Wife to the Boss (Managing the Bosses Series, #6) (21 page)

Honestly, he didn’t know why he bothered. These dates and things always seemed like a good idea at the time, and then when they actually got around to happening it was always in the middle of a problem that couldn’t wait, or such a disappointment he wished he hadn’t made the offer in the first place. Appearances. Maybe he should stop working for rich, eligible bachelor and start cultivating a reputation as an incurable workaholic. He was already halfway there. Wealthy bachelor didn’t sound like such a terrible life choice at the moment.

Someone who was almost certainly Gina Campbell, his secretary, knocked lightly on his door, and Alex straightened up in his chair, reaching for the tablet he’d set to one side. He expected his employees to be busy at all times; it wouldn’t do to be seen being less than busy himself.

“Come in.”

The heavy door inched open and his secretary slipped inside, laying a rather stuffed-looking manila envelope on his desk.

“The papers from Ritter Corp, Mr. Reid,” she said.

“Excellent, Ms. Campbell. Thank you.”

“Oh, and Mr. Reid?”

“Yes, Ms. Campbell?”

“I wanted to remind you that you have that charity gala for the Feed the Hungry Society coming up at the end of the month. The ‘upcoming event’ notification in my calendar just popped up about it, so I thought I’d mention it to make sure it didn’t get overlooked.”

The charity gala. Alex had completely forgotten about it. He’d agreed to attend nearly three months ago and promptly stopped thinking about it. He supposed it was lucky that Ms. Campbell had reminded him of its existence. It didn’t take a great deal to prepare for one of those events, but he always preferred knowing that one was coming up so he could ready himself mentally for it.

“Thank you, Ms. Campbell. I appreciate the reminder.”

She slipped back out to her desk without another word and he opened the budget report again, scrolling through the spreadsheet and highlighting as he went.

*   *

A
n hour later Alex stood, groaning softly under his breath as he stretched the kinks of sitting for too long in one position out of his muscles. For a moment he simply stood next to the chair, rubbing the balls of his thumbs into the worst of the knots, but there was only so much you could do yourself for tension like that. What he needed, he’d been told, was a massage, but he’d never gotten around to trying one. Maybe he would take a girl out to a spa one of these days and they would both get massages. A reasonable excuse, surely.

Speaking of girls, he still needed to go home and dress for his date with Miss Lloyd. His work suit would no doubt be adequate—certainly up to the standards of the restaurant where he intended to take her—but it was not strictly dinner attire.

“Ms. Campbell,” he said as he stepped out into the main office. “I’m heading home for the night. Please see that everything’s locked up as usual.”

“Of course, Mr. Reid.”

He nodded to her and went on toward the elevator.

As it sank toward the ground floor, he pulled his phone from his pocket. One more missed call. It was Mark, again. Alex sighed and put the phone away. He would have to call his brother back eventually, but not tonight. Tonight belonged to the lovely Miss Lloyd.

On his way home, he detoured to pick up the dry cleaning and half a dozen roses. Dressing in front of the walk-in-closet’s large mirror was taken care of in a matter of minutes. He ran a hand through the slightly tousled mess of his dark hair, and double-checked his appearance before taking the spiral staircase back down to the ground floor of the large house. He headed out to where his car sat behind the fountain that filled the center space of the circular drive. As he left the property, the gates swung shut behind him.

He met Miss Lloyd at the door of her well-appointed apartment downtown.

“Alex!” she said when she opened the door. “How good to see you again.”

“And you, Miss Lloyd.”

She laughed, and he found himself appreciating the light, carefree sound of it. “Please. Call me Dahlia.”

“Dahlia, then,” Alex said, dipping his head in a nod of acknowledgement. “I hope you like roses.”

“I love them, actually,” she said, taking the small bouquet from him and waving him to follow her in as she led the way to a kitchen full of stainless steel and dark marble. She smiled at him over her shoulder. “Everyone always shows up for dates with a bouquet of dahlias, like I’ll think it’s so clever that they found the flower I’m named after in a shop somewhere. Roses are a refreshing change.”

“I find the things most people think are clever are usually quite commonplace, in context. But maybe that’s vain of me to say.”

She laughed. “I don’t know, Mr. Reid. You stand a little above the rest of the world. I think looking down on us poor mortals from your superior vantage point is only to be expected.”

Flowers safely ensconced in a vase full of water, Dahlia turned, moving back toward him, and leaned one hip against the edge of the kitchen island. They were close enough that he could almost feel the warmth coming off her skin. The tight little dress she wore outlined every curve of her body, and it was certainly a sight worth showing off.

“You make that dress look good,” Alex said, letting his voice come out a little lower. A little rougher. “Very good, in fact.”

Her cheeks flushed, the pink a lovely contrast to the cream of her skin. “Thank you.”

He smiled, and the color deepened, but he didn’t say anything else about her clothes, just offered her his arm. “Shall we? I believe we have dinner reservations in twenty minutes.”

She laid her hand on the crook of his elbow, smiling up at him. “Lead on, good sir.”

They started out into the hall and down to the car, where he helped her in before sliding into his own seat.

“So,” she said when the car had started and they were pulling out into the street. “Where are we going?”

He grinned. “It’s a surprise.”

The sound she made was a little frustrated, but when he glanced over at her she was grinning. “You know just the way to get under a girl’s skin, Alex Reid.”

Laughter bubbled up from his stomach. “Is that so, Dahlia Lloyd? You think it’s a deliberate taunt?”

“I think that it’s cruel to tell a reporter that the place you’re taking her is a surprise. Don’t you know that I can’t stand not knowing?”

“You’ll have to stand it just a bit longer, I think.”

“Cruel,” she said again, on a sigh. “And unusual.”

He turned just long enough to grin at her, but didn’t answer.

There was silence then for a moment, and Alex let his thoughts turn back toward work. He needed to contact the financial department about next quarter’s investment capital. And there was the paperwork for the acquisition of Orion Investments to be completed. He shook his head and tightened his hands a little on the wheel as he merged onto the freeway that wound along the edge of the city. At home, there was the gym, too. Finding someone he actually liked to take care of setting it up had been much harder than he would have thought. It was a home gym. How difficult could buying equipment and having someone move it in be? However, if you were wealthy you were required to hire someone else to furnish it or look like an idiot when you didn’t have the latest Muscle Mania 5000 or whatever it was they were peddling on TV these days. Not to mention the whole problem of a personal trainer, and-

“Alex!”

He shook himself out of the thoughts, turning to look at Dahlia. There was a slight downturn to her lipstick-painted mouth, a crease forming between her dark brows.

“I’ve called your name five times,” she said.

“My apologies.” He flicked his gaze back to the road, but smiled at her. “It’s one of the occupational hazards of a date with a CEO. The work we do is never ending, and we’re always thinking about something that has to be done.” He could see, from the corner of his eye, the moment she decided to let it go, her expression smoothing out and a smile taking the place of the slight frown.

“I suppose I should consider myself lucky to be getting any of your time at all then,” she said, not at all petulant.

“I’m not sure how much luck has to do with it,” he answered. “I couldn’t let such an attractive woman get away without at least asking her to dinner. So here we are.”

There it was again, that charming little blush. He liked it a little more than he should, when he had no intention of asking her out on a second date. Who knew, though? Maybe it would change his mind. Stranger things had been known to happen.

They pulled into the drive of the restaurant, and the valet stepped up as they parked. Alex got out and went around to aid Dahlia in stepping from the car, then tossed his keys to a uniformed young man not much younger than he was. He didn’t feel anywhere near as young as the valet looked. But then, he’d done more in twenty-seven years than some people accomplished in seventy. Maybe it was the weight of the company on his shoulders that made him feel so much older than he was these days. Or maybe it was just having more money in the bank than most people saw in a lifetime. Both of them seemed, at times, to be equally heavy privileges.

“I’ve been trying to get into this restaurant for weeks,” Dahlia sighed suddenly beside him, her head tipped back so she could look up at the lit sign for La Petit Table, one of the most expensive—and most exclusive—places in the city. “That just isn’t fair.”

“There are connections you make when you have money that even journalists can’t manage,” Alex said. He turned his head to smile at her. “Lucky for you, it seems you have one of those connections.”

Her flattered laughter was answer enough.

Inside, the black-coated waiter led to them to their seats, and when the wine had been brought and poured and they were sipping from their glasses, Dahlia smiled across the table at him.

“So,” she said. “Tell me something that I didn’t learn about you in the interview.”

“Off the record?” Alex teased.

She grinned, lifting both shoulders in a shrug. “Come on now, you don’t really think that I’m going to go spilling all your secrets on the seven o’clock news, do you?”

He shook his head at her. “Oh no, Dahlia. I’m afraid any secrets I tell you are going to have to be explicitly off the record, or you’ll have to settle for nothing.”

The corners of her mouth turned down, her eyebrows drawing inward, and she gave him a wide-eyed pleading look that didn’t quite disguise the playful sparkle under the expression. It suited her face well.

“Fine,” he said, sighing. “If you really want to know something that no one else does, you might be surprised to find out that I am an avid collector of porcelain monkey statues.”

Her eyebrows shot upward, and she gave him an entirely disbelieving look. “Porcelain monkey statues,” she repeated.

Alex nodded gravely. “Yes, and I was once reprimanded by a teacher for being too amazing. It just wasn’t fair to all the other children.”

Dahlia laughed. “Beating me at my own game. How rude.”

“It has to happen every now and then, or we lose all sense of humility.”

She leaned forward a little on one arm, giving him a generous view of the assets that were so carefully displayed by the sleek blue dress she wore. “So, Mr. Reid. In all honesty. Off the record entirely. Tell me something that you didn’t tell me in the interview.”

He took a slow sip of his wine, rolling the flavors of it across his tongue and giving her question some thought. On a first date revealing anything too intimate was off limits, but giving her some meaningless factoid she could dig up with an internet connection and twenty minutes of interested searching would be insulting. All the same, he had no intention of giving her anything she
could
reasonably share with the seven o’clock news, should she feel so inclined. “Very well. If you really want to know, I’ll tell you a secret.”

“Oh?” her eyes lit, and he wasn’t entirely sure he liked the way she looked at him. He wondered if her early refusal to go off record had been quite so playful after all. “Tell me, then.”

“The secret,” he said, leaning a little nearer himself, careful not to let his wine glass tip. “Is that I happen to be developing quite an attraction to this lovely brunette I met the other day.”

Her laugh was a little bit startled, but the smile that went with it as she straightened up in her seat was genuine. “Oh, very smooth, Alex. Very smooth. I can’t even be angry with you for deflecting that one when you did it like that.”

He just smiled, and took another sip of his wine.

It was, over all, a pleasant meal. Alex liked Dahlia well enough, though once or twice he thought he saw her slip again, saw a journalist’s interest rather than a date’s in her wide hazel eyes. He hadn’t lied about his attraction to her, but it was too much of a risk to take. He had known when he began this that he would have to deal with hangers-on and gawkers, women who wanted him for his money and women who wanted him for his power. He hadn’t specifically anticipated women who would date him in order to spread his life story across page six, but maybe he should have. Still, he smiled at her, nodded along to her stories. She smiled back at him, and laughed at his jokes, and he wondered if the flush he had liked was natural or something she had trained herself into. At the end of the night, he didn’t take her home.

He had considered it, of course. Who wouldn’t? Dahlia Lloyd, whatever else she may be, was a beautiful woman, and the dress she was wearing certainly did her some favors, but he wasn’t going to take a woman he wouldn’t risk sharing his personal history with to bed. Not when it might mean waking up in two days to find an exposé of his bedroom style headlining some gossip rag. Miss Lloyd might be of a much higher caliber than those sorts of magazines, but that didn’t mean that she would be entirely above making a bit of money off them if she couldn’t catch the scoop she so obviously wanted to write herself.

Alex dropped her off at her apartment, ignoring the look that obviously hinted at wanting a goodbye kiss—and more than a kiss—and went back to his car, and then drove to his own large house on the edge of the business district. In the quiet sanctuary of his bedroom, he stripped out of the suit he’d been wearing and carefully hung up the jacket and pants, tossing the shirt he’d been wearing all day in the hamper. He liked his things neat.