Elizabeth Harbison - Plain Jane Marries The Boss

“Why should I be upset that she’s getting married?”

Jane frowned. “Because she’s your…aren’t you two…” She took a breath. “I just thought you two were an item.”

His expression lifted momentarily. “An item?” He gave a laugh. “I don’t think either one of us has time for that sort of thing.” He hesitated. “At least, I don’t.”

“Then you’re not involved?” The words came out in a rush and she instantly regretted being so transparent.

He looked at her with a puzzled expression on his face. “No. She was an actress, trying to get herself known in the same circles I have to socialize with now and then. We just went out together sometimes when the occasion called for couples. Served us both well, although she’s benefitting more than I am at the moment.”

Jane couldn’t help smiling broadly. He was free. Her pulse raced. There was no woman in his life at all. “Then don’t you find it romantic that she’s running off to get married?”

Trey gave a derisive snort. “Romantic for her, maybe, but damned inconvenient for me.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I was planning on taking her to dinner tonight. I was counting on it. What am I going to do now?” He turned to walk toward his office, dazed.

Jane followed at a careful distance. As well as she knew him, she didn’t understand this reaction at all. “Couldn’t you take someone else to dinner instead?”

He turned and looked at her with a helpless expression that she’d never seen on his face before. “Where am I going to find someone to say she’ll marry me at the last minute?” He walked to his desk and flopped into his mahogany leather chair looking so much like a discouraged child that Jane felt the urge to wrap her arms around him.

“Marry you,” she said in a rush of breath. She sat down opposite him and tried to keep her face from showing the devastation—not to mention confusion—she felt inside. “I don’t get it. You were planning on marrying Victoria?”

He looked at her blankly. “I wasn’t really going to marry her.”

“But you just said…”

“Nah, we were just going to say that.” He tipped the Ocean in a Box on his desk and watched the waves swell left and right. “I just needed to create that illusion. Just for tonight.”

Jane pinched the bridge of her nose to ward off a rapidly impending headache. “Why?”

“My father is in town briefly and I think he’s ready to sign over his shares of the company to me, if he believes I’m settling down into family life. When he does,” he held his arms out expansively, “I will finally have a controlling interest in this company.”

“You ought to,” Jane agreed. Trey had taken Breckenridge Construction from being a small-time contractor to being the most prestigious construction and building renovation company in Dallas. Maybe even in all of Texas. “But is it really all that urgent for you to hold control of the company? It’s just on paper, after all.”

“That’s the point. It’s not just on paper. If my father keeps putting the kibosh on jobs he doesn’t approve of, you know what we’ll be?”

“No, what?”

“The biggest school playground builders in Dallas. That is, until we go broke. Which wouldn’t take long.”

“But we’ve got the Davenport contract. That’s worth millions.”

“Exactly.” Trey jabbed a finger in the air. “If my father gets wind of that contract he’ll vote it down in a heartbeat.”

“He doesn’t know about it?”

Trey gave a dry laugh. “No way. The Davenport hotel chain was started by a man who was a staunch supporter of a political candidate my father couldn’t stand.”

“Does that matter?”

“It shouldn’t. But my father and Gutterson nearly came to blows over politics twice that I can remember. For twenty-five years now my father has refused to have anything to do with the company, even though Gutterson himself is long gone.”

“I see.”

“So we’re walking a tightrope. My father’s here for three days, during which time he has to not hear about the Davenport contract and sign the controlling shares of the company over to me.”

Jane nodded. “But I don’t quite understand what being a family man has to do with running the company.”

She was almost sure his expression softened when he looked at her. “Neither do I, but those are his conditions. He’s always had this weird thing about wanting me to settle down and, as he says, get my priorities straight before taking on the whole company.”

She didn’t think that was so weird, but decided it would be best if she didn’t say so.

“So I sort of led him to believe that I was in a serious relationship, headed straight for the altar.” He absently touched the ring finger on his left hand.

“Ah, I see.” Finally she was beginning to understand. Victoria was an actress. She wasn’t really Trey’s girlfriend, but she played the role as part of an agreement between them. In a strange sort of way it made sense. It certainly explained why they had so often asked Jane to get Victoria on the phone at the last minute when an event came up. It also explained why he usually had Jane arrange for a car to pick Victoria up and take her wherever it was they were going, rather than picking her up himself.

How ironic that Trey had asked someone else to play the role of girlfriend for him when Jane wanted the job so desperately herself. But he couldn’t see that. And she couldn’t show it.

“Don’t look at me like that.”

“Like what?” she asked, instinctively raising a hand to her face.

“Like I’m the devil himself.”

“I wasn’t.”

“You know, I do have the company’s best interest at heart here.” He shrugged. “It was a harmless lie, good for my father, good for me and good for the company.”

“Everyone wins?”

“Exactly. You do realize that if we keep going the way we are, with no solid leadership, we’re going to have to do some downsizing? That means people will lose their jobs. I could prevent that, if I had control.”

“Can’t you just buy more shares yourself?”

He shook his head. “I’ve done everything I could to get more shares, and our other investors, at least the ones I can identify, just aren’t budging.”

Jane began to calculate the worth of her own shares, then stopped. It wasn’t even close to what he would need. She was saving for her eventual retirement, so her interest was based on the forty-year savings plan, not controlling shares. “But if your father is willing to sign over his shares—”

“That’s just it. If he’s willing. But now…” He made a gesture of futility. “Unless Victoria shows up, he’s going to go back to Europe and leave me here with my piddly eighteen percent. I mean, telling him I’m serious about a relationship and then losing the girl looks worse than never having been serious in the first place.”

“I see.”

“Though it wouldn’t necessarily have to be Victoria…” He tapped his fingers on the desk. “It could be anyone.”

Jane’s mouth suddenly felt dry. “Doesn’t your father know who Victoria is?”

He shrugged. “Actually, no. I never said her name. He lives in Tuscany—”

“The south of France,” Jane corrected automatically, still thinking about the fact that Victoria wasn’t really a contender after all.

“What’s that?”

She returned her attention to the conversation. “It’s the south of France, not Tuscany.” She’d heard the stories of how the elder Terrence Breckenridge had suddenly abandoned the business he’d founded to move to a quiet life near Provence. It was Jane’s fantasy that someday she, too, would have that kind of nerve, so his destination had stuck in her mind.