Arlene James - The Man With The Money

Stevens gulped and nodded. Rudd handed over the money to an impressed Charly. With those warm bills in her hand, she felt as if she’d met a kindred spirit, and the way he held her gaze made her wonder if perhaps she hadn’t found more, but then she took a good look at him and mentally shook her head. The man was a hunk. It wasn’t just those gorgeous eyes or that wavy brown-black hair, the chiseled features or even the broad shoulders and powerful build. He exuded an aura of confidence and potent masculinity that made itself felt as surely as any physical touch. He wouldn’t really be interested in a woman like her. If she couldn’t hold Dave’s interest, she certainly couldn’t hold the interest of a man like this! Oh, he flirted. Of course he would flirt. It seemed a part of his nature. He probably didn’t even realize he was doing it, but even if it had been more, it was still out of the question.

“The kids will be so thrilled,” she told him. “We’ll have the team shirts printed up with RuCom Electronics Store 796 on the front.”

“RuCom Electronics will suffice,” he said, sounding amused, “and it’ll save on printing costs.”

She laughed. “So it will.”

“By the way, what’s the team name? You never said.”

“Well, we haven’t really decided that yet,” she admitted.

“Good,” he said. “I might have some ideas about that. I mean, since you’ll be representing RuCom, we’ll want it to be something cool, naturally.”

“Oh, ah, well, the team would have to vote on it, you understand.”

He shrugged. “No problem. When can we have a team meeting?”

“Uh, Thursday. We’re practicing at a field over on Lovers Lane at Arroyo. We start about six.”

Darren Rudd smiled. “Then I’ll see you Thursday. Probably not by six, more like half past.”

“No problem. You could even come after practice, about seven.”

He rubbed a spot just in front of one ear and said, “We’ll have to see. Now if you’ll just give me a number where I can reach you…”

“Oh, yes, of course.”

He plucked an ink pen from the counter and turned over a brochure touting a certain computer package. She recited all ten digits of her home phone number, knowing that Bellows, Cartere, Dennis and Pratt took a dim view of her “bleeding-heart projects.” Darren Rudd jotted them down and wrote the name Charlene above them in bold block letters. “Actually,” she heard herself say, “nearly everyone calls me Charly.”

He hitched an eyebrow at that. “Is that a fact? Funny, you don’t look like any Charlie I’ve ever seen.” He actually winked at her then.

To her horror, she felt a blush start to rise. With her pale, golden coloring, it was impossible to hide it. “I’ll, uh, see you Thursday then.” Quickly she turned away, but then she turned back long enough to add, “Thank you. Thank you so much. And it’s Charly, with a Y.”

“Charly with a Y,” he echoed, tucking his hands beneath his folded arms and nodding.

Charly got out of there as fast as her sensible pumps could carry her without knocking something over, blaming her pounding heart on her haste. It was only after she’d made it out to the sidewalk that she began to think how this must be her lucky day, after all.

Dave would never have given her five hundred dollars! Oh, he’d have given her something, certainly more than Pratt, but five hundred? Never. She laughed as she stuffed the bills into her purse. She could kiss the feet of whoever had thought up Retail Staff Appreciation Day at RuCom Electronics. Just one thing bothered her.

Why had she told him to call her Charly? Only her family and friends called her that. Professionally, she was Charlene. Charlene was an attorney, all business. Charly was just a woman with friends and family. Charlene was a sharp, Amazonian warrior on the field of legal expertise. Charly was a much more vulnerable soul, a woman who desperately wanted a family of her own. Something told her that vulnerable was not a good thing to be when it came to dealing with Darren Rudd. He might be just some exec who’d worked his way up to the home office via outstanding performance in the retail end of the business at this point, but he was the sort of decisive, bulls-by-the-horn type. If she wasn’t careful, he’d steamroll her, and this would be his and RuCom’s team rather than hers and the kids’.

If she wasn’t careful, she’d take his flirtatiousness seriously, and that could only lead to trouble. Maybe he would call her Charly, but when it came to Darren Rudd, she was going to have to be Charlene.

Darren snapped his fingers, hovering over the open cash drawer where he’d just put in some bills. “Come on, come on. I only had three hundred on me. You’ll get it back, I promise.”

“It’s not the money,” Stevens said, passing Darren two hundred in cash. “I just can’t believe you, of all people, have expressively gone against company policy, policy you dictated, I might add. I knew nothing good could come of this retail staff appreciation program.”

Darren slid the bills into the cash register and closed the drawer, chuckling. “I’ll be honest with you, Stevens, having corporate staff substitute for retail associates is more about giving you stuffed shirts in your ivory tower a taste of the real business than letting the sales staff off for the day, though they do deserve it since they’re the real money-makers.”

Stevens made a face. “Point taken. But I don’t see what that has to do with sponsoring a soccer team against company policy.”

“It hasn’t a thing to do with it,” Darren admitted. “I just wanted to get to know the lady.”

Stevens rolled his eyes. “Five hundred dollars to get to know a woman, when you’ve got a whole string of them dangling after you?”

“It’s my five hundred bucks,” Darren said with a shrug.

“What about the company policy?”

“My company, my policy.”

“And how long do you suppose it’ll be before she figures out you’re D. K. Rudell instead of simple Darren Rudd?”

Darren grinned. “Long enough, I hope.”

Stevens shook his distinguished gray head. “I do not understand you, sir. I have never understood you. I don’t think I ever will.”

Darren laughed and clapped his vice-president of operations on the shoulder. “Stevens, weren’t you ever young and single?”

“Of course.”

“Well?”

“Well what?”

“Didn’t you ever run the race just for the joy of the chase?”

“I couldn’t afford such indulgences,” Stevens intoned dolefully.

Darren shook his head in pity, then grinned unrepentantly and crowed, “Well, I can, and I have a closetful of track shoes to prove it.”

“And the notches on your bedpost, no doubt,” Stevens muttered.

Darren tapped his temple with a forefinger. “The only record I need is right up here.”

“Let us hope you keep it there,” Stevens said with a sniff. In another life, Darren mused, Stevens had undoubtedly been an English butler. No one else could be that starchy. Still, he was a genius at corporate management. Thanks to him and his team, RuCom ran like a well-oiled machine. His only real fault was in his attitude toward the sales staff, whom Stevens and most of the other executives in the corporate office considered beneath them, when in reality they were the lifeblood of the company. Darren had instituted a yearly Retail Staff Appreciation Day as a means of giving his corporate staff a taste of real retailing, and being one who believed in leading by example, at least in his business life, he had gladly taken a turn behind the counter.

In truth, he’d thought it would be just like the old days when he’d been struggling to find his niche in a marketplace dominated by giants, but it wasn’t. Too much water had gone under the bridge since he’d opened his first shop in Lubbock, fresh out of college at Texas Tech. The water had rushed under that bridge, actually, sweeping him along with it, and now he was the biggest boy in the business. Sometimes he missed the old days—but not for long. He made a mental note to ditch the Porsche and go with the Caddy when he met Charly on Thursday.