Married to His Business (Millionaire of the Month #5)(12)
Author: Elizabeth Bevarly

She noticed Stephen didn’t grasp Matthias’s hand in

both of his the way he had hers—in fact, he gave Matthias’s one, two, three firm, manly shakes and released it. Then again, Matthias was a rival, so naturally, Stephen’s greeting to him wouldn’t be as familiar as his to Kendall had been. Similarly, it was understandable why Stephen’s posture, too, with Matthias would be more assertive, more straightforward, more businesslike, than it had been with Kendall. Wouldn’t it?

Yeah. Sure. Of course.

"Matthias Barton," Stephen greeted him. "Long time, no see. What have you been up to?"

"Besides competing with you for the Perkins contract?" Matthias replied. "Not much."

Well, he’d recently lost his personal assistant of five years, Kendall thought irritably. Or so she’d heard. That was kind of major.

As if he’d read her mind, Matthias turned to her then and feigned tremendous surprise—though, Kendall thought, not very well.

"Why, Kendall Scarborough," he said with overblown amazement. "What are you doing here? I haven’t seen you since…" He pretended to search his memory banks—again, not exactly an Academy Award-winning performance— then snapped his fingers. "Since you gave me your two weeks’ notice to go work for some fly-by-night company."

She sighed wearily. "Well, except for this afternoon in my room, when you offered me my job back."

Now Stephen was the one to look surprised, Kendall noted. Only his was obviously genuine. Then he smiled, and looked at Matthias again. "Really?" he asked the other man.

Matthias looked a little uncomfortable now, and this time, he wasn’t pretending. "It was just a formality," he

said. "I always offer my exes the chance to come back, once they come to their senses and realize what a mistake they made, leaving Barton Limited."

Kendall couldn’t prevent the snort of laughter that escaped her at that. Yeah, right. Matthias had the longest memory of anyone she’d ever met, and he never forgot a slight—real or imagined. If someone elected to leave the company for any reason, he had that person’s personnel file expunged within the hour, as if they never existed. And he certainly never went looking for that person to offer them an opportunity to return.

Not until this afternoon, anyway, she reminded herself.

But the only reason he’d come looking for her, she further told herself, was because he hadn’t known how to program his new BlackBerry. The offer to take her back had obviously been off-the-cuff, and had doubtless been extended for the same reason. He thought she was the only one who knew how to program one of those things. He didn’t realize anyone could do it for him. Well, anyone except Matthias Barton.

"Well, Barton," Stephen said now, "had you appreciated Kendall’s possibilities, the way I do, then maybe you wouldn’t have lost her in the first place."

Kendall started to smile at that, then stopped. Something about the way Stephen had said it made it sound kind of unprofessional. Just what had he meant by possibilities? That was kind of a strange word to use. Why not abilities? Or talents? Or expertise? Possibilities made it sound as though he considered her a blank slate or unformed mass that he could turn into whatever he wanted.

"I assure you, DeGallo," Matthias replied, "that Kendall was one of my most prized possessions at Barton Limited. I hope you realize what an asset she’ll be to OmniTech."

All right, Kendall thought. That did it. Forget about blank slates and unformed masses. Matthias had just made her sound like a new computer system. Possession? Asset? Just who did he think he was?

"Prized possession?" she echoed indignantly.

Matthias looked down at her and must have realized immediately from both her voice and her expression—and, most likely, the quick drop in temperature among the small group—what a colossal gaffe he’d just made. "Uh…" he began eloquently.

"If that’s the case," she continued while he was still off balance, "then you better go over my operating instructions while you’re here. I wouldn’t want Stephen to think he acquired a defective machine."

The look Matthias gave her then was almost convincingly distressed. Almost. "Kendall, that’s not—"

This time his words were cut off by Stephen’s light, good-natured laughter. "Sounds to me like she works just fine," he said. "In fact, this particular model is promising to work better than I initially hoped."

Matthias’s lips thinned at that. "Yeah, she’s a piece of work, all right," he muttered.

She smiled sweetly. "And now I’m working for someone else."

Matthias opened his mouth to respond, but this time was prevented by the arrival of their server, who placed tall sweaty glasses of mineral water in front of Kendall and Stephen. Then the waiter looked at Matthias and asked, "Will you be joining this party?"

Even Matthias, Kendall thought, wouldn’t be crass enough to crash her meeting with Stephen. And he didn’t. Instead, he told their server that no, he was on his own and

didn’t want to interrupt anyone’s dinner, so would just take a seat at a table by himself. Then, even though there were at least a dozen empty tables in the restaurant, he pulled out a chair from the table immediately beside Kendall’s and Stephen’s, and seated himself without a care.

Unbelievable, Kendall thought. Evidently, Matthias was that crass, after all. If not in blatantly joining them, then certainly in doing his best to destroy any chance the two of them might have for speaking freely about her new obligations as vice president. There was no way Stephen would discuss the policies of his company in the presence of one of his competitors, even superficially. He confirmed that by shrugging philosophically when Kendall looked at him—not that she needed any confirmation.

So instead of talking about her new job over the course of dinner, Kendall and Stephen instead discussed superficialities like the weather, books, current events and a favorite TV show they had in common.. .with Matthias throwing in his own commentaries here and there, completely uninvited.

It was going to be a long orientation.

Four

The temp Matthias ordered from a Tahoe City agency— once he found the phone book after thirty minutes of looking for it—arrived promptly at eight o’clock the morning after his arrival. Unfortunately, he’d done something wrong when he tried to set his alarm clock the night before—no, the alarm clock was defective, that was the problem—because it was the ringing of the front doorbell that alerted him to the arrival of his early-morning appointment. Not Kendall, who would have normally alerted Matthias to that. Kendall, too, would have been infinitely less intrusive about her reminder than the doorbell was.