The Bridal Suite

“I don’t think puppets have strings,” Jeannie said carefully. “I mean, it’s marionettes that—”

“It was just a figure of speech,” Dana said angrily. “Oh, that man. How can he be so blind?”

“Dana, look, I think maybe you’re going overboard, you know?”

“Well, you think wrong. There’s a serious problem with the new code, thanks to my boss. Dave’s screwing up, big time.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m positive,” Dana took a deep breath. “He’s got a drinking problem.”

“You’re joking.”

“I’m dead serious. He doesn’t slur his speech or fall down in a heap, but there are times he’s so drunk he can hardly see the monitor.”

“But—but surely, someone would have noticed—”

“Someone did. Me.”

“Did you say something about it to him?”

“Yes, of course.”

“And?”

“And, he denied it. Then he said that no one would believe me. He’s the one with a name. With experience. So now I spend half my time trying to catch his errors, and the other half trying to keep up with my own work, and the result is that everything’s a total mess.”

Jeannie chewed on her lip. “Damn,” she said softly. “What a spot to be in. Well, you’ll just have to go to McKenna. I know snitching on Dave won’t be fun, but—”

“I have gone to him,” Dana said furiously. “What do you think I’ve been telling you for the last fifteen minutes?”

“You told him Dave’s a drunk?”

“No. I knew he’d never believe me. But I told him the code’s unstable.”

“What did he say?”

“He said he knows there are problems, and that Dave told him I was the cause, and that he realizes I’m upset because I didn’t get that promotion.” Dana’s eyes flashed. “And, until he got around to telling me I might want to look for another job, he complimented me for complaining in such a ladylike way—”

The door swung open. Charlie, the custodian, beamed at Dana and Jeannie. He had a mop in one hand and a bucket in the other.

“Top o’ the mornin’, ladies,” he said cheerfully. “My apologies for disturbin’ you. I did knock, but I guess you didn’t hear me.”

“That’s okay,” Jeannie shot a glance at Dana. “We were just about finished in here.”

“Makin’ girl talk, were you?” Charlie beamed his grandfatherly smile. “And primpin’, I suppose. Well, darlins! you can rest assured that there’s no need. The both of you ladies are perfect, just as you are.”

Jeannie smothered a groan as she saw the look on Dana’s face.

“Indeed,” Dana said coldly. “Whatever would we girls do without a man’s stamp of approval?”

Charlie, blissfully unaware of the quicksand beneath his feet, grinned broadly. “Isn’t that a fact?”

“You want a fact?” Dana demanded, marching toward him. Charlie’s smile faded and he flattened himself against the wall. “We are not girls,” she said, wagging her finger under his nose, “and we are not ladies. We are women. As for needing a man’s stamp of approval—”

Jeannie grabbed Dana’s arm and hustled her from the bathroom. Halfway out the door, she turned and gave Charlie an apologetic smile. “It’s nothing personal,” she hissed. “She’s just upset.”

“I am not upset,” Dana said, spinning around. “I am just tired of pretending that I need patting on the head, as if I were a—a poodle instead of a person.”

Charlie’s baffled glance went from one woman to the other. “I never said one word against poodles, Miss.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake! I didn’t... This has nothing to do with dogs. I simply meant...” Dana threw up her arms. “Men,” she snorted, and marched off.

Moments later, Charlie stood before Griffin McKenna’s massive desk, his bushy white brows still drawn together in a knot.

“So, there I was, about to mop the ladies’ room—pardon me, the women’s room—and the next thing I knew, the young lady said I’d insulted her dog. I ask you, sir, why would I? I like dogs. ‘Course, she says it’s a poodle. Try as I might, I can’t claim to be fond of them little things. Can’t stand their yappin’ all the time, if you know what I mean.”

Griffin nodded wisely. That was the way he hoped it looked, at any rate, but he couldn’t be sure he was pulling it off. What in hell was the old guy babbling about?

He liked Charlie. But his mind was on other things. Like putting on a good showing at the convention that started tomorrow in Miami. Like landing a couple of big accounts with Data Bytes’s new financial database program, to put the company back in the black.

Like figuring out why a woman as gorgeous as Dana Anderson should be so impossible.

Griffin frowned. Why waste time thinking about her? She was gorgeous, yeah, but she was nothing but a pain in the rear. If only she’d admit she didn’t know everything, and do what she was told.

Not that he could imagine that happening. The perfect Ms. Anderson taking orders? And from a man? He almost laughed.

Still, there had to be some guy out there, somewhere, who could tame her. It wouldn’t be easy, but it would be worth it to turn all that anger and fire and single-minded determination into passion, the sort of passion beautiful women were meant to experience.

“...Just said that the two of ’em were pretty little things. I suppose her poodle is, too.”

Griffin dragged his thoughts back to Charlie. The poor guy was really worked up, but about what? Griffin was no closer to an answer now than he’d been when the old fellow first came bustling through the door five minutes ago, with the ferocious Miss Macy snapping at his heels. The woman was a leftover from prior management and insisted on defending the door to his office with the zeal of a junkyard dog, despite all his reminders that Data Bytes’s employees were free to see him, anytime, anyplace, about anything.

“...Wife’s sister had a poodle once. Nasty little thing it was, all teeth and a bark high enough to make your ears ring.”

Griffin nodded in sympathy. He leaned forward, picked up his pen and scribbled a note on the pad Macy had centered neatly on his desk blotter.

“Early retirement package for Macy?” he wrote. “Put junkyard dog out to pasture.” Which was a mixed metaphor if ever he’d seen one. It was just that Charlie kept going on about dogs...

Griffin focused his attention on the old man who surely deserved it, considering that he’d made it past Macy, and with his mop and scrub bucket still in his hands.

“...Best come straight to you, sir, seein’ as you said there was an open door policy. Right?”

“Right. Absolutely.” Griffin cleared his throat. “Although, actually, I’m not quite certain what the problem seems to—”

“Well, sir, the young lady thinks I insulted her and maybe even her poodle. And I didn’t.”

Griffin rubbed his hand across his forehead. This was what came of defying your own advisors, all of whom thought he was crazy to go in and spend a couple of months at the helm of each company he purchased. He’d always disagreed...until now.

“Who knows what she’ll do? Complain to you, I s’pose. All this nonsense I read, about sexual harrass...whatever.” Charlie looked stricken. “She had this real angry look in her eyes—green, they are, and cold as can be.”

An icy draft seemed to waft across the back of Griffin’s neck. “She has green eyes?”

“Yes, sir. It had been on the tip of my tongue to tell her they were the color of emeralds but, thank the saints, I never got that far. Anyways, I thought I might do well to come and talk with you.”

“And the lady’s name?” Griffin asked, though he knew. Dammit, he knew.

“Her friend called her—did I mention there were two young ladies, Mr. McKenna?”

“Yes. Yes, you did. What did her friend call her, Charlie?”

“Dana. And if I never see the woman again, it’ll be way too soon. You understand, sir?”

Did he understand? Griffin smiled tightly as he rose to his feet and offered Charlie his hand.

“I hope I did the right thing, comin’ to you, sir,” Charlie said. “I don’t want to get the girl—the woman—in any trouble, you understand.”

“Wipe her from your mind, Charlie. You won’t have any more problems with Dana Anderson.”

“You’ll have a talk with her, will you? Tell her I didn’t mean to insult her dog?”

“Indeed,” Griffin said as he eased the old man out the door and shut it after him.

Oh, yes. He’d have a talk with Ms. Dana Anderson. Damn right, he would. The woman was trying to make Dave look bad, and now she’d upset a nice old man. She was Trouble with a capital T, and eliminating trouble was what Griffin did best.

Whistling softly between his teeth, he strolled to his desk. His glance fell on the note he’d made about Macy. With a sigh, he grabbed it, crumpled it up and slam-dunked it into the wastepaper basket.

Macy was a dragon, but she was a dragon who knew how to do her job.

Dana Anderson was a different story. Let her go make life difficult for somebody else. Let her bake cakes, or sew curtains, take dictation or type letters, let her do a woman’s job instead of storming into the business world and making trouble. And if she couldn’t accept her rightful place in life, then she could go find a bunch of leftover female twit-heads from the seventies, rip off her bra and burn it.

Griffin caught his breath. An image filled his mind. He saw Dana standing beside a blazing fire, her green eyes locked to his as she let down that mass of streaked golden hair and then, with heart-stopping slowness, took off not just her bra but every stitch she wore, until she had nothing on except her own soft, rose-flushed skin.

Naked, she’d be even lovelier than he’d dreamed. And yes, dammit, he had dreamed of her, though it galled him to admit it.

Griffin shut his eyes. The image was so real. He could feel the heat of the fire and hear the soft beat of drums somewhere off in the darkness of the night. He could see Dana smile, then run the tip of her tongue across her lips. Her hands lifted; she thrust them into her hair. Her head fell back and she began to dance. For him. Only for him...

Griffin blinked, cursed, and grabbed for the telephone.

“Miss Macy,” he barked. “Send Dana Anderson in here, on the double.”

“Mr. Forrester’s here. He wants to see you, sir.”

“All right, send him in. And then get hold of the Anderson woman.”

“Of course, sir.”

Griffin sat down. He’d give Forrester five minutes, although, to tell the truth, the man was becoming an annoyance. Still, there was no harm in a little delay. In fact, it would make what came next all the sweeter, when he finally gave the blonde with the green eyes and the disposition of a wet tabby cat exactly what she’d been asking for.

Smiling, he tipped back his chair and put his feet up on his desk.

The mere thought of the Anderson babe cooling her heels on the unemployment line was enough to make his day.

CHAPTER TWO

DANA was neck-deep in work.

Unfortunately, none of it was hers. She was too busy fixing up Dave’s disasters to pay any attention to her own stuff.

Her tiny cubicle was crowded with files, and her desk was strewn with papers. Memos fought for space with a clutter of computer disks and Styrofoam cups. “The Neat Freak,” Dave had dubbed her long before he’d gotten his promotion, but neatness had gone the way of the dodo bird. How could you be neat, when the world was crashing down around your ears?

She’d spent the past hour hunched over the keyboard, hoping to find a way to debug the latest problem in the code. Dana’s fingers raced across the keyboard. Numbers scrolled down the screen of her monitor. She paused, scanned the numbers, then hit the “enter” key.

“Please,” she said under her breath, “let it be right.”

It wasn’t.

Not that she’d expected it would be. Mistakes, not miracles, were too often the inevitable result in the wonderful world of computing.

If only Griffin McKenna could get that through his thick skull....

His thick, handsome skull.

Dana muttered a word McKenna surely wouldn’t have approved hearing a woman say. She glared at the monitor. Then she sighed, sat back and reached for the closest Styrofoam cup. An inch of black sludge sloshed in the cup’s bottom. She made a face, held her breath, and glugged it down. After a minute, she looked at the monitor again.

McKenna’s face, complete with its smug, self-confident smirk, seemed to flicker like a ghostly apparition on the screen.

“That’s right,” she said. “Smile, McKenna. Why wouldn’t you? The world is your oyster.” Angrily, she tapped the keys again, deleting the numbers, but McKenna’s image still lingered. “I should have quit,” she muttered. “I should have told that man exactly what he can do with this job.”

It wasn’t too late. She could pick up the phone, dial his office...

She was reaching for the receiver when the phone rang.

“Hello,” she snarled.

“Dana?”

It was Arthur. Dana shut her eyes.

“Oh,” she said. “It’s you.”

“Were you expecting someone else, my dear?”

Dana shot a glance at the monitor, as if she half expected to find McKenna’s face still etched onto the glass.

“No,” she said. “No, not at all. I just—I’m, ah, I’m awfully busy just now, Arthur, so if you wouldn’t mind—”

“Of course, Dana. I only wanted to say hello.”

“Hello, then,” she said, trying not to sound brusque, “and now, if you’ll excuse me...”

“Will I see you this evening?”

“No,” she said. “I mean, yes. I mean...”

Dammit. She was being rude, and she was babbling, and it was all because of McKenna. She flashed another quick look at the screen. He was still there, smirking. She stuck out her tongue, then rolled her eyes. What had happened to the rational thought process she was so proud of?

“Arthur.” She took a deep breath. “Are you free for lunch? Because if you are, could you meet me at...” Dana paused and did a mental run-through of the restaurants between Arthur’s office and hers. McKenna might eat in any one of them, and he was the last person she wanted to see right now. “At Portofino,” she said, plucking the name out of the air. It was a name she recalled from a recent review in the Times.

“Portofino. Of course. But...all you all right, Dana?”

“I’m fine. It’s just... It’s just that I need you.”

“Oh, my dear,” Arthur said, and she didn’t realize he might have gotten the wrong impression until she was on her way out the door.

But by then, it was too late.

Griffin had been in a lot of restaurants in his life, but never in one that reminded him of a chapel.

If only he’d been paying attention when Cynthia had turned up unexpectedly at his office, smiling her perfect smile, looking as if she’d just stepped out of a bandbox—whatever the hell that might be—asking if he’d like to join her for lunch.

Sure, he’d said, even though he knew he should have come up with some excuse because Cynthia was beginning to push things a little too hard. But his thoughts had been on Dana Anderson, and how much pleasure there’d be in firing her, and the next thing he’d known, he and Cynthia had been standing inside this super-trendy, self-conscious watering hole where violins violined and trysters trysted.

“What is this place?” he’d muttered.

“It’s called Portofino,” Cynthia had whispered, giving him a tremulous smile. “Your mother said the Times gave it a terrific write-up.”

My mother, the matchmaker, Griffin had thought grimly, but he’d managed to smile. Apparently, it was time for another little chat. Marilyn McKenna was wise, sophisticated and channing...but she never gave up. She had decided, a couple of years before, that it was time he married and settled down, and she’d switched her considerable energies from her newest charity to getting him to do just that. Poor Cynthia didn’t know it, but she was his mother’s latest attempt at moving him toward the goal.

“If you’d rather go someplace else,” Cynthia had said, her perfect smile trembling just a little...

“No,” Griffin had said, because that was exactly what’d he been thinking. “No, this is fine.”

It wasn’t fine. The Times might love Portofino but as far as he was concerned, the place was a total loser. He liked being able to identify the food on his plate, something you could not do in the artificial twilight of the restaurant, and if the captain or the sommelier or the waiter slid by one more time, smiling with oily deference and asking, sotto voce, if everything were all right, he was going to say no, by God, it wasn’t, and would somebody please turn up the lights, dump half the bordelaise sauce off what might yet prove to be a slab of rare roast beef, and take away these flowers before he started listening for a Bach fugue to come drifting from the kitchen?

Griffin smothered a sigh. The truth was that he’d do no such thing. He’d come here of his own free will, which made paying the consequences for his stupidity an obligation.

The captain had seated them at a table for two behind the perfect fronds of an artificial palm tree. The fronds had dipped into his soup and his salad. Now, they were dipping into his beef.

“Isn’t this romantic?” Cynthia sighed.

“Yes,” Griffin said bravely, brushing aside a frond. “Yes, it is.”

“I just knew you’d like it,” Cynthia said, batting her lashes.

He’d never noticed that before, that she batted her lashes. He’d read the phrase in books but until this moment, he hadn’t thought about what it meant. Blink. Blink, blink. It looked weird. Did all women do that, to get a man’s attention? He couldn’t imagine the Anderson woman doing it. She’d probably never batted a lash in her life.

“Griffin?”

Griffin looked up. Cynthia was smiling at him. Nothing new there; she almost always smiled at him. Not like the charming Ms. Anderson, who always glared.

“Griffin.” Cynthia gave a tinkling little laugh and cocked her head at a pretty angle. “You seem to be a million miles away.”

“I’m sorry, Cyn.” Griffin cleared his throat. “I, ah, I keep thinking about that conference.”

“The one in Florida? Your mother mentioned it.”

Give me a break, Mother!

“Yes,” he said pleasantly. “It should be interesting. I’ve never been to a software convention before.”

“I envy you,” Cynthia said, and sighed.

Griffin’s dark brows angled upward. “I didn’t know you were interested in computers.”

She laughed gaily. “Oh, Griffin! Aren’t you amusing? I meant that I envied you for getting away from this cold weather to spend a long weekend in Florida. I only wish I had that opportunity.”

Griffin’s jaw clenched. Marilyn the Matchmaker was really pushing it this time.

“Yes,” he said politely, “I suppose it sounds terrific, but I doubt if I’ll even get to set foot on the sand. I’ll be too busy rushing from meeting to meeting.”

“Ah,” Cynthia gazed down at her plate. “I see.”

Griffin sighed. No. She didn’t see. She was a nice girl, but she was wasting her time. Sooner or later, he was going to have to find a way to tell her that.

It was true, she would undoubtedly make some man a fine wife. She was pretty. Actually, she was beautiful. She was well-educated, too, but she wasn’t the kind of woman who was bothered by the fact that she was a woman; she understood that there was a difference between the sexes. Griffin had had enough of male-bashing broads to last a lifetime. Any man would, who’d come of age within the past couple of decades.

Cynthia was like a breath of fresh air. She had no agenda and no career goals. She didn’t look upon men as the enemy. She liked being a woman. She understood the difference between the sexes, and the difference pleased her.

There was no question as to what would make Cynthia happy. She would be content to be a man’s helpmate. To bear his children. To stay at home, cook his meals and clean his house...metaphorically, anyway, because, of course, there’d be a staff of servants to do all of that. The point was, Cynthia would not want the rules bent to accommodate her. She wouldn’t leave you wondering if she’d say “thank you” if you opened her car door for her or accuse you of trying to treat her as if she were the weaker sex.

Griffin knew that if he’d been looking for a wife, he’d have looked no further.

But he wasn’t looking for a wife. Not yet. Maybe not ever. His life was full and exciting, just the way it was. He loved his work, and his freedom, the right to come and go as he pleased, when he pleased. Not that he didn’t enjoy curtailing that freedom from time to time. The world was full of gorgeous women who were eager to share his life for a few weeks or months, no commitments asked. They were not wife material, his mother had said more than once, and each time she did, Griffin nodded thoughtfully and breathed a silent prayer of thanks that they were not.

But—and it was one hell of a big “but”—if he ever did decide it was time to settle down, and if Cynthia was still available, he might just look her up. He liked her well enough; he supposed he could even learn to love her...and if he couldn’t imagine taking her in his arms, the way he’d thought about taking Dana Anderson in his arms, and making love on the warm sands of a tropical beach, so what? Wild passion wasn’t what married life was all about.

Griffin frowned. Dammit, it wasn’t what the Anderson woman was all about, either. Why did he keep thinking about her and that silly beach?

Ms. Anderson, making love on a beach. The very idea was laughable. She’d probably never had a date in her life. She’d probably never...

Griffin jerked back in his seat.

No. It couldn’t be!

But it was. There, directly across the restaurant, tucked away in a cozy little nook, sat Dana Anderson...and a man.

What was she doing here? Griffin would have bet anything that she had her lunch in a health food store, or quaffed yogurt at her desk. Instead, here she was amidst the palm fronds and velvet drapes in the pseudo-romantic, sickeningly phony confines of Portofino. And she was with a guy.

An attentive one.

Griffin’s frown deepened.

The man could have been chosen for her by central casting. He was perfect, from his tortoise-shells to the bow tie that bobbed on his Adam’s apple.

“Monsieur?”

Griffin looked up. The waiter hovered beside the table.

“Do monsieur and madame wish dessert? A tarte, perhaps, or a Madeline Supreme?”

What Griffin wanted was to keep watching the Anderson babe and her boyfriend, but Cynthia had that I’m-hurt-but-I’m-being-brave look on her face again. The waiter, who seemed to see nothing strange in a French menu and a French accent in a restaurant named for a town in Portugal and warned, perhaps, by the look on Griffin’s face, drew back as if expecting to be attacked.

Griffin did his best to smile politely.

“Nothing for me, thank you,” he said. “Cyn? What will you have?”

Cynthia listened attentively while the waiter made his way through a seemingly endless list. Anderson—Ms. Anderson—wasn’t doing much of anything. She certainly wasn’t eating. Griffin couldn’t fault her for that. He couldn’t see her plate very clearly, thanks to the near-darkness that hung over the room like a pall, but from what he could observe, she was eating what looked like a taxidermist’s special.

And the Bow Tie was worried. You could see it on his face. He was looking at Anderson the way a puppy looks at an out-of-reach bone.

Well, who could blame him? Despite the plastered-back hair, the tweed jacket and the loose-fitting twill trousers, Dana Anderson was something to look at.

Griffin frowned. Yeah, well, piranhas were interesting to look at, too.

The guy said something. Anderson started to answer, stopped, then began to speak. She was really getting into it now, gesturing with her hands, leaning forward and risking immolation from the candles flickering in the floral centerpiece. She took the guy’s hand in hers, and the idiot positively beamed. There was no other way to describe it.