His Executive Sweetheart. Christine Rimmer
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for Celia. Not anymore. Suddenly, his slightest touch seared her to her very soul.
She made herself cross back around the desk and return to her chair. She picked up her legal pad again and waited for him to go on.
For the next ten minutes, the situation was almost bearable. They got through his calendar for the day, the rest of the memos and letters he would be wanting, the reports he needed her to get in hard copy and bind for the next managers’ meeting.
They were winding things up when he added offhandedly, “And would you get something nice for Jennifer? Since it is Valentine’s Day…”
It felt like a knife straight through the heart, when he said that. Get something nice for Jennifer….
Jennifer Tartaglia had a featured role in the hit review, Gold Dust Follies, playing nightly in High Sierra’s Excelsior Theatre. Jennifer was Cuban and Italian, drop-them-in-their-tracks gorgeous—and a very nice person, as well. The first time the showgirl had visited the office tower, she’d made it a point to say hi to Aaron’s secretary.
“Hello, so nice to meet you.” Jennifer had stuck out her hand and beamed a radiant smile. “I hear you take fine care of Aaron.”
They shook hands. “I do my best.”
“You are the best. He tells me so.” Still smiling that wide, friendly, breathtaking smile, Jennifer tossed her honey-blond mane of hair and turned to walk away. Celia had found herself staring. The rear view of Jennifer Tartaglia—especially in motion—was something to see.
But so what if no woman had a right to look that good? Celia liked Jennifer. She considered Jennifer a good person who was, no doubt, very good to Aaron—not that the relationship was anything truly serious. It never was, with Aaron.
Aaron Bravo…enjoyed women, and a man in his position had his pick of some of the most beautiful, talented and seductive women in the world. But none of them, at least in the years Celia had worked for him, had lasted. Aaron always gave them diamonds—a bracelet or a necklace—at the end. Eventually, Celia knew, she’d be buying diamonds for Jennifer.
He really was married to his work. And so busy he thought nothing of asking his assistant to buy his girlfriend thoughtful gifts and expensive trinkets whenever the occasion arose—like for Valentine’s Day.
“Something nice for Jennifer,” Celia parroted in the voice of a dazed windup doll.
He was frowning again. “Are you certain there’s nothing wrong?”
“I am. Positive. No problem. Sincerely.”
An hour later, Celia left High Sierra to get Jennifer that gift. She found a heart-shaped ruby-encrusted pin in one of the elite little boutiques at Caesar’s Forum Shops. High Sierra had its own series of exclusive shops, the Gold Exchange, in the central court between the casino and the 3,000-room hotel. But Celia never shopped in-house for gifts “from” the boss. To her, it seemed more appropriate, more personal, if she went outside Aaron’s realm of influence to get little treasures for his lady friends.
And hey, wasn’t that great reasoning? she found herself thinking, now unrequited love was souring her attitude. He wasn’t even choosing the gifts. How personal could they be?
She bought the pin, brought it back to High Sierra and showed it to him, so that he’d know what lovely little trinket Jennifer was getting from him.
“Great, Celia. She’ll love it.”
Tears tightened her throat as she wrapped up that ruby heart. But she didn’t cry. She swallowed those tears down.
By then, it had been a mere six hours since she’d realized she was in love with him. She couldn’t afford to start blubbering like a baby from day one, now could she? And maybe, she couldn’t help thinking as she expertly tied the red satin ribbon, this sudden, overwhelming and inconvenient passion would just…burn itself out. Soon.
Oh, yes. Please God. Let it be over soon….
But her prayer was not answered, at least not in the next week. The days went by and the longing didn’t fade.
She managed, somehow, never to cry over it, in spite of how close she’d come that first day. And he never guessed. She was sure of it. She took a kind of bleak pride in that, in the fact that he didn’t know she was hopelessly, utterly gone on him.
Yes, sometimes he gave her a faintly puzzled look. As if he knew something wasn’t quite right with her. But she did her job and she did it well and after that first day, he never asked again what might be wrong with her.
Fresh torments abounded.
Simple things. Everyday things. Like his brushing touch, they were things that had meant next to nothing before. Things like following him around the executive suite taking last-minute instructions before he met his managers for lunch—as he stripped to the waist and changed into a fresh shirt.
She tried not to stare at his muscled back and lean, hard arms, not to let herself imagine what it would be like if he held out those arms to her, if he gathered her close against that broad chest, if he lowered that wonderful mouth to cover hers….
It was awful. She had seen him change his shirt fifty times, at least. She’d never thought of a fresh shirt as a new form of torture. Until now.
Really, their lives were so…intertwined. They both lived where they worked. Aaron had a penthouse suite. Celia’s rooms were smaller, of course, and several floors below his.
She’d always loved that, living on-site. She loved the glamour and excitement of her life at High Sierra. In many ways, the resort was its own city. A person could eat, sleep, shop, work and play there and never have to leave. The party went on 24/7, as the tired saying went.
Celia was far from a party animal. But working for Aaron, she felt as if some of the gold dust and glitter rubbed off on her. Growing up, she’d been just a little bit shy, and not all that popular—not unattractive, really, but a long way from gorgeous. She came from a big family, the fourth child of six. Her parents were good parents, but a little distracted. There were so many vying for their attention. She felt closer to her two best friends, Jane Elliott and Jillian Diamond, than she did to her own brothers and sisters.
She’d earned an accounting degree from Cal State Sacramento and worked for a Sacramento CPA firm before she stumbled on a job as secretary/assistant to one of the firm’s clients, a local morning talk-show host.
Celia adored that job. It suited her perfectly. She needed to be organized and businesslike—and she also needed to be ready for anything. She handled correspondence and personal bookkeeping, as well as shopping and spur-of-the-moment dinner parties. Her duties were rarely the same from one day to the next.
The talk-show host had done a segment on High Sierra. Aaron had agreed to a brief interview. And then he’d been there, behind the scenes, for the rest of the shoot. And he’d remembered the girl from his hometown.
Two months later, the talk-show host got another show—in Philadelphia. Celia could have gone, too. But she decided against the move.
Aaron’s human resources people had contacted her. She flew to Vegas to see him and he hired her on the spot.
“You’re just what I’m looking for, Celia,” he had said. “Efficient. Cool-headed. Low-key. Smart. And someone from home, too. I like that. I really do.”
It had been a successful working relationship pretty much from the first—impersonally intimate, was how Celia always thought of it. She was a true “office wife” and that was fine with her. She was good at what she did, she enjoyed the work and her boss knew her value. She’d had a number of raises since she’d started at High Sierra. Now, she was making twice what she’d made in the beginning. She’d been happy with the talk-show host, but she’d really come into her own since she became Aaron’s assistant. Now, instead of shy, she saw herself as reserved. Serene. Unruffled.
She was that calm place