Secret Admirer: Secret Kisses / Hidden Hearts / Dream Marriage. Christine Rimmer
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view,” Matt said far too pleasantly.
“Isn’t it?” Andrea shot him her most dazzling smile, and Jane remembered what her mother had said about some floozy nailing him. Andrea wasn’t exactly the kind of woman her mother had warned her about, but maybe good ol’ Mom had a slight, annoying point. Not that it mattered. Jane didn’t want him. She wanted to kick him or flatten one of his fancy tires. Or maybe strangle him with his loud tie.
It was all she could do to keep her face blank. Somehow she forced a smile, but she couldn’t quite control her eyes. No doubt, they were shooting sparks.
Not that Andrea, who was beaming at Matt, seemed to notice. Not that Jane blamed her boss for smiling at the handsome rat. Despite the chill in the room, the man radiated sex appeal.
“This is great,” Andrea said. “The two of you on top of this—together.”
“Teammates,” Matt supplied silkily, winking at Jane. “Hey, I don’t know if now’s the time, but I’ve come up with several new ideas. What about a chicken flying contest and maybe some armadillo races?”
Jane began to cough.
“Why, that’s brilliant,” Andrea said. “The male viewpoint is so refreshingly original. This is so…so Texas. Don’t you agree, Jane?”
Jane swallowed. “My thoughts exactly,” she said, clasping her knotted hands even more tightly because she itched to strangle them both.
Chicken flying contests—my you know what!
Jane’s reaction to being blindsided and put on the spot while in Andrea’s office was predictable. What she did about it wasn’t. Normally she would have kept her cool and worked behind closed doors to resolve the problem. Today she stormed down the hall, threw open the door to Matt’s office and went inside without even knocking.
He was at his desk, on the phone.
Making a date with some floozy, no doubt. At the thought she saw green.
His playful, sparkling green eyes rose to hers innocently when she hurled herself inside his office. Instantly he said a polite goodbye in his low, husky voice, and was off the phone before Jane could blink. He got up and shut the door.
Carefully she stepped across papers, reports, corporate manuals and stacks of files.
“Your office is a mess!”
“I’m phobic about file cabinets,” he said.
“You should be ashamed.”
He grinned. “Something from my dysfunctional childhood. Haven’t told the shrink about it yet.”
She didn’t laugh as she removed several files from a chair and slapped them on his desk before sitting down.
“Coffee?” he offered as he sank into his leather chair on the other side of his massive desk, which was also overflowing with clutter.
She shook her head so hard several pins flew out of her hair toward him. “This won’t take long.”
Smiling amiably, he picked up a pin and began to play with it.
She cleared her throat. “You stole my folder on the fund-raiser out of my briefcase.”
“Wrong. You left it. I returned it.”
“And you stole my ideas!”
“I think our working together could be fun.”
“You have absolutely no interest in the children’s after-school day-care education fund.”
“Maybe I want to become…passionate about the same things you are.”
“All you want is to be director of market research.”
“Sounds like the pot calling the kettle black to me, darlin’?”
“I’ve worked hard for everything I’ve ever gotten. But you…you just get by on your contacts, money, your fancy car, good looks and good-old-boy network. Schmoozing around the ol’ watercooler. Telling dirty jokes.”
“Last time I looked, Andrea isn’t a good old boy. She seems to think highly of me.”
“Because she’s got a crush on you.”
“If she does, is that my fault?”
“You’re using it.”
“Relax. Spending more time together on this project could be fun…if you’d let it be.”
“This is my career. I work hard. All you do is joke.”
“I appreciate all you do. I admire you. That’s why I’m so interested in getting to know you better,” he insisted.
“Sorry, I don’t trust your motives. And if you dare joke about me or what happened in your car this morning to your watercooler pals…If they start coming on to me…” She choked at the awful thought and was unable to go on. His handsome face blurred. Oh, God, in another second she would be crying.
She got up to run, but he was faster. He grabbed her and pushed her up against the wall. She twisted her face away from his.
His grip eased. “Hey, I don’t want to hurt you.” His deep voice was soft. So soft, her knees went weak. “And I damn sure don’t want other men coming on to you.”
Very gently he cupped her chin and forced her to look at him just as she felt a single mortifying tear slide down her cheek. She wiped it away with the back of her fist and took a deep breath and glared at him.
A muscle tightened in his jawline. Then he drew a deep breath of his own, and he swallowed.
“Let me go,” she said.
“All right. But it’s not going to be that easy.”
When his hands fell away, she opened the door and ran. The day got worse. During her PowerPoint presentation about corporate branding, the computer she was using went down. When she couldn’t get it to work, she grew flustered. Naturally, Matt seized the day. After he jimmied a couple of wires, the computer hummed to life. By the time she was able to start over, she felt shy and unsure because she was running out of time. She talked too fast, lost her focus and forgot to make her most important points. If only Matt hadn’t been there, leaning forward, listening to her every word as if he was spellbound. The jerk even complimented her speech and asked several intelligent questions that made her look great afterward.
Then it was his turn. A natural when it came to sports or performances of any kind, he got up and blew everybody away with his smooth presentation. He stared at her the whole time, smiling after every point he made. When everybody clapped and congratulated him, Jane sat in her corner and chewed moodily on her pencil until the lead snapped and she tossed it down.
When their colleagues filed out of the conference room, Matt came over to her. No doubt to gloat because he was sure she’d lost and he’d landed the director of market research position.
“You didn’t say anything. Well?”
“Well what?”
“What’d you think of my presentation?”
She jabbed her pencil into the knot of hair at her nape. “You’ve been a natural-born ham ever since elementary school.”
“Surely you don’t still hold my clumsy efforts in the school talent shows against me.”
“You blew everybody away even back then, and you know it.”
“Even you?” he asked.
She felt her face heat. She was sure she was blushing, which was even better for his ego than actually telling him he’d been terrific.
“Did anybody ever tell you, you’re way too conceited, Harper?”
“Just you.”
She