Hired: The Boss's Bride

She bit back a groan as she imagined throwing herself on the bonnet of her beloved Corvette while it was taken away by goons hired by her bank.

She glanced back over her shoulder. Whatever predicament she had landed herself in, the answer came down to Mitch Hanover; the man who had her future in his firm, long-fingered hands.

Kristin had called him a slave-driving stuffed shirt on more than one occasion. Veronica had thus pictured a balding, overfed, pompous, pasty, married guy on daily blood-pressure medication. Compared with her last boss, the personable, clean-cut and ultimately indiscreet Geoffrey, that combination of traits had sounded like her salvation.

Salvation, as it turned out, had been offered to her in the form of a man whose dark grey suit, darker tie and crisp pinstriped shirt were pressed to the point of agony. But it was the stuff stuffed inside the shirt that made the bigger impact.

Mitch Hanover was beautiful. The kind of beautiful a young girl with dreams of princes and fairy wings and all that jazz would go weak at the knees for.

A shade over thirty, a bit more over six feet tall, with matinee-idol looks, an assemblage of dark preppy hair, sharp jaw and persuasively curved mouth. Stuck in a room with a young Cary Grant and Paul Newman he would have held his own.

But the things that had hit her first, last and every moment in between were his eyes. He had the kind of deep grey eyes that gave her the feeling it wouldn’t take all that much to make them sparkle.

Unfortunately she hadn’t managed it. Yet. But since he hadn’t turned her on her heel and sent her packing, she had time. All for the sake of getting the job, of course. That was why she’d come home. Not to ogle, or allow herself to be consistently ogled, by a colleague. Supremely ogle-worthy though he might well be.

Downstairs Kristin began whispering to her boss animatedly, arms flailing, going pink in the face, no doubt talking her up, while Mitch remained cool, aloof, unflappable. It didn’t ease Veronica’s mind any.

In fact, watching him standing there surrounded by all that gilded finery, his fine mouth pressed into a straight line, his eyes unreadable, his whole mien making him seem as if he took life far too seriously, he made her feel distinctly nervous. Little butterflies came to life in her stomach and she slid a hand beneath her T-shirt and tried her best to silently talk them down.

As though he knew he was being watched Mitch chose that exact moment to glance up at her, his intense grey eyes sending the tummy butterflies into hysterics.

Car payments, car payments, car payments, she repeated inside her head.

She slid her hand from her tummy and casually waved it at a random picture on the wall, some great hulking green monstrosity that looked as if it had been painted by a blindfolded monkey. She poked out her bottom lip and nodded, feigning great appreciation.

Mitch’s gaze trailed away, lingered for a moment on the painting, then shifted back to her. From that distance she could have sworn his eyebrows raised a very little, and that his already enticing mouth turned upwards into the lightest of wry smiles, as though he wasn’t of the mind to take the thing home and stick it on his wall, either.

But then he blinked and once again became a wall of poised professionalism. Shame, she thought. When he let his latent charm shine on through she thought he had great potential for fun.

She cleared her throat and reiterated the new grand plan she had come up with once she’d realised how ridiculous the Barbie hair, wings and fairy-dust ambitions really were: Be good. Work hard. Take care of you. Eat more greens. So long as she stuck to those rules, surely her life would change for the better.

Mitch barked some instructions at Kristin, who nodded and was on the phone sounding professional and brisk in an instant, before he jogged up the stairs to arrive at Veronica’s side. He brought with him a flutter of subtly sexy aftershave that had her breathing deep through her nose, then mentally berating herself for being so weak.

‘Whatever Kristin’s been telling you about me,’ she said, ‘believe about half.’

‘But which half would I choose?’ He glanced sideways at her as he strode past and her knees began to shake all over again.

She jogged to catch up. ‘Whichever fools you into thinking that, beneath this ravishing style icon before you, I’m actually more like you than you’re thinking; I’m sophisticated, responsible, meticulous, fair and open to new ideas and challenges.’

‘Now, what makes you think I am any one of those things, Ms Bing?’

‘Eternal optimism?’ she tried.

He kept walking a step ahead of her, but this time she sensed the wry smile for sure.

The butterflies calmed down to a mild buzz, and Veronica felt herself edge a step closer towards landing the job. To truly starting afresh.

And this time she wouldn’t screw it all up.

Mitch didn’t slow until he’d reached the back office, though Veronica Bing and her long legs, warm persuasive scent and effervescent babbling kept up just fine.

‘Do you mind if I use your office, Boris?’ he asked the curator who had been around the place since before he could remember. ‘I have another interview to conduct.’

Boris eyed him warily, as did most of the gallery staff whenever he deigned to set foot in the place. Nevertheless the older man was enough of a gentleman to acquiesce. ‘Of course, young sir.’

After dragging a high-backed, ornately carved antique chair around for Veronica to sit upon, Mitch swung to the commanding side of the desk.

He sat, and looked up to see that Veronica had ignored the offer of a seat. Instead, as Boris passed she reached out and ran a finger and a thumb over the curl of his red bow tie. ‘Very debonair.’

Boris blushed. He honest to goodness blushed. Mitch wasn’t sure he’d ever even seen the fellow smile, much less find enough raw emotion within himself to blush. He was beginning to fear that the woman might well be some kind of witch.

‘Why, thank you,’ Boris finally managed to spit out when he found his tongue again. ‘Good luck, miss.’

And was his back actually straighter as he shuffled out into the gallery?

Mitch sat back and pondered the situation at hand. If this woman could have both he and old Boris gobsmacked within seconds of meeting her, he wondered just what she might be able to do with a roomful of red-hot Armadale art collectors. Would she outshine them all or would they eat her alive?

‘So who’s Boris when he’s at home?’ Veronica asked as she sauntered around the cluttered room, picking up lovingly polished objets d’art, turning them over, sniffing one or two, then putting them back on whatever spare space she could find. Mitch could only hope they hadn’t been placed in any particular order, or that at least they’d been catalogued and photographed already.

He swung back in the chair and crossed his right ankle over his left knee. ‘Boris is the gallery’s curator and currently the senior employee.’

‘He runs the joint? So why isn’t he interviewing me?’

For want of a clearer way to draw the line as to just who was in charge here, in the business and in the interview, Mitch said, ‘Because I own the joint.’

She stopped her perusal and her gaze swung back to his, dark and bright all at once. And those lips of hers, slices of luscious red, curved upwards into the kind of smile any warm-blooded man could not for the life of him ignore.

Lucky for him it had been some time since his blood had run higher than lukewarm.

He silently cleared his throat and told himself that saucy smile meant she was not in the least bit awed by him and his hiring and firing rights, which wasn’t a good start to the proceedings, or any kind of working relationship.

‘Take a seat, Ms Bing,’ he insisted in his most sober boss-like voice.

She dropped her sleek form into a chair and crossed one long leg over the other and said, ‘Of course, Mr Hanover.’

Was she mocking him? Seriously? From nowhere a bubble of stunned laughter rose into Mitch’s throat. He swallowed it down before it took any kind of hold.

Then his voice dropped a good three notes as he produced his most officious glower and said, ‘Now would be a good time to show me your résumé.’

She shook her head. ‘No résumé.’

‘No résumé?’

‘When has a résumé ever told you anything about a prospective employee more valuable than the things you discovered simply by talking?’

He opened his mouth to deny it, but she made a fair point. One he’d always believed in, hence the reason he was here now rather than some overtrained human resources lackey. ‘Okay, so then why don’t you tell me a bit about your experience?’

When her smile shifted sideways, lifting one rosy cheek until a sincerely adorable dimple appeared, Mitch shifted in his chair and wished this day over.

‘Your experience in the auctioneering field,’ he qualified.

‘Right.’ She smiled at him some more, lots and lots of goodness knew what going on behind those bright brown eyes. Then she leant forward, her fingers with their blood-red nails gripping the edge of the desk. ‘Is this really going to be one of those interviews? Where you ask for my references and I have to come up with some sham, off-the-cuff answer to “What’s your worst flaw?”?’

Mitch could do little but stare.

The other interviews had taken around twenty minutes a piece, the well-qualified participants answering exactly those sorts of questions without complaint. In fact, they’d answered them with great preparation and poise. And he was a busy man with other pressing projects to ably fill any spare time he might have. Back in the city in his nice big office behind a nice big door manned by a Rottweiler of a receptionist whom he would have trusted to take a bullet for him rather than expect him to deal with the kind of frivolity he was dealing with right now.

He too sat forward. ‘Would it be a huge problem for you if it were that kind of interview? We can end this now if that’s the case.’

Maybe that would be for the best, he thought. Despite the growing desire to see what throwing a firecracker like her into a place like this might achieve. For then she and her long legs and bright eyes and hot lips and crazy car would be gone from the fringe of his life. As would the sense that she would end up being more trouble than she was worth.

But instead of giving in and admitting they were obviously a bad fit, she smiled more, wider. And the sense that he was no more in charge of this interview than the chair beneath his backside grew stronger than ever.

‘Mr Hanover,’ she said, ‘Mitch. All you need to know is I’m it. I’m your girl. I’m the best you’re ever going to meet. This job you are looking to fill isn’t about an extensive knowledge of those old paintings out there. It isn’t about who I know, or where I’ve come from. Auctioneering is about selling people what they already think they need: land, lifestyle, dreams, the next big idea, golden trinkets. The product doesn’t matter. What matters is the pleasure I can gift your clients when they buy from you. As it is that pleasure that will become their lasting memory of dealing with Hanover House.’

She finished off her speech with a grin. And Mitch realised all too late that the strange tugging feeling around the edges of his face was the result of him actually smiling back. The soothing lilt of her voice, her utter conviction, the way she un-flinchingly held his eyes with hers… Hell, if she’d tried to resell him the building beneath his feet he had a feeling he might have asked how much.

He slowly relaxed until he was back in control of his facial features, then sat back, rubbing a finger along the dip beneath his bottom lip while he let the idea of her trickle through his flinty outer shell.

She was sassy. Confident. And, despite her apparent lack of regard for form and tradition, she was selling herself like crazy. She wasn’t here on a whim. She really wanted the job. And he really, really needed someone to do it. Someone who actually had a chance of bringing the business into the twenty-first century. And quick smart.

He thought back to the portrait of his great-grandfather, the founder of Hanover House, hanging imposingly over the reception desk. He wondered what old Phineas would have made of Ms Tight Pants. If the guy had had a pittance of the Hanover charm he was famous for, Mitch was pretty sure the crusty old goat would have been smitten.

He asked, ‘And you don’t have any qualms about selling people things they don’t need?’

‘They’re grown-ups, right? Let them do as they please with their money. If they want to blow it all on red at the casino, on drought relief in Africa or on a shiny big ring for their mistress, then who are we to stop them?’

Mitch scratched his head. Who was this woman and where had she come from? ‘I wouldn’t have pegged you for a cynic, Ms Bing.’

She was all blinking dark lashes and radiant smiles as she said, ‘And why ever not?’

Fifteen minutes later Mitch once again stood in the foyer, watching Veronica Bing and her tight denim and bouncy dark curls walk away.

The woman is a walking mantrap, he thought, hands in his trouser pockets as he tugged at the hairs on his thighs in punishment for allowing his eyes to remain focussed just south of her beltline.

She spun suddenly, walking backwards, and his eyes zoomed north. ‘See you tomorrow, boss!’

‘Not me,’ he said, somewhat relieved for it to be the truth. ‘Boris will show you the ropes from here.’

Her pace didn’t falter, though he could have sworn her smile dropped. But with the sun in his eyes it might well have been all in his imagination, which had been acting as though it were on some kind of stimulant ever since she’d walked through his door.

‘And there I was,’ she said, ‘thinking I’d be spending tomorrow strapped to a chair, toothpicks keeping my eyelids open, while you trained me in the ways of the Hanover business principles using graphs and pie charts and ancient battle cries.’

Mitch again felt a smile tug at the corners of his mouth, but since she was on her way out the door, he let it happen. ‘That’s week two.’

She smiled in return, and that time he knew it wasn’t his imagination, because he felt it clear across the room. He balled his hands into fists until his nails dug sharply into his palms.

She waved. He nodded. And then she was out the door.

The six-week contract he’d half had in mind for the position had been stretched out to six months, for how could she be expected to move cities for less time than any sane landlord would offer on an apartment lease? How indeed. Though the clothing, petrol and moving allowances she’d initially insisted she could not live without had been summarily refused, the fluid working hours, a refurbishment budget and carte blanche to run the auctions the way she saw fit had made it through the hashing-out process.

Mitch consoled himself with the fact that he was on such a tight time limit that, if she’d held strong on some of her other requests, he might well have given in to them, as well. Grudgingly. And at least now the deal was done and the toughest little negotiator he’d come across in some time was on his side forthwith.

As he watched Veronica toss her shiny silver handbag into the seat of her audacious pink car a parking inspector sauntered up, notebook open. A malevolent kind of thrill shot through him, much like the feeling of anticipation that came just before a champ was knocked out in a title fight.

‘This’ll be good,’ he said to nobody in particular, leaning against the desk to get the best view possible for when she was taught a much-needed lesson in supremacy and command.

Veronica sidled up to the man in blue, smiling and leaning to look over his shoulder. Mitch remembered then the way she’d smelled when she’d leant in to shake on the employment deal: exotic and fresh all at once. How her dark eyes had seemed lit from within as she’d put across her point of view. How charming was her lopsided smile.

The parking inspector didn’t stand a chance.

It was barely a moment later that the guy glanced her way, laughed and tore up the sheet in his hand. Veronica took the torn-up pieces of paper, tucked them down her top, gave him a pat on the arm, jumped into her ridiculous car, revved the engine with enough va-va-voom every other retailer within spitting distance no doubt had their noses to the front windows of their shops and, with a flick of her riotous dark curls, off she zoomed.

CHAPTER TWO

‘YOU coming, Mitch?’ Kristin asked.

Mitch watched distractedly as Kristin felt around with her feet until she found her heels beneath the guest chair in his office and slipped them back on.

He’d known a woman once who had made a habit of the exact same move; her eyes devouring the Sunday papers, her mouth focussed on downing the last of her tea, while her feet worked unconsciously beneath her chair preparing to whisk her off to the library for hours of research for the doctorate she’d never finished.

‘Mitch?’ Kristin said, and he slid back to the present.

He rubbed a quick rough hand over his face as he asked, ‘Am I coming where exactly?’

Kristin stood, hoisted her handbag over her shoulder and rolled her eyes. ‘To the welcome Veronica drinks. I’ve only mentioned it a thousand times over the past few days.’

So she had. Enough that he hadn’t been able to go a day without thinking about his new employee. Wondering if she’d found a place to live. If she’d bought herself an outfit more appropriate for her new position or if she’d turned up to work at Hanover House in an array of tight trousers and suggestive T-shirts. If he’d done exactly the wrong thing in hiring her because she might be just radical enough to finally run the place into the ground all on her lonesome.

‘Come,’ Kristin begged when he didn’t instantly say his usual no. ‘Do. Everyone from the gallery will be there, as will a whole bunch from the office who overheard the words “Friday-night happy hour” and invited themselves. I’m sure it would do them all a load of good to see the Big Boss knows how to let his hair down too.’

Mitch ran a quick hand over his short back and sides haircut, which had never been more than a centimetre longer than it was now, even while at university. ‘You go. I still have too much to do here,’ he said, even though Kristin held his life in her BlackBerry and knew exactly how up to date and organised he always was.

‘You could always ask Manda to come,’ she said, cocking a hip and not looking as if she was heading out his door anytime soon.

‘Could I, now?’

‘Mmm-hmm.’

As if that weren’t enough reason for him to stay away. He and the accounts junior from Jefferson Corp two floors down had had three dates. One more and she’d start asking more of him than he was prepared to give. And he’d learnt three years and more blondes ago that three dates was exactly the precise cut-off point where they wouldn’t get hurt and he couldn’t get caught.

‘Unless this would make it date four, then you’d better stay away,’ Kristin said, tapping a finger against her lips as she counted back. ‘I’m thinking pale pink tulips to break it off with this one.’

He slanted his eyes her way. ‘You’re a regular laugh riot, you are.’

She grinned, and stood waiting in the doorway of his office. ‘So does that mean you’re coming?’

He threw his fountain pen onto his desk and wondered exactly what Veronica Bing might choose to wear for Friday-night drinks if her interview outfit ran to knee-high boots and tight jeans. Somehow, compared with the lack of nutrition in his fridge at home and given the unusual empty space in his after-hours appointments diary, it seemed too interesting a prospect to miss.

‘You convinced me.’ He stood and grabbed his suit jacket from the back of his chair. ‘Though if anybody gets too drunk, I’m not going to be the one dropping them home. And don’t invite Manda.’

‘Deal,’ Kristin said, practically skipping as she led him out of the office.

Veronica sipped a Bloody Mary as she watched Mitch Hanover smile and nod at a young, cute, skinny blonde draped all over him at the bar.

He’d been true to his word. She hadn’t seen or heard from him once in the days since the interview. Which was a good thing, really, especially when she’d been reminded on a daily basis since why getting too friendly with the boss was a bad, bad thing.

While finding an apartment that would accept a six-month lease, getting to know the Hanover House staff and frequenting the local hardware store to find some bargains for the changes she wanted to make to the gallery, she’d also had to deal with phone call after phone call from a bewildered Geoffrey, who as it turned out had taken her leaving far worse than she’d imagined he would.

As it turned out he’d been about to offer her a key to his apartment. A key! Which wasn’t as petrifying as a ring, but still ridiculous considering they’d had two and a half dates in as many months. Ridiculous, but unfortunately not all that shocking.

The great curse of her life was that the time she had spent looking after her sick mum had left a lasting impression upon her. A kind of Florence Nightingale tinge that she couldn’t seem to wash away. No matter how hard she tried to stifle it so that she could get on with becoming a successful, sought-after, self-confident businesswoman with space of her own, with a job that both broadened her limited horizons and absorbed her, her ambitions had again and again been smothered by men who missed all that and only saw a soft, mushy, empathetic shoulder to lean on.

Explaining all that to Geoffrey had been pointless. There’d been tears, there’d been tantrums, there’d been the sound of ceramics smashing on the floor, and none of that had been from her end.

A high-pitched giggle tugged her from her reverie and back to the long mahogany bar, glossy and shimmering with the reflected light of a half-dozen funky cone-shaped lamps above. Blondie was still there doing her all to show Mitch Hanover she could be soft, mushy and empathetic for him and much, much more.

Blondie giggled loudly again and it screeched down Veronica’s nerves like fingernails down a blackboard. Mitch didn’t seem to mind in the least.

Men…

Today this man wore another dark suit, a different pale pinstriped shirt and an ever-so-slightly more frivolous tie—it was embroided. The tailored clothing made him look far too intense for her comfort, yet at the same time she still found him remarkably yummy.

Especially when comparing him with the men of her recent acquaintance. Gold Coast men wore relaxed linen, bright ties, and none of them could remember the original colour of their teeth. Whereas Mitch Hanover was straight, intense, dark and self-contained. It was like comparing used-car salesmen with a Master of the Universe and she couldn’t deny she instinctively preferred the latter sort a heck of a lot more.

Perhaps it was the fact that he didn’t look like the kind of guy who needed a shoulder to lean on. His shoulders seemed plenty broad enough to handle a whole world of troubles and then some.

‘He never comes,’ Kristin whispered into her ear.

‘Who never what?’ Veronica asked, dragging her eyes away quick smart for fear she’d been caught staring.

‘Our venerable boss,’ Kristin said. ‘He never comes to these social things.’

‘Never?’ Veronica asked, turning straight back to gaze his way now she had a good excuse to do so.

‘Not once,’ Kristin said while sipping at her mixed drink through a skinny pink straw. ‘This is a total first.’

‘Maybe he didn’t have plans tonight.’

‘Maybe. Though it looks to me as if he’s busy making them.’

Veronica experienced a rapid tightness in her chest at the thought. It felt a whole lot like envy. Which was an unforgivable reaction considering Geoffrey had been promoted while she’d had to move cities, change jobs and listen to him whinge about how she had put him out.