His Girl Friday

“I don’t like it. Can’t you buy something with a V neck?” He glowered. “Failing that, you might try a shirtwaist dress, they button up.”

“What is this fixation about the way I look?” she burst out. “My hair’s wrong, you don’t like my clothes, now I button them wrong…!”

“I don’t know.” He took a draw from the cigarette, his eyes going involuntarily to her long, elegant legs where they were crossed. The skirt came just above her knees, and he admired the fluid lines of her body with new interest. “Maybe my father’s right, and I shouldn’t have a secretary who dresses like a Quaker.”

She stared at him. “Mr. Ritter, do you feel all right?” she asked cautiously.

He sighed half angrily, staring at her again. “I’m frustrated,” he muttered, knocking an ash off his cigarette. “You try going without a woman for four months and see how you manage.”

She felt her face burning, but she glanced down at her notepad and concealed it. “I’ve gone without a woman for twenty-three years, and it hasn’t done me any harm,” she informed him.

“Oh, you know what I mean,” he grumbled.

Unfortunately she did. He was the bluntest man she’d ever known. He said exactly what he thought, no matter how shocking it sounded. He didn’t even pull his punches with language when one of his clients or cohorts made him mad. In fact, during Danetta’s first week on the job, Mr. Ritter had taken exception to a few remarks from a dissatisfied customer, and the unfortunate gentleman had come out of Mr. Ritter’s office headfirst, followed by some of the foulest language Danetta had ever heard. It was a fascinating introduction to her hot-tempered, uninhibited boss.

He narrowed his blue eyes again and searched her face. “You never talk about your love life.”

“I guess I could make up something,” she said, trying not to look and sound as unsophisticated as he made her feel.

“I thought as much.” He was watching her in an odd way. He seemed to do that a lot these days, as if he was curious about something. She wished he’d come out with it. He made her feel like an insect on a pin. “Too many nights alone can make a woman vulnerable, you know. Especially a repressed maidenly type.”

“Are you trying to tell me something, Mr. Ritter?” she asked finally.

“I’m concerned about you,” he said surprisingly. “Ben Meadows, my new sales manager, mentioned this morning that he’d been trying for two weeks to get a date with you, but that you froze him out.” He smiled faintly, and his pale eyes became intent. “He thinks you won’t go out with him because you’ve got a crush on me. In fact,” he added with a stare that was pure speculation, “so does my father.”

She couldn’t help the flush that highlighted her exquisite complexion. Her heart jumped into her throat. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “My gosh!”

He glared. “Well, you don’t have to make it sound like a perversion,” he said shortly. “Women do find me attractive from time to time.”

“A certain type of woman, yes. Not me!”

He sat very still and she wondered if she’d finally gone too far. He didn’t seem to move, but his eyes narrowed and grew cold. “Why not you?”

“That’s personal.”

“So it’s personal. I want an answer,” he said doggedly.

She took a deep breath. She couldn’t lie to him, even if she might have done better to lie. “Because you’re a womanizer, Mr. Ritter,” she said, feeling backed into a corner. He was beginning to look dangerous, and she dropped her eyes to her lap. “I’m sorry, but I don’t find that kind of man very attractive.”

He took a draw from his cigarette and let out a thin cloud of smoke. His eyes grew brooding and even colder. “I suppose I asked for that. I didn’t realize what kind of answer I might get.” He sat up straight. “All right, Dan, you’ve convinced me that my father doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about. Let’s do the mail.”

She felt guilty, but she didn’t dare back down. He respected spirit. She’d learned her first week as his secretary that it was either give it back as good as he gave it out, or spend her life in tears. He didn’t pull his punches, and he didn’t respect anyone who did. As she soon discovered, he needed that toughness to deal with the people who frequented this office. Business was hard, and he was equal to it, even during recessions.

All the same, she had the oddest feeling that she’d wounded him. If a woman he called by a masculine nickname could wound him, that was. Sometimes it cut her to the bone when he called her Dan. He made it sound as if she were his fishing buddy or his tennis partner. He treated her that casually, and it had hurt. Maybe that had prompted her uncharacteristic outburst about his lack of morals.

She wondered why he was so promiscuous. In two years, she’d learned next to nothing about him, except about the type of woman he liked. About his feelings and thoughts, she knew nothing. She knew his mother had died ten years ago, and that his father had remarried a lady named Cynthia. Danetta knew that he spent time with them, but he never talked about them. His father did let a few things slip from time to time when he came into the office, but not enough to satisfy her growing curiosity about the enigmatic man she worked for.

He started dictating, pacing as usual, and she had to work to keep up with him. He wasn’t sparing her. She felt the whip of his voice and the ice in his stare until he was finally through and let her go back to her own desk.

He was unusually silent for the rest of the day. She sent people into his office and buzzed him when he was needed on the telephone, but he didn’t offer her coffee or stop to talk. At quitting time, he was out the door before she was, leaving her to close up without even a goodbye unless she counted the curt jerk of his head as he left, attaché case in hand.

Danetta watched him go with mixed feelings. Perhaps she shouldn’t have opened her mouth. Now she’d really complicated things.

She covered the typewriter and the computer, got her purse and sweater, and went out to stand in line for the bus. She watched it approach indifferently, her mind still on her boss. One of these days I will kiss my iguana, she thought vengefully, and he’ll turn into somebody as handsome as Robert Redford and then you’ll be sorry, Mr. Ritter! And he’ll buy me mink coats and diamonds and we’ll live in decadent luxury…

She became aware of amused stares and realized belatedly that she was talking out loud.

“I’m a writer,” she improvised. “It’s a great plot, the iguana prince…”

“Yeah? The part about Robert Redford was great,” an elderly woman said, grinning as she got onto the bus just ahead of Danetta. “But nobody would kiss an iguana!”

Danetta only smiled.

Chapter Two

Norman was curled up on the radiator, as usual, when Danetta got home. He opened his eyes and then closed them again, his long emerald-green body sprawled over the warm place.

“You’re so enthusiastic, Norman,” she sighed, pausing to rub his head and tickle his chin. He did look ferocious, she supposed, remembering Mr. Ritter’s horrified expression when she’d mentioned having an iguana. But the reptile’s fierce appearance was just window dressing in Norman’s case. She’d carried him around and petted him since he was barely seven inches long, and she didn’t find him in the least intimidating or frightening. It was hard to be afraid of a creature that liked spinach quiche and responded to a whistle. She was sure that a book she’d read on iguanas said they were stupid. It was a good thing Norman couldn’t read.

She heated up some quiche for him and turned on a Beethoven sonata. When she put the quiche in a bowl with two or three fresh hibiscus petals from the florist, Norman sniffed and oozed down onto the floor. He looked like a miniature dinosaur, Danetta thought as she watched him plod to his food dish and eat hungrily. He wasn’t much on regular meals. He ate about every second or third day, and he was certainly healthy enough. His tail gave her nightmares. It was terribly long and quite handsome, and she lived in fear of stepping on it. Iguanas shed their tails quite easily if they were pulled on, but Norman would never forgive her if she cost him his crowning glory.

She brooded most of the evening over Cabe Ritter’s behavior. First he wanted her to dress in a more feminine way, then he accused her of having a crush on him, then he seemed to be mad because she denied it. He was the most puzzling man she’d ever known.

Finally she went to bed, leaving Norman on the radiator. It was still cool at night, and that warmth attracted him. He was so predictable. She could always find him on the radiator, on his paper in the bathroom—because he was housebroken—or in the kitchen. It was a good thing that Mr. Ritter had never come to visit her at home, she mused as she lay awake. Norman would give him fits.

She closed her eyes with determination, but she kept seeing her enigmatic boss’s broad, hard face. She’d denied her attraction to him for a long time, and it was a good thing she’d learned to hide it. If she’d given herself away today when he’d made that accusation, she’d be looking for another job.

As if she’d ever have a chance with such a man, she sighed inwardly. He could have his pick of women, and did. Danetta wouldn’t even be in the running. She only wondered why he’d been so irritated when she’d made that remark about his being a womanizer. Surely he didn’t want her to have a crush on him! Of course not. She groaned and rolled over. She had to try to get some sleep.

The next morning, she felt as if she hadn’t gotten even one hour’s worth. She went to work dragging, her eyes bloodshot and dark circled. She’d dressed hurriedly in a green-and-lavender-and-brown swirled dress—a shirtwaist dress, although she hadn’t really meant to. She left her hair down, too, mainly because she didn’t have time to put it up after she’d overslept.

Mr. Ritter was usually a half hour later than she was. Today, of course, he was early. Mentally groaning as she tried to tiptoe into the office, she prepared herself for a lecture. He didn’t say anything as it turned out, but he did give her a cold glance as she walked in, his eyes going pointedly to the clock on the office wall, which proved that she was a full ten minutes late. He was on the phone, nodding and muttering to someone on the other end of the line.

She mouthed an apology and started to take off her lightweight car coat.

“Keep it on,” he called to her, covering the receiver. “Get the tape recorder and your pad and pen. We’re going out to a rig to get some data about that new machine part I made for Harry Deal.”

She had to grit her teeth. Harry Deal was an old-line rigger who hated women and made no secret of it. He made her feel like fish bait, and Mr. Ritter knew it. Which was probably why he was dragging her out to the rig with him, she thought miserably. He was getting even for what she’d said the day before.

“Not today,” she sighed to herself. She put her coat over her arm as she got the necessary items together. “I’m just not up to Harry Deal today.”

“Stop moaning,” her boss snapped. He held open the office door, his cold eyes taking in every fact of her appearance. But they lingered on the soft thrust of her breasts and the sensuous curves outlined by the dress, and the coldness went out of them. The pale blue began to darken, to glitter. His jaw tautened and the arm that had been holding the door open moved, so that as she started to go through the doorway, he was suddenly blocking her way.

She looked up warily, her apprehension visible on her soft features. Close up he was devastating. That gray-and-beige sports coat clung to him lovingly, not too tight but certainly not overloose. Her eyes dropped, noting involuntarily the way his gray slacks molded the powerful muscles of his long legs. He smelled of spicy cologne, and her eyes rose again and stopped at the wide curve of his mouth above that cleft chin. She could feel the heat of his big body and it made her long to lean against him.

“Is this for my benefit?” he asked quietly, his eyes smoothing down the clingy shirtwaist dress.

Her heart bounced in her chest as her eyes met that glittery stare. “Of course not,” she faltered. “I…was running late, and I didn’t have time to put up my hair.”

“I’m not talking about your hair,” he replied, his voice deep and measured. His arm moved deliberately so that it brushed lazily against her shoulder, and she could feel the warmth of his breath on her temple. “Be careful,” he murmured softly. “You said yourself that I was a womanizer. Wearing something that sexy might give me ideas.”

Her shocked eyes were trapped in his stare. It was like electricity flowing between them for one long, staggering instant.

“I…didn’t mean to,” she stammered.

“Didn’t you?” He moved his arm away and stood aside to let her pass. She managed that on legs almost too wobbly to support her. After shrugging into her coat, she went out to the car. Her face burned as she realized just how vulnerable she was to him. And he wasn’t even trying. What would she do if he ever made a real pass at her?

There was a strained silence between them as he drove out of town toward one of Harry Deal’s newest oil rigs. This was a derrick, because Harry was drilling for the first time on this new field on his property. He hadn’t hit oil yet, but Danetta would have bet that he was going to. Harry could smell oil, and he had quite a track record.

“My father has a percentage of this exploration,” Cabe said a few minutes down the road. He tapped ashes from his cigarette into the ashtray of his big gray Lincoln, glancing sideways at Danetta. “Relax, for God’s sake,” he snapped. “I’m not going to jump on you!”

She bit her lower lip until her teeth bruised it. “I appreciate it,” she managed with forced humor.

He took a long draw from his cigarette and let out an audible sigh with the smoke. “It’s all right, Dan,” he said after a minute. “I don’t have the right to tell you how to dress, although I guess I might have pushed you into what you’re wearing today by the insulting things I said about the way you looked.” He moved uncomfortably. “It’s my father, damn it! I hadn’t even noticed your clothes until he stuck his nose in.” In fact, he hadn’t really noticed Danetta that much until his father had started to point out her virtues. Now he found himself watching her all too often. Like right now. He glanced toward her and then away, his face tautening as his eyes registered once again how sexy she looked in a dress that fit properly. “That dress is…very flattering.”

She knew her face was flaming. All at once she felt like one of the creatures on the endangered species list. She darted her eyes to the window without acknowledging the compliment. “You said your father had an interest in Mr. Deal’s operation?”

He put out the cigarette. “A small percentage, yes,” he replied, relieved to have the hot tension die down. The sight of her in that dress wasn’t doing his self-control any good at all, and he hoped she was too green to realize that his bad temper was due to the new attraction he was feeling for her. “Eugene likes to have his finger in every pie he can find.”

“I thought oil was a bad investment right now.”

“The market’s down, but it will come up again. Like gold, it fluctuates. But as long as it’s a necessity, prices will eventually go up. Eugene and Harry Deal are smart enough to diversify. They’ll make out.”

“Is there a problem with the equipment you made for Mr. Deal?” she asked.

“He thinks so. I don’t.” He glanced at her and grinned. “I know the joker who’s operating the rig for him. He’s an old-line rigger and he doesn’t like trying new things. He’s probably put the damned part in backward or left it out altogether.”

Which turned out to be exactly the case. Danetta, standing uncomfortably to one side while Cabe wrestled with an unfathomable piece of greasy equipment, saw the older man nearby turn red when the motor was turned back on and the part slid into place and worked with textbook precision.

The rig was overrun with men—muscular, rough-looking men who seemed to find Danetta, even in her light car coat, quite an attraction. There were some women in that line of work, but not in Harry Deal’s crew. She felt all too conspicuous.

She was holding Cabe’s jacket while he worked. Now he wiped his hands on a handkerchief that would never be white again and gave Harry Deal a speaking look.

Harry, a white-haired, short man with a big nose, glared at his rigger. “Okay, I stand corrected,” he muttered. “Sam, you can explain all this to me later.”

“Yes, sir,” Sam grumbled. He shot Cabe a hard glare and stomped off to the other side of the rig.

“How’s your dad?” he asked Cabe.

“Making money. He hopes you’re going to fund him a new Rolls with this strike.”

“I’m doing my best.” He turned, pursing his lips at Danetta. “Still got the same secretary, I see. Not married yet, Miss Marist?”

Danetta hugged Cabe’s coat to her breasts. “I did find one candidate, Mr. Deal,” she replied sweetly, “but he couldn’t change a tire and talk at the same time, so I gave him up.”

Harry smiled unpleasantly. “Can’t change your own tire?”

“I have to these days. Most men are so fastidious that they don’t like getting mussed up doing those difficult jobs.”

Cabe saw disaster ahead. He took Danetta by the arm and led her away from a smoldering Harry. “Let me know if you have any more problems, Harry,” he called over his shoulder. “We have to get back to work.”

“Thanks, Cabe,” the older man said shortly and turned back to his job.

“Arrogant old dinosaur,” Danetta muttered, all too aware of the biting grip Cabe had on her arm even through the thick cloth.

“You escalated things, honey,” he reminded her. “Now get in there and keep quiet until I get you out of earshot.” He gave her a faintly amused glance. “You’ve never talked back to Harry before.”

“Maybe it’s the smell of oil and grease that did it,” she offered, smiling impishly. She felt free, now that she’d finally stood up to the old devil. Maybe working for Mr. Ritter had given her that bit of extra self-confidence. She’d had to stand up to him, and now it was getting to be second nature to stand up to other people. She’d…expanded emotionally, she thought.

He chuckled softly as he put her in the Lincoln, leaving his jacket in her hands as he went around and got in. He was still trying to get the grease off his big hands.

“Damned old-line riggers,” he said on a heavy sigh. “Harry needs to fire that son of a—”

“Mr. Ritter!” She glared at him.

“Sorry, Miss Lily-White.” He glanced at her as he started the car. “You ought to be used to my language by now.”

“I ought to,” she agreed. She leaned back against the cushy seat with a long sigh and closed her eyes. “Just when I think I’ve heard it all, you invent new words.”

He chuckled softly. “Do I?” He sat watching her with the engine running, his eyes curious. He slowly turned her face toward him, with a big, grease-stained hand. The smile left his hard lips. “You’re a little wildcat when you get started, aren’t you?” he asked in a tone he’d never used with her before. “You didn’t have that fire in the beginning. It took a few tears to bring it out, but you don’t back away from anything these days, do you?” he mused. His big thumb moved to her mouth and suddenly dragged across her lips while he watched her reaction with narrowed, intent blue eyes.

The sensation that deliberate action caused shocked her. Her body went taut and hot all at once, and her breath caught audibly.

Her response was sheer delight. He’d forgotten that a woman could be that sensitive to his touch. She was innocent, not like the jaded, very sophisticated women who frequently passed through his life. Almost everything sensual was new to her. His thumb moved again and pressed against her mouth so that she could taste tobacco and the faint smell of grease on it. He felt his body tighten as her face told him exactly how much pleasure she was feeling. His blue eyes glittered into hers at a proximity that made her muscles clench.

“Did you know that your mouth was that sensitive, little one?” he asked huskily, searching her wide eyes. “That it could arouse you when a man played with it?”

She swallowed nervously, her body tingling with new sensations. “The…men on the rig…” she whispered.

“The windows are tinted,” he reminded her in a slow, deep undertone. His thumb moved again with sensual pressure and he bent closer, so that the cologne scent of his big body overwhelmed her. Her scent was in his nostrils and he wanted nothing more in life than her soft mouth. Reason and sanity seemed to go out the window as he watched with masculine delight the helpless reaction of her innocence to his experience.

“Mr. Ritter…!” she murmured. He was overwhelming her, and she was afraid.

“Have you ever been kissed properly?” he whispered, letting his eyes drop to her parted, swollen lips. “With your mouth open under a man’s lips?” he breathed, and she actually moaned. His jaw tautened. “It would be so easy. I could lower my head, just an inch or so,” he drawled softly, moving closer, “and let you taste my breath. And then I could slide my hand into your hair, like this—” he drew her face up under his with the pressure of his fingers at her nape “—and I could kiss you like that. I could part your lips with my mouth and drag you against me so hard that you could feel my heart beating…”

She panicked at the mental pictures he was putting into her mind, and in one last burst of sanity she pushed at his chest, trying not to feel the hard warmth of hair-roughened muscles under the thin white shirt. “No! You…mustn’t,” she pleaded. “I work for you…!”

“Work for me,” he echoed, his voice barely audible. He stared down at her soft mouth and felt his body clench with the need to take it. Work for him. The words echoed in his mind and he blinked and scowled down into Danetta’s shocked eyes. Danetta! His head jerked up.

“My God, what am I doing?” he asked harshly. He let go of her abruptly and sat up, moving away from her to light a cigarette. He managed it with a brief fumble, which she was too shaken to see. “I’m sorry, Dan,” he said stiffly. His heart was shaking him, and the tautness of his body was unexpected and disturbing. She was only a child. “That won’t happen again.”

He put the car swiftly into gear and pulled out onto the road without looking at her.

Danetta tore her eyes away from his hard features. She could hardly believe that had happened at all, except for the faint soreness of her mouth and her tingling scalp. No wonder women flocked around him, she thought miserably. He had an infallible technique. He’d barely touched her and yet he’d made her knees weaken. She could still taste his smoky breath in her mouth and hear the deliciously shocking things he’d said to her. She almost groaned at the fever he’d kindled and left unsatisfied. She’d wanted his hard lips to crush down on hers, to feel his arms go around her, his chest pressing roughly against her soft breasts. She wrapped her arms around her, trembling a little in the aftermath. What was wrong with him?

He was quiet all the way back to the office, keeping the radio between them. But all the while she was thinking, and wondering if he’d done it on purpose, to show her how vulnerable she was to him. Maybe it was revenge for calling him a womanizer. To show her that even she was wide open to his practiced technique. By the time they got into the underground garage, she felt sick all over, certain that he’d been trying to humiliate her.

She reached for the door handle the minute he parked the car, but his big warm hand caught hers, staying it.

“Not yet,” he said quietly. His eyes searched hers in the tense silence between them. Something in her eyes made him feel guilty. “I’ve hurt you.”

“I called you a womanizer,” she reminded him, dropping her eyes to his chest. “Was that…why? To teach me a lesson?”