Acquiring Mr. Right

She halted with one foot on the sidewalk in front of the entrance. A sign was attached to a post supporting the cover over the red car. It had her name on it.

Frowning, she changed direction and went to the covered parking area. While there was space for two vehicles under the portico, no one had dared challenge James’s exclusive right to the middle of the spot. Lance had left plenty of room for another car.

Disgruntled at yet another change, she marched into the building and up the stairs. Her secretary gave her a warning glance when she arrived at the door of the CFO suite.

“Good morning, Tiff. Is something up that I should know about?” she asked, pausing by the other’s desk.

“Mason came in about fifteen minutes ago and headed straight for the big office.”

Krista was taken aback by this information. Mason in town was a surprise, and his being at the office was a shock, especially in light of the new ownership. “Trouble?”

Tiff shrugged. “Mason raised his voice once, but since then I haven’t heard anything.”

Krista nodded and continued into her office. After storing her purse in the credenza, she stopped in front of an ornate wall mirror and studied her reflection.

A tiny frown of tension was evident in two little lines between her eyes. She forced the muscles to relax.

This morning she wore one of her power suits, as Uncle Jeff’s wife Caileen called them. As a Family Services counselor, her aunt—step-aunt, actually, since Jeff Aquilon had been a brother to Krista’s and Tony’s stepfather—had helped her select clothing for the business image she’d wanted to project when she’d had to do a senior presentation in college.

Deciding against all black for her first day as the COO, she’d chosen black slacks with a gray pinstripe. The pinstripe had a touch of red running through it. The tailored blouse was also black, but the suit jacket was a buttery soft leather in brilliant power red.

She looked, she thought, like a woman who knew what she was doing, who knew where she was going—like a woman who was used to taking charge.

Fortunately, only she knew her knees were knocking.

Her intercom buzzed. When she answered, Tiff told her she was wanted in the CEO’s office.

Going into the corridor, she reflected that James had always opened the conference room door and bellowed her name so that it could be heard clear out to the parking lot. A polite request through the secretary was another change, one for the better, in her opinion. She hated yelling of any kind.

Before she reached the end office, she came face-to-face with Mason, who was leaving it. “Hello, Mason,” she said in a friendly fashion.

He stopped in front of her, his smile more of a sneer than a greeting. “My, you certainly move fast when you put your mind to it, don’t you?”

She tried to figure out just what his remark meant. When she’d first been promoted to head of the accounting department, the heir-apparent had tried to put a move on her, but she’d acted obtuse, as if she didn’t catch on that he was trying to start something.

Even at twenty-two, she’d known it was bad judgment to get involved with someone who could derail her fledgling career. There was also the fact that he didn’t appeal to her in any way, shape or form.

“I try,” she said lightly, assuming he referred to her now being the chief operations officer and aware that all around them others were straining their ears to hear what was being said between them. “I wasn’t sure you would be with us anymore.”

“Where did you think I would be?” he demanded in a definite snarl.

“I thought you might decide to retire and live the life of a rich playboy,” she told him, knowing he liked to imagine himself as a jet-setter.

“Not with my father controlling the purse strings,” he said, anger overriding the earlier sarcasm. “And now, you’re the one in charge. Maybe the new CEO will let you try some of your ideas.”

His tone implied he shared his father’s views of her notions. “I’ll keep my fingers crossed,” she said calmly.

He snorted and walked away whistling “Hail to the Chief.”

At times she would really like to give him a good smack across the mouth, she acknowledged, going into Thea’s office. “I understand Mr. Carrington wants to see me.”

Without answering, the secretary pushed the button on her phone set. “Krista Aquilon is here.”

“Ask her to come in, please,” Lance said politely.

Thea nodded at Krista.

As far as Krista could remember, Thea had managed to never call her by her title or even Ms. Aquilon, as if this was beneath her lofty position. Strange woman. Krista went into the inner office.

Lance rose and came to her, hand out. Krista shook hands with him, more than a little wary. Even so, she wasn’t quite prepared for the jolt of electricity that rushed up her arm and to all parts of her body.

Gray eyes flicked over her. “You look stunning this morning,” he said with an approving nod.

“Actually I was going for ‘person-in-charge’ rather than stunning,” she told him. “I blew it, huh?”

“You look like a person of immense authority,” he assured her. There was laughter in his eyes. “Coffee? I just made some—apparently Thea doesn’t do coffee—and it’s good, if I do say so.”

“Please, with one sugar.” She smiled when he did, a real smile, and felt some of the tension drain out of her shoulders as she took her usual chair at the side of the big desk. “I met Mason in the hall. For some reason, I assumed he would no longer be with the company.”

Lance settled behind the desk. They sipped the excellent brew in silence for a few seconds. “Did he give you any trouble?”

“Not really. He may have been a tad disappointed that he wasn’t named the COO.”

The new boss shrugged. “Then he should have shown some real interest in the company at some time during the past twenty years. If he gives you any problems, fire him.”

Krista nearly choked on her coffee.

Lance continued. “I felt like doing that this morning when he walked in here unannounced. He was supposed to have been here yesterday for the staff meeting.”

“He has a tendency to be late,” she explained. “Or not show up at all. I guess he thought he could continue his old ways. My secretary said she heard him raise his voice. If he was insubordinate, why didn’t you tell him to clear out?” The question was pure curiosity on her part.

“I told Heymyer I’d give everyone who wanted it a chance to stay on.” Lance’s dark eyebrows rose slightly. “You’re the boss. You say who stays and who doesn’t. If Mason doesn’t work out, then he goes. Although I wouldn’t toss anybody out on the first day,” he offered as a suggestion. “It’s unsettling for the other employees.”

“Mason’s the vice president—”

Lance shook his head. “The Heymyer officers are gone. You and I are the big bosses now.”

She did a mental double take on that idea. “So what’s his title?”

“Whatever you decide.” The winter-gray eyes bored right into her. “It’s your job to run the company, so that’s your call. I will need an organizational chart as soon as you can get one done so my people will know who’s who.”

After she’d absorbed Lance’s information, she asked, unable to keep the facetious tone completely under wraps, “And what will you be doing while I’m drawing up charts, checking production runs and making sure the company is running smoothly?”

“Envisioning the big picture, coming up with clever ways to integrate the operations and devising strategies to make it all mesh like clockwork.”

His grin was…sardonic? Definitely.

“Well,” she said, “that explains the division of labor. I’m so glad we had this chat.”

“You have a smart mouth, but that’s okay. I like a woman who speaks her mind.”

“Good, because I have a couple of hundred questions.”

For the next hour, they discussed the changes that would be necessary to save the business. It was obvious he’d had experience in smoothly melding new enterprises into CCS’s operations. Krista tried not to look too naively impressed by his acumen.

“We might move some parts of production to another location,” he told her, his eyes on the middle distance as if he could see those parts being transferred already.

“You said you weren’t shutting down here,” she reminded him with a fierce frown. “You said no one would lose their jobs, that we’re going to put the company back on track. That’s why I agreed to stay.”

“I’m not talking about shutting down, but things aren’t going to stay exactly the same. That’s why the company was going downhill—it was static.”

He held her gaze until she was forced to acknowledge the truth in his words. She sighed. “I know. Sorry. I’ll pull in my claws.”

He leaned toward her. “Sometimes claws are useful.” He lifted her left hand. Her nails were short and buffed to a shine rather than polished. “With these, I don’t think I have anything to worry about.”

Her skin burned everywhere he touched her. Maybe he didn’t have anything to worry about, but maybe she did. Shaking off the sensation, she continued their planning session.

“One other thing,” she said some time later, preparing to leave. “Someone put up a sign with my name on it in a parking space next to your car. Who authorized it?”

“I did.”

“Have it taken down. I already have a space I like.”

“You’re the COO. Don’t you think you’re entitled to a few perks?”

She was aware of his keen gaze on her as if she were some newly discovered pest under study. “Not that kind. It irritated me when I worked on the production line for the VIPs to assume they had more rights than anyone else. Even Mason, who was rarely here, had a reserved space.”

“So where are the signs now?”

She grinned. “When I became CFO, I told the executive staff there wasn’t money in the budget to replace the old signs when they needed repair. James agreed. After that, parking near the door was a perk only to those who got here early. It greatly improved the timeliness of the staff’s arrival.”

When he chuckled, she again found herself spellbound by the sound.

“What time do you usually come in?” he asked.

“Seven-thirty or thereabouts. I had a flat this morning, picked up a nail in a brand-new tire. There’s a lot of construction going on in my neighborhood.”

“Who changed the tire?”

“I did. My uncle says people need to be self-sufficient regarding minor emergencies such as flats. He taught us basic car maintenance and simple household repairs.”

“Smart man.” He paused, then added, “James said your mother died when you were a child.”

She heard the slight upward inflection and had to decide how much she wanted him to know about her personal life. “Shortly after I turned ten.”

“So you went to live with an uncle?”

Krista felt the familiar tightening inside, the shutting down of emotion when someone delved into her life. “Actually he was my stepfather’s brother. He took me and my brother Tony in as well as Jeremy, his nephew. Then Social Services found out and moved me and Tony to a foster home. They said the four of us couldn’t share a two-bedroom home. I slept on the sofa while Jeremy and Tony shared the spare room. At the foster home, Tony and I had our own rooms.”

“It wasn’t a happy experience,” Lance concluded, his expression becoming grim, as if he could see the unhappiness of those children.

Unwanted memories flooded her mind. She’d broken a plate at dinner one night. Her foster father had beaten her with his belt. She’d stared into the distance and imagined escaping, running to her mother. At one point she’d felt moisture on her legs and trembled with fear, not knowing what the man would do if she’d wet her pants. But it had been blood running down her legs into her socks.

That’s when Tony had sneaked out into the night and gone to their step-cousin for help.

Not wanting to disclose any emotion that those keen gray eyes would surely detect, she went to the window and gazed out at the desert land. “The foster father beat us, so we ran away with Jeremy. He was seventeen. We sort of lived off the land that summer. In the winter, Jeremy got a job at a grocery and we lived in an abandoned gas station that had had living quarters on the second floor.”

“How long did you live like that?” Lance asked, his voice fathoms deep with a stillness at its center that she found oddly comforting. His reflection appeared in the windowpane next to hers. His heat swept over her, all the way to the hidden place inside.

“We were caught the following summer on a ranch. The family there went to bat for us and we were returned to our uncle, Jeff Aquilon. He became our legal guardian, and we lived happily ever after.” She cast Lance a saucy grin to show him she was still living that good life.

His manner was thoughtful, as if he was connecting all the dots while he studied her. “You and your brother took your guardian’s name?”

“Well, he made it legal, but our mother started using Aquilon for all of us when she married his older brother.” Anticipating the next question of his very logical mind, she added, “My father walked out when I was a baby and Tony was three, so it’s the only name he or I have ever known.”

“I see. It must have been difficult, hiding out from the authorities all that time.”

She carefully held all the old emotion in check while planting a smile on her face. “Nah, that was the fun part. The hard part was getting up the courage to run away.”

“But you did it.”

“Because of Jeremy. He’s the one who figured out what to do. He took care of us, but he didn’t have to. He wasn’t kin to us by blood or legal ties. When his father, the oldest Aquilon brother, died, Jeremy came to live with us. About six months after my mother and stepfather divorced, my stepfather died in an auto accident, so Mom told Jeremy to come back to us. Jeff, the youngest of the three brothers, had been in the hospital at that time.”

Silence surrounded them like a blanket. Krista felt as if she couldn’t breathe, as if she were being smothered as the past pushed past her defenses and closed in on her.

Then a big, warm hand touched the back of her neck. Strong fingers massaged the tense muscles in her shoulders.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry I made you remember.”

The gentleness of his touch, the sympathy she sensed in him, caused her eyes to burn. But she’d learned long ago that tears didn’t help. She managed to shake her head as if it didn’t matter, to make herself not care. “Everything came out okay. Uncle Jeff got a bigger house, so that satisfied the family services people. When he married Caileen, who was the new counselor from the county welfare office, we became one big happy family. Caileen had a daughter, Zia, so I got a big sister out of the deal. That was nice.”

“Ten years old,” he murmured. “That’s an impressionable age. Things happen that can never be forgotten.”

His hand glided down her back, stopped at her waist. A need to lean into him, to feel his strength as well as his heat, alarmed her. It was time to end this conversation.

“Well, you don’t forget,” she admitted, stepping away from him, “but you move on.” She glanced at her watch. “Speaking of which, I’d better get those organizational charts done, then I have some ideas to run by two of the production managers about merging their lines.”

To her surprise, laughter erupted from him.

“Go for it,” he said.

Later, in her own office while waiting for a new spreadsheet to come up on her computer, she studied her hands. There was the faintest tremor in them.

In helping her practice for her presentation, her aunt Caileen had told her to act calm and assured in uncertain situations and it would follow that she would become calm and assured. With Lance Carrington, Krista wasn’t sure that would work. Something about him reached right down into her inner equilibrium and shook its moorings.

“What is going on over there?” Marlyn asked on Thursday when Krista met her for a quick lunch.

Krista smiled as her best friend’s expression mirrored the shock of other residents upon learning about the company changes. “Heymyer sold us out without a word.”

It was through Marlyn, whom she’d met in her freshman year at college, that she’d gotten the job with Heymyer Home Appliances. She and Marlyn had both used the work/study program to pay their way through school. They’d shared apartments, clothes and books during those years of work, study and counting pennies.

“And the new guy wants you to stay on?”

“Right.”

“I thought raiders always fired all the executives and put in their own people.”

“He asked me to stay six months, I guess to help with the transition. Then he’ll fire me.”

“You think?”

Krista shrugged. “We’ll just have to wait and see. I’m not worried about finding a new job, but for others who’ve lived and worked their whole lives in this town, what happens to them?”

They both thought this over.

“His picture was in a big spread the paper did on him and CCS.” Marlyn tilted her head and studied Krista. “He’s only thirty-four. Rich and handsome.”

When she waggled her brows, Krista had to laugh. “He’s also strictly business.”

For the briefest instant, she recalled how she’d felt when he’d stood behind her at the window, as if he’d sensed the turmoil his questions about her past had caused. His touch had been comforting.

It had also been exciting, reaching right down and stirring something inside her. A hunger, she realized, a need for touching, caressing…for fulfillment.

Enough, already, she warned her libido, or whatever it was that kept sending forbidden longings through her.

“So how are things going with your business? Does everyone in town want the famous Marlyn Reynolds of Reynolds’ Interior Design to redo their homes?”

“Oh, yeah.” Marlyn sighed, then smiled. “Actually things are going well with business. I just wish I could say the same about my personal life. Or lack thereof.”

“Come on,” Krista said, “you and Linc are solid.”

“Are we?” Marlyn finished her salad and peered out the window at the mesas and rugged canyons cut by eons of wind and water erosion. “He called and said he wouldn’t make it home this weekend. I told him if he didn’t, not to bother coming at all, ever.”

“Marlyn, you didn’t!”

To Krista’s consternation, tears filled the other woman’s dark brown eyes. “I mean it, Krista. I’ve had it.”

“But you’ve loved him since third grade. You told me it was love at first sight for both of you.”

“Well, I saw him more in school than I have since we married. I’m tired of it.”

“You need to talk to Linc. Surely you two can work things out.”

There was a troubled silence. “I don’t know,” Marlyn admitted. “I’m not sure how I feel about Linc and marriage and making it as a couple anymore.”

Krista couldn’t conceal her shock. “Go to a counselor,” she urged. “Don’t give up, not without trying something.”

“I’ll think about it,” Marlyn said halfheartedly, “but I’ve been so miserable lately. I’m married and I’m lonely as hell. I have a husband I see only when he can work me into his schedule.”

Linc was a civil engineer. He worked for a big company that had a contract with the government for a new dam across a stream up in the mountains east of town. It was a two-hour drive over a winding road to get to town. He stayed in an RV trailer during the week and came home on weekends.

Sometimes, Krista added truthfully. Lately, he’d been tied up at work more and more on weekends. She could understand Marlyn’s grief with that.

“How can he know how you feel if you don’t tell him?” she asked with great practicality. “If you talk honestly with each other, that could help get your marriage back on track.”

She recalled those were the words Lance Carrington had used with her. Together they were going to get the appliance company “back on track.” Studying her friend, she thought things were changing in both their lives.

Change. One of the big C-words.

From her experience, change had often meant confusion—and chaos.

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