The Bachelor. Marie Ferrarella
to the keeper of the gate. “I’m Jennifer Hall. Mr. Logan is expecting me.”
Unlike Betty, who came to work in jeans that had seen a better century, the woman she addressed looked as if she had been forged out of a mold that was labeled: Perfect Secretary.
The woman smiled distantly but politely, then checked a list before her.
“Yes, he is,” she replied coolly. “If you’ll come this way.” Rising to her feet, the secretary led the way back. She knocked on the door, then turned the knob, opening the door just wide enough to allow Jenny to slip through. “Ms. Hall to see you, sir.”
Nodding her thanks to the woman, Jenny crossed the threshold. When the door closed again behind her, Jenny concentrated on not sinking to the floor in a heap.
She looked like the personification of efficiency, Eric thought as he rose to his feet to greet Jenny. Every light brown hair was pulled back and in place, except for one wayward wisp at her right temple that seemed to have rebelliously disengaged itself from the rest.
It made her look more human, he thought, his eyes sweeping over the rest of her. Jordan’s sister was wearing a light gray suit that appeared just large enough to hide her figure.
Was there a figure beneath all that, or was she shapeless?
Didn’t matter one way or another. He reminded himself that this was his best friend’s sister and not another conquest to be won over. This was strictly business, not pleasure. If anything, he was doing a favor for a friend. A friend to whom he’d ultimately lost a handball game to yesterday.
“Sit down.” He gestured toward the comfortable chair before his desk.
“Thank you for seeing me.”
The words were uttered slowly, distinctly. She wasn’t enunciating so much as trying to work around a tongue that felt as if it had swollen to three times its normal size. Sitting, she leaned her briefcase against the back of the desk and placed her hands on either armrest, praying she wouldn’t leave damp streaks on them. Her palms felt as if they were more than one half water.
Taking a deep breath, she launched into her campaign, fervently hoping she wouldn’t sound like a blithering idiot to him.
“I realize that your time is precious, Eric—” She could call him Eric, couldn’t she? After all, they did go way back, technically. “But this is a very worthy cause.” Her palms grew damper, her speech rate increased. “Since 1989, PAN—that’s the Parent Adoption Network—has been able to help—”
Was she trying to convince him? he wondered. He was under the impression, after talking to Jordan, that this was a done deal. “Yes.”
The single word pulled her up short. She felt like someone slamming on the brake and skidding back and forth along the road, trying not to hit something. “Yes?”
Was there something he wasn’t getting? Or had Jordan failed to tell her that he had agreed to this? “Yes, I’ll be part of the bachelor auction. That’s what you were leading up to, wasn’t it?”
“Yes.” She blew out a breath, her mind a sudden blank with nothing available in the immediate area with which to fill it. She flushed. “Wow, that certainly takes the wind out of my sails.”
He found pink was an appealing color on her. Maybe she wasn’t quite as plain as how she first came across. Jenny did have beautiful blue eyes. “Why? Didn’t you want me to say yes?”
“Yes.” She liked the sound of that word in her ear, the taste of it on her tongue. Yes… There were so many scenarios she wanted Eric and herself to agree on….
Yanking herself out of her mental revelry, she tried to backtrack. She wasn’t going to suffer death by headache today. No, if she was going to die today, it was going to be death by sheer idiocy. “I mean, I’ve been looking for the right words to persuade you, practicing speeches.” Because Eric was looking at her so intently, she flushed again. She tried not to contemplate what was going through his mind. “The cabby must have thought I was crazy.”
“Cabby?”
Jenny nodded. “I had to take a cab to get here. Actually, I had to take a cab to get anywhere today. My car died.” She felt her tongue tangling more and more and waved a hand at her words. She’d gone off on a tangent again. It was what happened when her brain wasn’t operating properly. “Never mind, you don’t want to hear about that.”
Eric smiled at her. Jenny found her knees dissolving like sugar cubes in a hot cup of coffee. Any second now she was going to turn into a complete puddle.
“I’ve been subjected to worse things,” he confided. Glancing over at his day planner, Eric made a decision. “Why don’t we grab a cup of coffee somewhere and talk over exactly what you want me to do?”
Oh, if you only knew. Jenny grabbed her thoughts before they could bolt from the corral and go off running.
This was a bad idea, she thought.
Her confidence didn’t come into play in this arena the way it did when she was in the courtroom. There she was completely prepared, knew her case’s strengths, its weaknesses. Here, the only weakness she was acutely aware of was her own.
This wasn’t about her, Jenny upbraided herself. This was about charity. She had to stop thinking like an adolescent and start thinking and behaving like the mature twenty-six-year-old woman she was. A twenty-six-year-old woman who was a damn good attorney and had graduated at the top of her class within a highly competitive academic forum.
A twenty-six-year old woman-slash-attorney who was turning into mush while looking up into warm chocolate-brown eyes that reminded her of her favorite pudding.
Enough.
Exercising tremendous self-control, Jenny forced herself to think practically, not an easy matter under the circumstances. She had to be in court by three, which meant she needed to be inside a cab by two-fifteen. That in turn meant calling a cab by one forty-five. Since it was a little after one o’clock now, that gave her approximately forty-five minutes.
Forty-five minutes to bask in Eric Logan’s smile and try very, very hard not to behave like a living brain donor. It was a challenge.
“Sounds good to me.” She slowly peeled the words off the roof of her mouth one by one.
The next moment, Jenny looked away from the even wider smile that was now gracing Eric’s lips. She had to. She knew she wasn’t about to regain the use of her knees any other way.
Three
T he coffee shop turned out to be just around the corner from the Logan Corporation. There were tables outside the shop for those who felt like facing the brisk early December afternoon. In deference to the weather, Eric selected one inside for them. It was close to the window so that they still had a good view of all the foot traffic on the busy thoroughfare.
Eric waited until they were both seated and facing each other across a small, round oak table before he said anything beyond asking her what kind of coffee she felt like having.
He watched her take a delicate sip. Jordan’s sister had nice features, he decided, but someone needed to introduce her to makeup.
Still, he knew a great many women who, deprived of their paints, powders and brushes, looked far less attractive than Jenny did. There was something to be said for that.
“So, is this what you do?” Eric asked.
With Eric so close, at times brushing against her in this crowd, it was all Jenny could do to focus on what he was saying, to put one foot in front of the other and keep walking. Thinking was out of the question, so she hit on the first thing that came to her mind.
“You mean badger men?”
He laughed and though it was dangerous to her newly returning sanity, she allowed herself to absorb the rich sound and bask in it for a moment before,