The Boss and the Plain Jayne Bride. HEATHER MACALLISTER
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“I like teaching the seminars.” Jayne emptied her electric pencil sharpener into the wastebasket at the side of her desk.
“Try this equation—Jayne works nights equals Jayne never meets anyone.”
“Sylvia.” Jayne swept pencil shavings off her desk. “You’re sounding like my mother’s Sunday afternoon phone calls.” And they were probably both right.
A crafty smile lit Sylvia’s face. “Speaking of relatives—”
“No more blind dates!” At least not the blind dates Sylvia arranged.
“Are you still mad about Mogo?”
“As soon as I heard his name was Mogo, I should have said ‘No go.’” Most of Sylvia’s male relatives played sports. Mogo, aka Mogo the Magnificent, was a professional wrestler. Jayne’s question about whether the matches were real or fixed proved to be the evening’s conversational highlight, especially since Mogo had chosen to take her to one of his. He’d abandoned her outside the entrance to the dressing area, apparently forgetting he’d brought a date, which was fine with Jayne.
Sylvia opened her mouth, but Jayne broke in. “Want to join me for a sandwich downstairs?” Food and men were Sylvia’s two favorite topics.
She groaned. “Not the company snack bar!”
“I’ve only got an hour before class starts.”
“Jayne, let’s at least go to the Greek place across the street.”
Jayne laughed as she retrieved her purse from the bottom file cabinet drawer. “I thought there weren’t any men who ate there.”
“No eligible ones.” Sylvia trudged beside her. “They work around here and I’ve already eliminated them as possibilities.”
Ten minutes later, Jayne and Sylvia, seated in a vinyl booth next to the window, were trying to resist a bowl of salty, oily olives—Sylvia more successfully than Jayne.
“Jayne, fat and salt equal secretary’s butt.”
Jayne dropped the black olive. “You don’t have to keep talking to me in equations.”
“You’re an accountant. You understand equations.” Sylvia snatched the bread basket away from Jayne’s creeping hand. “No bread, either!”
“I like olives! I like bread!” Jayne wailed. She inhaled, her eyes closed. “Warm, yeasty, crusty...I can smell it from here!”
The basket thudded to the table. “Heads up. New waiter.”
“I suppose you’re not going to let me order moussaka, either,” Jayne grumbled as an attractive dark eyed man approached.
“Perish the thought.”
While Sylvia simpered at the waiter, Jayne defiantly snuck in her order for moussaka and ate an olive for good measure. Then another. She was reaching for the bread basket when she saw him.
The most gorgeous man in the universe, or at the very least in Texas, stepped from the evening sunshine into Garcia’s Greek Eats. Impossibly, stunningly handsome, he paused and blinked as his eyes adjusted to the interior.
Jayne’s heart hammered with such force she felt the tremor in her hands. The man was out of Sylvia’s sight, or Jayne knew the waiter who had captured her friend’s interest would be forgotten. In fact, when Sylvia did spot this man, she’d probably kill Jayne for not pointing him out to her earlier.
But Jayne couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe and didn’t want to share the beautiful man, though he was so far above her orbit, he was more dream than reality.
The restaurant owner approached the sable-haired god and led him to a table on the opposite side of the room where he sat in profile to her and still behind Sylvia.
Jayne swallowed, her mouth dry and brackish from the olives.
“Jayne?” Sylvia gave her a strange look.
“What?” With difficulty, Jayne dragged her gaze away from the Gorgeous One.
“I’ll bring more bread,” the waiter said smoothly.
Sylvia glanced to Jayne’s bread plate where three rolls and five olive pits sat.
“Oh.” Jayne stared at rolls she didn’t remember taking and the pits of the olives she didn’t remember eating. “I’m hungry?”
With Sylvia still looking at her skeptically, Jayne bit into a roll and chewed as though she were enjoying it.
“At least you aren’t slathering them with butter.” As she spoke, Sylvia looked over Jayne’s shoulder out the window, allowing Jayne the opportunity to stare at the man undetected.
From this distance, she couldn’t make out the minute details of his appearance, but what she saw was more than enough to steal her breath. Though dressed in a casual shirt and pants, he had a sleek, well-puttogether look about him.
Toying with her roll, Jayne only half listened as Sylvia extolled the virtues of exercise and fat-free dining and warned Jayne about the dangers of cellulite in women of their age. Sylvia was nearing thirty—nearer than Jayne, but Jayne knew better than to point that out.
She sighed and ate a particularly large olive. No one was likely to see her cellulite anyway.
“Don’t think I didn’t see you eat that olive.” Sylvia interrupted her monologue. “I’ve a highly developed peripheral vision. Nothing much gets by me.”
Except the man behind her and Jayne decided not to mention him. Once or twice, he checked his watch, but he never looked their way, of course. When the waiter approached, he ordered and appeared to be dining alone. Incredible. The woman in his life—Jayne didn’t doubt there was one—shouldn’t let him go out alone. If he were in Jayne’s life, she wouldn’t let him out of her sight for a minute.
Letting Sylvia’s words waft around her, Jayne transported herself into the empty chair across from the man.
He’d raise his eyes to hers, greet her warmly and smile a smile just for her.
And she’d...
Jayne tried again. And she’d...she’d...
Nothing. She wouldn’t do anything because she’d never have the courage to be with or even speak to a man like that.
Such a man was not for her. She acknowledged this fact without self-pity. Beautiful people were attracted to other beautiful people. That was simply a law of nature intended to protect their gene pool. Others might go swimming in that pool, but would soon find they were in over their heads. Survival of the fittest, or in this case, beautifulest.
“Jayne? Are you listening to me?”
“Nope.”
“Figures.” Sylvia pointed to Jayne’s bread plate. “What is with you?”
Jayne stared at her fingers, which were buried in a mound of bread crumbs. “The bread was dry,” she declared and withdrew her hand, scattering bread crumbs and bits of crust across the table. “Really, really dry.”
“And you’re really, really distracted. Are you going to tell me about it?”
“No,” Jayne said as their dinner arrived, “I’m not.”
How could she have eaten so much? Jayne stood in the Pace Waterman conference room and regretted each and every bite of the moussaka. Well, maybe not the first half-dozen bites, but after that she should’ve quit eating and would have if Sylvia hadn’t been scolding her for ordering the heavy dish in the first place.
She was really cross with Sylvia because her scolding kept Jayne from daydreaming about the dreamboat. And then she had to leave the restaurant because of this