IF YOU WANTED THE MOON (2 page)

“No, Tori—”

“My budget was cut too, and I told him so, but does he believe me? I’m the golden child around here, let him tel it, just because I’m the youngest department head. He even has a rumor circulating that Mr. Chandler made Lassiter hire me.”

Arthur frowned. “He
made
him hire you?”

“Yes! Ain’t it crazy? Baxter even told one of our coleagues that Chandler went so far as to grab Lassiter by his coat lapel and tel him he either hire me or hit the road himself. Can you imagine such a lie? As if I’m some favorite of Mr. Chandler’s when that man doesn’t know me from Adam!”

“Tori—”

“I always thought Baxter was petty. But for him to result to this. And to use you of al people!”

“Tori, you don’t understand,” Arthur finaly was able to say. “Herb Baxter has nothing to do with this. Mr. Chandler himself requested you.”

If Tori’s jaw didn’t drop, it should have. Ethan Chandler selected
her
? The man she nearly kiled wanted her to go al the way to Florida with
him
? Now her mind was realy reeling with questions.

Why, chief among them.

But Arthur stood up. He was no confidant of Ethan Chandler’s. He was just his assistant, or, as many around the office referred to him behind his back, his flunky. He knew Tori had nothing going for her in terms of company power and access, but he had next to nothing going for him which, he’d admit, was quite a distance from nothing, but it was light years away from knowing why Ethan Chandler did what he did.

“I can’t answer any of the zilion questions I know you have, kido,” Arthur said as he stood. “Al I know is that Mr. Chandler expects you at the airport 9 am tomorrow morning. So be there or be

square. Okay? That’s al I can tel you because that’s al I know.”

“Then don’t tel me what you know,” a now distraught Tori implored. “Tel me what you think, Arthur. Why me?”

Arthur looked at Tori with some consternation. The sympathy in his eyes scared her. “What I think,” he said, weighing his words carefuly, “is that you’d better work very hard to prove to him that you deserve what you have.”

Tori was terrified. “You’ve heard something, haven’t you? He wants to fire me, doesn’t he?”

“No,” Arthur quickly interjected. “I haven’t heard anything like that. But I know Chandler, and . . .”

“And what, Arthur?”

“And he expects excelence, Tori. He tries each and every one of his management team members in some way or another. To see if they’re worthy. You’re just going through the fire early.”

“And what if I go through that fire and be found wanting?”

Arthur looked Tori dead in the eye. “If that does happen, if you are found wanting, then I suspect that your days at CDI wil be numbered.”

Tori’s heart dropped. There was no way she could lose her job, not with the financial responsibilities she had, but Chandler’s little selection was putting her in jeopardy of doing just that. She wasn’t like Arthur. She couldn’t put up with other people’s mess. She and Chandler would be at each other’s throat by nightfal if he turned out to be anything like those periodicals said that he was. And the man who’d been haunting her dreams, would suddenly become her nightmare.

She phoned one of her closest friends, who in turn phoned another one of her closest friends, and before she knew it she was puling out of the parking lot at CDI to meet them for lunch. They wanted al of the lurid details, they both had told her, as if she was lying; as if she had to know more than what she’d already relayed.

But she didn’t know a thing more, she thought, as her BMW sat idly in the thick of Chicago’s noonday traffic. Her closest friend, Macy, lived and worked in Northwest Chicago too, but their other

friend, Sheila, a first-year resident at Children’s Hospital in Lincoln Park, could never be far from where she worked. They, therefore, often found themselves adjusting their own schedules to accommodate hers, a fact none of them was thriled about. Today, however, Tori didn’t mind the drive. It was the first chance she had al morning to clear her head; to try her hardest to make sense out of this senseless news Arthur had laid on her.

She’d only seen Ethan Chandler twice in the entire five months of her employment with his company, and now he was specificaly requesting her to be his assistant in Florida? Her? Not one of his senior executives? Not one of his tried and true veterans like Herb Baxter or, here’s a novel idea, she thought, his
real
assistant Arthur Coughlin? It didn’t make sense. None of this, she thought, as she parked near the restaurant and began walking toward it, made a lick of sense.

And it wasn’t as if she had the option of turning Chandler down. She didn’t. Her parents were in their forties when they had her (her mother 45, her father nearly fifty). By the time she was ten her father’s health, due to a stroke, deteriorated to such an extent that he couldn’t work anymore, and although her mother did what she could, her unskiled labor netted little by way of income. By her teen years, Tori was virtualy running the entire household, caring for her father while her mother worked two ful-time jobs. Tori went to school, cooked, cleaned, looked after her father, totaly neglected her social life, and cried herself to sleep at night. She knew that her life was no way for a teenage girl to have to live, and she also knew that her plans would be shelved for quite a while to come because no way was she abandoning her parents.

By the time she graduated high school, her mother, then in her early sixties, had to retire due to her own health issues, forcing them to rely on her father’s disability, and her mother’s smal social security check, as the family’s only means of support. But yet in stil neither would hear of Tori delaying colege and working to assist them, as Tori had thought was the only sensible thing to do.

But her parents weren’t interested in her sensibility. She had to move on, her mother had told her. She’d done al anyone could expect from an eighteen year old girl. Besides, her mother added, she was their hope and glory now, the only chance they would ever have of knowing what living the American dream was al about.

Her parents worked hard when they were able, doing al they could to make ends meet, and al they ever wanted was to have a home of their own, rather than the harsh apartment living they’d always

known. When Tori got the job with Chandler, she saw it as her chance to make their dream come true. And she did, purchasing them their very first home, a three bedroom cape cod in Arlington Heights, while she herself moved, not into the ritzy condo community where she had hoped to reside, but into a smaler, one bedroom apartment so that she could afford her parents mortgage payments, and her own rent. That way her parents had security, while she was able to maintain some semblance of independence.

But her independence came with a price. Between the mortgage on the house and the rent on her place, she was stretched, where even her wel paying job as a logistics supervisor barely made ends

meet. If Chandler fired her, which, if Arthur was to be believed (and he was), Chandler would easily do, she and her parents would be up a creek. For reasons she probably couldn’t begin to fathom, Chandler had decided to choose her, to disrupt her life whether she liked it or not, and she could il afford to do a thing about it. Except pray, which she did, as soon as Arthur left her office, unceasingly.

The first time she laid eyes on Chandler was a very brief, but tense-filed encounter. It was during her interview at CDI and her interviewer, Paul Lassiter, was going over her credentials. Graduate of Northwestern’s Business school, which he viewed as a good thing, but her two years at Dow-Tate and her then current post as an analyst for Fitzgerald-Waterhouse, a very smal firm, didn’t impress him at al. “How old did you say you were?” he asked as he kept flipping over her one-page resume, as if there just had to be more
there
there; as if he could not believe she’d have the gal to apply for such a position of esteem this early in her career.

When she told him, for the third time, that she was twenty-five, he roled his eyes the same way he’d done twice before, and then he shook his head as if he knew she had to be crazy. Oh wel, she

thought, as she watched his displeasure increase with every question he asked of her. It was a shot in the dark anyway. She knew she could do the job, that was why she applied, but her interviewer’s snarly expressions were right on: she was no where near qualified for the post.

But then Ethan Chandler showed up. He peered in through the door without knocking, his presence sudden and intrusive. Lassiter, on seeing Chandler, jumped to his feet so fast that Tori almost jumped too, wondering if some foe had suddenly appeared. She quickly looked behind her to see who was this person that would have her expressive, but otherwise mild-mannered interviewer, al at once so

jumpy.

What she saw was a tal, wel-built stranger of obvious stature (Lassiter’s reaction proved that), whose impatience seemed to scream out through the fierce, almost deadly-serious look on his wel-tanned face. He had blue eyes, fierce, cobalt blue eyes that seemed to belie his impertinence, because he also had the look of a man who couldn’t care less about standing on ceremony; who wouldn’t dream of excusing his lack of respect as if what he had to say was always infinitely more important, at least in his mind, than any worthless conversation he may have disrupted. A man ful of himself, in other words, Tori thought.

Everything about his manner, in fact, was fiery and abrupt, from the way he shoved his hands into the pant pockets of his expensive suit, to the way he immediately began asking about some cost

projections he’d been expecting from Lassiter without ever bothering to apologize for his rude interruption. One of those workaholic,
I own the universe
white men who’d give his life for his company but wouldn’t cross the street to help his felow man. He was al about the Benjamins, Tori figured, and she also remembered how she thought it was a shame.

Not just because he was so unusualy good looking, which he was she begrudgingly admitted, but because, through that fierceness that seemed to cloak him, there also seemed to be something oddly

charming about him, too. Why she felt that way was a mystery to her, since there was nothing she could point to that would prove it. But he did, for better or il, make something leap within her. A weird reaction, she knew, given that he was nothing but a stranger to her. The strangest reaction, in fact, she’d ever had to a man. And that was why, for her own good, she turned back around.

Ethan Chandler had every intention of turning back around too, of getting a time certain on that projections report from Lassiter and then high-tailing it on a plane for Seattle, but that was before those big, brown eyes of the woman in Lassiter’s office looked his way. She gazed so deeply into him, with such a knowing stare, that it disturbed him. But just as he was beginning to return that gaze, and to study her, she looked away from him. It was such an odd encounter, one that should have been memorable only for its brevity, but one that led him to move further into Lassiter’s office to get a better look at her, a move totaly inconsistent with his very nature. He had every intention of making a quick getaway, not check out some female.

But that was exactly what he found himself doing. Checking her out. She was stunning, he thought, with her perfect, dark brown skin, long, silky black hair, and the biggest, brownest eyes he’d ever seen. Not to mention that kiler bod of hers with those long, shapely legs going up into a skirt so skintight he wondered if it was stitched on. She was aluring, no doubt about that, but not so aluring to a man like Ethan Chandler that he’d go out of his way to show interest in her. She wasn’t even his type, as she looked every bit as young as she undoubtedly was, but he stil couldn’t deny his reaction to her.

Maybe it was purely an ego thing. Maybe the fact that she was one of the few women who could take a look at him and not show any outward signs of interest, perplexed him. Not that he thought of

himself as some great looking Casanova. He didn’t. But women did, most every woman he’d ever encountered, and young females like this one were usualy the worst of the bunch. They threw themselves at him, doing al they could to please him, giving him permission to do whatever he wanted with their pliable bodies. Al they seemed to require in return was a promise that he’d keep them around; that he’d keep them in his so-caled stable, only to be shocked to learn that he had no stable. But this one was different. He could feel it even if he couldn’t see it. He just couldn’t understand why.

Tori was wondering why, too. She wanted to know why was he standing there like some idiot staring at her. Even as Lassiter tried to explain why he was late with his report, blaming al of these

interviews he was forced to conduct as the main culprit, the man would not relinquish his stare. He made her so uncomfortable, in fact, that she felt compeled to say something. She wasn’t going to get this job, that was obvious, but she also wasn’t going to sit idly by and let some man treat her as if she were a side of beef.

“Excuse me,” she finaly turned to Ethan and said, “but wil you please stop staring at me?”

Lassiter’s mouth gaped open at Tori’s strident tone towards Mr. Chandler, but Ethan didn’t flinch. He simply continued staring at Tori, seemingly fascinated by her, but that fierce, unnerving look of his only made her more strident. “I know I look good,” she said with false bravado, adding
sort of
in a lower tone, “but dang. Didn’t your mama teach you any home training? Didn’t she tel you it’s rude to stare?” When the man stil wouldn’t let up, not even out of the common courtesy that being busted often inspired, Tori got angry. “Look,” she said with venom, “I’m here for a job, not for your inspection!”

Ethan’s heart dropped. It was pain. That was what he was seeing. Pain shrouded in big talk and swagger. Her eyes gave her away. She put on the brave front, she said al the tough words, but the