Elizabeth Bevarly - Married to His Business / Six-Month Mistress - Married to His Business

A moment passed in which neither of them spoke, or moved, or even breathed. Then Kendall’s lips turned up almost imperceptibly, into a smile with what only someone who had the vast experience Matthias had with the emotion could identify.

Victory.

Kendall Scarborough had it in her head that she’d just won whatever the two of them had been engaged in. Now if Matthias could just figure out what the two of them had just engaged in, maybe he’d know what to do next.

Kendall, however, didn’t seem to be having the same problem he had. Because she settled her hands on her hips in a way that was at once relaxed and challenging, and she asked again, “Was there some reason you came here this afternoon, Matthias? Is there something you wanted?”

He honestly had no idea how to answer her. Because for the first time in his life, Matthias didn’t know what he wanted. He was too off-kilter looking at Kendall and thinking about Kendall and listening to Kendall saying his name and marveling at how Kendall had thrown him so off-kilter.

But he didn’t want to look foolish, either—that would have been another first he would have just as soon done without. So he reached into his trouser pocket and removed a small gadget he’d purchased for himself the day after she’d left his employ. Something called a… Well, he couldn’t remember what it was called now, but it was supposed to be even better than the… Whatever that other thing was he used to use for keeping track of his appointments and obligations.

Then he held it out to Kendall and replied, “Yeah. Do you have any idea how this thing works? I keep getting e-mail from some deposed prince in Nigeria who needs my help freeing up some frozen assets he’s trying to get out of the country, and I’d really like to help him out, because he promised me a more than generous share once he’s fluid again. Plus, this woman named Trixie just got a new Web cam she wants to show me, and I’m thinking it might be technology I’d like to invest in.”

He looked at Kendall, who was looking back at him as if he’d just grown a second head. “What?” he said.

She crossed the room in a half-dozen long strides and opened the door. Then she pointed to the hallway beyond with one finger. “Out,” she said. “Now.”

His mouth dropped open in surprise. “What, you’re not going to help me?”

“I’m not your assistant anymore, Matthias.”

Oh, as if he needed reminding of that . “But—”

“Out,” she repeated. “Now.”

He shook his head in disbelief. But he did as she asked him to. Told him to. Demanded he do. The door was slamming shut behind him before he’d even cleared it, missing his backside by that much. He spun around, and went so far as to lift a fist to pound on it again. But he stopped himself before completing the action.

There was a better way to go about this, he told himself. He just had to figure out what it was. Because Kendall was making a mistake, thinking OmniTech was the place she needed to be. Where she needed to be was with him. Or, rather, with Barton Limited, he quickly corrected himself. Now all he had to do was figure out a way to make her realize that, too.

Three

Kendall leaned back against the door through which Matthias had just exited and tried to get a handle on everything that had just happened.

She’d thrown him out, she marveled. She’d looked at the BlackBerry in his hand, incredulous that, just when they were starting to have an exchange that felt evenly matched, he would ask her to program the little gizmo the way she had so many others when he was paying her to be his underling, and then she’d asked—no, told —him to leave. Even more stunning than that was the fact that Matthias had done as she asked—no, told —him to and had left. Without a word of argument. Without a word of exception. Without a word of reproach.

Okay, and without a word of farewell, either.

The point was that Kendall had taken charge of a situation with Matthias and she had mastered it. Eventually. Just because there had been a few moments in between that had been filled with strange bits of weirdness didn’t diminish the enormity of that achievement.

But just what , exactly, had that weirdness been about? she asked herself now. There had been times during their conversation when Matthias had looked at her almost as if he were seeing someone else, someone he didn’t quite know, someone with whom he wasn’t entirely comfortable. Someone he wasn’t sure he liked. It had been…weird. And her response had been weird, too. She’d suddenly been aware of him in a way she hadn’t been when she’d worked for him. Or, at least, in a way she hadn’t allowed herself to think about when she worked for him.

She let herself think about it now.

The day Matthias had announced his engagement to Lauren Conover, Kendall had experienced a reaction that had surprised her. A lot. And she’d realized that day that her feelings for her boss might perhaps, possibly, conceivably go a little beyond professional. Because where she had never minded the other women who came and went in Matthias’s life—because they always came and went—when he’d made a move to join himself permanently to someone else, Kendall had felt a little…

Well, weird.

At first, she’d told herself it was just disappointment that such a smart man would do something as stupid as arrange a marriage of convenience for himself. Then she’d told herself what she felt was annoyance that, because of his engagement, he wanted her to arrange so many events for him that had nothing to do with work. In fact, she’d run through a veritable grocery list of feelings in response to Matthias’s announced nuptials: denial, then anger, then bargaining, then depression…

Hang on a minute, Kendall thought now. Those were the stages of grief. And no way had she felt that . No way had she been that far gone on her boss.

Ultimately, however, she had been forced to admit the truth. That maybe, perhaps, possibly, conceivably, she had developed…feelings… for her employer. Feelings of attachment. Feelings of allegiance. Feelings of… She closed her eyes tight and made herself admit it. Feelings of…affection.

The recognition that she had begun to feel things for her boss that she had no business feeling—even her allegiance wasn’t for things that related to work—was what had cemented her conviction that she would, once and for all, tender her resignation. Even after his engagement to Lauren was canceled, she’d known she had to go. She couldn’t risk falling for Matthias, because he would never care for her in any way other than the professional. He didn’t care about anyone in any way other than the professional. That the offer from Stephen DeGallo had come on the heels of the cancellation of Matthias’s wedding had just been an exclamation point to punctuate the obvious. She had done the right thing by leaving Matthias. Or, rather, she hastily corrected herself, by leaving Matthias’s employ.

She just hoped taking the job with Stephen DeGallo had been the right thing to do, too.

Some lodge, Matthias thought as he pulled into the drive of what looked more like a boutique hotel than a private residence. Had it not been for the fact that he’d been here once before—three months ago, when his brother, Luke, was in residence—he wouldn’t have been sure he was in the right place. He turned off the ignition and exited the car, hauled his leather weekender out of the backseat and made his way to the entrance where the caretaker was waiting for him.

The woman was dressed in a pale yellow straight skirt and a white sleeveless top, a canvas gimme cap decorated with a logo he didn’t recognize pulled low on her forehead. Coupled with her sunglasses, it was hard to tell what she looked like, but what he could see was pretty, in a wholesome kind of way. The ponytail hanging out of the cap’s opening was streaked dark blond, and she had some decent curves, so it wasn’t surprising that Matthias found himself comparing her to Kendall…and thinking how nice it would be if it was Kendall who was here to greet him instead. Not because he wanted to spend a month here with Kendall, of course, but because if Kendall was here, he could get a lot more work done, that was all.