Three Blind-Date Brides: Nine-to-Five Bride. Melissa McClone
it a mess? I’m afraid I can’t do a whole lot with it, though I do occasionally tie it back or put it up.’ She uttered the words while she tried to come to terms with the expression in his eyes, with the reciprocal burst of interest it raised in her. Goosebumps tingled over her nape and down her arm. ‘It’s just that it takes ages and I was busy this morning,’ she finished rather lamely while she fought not to notice those reactions.
‘“Mess” wasn’t really what I was thinking.’ He murmured the admission as though against his will, and then, ‘Let me have the hat.’ His fingers brushed hers as he took it from her.
Warmth flowed back up her arm again from the brief contact.
Totally immune to him, are we? Doesn’t look like it, and he definitely did notice you just now. You saw it for yourself.
Oh, shut up!
He tossed the hats onto the back seat and ushered her towards the front one. ‘Hop in. This was my third stop this morning. I have quite a bit of dictation for the trip back to the office. It’s up to you whether you speak your notes into a recorder or write them down, but there are deals in progress, so we need to get moving.’
‘I’m quite willing to be occupied.’ And you see? The Morgan’s boss was highly focused on his work, his success. All those things Michael had cared the most about, had used her to achieve. Marissa hopped, or rather, he boosted her up into the high cab of the car and she landed in the seat with a bit of a plop. It was a soft, comfortable, welcoming seat, contrasting with the strength of the vehicle itself.
Not that she thought Rick Morgan had a soft side to match his car. She couldn’t let herself think that. He was off-limits to her in any case and she needed her hormones to accept that fact without any further pointless comparisons.
The manoeuvre had also left rather a lot of leg exposed and she quickly tugged the skirt back into place.
Rick’s gaze locked onto that expanse of leg and he caught his breath. Blinked twice. And then he strode around the front of the vehicle with his shoulders thrown back and a shuttered expression on his face that made her more conscious of him than ever.
He couldn’t want her. In fact he was probably wondering why on earth he had noticed her at all. She would seem like part of the furniture to him. Like a coffee table with sturdy blocks keeping it low to the ground. Well, women her height didn’t have slender legs that went on for ever, did they? Not that she was comparing herself to a coffee table.
‘I’ll take written notes.’ She didn’t want to speak aloud in front of him for who knew how long, repeating everything he said. That would feel far too intim—uncomfortable. ‘It’ll be more efficient.’
‘Then let’s see what we can do about cementing the positive outcomes that are riding on this morning’s earlier visits.’ He set the car in motion while she prepared herself—a man with power and achievement on his mind.
Michael Unsworth had been all about those things too, in the most arrogant of ways, though it had taken her way too long to see that, to see beyond his surface charm. He’d led her on, taken credit for all her hard work for him as though he’d done it all himself and, when she’d called him on that, he’d dumped her, had claimed their secret engagement had never existed. She was more than over all that, of course. It had happened months ago and she’d told him what a snake he was at the time.
Yes. Totally moved on. Her ongoing tendency to occasionally blare raging I don’t need a man style music in her apartment at night notwithstanding.
She happened to like the musical accompaniments to some of those particular songs, and if she truly felt that way she wouldn’t be trying to find a man she liked on a dating site, would she?
And you don’t think you’re so keen to find a man because Michael dumped you and your birthday will be the anniversary of the day you believed you and he became ‘secretly’ engaged as well as making you officially ‘old’? You’re not out to prove something? Several somethings, in fact?
She was simply out to do something positive and proactive about her future. She didn’t even care if she found a man before she turned thirty. The dating site was a way to look around. If nothing eventuated, no big deal.
And this awareness of her boss … Well, it would go away. He might be somewhat nice, but that didn’t change his corporate status. She would ignore her consciousness of him until it disappeared.
‘Yes.’ She was ready, under control and safe from the temptation of a corporate boss with power on her mind. Marissa clutched her pencil and hoped that was true!
CHAPTER TWO
RICK turned his car into the traffic and started to dictate. First came the report for Cartwright’s committee meeting. Then a bunch of short memos to be emailed to various department heads regarding the other projects he had visited this morning. Marissa’s pencil flew across the pages while she remained utterly conscious of his presence at her side.
In the confines of the big car she registered each breath and movement as he managed the congested traffic conditions with ease. Maybe joining a dating site had raised her overall awareness of men in a general sense?
That might explain this sudden inconvenient fixation on Rick.
He paused, glanced at her. ‘All right? Are you keeping up?’
‘Yes.’ She waved the hand with the pencil in it and didn’t let on for a moment that it ached somewhat from the thorough workout. ‘Gordon always dictates when we’re out on site work.’
Which had been all of three or four times since she’d started with her middle-aged boss six months ago, and Gordon always paused to ponder between each sentence.
‘Take this list down then, please.’ Rick went on to give a prioritised outline of workaday items—phone calls to be made, documentation to be lifted from files and information to be gathered from other departments within the company.
He had crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes. They crinkled when he scrunched his face in thought or gave that slight smile, and made him look even better. Gorgeous, with character.
Whereas Marissa had spent over a hundred dollars on a miracle fine line facial cream last week, an action that had puzzled the younger of her Blinddatebrides friends Dani, and made Grace laugh, albeit rather wryly.
When Rick wound up his dictation, she gestured at the steno pad now crammed with instructions. ‘Someone’s going to be busy. There’s also a BlackBerry in the pack Tom gave me. Do you want me to read you the day’s list?’
In case he’d missed something in the estimated ten hours of straight work he’d just hammered out for whoever got the job of replacing Tom in his absence? She pitied those girls in the general pool on the first floor. Maybe he’d take two of them. Not her problem, in any case.
After this trip, Marissa would take her fine line wrinkles and go back to Gordon’s office.
Rick probably wouldn’t be in a good mood about the first floor help, though, given his last temp from there had booked an appointment for him to go out on a matter someone else should have handled.
‘Yes, check through and see what I’ve missed, would you?’ He signalled, slowed and turned and she realised with a start that they were back at their North Sydney office building. The city pulsed with busyness around them before he took the car underground, but she could only focus on his busyness.
Note to self about go-getter busyness, Marissa: it is not an endearing or invigorating trait.
She quickly pulled the electronic organiser from Tom’s travel pack in her tote. Scanned. Read. Tried not to acknowledge the burst of irrational disappointment that swept through her.
‘There’s a notation of “Julia” for twelve-thirty.’ He wouldn’t hear the slight uneven edge in her