The Boss and the Plain Jayne Bride Read online

  “You look great,” he said and greeted her with a continental kiss.

  During Jayne’s days at the agency, she’d seen a lot of such kissing going on and knew not too make too much of it, but here she was in a new outfit that made her feel elegant, being kissed by the most gorgeous man in the universe for all to see.

  Pretty fantastic, now that she thought about it.

  The gentle pressure of Garrett’s hand in the small of her back as they followed the hostess to their table gave Jayne a warm feeling in the pit of her stomach. Would it be so terrible to pretend—just a little—as long as Garrett didn’t suspect?

  Mirrors tiled the back wall of the restaurant. Jayne could see the handsome man behind her, and the way women’s eyes swiveled and watched their progress across the room. Garrett would always draw women’s eyes, she thought.

  “Garrett!” cried a female voice. And then, incredibly, “Oh, and Jayne! Hi!”

  Jayne searched for the speaker and saw Micky, the receptionist from Venus, sitting two tables away with three other young, overly attractive people—the sort who normally intimidated Jayne.

  But Micky wore a wide, all inclusive smile as she introduced Garrett to them as her boss, and Jayne as the Venus accountant who “knows everything there is to know about numbers. When I start making real money, she’s the one I’m going to hire,” Micky told the others.

  “That will be the best decision you’ll ever make,” Garrett said, smiling down at Jayne.

  Pleased, she felt herself blushing.

  Micky chattered on for a bit, then made shooing motions with her hands. “Anyway, you two go on to your table. You deserve a night out after all the time you’ve spent cooped up in the office.”

  Garrett raised a hand in farewell and immediately steered Jayne toward the waiting hostess.

  “Micky seems nice,” Jayne said as she slid onto the gold velvet banquette against the wall. The fabric caught the material of her skirt and raised it a few inches above her knees. “She’s gone out of her way to be helpful while I’ve been at the agency.”

  “She’s a sweet kid,” he agreed, taking the chair opposite her.

  Jayne surreptiously tugged at her skirt hem. There was no way to pull it back to where she wanted it without drawing attention to what she was doing. But who was going to see? The tablecloth covered her legs. She left her wayward skirt alone. “Doesn’t Micky want to model? She looks like she could.”

  “We book her locally when we can, but her boyfriend doesn’t like her traveling or working weekends. She was all set to head for Europe this summer and build her portfolio until she hooked up with him.”

  Nicky V’s had capitalized on its current popularity by adding extra tables and it was packed tonight and noisy tonight. Jayne leaned closer so she wouldn’t feel as if she was shouting. “Is her boyfriend one of the men we met?”

  Garrett’s gaze dipped downward before he shook his head. “No. I saw him once when he came to pick her up after work. He’s more the football player type.” His eyes flickered downward again.

  All at once, Jayne remembered her neckline and the fact that she wasn’t wearing a blouse. Sitting up abruptly, she grabbed the menu to hide the fact that he’d flustered her.

  “Yes, I suppose we’d better decide what we’re going to order,” he said mildly.

  When Jayne peeked at him over the menu, she swore she saw him smiling.

  What if he thought she’d leaned over on purpose? What if he thought she was flirting with him? How embarrassing. No more pretending. Men like Garrett did not, except in fairy tales, end up with Plain Janes. So, until she got home, she was going to be all business.

  “See anything you like?” Garrett asked and Jayne realized she’d been staring at the menu without reading anything on it.

  “I, ah...” Good grief. Every entrée had an explanatory paragraph beneath it. Words like “goat cheese,” “endive,” “jicama” and lots of purees of this and essences of that jumped at her. What if she mispronounced one of them? Where was “fried” or “baked” or plain old “sauce”? She knew how to pronounce those.

  Obviously she was way out of the restaurant loop. She should pay more attention when Sylvia went on about her dates.

  “Do you like fish?” Garnett asked.

  “Fish is...okay,” she said, trying to figure out if he liked fish.

  “The sea bass is good here.”

  “Then I’ll give that a try.” Honestly, if Garrett had suggested pan-seared shoe leather with puree of mango spiked with cilantro, she would have agreed.

  With the ordering hurdle out of the way, Jayne decided to bring up the topic of Venus’s new business plan. Folding her hands on the table to remind herself not to lean forward, she began with a polite, “I enjoyed meeting your family today.”

  He grinned. “You look so serious. Don’t be. I know you’re thinking that they didn’t pay much attention to what we said, but realistically, you can’t expect them to instantly absorb financial data that took us a week to generate.”

  She hoped they’d absorbed the fact that they were broke.

  “They have different strengths, which you’ll see when we interview new talent. And my parents have so many contacts they can place almost anyone.”

  Jayne felt ashamed of herself because she had thought the Charleses, with the exception of Garrett, were mental lightweights. Garrett was right. She wouldn’t know the first thing about acquiring models and if they sat her down and started spouting information at her, she’d probably be bored, too. “I just want them to fully understand what we’re doing because...” She trailed off. That was a road she shouldn’t be going down, either.

  Garrett leaned forward. “Because of George.”

  Jayne nodded, remaining stiffly upright.

  “Sasha actually figured out what happened there.” Before she realized what he was doing, he stood, moved between their table and the one next to it, and joined her on the velvet banquette. “This is better,” he said settling into place. “We could hardly hear each other.”

  Two people weren’t meant to sit on this side of the table, but that apparently didn’t bother Garrett. His leg was pressed up against hers and her skirt was halfway up her thigh. He drew his arm across the back of the banquette behind her. “As I said, Sasha’s figured out what happened with George.”

  Jayne could feel the heat of Garrett’s body and the hard length of his leg. Her leg was hard, too, but that was due to the black, industrial-strength-support-andcontrol-top panty hose she was wearing and not muscle. She hoped he couldn’t tell the difference.

  “It sounds like his problem was a plain, garden variety inferiority complex,” Garrett said. “Sasha said he was hitting on the models—he even asked her out and he must be thirty or thirty-five years older than she is. She says he wasn’t having much luck and I gather it became somewhat of a joke around the office.”

  “And you think he knew?”

  Garrett reached across the table for his wineglass. “I not only think he knew, I think he became jealous and resentful and tried to compensate by making risky investments in hopes they’d pay off big and he’d have a lot of money to flash around.”

  “Except it wasn’t his money.”

  “It was at first, but he ran into trouble, borrowed from Venus and never could pay it back.”

  That made sense. Jayne hadn’t been able to figure out what would motivate a business manager into making such speculative investments. There wasn’t any need and the risk was too high. “He knew you’d eventually discover what he’d been doing, so he left.”

  “Right. While you were working out the figures last week, I compared dates and timing. He was running our billing receipts through another account before depositing them in escrow. He’d dip into the market for a few hours, sell and then deposit the original amount into our escrow fund.”

  More laws George had broken. “And everything was great as long as he made money.”

  “Right.” Garrett
took a sip of his wine. “Do you realize that we’ve spent the evening so far talking about me and my family and the business when I really wanted to learn about you?” As he spoke, he slipped his arm off the banquette onto her shoulder.

  And here Jayne thought she’d been dealing admirably with having Garrett sitting as close as possible. He’d seemed laid-back and matter-of-fact about it, so she’d tried to be casual as well. She’d made conversation and everything. True, she hadn’t attempted to drink her wine, or even water because every time she moved, her skirt slid farther up her leg, but she didn’t think he’d noticed.

  She could only imagine how she looked, with her hands clasped tightly in her lap, providing an anchor for the skirt, while Garrett sprawled comfortably next to her.

  “So tell me about you,” Garrett prompted.

  Jayne thought she could risk handling the wineglass. She reached forward, felt her skirt ease and started talking. “I’ve been with Pace Waterman. for over six ye—” She’d leaned back and discovered herself against Garrett’s shoulder. She shifted, but Garrett held her fast.

  “This is more comfortable. You’re fine here, aren’t you?”

  No, she was not fine! How could she be fine when every second she spent nestled against him, surrounded by his warmth became a struggle to keep from flinging her arms around him and saying, “Kiss me, you fool”?

  Jayne took a swallow of her wine. “Six years. I’ve been with Pace Waterman for six years,” she said determinedly.

  “What do you do when you aren’t an accountant with Pace Waterman?”

  “I—” What did she do? Watch TV? Go out to eat or to the movies with Sylvia? Have the odd blind date here and there? “I think about being an accountant with Pace Waterman.”

  Garrett laughed, a low, intimate chuckle that Jayne felt as well as heard. “I’ll have to give you something else to think about.” His look made her shiver.

  “Oh, you have!” Jayne blurted out without fully thinking her answer through.

  “And what is that?”

  You. She swallowed. “Well, Sylvia and I are planning a cruise.”

  Garrett thought for a moment. “Sylvia is your friend who’s with Sandor.”

  “I guess that’s where she is,” Jayne grumbled.

  “She is. They’ve gone clubbing.”

  There was a tone in Garrett’s voice she couldn’t identify. “Is there something wrong with that?”

  Shaking his head, Ganett set his glass on the table. “I wouldn’t worry about her. My impression is that your friend has had experience with the type of man Sandor is.”

  “What type is that?”

  “The fun-for-the-moment type. Now if he were with you, I’d worry.”

  Jayne made a face. “Because I’m not a fun-for-the-moment type?”

  “Because you’d get hurt. Sandor’s interest never lasts long.”

  “And you think that won’t hurt Sylvia?”

  “Sylvia looks like she knows when to protect her emotions. You haven’t learned how yet.”

  He was right, but Jayne didn’t like him being right. It meant he was too perceptive for comfort. Meant he might know how he was affecting her. “Have you learned to protect your emotions?” she asked to divert the conversation away from her.

  He nodded. “You learn quick in the modeling business.”

  Before Jayne could question him further, their waiter arrived with a stuffed mushroom appetizer Garrett had ordered to split with her. Instead of moving back to his seat the way Jayne expected him to, he signaled the waiter to move his place setting.

  With his arm no longer around her shoulders, Jayne eased to one side a bit, which twisted her skirt. Why hadn’t she realized before that velvet was such a vicious fabric?

  As soon as the waiter had set her plate in front of her, Jayne saw why Garrett had wanted to split the dish. Half a grilled portabello mushroom with a generous lump of crabmeat sat on a green nest. Jayne liked mushrooms as well as anyone, but this was a lot of mushroom.

  She picked up her fork and put a tiny bit of the crabmeat on it.

  “No, no.” Garrett took the fork from her. “You need to experience all the flavors simultaneously. Let me.”

  As Jayne watched, Garrett speared a little greenery, shaved off a bit of mushroom and managed to balance a flake or two of crabmeat on the fork. Then he held it out to her.

  Jayne made as though to take it in her hand, but with an amused look he murmured, “Open your mouth.”

  Jayne did, more from surprise than anything else.

  Slowly Garrett set the fork on her tongue and Jayne closed her mouth around it. Just as slowly, he withdrew the fork. “How is it?”

  She’d forgotten to register the taste. Quickly chewing, she swallowed. “It’s good.”

  “Too fast.” Garrett created another bite for her. “This time, savor the taste.”

  He held her gaze as she slowly chewed and swallowed. “Well?”

  Jayne smiled and nodded, glad speech wasn’t required.

  “There.” He gave her back her fork.

  Although Jayne took tiny stacked bites and swallowed them slowly, she didn’t really appreciate the chef’s combination of flavors.

  She was thinking about Garrett. He was being... nice to her. Or something. She had to remember that in his world, people were more flamboyant in their actions. Hadn’t he already warned her to protect her emotions?

  Except Jayne was afraid that where Garrett was concerned, his warning had come too late.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  GARRETT took in Jayne’s stiff body posture and mentally shook his head. He’d done everything but draw her an equation to let her know he was interested in her.

  Maybe he should draw her an equation.

  He’d never met anyone as determinedly unresponsive. He didn’t believe it was because she wasn’t attracted to him. He couldn’t be misreading the signals. No, when he remembered their first several meetings, the signals had been endearingly clear. The problem was now, she wasn’t signaling back.

  She didn’t yet realize he was interested in her.

  Was she still hung up on his looks? Garrett felt a fleeting disappointment. He’d been judged on his looks his entire life; it was a reality of the business he was in. By the same token, he’d learned to look beyond people’s appearances to the person they were inside. He yearned to find someone who could do so as well. Someone who would like and love him for himself, not the way he looked. After working with Jayne for so many hours, he’d thought their comfortable working relationship could expand to a personal one.

  But Jayne was obviously having difficulty with the transition.

  “You were going to tell me about yourself,” he prompted, not ready to give up yet.

  She immediately dropped her fork and put on her serious expression. He supposed he shouldn’t tell her that she looked cute when she did so, but she did.

  “I graduated at the top of my class at—”

  “Jayne,” he interrupted her gently. “I’m already convinced that you’re a stellar accountant. I want to know everything else about you.”

  She looked at a loss.

  Garrett flung out a handful of conversational starters. “Do you travel? What kind of books do you like to read? Any hobbies or hidden talents? If you could go back in time and have dinner with anyone, who would it be and why?”

  He expected her to laugh and pick one. Instead, gazing off into the distance, she recited her answers. “I went to Mexico with my parents once.”

  Garrett started to comment, but Jayne continued before he had a chance.

  “I read financial journals, magazines and newspapers mostly, but I used to like science fiction. My only unusual talent is that if you tell me a date, I can tell you what day of the week it is and I’d like to go back in time and have dinner with my birth parents.” When she finished, she looked back at him inquiringly. “Is that the sort of information you wanted?”

  She’d distilled a potentia
l thirty minutes of conversation into a few seconds. Nonplussed, Garrett stared at her. “Jayne, this isn’t an interview.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He gestured. “I want a little more conversational give and take. You mentioned ‘birth’ parents. Does that mean you’re adopted?”

  She nodded. “My parents were middle-aged when they adopted me.”

  Aha, a clue. “No brothers or sisters?”

  She shook her head.

  The only child of no doubt adoring older parents. Garrett began to understand where her serious demeanor came from, although she could have just as easily been spoiled. “Do you often think about finding your birth parents?”

  “Oh, no!”

  She looked upset and he could tell that she didn’t want him to think she felt any disloyalty to the parents who’d raised her.

  “They were teenagers and couldn’t take care of a baby. I figure they’ve both made new lives. Of course, I wonder what they looked like. And it would be interesting to sit and talk with them, just to find out what kind of people they were then. But now—” she raised a shoulder “—they’d just be strangers.”

  After she revealed that glimpse into her background, Garrett had better luck in drawing her out. During their meal, he slowly and carefully chipped away at her reserve and gradually, Jayne relaxed around him, opening up more and more.

  As they talked over coffee, he was even able to put his arm behind her again without her holding herself stiffly upright.

  He enjoyed the feel of her against him, with her soft curves and creamy skin. He liked watching her talk, enjoyed the way her small, well-formed mouth moved.

  He liked what she had to say, too, and the way she listened to his views and opinions, feeling free to agree or disagree.

  In fact, it was when she was disagreeing with him that he found her most attractive because it demonstrated that what he thought mattered to her. His appearance wasn’t a factor in the discussion.

  Too, with Jayne, he knew he wouldn’t have to talk about any of the aspects of the fashion world, which made up the bulk of the conversations with his family and those who worked at the agency.