Leigh Michaels - Wife On Approval

Paige said stiffly, “I didn’t think you’d be particularly interested.”

“How could I not be interested in the man who used my daughter and then tossed her aside? You’re not having any foolish ideas, are you?”

“About wanting him back? Of course not.”

“That’s good,” Eileen said with satisfaction. “Because, of course, it can’t be done. And if, instead of rose-colored romantic notions, you’re really cherishing any feeble ideas of taking revenge for the way he treated you—well, I don’t think you could possibly pull that off, either.”

Her mother’s blithe assumption that she would fail—that she wasn’t attractive enough, feminine enough, or smart enough to succeed—acted on Paige almost like a challenge. So she couldn’t possibly win Austin back, could she? And she couldn’t possibly figure out a way to get even with him for dumping her? Or, best of all, to accomplish both things at the same time?

Paige was half tempted to take on the dare, not to put Austin in his place but simply to prove that her mother was wrong about her.

Except, of course, she reminded herself, that it would be such a childish thing to do.

Austin had only been inside the offices of Tanner Electronics once before, and that had been just a walk-through to get the lay of the land in order to help him decide whether he wanted to take the job. On that visit Caleb Tanner had been beside him all the while. It was time, he thought, to get a real sense of the people and the business and the surroundings, with no one interpreting or interfering.

So when Austin came into the big glassed-in atrium lobby at the front of the building shortly after lunchtime, he deliberately didn’t head directly for the executive wing. He strolled up and down the halls instead, peeking into office cubicles and conference rooms, studying computer screens and listening to discussions.

Tanner was a young firm, small and intimate and suffering from growing pains. That much Austin had known before he’d ever considered associating himself with the business, and it was part of what he’d found so attractive about Caleb Tanner’s offer. The challenge of grooming a new company beyond financial success into a position of status intrigued him.

By the time he eventually arrived at Caleb Tanner’s corner office, however, Austin found himself frowning. There was no secretary in the outer room—there hadn’t been on the day he visited, either, Austin recalled—so he strolled over to the open door of the inner office and knocked softly.

Caleb’s back was to the door; he was leaning over the once-gleaming surface of his teak desk, where a no-longer-identifiable electronic device lay in a million pieces, and he was whistling softly as he studied the bits. He turned at Austin’s tap, looking startled. “I didn’t expect you till Monday,” he said, stretching out a hand in warm welcome.

“I got Jennifer enrolled in school this morning, and since she wanted to stay and get started, I thought I might as well come in for a few hours and begin to get acclimated.”

“Sabrina said you’d stopped by last night, but I thought you’d take the rest of the week to settle in.”

“I intended to,” Austin said. “But there’s not much settling left to be done. Your Rent-A-Wife team did wonders.”

“Not mine,” Caleb said. “Or, at least, not all mine. I suppose I have to take responsibility for Sabrina, terrifying as the idea is, since I’m marrying her in a couple of weeks. But the other two—”

“An interesting business,” Austin said. “Rent-A-Wife, I mean. I wonder what inspired it.”

“It was Paige’s idea, I guess. You’ve met Paige?”

Austin nodded. He wondered what Caleb would say if he told him exactly how long—and how well—he’d known Paige. But he’d closed that door behind him last night. She had made a misleading statement—not a lie, exactly, but a good long way from the whole truth—and by not correcting it then and there, he had in a sense promised that he would continue to be silent.

Besides, he told himself, perhaps that approach was the best one, anyway. Their marriage had been so brief as to be almost nonexistent, and it was so far in the past that dragging it up now would create nothing more than shock value.

“She wanted a more flexible job,” Caleb said, “to allow her to take care of her sick mother, so she started up the firm and then the other two partners signed on a few months later. So what do you think of Tanner now that you’re on board? The first thing, I guess, is to get an office set up for you. I intended to move out over the weekend so this fancy desk would be waiting for you Monday morning, but you beat me to it.”

Austin couldn’t see the whole surface because of the electronic gadgetry scattered over it, but the part he could see was covered with deep scratches. The desk, he thought, was teak, and it had once been a showpiece. Now it looked more like a workbench. “Thanks, but I wouldn’t want to put the chairman of the board out of the space you’ve grown accustomed to. There are a couple of rooms down the hall that will do fine for me. I’d rather be just a little off the beaten path, anyway—I get more work done that way.”

Caleb grinned. “My point exactly. This corner of the building is like dead center of the target, and I’ve been looking forward to getting out of it. I’ll just move out my personal stuff and leave everything else, and you can settle right in to the executive suite and get to work.”

On the contrary, Austin thought; moving Caleb out looked like a fairly big job. There were boxes, books and papers—to say nothing of electronic bits and pieces—scattered everywhere in the big room. And the physical clutter might not be the worst of the debris that Caleb had collected, Austin suspected. If the employee who was supposed to occupy the outer office was as inefficient as it appeared, he or she wasn’t likely to be a success at working for Austin. “I’d rather hire my own secretary, Caleb,” he said firmly. “Fresh start, new loyalties, all that stuff.”

Caleb frowned. “What are you talking about? Oh, you thought I was leaving mine for you? I’ve never had one.”

At least, Austin thought, that explained why the outer office was always empty. “I see. Well, even hiring a secretary isn’t the first thing on my list. Security is.”

Caleb’s eyebrows rose. “You mean things like new locks and guards around the building?”

“And some other measures, as well. If you aren’t suffering a leakage of information, it’s only a matter of time.”

“My people are loyal.”

“That’s beside the point, when a stranger can loiter in the hallway till an office is left empty and then go look at the specs still blinking on the computer screen.”

“Industrial spies, you mean? What makes you think they could get by with that kind of behavior?”

“Because I did.” Austin’s tone was uncompromising. “I’ve been here for a couple of hours already, walking the halls, and no one challenged me or even asked where I was headed.”

Caleb shrugged. “Maybe everyone recognized you and knew you belonged here now.”

“I think it’s more likely they didn’t even notice me.” A flash of movement in the outer office caught his eye, and with sudden suspicion Austin leaped up to check it out. If that room was supposed to be empty, who was listening at the door?

He burst into the outer room and pulled up short at the sight of Paige standing at the desk, arranging a plate where the blotter ought to be.

“What are you doing?” The question came out more sharply than Austin had intended.

“My job,” she said crisply. “I’m delivering Caleb’s weekly order of cookies. I’d have brought the plate into his office because he prefers to have them while they’re still warm, but I heard voices inside so I didn’t interrupt.” Her gaze flicked over him without apparent interest. “You’re not wasting any time getting into the part, are you, Austin?”