Stella Bagwell - Millionaire on Her Doorstep

Deliberately clearing his throat, he said, “Look, Ms. York, I realize we don’t know each other that well and—”

“Four hours at the most,” she interrupted.

Adam nodded, then feeling as if the office was closing in on him, he turned and walked over to a small table holding a coffee machine, paper cups and other fixings.

“Would you like coffee? Or there’s a soda machine at the front of the building,” he offered.

“Coffee will be fine,” she accepted. “Leave it black.”

He poured two cups and carried one to her. He’d intended to simply hand it over, then move away. But as he’d discovered in the short time he’d been with her in South America, his intentions went awry whenever he was near Maureen York. Instead, he remained less than a step away from her, his eyes going once again to her red lips. “I...understand you really weren’t trying to kill me. It just seemed that way.”

“Believe me, Mr. Sanders, if I’d been trying to murder you, I’d have found an easier, more thorough way than slinging you out of an open-topped Jeep.” She sipped the coffee, grimaced at the bitter taste, then leveled her eyes on his face. He had strong, bony features, darkly tanned skin and eyes as green as a wet emerald. His hair was the rich color of polished mahogany and flopped onto his forehead in a thick wave. If she had to describe his looks in one word, it would have to be sexy.

“Do you actually believe we can work together?” she asked him.

Adam couldn’t imagine getting any sort of work done while in this woman’s company. But he was going to keep that opinion to himself. Sanders Exploration needed a good geologist in a bad way. If it had to be Maureen York, then he’d do his best to be a professional about it.

“I can forget our first meeting if you can,” he said.

She smelled like lilacs on a warm summer night, and before Adam could stop them, all sorts of questions about her were running through his mind.

“How generous of you,” she replied.

A pent-up breath drained out of him. If his memory served him right, she’d told him she was divorced and that she’d worked as a geologist for nearly ten years. Other than that, he knew nothing about where she’d come from or how his father had managed to ferret her out of a long list of potential candidates for the job.

“I’m trying to be,” he agreed.

Maureen took another sip of coffee. “I, uh, the next day after the accident, I was on my way to the hospital to check on you, but an unexpected call forced me to turn around and head to the airport to catch a plane back to the States. I called the hospital later, and a nurse assured me you were going to be fine. I was glad.”

Back in the hospital, Adam had told himself he didn’t care if Maureen York had the courtesy to see if he was going to live or die. But now...well, hell, he felt like he was fifteen instead of twenty-five. It was downright ridiculous how much better her explanation made him feel.

“I have been...fine. Just hampered with a cast.” He forced himself to move away from her.

At the corner of the desk, he picked up his coffee cup and carried it over to the glass wall. The pineand spruce-covered mountains spread in a panoramic view to the south. Reluctantly, he kept his eyes on their beauty rather than Maureen York’s.

“What brought you here to Sanders Exploration?” he asked. “Six weeks ago, you obviously had a job with a good company.”

Maureen was wondering the same thing herself. She hadn’t been unhappy with her former employers. Their headquarters were based in Houston and you couldn’t get any closer to the oil and gas industry than that. She’d been paid a top-notch salary and the people she worked with had been easy to deal with. But she’d been feeling stifled by the city. And though she hated to admit it, she’d had to face the fact that her life had grown stagnant. She wanted and needed a change. Still—if she’d had any idea this man was a part of Sanders Exploration, she never would have agreed to hire on.

“For one thing, I wanted to get out of Houston. I didn’t dislike the city, but I was tired of living in an apartment and dealing with the fast pace. I want a house with a yard and trees.”

He couldn’t stop his eyes from cutting over his shoulder at her. “Sounds like you want to settle down rather than gear up for work.”

Squaring her shoulders, she walked around the desk and joined him at the windows. “I guess you could say I’d like to slow down. But not in the way you’re thinking.”

His dark green eyes met her brown ones. “I didn’t know there was any other way for a...woman.”

Her nostrils flared as she wondered why anything this man could say or think should matter to her. True, she would have to work with him, but she’d dealt with far worse. So why did she let his little innuendos fire her temper? It was silly.

“You might be interested to know that all of us women aren’t pining to get married. We can have a life without a man.”

“Really? My mother thinks a woman has to be with a man and a man has to be with a woman before they can ever be truly happy.”

Something about his voice, the way he talked about men and women made her feel as if she were a very young teenage girl just learning how it felt to be flirted with by a handsome boy. Yet Adam Sanders was far from being a boy, and she had long since passed the flirting teenage years.

“Your mother must be a hopeless romantic,” she murmured, then turned away from him and settled her gaze on the mountains stretching for several miles in the distance.

And Maureen York wasn’t a romantic. She hadn’t said the words, but Adam had read them on her face just before she’d turned her head away. Well, that was fine, even good, he thought. It was a relief to know she wasn’t searching for romance. It would make their job together so much easier.

“This job will send you to all sorts of places, particularly here in New Mexico. It’s not likely you’re going to get much time to spend in that house with a yard.”

She looked at him from the corner of her eye. “You don’t want me to take this job, do you?”

Fearing she could read his expression, Adam kept his gaze firmly entrenched on the view outside the glass wall. When his father had purchased this office building more than twenty years ago, he’d also bought several adjoining lots to keep any sort of neighbors at bay. To this day, beautiful woods of pine, spruce and aspen grew right up to the back of the building, and at most any time of the day, chipmunks and birds could be seen feeding right outside the windows.

“I don’t have the final say-so whether you work here or not. My father has that right,” he told her.

“That’s not what I said,” she pointed out.

“I think you’ve come here searching for something you couldn’t find in Houston. I don’t think you’ll find it here, either.”

How could he know what she was searching for? Maureen wondered crossly. She swallowed the last of the bitter coffee and tossed the cup in a trash can sitting next to the desk. “Are you an authority on geologists or women or both?”

“I don’t profess to be an authority on anything.” he retorted.

She smiled, but the expression didn’t reach her eyes. “Then don’t try to figure me out. More than one man has tried it and failed.”

That got his instant attention, and he twisted around and pinned her with a stare of disbelief. “Look, Ms. York, I’m not trying to analyze you. I just want to make sure you’re here to work. This may not be like the huge company you worked for in Houston, but we do sink a lot of holes. If you came out here thinking this job was going to be easy, then you might as well head back to Texas.”