Familiar with his many moods, Sylvia backed up slightly. “She’s not in today.”

That didn’t sound good. Perhaps he’d misunderstood his secretary. Frustration had him speaking a bit slower. “What do you mean, she’s not in today? Is she late? At a meeting?”

Sylvia inched another step backward as if she were afraid he’d massacre the messenger. “No. She’s not coming in at all. She took a personal day. The details are in her e-mail to you. She sent me a copy. I’m surprised you didn’t see it. Don’t you always check your work e-mails on the weekend?”

Patience was a virtue that he always found himself short of on Mondays. He followed the retreating Sylvia to her desk. “I didn’t check my work e-mail this weekend. My floors are all torn up, my house is a disaster, and that meant I had to move my computer into storage. Jeff still hasn’t fixed the glitch in my laptop. Plus, I had my mother’s birthday party to attend.”

Sylvia brightened. She and Mrs. Wright had chatted for ages when Mrs. Wright dropped by the office to check on her three sons. “Oh, how was that? Did you have a lovely dinner?”

“It was great,” Justin said. Well, it had been if he didn’t count his mother harping on her two youngest boys to find women and settle down like their beloved older brother. “After all, you are thirty,” his mother had reminded both of them at least ten times. She’d also made those remarks about wanting to see grandchildren before she died. Reminding her she was only fifty-five hadn’t helped. Justin sincerely hoped Jared’s wife came back pregnant. It might alleviate one crisis: getting his mother off his case. “Is Clint available?”

Sylvia sat behind her desk. “No. Remember? He’s at that luncheon in Springfield with the representatives from Kramer and McGee.”

A creature of having his space perfect, Justin decided the weekend must have thrown him even more than he’d realized; he’d forgotten that. “Wonderful. And Lauren decided to up and take a personal day. Couldn’t she have told me Friday?”

Frustrated, he threw a hand into the air. What was the point in having a public relations director if she didn’t work? Okay, so she hadn’t missed a day in six months. But today the company had not one but two major crises to deal with, and she should be doing something about them. Exactly what he wasn’t certain, but with Clint gone, she should be around. That much he had confidence in. Lauren would know how to soothe the feathers of some very ruffled clients. Wasn’t that what PR gurus did?

Not that he wasn’t capable of handling the situations alone, which was exactly what he’d do. “Sylvia, start making arrangements for immediate tech-support travel to Dynamics in Buffalo.”

Sylvia snapped to attention. “Jeff and Cecil?” she asked.

Justin nodded. “As always, and anyone else they feel they might need. Dynamics’s problem has to be solved on-site. Their whole system went down. Every minute is money. We’ve got to get them back up and make them impervious to another attack.”

The phone was already to Sylvia’s ear, and her fingers on the number pad. “Consider it done.”

Justin sighed as he went back to his desk. At least he had Sylvia. She called him a few minutes later to tell him flight times and that she’d reached Jeff.

“Hey.” Jeff entered Justin’s office about five minutes after that. “I just got the page that I’m needed.”

“You’re needed, all right,” Justin said. And despite their differences, it always amazed him just how similar they did look, even at age thirty. Each stood six foot one, each had light reddish blond hair and cream-colored skin. Not one freckle remained from either of their childhoods.

“So what’s going on?” Jeff asked. “I heard we’ve got major problems.”

“We do. Dynamics got hit with a virus. We’re working on their server issues, but about two dozen of their computers require complete reinstalls. Every minute they’re down is costing them millions.”

Jeff grinned. There was nothing he loved more than jumping into the fray. He’d wanted to be a firefighter, but asthma had ended that dream, much to his safety-conscious mother’s relief. “So when do Cecil and I leave?”

Justin’s shoulders slumped as some stress lifted. The best man for any computer-related crisis, Jeff had never let his brothers down. He was their Mr. Fix-it. “The next flight to Buffalo is at eleven. Sylvia’s made arrangements to have you both on it. Do you need anyone else?”

“No,” Jeff said. He glanced at his Rolex, the watch he’d bought more for its working precision than for its status. “So, like, I’m out of here right now.”

Justin nodded. “Exactly.”

“Cool. Never a dull moment at this place. Super Jeff off to save the day. This company couldn’t survive without me.”

For the first time that morning, Justin grinned. “Nope.”

“I’ll have Lauren feed my cat.”

Lauren, who should be in the office. Justin’s smile faded and he briefly wondered why she annoyed him so much. She really was a contradiction. Friday, Miss Plain and Mousy had worn a fitted red sweater that had made his libido boil and want to know exactly what lay underneath. As to why she’d crawled under his skin, Justin had no answer. “She’s out of the office today.”

“Yeah.” Jeff shrugged. “I saw her Saturday when I picked up my pinstripe and had her iron my dress pants.”

For some reason the thought of Lauren doing Jeff’s laundry didn’t sit well with Justin. “She irons your clothes?”

Jeff grinned, the grin of a man who has domestic bliss without the emotional entanglements of ring-around-the-finger. “I’m a lucky guy. Anyway, she told me she’d e-mailed you, but she wouldn’t tell me why she took today off. Said it was a surprise and I’d have to wait. I guess now I’ll have to find out what it is when I get back.”

The phone rang and Justin picked it up and listened. “Oh. Okay, Sylvia. No, of course I don’t have time for it, but I do want my floors done. My house is a FEMA wanna-be. You know, Federal Emergency Management Association. They go in after disasters. Send the call through.” Justin held up a finger, indicating that Jeff should wait. “Justin Wright. Hey, Bob. What’s up?”

His contractor’s voice boomed through the line and Justin moved the phone farther away from his ear. “Justin, today’s the day. We’re putting the first coat of polyurethane on your floors. See, I told you we’d be finished way before Christmas.”

Finally. They’d been sanding and refinishing the hardwood for almost a week. Besides having furniture in every corner, spare or not, Justin had a fine layer of dust coating everything, even the rooms that had been taped off. “That’s great.”

Bob chuckled. “I’m glad you think so, because you’ll need to be out of your house for about three days while we get everything done.”

“What?” That started today? Surely he had heard wrong. “Three days?”

“At least three days. Sorry to spring it on you like this, but of course you want the job done. Remember, I told you about this aspect of the job before we started the project.”