An Engagement Of Convenience

Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter One

“So, you’re the one!”

At the sound of her boss’s angry voice, Lili Soulé tried to cover the papers on her drafting table, but it was too late. The flier demanding that the management of the Riverview Building keep its child care center open was in full view—along with a charcoal sketch of Tom Eldridge, publisher of Today’s World magazine and Lili’s boss.

For a man who took great pains to avoid associating with employees, Eldridge sounded friendly enough at weekly staff meetings. But he sure didn’t sound friendly now.

Lili’s heart raced. She’d been working as a graphic artist at the magazine for two years, and her crush on the publisher was as strong as ever. Tom Eldridge was six feet of rugged masculinity, with a square jaw and chocolate-brown eyes—eyes that were unmistakably angry as he regarded the damning evidence. The frown that creased his forehead did nothing to calm her racing heart, but now that her identity as the child care center’s staunchest advocate was out in the open, she intended to defend herself. She nodded cautiously.

“So you’re the person who’s been circulating fliers and a petition to keep the day care center open?” he asked.

Lili tried to hide her discomfort as she looked up at him. “Someone has to do it.”

His scowl made her toes curl. “And that someone had to be you?”

Lili couldn’t deny his accusation, not with the evidence right in front of her. The damage was done. Still, if ever there was a time to assert herself and her right to free speech, this was it. After all, she reminded herself, her cause was just.

“Yes. I have twins in the after-school program. Once I heard that Riverview’s management might close the center, I felt I should do something before it was too late.” Her defiant reply seemed to surprise both of them.

Raised in a small town in the south of France by grandparents who had taught her to treat everyone with respect no matter how she felt about them, Lili seldom raised her voice. Especially not around the office. Until today.

Eldridge’s eyes narrowed. He pointed to the assignment sheet pinned to the corner of her drawing board. “With a family to support, I would have thought you’d be spending your time designing the magazine rather than causing trouble.”

Lili swallowed hard. “Actually, I was working on the magazine, but other things got in the way.”

“Yeah,” he agreed, glancing down at the betraying evidence. “It sure looks as if they did, and they’re causing problems for everyone, including me.”

This time, Lili’s heart plunged to her toes, but she didn’t intend to back off. The center had provided day care for her children for the past two years. Now that the twins were in public school, she still needed after-school care. Besides, no matter how Eldridge felt about her underground activities, a lot of parents depended on her campaign. She wasn’t in this just for herself.

“I heard that the building’s management has called a meeting of the tenants in two weeks to vote on the center’s closure,” she said when she realized that if she didn’t speak up, Eldridge might fire her. “I’m not the only parent in the building involved, but since I am the only artist, I felt it was up to me to create this flier.”

“You might be an artist, but I’m sure you can still do the math, Lili,” Eldridge said. “Anyone who reads the newspapers has to be aware that insurance liability rates have gone up every year and are still climbing. So are the wages for well-trained caretakers and everything else that goes into a quality day care center like ours.”

At his use of the word quality, Lili perked up. At least Eldridge recognized the center’s worth. “Yes,” she agreed. “But for the employees, it is both more convenient and less expensive than hiring baby-sitters.”

“Perhaps,” he agreed, “but for tenants like this magazine, the costs of operating the center keep rising. I realize children’s welfare is involved here, but to the management, business is business.”

“I know,” Lili agreed, wishing she weren’t so distracted by the sound of Tom’s voice, even when he was angry with her. “That is why the next thing I am going to do is start a fund-raising campaign.” Too late, she realized that by advertising her future plans, she was adding fuel to a burning fire.

“You haven’t heard a word I’ve said, have you?” Eldridge muttered grimly.

“But of course I have,” she retorted. “It is just that we do not seem to agree.”

“There’s nothing personal in this, Lili.” He gave a slight shrug. “I’ve been trying to tell you that while I understand the problem, I don’t own the building. Any decision the management may come to will be based strictly on financial considerations.”

Lili saw red. “Ensuring the proper care of an employee’s children should be just as much a part of running a business as making a profit,” she argued. “As long as the children are taken care of, absentee rates will stay down!”

Tom shook his head. “It’s not only me, you know. Even if I sympathize with you, in the long run I don’t matter. Some of the building’s tenants are not too happy with those petitions and fliers you’ve been circulating. They’ve complained that employees are being distracted from their work. Riverview’s management has no choice. The word is out to find and stop the culprit.” He gestured to the drafting table. “The flier you’re working on is only going to stir things up again.” He turned to leave. “I’d advise you to tear it up and go back to work.”

Lili impulsively reached out to stop him. His tense arm muscles told her he was still angry.

“Not if you help us to buy time. You can ask for a postponement of the meeting. That would give me time to find a way to keep the center open.”

“I only have one vote, Lili,” Eldridge said, glancing down at her hand. “What I think isn’t worth much. Not in tight financial times like these. As I just said, from the management’s viewpoint, business comes first.”

“And from yours?”

Eldridge hesitated, then took a step closer to her drawing board. “I might sympathize with your problem, but I don’t have a great deal of influence.”

To Lili’s dismay, he reached over, picked up the charcoal drawing she’d been working on and held it up to the light. “What’s this supposed to be? A wall target for you to pitch darts at?”

That’s not what Lili had intended when she’d started the sketch of his face. Rather, she’d been wistfully wondering what it would be like to kiss him.

That was ridiculous, she knew. After all, she was a mature woman, a single mother, not an infatuated teenager.

“No,” she said softly. “I heard the sound of your voice and somehow started drawing your face….” It was not a very convincing explanation, but it would have to do.

Tom put the sketch back on the drawing board, reached for the piece of charcoal and filled in the eyebrows. “As long as you’ve gone this far, it might as well look more like me.” He handed the drawing back to Lili and, in a voice that set the hair at the back of her neck tingling, warned, “Let’s just say that if I were you, I’d stop causing any more trouble around the building. I’m willing to forget I found the flier this time, but I might not be able to the next.”

Lili silently stared after Eldridge as he left the studio. Whatever fantasies she’d had about getting to know him on a personal level had just been destroyed. She turned back to her work. No matter what he said about not circulating petitions or handing out fliers, she was determined to find some way to keep the center open.

TOM MADE HIS WAY back to his office, wondering how he could have been so off the mark when it came to Lili Soulé. Could this be the same ethereal woman who had floated in and out of the art studio for the past two years? There obviously lurked a will of steel under that shy smile. Lili was the last person he would have expected to be the mastermind behind the fliers and petitions circulating through the buildings.

A red-blooded man, he couldn’t help noticing Lili’s sapphire-blue eyes and blond tousled hair whenever he wandered into the art studio or attended staff meetings. But that was where his interest ended. He had a Business Only policy when it came to his employees and he didn’t intend to change now.

As far as delaying Riverview’s monthly meeting or voting to keep the center open, hell, he was as sympathetic as the next guy, but it was his job to keep Today’s World out of the red and his lease out of trouble.

Since it had been a dire complaint from the building’s management that had brought him to the art studio this morning in the first place, he didn’t know why he hadn’t fired Lili on the spot when he’d discovered that flier. There was a clause in his lease that stated Today’s World’s rental agreement could be canceled if an employee undertook any activity that could be construed as defaming management. Maybe it had been the scent of her perfume, or perhaps her quaint French accent that had distracted him. Either way, he was beginning to feel as if he’d been seeing Lili for the first time. And he had to admit he liked what he saw—a mixture of an old-fashioned woman and a tantalizing modern one.

Too bad she was off-limits.

The way Riverview’s manager had put it, one-half of the business owners were in favor of closing the center. Another third were for keeping it open, and the rest appeared to be undecided. Lili obviously was out to get that minority on her side, and the process was turning Riverview’s tenants into warring camps.

All things considered, he was actually proud of the way he’d kept his cool with Lili instead of firing her.

LILI HEADED STRAIGHT for a heart-to-heart with her close friends April Morgan Sullivan, one of the magazine’s editors, and Rita Rosales Callahan, the magazine’s research librarian, who had just returned from her honeymoon. Confessing her undercover activities and her disastrous meeting with Tom Eldridge might not be wise, Lili realized, but if she couldn’t ask her two closest friends for advice, whom else could she appeal to?

Lili found the two women at the watercooler.

“No way!” Rita said when Lili finished telling the story of how Tom had caught her planning another flier and sketching his likeness!

Rita’s dark eyes lit up with interest. “I know I advised you to try to get Tom’s attention, but that sure was one heck of a way to go about it! What happened after he caught you?”

Lili shivered as she mentally revisited the scene in the art studio. “For a minute I thought he was angry enough about the flier to fire me. Instead, when he noticed the sketch of him I was making, something about him seemed to change.”

Rita grinned. “What did he say?”