The American Earl (5 page)

Growing desperate, Abby put all the files away then let herself into Matt's office. He must keep a record somewhere of his contact numbers, she reasoned. Flicking on a light, she walked in. There were no file cabinets in this room, just one enormous desk that looked as if it was made of an exotic type of wood with ebony inserts at the corners, a masculine style of chair and two visitors' chairs shoved into corners of the room. The only other item in the room
was an oriental carpet in rich golds and blues, covering the expanse of polished wood floor between door and desk. Smythe kept things simple but certainly wasn't concerned with overspending.

Abby walked over to his desk. On the leather blotter lay a neat stack of unopened mail and, alongside, an ivory-handled letter opener embossed with a family crest. His family's?

Idly, she flipped through the envelopes. One caught her eye. Or, at least, the name of the recipient printed on its front did. Lord Matthew Robert Smythe, seventh earl of Brighton.

Abby brushed her fingertips across the creamy vellum.

The return address was London, England. An attorney's office, it appeared. She wondered why Matt had come to America to start and run his company, when all of his family ties were in Britain. He spoke with only a slight accent, and she'd sensed, more than once, that he didn't like people to use his aristocratic title. It seemed so very strange, almost as if he was intentionally erasing his past.
Why?
she wondered.
Was it just a privacy issue—or something more important?

Abby shook her head, annoyed with herself. After all, there was no reason for her to care at all about her new boss's personal quirks.
Or was there?
she wondered as she moved back out of his office. If he simply eliminated people and places that bothered him or were no longer of use to him, where did that leave her or any other employee?

Maybe Paula hadn't been entirely truthful about the women who had taken this job before her. Maybe they had left because Matt had done something to
drive them away, or had fired them. If this was so, a few months from now she might end up the same way. Dropped in the middle of New York City, Los Angeles or Hong Kong, without a job or a way to get home to her safe, predictable Chicago.

The thought chilled her, then infuriated her. Abby shot another glance at the clock. It was almost 8:00 p.m. Slinging her purse over one shoulder, she shut off the lights and locked the office door behind her. Why was she waiting around for a man who didn't have the decency to consider his employees' welfare?

 

Matt strode into the marble-and-glass lobby and had started past the security guard when the man in the glass booth stopped him with a wave. “Hold up there, Lord Smythe. A young lady left a note for you.”

“Young lady?” Matt had to think for a moment before deciding he could only mean Abby. He grabbed the slip of paper and kept on moving into the waiting elevator. Before he reached his floor, he had finished the note and cursed females everywhere. The elevator doors opened, he hit the Lobby button and rode back down to the foyer.

Matt was still fuming by the time he reached Abby's apartment building in Chicago's famous Loop area. A man with an armload of groceries had just buzzed himself in. Without breaking stride, Matt followed him through the door. The mailboxes were labeled with tenants' names and apartment numbers. There was no elevator that he could see; he took the metal stairs in twos, his rage mounting with each flight. He found Apartment 4B and pounded a
clenched fist on the door, knocking leaves from a dried floral wreath onto the floor.

Abby cracked open the door and stared at him over the crust of a grilled cheese sandwich halfway into her mouth. “What are—”

“Why are you
here?
” he interrupted with his own question. Not waiting to be asked in, he marched past her into the little apartment. “Can't you understand a simple directive? ‘Wait for me until I return.' Or wasn't Paula clear on that?”

Abby stood at the open doorway, staring at him as if he were a rogue moose that had just wandered in off the city street and into her living room. “You have atrocious manners.”

“Never mind my etiquette,” he growled. “I intended to review some important material with you tonight.”

“I stayed more than a reasonable length of time,” she retorted, kicking the door closed behind her. “It was well past normal work hours, and on a Saturday besides. I was starving, there was no food around and I had no way of contacting you. For all I knew, you'd totally forgotten about me. I might have been there all night.”

Matt winced. Had he really been that thoughtless? He had planned on taking Abby out to a working dinner. He wasn't accustomed to eating his last meal of the day until eight or nine o'clock in the evening, and it hadn't occurred to him that her body clock might function differently than his. But he wasn't about to let her off the hook so easily.

“You're on twenty-four-hour call for this job, Ms. Benton.”

“No,” she said crisply, “I am not.” She took an
other bite, chewed and swallowed, all the while fixing him with a cool gaze. “I need my sleep, my meals and some order in my life. I'll work hard for you, but I have to know what to expect so that I can take care of my personal requirements. I won't sit around an empty office, twiddling my thumbs and starving while I wait on your beck and call.”

Matt glared at her, feeling heat rise from beneath his collar.
Not even Paula spoke to him like this—without the respect he was due as a British royal, a man who had made millions, a man who—

He blinked, shocked at the words that had tumbled through his mind. Whose voice had
that
been? Not his own. Respect—the old earl, his father, had gone on endlessly about it, all through Matt's childhood.

In fact, the family's prominence in society had been so important to Matthew's father, the earl of Suffolk had skirted convention. The accepted rules of peerage dictated that his eldest son should hold the next lower title to his own, that of viscount, leaving his two younger sons simply as lords. But generations of Smythes, by marrying with other aristocratic families, had collected a fine list of titles not, in the old earl's opinion, to be wasted. He'd elected that his sons should also be honored as earls, though of regions of lesser historical importance than his own. Nobody had yet dared challenge the man since all the titles were legitimate. And so, incredibly, they were a family of four earls.

Distant echoes of a troubled and lonely past washed over him. He was stunned. Of all the men in the world, the one he least wanted to emulate was the earl of Suffolk.

Abby was still speaking. He tried to clear his mind and focus on her words.

“…and after I finish eating, I'll have to think a little more about accepting this job
as your personal slave.
” Her eyes flashed in challenge at him.

He bit down on his lower lip to keep from laughing. Is that how he came off? The tyrannical slave-holder? Now that he gave it some thought, he had been rather inconsiderate not to at least call and make sure his plans suited her.

“I, um, I apologize,” he said haltingly, watching her polish off the last nibble of her sandwich.

“I should think so,” she agreed, licking buttery crumbs from her fingertips.

“I tend to work from the moment I wake to the second my head hits the pillow, catching meals where I can. I suppose I assume others do the same.”

“Don't get me wrong,” she said. “I can work as fiercely as anyone. But I tend to fall apart if I don't get a meal now and then.”

He chuckled. “Wouldn't want that, would we? Your falling apart.” She was so nicely put together, after all.

Abby shrugged. “Perhaps your other assistants died of malnutrition.”

He laughed out loud this time. She had a sense of humor, as well as spunk! “Hardly. I'm not exactly sure why they left. Actually, some I didn't mind seeing go. They weren't anywhere as good as you are with people.”

Abby allowed him a tentative smile. He'd meant to flatter her, but it hadn't been a lie. She
was
good. Very good. He had seen his guests respond to her open friendliness. Matt stepped closer to her, feeling
an inexplicable need to lessen the space between them.

“In my own defense, I had planned to take you out for dinner at a restaurant not far from the office. They have a quiet table near the back where I thought we might finish our business day in a more pleasant atmosphere than at the office.”

“Oh.” She looked suddenly deflated.

“We can still go. Maybe you could consider that sandwich an appetizer?” The idea of sitting across a table from her, the glow from a candle stuck in a Chianti bottle lighting her pretty face, suddenly appealed to him immensely.

She shook her head but didn't seem to have her heart in turning down his invitation. “I'm pretty tired. Is there some other way we can prepare for the trip?”

“I'll call you tomorrow around ten in the morning, if that's all right. Perhaps a few details over the phone—travel information and such. The rest we can discuss on the plane, Monday. I'll bring your contract with me, and you can look it over and sign it then.”

“Good,” she said. “Thank you.”

He hovered over her for a moment longer. The urge to kiss her had been building since he had walked into her apartment. The impulse was strong…but all wrong, he told himself. Instead, he extended his hand to shake hers. A poor substitute, but there it was.

“Thank you for taking the job,” he said. “I'll try to see that you won't regret it.”

T
wo days later, Abby stepped from the private elevator into the Fifth Avenue penthouse and looked around, her heart thumping with excitement. Matthew Smythe's New York digs were professionally decorated entirely in black and white. No in-between shades of gray, no colors. The decor, she decided, suited his personality perfectly. Black or white, yes or no…never a maybe.

Black onyx tiles alternated with white marble, leading from the foyer into the living room. Sophisticated nude female sculptures in pristine white alabaster flanked the wide doorway opening into the suite. The carpeting was a creamy Berber. Bookending an immense glass table, set low enough for drinks or to serve a light meal, were a pair of black leather sofas. Fresh flowers overflowed twin vases at the ends of
the fireplace mantle, but every bloom of lily, rose and baby's breath was pure white.

However, Abby had little time to muse over her boss's taste in decor. The folder she held contained their itinerary for the next ten days, and there was barely time to breathe between meetings.

“As I explained, I keep a second suite of rooms entirely separate from mine, for my employees,” Matt said, motioning absently toward a door as he reached for the telephone. “You'll have complete privacy and three rooms to choose from. Take your time unpacking and freshening up. I have several calls to make, then we'll take a car to the Haversfield meeting at three o'clock.”

Abby nearly choked on a laugh but managed to hold it back. Take her time? He was giving her an entire thirty minutes. She had hoped for a shower to rinse off the airport dust, but there was no time for that now. She'd have to settle for a spritz of perfume, change of clothes and a few strategic touches with a curling iron.

While Abby hurriedly unpacked, her thoughts returned to the envelope she'd discovered on Matt's desk. No wonder he was used to getting his own way; he had undoubtedly been terribly spoiled as a child, raised in the lap of aristocratic luxury. No doubt his adoring parents had set him up in business in the States, she thought indignantly. Most people struggled just to pay their rent and buy groceries. This man's biggest worry was how many thousands he could add to his net worth on any given day! And he barely blinked when one employee left and another slipped into the vacant slot.

She had never liked self-involved people. When
she added wealth to the equation, the earl of Brighton seemed even less her type.

So what?
she asked herself.

She hadn't taken the job because of Matthew Smythe's winning personality. Her reasons had been purely practical. And Matt wouldn't be disappointed when she left since none of his other hostesses had stayed as long.

There was only one problem. Despite his cavalier treatment of her, as if she were no more than an insignificant cog in his personal wheel of success, she was strongly attracted to him. And, she had noticed, she wasn't the only one. Everywhere they went, his mere presence commanded the attention of women. When he wanted a woman in his bed, she had no doubt there would be one. So, what did he want from
her?
A woman with no experience in pleasing a man. A woman who hadn't even been able to entice her fiancé those last few steps to the altar. The pain returned with sharp, accusing jabs to her heart. She took three deep breaths then forced herself to think only of business.

 

There was one meeting in Manhattan that afternoon and another that evening. As they approached the first prospective client, Matt clasped Abby's hand and casually rested it in the crook of his arm. He gave no other indication to the woman who represented the upscale, mail-order service that they might be more than boss and employee—no pet names, no suggestive touches. That one gesture, though, was enough to indicate an intimate connection.

Although Matt acted as if he didn't even feel her hand on his arm, Abby gave an unintended jump as
her fingers curled around his suit sleeve. She was surprised to feel taut muscles in his biceps and forearm—something she hadn't noticed before. She would have thought he was too busy cutting million-dollar deals to exercise. Apparently he had found a way.

She imagined the rest of his body, just as toned and tight…and hard. Her knees felt rubbery. She managed to play her supporting role through the first meeting and not melt into a puddle of feminine desire every time he looked at her, but it was hard work.

“I entertain my foreign suppliers differently than my customers in the U.S.,” Matt explained later that day as they rode to their dinner meeting at the Four Seasons.

The brilliant lights of Broadway and Times Square flashed past the limo's windows, and Abby felt suddenly breathless again. This was another kind of sexiness. A city could be sensual, edgy, provocative…although not as gut ticklingly so as a man like Matthew Smythe.

“Let me guess,” she said, keeping her voice steady, her eyes on the view outside the car's windows. “Tonight the situation is reversed; they'll be trying to seduce you.”

Matt gave her a strange look.

Abby winced. Why had she used
that
word?
Seduce.
It held dangerous multiple meanings. Maybe it was the allure of the city working on her subconscious. Or maybe it was because she couldn't stop thinking about her new boss in an unclothed sort of way…because of those hidden muscles she'd discovered.

“I suppose seduction is a good analogy.” He gave her one more quick glance before returning to notes
on his laptop, but didn't seem to notice her embarrassment. The computer was hooked to a modem, he had explained to her earlier, which allowed him to communicate with the touch of a few keys with any of his offices, as well as clients and suppliers around the world. “Tonight,” he continued, “the vice-president of an Austrian company will be pitching his products to us. I already have a deal with a similar firm based in Munich, but I'm not satisfied with the quality of their goods.”

“Then why are you entertaining him, instead of the other way around?”

After typing a few more sentences, Matt leaned back against the leather upholstery to observe her solemnly. “I never let anyone pay my way,” he said. “It's one of my rules.”

She frowned. “Why is that?”

“It just is.” He shrugged as if it didn't really matter. But she sensed that this was an important issue to him. “Neither I nor anyone on my staff accepts gifts. If one of my clients should send you anything more than a tasteful bouquet of flowers, you're to send the gift back immediately, with your gracious thanks.”

“I understand,” she said, though she really didn't. She dismissed this as just another example of his eccentricity.

Dinner at the Four Seasons was sedately spectacular. The enormous reflection pool in the middle of the single spacious dining room caught the light from the ceiling above. All the seating faced the room's center, giving the room the feeling of a theater-in-the-round. The elegantly attired waiters took center stage. The couple sharing their table spoke only a little En
glish and clearly preferred German, which Matt spoke fluently.

“Ich spreche ein bitte,”
Abby apologized at the beginning of their conversation for the little she spoke. She remembered only a few phrases from her high school foreign language classes.

Matthew said something to his guests in German, then translated for her. “I told them you've only recently joined our firm.” He laid a hand over hers on the tabletop, as if to demonstrate an additional personal nature to their relationship.

The message must have been lost to Frau Gremmel, a pretty blonde with wandering eyes. Her gaze hungrily took in the dashing waiters, then settled on Matt with special intensity. Impulsively, Abby turned her hand over, palm up, lacing her fingers through Matt's, as if tenderly marking her territory. She felt an answering tremor through his hand and knew she'd taken him by surprise.
Good,
she thought,
someone ought to shake up the man once in a while.

He started to move his hand out of hers, but she closed her fingers around his. Not so hard that he couldn't pull away if he really wanted to, just enough to challenge him. Later, if he asked her what she'd been doing, she would say that she'd just been playing along. Secretly, it gave her almost as much satisfaction to rattle his cage as it did to disappoint the fair Frau.

 

For the life of him, Matt couldn't remember what he had ordered for dinner. He vaguely nodded as the waiter placed the sizzling roast duckling topped with mango chutney in front of him. His senses seemed to be reacting in slow motion. Staring at the food before
him, he felt Abby release his hand to pick up her own fork and dig into a thick cut of rare prime rib glistening in its own juices. For a moment everything in the room seemed to wash away in a blue haze, and all he felt or knew was the sensation of cool air lifting the perspiration from his palm, where her hand had been.

Observing Abby's calm expression and cool tan-colored eyes as she took her first bite of the pink beef, he supposed that the simple gesture of cupping his hand in hers had meant less than nothing to her. But the knitting motion of their fingers and the silky touch of her skin had shaken him profoundly. The subtlest shift of her fingertips against his flesh had sent electrical shocks pinging through his wrist, up his arm. But
her
composure had been absolute.

Matt listened with only half an ear to Gremmel's glowing description of the wide range of confections his company offered. But his glance kept straying to the petite figure seated on his right. Abby was heavily into her beef, putting it away, bite by delicate bite but with great zeal.

Abby finished before any of them, but kept a lively conversation going until the others were done eating. “And how was your salmon, Frau Gremmel?” she asked politely.

“Ganz gut. Danke,”
the woman answered.

“Herr Gremmel?” Matt asked, taking Abby's cue.

“This has been delightful, Lord Smythe. As my wife has said, most delicious. You must let us entertain you the next time you are in Vienna. You and your charming companion.” He winked good-naturedly at Abby.

Matt smiled and nodded. Showing Abby around the elegant, old city appealed to him. But Austria also
made him think of Thomas. His older brother lived most of the year in Elbia, just across the Austrian border. Matt had only briefly met his new bride and the children Thomas had inherited in the bargain. He was curious to see if marriage had changed the dedicated bachelor. It wasn't long ago that he would have a staked a fortune on none of the Smythe brothers marrying. But in the last year both Thomas and their younger brother, Christopher, had taken brides.

“Perhaps we will take you up on that offer,” Matt said.

He let Gremmel put the icing on his sales pitch, then asked that samples be shipped to his home office. They parted with handshakes and polite wishes that they would soon be doing business for their mutual profit. Abby warmly added her own hopes for their safe travel home. She treated everyone as if they were family, he realized, amazed at how naturally she pulled off the quick hugs and cheek kisses.

On the way back to the hotel, Matt sat silently in the back of the limo while Abby chattered nonstop, still excited about all she'd learned at the dinner meeting. He gave her one-word answers when he could and tried to tune her out.

It wasn't that her enthusiasm annoyed him. Quite the opposite. He fed off of her euphoria. Her buoyant mood stimulated him in ways he didn't want to be stimulated at the moment. But he couldn't help thinking about her small hand resting on the seat between them. Couldn't help pondering how easy it would be for him to pick up her fingers and pull her across the seat toward him. Then he'd silence her lips with his own.

He hoped that by the time they took the elevator
up to the penthouse she would run out of steam. But she was still happily analyzing the evening, gleaning all she could from the experience, when they stepped across the marble threshold.

“Will you need me for anything more tonight?” she asked cheerfully.

The question jolted him. “
Need
you?”

“Yes. Do you want me to draw up notes about tonight's meeting before I call it a night?”

He glanced at the clock on the mantel. “It's after eleven o'clock. I think that can wait until morning.”

“Good.” She yawned, stretching her arms high over her head. The motion thinned out her already slender waist and lifted her breasts provocatively.

“I'm exhausted. That meal
really
was wonderful, by the way.”

“Yes, good…it was quite good,” he muttered, hastily turning away.
Why did she unnerve him so?

A moment later, he spun around, intending to ask her about the thing she'd done with their hands in the restaurant. But she was gone. He heard water running in her bathroom. Sighing, he shook his head.

Matt waited impatiently outside the door to her suite for the water to stop running. Why he waited, he wasn't sure. He heard her feet padding across the floor of the adjoining suite. She was humming to herself, sounding delightfully content and pleased with herself.

He stepped close to the door separating her private quarters from his domain. “Abby?”

The humming stopped. “Did you want me, Matt?”

“Yes.”
Yes!
he thought wildly.
I want you out of those clothes and in my arms.
“Would you come in here for just a moment?”

There was a delay while he imagined her pulling a robe over her nightdress, then she appeared in the doorway. She had indeed put on a simple pink cotton robe. And it almost concealed the fact that she wore nothing beneath it. Unfortunately, her attempt at modesty failed to account for two crucial factors. The lamps in the room backlighted her figure, so that her long, slim legs showed through the fabric. And her nipples were raised, poking little brown dots through the pale cloth.