A Cowboy in Disguise (12 page)

“I saw you two. This was planned all along, wasn’t it? Congratulations.” She sighed as she opened the door behind him.

“Alex, this is all Mackenzie. I had no idea she’d try something like this.”

“I asked you to leave.”

She shut the door behind him and locked it for good measure. Mackenzie Stevens could have him. The two of them were obviously a match made in Hades anyway.

•

Alexandra settled into one of the posh leather chairs in David’s office as he leaned on the corner of his desk. She’d thought about her request all morning long and waited until the end of the day to talk to David about it.

“You want a new assignment?” he asked in surprise.

“Yes. Considering the way the Rio project has shaken out, it seems my involvement is to be rather limited. I’ve given Falconer all the information I can and short of actually presenting, there’s not much more I can do.”

David studied her for a moment. So she was back to calling him Falconer, was she? “I was as surprised as you were when Mac Stevens sent that fax limiting our team to one presenter, so I can understand your request.”

“I’d like to find something to put my energies into. Anything hot right now?”

David walked around behind his desk and sat down. “If you’d asked me yesterday, that’s exactly what I’d have talked to you about. But this morning I happened to get a call from one of the men on Rio’s board of directors. I wouldn’t say anything to anyone outside this office about how I know this, but it looks like you’re not off the hook just yet.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well,” David said, “I got the impression that this particular Rio board member was none too pleased with the Stevens fax. There have been a lot of inconsistencies in this process, so they’ve scheduled a pre-presentation meeting—sort of a last chance for all the competitors to ask questions and get equal treatment.”

Equal treatment
, she thought.
What a joke
. “So Falconer and I need to go as a team?”

David nodded. “He also indicated they’re issuing a follow-up fax today. They don’t want to publicly step on Mac Steven’s toes by inviting the full team to speak again, so they’re instead asking for everyone to be available outside the room in case of questions.”

“Just what I’ve always wanted to do—sit out in the hall and wait for someone else to present my work.”

“Try not to take it personally, Alex. Looks like you and Scott are stuck with each other for a few more days. At least we know Rio is keeping a close watch on the whole situation.”

Alexandra’s heels clicked along the tile floor more slowly than usual on her way back to the office. The sound used to seem filled with a sense of purpose, but now each step only carried her closer to an office cluttered with the corpse of her project.

•

Scott saw Alexandra walking down the hall without that sense of lovely determination she always carried so lightly. He cursed Mackenzie under his breath, and then cursed himself. If he hadn’t accepted David’s offer, if David hadn’t heard through the grapevine that he knew Mac personally, then he could have spared Alexandra the anguish she was going through. He should have said no. How stupid had he been to think Mac might be professional, or that the rest of the Board might keep her in line.

He knew what Alexandra must think of him. Everything he’d promised her would never happen, had happened. Scott also knew what he would have to do. First, he had to find a way to convince Alexandra his professional intentions were honorable, and then he had to find a way to make her fall in love with him. Then he had an idea—a brilliant one he thought.

Alexandra looked as though her thoughts were far away, so it had to come as even more of a shock when he grabbed her by the arm and pulled. The next thing he knew, she was seated awkwardly beside him atop several boxes of paper inside a small supply closet.

Scott snapped the door shut and locked it from the inside. He hoped his idea was as brilliant as it first seemed.

“Are you crazy?” she yelled.

A single stripe of light from under the door made it hard to see him in the dark. “
Shh
,” he cautioned. “What do you think people will do if we make noise and they discover us locked together in a supply closet? Could start some pretty nasty rumors.”

Alexandra imagined the faces of her coworkers and rolled her eyes. “Isn’t this illegal imprisonment or something?” she whispered.

“Probably. I don’t care. You haven’t exactly been willing to talk to me since that stupid fax arrived.”

“You mean since you stole my project. Or to use your colorful expression, ‘horned in’ on it.”

Scott put his hands on her shoulders. “You have to listen to me, Alex. Really hear me. I had nothing to do with that decision. It’s ludicrous, but when Mackenzie saw you walk in that room looking the beautiful, stunning way you did, her claws came out.”

Alexandra probably had a hard time imagining Mac Stevens feeling threatened by anyone. “I saw you together in the corner conspiring.”

“Conspiring?” Scott almost laughed. “Is that what you think?” The scent of her perfume oil was intoxicating in the small closet.

Alexandra stayed silent until she heard the clunk of footsteps outside pass. “You’re going to get us both fired.” The closet was extremely small—getting smaller by the minute—and he was too close to her.

Alexandra continued. “Let’s look at the facts here. I spent six months on a project only to hear that you’re coming in at the last minute and I need to share it. We work together for a while until I get comfortable with you and then I find out your real connection to the client. And then—oh, this gets better. And then I see you all cozy with your former lover and
voilà
, Alexandra is off the project and out of the picture two days later. Who has the entire project now? Why, none other than Mr. Scott Falconer.”

Scott’s jaw dropped. “I suppose you think I deliberately poisoned your shrimp puffs, too.”

“It’s a distinct possibility.” Her chin was high again. If anything, he knew how to put the fighting spirit back into her.

He moved closer to her so that her knees brushed against his thighs. She tried to move farther back on the stack of boxes and couldn’t. He leaned in and placed his hands on the boxes—one on either side of her.

“Think about this,” he whispered. “If my goal was to take the project, why wouldn’t I have done it from the beginning?” His lips were so close to hers that he could feel her breath. “If there was a big conspiracy, why wouldn’t I have had Mackenzie just send a fax when I was hired and request that I give the presentation right from the start?”

•

Alexandra’s anger was treacherously close to melting away from her. How dare he poke holes in her theory this way? He made sense on some level and on another, a sense of shame crept in. She hadn’t treated him fairly, but there was no time to think about it. Scott’s lips had already found hers.

All she wanted to do was lay back on the boxes and forget everything. She had been so tired, so angry and so untrusting for much too long. Scott had been good to her even when she least deserved it and it felt as if his touched healed her somehow.

“Do you believe me, Alex?” he murmured against her lips.

She nodded that she did.

“I want you to promise me something.” He pulled away and looking deeply into her eyes. “The next time you suspect something sinister or start to distrust me, I want you to wait and give me a chance. Okay?”

“All right.”

She gently pushed him away and slid off of the boxes, surprised she could stand without wobbling. “We still have the same problem,” she whispered into his ear. “We work together.”

Her argument sounded thinner every time she used it.

Scott wrapped his arms around her tightly and held her against his chest for what seemed hours. “I look at it this way, Alex. A job like mine is easy to find. A woman like you isn’t.”

Alexandra felt warmth spread from head to foot as she embraced him. “We got off to a really strange start, didn’t we?” She turned her head and looked up at him with eyes that glittered with desire. “After the presentation, we’ll see what happens.”

As they looked at one another, the last bit of light disappeared as the beam underneath the door went out and the office noises outside faded away. Could the workday have ended so soon?

They stood there in each other’s arms afraid to move. “Think everyone has gone?” Scott whispered.

“I don’t hear anyone. Hope there aren’t any stragglers. Try the door.”

Scott unlocked the latch on their side of the door and put his hand on the knob. The door didn’t open. He turned it again and the door still refused to budge.

“Uh-oh,” he said. “I think it’s locked from the outside, too.”

“I didn’t hear anyone lock it. Let me try.” Alexandra pulled in vain on the handle. “Think we could break it?”

“Oh yeah, and who’s going to explain the damage tomorrow?”

“We have two choices then. Mary or Sarah,” Alexandra said as the lights on her cell phone illuminated the dark closet. She held her finger over the luminous number pad in anticipation.

They looked at each other and said in unison, “Mary.”

It took Mary more than an hour to find Alexandra’s spare office key at her house, track down a screwdriver, and make her way to the office.

Alexandra and Scott leaned against opposite corners of the supply closet as they listened to Mary remove screw after screw to take the entire doorknob and lock out of the door.

When the door flew open, Mary simply stood there with the screwdriver in her hand surveying the guilty captives inside. “Either of you feel like explaining?” she teased. From the looks of their disheveled clothing and tousled hair, no explanations were really necessary. At least there was no one around the office to witness the scene.

Scott said, “You two go on home. I’ll put the door back together and head out in a minute.”

“I had to take the bus,” Mary announced. “Looks like you get to drive me home, Ms. Alexandra.” Her face held a knowing, smug look as she clasped her hands behind her back and smiled.

“Not a word,” Alexandra warned as they drove. “I don’t want to hear a thing.”

Mary shrugged, grinning all the while. “Who? Me? I wasn’t going to say anything. On second thought, what’s the going rate for a good blackmail payoff these days?”

“Not funny. What am I going to do, Mary? I’m breaking all my own rules with a guy I barely know.”

“Good. Need any pointers?”

•

Mac Stevens was conspicuously absent from the pre-presentation meeting at Rio Safari International the next morning. Of even greater significance, the third team had announced their formal resignation from the presentation, narrowing the competition down to two firms.

Scott and Alexandra arrived side by side with an enhanced charisma together that couldn’t be ignored. They had survived flat tires, an avalanche, food poisoning, a wicked misunderstanding and an evening locked together in a supply closet. A formal client meeting was a cakewalk by comparison, even with Duncan in the room looking daggers in their direction.

“I could quit,” Scott had offered. “I hadn’t thought of it before, but I’m willing.”

“No,” she’d said. “At this point in the game, the client would dump us if you did.” But she’d appreciated the gesture.

They had come to work marvelously together, each tuned in to the same questions and same streams of thought during the discussion. There was no doubt in their minds that the presentation they had prepared was right on the mark.

Earlier that morning, the graphics department had brought over the final poster boards with their enormous illustrations. Alexandra had even hooked up the projector to her laptop to watch the computerized part of the presentation animate its way across the wall of her office. This was quite possibly the best piece of work she had ever done, and though a twinge went through her when she thought of handing it over to Scott, she could picture him in his naturally charming way using her images and his wizardry with numbers to win over the Rio Safari panel.

Her attention returned to the meeting. Alexandra hated to be wrong, but she had to admit to herself that David had known all along exactly what D. W.
Songstram
Corporation needed to win the client. Mackenzie hadn’t been the only factor in Scott’s hiring, David had quietly told her.