Falling for Sir (11 page)

"Other arrangements?"

"The ins and outs. The up and downs. Of
your schedule. There are other things I might need from you."

"Other things?"

"Well...as they...come up."

She approached his desk. "Fine. I'll go
there on my lunch break and look around. How do I get in?"

Jack reached into his inside jacket pocket and took
out a small silver card. He handed it across the desk. "This is a key to
the elevator that takes you up there. You'll have to sign in first with the
concierge in the lobby and he'll show you where to go. I'll call him so he
knows to expect you."

"What floor is the apartment?"

"Seventeenth." He smiled, holding onto
one corner of the card key while she grabbed another. "And the
eighteenth."

Finally she tugged the card out of his fingers.
"Great." She turned away, but only walked a step before she turned back,
"And Mr. Marchetti, you're lucky I have a sense of humor about these
things or I could have taken offense at the half dozen innuendos with which you
just amused yourself. I can see your apartment isn't the only thing that needs
updating."

Having delivered that verbal slap, she walked
out of his office with no further comment, her ponytail, and her ass, swaying
with smug confidence.

Damn.

As his Grandma Boudreaux used to say, she'd left
him hot and muggy as a July evening on the Louisiana bayou, with no air
conditioning and no fans.
 
He didn't even
mind that she'd just accused his flirting skills of needing an update. She was
right about that.

He laughed softly. At least she hadn't turned
his apartment down. It was a start. But a start to what exactly he had no idea.

* * * *

Bob Rawlings saw her putting on her coat to
leave at lunch and he stood in her door, hands in his pockets. "What did
Marchetti want with you upstairs? I hear he called you in his office."

She carefully considered her response, knowing
his nose would be pushed out of joint if he knew about the offer she'd just
been made. Since she didn't even know yet if she would accept the job—or
could
accept it with a tight time line—
she decided it was safer not to mention it. "He had a few ideas about the
Centennial party and wanted to know how the plan was coming along."

Bob leaned against the doorjamb. "Wanna
watch yourself there, Miller."

"Oh? Why?"

"The boss has his eye on you." He
leered. "Tread with caution."

She briskly knotted her belt. "I don't know
what you mean."

"You may not have learned this yet, my prim
little lady, but favor can be taken away just as quickly as it's given out.
Wouldn't want you to get on his bad side. The drop is just as steep as the
sudden rise."

Marianne wondered if he got his sayings from a
wall calendar. "Thanks. I'll bear it in mind."

"But of course, if you subjugate yourself
to his every need you could last for years. Like Bracknell and Old Marchetti.
She devoted her life to the old scoundrel. Gave up her own happiness and danced
to Marchetti's tune."

"Right."

"So make sure you don't neglect your own
needs. Even a starchy, somber girl like you has needs."

She walked to the door and waited for him to let
her through, but he remained in her way. His eyes gleamed hotly down at her and
she could smell whiskey.

"You need to get out more, Miller. You're
working too many late hours here in the office. First one in, last to
leave." He laughed unpleasantly. "I'd hate to see you becoming a
dried up, frosty old spinster like Bracknell."

"Excuse me."

"You know," he leaned closer,
grinning. "I can give you what you need, Miller, and I won't demand a
lifetime of servitude in payment. All you need do is ask."

"I'll let you know if I ever need your
 
help," she muttered. "Excuse me. I
have an appointment to get some genital warts removed."

He squinted, clearly not knowing whether to
believe her for a second. Then he snorted, swayed and stepped out of her way.
She left her office, staring grimly ahead. Why the hell had Bob Rawlings hired
her when he evidently wanted to hold her back and was nervous about
competition? In her corner vision she saw him slouch back into his own office
and shut the door. Back to his online porn, probably. She knew he'd bribed one
of the IT guys into removing his security firewall—heard him doing it one night
when she happened to be working late in her office and he didn't know she was
around.

David joined her as she was stepping into the
elevator. "Don't worry about Dickwad Rawlings," he exclaimed.
"Everyone knows what he is, honey. We all just ignore him and get on with
it."

"Why doesn't anyone complain to
Marchetti?"

The little man shrank back, dramatically holding
his throat. "Who complains to Marchetti about anything? You want to keep
your job, you keep smiling and act like everything's just fine. Listen, I've
put up with that jerk Rawlings for ten years. Picked up his messes, smoothed
out his mistakes. I'm just waiting for the day his liver gives out or his wife
puts a knife in his back. Whichever happens first."

"But in the meantime he harasses people and
doesn't do his job."

David widened his eyes. "Welcome to the
real world, honey-buns."

* * * *

The concierge was an eager, upbeat fellow who
clearly took pride in his job in one of the most luxurious apartment buildings
in the city.

"Mr. Marchetti's place covers twelve
thousand square feet over two entire floors," he said, marching her to the
private elevator.

"A lot of space for one man."
Even if he does have a big head and a big—

"Can't argue with you there, lady. I keep
telling him he needs company."

"I suppose he can always talk to himself.
That way he's always got someone to agree with him."

The man looked puzzled and then, evidently
deciding to simply ignore her comment, he continued with his tour guide spiel.
"He's got five thousand square feet of terraces and roof deck. Five
bedrooms and seven full baths." He nodded briskly. "'Bout time he had
someone in to renovate. I've been telling him for years." He showed her
how to use the card key in a slot by the elevator doors and they slid open
almost silently. "You make sure he doesn't distract you. I know how he is
with the ladies." He gave her a jaunty grin and a wink.

"Yes. I know how he is too." Marianne
smiled stiffly back, stepped in and let the doors close.

Jack Marchetti had evidently chosen a decorator
from his own staff roster in the expectation of getting a renovation done on
the cheap, or free, despite the fact that he was one of the ten richest men
under fifty in New York City. Yes, she'd read the Forbes list. And rolled her
eyes at it.

Money? He could keep it.

She chuckled at herself. Of course she could say
that because she didn't have any. It was easy to disdain something one never
had.

Marianne remembered the bitter fights over her
grandfather's money when he died. In the end Uncle Stan got the lion's share,
because of a last minute addendum to the will, which shut Marianne's father
almost completely out of it. Dear Uncle Stan promptly blew it all in Vegas.
Marianne's mother had cried with her head on the kitchen table for two solid
hours when she heard he'd left Aunt Maureen and dashed off to sin city with a
first class ticket in one hand and a nineteen-year-old barmaid in the other.

If Marianne's father had known about the long
affair between his wife and his brother he showed no sign of it. He didn't seem
to care about his wife, or the money, or anything other than books. And of
course, his daughter. But only, she suspected, because she was very much like
him—socially awkward, an introvert whose reserved nature often came across to
others as a superiority complex.

"The only important thing in life," he
used to say, "is an education. It's one thing that can't be lost or spent
or taken away from you."

Because she knew about her mother's infidelities—and
yes, Uncle Stan wasn't the only one—Marianne often felt as if she was her
father's only companion. The only one he could trust. Consequently she spent a
lot of her evenings at home with him, his books and his board games. She
wouldn't have left his side to go away to college so early, if he hadn't
suddenly dropped dead of a heart attack during a game of backgammon.

He left her just enough money to complete her
education and get out of dodge. She wasn't sure her father would approve of a
career in interior design. It was more likely he would have wanted her to
follow his footsteps into the world of academia, but there was the creative
side she inherited from her mother and it wouldn't be crushed out of her.
Always anxious to please her father—the parent who most valued her
presence—she'd tried hard not to be lured by art, but it was all around her,
hovering in the air to seep into her skin. Just like her mother's cigarette
smoke.

"Great," her mother had shouted,
lighting up another cigarette within seconds of grinding out the last one,
"go away, just like your brothers, and leave me here to manage this drafty
old farmhouse on my own."

Just before she closed the front door and left
home for the last time, Marianne had suggested, "Ask Uncle Stan to move in
and help out. He's handy in the woodshed, isn't he?"

She'd left her mother with a white face and a
wide-open mouth. That's what it feels like to be betrayed, Veronica dear, she
thought.

People should never marry without love, plain
and simple. Her parents, she knew, had married because her mother was pregnant.
See what one little mistake, one moment of lust, can do? How much unhappiness
it can cause?

The elevator to Jack Marchetti's apartment
stopped slowly and smoothly. The doors opened with a self-satisfied whoosh and
her first view was of a large billiard table, slap bang in the middle of the
dark, hard wood floor. The far wall was dominated by a huge, flat-screen TV and
before it lurked two ugly leather lazy-boy recliners - complete with cup holders.
A worn brown velvet sofa, that looked as if it might once have claimed pride of
place in an elderly relative's house, sat along the exposed brick wall with a
stack of magazines beside it, topped off with an old, wind-up alarm clock. Was
that a modern art exhibit, or just some trash waiting to go out? Her astonished
gaze swept further into the apartment and found a giant, inflatable gorilla; a
tall, dead plant; a line of pub mirrors set against the wall; a gumball machine
and a corner dinette set with torn plastic seating. Bright orange. By the time
she reached his bedroom on the upper floor she was surprised not to find a
stripper pole.

There was only one term to describe his
decorating style. Frat House.

This was the home of a man who planned never to
grow up. Pretty sad at his age. Worse even than that, it was clear everything
to him was temporary. The only item fixed to the wall was his TV. Pictures and
mirrors merely lounged against walls. Second hand and cheap flat-pack furniture
was the order of the day, as if anything more solid was an investment he didn't
see any point in making. His "closet" was an open wrack on wheels in
the bedroom. There was a black suitcase laid open on his bed with a few
toiletries scattered inside, as if he'd been looking for something in it only
that morning. Apparently he was a man who never fully unpacked.

The apartment was pretty much a clean slate,
which was a good thing for her. But it was also an overwhelming space,
especially for her first solo project. Then there was the thought of working
closely with that man as her client, on a project that would put her even more
firmly in his sights, when she'd basically told Mrs. Bracknell that she meant
to keep her head down and hide.

He was right about the bones of the place though.
They didn't need to be messed around with, fortunately considering the time
constraints —just his lousy decor.

The view, of course, was stunning. A bank of
floor to ceiling windows faced out over the churning cityscape. At night the
lights must be beautiful, she thought. But somehow she doubted Jack Marchetti
ever spent much time appreciating the view, whatever city he was in. Beauty
like that was wasted on a man like him because he saw it every day, wherever he
went. The outdoor terraces had no furniture and the doors leading out to them
were locked.

She thought suddenly of his eyes. They were an
odd color—a blue that could be almost black at times and in some lights. Like a
summer's dusk, velvety and warm, quivering on the verge of transformation to
night. There was something sad about his eyes, she realized. Something that
added another layer of mystery.

Jack Marchetti was very different to the harsh,
mean-tempered boss she'd been warned to expect. But he did act like a man
accustomed to getting his own way.

One empty glass, sticky with the remnants of
whiskey, sat on the low cabinet beside the bed and with it a chessboard. The
cabinet drawer was slightly ajar. Even as she told herself not to pry, her
fingers reached for the slender metal handle and tugged. The drawer opened
smoothly. A few books lay there with a travel packet of tissues, a few throat
lozenges—and a pink ribbon.