Married to His Business (Millionaire of the Month #5)
Author: Elizabeth Bevarly

One

As Kendall Scarborough watched her boss close his cell phone, stride to the northernmost window of his office and push it open, then hurl the apparatus into the wild blue yonder, she found herself thinking that maybe, just maybe, this wasn’t a good day to tender her resignation. Again. But she would. Again. And this time she would make it stick.

And how fitting that one of her last tasks for Matthias Barton would be ordering him a new phone. Again. At least phones were easier to program and format to his liking than were PDAs and MP3 players, a number of which also lay at the bottom of the reflecting pool in the courtyard of Barton Limited—which just so happened to be situated directly below the northernmost window of Matthias’s office. In fact, there were at least five years’ worth of PDAs and MP3 players and other small appa-ratuses…apparati…little gizmos…in the pool, Kendall

knew. Matthias Barton was, without question, one of the finest minds working in big business today. But when it came to itty-bitty pieces of machinery, he was reduced to, well.throwing a lot of stuff out the window.

She straightened her little black-framed glasses and plucked out the pen that was perpetually tucked into the tidy, dark blond bun knotted at the back of her head. Then she withdrew a small notepad from the pocket of the charcoal pin-striped, man-style trousers she’d paired with a tailored white, man-style shirt. All of her work clothes were man-style, because she was convinced they gave her petite, five-foot-four-inch frame a more imposing presence in the male-dominated society of big business. After scribbling a few notes—not the least of which was New phone for Matthias—she flipped the notepad closed and stuffed it back into her pocket.

"Kendall," he began as he closed the window and latched it, then turned to make his way back to his desk.

"Got it covered, sir," she told him before he said another word. "We’ll go with VeraWave this time. I’m sure that service will suit you much better than the last one."

To herself, she added, And the one before that. And the one before that. And the one before that. It was just a good thing Barton Limited was headquartered in a city like San Francisco where new phone services sprang up every day. The year wasn’t even half over, and Kendall had already been forced to change cellular companies three times.

"Thank you," Matthias told her as he seated himself behind his big mahogany desk and reached for the small stack of letters she’d typed up that morning, which were now awaiting his signature.

His attire was, of course, man-style, too, but she didn’t

think that was what gave him such an imposing presence— though certainly the espresso-colored suit and dark gold dress shirt and tie, coupled with his dark hair and even darker eyes, didn’t diminish it. Matthias himself was just larger than life, be it sitting at the head of the massive table that bisected the boardroom of Barton Limited, or slamming a squash ball into the wall at his athletic club, or charming some bastion of society into a major investment at a dinner party. Kendall had seen him in each of those situations—and dozens of others—and she couldn’t think of a single moment when Matthias hadn’t been imposing.

He’d intimidated the hell out of her when she’d first come to work for him straight out of graduate school, even though, back then, he’d barely been out of grad school himself. In spite of his youth, he’d already made millions, several times over. Kendall had been awed that someone only five years older than she—Matthias had only recently turned thirty-two—was already light-years ahead of her on the corporate ladder. She’d wanted to observe his habits and policies and procedures and mimic them, thinking she could achieve the same rapid rise and level of success through emulation.

It hadn’t taken long, however, for her to realize she would never be in Matthias’s league. He was too focused, too intense, too driven. His work was his life. He needed it to survive as much as he did oxygen or food. Over time, she’d gotten used to his ruthless single-mindedness when it came to achieving success, even if she’d never been able to understand it. And not just any old run-of-the-mill success, either. No, Matthias Barton had to be the absolute, no-close-seconds, unparalleled best at everything he set out to do.

Not that it mattered now, Kendall told herself, since she

wasn’t going to be a part of his pursuit—or his success— much longer. She had a pursuit—and success—of her own to accomplish, and she should have started years ago. With her MBA from Stanford, she’d been overqualified for the position of personal assistant when she’d taken the job with Matthias. But she’d known that working for someone like him for a couple of years, even as a personal assistant, would offer her entrée into an echelon of big business that most recent grads never saw. She’d learn from a legend and make contacts up the wazoo, swimming with the proverbial sharks. But "a couple of years" had become five, and Kendall was savvy enough around the sharks now to be able to grill them up with a nice wasabi sauce. It was time to go.

"Okay, where were we?" Matthias asked.

"Well, sir," she began, "you’d just, um, concluded your call with Elliot Donovan at The Springhurst Corporation, and I—" She inhaled a deep breath, steeled herself for battle, and said, in a surprisingly sturdy voice, "I was about to give you my two weeks’ notice." To herself, she added silently, And this time, I’m going through with it, no matter how hard you try to change my mind.

His head snapped up at her announcement, and his bittersweet chocolate eyes went flinty. "Kendall, I thought we’d already talked about this."

"We have, sir, several times," she agreed. "Which is why it shouldn’t come as a surprise. Now that your wedding to Miss Conover is off—"

"Look, just because Lauren and I canceled our plans," Matthias interrupted, "that doesn’t mean I don’t still need you to take care of things."

His now-defunct wedding to Lauren Conover had just

been the most recent reason he’d used for why Kendall couldn’t leave his employ yet, but she was still surprised he would try to use it again. Technically, the wedding hadn’t been canceled. There had just been a change of date and venue. Oh, and also a change of groom, since Lauren was now planning to marry Matthias’s twin brother, Luke.

"Anything left to do will be taken care of by Miss Conover and her family," Kendall pointed out. "If there’s anything left to do."

And she doubted there was. Matthias hadn’t spoken much about his broken engagement, but Kendall hadn’t been surprised when she’d heard the news. Well, maybe the part about Lauren’s falling in love with Luke Barton had been a little surprising. Okay, a lot surprising. But even without Luke’s intervention, the marriage, as far as Kendall was concerned, would have been a huge mistake. Matthias had proposed to Lauren Conover only because he’d wanted to merge his business with her father’s, and Lauren Conover had accepted the proposal only because…