Hired: The Boss's Bride. Элли Блейк
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therefore couldn’t possibly be what he, or the business, needed in order to move forward. Hadn’t the woman heard of a navy suit and beige stockings?
Then when his interviewee bent into the car, kicking one long leg behind her as she reached into the back seat to pull out a large silver handbag, he gave himself one last chance in hell of pulling himself together by closing his eyes and turning away.
The bell over the double oak doors clanged. Mitch opened his eyes, drew in a breath, looked straight down the barrel of the respectful portrait of his great-grandfather, Phineas Hanover, which hung behind the reception desk, muttered, ‘Heaven help me,’ then turned to the bright windows.
And in she came, bringing with her a waft of warm spring air and raucous conversation as Kristin prattled on beside her like an overexcited teenager.
He readied himself to take the proceedings in hand but his words stopped in his mouth when he caught a load of the image emblazoned across Veronica’s T-shirt. A huge pair of glistening red lips followed the dips and curves of her chest.
The ensuing tightness in Mitch’s chest was definitely not the result of hyperventilation. Or a stitch, as he hadn’t made a move. And it couldn’t be a heart attack. He was thirty-four and fit as a fiddle, for Pete’s sake.
He blinked, breathed deep and looked up into her eyes instead. Only to find that without the huge sunglasses covering half her face she was…lovely. There was no other word that he could bring to mind no matter how hard he tried. With all that tousled dark hair that made her look as if she’d just rolled out of bed, a pair of sparkling dark eyes and skin so tanned and healthy-looking she practically shone.
Mitch felt the faint but conspicuous beginnings of a chemical reaction deep within his bones before it quickly spread, making his palms tingle and the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. Saying the rapid rush of such a feeling shocked the hell out of him would have been an understatement.
When Veronica’s eyes finally swung from Kristin’s beaming face to look his way, he actually braced himself for impact.
Her smile faltered. Even from that distance, and with the sun behind her, he saw it. Felt it. Then her gaze raked him from the top of his dark hair, down his conservative suit to his freshly shone shoes and back to his eyes again. And his skin contracted as though it had been one long red fingernail that had traced his skin rather than the casual caress of a pair of big brown female eyes.
She broke eye contact and the skin on the back of his neck suddenly felt cold, as though he’d come out in a sweat. Which was ridiculous. This whole thing was quite simply all too ridiculous. He was a man of experience. Far wider reaching experience than he would admit to in polite company. And in his experience he’d come to believe that this kind of instantaneous, primal, physical reaction to a woman was no longer his to be had. The fact that he’d cultivated his indifference to the point of it being an art form all of itself was beside the point.
He ran a hand up the back of his neck and tried to remember the last time he’d eaten.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw Veronica pat Kristin on the shoulder and ask her something that had them both looking his way.
‘Right,’ Kristin said, shaking her head. ‘I’d forgotten all about him.’
Way to build me up as the dominant player in this here situation, Mitch thought.
He shot Kristin a look that had her biting her lip, then he turned his attentions back to the newcomer. He reminded his professional self how much he needed an interim stopgap to save the family business. He informed his personal self that this interloper was the exact antithesis of the kind of cool, cavalier blondes who usually caught his eye. While in the back of his head Kristin’s voice told him she was the answer to all his dreams.
‘Mitch Hanover,’ he said, walking the final two steps towards her. He held out a hand. ‘You must be Veronica Bing.’
‘What gave it away?’ she asked, taking his hand and shaking. Hard, sharp, determined, like a man. But at the same time she gave a saucy little curtsy, one foot tucked neatly behind the other as she bowed her head with respect.
He slid his hand away; slow enough it wouldn’t draw suspicion, fast enough he wouldn’t have to put up with any superfluous lingering memory of her touch upon his skin.
‘The other three interviewees didn’t object when I offered them plane tickets to come here,’ he said, glancing past her at her ostentatious car. ‘Return plane tickets.’
One thin dark eyebrow shot skyward, and her tongue darted out to moisten her full lower lip. ‘It seems my irrational fear of flying has given me an edge over my competition. I knew one day it would come in handy.’
Her mouth curved into a slight smile. He felt his own tug at the corners. He caught himself just in time.
‘I’m sure Kristin has informed you of the importance and immediacy we have placed on the auctioneer role. We have a massive new show set to kick off next week, no auctioneer in place and half the staff down with the flu.’ Though Mitch thought it more likely that they figured, in most cases correctly, if they came back in, they’d be sacked on the spot. ‘The very future of this business depends on filling this position with exactly the right person.’
At this point the other three interviewees had respectively been sanctimonious, blasé and terrified. Veronica Bing, on the other hand, grinned.
‘Well, now, that’s the most unappealing sales pitch I’ve ever heard. Mitch Hanover, I do believe you need me more than you even realise.’
Her bold words hung between them like a bright, shiny red apple: tempting as all get out, and just as likely to be poisoned as not.
He inwardly cursed the last inept auctioneer who’d brought the place to its knees with his lackadaisical ways, the doddery old curator for having no clue about current market trends and his parents for being so good to him he couldn’t let them down.
But he was here now. And so was Veronica Bing. He might as well get it over with.
‘Why don’t you head on through the gallery and I’ll join you in a moment?’ he asked, waving a hand in the direction of the rear office.
‘Whatever you say, boss.’ She swanned across the shiny grey carpet of the wide-open lobby and up the polished wood stairs and disappeared behind the huge brick partition hiding the gallery itself from the road view.
‘Isn’t she something?’ Kristin asked from behind him.
Mitch sucked his breath in through his teeth. ‘She’s something, all right. I’m just not quite sure what.’
Veronica took the moment to herself to try to stop her knees from shaking.
‘So far so good,’ she whispered to herself. ‘You’re doing fine. Chin up, back straight, look him in the eye and wow him with your confidence.’
Confidence? Ha! She could barely remember what the word meant. A week ago this move had sounded so fantastic by the light of a message machine that had been blinking with a dozen messages left by a man who didn’t seem to understand the word ‘No’.
But now, here, in this big, old, musty, gilded building that echoed with the cultured voices of people who’d walked in her shoes, she felt more than a little intimidated.
The grey papered walls were faded, the massive chandelier in the middle of the entrance looked as if it hadn’t worked in a century and the gunk on the walls, gilded frames around pictures of fussy-looking, overfed royalty, what she could only assume was supposed to be art, were so far beyond her taste and life experience as to seem alien.
Then there was Kristin, the girl who’d once had more piercings than Veronica had handbags, now with a slick dark bob and dressed in an elegant beige trouser suit, while she’d trundled up in her tight jeans and knee-high boots and T-shirt, the exact kind of thing she’d worn to work every day in her last post, auctioning patents on computer-game intellectual