Victoria Pade - Corner-Office Courtship

Nearing the house for the second time, she decided it might be presumptuous to park in the driveway, so she pulled up to the curb and turned off her engine.

Why am I so nervous about this whole thing? she asked herself as she unbuckled her seat belt and gathered the notebook with samples of her work and the pamphlets and fliers about wall textures and colors.

She’d arrived at any number of houses in the last six months to bid on jobs.

But none of those other bids had involved a Camden, she reminded herself.

Cade Camden.

The man she hadn’t been able to stop thinking about since she’d first looked up from behind her counter into those amazing blue eyes.

But if ever there was a guy for her to stop thinking about, it was him.

She’d spent a full year under legal siege from her now ex-husband and his family. Barely six months after the divorce, the very last thing she needed was to get involved with another spoiled rich boy and the family that came with him.

And if that weren’t enough—and it most definitely was—this particular rich boy was a Camden .

If dealing with the power bought by the Pirfoys’ money had been daunting, she couldn’t even fathom what kind of hell the Camdens could rain down on her.

And the Pirfoys hadn’t come with the reputation the Camdens did. Or with the track record the Camdens already had with the Morrisons.

Ruthless—that was what her grandfather had said about H. J. Camden. Whatever and whoever was in H. J. Camden’s way got run over, left as roadkill.

And how far from the tree could the apple have fallen? Nati asked herself.

Probably not far. It was unlikely that the Camden stores, the Camden empire, the Camden fortune had continued to thrive without H. J. Camden at the helm because his descendants were nice guys.

And the fact that Cade Camden had seemed like a nice guy yesterday?

Her ex-husband had seemed like a nice guy at the start, too.

She could still turn this job down, she reminded herself.

Maybe she should….

But her car was sixteen years old and making a bad noise. Plus, she had trouble getting it to start every morning. She had more bills due this month than she had money to pay them, her grandfather’s birthday was next month and with Christmas the month after that, there was no doubt that she needed the money this job would bring in. She just plain couldn’t afford to turn it down.

And this was just a job, after all. She would do what he hired her to do, get paid and go on her way. What went on in her head in the process didn’t matter. It was just a nuisance that she’d have to deal with until it wore itself out. Which she was certain it would do.

She was going to do this job, collect a nice fat check and get her car fixed and pay her bills. And in a way, the fact that Camden money would be paying those bills was a win for the Morrisons. Not that her great-grandparents would have considered it anywhere near restitution, but it was a teeny, tiny win nonetheless.

Nati pulled on the handle to open her car door but nothing happened.

The door needed to be fixed, too, and she suffered a moment of anger, frustration and longing for the luxury car she’d had to leave behind in the divorce.

“Don’t pour salt into the wounds,” she beseeched the old beige sedan that she’d used in college until she’d married Doug. She’d left it with her grandfather for the six years of her marriage and was now driving it again.

As if her plea had helped, when she tried the door a second time it opened and she got out.

“Thank you,” she said to the car when she closed the door, then she headed up the driveway to Cade Camden’s house.

There were two steps up to the small landing at the front door where twin marble planters bearing matching topiaries stood like sentries on either side. Nati rang the bell and instantly heard a muffled “Coming” hollered from inside.

A moment later, Cade Camden himself opened the door.

He was wearing suit pants and a white dress shirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows and the collar button undone. There were some nearly transparent spots on the front of his shirt where water must have splashed him, and he was drying his hands on a dish towel.

“Right on time!” he crowed in greeting. “If you had been ten minutes earlier you would have caught me with dirty dishes in the sink.”

“Your maid didn’t do them?”

“My maid?” he parroted with a laugh. “I don’t have a maid.”

“Sorry,” she said. “I just figured—”

“They were my dishes from last night and this morning,” he explained. “My grandmother would have shot me if she knew that I hadn’t rinsed them and put them in the dishwasher when I’d finished eating, but you know how it is—sometimes you just feel lazy….”

“I won’t tell,” Nati promised, taking stock of his face again and realizing that no, she hadn’t been imagining him to be better looking than he actually was—something she was hoping she might have been doing. He was every bit as head-turningly handsome as she’d been remembering him, and he smelled wonderful, too. He appeared to be freshly shaven and the scent of citrus and clear mountain air was wafting out to her.

And weakening her knees a little…

He also had great hair, she realized in that instant. Thick and clean, he wore it cut short on the sides and back with the top just a bit longer but still neat. Not so neat that it looked as if he’d put much care into it, though. In fact, it was just tousled enough to keep him from appearing too businesslike, to give him a casual air. And somehow it made her want to run her fingers through it….

Nati tightened her grip around her notebook and pamphlets as if that was the only way she was going to be able to keep from doing it.

“Come in,” he invited then, moving to one side of the entry so she could step across the threshold.

The entry was large, with a steep set of stairs directly in front of the door, a hallway alongside the stairs that was a straight shot to a kitchen at the other end of it, a formal living room to the left and double doors to the right that were open to a library that looked like something out of a Charles Dickens novel—all dark wood, tufted leather seating and books and books and books.

Cade closed the front door. “The wall that needs work is in the dining room—be prepared,” he cautioned as he led Nati down the hallway beside the stairs.

Don’t look at his rear end…

Don’t look at his rear end…

Don’t look at his rear end…

Oh, but it was such a good one…

Because yes, despite her efforts to keep herself from doing it, she did look. And whether his impeccably tailored pants did it justice or his backside did the pants justice, Nati didn’t know. She only knew that Cade Camden had a very, very fine derriere….

“Nice house,” she said, forcing herself to glance at the big spotless kitchen that showed no signs of having been a mess earlier.

Cade tossed the dish towel on a kitchen counter. “I’ve been here almost a year but I can’t take credit for anything—the couple who owned the place before me had been remodeling it a room at a time. The dining room was last on the list and just as they were getting to it, they split up.” He took her through the kitchen, through an adorable butler’s pantry and into a formal dining room.

There was a long rectangular table with six chairs on each side and one at either head, a sideboard and a tall hutch—all in mahogany. The back wall immediately drew Nati’s attention. The gold-foil wallpaper printed with black safari animals riveted the eye.

“Oh, dear…” she said with an astonished laugh.