Leigh Michaels - The Playboy Assignment

In the receptionist’s office, once the brownstone’s living room, Rita’s desk was neat, the blotter empty except for tomorrow’s to-do list. The in-basket marked with Susannah’s name was empty.

That was one minor miracle, Susannah thought. At least she was no farther behind than she’d been early this afternoon—it felt like a million years ago—when she’d left the office to attend Cyrus’s funeral...

Except, of course, for the job Pierce had dumped on her. Putting a value on an art collection was hardly a public relations job, but Susannah liked both art and research, and under other circumstances she might have found it an enjoyable challenge. If she had plenty of time, if she didn’t have a dozen pressing projects...

“Be honest,” she told herself. “If it didn’t involve Marc Herrington, you’d like the job a whole lot better.”

She climbed the stairs from the main level to her own office, at the back of the building. Her desk was in chaos, piled with papers and folders, just as it had been late this morning when the telephone calls started to come in. The project she’d been working on was due to be presented to the client tomorrow afternoon, but Susannah had no enthusiasm for facing the final details tonight. She’d come in early in the morning to finish.

She sailed her picture hat across the room toward the chintz-covered couch. The hat landed almost atop a calico cat, curled up nearly out of sight under the edge of a cushion. The cat opened one yellow eye and surveyed her warily. Susannah apologized and went on down the hall to Kit’s office, with its view of the street and the green expanse of Lincoln Park beyond.

The room was unnaturally neat, and Susannah thought the air smelled a bit stale after ten days of disuse. She wasn’t quite sure how that could happen, since the door had been open all the time. Perhaps it wasn’t staleness she felt, but loneliness.

She flung herself down on the chaise longue. She missed Kit. Missed being able to bounce ideas off her, to share frustrations and problems and triumphs.

“So what would Kitty do?” Her voice was loud in the silence of the office.

Stupid question, of course. Susannah would have bet money that Kit—straightforward, uncomplicated Kit—had never had a secret in her life.- She’d even fallen in love so transparently that Susannah and Alison had known it- almost before Kit herself had.

Susannah sighed.

Alison, the warmhearted and practical, wouldn’t be much more help. She’d be sympathetic, of course, but Alison—who had X-ray vision when it came to predicting the outcome of a business decision—would never comprehend how, even at the tender and inexperienced age of eighteen, Susannah could have been so foolish, so impractical, so shortsighted.

The truth was, if she tried for a month Susannah couldn’t explain to Alison what had happened eight years ago between her and Marc—because she wasn’t certain she understood it herself.

And neither Kit nor Alison would be able to fathom why they’d never heard about Marc Herrington before. If he had once been an important part of Susannah’s life, they should have known all the details long since. And if he hadn’t been significant, why was she making such a fuss about meeting him again now?

No, Susannah decided, her partners would be no help whatsoever. She was in this one on her own.

The last rays of sunlight were still filtering through the hallway, but Kit’s office had dimmed slowly and imperceptibly till Susannah was sitting in darkness.

Maybe she was overreacting, she told herself hopefully. Despite what Marc had said about being involved in the fate of Cyrus’s art collection, perhaps he really had no intention of doing anything of the sort. Maybe he’d just been pushing buttons, simply to see what her reaction would be. She wouldn’t put that sort of behavior past the new Marc.

Besides, the collection was big, and with her lack of experience, valuing it wouldn’t be the work of a few days. The task could stretch over a period of months, especially since she couldn’t just drop her other obligations. Surely Marc couldn’t rearrange his life to leave room for that.

Marc wasn’t the sort to be without a job. He’d never been too proud to work at whatever came to hand, and Susannah doubted that had changed. Besides, hadn’t Pierce said something about Cyrus’s funeral being delayed because Marc was on vacation? A vacation surely implied a job, and also an employer—who would not be likely to look kindly on a lengthy absence.

But what kind of a job? she found herself wondering.

Once, Marc had been a welder in a factory which built farm machinery. She supposed he might have made the jump into management, pushing numbers instead of steel. As a supervisor of sorts, perhaps; his hands—though not calloused—had been hard, as if he still did physical work. She hadn’t realized till just now that she’d noticed.

But then there was the fit of his pin-striped suit. Susannah still had trouble reconciling that suit with the Marc she remembered.... Not that it mattered, she told herself firmly. It was a waste of time to speculate about a man from a far distant past. A man who could never be important to her again.

She’d do her job, and Marc would go back to his regular life, wherever it was. And whatever—and whomever—it involved.

In the end, Susannah was glad her presentation was scheduled for Friday afternoon, because it forced her to push the entire problem of Cyrus’s paintings out of her mind. Instead, she spent the day concentrating on how to carry off a widespread recall of child safety seats without creating a national panic, and—less important but perhaps even more difficult—how to present her strategy to the manufacturer without causing an uproar which might cost Tryad future business.

By late afternoon, she’d managed both, and she celebrated by taking a cab back to Tryad’s offices. The work was far from over, but with all the plans approved and in place, the rest would be relatively easy.

She’d actually forgotten Cyrus and the paintings until she reached into her handbag to pay the cabbie and her fingertips touched a small square envelope. Rita had handed it to her as she went out the door for her presentation, saying it had just been delivered by a courier service. Susannah hadn’t even opened it, just shoved it into her bag. But she knew what was inside; through the heavy paper, embossed with Joseph Brewster’s name, she’d been able to feel the shape of a key.

The key to Cyrus Albrecht’s house, no doubt. Well, Monday would be soon enough to figure out how she was going to handle the problem of setting a fair value on Cyrus’s art collection and keep Pierce and the museum’s board happy.

The good news, she told herself, was that by Monday, Marc Herrington would have gone back to—wherever it was he’d come from. In fact, she thought he was probably gone already, or Joe Brewster wouldn’t have sent her a key. Not that she was planning to check; she deserved a peaceful weekend.

And the sudden drop in spirits she was suffering at the moment was an aftereffect of hard work and stress, of relief, of worry about how she was going to pull off this assignment. It had nothing to do, she was certain, with whether or not Marc Herrington. was still in Chicago.

She handed the fare over to the cabbie and reached for the door handle, only to feel it slide away under her hand as the door was opened from outside.

Another commuter, she thought, anxious to pick up a cab at rush hour. At least he could wait till I’m out!

But the odds were that anyone hailing a cab in this neighborhood was a client of Tryad’s, so she swallowed the tart comment she’d have liked to make and smiled instead. “I’m glad I happened along just when you needed the cab,” she said sweetly, and planted one foot on the curb.