The Bachelor's Cinderella: The Frenchman's Plain-Jane Project

CHAPTER TWO (#ub98c4e84-44d0-574b-97fb-54dcb654c4a4)

“WHERE is everyone?” Meg asked as they entered Fieldman’s Furnishings the next day.

Etienne looked around the big, empty office with weak sunlight filtering in through the streaked and dusty windows high overhead. It shone on the mottled blue carpeting that was worn thin in places. There was a crack in one of the walls, and despite the fact that people still worked here, the place smelled of neglect. “I gave them the day off,” he said.

“Excuse me? You did what?” Meg turned to him, her brown eyes open wide. She was wearing some wild red and white thing that hid a lot of her body, but wasn’t camouflage enough to hide the fact that she was shapely and generously curved.

He frowned at her reaction. “I sent them home. With pay,” he clarified. “Don’t worry, Meg. I didn’t turn your friends out without compensating them.”

Meg shook her head. “I didn’t mean that. I wasn’t accusing you of cheating Edie and the others. And I know this is so out of line, but I was just…The company is dying and you sent the workers home? Why would—I’m sorry for asking, but I just don’t understand why you would do that.”

He smiled suddenly. “Meg, see what a great help you’re going to be. Look, you’re already questioning my methods.”

Instantly she looked contrite. A lovely pink crept up from the neckline of her white blouse. “Don’t,” he said suddenly. “There’s no need to be embarrassed about the fact that you’re questioning me. It’s a good thing.”

She frowned. “I’m not embarrassed.”

“You’re blushing.”

“I never blush.”

But she was. And in a very pretty way. The bloom continued to spread, the faint rose accenting the full curve of her cheeks. Etienne raised one brow. “Yes. You’re blushing. If we’re going to work together, we need truth between us.”

Almost as if she couldn’t help herself, Meg reached up and touched her face. The pale, almost indiscernible scar that ran three inches from the corner of her lip toward her ear was now the only part of her face that wasn’t a delightful pink. There was something very…erotic about that small white scar, something that made a man think about placing his lips against that thin line and moving outward, kiss after kiss.

Etienne caught himself again and stopped that train of thought as quickly as he could. What on earth was wrong with him? The woman…Meg wasn’t wearing anything vaguely suggestive. In fact, her clothing looked somewhat sacklike. Her shoes were made for comfort rather than to accentuate her legs. And yet he had been thinking…well never mind what he had been thinking. Or why. He didn’t even want to know about the why. Instead he cleared his throat and flipped on a computer in the still, empty room. The sound of the machine booting up filled the silence. He looked at Meg.

“I wasn’t lying or trying to be coy,” she insisted. “I’ve never been a blusher.”

“Good, then. It’s something new in your life. These next few months are going to be all about new things. Unlike these out-of-date computers.”

“You have a time frame?”

“I have a goal. Not only to bring back your business in the United States but to expand beyond your shores. There’s a small business expo in Paris two months from now. Make an impression there and international business will flow in. That’s our target date to be up and running again full speed.”

“You’re serious, aren’t you? Two months seems so short. Not that I’m doubting you can do it. You’re the genius of La Défense.”

Etienne snapped to attention at Meg’s mention of Paris’s business district. “The genius of La Défense? And you surmised that how?”

“Um…you told me?” She looked up at him without guile, those big brown eyes as innocent as a newborn lamb’s, even though he knew he had never told her the nickname given to him by the French press.

“Meg…” he drawled.

An instant expression of guilt shadowed her countenance. “All right, I looked you up on the Internet. I’m sorry if I intruded. I just…I don’t really know you and I wanted to know if you were for real.”

He wanted to smile at her forlorn tone. He felt very real staring at her right now, but…the Internet?

The urge to smile disappeared. He was from an old, well-known family. There had been articles written about Louisa’s death. But that wasn’t something he felt he could discuss. Despite the three years that had passed, the pain, the guilt was still like a flame inside him. “And what did you discover?” he asked, careful to keep his tone casual.

“I discovered that…you are real,” she said simply, which said so much and so little at the same time. She hesitated. Then she took a deep breath. “So, can even a genius like you pull Fieldman’s together in only two months? What can we accomplish in such a short time?”

Etienne felt a huge sense of relief. He wouldn’t be asked to discuss Louisa. He wouldn’t have to give evasive answers to mask his pain. If Meg had chanced upon that story, and she most likely had, she wasn’t saying anything. For several long seconds he studied her carefully. She gazed back at him directly, unflinchingly. Only the way her fingers fidgeted with the cloth of her dress gave away even a hint of discomfort. All right, she probably knew his history. But she was ignoring it. He would, too, and he would be grateful. In other circumstances, he would be kissing her feet.

Which called up an image of something he knew he could never pursue.

“What can we do?” he asked, skirting all the issues except the only one he would allow himself. “Many things. When a company begins to fail, it’s not enough to simply go back to the old ways. And yes, better accounting practices will help, but they won’t get Fieldman’s the attention we need to pique customers’ curiosity. What we need are some quick, very visible, highly touted changes. We want a spark to intrigue the customers and fire up the employees. We want something to attract publicity.”

He caught a smile on her face. “What?”

“I assume your changes won’t be like the ones Alan made,” she said.

Etienne laughed. “Well, I was thinking bunny rabbits. With carrots. Very eye-catching.”

“Ah, I see you really do need me, after all,” she said. “No bunny rabbits.”

He tried to look wounded. “What do you suggest, then?”

For half a second, she looked self-conscious. Those pretty caramel eyes flew open wide. “All right, you don’t want to go back to what Fieldman’s was doing when Mary was in charge.”

He slowly shook his head. “The world moves on. We have to move with it.” It was a good reminder and more for himself than for Meg. He was a man constantly on the move, and he needed to be that way. There was no way to change the past. All he could do was move away from it.

“Your job takes you all around the world, doesn’t it?”

“I never stop moving. It helps that I’m not married or likely to be. It wouldn’t be fair to ask a woman to put up with a man like me who is never around.”

Which was far more direct than he felt comfortable being, but he had learned that being direct was the only way.

Meg didn’t even blink. In fact she smiled slightly. “I’m not a family woman, either, or likely to get married.”

Which meant something bad had to have happened to her at some point.

“Someday I’ll want children, but since I don’t have them yet, I’m free to spend as much time on the job as necessary.”

Children. Etienne’s heart started thudding. He had once wanted a child.

He didn’t speak. Memories rushed at him. A conversation with his wife. She hadn’t wanted the baby. He had. But she was the one who lost her life due to the rigors of pregnancy and an undetected heart defect.

And he was obviously not hiding his reaction to her declaration well. Meg was looking at him with what could only be called concern in her expression. Etienne shook off the past. It was done. It was over. And he was making Meg nervous. That wasn’t acceptable.

“But we don’t need to spend time talking about my plans,” she said quickly. “We need to discuss the company and…I understand what you said, but we don’t want to toss out what worked completely, do we?” she asked. “That is, isn’t my knowledge of what was working part of why you hired me?”

She licked her lips nervously. Etienne’s pulse jumped. His body reacted…the way any man’s body would react. And suddenly, standing here staring at those berry lips, he wondered for a second why he had hired Meg. She wasn’t pretty in the common way at all—some might even call her plain—but there was something…some light in her eyes, something very full about those lips that made her very tempting, and temptation was never allowed to be a part of his dying business reclamation projects. Yet, here he was examining Meg as if he intended to do something that was out of the question.

He nearly swore. No doubt he’d simply been depriving himself of female companionship for too long. He was clearly going to have to watch himself around Meg Leighton. And she was still waiting for an answer to her question.

“Yes, you have the keys to what made Fieldman’s work before. Let’s take that and give it a twist.”

“Something classic but fresh,” she said.