Married to His Business / Six-Month Mistress: Married to His Business

Well, a couple of weeks, anyway.

She said nothing as she gazed out the window, only studied the same view Matthias was considering himself. But he knew there must be some part of her brain that was questioning DeGallo’s motives by now. She was a smart woman. She had good instincts. It was what made her so good at what she did.

“Look at that view,” he said anyway, trivializing with a cliché what was a staggeringly beautiful piece of work. “You don’t see views like that in the city.” He turned to face Kendall before adding meaningfully, “Where most job orientations take place.”

She slumped a little at the comment, expelling a tired-sounding sigh. But she said nothing to deny his more-than-obvious allegation.

“And look at this room,” he said further, turning again and sweeping both arms open. “Who gets a place like this when they’re undergoing orientation for a new job?”

Kendall sighed again, still sounding weary, but turned her body in the same direction as his. “New vice presidents for the company,” she told him. “That’s who. Stephen just wants to make a good impression, that’s all.”

Matthias dipped his head in concession, however small, to that. Then he strode to the table where there sat a bouquet of flowers more massive than any man anywhere had ever sent to any woman for any reason—be it declaring his love or groveling for forgiveness. He plucked the card from a particularly luscious-looking bloom and began to open it.

“Matthias, don’t—” Kendall began.

He halted, snapping his head up at that, not because she had told him to stop, but because she had addressed him by his first name. Never, not once, during the five years she’d worked for him had she called him Matthias. Because never, not once, had he given her the okay to do it. And the fact that she had stepped over that line now so thoroughly, without his permission…

Hmm. Actually, now that he’d heard her call him Matthias, he realized he kind of liked the way his name sounded coming from her lips. In fact, he kind of liked the way her lips looked right now, having just said his name. Parted softly in surprise, and maybe embarrassment, as if she hadn’t intended to call him Matthias, and now she wasn’t sure what to do to take it back, or if she even wanted to take it back. What was strange was that Matthias didn’t want her to take it back. In fact, he wanted her to say it again. Even more surprising, he realized the context in which he wanted to hear her say his name had nothing to do with her job, and everything to do with, well, other reasons people came to Lake Tahoe.

“Don’t,” she said again, more softly this time. Omitting the use of his name.

This time, too, she extended her hand toward the small envelope he still held tucked between his index and middle fingers. Not sure why he did it, Matthias pulled his hand toward himself, out of her reach. She took another step forward, bringing her body to within touching distance of his, then hesitated. But she didn’t drop her hand, and for a moment, he thought—hoped—she would trail her hand after his to retrieve the card. He even found himself looking forward to her fingers tangling with his as they vied for possession. And although it was clear she was grappling with the possibility of that very thing herself—or maybe because she was grappling with it—she dropped her hand to her side again, ceding to him with clear reluctance.

The victory was strangely hollow, but Matthias shouldered it anyway. Opening the envelope, he withdrew the card, then scanned the sentiment upon it. He wasn’t sure if it was DeGallo’s writing, but it was masculine and forceful, and he suspected DeGallo himself had indeed penned the words. The task hadn’t been left to an assistant to complete, which was what Matthias would have done in the same situation.

Then again, Matthias would never have been in this situation. Oh, he might have wooed someone away from one of his competitors specifically to learn more about that competitor’s practices, but he would have been straightforward about it. He wouldn’t have set up the new hire in a honeymoon suite with a breathtaking view of a romantic environment and called it orientation. And he wouldn’t have sent flowers—with anyone’s signature.

He shook his head as he read aloud the sentiment DeGallo had written. “Kendall,” he said, “Can’t wait to have you navigating our PR waters. Welcome aboard!” He looked up at Kendall then, but she was staring at the wall. “Navigating our PR waters?” he repeated. “Was that the best he could do?”

Now Kendall turned to look at Matthias, her huge, clear green eyes penetrating deep enough to heat something in his chest. “Well, there is a lake out there,” she said lamely. “Besides, what would you have said to welcome a new employee?”

“I would have said, ‘Get to work,” ’ he replied. “And I would have said it to that new employee’s face. I wouldn’t go through all this ridiculous pretense to make her feel like she was more important than she actually is.”

Two bright spots of color flared on Kendall’s cheeks at that. She nodded brusquely. “Of course you wouldn’t,” she said. “Because no one is important to you. You think the success of Barton Limited is because of you and you alone. You have no appreciation for how many people it takes to make a company prosper, and you have no clue how to take care of the ones who are doing the best work. And if you’re not careful, then—”

She halted abruptly, her eyes widening in what he could only guess was horror that she’d just leaped like a gazelle across the line she had previously only overstepped. Matthias narrowed his eyes at her, his own lips parting now in surprise. Kendall had never challenged him like this before. Hell, challenged? he asked himself. Compared to her usual self-containment, she’d just read him the riot act. With a bullhorn. Sure, she’d taken exception in the past to some of his decisions—okay, edicts—but she’d always pointed out her concerns with discretion. And deference. But this reaction was completely unlike her. Totally unexpected. And extremely…

Matthias stopped himself before allowing the impression to fully form. Because the impression had nothing to do with his reaction to Kendall as an employee, and everything to do with his reaction to her as a…a person.

“Is that what you really think?” he asked, deciding to focus on that instead of…the other thing.

She hesitated only a second, then nodded. And then, a little less forcefully than she’d spoken before, she added, “Yes. Sir.” And then, a little more forcefully, she altered her response to, “Yes. Matthias.”

There it was again, he marveled. That ripple of heat that should have been disapproval of her familiarity by using his first name, but which was instead…something else. Something he told himself to try to figure out later, because he really needed to respond to Kendall’s allegation that he was so self-centered. But because of the way she was looking at him, all clear-green-eyed and hot-pink-cheeked and tumbling-silky-haired, all he could manage in response was, “Oh, really?”

A moment passed in which neither of them spoke, or moved, or even breathed. Then Kendall’s lips turned up almost imperceptibly, into a smile with what only someone who had the vast experience Matthias had with the emotion could identify.

Victory.

Kendall Scarborough had it in her head that she’d just won whatever the two of them had been engaged in. Now if Matthias could just figure out what the two of them had just engaged in, maybe he’d know what to do next.

Kendall, however, didn’t seem to be having the same problem he had. Because she settled her hands on her hips in a way that was at once relaxed and challenging, and she asked again, “Was there some reason you came here this afternoon, Matthias? Is there something you wanted?”

He honestly had no idea how to answer her. Because for the first time in his life, Matthias didn’t know what he wanted. He was too off-kilter looking at Kendall and thinking about Kendall and listening to Kendall saying his name and marveling at how Kendall had thrown him so off-kilter.

But he didn’t want to look foolish, either—that would have been another first he would have just as soon done without. So he reached into his trouser pocket and removed a small gadget he’d purchased for himself the day after she’d left his employ. Something called a… Well, he couldn’t remember what it was called now, but it was supposed to be even better than the… Whatever that other thing was he used to use for keeping track of his appointments and obligations.

Then he held it out to Kendall and replied, “Yeah. Do you have any idea how this thing works? I keep getting e-mail from some deposed prince in Nigeria who needs my help freeing up some frozen assets he’s trying to get out of the country, and I’d really like to help him out, because he promised me a more than generous share once he’s fluid again. Plus, this woman named Trixie just got a new Web cam she wants to show me, and I’m thinking it might be technology I’d like to invest in.”

He looked at Kendall, who was looking back at him as if he’d just grown a second head. “What?” he said.

She crossed the room in a half-dozen long strides and opened the door. Then she pointed to the hallway beyond with one finger. “Out,” she said. “Now.”

His mouth dropped open in surprise. “What, you’re not going to help me?”

“I’m not your assistant anymore, Matthias.”

Oh, as if he needed reminding of that. “But—”

“Out,” she repeated. “Now.”

He shook his head in disbelief. But he did as she asked him to. Told him to. Demanded he do. The door was slamming shut behind him before he’d even cleared it, missing his backside by that much. He spun around, and went so far as to lift a fist to pound on it again. But he stopped himself before completing the action.

There was a better way to go about this, he told himself. He just had to figure out what it was. Because Kendall was making a mistake, thinking OmniTech was the place she needed to be. Where she needed to be was with him. Or, rather, with Barton Limited, he quickly corrected himself. Now all he had to do was figure out a way to make her realize that, too.

Three

Kendall leaned back against the door through which Matthias had just exited and tried to get a handle on everything that had just happened.

She’d thrown him out, she marveled. She’d looked at the BlackBerry in his hand, incredulous that, just when they were starting to have an exchange that felt evenly matched, he would ask her to program the little gizmo the way she had so many others when he was paying her to be his underling, and then she’d asked—no, told—him to leave. Even more stunning than that was the fact that Matthias had done as she asked—no, told—him to and had left. Without a word of argument. Without a word of exception. Without a word of reproach.

Okay, and without a word of farewell, either.

The point was that Kendall had taken charge of a situation with Matthias and she had mastered it. Eventually. Just because there had been a few moments in between that had been filled with strange bits of weirdness didn’t diminish the enormity of that achievement.

But just what, exactly, had that weirdness been about? she asked herself now. There had been times during their conversation when Matthias had looked at her almost as if he were seeing someone else, someone he didn’t quite know, someone with whom he wasn’t entirely comfortable. Someone he wasn’t sure he liked. It had been…weird. And her response had been weird, too. She’d suddenly been aware of him in a way she hadn’t been when she’d worked for him. Or, at least, in a way she hadn’t allowed herself to think about when she worked for him.

She let herself think about it now.

The day Matthias had announced his engagement to Lauren Conover, Kendall had experienced a reaction that had surprised her. A lot. And she’d realized that day that her feelings for her boss might perhaps, possibly, conceivably go a little beyond professional. Because where she had never minded the other women who came and went in Matthias’s life—because they always came and went—when he’d made a move to join himself permanently to someone else, Kendall had felt a little…

Well, weird.

At first, she’d told herself it was just disappointment that such a smart man would do something as stupid as arrange a marriage of convenience for himself. Then she’d told herself what she felt was annoyance that, because of his engagement, he wanted her to arrange so many events for him that had nothing to do with work. In fact, she’d run through a veritable grocery list of feelings in response to Matthias’s announced nuptials: denial, then anger, then bargaining, then depression…

Hang on a minute, Kendall thought now. Those were the stages of grief. And no way had she felt that. No way had she been that far gone on her boss.

Ultimately, however, she had been forced to admit the truth. That maybe, perhaps, possibly, conceivably, she had developed…feelings… for her employer. Feelings of attachment. Feelings of allegiance. Feelings of… She closed her eyes tight and made herself admit it. Feelings of…affection.

The recognition that she had begun to feel things for her boss that she had no business feeling—even her allegiance wasn’t for things that related to work—was what had cemented her conviction that she would, once and for all, tender her resignation. Even after his engagement to Lauren was canceled, she’d known she had to go. She couldn’t risk falling for Matthias, because he would never care for her in any way other than the professional. He didn’t care about anyone in any way other than the professional. That the offer from Stephen DeGallo had come on the heels of the cancellation of Matthias’s wedding had just been an exclamation point to punctuate the obvious. She had done the right thing by leaving Matthias. Or, rather, she hastily corrected herself, by leaving Matthias’s employ.

She just hoped taking the job with Stephen DeGallo had been the right thing to do, too.

Some lodge, Matthias thought as he pulled into the drive of what looked more like a boutique hotel than a private residence. Had it not been for the fact that he’d been here once before—three months ago, when his brother, Luke, was in residence—he wouldn’t have been sure he was in the right place. He turned off the ignition and exited the car, hauled his leather weekender out of the backseat and made his way to the entrance where the caretaker was waiting for him.

The woman was dressed in a pale yellow straight skirt and a white sleeveless top, a canvas gimme cap decorated with a logo he didn’t recognize pulled low on her forehead. Coupled with her sunglasses, it was hard to tell what she looked like, but what he could see was pretty, in a wholesome kind of way. The ponytail hanging out of the cap’s opening was streaked dark blond, and she had some decent curves, so it wasn’t surprising that Matthias found himself comparing her to Kendall…and thinking how nice it would be if it was Kendall who was here to greet him instead. Not because he wanted to spend a month here with Kendall, of course, but because if Kendall was here, he could get a lot more work done, that was all.

“I assume you’re Mary?” he asked the woman by way of a greeting. “I’m sorry I’m late.”

She seemed to deflate a little when she got a good look at him, and only then did he realize she had seemed kind of expectant as he strode up the walk. Maybe she’d thought he was someone else, since his own appearance probably wasn’t easy to discern, either, thanks to his own sunglasses.

She nodded. “I’m the caretaker.” Without further ado, she extended a key that dangled from a rather elaborate key chain and added, “Here’s the key. Just leave it on the kitchen table at the end of the month. I’ve stocked the refrigerator and cabinets, and there’s some carryout from a local takeaway gourmet. But if it’s not to your taste or you’d like something specific, there are menus for some restaurants in Hunter’s Landing on top of the fridge. I can recommend Clearwater’s and the Lakeside Diner for sure. Or if you do the cooking thing, there’s a market just east of where you turned off to find the lodge.”

Her voice was soft but dispassionate, and she spoke as if she were reading from a script. And not very dramatically, at that. “Tahoe City is about a half hour north, the Nevada state line about twenty minutes east. If you want to gamble,” she added, as if wanting to clarify.

“Not like that,” Matthias told her. When he gambled, he liked for the stakes to be much higher than mere cash.

Mary nodded. “Would you like for me to show you around the place? Explain how everything works?”

“I assume it’s all pretty standard,” he replied. Not to mention he had no intention of seeing how anything worked. That way lay madness.

“Standard, yes,” Mary told him. “But there are quite a few amenities. Hot tub, Jacuzzi, gourmet kitchen, plasma TV…”

He held up a hand to stop her. He wasn’t the type to indulge in any of those things. He had too much work to do. “It won’t be necessary,” he told her. “Thanks, anyway.”

“Then, if you won’t be needing anything else?” she asked.

Well, there was nothing he needed that she could provide, anyway, he thought. So he told her, “Nothing, thanks.”

“Emergency numbers are on the fridge, too,” she said. “Including mine. Hopefully you won’t need them, either.”

She hesitated before leaving, studying Matthias’s face for a moment as if she were looking for something. Then, suddenly, she said, “Goodbye,” and turned to walk down the front steps. For the merest, most nebulous second, she seemed a little familiar somehow. He didn’t know if it was her walk, her voice, the way she carried herself or what, but there was…something about her that reminded him so much of someone else. He just couldn’t quite put his finger on who.

And then the impression was gone, as quickly as it had materialized. Mary was gone, too, having climbed back into her car and backed it out of the driveway. Matthias jingled the key in his hand absently, shrugged off his odd ruminations and turned to unlock the front door, closing it behind himself once he was inside. Out of habit, he tossed his battered leather weekender—the one he’d traveled with since college—onto the nearest piece of furniture. No small feat, that, since the place was huge, with a foyer the size of a Giants dugout, and the nearest piece of furniture was half a stadium away. He didn’t care if he knocked something over in the process. He was still pissed off at Hunter for making all of them rearrange their lives for a month to come here and do whatever the hell it was they were supposed to do.

But then, he was still pissed off at Hunter for dying, too.

Of course, if he were honest with himself, Matthias would have to admit that he was more pissed off at himself than anyone else. He hadn’t meant to lose touch with the Seven Samurai over the years. It had just…happened. Time happened. Distance happened. Work happened. Life happened. People grew up. They grew apart. They went their separate ways. Happened all the time. He and Hunter and the rest of them had all been kids when they’d made pacts and promises to stay friends forever. Hell, Matthias hadn’t even kept in touch with his own brother. Then again, when your brother did things like accusing you of cheating him in business and stealing your fiancée, it was understandable why you’d allow for some distance.

As soon as the thought formed in his head, Matthias pushed it away. He was being unfair to Luke. Really unfair this time, and not the phony-baloney unfairness of which his brother had always accused him. Their father hadn’t exactly been a proponent of fairness, anyway. He had pitted the two of them against each other from the day the twins were old enough to compete. Which, to the old man’s way of thinking, had been within seconds of their emerging from the womb. If there had been some way to make the boys vie for something against each other, Samuel Sullivan Barton found a way to do it. Who could win the most merit badges in Cub Scouts. Who could sell the most wrapping paper for the school fund-raiser. Who could score the most baskets, make the most touchdowns, pitch the best game. As children, they’d been more like rivals than brothers.

It had only gotten worse after their father’s death and the terms of his will had been made public. Samuel had decreed that whichever of the boys made a million dollars first, the estate would go to him in its entirety. Matthias had won. Though winning had been relative. Luke had accused him, unjustly, of cheating and hadn’t spoken to him for years. It hadn’t been until recently that the two men had shared anything. And then what they’d shared was Lauren Conover, the woman who’d agreed to be Matthias’s wife. It had been the ultimate competition for Luke…until he’d fallen in love with the prize. And although Matthias had come to terms with what had happened, things between him and his brother still weren’t exactly smooth. Or simple. Or settled.

Man, what was it about peoples’ last wills and testaments that they always sent Matthias’s life in a new direction?

He sighed as he leaned against the front door and drove his gaze around the lodge. In college, they’d said they wanted to build a cabin. But “cabin” evoked an image of a rustic, no-frills, crowded little shack in the woods with few amenities and even fewer comforts. This place was like something from Citizen Kane, had the movie been filmed in Technicolor. The great room ceiling soared up two stories, with expansive windows running the entire length of one wall, offering an incredible view of the lake. The pine paneling was polished to a honeyed sheen, the wide planked floors buffed to a satin finish. At one end of the room was a fireplace big enough to host the United Arab Emirates, a sofa and chairs clustered before it that, ironically, invited an intimate gathering of friends.

The place was exactly the sort of retreat Matthias would have expected Hunter to have. Handsomely furnished. Blissfully quiet. Generously outfitted. And yet there was something missing that prevented it from being completely comfortable. Something that Hunter had obviously forgotten to include, but Matthias couldn’t quite put his finger on what.

He pushed himself away from the door and made his way to where his weekender had landed—just shy of actually hitting the nearest piece of furniture he’d been aiming for. His footsteps echoed hollowly on the hardwood floor as he went, an auditory reminder of just how alone he would be while he was here. Matthias wasn’t used to traveling alone. Kendall had always come with him on business trips, and even though they’d naturally had separate quarters, he’d seen her virtually from sunup to sundown. Of course, this wasn’t, technically, a business trip. But he would have brought Kendall along, had she still been in his employ, because he would be working while he was here. And Kendall had been a big part of his work for five years.

Five years, he thought as he grabbed his bag and strode toward the stairs that led up to the second floor. In the scheme of things, it wasn’t such a long time. But it comprised the entirety of Kendall’s work life. He was the only employer she’d had since graduating. He’d been her first. Her only. He’d been the one who had introduced her to the ways of business, the one who’d taught her how to achieve the most satisfaction in what she did, the one who’d shown her which positions to take on things that would yield the most pleasurable results. And now, after he’d been the one to initiate her in all the intricacies of the working relationship, another employer had wooed her away.

“Oh, for God’s sake, Barton,” he muttered to himself as he climbed the stairs. “You’re talking about her like she’s an old lover.”

He waited for the laughter that was bound to come from entertaining a thought like that, but for some reason, it didn’t come. Instead, he was overcome by a strange kind of fatigue that made him want to blow off work for the rest of the day and instead go do something more—