Chapter 6
Lucas sat in the chair behind his desk and willed his tension headache away. His clients all needed to be reassured endlessly, it seemed, that the merger wouldn’t change anything on their end. The usual red team they used for penetration testing wouldn’t change, the billing cycle wouldn’t alter, the effectiveness of the job they did ferreting out vulnerabilities in their computer systems wouldn’t be diminished.
While he understood their concerns—the fees they paid to Curry Security were a huge line item on their budgets—how many times did he have to repeat himself? It didn’t help his mood that two “urgent” meetings had been suddenly scheduled while another video conference had been cancelled at the last minute.
The latter gave him a moment to breathe, but the only thing he could focus on was his aggravation. And not only with his customers. He was annoyed with himself as well. After arriving at the office to talk to the East Coast in their early a.m. hours, he’d realized he’d left his cell phones—both personal and work devices—on his bedside table.
Emmaline was coming by the office to drop them off.
She’d been completely amenable to the idea. Yeah, he knew he paid her salary, but she had her own agenda, and her day had started even earlier than his. When he’d ventured into the kitchen on his way out the door, coffee had been ready as well as a bowl of fruit and another of steaming oatmeal, made palatable with brown sugar and raisins.
Looking at the dark brew and the nutritious food, he’d literally patted his own damn back. A butler was a convenience he appreciated more each day.
Though she’d been making herself scarce again, and his hectic schedule had forced him to leave for work early and stay late, so they’d crossed paths rarely the last couple days.
But that was convenient too. It kept the situation with Emmaline-the-desirable-woman on the back burner until a more suitable time…when he could logically determine whether a fling, affair, whatever-it-should-be-called, was a sensible course to take or not.
A buzz sounded on his desk phone, startling him. With a twitch, he reached for the handset and learned from his assistant that Emmaline was on her way to his 7th floor office from the lobby. He’d alerted George to the imminent arrival of a visitor, but there was something in the other man’s voice that made him frown.
Getting to his feet, he crossed to his door and pulled it open.
God.
His mouth dried and his eyes went wide. The damn female was in that uniform again, her beauty not even a little bit masked, and her sexiness only more alluring when it was dressed in the dark coat, the crisp shirt, the striped pants. The employees working on this floor popped up like prairie dogs from their cubicles, noses twitching. Emmaline glanced around at them, looking quite surprised herself.
Who could blame her? While he went to work most days in full Businessman—someone had to look like a full-fledged, responsible adult—the women and men who white-hat hacked for him dressed in whatever they fancied—most often flip flops, shorts, T-shirts displaying superheroes, and holey jeans or surfer shorts. Hair was a free-for-all as well, dread locks, purple locks, locks shorn haphazardly like their roommates had played a joke on them the night before when they’d passed out after a classic Pac-Man marathon.
Then there were the piercings and the body art…all of which didn’t bother Lucas in the least because they were only the outsides of the most brilliant and focused brains he’d ever met. Current standards in tech workplaces meant that management provided facilities with all kinds of diversions, aka “creativity boosters”—ping pong tables, an indoor lap pool and mini-track, as well as an ice cream soda bar, among others—but this group rarely glanced up from their computer screens. His seventh-floor team was the most focused of the focused.
Until Emmaline Rossi strolled by, naturally looking beyond tempting in her buttoned-up lusciousness.
One of his youngest employees, apparently about to imbibe his twentieth Red Bull of the day, exhaled in admiration as she passed, causing the wrapper of the straw between his lips to torpedo across the top of his cube and bounce off her perfect, peachy cheek.
Striding forward, Lucas wrapped his hand around her forearm and towed her toward his office while giving his staff a quelling stare.
Which didn’t work in the slightest, he realized, when several gathered around his doorway as he ushered Emmaline inside.
“Hey, Ruckus,” a voice called out. “A question?”
He nearly cringed, but settled for glaring at the diminutive speaker. Rachel, dressed in overall shorts, long socks pulled up to her knees, and two different-colored sneakers, gave him a cheeky grin. Where she’d come up with that name for him, he did not know, but everyone she worked with had been gifted with a weird moniker.
“What?” he said.
“Is it a singing telegram? Can we listen?” she asked, her lips and tongue stained a brilliant blue from the raspberry suckers she chain-licked.
“It’s not a singing telegram,” he ground out and shut the door in her face and in the faces of the dozen others who hovered nearby.
Then he looked at Emmaline. “Sorry,” he said. “They’re…not much for standing on ceremony. But very, very smart.”
“Ruckus?” Emmaline echoed with a tilt of her head.
He winced. “I’m only happy not to be Gary, otherwise known as Gravy.”
Her lips twitched, then she turned around, taking in his office. The space was expansive, with a seating area and bar on one side and a bank of windows that offered a wide and very expensive view of the Pacific on the other.
“Wow,” she said, glancing over her shoulder at him. “Impressive, same as that extensive check I went through in the lobby to be allowed onto the dedicated elevator. I thought you might have the Pope up here.”
He smiled. “That’s our business, security. The company has various ways to uncover people’s personal and financial data, and so we take protecting those ways very seriously.”
“I understand.” She approached his desk and reached into the tote hanging from her shoulder to withdraw the two cell phones he’d requested. After placing them beside the framed photo of Stella, circa age fourteen, Emmaline walked around the room, fingertips trailing along the long credenza below the windows as if, by habit, checking for dust.
Watching her, he breathed in, trying to catch an elusive whiff of her delicious scent. When he found it, he gulped in another breath and felt his headache ease off a notch. Just looking at her could relax him.
“I brought you lunch,” she said, reaching into that tote again to pull out an insulated bag that she placed on the credenza. “There’s a thermos of the minestrone soup you like and some leftover flatbread.”
His mouth watered at the thought. “You brought me lunch.”
Her expression turned embarrassed. “I didn’t know if you already had plans…”
“Just the cafeteria, if I made the time for it. And they offer nothing there as good as your soup and flatbread.”
“Well, I’m glad I brought them then.”
Her mouth curved up in that I-pleased-you smile that made him feel as if the sun had burst through clouds. His headache all but evaporated.
“How did you learn to cook?” he asked. “Your mother?”
She shook her head. He wished she’d left her glorious hair free, but today she’d confined it in that severe braid.
“No, I picked some of it up here and there through my nanny and au pair jobs. Then I took cooking classes at the Academy.”
“Have you thought about working in a restaurant? Opening one yourself?”
“Me?” Her eyebrows rose, and she put one slender hand against her starched shirtfront. “I…no. I’m not that type.”
“No?” He studied her face, watching as pink suffused her cheeks and her thick lashes came down to cover the expression in her eyes.
“Sara could do it,” she said. “She’s already on track to building a landscape design business. And Charlie…”
He drifted closer to Emmaline. “What about Charlie?”
“Total over-achiever. Right now she’s taking on the elementary school’s book fair, but she could organize and run an army, I swear. That parent-teacher group will never be the same.”
Lucas came near enough to count each of those sooty eyelashes and feel the warmth of her body reaching toward his. In order not to touch her, he fisted his hands in his pockets. “I’m sure you could do anything you put your mind to, Emmaline. And be a big success.”
“But you see…” She shrugged. “I just want to…to take care of someone—a household.” Her lashes lifted and her gaze met his. “Small stuff, huh?”
“Or a different sort of success.” Without thinking, he withdrew his hand from his pocket and brushed the back of it against her warm cheek. “You’re very good at taking care of someone. Of taking care of me.”
She gave him that sunshine-on-a-cloudy-day smile again. “My job, Mr. Curry,” she said, primly. “Sir.”
The sir was going to kill him. She was doing him in degree-by-degree, breaking down all his good intentions with those Mr. Currys and sirs and homemade soup lunches.
He was still stroking the side of her face, and he had no intention of stopping. Well, no will to stop, really.
But now wasn’t the time or place, he recalled, and he wasn’t even certain that messing around with his butler was any kind of good idea. It was something to be sorted out at another date. A later time.
Stepping back, he let his hand drop.
Emmaline cleared her throat and retreated until she bumped against the credenza. With a hand against it, she steadied herself. “I should—”
The phone on his desk buzzed. He frowned at it, then reached over to flip on the intercom. “Yes, George?”
“He’s at lunch,” came the cheeky voice. Rachel. If she wasn’t such a talented bug-detector, he’d fire her weird ass right now for the interruption.
“What is it you want?” he demanded.
“We have a bet going on out here. About the chick in the odd get-up.”
“Pot meet kettle,” he murmured, then raised his voice. “It’s none of your—”
“Is she a stripper? That’s what I have my money on.”
“For God’s sake.” Lucas flipped the intercom to Off. Then he dared a glance at Emmaline. “I’m sorry…”
She was shaking. With one hand over her mouth, the other arm flung across her midsection. Shaking.
With laughter.
He dropped his head, and felt a grin pull at the corners of his mouth as he looked down at the floor. Damn, the woman had totally turned around his mood. Who thought today would bring a smile to his face? “Emmaline…”
“I guess I can see it. Singing telegram, stripper.” Her laugh bubbled out, bright and amused and nearly a giggle. “I’m sorry if I messed with your reputation. I was going for…”
He looked up to see her sliding off the jacket. “Why did you come dressed like that?”
Without answering, she folded the garment inside out then attacked the buttons of her vest. Slipping it off, she placed it with the jacket on the credenza. Her tie took seconds to remove, and she flung it over the other clothes. With a lift of her chin, she unfastened the buttons at her throat to reveal the sweetest notch of smooth, olive skin. Then he watched her narrow wrists emerge as she rolled up her cuffs.
“How about this?” she finally asked, holding her arms out to the sides. “Better?”
He didn’t bother explaining that having her come out of his office less dressed than when she went in wouldn’t likely quiet the rumors. Instead, he snatched one of her hands and used it to bring her closer to him. “Emmaline. Why did you put the uniform back on?”
“I…” She breathed in deeply, but he kept his gaze trained on her face rather than bowing to base instinct to watch her lovely breasts rise and fall beneath crisp cotton. And that snap, click, whatever you wanted to call the instant of deep connection between them, fell into place again. His fingers threaded with hers, and he sensed the tense alertness in her body, the same that was in his. Their toes were lined up at the edge of a brink and it was dive or fly…he couldn’t say which.
“Why, Emmaline?” he insisted. “Why the uniform?”
Her throat moved as she swallowed. “To put…things back on a more formal footing. Like the beginning.”
But in the beginning they’d been two strangers groping in the back seat of a cab. It always came back to that, their rash, reckless, fiery first encounter that had been so right, so damn quick. “The uniform isn’t going to work.”
She pursed her lips.
God, like a kiss.
“Then what will?” she asked, her expression serious.
As if she expected him to have an answer. Nothing. Nothing will work, he thought, if you mean finding some way to halt what is going on between us.
There was going to be a next move. That was certain. And its timing might not be all that convenient. That was clear too.
“Let’s talk tonight,” he said. “We’ll figure out the best way to handle…everything.”
He made the promise in a firm voice, even though he had no idea what that “best way” might be.
Emmaline bundled her butler uniform into the laundry bag for the dry cleaner, knowing it was being retired for the rest of her employment with Mr. Curry. She sighed. The wool and starched cotton hadn’t done a thing to create an effective buffer between her and her boss, anyway.
The conversations between them were becoming more personal. The looks they exchanged more intimate. But she still had secrets she definitely didn’t want to share, and surrendering to her body’s urges that night in the hotel room had been one big letdown.
A humiliating flop.
So what was there for the two of them to talk about? Why was he insisting on the discussion? Would he explain the exact moment he’d realized her kisses were too clumsy or her eagerness a turn-off so that he’d needed an escape from Room 1712? That sounded like a fun conversation.
Not.
But he seemed determined to have it, so if she wasn’t allowed her pinstripes and knotted tie, then she needed to don another kind of armor. Searching through the items in her closet, she considered.
She knew about her face, her figure. Both had brought her attention since she was a girl.
They had brought her to Enzo’s attention.
In those first lonely months in Europe, she’d come to understand that what he’d wanted first was the shell of her. The beauty of her features and form. She’d been the perfect eye candy for his arm, the trophy that made him look even more of a success to others.
So for a while she’d hated her looks and blamed them for the circumstances that had sent her fleeing from home. As time wore on, however, she’d realized that it was the malleable quality Enzo had detected inside her that had been the real danger.
Her youth, her compliance and naiveté, had been just as important to him—more. Her willingness to allow him to lead the way in everything had been what his ever-hungry ego needed to appear a winner in the eyes he met in the mirror every day. And when he felt challenged—by her, someone else, life in general—then he took it out on her through belittlements…and worse.
Given time and distance, she’d seen the situation with more clarity. Bruises didn’t entirely fade away, past criticisms resulted in small permanent cracks here and there, but she knew herself now…and liked herself, outside and in.
She didn’t need to be a businesswoman or an organizational PTA whiz to be happy. Enjoying caring for people didn’t mean she wanted them to wipe their feet on her.
Coco D’Angelo, that pretty little helpless doll, had been morphed by years, solitude, and self-reflection into Emmaline Rossi. Emmaline Rossi, who knew when she was cornered by a smart, sexy, blue-eyed man into an uncomfortable situation that there were advantages to doing it wearing a pretty summer dress and after a careful application of make-up.
The sleeveless garment she chose was of soft rayon, gathered under the breasts, the color nearly black at the top and then fading grayer, finally becoming a soft pink at the below-the-knee hemline. It wasn’t provocative—well, the deep vee-neck might have been if she hadn’t used a sturdy safety pin to keep the cleavage peepshow under control. She wore wedge sandals in the same soft pink with straps that wound around her ankles. Lipstick the same shade, too, and she used extra mascara and then left her hair loose and wavy to her shoulders.
A spritz of perfume.
Now as confident as she could make herself, she headed into the kitchen. A seafood salad was already chilling for Mr. Curry’s dinner—she hoped he intended to get their conversation over with before the meal—but now she put together a tray of canapés. Bite-size stacks of melon, prosciutto, blue cheese, and basil; cucumber slices topped with a sliver of hard-boiled egg and two spears of chive; a few of the feta cheese puffs Mr. Curry liked so much.
As she gathered up some linen cocktail napkins from a nearby drawer, she frowned at them, thinking they might need a freshening with a hot, steamy iron. Then the doorbell rang.
Her head turned. Not him, not unless he’d left behind his house keys along with his cell phones and then forgotten to have her bring those to the office as well. It was too early for him, too, she assured herself, instructing her jumping heart to calm. She had a while longer before their awkward conversation was due.
Stella and her fiancé, Aaron, stood on the doorstep. Emmaline welcomed them in, and the younger woman explained she thought she might have left the book she was reading for her book group on the premises.
Emmaline frowned. “I haven’t seen it.”
“I thought you would have mentioned finding it,” Stella said, glancing around as she made her way toward the living area. “But I can’t think anywhere else it could be.”
Aaron sauntered behind her. “She’s a featherbrain,” he told Emmaline. “Honest to God, I think I might have to put her on a leash in case she wanders off and gets lost on the honeymoon.”
Stella flushed. “I misplaced a book, that’s all.”
“I keep telling you to bow out of that little club. Once we’re married you won’t have time for chick lit.”
I keep telling you to quit volunteering at the library. Once we’re married you’ll have better things to do than to read to toddlers.
Enzo’s voice echoed in Emmaline’s head, and a chill rushed over her skin, which doubled down when she noted the anxious expression on Stella’s face.
“It’s just one night a month,” the younger woman said.
Her fiancé shrugged. “Of course I’m not ordering you to quit, baby. Your choice.”
But Emmaline heard the subtext, or at least imagined she did—You’re expected to do as I say. Projection? Aaron wasn’t Enzo, she reminded herself. But God, it sounded uneasily familiar.
Then Aaron caught up to the bride-to-be and slung a casual arm around her neck. “I’ll help you look for it,” he said, smooth as silk.
Too smooth?
Emmaline tried to shake off the thought as they scattered to peek in drawers and behind cushions.
“Got it!” Aaron finally said, pulling the bright-covered novel from deep beneath the sofa. Then he glanced across the room and spoke to someone just entering the space.
“Lucas, my man, you’re going to have to censure your butler for not cleaning under the couch.”
Emmaline stiffened. The deep-cleaning crew moved all the furniture once a month on the day they washed the windows inside and out as well. She, however, ran the vacuum every morning, though only around the furniture, it was true. The incipient anxiety she’d been keeping at bay moved in and cast a vice around her forehead.
Mr. Curry spoke up then. “I have no complaints about Emmaline or her work,” he said mildly.
“Of course you don’t,” Stella rushed in to say, then made her way to her brother to kiss his cheek. “How are you?”
He smiled at her and ruffled her hair as if she were still a child. “Good. What’s up with the visit?”
“I lost a book.” She slid a smile at her fiancé. “But it’s found.”
“Ah,” Mr. Curry said, “that’s good.”
“How about offering a man a drink?” Aaron suggested. “I could use a V & T.”
Her boss threw Emmaline a quick glance then looked at his sister. “Can you stay a while?”
They could. Emmaline took herself into the kitchen to add to the canapé tray, not sure whether to be sad or glad about the turn of events. On the one hand, it postponed her discussion with Mr. Curry. On the other, she couldn’t avoid the bad feelings she got watching Stella and her fiancé interact.
He corrected her more than once, over little things like what variety of doodle dog an acquaintance had just adopted or the exact starting time of the matinee they’d attended. He tsked when her hand gesture knocked over a melon-and-prosciutto appetizer from the tidbit plate Emmaline had set in front of her, calling Stella “clumsy” in an amused way that sounded less than affectionate. With a blush, the young woman leaped to clean the tumbled food off the floor, but Mr. Curry—his preoccupied gaze glued to the setting sun—didn’t seem to notice either his future brother-in-law’s condescension nor his sister’s fretful movements.
God, Emmaline thought, moving swiftly to remove the small mess herself, that overblown concern she’d done something to displease was just too familiar.
As was the bruise she spotted on the younger woman’s inner arm.
“Stella,” Emmaline said, catching her narrow wrist. “What happened?”
“Oh, that,” she replied, offhand, pulling free of Emmaline’s hold. “I don’t even know.” Then she slipped back into her chair and engaged her brother in talk of the seating arrangements at the wedding reception.
As the minutes wore on, Emmaline couldn’t evade the growing pain throbbing in her head. She considered making her excuses and retiring to her rooms, but she also felt compelled to keep her eye on Stella. Aaron didn’t do anything overtly out-of-line, but casual criticisms were sprinkled into the conversation that Emmaline eavesdropped upon as she moved between the ocean terrace and the kitchen. The young woman was talking too fast, he said, and the TV show she was binge-watching was overrated. By the way, he thought Stella needed some private tennis lessons before they challenged his friends to mixed doubles again.
Mr. Curry continued to be oblivious, and though he managed to respond to his sister’s questions, Emmaline could tell he’d retreated to his own inner world—until suddenly he snaked out a hand to grab hers as she gathered up some empties. The tray she carried in her other hand wobbled, and he rescued it from danger by placing it on the table.
“Emmaline,” he said in a quiet voice, his gaze searching her face. “What’s the matter? What’s wrong?”
The concern on his face seemed to unleash more pain in her head that sent a rush of nausea to her belly. Dark spots swam in her vision.
He was instantly on his feet, a strong arm around her waist as he guided her inside to the soft-cushioned couch. When she made a low sound of protest, he tightened his hold on her. “I’ve got you. Nothing to worry about.”
Emmaline closed her eyes as he lowered her onto the cushion. “Do you say things like that on purpose?” she asked, her tone plaintive.
“What?” He drew a throw over her and then brushed her hair off her brow.
Without the energy or inclination to explain, Emmaline shook her head, then winced at the wave of pain that rushed over her scalp to squeeze her neck.
Stella rushed over. “Is she sick? Does—” She broke off. “Oh. She looks nearly as bad as you did after your last European trip. I hope it’s not that same awful flu.”
Your last European trip.
Though her head felt over-stuffed and muzzy, her brain latched onto the phrase. “You had the flu?” she murmured.
“Oh, a terrible flu,” Stella answered for him. “Came home without his luggage but looking like he’d carried his suitcases on his back all the way home from LAX.”
“Stel,” Mr. Curry said, “you made me that great concoction that helped my headache. Can you do that again for Emmaline?”
“Coming right up,” she said, cheery.
Emmaline struggled to sit up. “I can get it myself.”
Mr. Curry pushed her back down, his hand on her shoulder. “Let us take care of you.”
“But I’m the butler—”
“Shh,” he said. “I’ve got you.”
And at the repeat of those magic words, Emmaline stopped resisting and let him have his way with her.