Bride by the Book (Crimson Romance) (11 page)

So this was what she’d been missing by working day and night at BrownWare. This was what she missed because of attending college at the age of sixteen and spending every available minute in the computer lab or studying in the library.

She had rarely dated in college, and definitely hadn’t had time for men at BrownWare. The one time she’d had dinner with a man, her father had made her life miserable for weeks afterward. He said she was frittering away time needed to perfect BrownWare’s latest software offering.

Well, here was her chance to experience everything she’d missed. Angie threw her entire body and soul into it.

• • •

Garner couldn’t believe it. Seconds before, he’d been in control of the kiss, but now, Angie had turned the tables on him. She was kissing him even more vigorously than he’d kissed her, and her hands traveled across his back in a way that sent his control spinning dangerously close to collapse.

For a moment, he let himself be carried along on the rush of Angie’s passion. Obviously, he’d been mistaken when he thought her inexperienced.

A few minutes and several kisses later, Garner realized wryly that she
was
inexperienced. He mistook her enthusiasm for expertise.

He might have known, he thought with inward laughter. He should have realized Angie would approach any new experience with her usual fervor. The problem was his body didn’t recognize what his head acknowledged.

“Angie,” he whispered. “Stop.”

Her innocent blue eyes opened halfway. “Why?”

“Because.” He tried to push away, but Angie held him too tightly. “If you don’t, we’ll both wind up with no clothes on right here in Mr. Smith’s backyard where anyone can see us.”

“Oh.” Angie thought a moment. “In that case, why don’t we go back to my house?”

Garner decided the time had come for stern measures. No way was he going to screw up his relationship with his new secretary before he had solved all the mystery surrounding her.

“Angie, let go of me. I’m not going to make love to you. I didn’t mean to kiss you at all. It was a mistake.”

“A mistake?” she echoed, looking stunned. “Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure.”

Somewhere, in the dim, far reaches of his mind, Garner knew he ought to shut up, but the frustration he felt when he parted contact with Angie’s soft body made him cutting when he knew he should be gentle.

Or maybe he was just crazy. On that thought, he opened his mouth when he most definitely should have kept it closed.

“You’re too young and too inexperienced,” he went on. “Which reminds me. You’re going with me to Mindy’s party, and the purpose is to introduce you to almost everyone in town, and that’s it. You’ll meet a lot of people at any party of Mindy’s.”

Angie froze. He felt the tension in her body almost as if he still touched her.

“In that case, keep your kisses to yourself,” she snapped.

“Angie—”

“You started this. I didn’t.”

Garner winced. “You’re right. It won’t happen again,
Miss
Brownwood.”

For good measure, he added, “And you may as well leave those phony glasses of yours at home. You don’t need them, and frankly, they don’t go with the rest of you.”

Angie looked as if various methods of killing him ran through her mind. She lay back on the clover, with bees buzzing around her head, frowning at the sky and firming her soft lips into a straight, adamant line. He had no doubt that she would have walloped him over the head if a stick had been near to her hand.

Thankfully, he had worn her out enough that she was forced to let him live.

Angie awakened at her usual early hour and lay very still. For a moment, she didn’t know where she was. She stared at the fluffy green and white gingham curtains. They didn’t coordinate with the usual austere decor of the brown and tan furnished apartments she had grown accustomed to from her old life because she literally did not have time to decorate an apartment.

She snapped awake. She lay in the old-fashioned bedroom she loved in her own house in Arkansas. She’d slept long and hard. Her body felt pleasantly boneless and extraordinarily relaxed … until she moved.

She gasped with shock when she tried to lift her legs over the edge of the bed. Her calves screamed for mercy. She stood and fell back on the bed with a moan.

The telephone rang. Angie looked at it suspiciously. It was four in the morning in California.

“Good morning, Angie,” Garner said. “I was just checking to see if you’ve made it out of bed yet.”

“Of course I’ve made it out of bed.” She forced her body to sit straight and placed her feet on the floor. “Why shouldn’t I? I have a lot to do today.”

“Your list of things doesn’t include buying a shotgun to come after me with, does it?”

Angie stood painfully. Muscles she’d never known existed complained. “As a matter of fact, that was the first item on the list.”

“In that case, you’d better take a long, hot shower and eat a good breakfast,” Garner said, chuckling. “The second phase of your training begins today.”

“It can’t.” She sat back down on the edge of her bed in disbelief. She was too young to feel like this. “There isn’t anything left of me for you to train.”

“We’re reforming your diet next.” He hung up, laughing.

Poor shape or no, she was not about to put up with that. Grumbling, Angie hobbled to the bathroom, where she spent almost an hour soaking in the bathtub, trying not to remember her response to Garner’s kiss. He hadn’t meant anything by that kiss. Worse, he probably thought she was like Mindy Adams, out to trap him.

By the time she emerged from the bathtub, she could almost walk normally. She left her hair down around her shoulders and put on a turquoise and yellow tailored cotton dress and a pair of high-heeled, yellow pumps. She would put her hair up just before she left the house, and she would remember to put on the glasses. In her opinion, those glasses added a professional look no secretarial wardrobe could do without.

She went to the kitchen and opened the back door, where she observed the yard possessively through the screen. It was hers, overgrown grass and all. With this house and this yard to care for, what did she care what Garner Holt thought about her motives?

“Jay!” the mockingbird shouted from an overhead wire.

Angie looked up. Sure enough, the bird had detected the movement of the door and glared down at her.

“You may have been here before me,” she told the bird, “but I have a legal deed to the place.”

“Jay!”

She drew back, still surveying the yard happily. She had a whole house and yard—complete with a possessive bird—all to herself. It was a novel and exciting experience to someone unused to caring for yards, flower beds, and territorial mockingbirds.

She was also unused to cooking. Angie glanced regretfully around her tidy little kitchen while she put a couple of toaster pastries in the toaster. She’d looked forward to more scrambled eggs and butter-laden grits, but not with Garner around to countermand her order. As soon as she got her yard straightened out, she was going to make use of her new cooking app and learn to cook her own breakfast.

She opened a cabinet and hid a couple of her favorite packaged pastries in her briefcase. At least, she’d have sustenance in case Garner intended to enforce his ridiculous dictates and place her on some sort of ghastly diet.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

Angie gasped, slammed the briefcase shut and spun toward the back door. She’d let the door stand open so she could enjoy the sight of the morning sunlight on the tall, thick grass. Garner stood there, blocking her view and regarding her severely through the screen. He held a sheaf of books and papers under one arm, and he wore a dark blue suit with a red tie.

Angie’s heart raced. She’d thought he looked good in his jeans and cowboy boots. In a suit, he was spectacular.

“Throw that junk in the garbage,” he instructed. “I knew you’d try to pull something of this sort if I didn’t check up on you.”

“What are you doing here?” Angie sagged weakly against the cabinet, heart pounding. The man had no right to cause this sort of reaction in an employee. “I have a front door, you know.”

“Jay!” the mockingbird shrieked.

“Around here, everyone knows to come to the back door. The kitchen is where all the action is.” Garner glanced up. “Let me in, will you. That bird looks like he wants a piece of my hide.”

She moved slowly toward the door. The morning sun fell across Garner’s head, burnishing his dark head with chestnut. He looked tall and fit, altogether too healthy and vigorous for human consumption.

The moment she opened the door, her pastries sprang out of the toaster. Garner stepped inside, scowling at them. Angie ignored her breakfast in favor of noting that although he’d put on a suit, he still wore cowboy boots.

“You ought to throw those outside to appease your man-eating bird,” he said. “No wonder you’re in such terrible condition. You don’t eat anything but high-fat or high-sugar foods.”

Angie laughed, determined to show him she hadn’t given another thought to yesterday’s kiss. “My last job had irregular hours, so I could never count on having time to cook or to eat regular meals.”

“This was your secretarial job with Peter Van Holden?”

She tried to remember her résumé. “Yes, it was. He worked strange hours.”

It was that voice of his, she decided. Before she knew it, he might hypnotize her into revealing a life that was far removed from the life she’d presented in her résumé. No professional secretary would have put up with the kind of life Angie had lived.

“I’ll bet you made a high salary, working those hours,” Garner observed. “Too bad it didn’t leave you time to take care of yourself.”

“I take very good care of myself.” Angie crossed her fingers behind her back. “Just because I don’t care to cook early in the morning … ”

The telephone rang and Angie jumped. Since Garner stood in her kitchen, that meant the caller wasn’t him. That meant it was likely someone from her old life who probably wanted to regale her with something really awful Vernon Brownwood had done.

“Want me to get it?” Garner asked, when she made no move toward the phone.

“Please.” Angie brightened. Maybe the caller would think he or she had the wrong number.

“Yes, this is Miss Brownwood’s residence,” Garner said.

“Who are you?” the caller demanded.

Angie recognized the voice instantly and winced.

“I’m Garner Holt, her employer.” He gave Angie a comforting smile.

“Well, I’m her mother, and I demand to speak to my daughter this instant,” the caller said. “And if you think you can explain what you’re doing in my daughter’s house at this hour of the morning, I’ll be happy to hear your story.”

Angie heard every word of her mother’s clear, carrying voice and grimaced. She shook her head at Garner.

“It’s eight o’clock here,” Garner said in ultra-polite tones, grinning at Angie. “I stopped by to give Miss Brownwood some last minute instructions about the office before I leave town.”

“Eight o’clock?” Celia Brownwood sounded mollified. “Oh, yes. I forgot about the time difference. I apologize, young man. Kindly put my daughter on the phone before I jump to any more irrational conclusions.”

“I’m not a young man.” Garner sounded like he was enjoying himself. “I’m sort of middle-aged. Your delectable young daughter is safe with me.”

“Is that right?” Angie noted that her mother did not sound particularly convinced. “Well, I knew this was going to happen the minute Angie got away from here. It’s too bad, because she was the only one who could have kept things going. Let me speak to her, please. It’s an emergency.”

Angie sighed and rubbed her forehead. Everything at BrownWare was an emergency these days.

“Hello, Mom,” she said, with a complete lack of enthusiasm. “Yes, he’s very nice. No, we are not engaged. I work for him. I just met him a few days ago when I got the job.”

If that didn’t send Garner running, she didn’t know what would. After the way she had responded to his kiss, surely he’d think the worst, that she had taken the job especially to bring herself to his notice.

However, on the whole, Angie thought she’d rather have him think the worst than know the truth.

Garner leaned against the kitchen counter with the look of a man prepared to enjoy himself. Angie wondered why he had really come.

“Angie, sweetie, I hate to say this when you’ve obviously got something a lot more interesting developing than what’s happening at BrownWare, but something has got to be done. Your father—” Celia’s voice broke off suddenly. Angie heard sounds of a scuffle. “Vernon, you give me back my phone immediately.”

“You viper,” Vernon Brownwood hissed into Angie’s ear. “I’ll see to it that you never work again. Never. Do you hear me? I know what you’ve been up to.”

“I’m glad you do,” Angie said, “because I sure don’t. Goodbye, Daddy.”

“Don’t hang up while I’m talking to you,” Vernon yelled. “I know you’re out to destroy me.”

“I don’t work there anymore, remember?” Angie said wearily. She’d thought putting a couple of thousand miles between her and her father would ease the situation. It looked as though she’d been mistaken. Vernon sounded as furious and irrational as he’d been the day she walked out of her office for the last time. “Gotta go, Daddy. My new job is waiting.”

“New job?” Vernon yelled. “I’ll have you blacklisted. You’ll never get another job as long as you live.”

Angie held the phone away from her ear. When she did, Garner stared in shock at the receiver in her hand, which continued to scream until Angie hung it up.

“That was your father?” Garner asked in disbelief.

“Unfortunately, yes,” Angie said, grimacing. “He’s the main reason I left California.”

“Was he … yelling at you?”

“As a matter of fact, he was.”

“Is he all right? I mean, is he well?”

“Who, Daddy? Of course, he’s all right. Why shouldn’t he be?” Angie said defensively. “It’s everyone around him who’s worn out.”

“Have you done something to make him angry?”