Karen Rose - Secret Admirer

“Somebody like me?”

“Shut up and kiss me.”

For once she obeyed him. Their mouths came together again, her tongue mating with his.

“Let’s call in sick and go to bed,” he whispered.

Before he could stop her, she slipped out from under him faster than if she’d slicked herself with butter. Opening her door, she flung herself out of his car just as Ol’ Bill Sinclair drove by on his way to the Gazette. When she began buttoning her blouse, the old coot tooted.

“God, now everybody in town will know,” she wailed, turning red.

“Get back in the car before anybody else sees you.”

“Only…only if you promise not to touch me.”

“Hell.” When he jumped out of the car too, she started to run back to town. “Okay. Okay.” He held up his hands. “I promise. No touching.”

She turned and ran toward him just as he recognized Helen Geary’s giant beehive hairdo as she whizzed by in her brand-new red Caddy, her eyes out on stems. Helen, being Helen, honked at them too, of course.

“I can’t believe this,” Jane moaned. “She’ll tell everybody.”

“What the hell was that all about?” Matt asked once they were both in his Porsche again. He stared at her while she groped on the floor for her hairpins.

“You tell me. You started it, Harper.”

He turned the key in the ignition. “That takes me back to Red Rock Public School. That’s what you said after you tossed my cowboy hat back at me after you’d sat on it and squashed it flatter than a Frisbee.”

“You started that one too, Harper. You shouldn’t have pulled the ribbons out of my pigtails.”

“Did you know I still have one of those red ribbons?”

“Just like you probably still have the negatives of those pictures.”

He growled. “I don’t have them. I told you that already.”

“Liar.”

“There’s no use talking to some people,” he grumbled.

Aware that she was warier than ever of him, he drove the rest of the way to Fortune TX in a tense, electric silence. He did nothing more to try to break the wall of ice between them. The traffic on the interstate was thick and fast, so he shifted and downshifted, paying attention to his driving instead of her.

When he pulled into his space at the parking garage, she said in the frosty voice he was all too accustomed to, “Let’s not go in together.”

“Right,” he said, his tone as clipped as hers. “Business as usual.”

She’d disappeared by the time he had his shirt buttoned, his tie with the flamingos back on and his hair combed. He was about to get out himself when he noticed the corner of a manila folder under her seat. It must’ve fallen out of her briefcase. After picking it up, he couldn’t resist thumbing through it.

It was mainly boring lists that had to do with that after-school care fund-raiser she was chairing.

He read through it and laughed out loud.

She was good, but so was he.

Bake sale. Down-home cooking.

Silent auction at the baseball game in Red Rock.

Then he came to the last item.

She was planning to auction her “down-home” cooking services to the highest bidder.

In a flash he saw a way to turn the tables on her both in work and play.

She wouldn’t like it.

Or would she? She’d damn sure kissed him back. Still, it was risky. No matter what, he intended to play his hand for all it was worth. Unlike her, he was a gambler.

Happy birthday, darlin’.

He was whistling “The Yellow Rose of Texas” when he got out of the car.

How could she have been so stupid? What had she done?

Jane stood in front of the glass doors of Fortune TX and slapped her forehead with her open hand. Harper wanted to be director of market research. He didn’t want her. His little seduction routine was just his own perverse version of a game of hardball!

Last week he’d impressed Andrea, Jane’s supervisor, and all their bosses in that meeting when he’d demonstrated how the company could best use the Internet to defend brand assets. He’d been creative. She couldn’t let herself ever forget that he’d do anything to win. Anything.

Harper was part of the good-old-boy network. That was one of the reasons he was so successful. He didn’t work as hard as she did because he didn’t have to. He schmoozed. He drove a jazzed-up car to impress people. He was into image rather than substance.

He would probably tell every man at the water-cooler first thing how easy and hot for him she was. He’d get a few laughs, and the male executives would start snickering behind her back. They might even ask her out to get more of the same. If any of them even winked at her, she’d never be able to face anybody again.

Fool that she was, she still felt turned on by the darkly handsome jerk with the talented mouth and hands. She’d even liked the way he’d touched her breasts.

The sun was getting hotter, or was it just thinking about him that made her feel the heat? There was nothing for it but to go inside and face the music.

When she reached her floor, Jane still felt hot and wet and trembly as she skittered past the receptionists, mumbling her hellos so fast neither woman could start a real conversation. Not that they didn’t try.

“You look great,” Stephanie said.

“Different,” Melanie agreed. “What’s with the looser hairstyle and those top buttons undone? New look?”

“New man,” Stephanie whispered.

“Gotta go,” Jane said, not meeting their eyes. She couldn’t even manage a smile in her mad desire to escape to her own office where she could close her door, be alone and try to regroup.

“Have you seen that cute green dress in the shop downstairs? It’d be perfect for the new you,” Melanie said.

“There is no new me,” Jane muttered, horrified that she felt faintly tempted to take a look at the dress.

Even before she got to her office and saw the huge bouquet of daisies, roses, irises and lilies, she didn’t have an inkling about how to proceed with her day. She hated teasing or sexual innuendo, even talks about sex and boyfriends between women. She hated sex on television. Love scenes in books made her skim pages until she got past them. That’s why Matt’s sexy pictures of her had undone her.

Just why sex scared her so deeply was a mystery. Maybe her mother had been too open and flamboyant. Maybe it had to do with the whole town laughing because she’d been born in the pool hall. To Jane, sex was not something to be viewed through keyholes or to be flaunted the way Matt had flaunted those pictures of her.

Jane was at her file cabinet, with her back to the huge vase of lilies and roses and daisies on her desk, when Stephanie popped her head inside the door.

“We’re all dying to know. What’s the special occasion?”

Jane turned and gasped when she saw the flowers Stephanie was looking at. Moving toward them, Jane said, “Oh, I didn’t realize you followed me.”

“Couldn’t resist.”

“I guess…It’s my birthday,” Jane mumbled.

“Looks like somebody remembered big-time. Who?”

“I—I haven’t a clue. My mom maybe.”

“So, read the card.”

With trembling fingers Jane plucked the small envelope from the flowers. Leaning over them, she couldn’t help but inhale their sweet fragrance. “Mmmmmmmm.”

Oh my, she did love flowers.

“Name withheld upon request,” she read aloud. Then she flipped the card over. “That’s all.”

When she looked up, Stephanie was still hovering expectantly. “Well?”

“I’m sure you’ve got work to do,” Jane said hastily.

Ducking her head, Stephanie scurried away.

Jane set her briefcase down and began to search for her folder with the information on the fund-raiser. She needed to get approval from her boss, Andrea, for the booth at the baseball game Wednesday night.