Hidden Agenda

Conner laughed. “You know why.” They both stepped back into his office.

Ham used to drop into Conner’s office almost every morning with a new joke or a funny story about his wife. Conner had enjoyed their conversations. But ever since Ham had taken over Stan’s job, he seemed rushed and harried. With two jobs to perform, he had no time for idle chitchat.

He must really need that report. “I’m working on the report today, I swear.”

“I didn’t come here to harass you. How’s the new secretary working out?” Ham asked as he eased himself into his favorite wingback chair. “Is she as useless as she looks?”

“She can pour coffee, at least.” Conner took a sip from his mug. It was cooling off. “I don’t understand why Joyce keeps pitching these pretty bits of empty-headed fluff at me, expecting things to work out.”

This one was worse than all the others put together.

“What was her name again?” Ham asked. “Hilary, Julia…”

“Something like that. Joyce claims this one has impeccable credentials—she was an assistant to some oil company exec. But I could tell with one look she’s never worked a hard day in her life.”

“You need someone with brains and maturity.”

“Or at least one who wears sensible shoes,” Conner grumbled.

“Why didn’t Joyce promote someone from within the company? At least she would know something about the lumber business.”

Conner raised an eyebrow. “Oddly, not a single employee applied for the opening.”

Ham laughed. “Whose fault is that? Your reputation has spread far and wide.”

“I’m not that bad. I just have a low tolerance for stupidity.” He stood and stretched, then walked to the far end of his office to gaze at one of his favorite paintings, a forest scene by a Russian artist. “How does she keep from breaking an ankle, tottering around on those ridiculous shoes?” Those stilettos made her legs look a mile long, but that shouldn’t be the aim in a work situation.

It wasn’t just her shoes. The suit she’d worn that first day had cost more than his, he was pretty sure. Three years of marriage to Chandra—not to mention growing up with his mother—had taught him to recognize Chanel when he saw it. Then there was the haircut. Hilary-Julia—whatever hadn’t gotten that style, or the subtle blond streaks, from a strip mall beauty shop. He pictured her lying back in a fancy salon chair while someone named Marcel shampooed her hair, digging his fingers into the thick, mock-gold strands, her head tipped back, creamy throat exposed….

Good God, where had that come from? He’d been too long without a woman, he supposed, but not many women wanted to spend time with him these days. He was too surly, too impatient.

“Give the girl a chance,” Ham said.

“I give her three days. She’ll either prove herself completely incompetent, or do something so thoroughly boneheaded that I’ll be forced to fire her.” He sighed. “I hope this one doesn’t cry.”

“Of course she’ll cry. They all cry. Besides, you’re a beast.”

“I’d be a lot nicer if I could get out of this damned office once in a while.”

“Back to your beloved trees.”

“Yeah.” God, he missed the trees. At night Conner dreamed about the forest, imagined himself in a hammock slung between two ancient tree trunks, the stillness and utter darkness all around him punctuated only by the periodic chatter or cry of nocturnal creatures. And during the day, he plotted how he would get back there.

“Well, I can help with that,” Ham said, coming to stand beside Conner and gaze at the painting. “There’s a forest sustainability conference in Jakarta next month. I want you to go.”

Obviously Ham expected Conner to be pleased about the junket. But trading in his office for a hotel conference room wasn’t high on his priority list.

“I’m not sure I can afford to take time away,” Conner said. “This situation with Stan…”

“It’s just three days, and it’s vital that Mayall Lumber attend. You should also check on Will Nashiki while you’re there, see how he’s coming along with the job in North Sumatra.”

A couple of days in the Sumatran rainforest? Conner could feel a grin spreading across his face. “Why didn’t you say that to begin with? Of course I’ll go.” Maybe, just maybe, things would be more settled by next month and he could stay in the field longer than a weekend. Nashiki would appreciate a chance to go home, spend time with his family. “If you’re sure you can spare me.”

“It’ll be tough, but I’ll manage,” Ham said, tongue firmly in cheek. He checked his watch and frowned. “Late for another damn meeting. I never realized how many meetings a CEO has to go to.” He limped toward the door, leaning heavily on his cane.

The new girl walked in as Ham left. “Good morning, Mr. Payne.” She held the door open for him.

Ham gave her a dismissive wave.

“Yes?” Conner asked brusquely as he returned to his desk. His office was Grand Central Station this morning.

“What else would you like me to do? How about if I start organizing in here?”

“No.” The single syllable came out more harshly than he intended. “You’re not to touch anything on my desk. Please,” he added grudgingly. “It might look disorganized to you, but I have my own system.”

“Of course,” she said agreeably.

“I’m kind of busy here.” He shuffled a few papers.

“Are you sure I can’t help? I’m good with figures.”

“This is a little more complex than keeping your checkbook register up to date.” If she even had a checkbook. She probably used plastic for everything, then had the bills delivered to Daddy.

“I’m proficient in all of the most widely used accounting and budgeting software. At my previous job, I assisted an executive in the accounting department of a midsize oil company.”

He looked up. “What happened?”

“Sir?” She flashed him a puzzled look.

“Why aren’t you working there anymore?”

“Oh. Philosophical differences. As I became more ecologically aware, I realized I could no longer support my employer’s policies. I’m a proponent of renewable energy.”

A well-rehearsed speech, he guessed, crafted to hide the real reason she’d been canned. Nonetheless, it piqued his interest. She didn’t look green to him. The women he knew who were environmental activists tended toward thrift-store clothes, Birkenstocks and no makeup.

He decided to challenge her. “Why a lumber company? We rape the land, too.”

“Mayall Lumber has one of the most ecologically responsible reputations in the industry,” she promptly replied. “The company is committed to responsible harvesting practices, and it even commits significant resources into saving the old-growth forests that support endangered species, such as the spotted owl and the orangutan. Also, the company has an extensive program for converting waste products into biomass fuel, reducing the world’s carbon emissions.”

She could have gotten most of that information off the web, but none of his other admins had bothered. Now he was impressed. He studied her with renewed curiosity. She’d dressed down today, he was relieved to see, though even in casual pants, she appeared quite well put together. The deceptively plain pants were still top quality, probably tailored to fit her long, lean physique. She could easily have walked off the pages of Vogue.

“You like orangutans, do you?” he asked.

“I’ve never met one personally,” she admitted.

He gathered up the sea of papers on his desk into one giant pile, picked it up and handed it to her. “See if you can make sense of this. I have to put together a report that shows the dollar amount spent on conservation efforts as a percentage of the gross profits from harvests in the European Union over the past three years.”

That ought to keep her busy for a while. And out of his hair. She was one powerful distraction, all long, coltish limbs and svelte curves his palms itched to explore.

“Yes, Mr. Blake.”

“And, um, you can call me Conner. We’re not that formal around here.”

“Very well, Conner.”

“And what do you prefer to be called?” He still hadn’t remembered her name.

“Jillian is fine. I don’t like having my name shortened.” She sashayed out of his office, her arms loaded with paper, and suddenly he realized she reminded him of someone…from a long time ago.

* * *

JILLIAN HAD TAKEN ADVANTAGE of a few quiet minutes to do an internet search on the forbidden reporter mentioned in the memo she’d seen in Joyce’s office. Mark Bowen was easy to find. She’d assumed he would be someone trying to dig up dirt on the murder, or Stan Mayall’s arrest. But he wasn’t a crime reporter, he was a business writer for some lumber trade magazine. She found a picture of him: in his thirties, kind of a scrawny guy but pleasant looking, in a nerdy sort of way.

He probably had nothing to do with the murder. Jillian debated whether to contact him or not, then decided in this instance she would heed Daniel’s orders. She wasn’t confident enough to confront a reporter who could write something about her and get her in heaps of trouble.

Besides, her stomach was grumbling. She shouldn’t have skipped breakfast.

The small office cafeteria reminded Jillian way too much of the one from her high school. As she pushed her tray along the line and selected a carton of yogurt and an apple, she checked out the tables behind her from the corner of her eye. They all seemed to be occupied by tight groups of people, mostly women. She saw no executive types. They probably went out to one of the many nice restaurants in this neighborhood, or had food delivered.

Her plan was to pay for her food, then boldly set her tray down at a table of women and introduce herself. How else would she get to know more people here?

But in the end, she just couldn’t do it. She had too many memories of trying to make friends her freshman year in high school.

That seat’s taken.

We don’t let losers sit with us.

The pig trough is that way.

Adolescent girls could be particularly cruel, and the cliques at her exclusive private school had been worse than most.

Eventually she’d made friends—swim team girls, mostly. But the popular girls had always ignored her, and after the terrible prank Conner had perpetrated on her, they had actively tormented her. Even the boys had teased her until she cried.

Jillian was about to sit at an empty table when she spotted a familiar face. Letitia sat alone, reading a newspaper. Jillian brought her tray to the other woman’s table and set it down.

“Hi, Letitia, okay if I sit here?”

Letitia looked up from her paper without cracking a smile. “You’re not very practiced with office politics, are you?”

Truth was, Jillian had no direct experience with office politics. The only place she’d ever worked besides Project Justice was at Daniel’s mansion, where her place among the staff as queen bee had been secure. She’d had no need to play games, curry favor or assemble a group of allies. But she’d read enough Cosmopolitan articles to understand how it worked.

“Maybe you could help me out with that,” she said.

“The first rule is that you sit with your own kind,” Letitia said. “You’re a top-level support staff. You sit with other executives’ assistants. You don’t sit with rank-and-file secretaries. And you certainly don’t sit with a security guard.”

Though stung by the rebuff, Jillian refused to show it. “That’s a stupid rule. Anyway, I want to sit with you. You seem like an intelligent and interesting person.”

“Oh, sit down. Jeez. Is that all you’re gonna eat?” Letitia had the remains of a chicken potpie in front of her. “No wonder you’re a size zero.”

Oddly, when people said she was too thin—something she heard all the time, although she was a perfectly healthy weight—it hurt almost as much as being called “Jillybean,” the nickname she’d endured in childhood. A size four was a long way from a zero but sometimes seemed threatening to certain women of more generous proportions.

Letitia, however, didn’t appear to be malicious with her observation; she just called it how she saw it. Jillian set her tray down, claimed a chair and unwrapped her straw, placing it in her glass of iced tea.

“So, how’s your first day going?” Letitia asked. “Ready to throw in the towel?”

“It’s not bad so far. It’s hard work, but nothing I can’t handle. Mr. Blake’s job is interesting, so I think mine will be, too.”

“Huh. Does he make you bring him coffee?”

“I don’t mind.” When she got to know him better, she would request that he not order her around like a chambermaid. But she had a sneaking suspicion Conner was being a jerk on purpose. He wanted to see how easily she could be intimidated, how far he could push her before she either cracked or pushed back.

If a billionaire formerly on death row couldn’t intimidate her, Conner certainly couldn’t.

“He’s got a hot man-booty.” Letitia took a sip of her coffee, then added another packet of sugar. “But I don’t know whether I could put up with him just to enjoy a little eye candy.”

“He’s a nice-looking man,” Jillian agreed blandly. What an understatement! “Is he married?”

“No, not anymore.” Letitia laughed. “Can you imagine committing yourself to that for life? At least if you’re an employee, you can walk away. No one was surprised when he got divorced.”

Divorced? Jillian had guessed he wasn’t married. He displayed no family photos on his desk, didn’t wear a ring and hadn’t mentioned a wife or kids. But she hadn’t pegged him as divorced, either.

“What happened there?” she asked, going for broke. Why not? Ordinarily she wouldn’t engage in idle gossip about her boss, but she was here to gather intelligence, right?

“No one knows. He’s tight-lipped when it comes to his personal life. But my guess is, Chandra got tired of sitting at home waiting for him. First he was always traveling, then he was always here, works sixteen-hour days most of the time.”

“Chandra Mayall?” That pushy, exotic creature who’d barged into Conner’s office that morning was his ex-wife? Of course he would marry someone like that. She’d probably been a cheerleader in high school.

“Yup. The boss’s granddaughter—and his sole heir, I might add.”

Conner Blake must have looked like a good catch to Chandra. But Jillian agreed that eighty-hour workweeks weren’t conducive to a good marriage.

“He’s young,” Jillian said. “I expect he’ll find someone else.”

“But not you, I hope,” Letitia said. “You wouldn’t want to be hooking up with a murderer.”

“He’s not a murderer,” Jillian said firmly, trying not to think too long and hard about how angry he’d become when she’d organized papers without his permission. And how he didn’t want her to touch anything on his desk or in his office.

“He’s got motive,” Letitia said, warming up to her topic. “Greg Tynes was having an affair with Chandra.”

“More gossip?”

“This I know for a fact. I saw them together. In the parking garage. Kissing.”

This was good stuff! “But Chandra is his ex. Why would he care?”

Letitia gave her a look that told her exactly how naive her assumption was.

She shivered slightly. Was it possible? She could think of little nice to say about the man, but could he possibly be a murderer?

In high school, when his cruel prank was still fresh in her mind, she’d envisioned all sorts of ways she might make Conner Blake pay for his crime. Her revenge fantasies had included such soap-operatic scenarios as transforming herself into a siren, tricking him into falling in love with her, then jilting him at the altar. Or waiting until he was running for congress, then revealing to the press what he had done to her just days before the election.

She’d grown up and realized how outlandish her fantasies had been, how improbable and immature. But never in her wildest imagination had she envisioned sending him up the river.

Now, that would be payback—sending Conner to prison. The thought brought her no satisfaction. He might be a despicable fathead, but could she really believe he was capable of taking a human life?

She didn’t have to draw conclusions. She only had to report what she found out and Daniel would follow up. Tonight’s report would be a juicy one.

CHAPTER THREE

THE NEXT DAY, when Conner returned from lunch, he found a surprise sitting on his desk. Jillian had delivered a report based on the armload of trash he’d shoved at her only yesterday. The papers were sorted into file folders, neatly stacked on his chair, and a printed report—complete with graphs, charts and a spreadsheet—sat in the middle of his desk.

He was torn when it came to having an assistant. On one hand, he needed someone to keep him organized. Paperwork, scheduling, computers, meetings—he wasn’t terribly good at any of it. But he hated having assistants underfoot. Give him a nice stand of oak trees and he could read them like a book. He could tell a tree’s health just by looking at the color and texture of the bark, the number of branches and how they grew, the gloss of the leaf.

Stick him behind a desk and he was close to useless.

His job performance as director of timber operations was only so-so. This company was only as good as the wood it harvested, and that harvest was only as good as the men and women out in the field finding the stands of trees, evaluating them, negotiating for the purchase and supervising the harvest. From his office he could give his buyers directions, look at photographs and approve purchases or not. But it drove him crazy not to have firsthand knowledge.

And the paperwork—God, how he hated paperwork. All the hoops they had to jump through to keep this certification or that one, proving they adhered to green policies, that they had performed all the correct environmental impact studies. He’d had no idea how hard his predecessor’s job was when he’d accepted the promotion.

It was easy to blame Chandra, but deep down, Conner had no one but himself to hold responsible. He was the one who’d been thinking with his privates, rather than his brain and his heart, when he’d agreed to the corner office. He’d have done anything to keep Chandra happy.

In the end, though, his decision to settle down had backfired. Chandra had fallen in love with an adventurer and world traveler who brought home exotic presents—carved teak boxes, silks and Oriental rugs. She’d seen him as a modern-day Indiana Jones.

But she’d grown weary of his constant travel and had begged her grandfather to promote him. Yes, because of Chandra, he had advanced in the company at lightning speed, bringing home ever-larger paychecks.

But an executive who’d traded in his bullwhip for a smart phone didn’t interest her any longer. The divorce had been executed with surgical precision. Conner had lost his wife, his home, his dog, his savings, and he’d been left with a job he despised.

He wouldn’t be here forever—that was his only consolation. But leaving Stan—a man as dear to him as his own grandfather—in the middle of this hideous controversy over Greg’s murder was unthinkable. With treatment, Stan might beat the cancer. But prison would kill him.

Conner simply couldn’t abandon the sinking ship.

He’d met with Stan’s lawyer, who at Stan’s request had allowed him to go over the evidence collected by the police. One anomaly stood out to Conner right away. Stan wasn’t strong enough to hoist two hundred pounds of deadweight into a car trunk. That was a point in Stan’s favor.

But Conner still had no clue who might have murdered Greg and framed Stan. Any one of the directors, looking to move up, could be responsible. All of them had been interviewed by the police, including Conner. In fact, they’d looked at Conner pretty closely, since he was Greg’s immediate boss. But once they’d zeroed in on Stan, they’d abandoned all their other suspects.

Conner forced his attention back to his job, looking over Jillian’s report. She’d made a few errors, mostly little details that stemmed from a lack of familiarity with the lumber business rather than outright mistakes. He made some notations, then headed for her desk to return it to her.

Maybe he’d finally found an assistant with half a brain who could get things back on track. Someone to whom he could actually delegate responsibilities.

He found her at her desk, shredding a stack of papers he’d given her permission to dispose of.

“You know, you don’t have to do that yourself. Down on the first floor, there’s a whole department devoted to managing waste and recycling. You just hand someone the papers and they’ll take it from there.”

“I prefer to do this myself,” she said, sending another stack of pages through the slot and pausing while the blades whined. “That way, I know for sure it was done. In case a question ever comes up. I assume some of these numbers, the bids and such, are confidential.”

Today she was wearing a slim black skirt and a short-sleeved, lime-green sweater that showed him more of her curves than he’d seen on her first day. Her breasts were fuller than he’d thought at first, and her waist was so narrow he could probably span it with his hands. Twenty-four inches, he’d bet money on it. He had a lot of experience sizing up the circumference of trees.

Not that Jillian’s body looked anything like a tree trunk.

“Is there anything else you’d like me to work on?”

He snapped back to his senses. He had no business thinking about Jillian’s waist, or any other part of her body for that matter.

“Where did you learn to pull together a report like that?” he asked, instead of answering her question.

“I have a business administration degree from Dartmouth,” she said. “Is it satisfactory?”

“There are some mistakes,” he said gruffly, plopping the report in front of her. “Fix them and print it out again.” He turned quickly and walked away before she could see his reaction to her.

Wow. He fell into his office chair and spun it around. Where had that come from? How long had it been since he’d reacted to a woman like that?

No one since Chandra. Chandra, with her traffic-stopping body and long black hair and eyes like cut emeralds, just as sharp, too.

She did nothing for him now, especially since he knew everything about her was fake, from the hair extensions to the augmented breasts to the acrylic nails.

But it wasn’t just her physical self that was insincere. She had lied without conscience, without a second thought, to get what she wanted. She’d perfected the fine art of saying exactly what a man wanted to hear, and he’d fallen for it.

No reason to believe Jillian wasn’t just the same. She was cut from the same cloth—rich, well educated, groomed to manipulate her way to become a rich man’s wife someday.

To be fair, she’d given no indication that she expected him to fill the role of her husband. She’d been nothing if not professional. Even a bit cool.

Which was odd.

Most women responded to him from a…hormonal perspective. The nastier he was to them, the more they tried to win him over. It was the beauty-and-the-beast syndrome. They wanted to tame him.

But not Jillian. She didn’t flutter eyelashes, or lean over so he could get an eyeful of her cleavage, or flip her hair or lick her lips. In fact, he suspected she might be sneering at him behind his back.

It shouldn’t matter. She appeared to be qualified for her job, and that was the only important thing.

She still seemed familiar to him somehow. Who did she remind him of? If she’d grown up wealthy in Houston, chances were good he’d crossed paths with her at some point—a debutante ball, a charity event, even a high school football game. But surely if he’d met her, he’d remember her. Her looks weren’t forgettable.

Pushing thoughts of his new assistant out of his mind, he focused on his email. Great, just what he needed, another screwup with harvesting in East Texas. Unfortunately, Greg Tynes was involved. Dissatisfied with Greg’s job performance abroad, Conner had brought him closer to home, but he’d continued to make mistakes. Apparently he hadn’t understood the protocol and had marked a snag that was a popular owl nesting site. Owls had to be protected not just because they were cute; they were essential to a healthy forest ecosystem.