Married to His Business (Millionaire of the Month #5)(18)
Author: Elizabeth Bevarly

And they would, he vowed. He would start calling his brother on a regular basis and make sure they saw more of each other. Hell, they both lived in San Francisco. It wasn’t as if it was a hardship for them to see each other.

Kendall had folded herself into her car by now and started the ignition, and was looking over her shoulder as she backed out of the drive. She stopped to wait for a dog to trot past before pulling out, and when she did, for some reason, she looked back up at the house. Her eyes immediately connected with his, but she’d donned sunglasses, so it was impossible to read her expression. Matthias lifted a hand to wave it in halfhearted farewell and, after a moment, she lifted a hand in response. But she didn’t wave, and she didn’t smile, so the gesture felt more final than it should have.

And then she was rolling out of the driveway and putting

the car in gear, and heading down the road that would take her back to the highway. She didn’t turn around again, even when she braked for the stop sign. Matthias watched her car until she was out of sight, then stood at the window a little longer, watching the empty place in the road where last he’d seen her. He told himself to get busy, that he had a lot of work to do today. He reminded himself he had another temp coming by in a few hours.

He reminded himself of a lot of things as he stood at the window looking at the place where Kendall wasn’t. But all he could remember was the way her hand had felt, curled tentatively over his arm when she’d expressed her sympathy over Hunter’s death.

She was going where she thought she needed to be, he told himself, recalling the words he’d used first, and which she’d turned back on him in an entirely different—and erroneous—way. But she was wrong. She didn’t need to be with Stephen DeGallo, a man who would only use her long enough to pick her brain about Matthias’s business and then manufacture some excuse to let her go. The man didn’t like people working closely with him whom he hadn’t brought up himself from scratch. Matthias knew DeGallo fairly well—What was the old adage? Keep your friends close, your enemies closer?—and Kendall, to DeGallo’s way of thinking, was tainted. She was used goods, sloppy seconds. No matter how much she liked and trusted the guy, DeGallo would, once he got the information from her he wanted, consider her a liability, and he would let her go.

And that, Matthias told himself as he continued to watch the empty street, was why he needed—no, wanted— Kendall to come back to work for Barton Limited. Because

DeGallo didn’t appreciate her the way Matthias did. Because DeGallo wouldn’t offer her the security and benefits Matthias would. Because DeGallo didn’t care about her any more than he would care about a new printer or phone system or hard drive.

It wasn’t because of the warmth that had spread through him when she’d curled her fingers around his arm. And it wasn’t because of the way she’d looked at him as he’d talked about his old friends, as if she wanted to hear more—about them and him. And it certainly wasn’t because the lodge had come alive while she was here and felt dim and somber now that she was gone. That was ridiculous. Houses didn’t live and they didn’t have feelings.

Then again, there were those who would say the same thing about Matthias.

He sighed heavily and pushed a handful of hair back from his forehead. He didn’t have time for this, he thought. He had work to do and an interview to perform. Because as much as he knew Kendall wasn’t where she needed to be, she was the one who would have to realize that. In the meantime, he needed—no, wanted—someone else.

Even if no one else would ever come close to her.

By the end of the week, Matthias had run through every temp agency in the Tahoe area without finding even a marginally acceptable candidate to replace Kendall, even temporarily. The one who had just appeared at his door was his very last hope, and already he knew she wasn’t going to work out, either. She had no concept of how to dress for a job interview, even one conducted in a nonoffice environment. She’d actually paired a crisp white shirt with a pair of pin-striped trousers and flat loafers, and had

knotted her dark hair on the top of her head like a tennis ball. Her little black glasses were tailored and elegant, and her makeup—if she was even wearing any—was understated and clean.

What the hell was she thinking, showing up for a job interview looking like this? She was even more over-the-top and under-a-rock than the first guy had been.

He expelled a restless sigh and gestured halfheartedly toward the living room, indicating she should take a seat on one of the chairs beside the fireplace while he folded himself perfunctorily into the other. The sooner they got this interview over with, the better. Then Matthias could…

Well, okay, he could be alone. At least he wouldn’t be wasting his time interviewing people who obviously had no clue how to interact in the world of big business. Instead, he’d be wasting his time dreading the fact that he’d have to set up another interview with someone who would almost certainly be as unqualified to fill Kendall’s position as this woman was.

"So, Ms…." He glanced down at the résumé the temp agency had e-mailed him to inspect in preparation for her arrival. "Ms. Carrigan," he finished. "I see you’re a graduate of Stanford Business School."

She smiled a small, unobtrusive smile that made Matthias flinch, so blatantly inappropriate was it for a job interview. "I am," she said. "I graduated in May with honors."

Yeah, yeah, yeah, Matthias thought. Honors schmonors. If he had a dollar for every honors degree places like Stanford and Harvard issued, he could paper the whole top of his desk.

"And what interests you about the position as my personal assistant?"

She sat up straighter, crossed her legs at the ankles,

wove her fingers together loosely in her lap, then tilted her head thoughtfully to one side. Matthias mentally shook his own head and somehow refrained from rolling his eyes. Her entire posture just screamed indolent slob. What an incredible waste of time this was.

"May I speak frankly, Mr. Barton?" she asked.

"Of course," he told her. Adding to himself, Making presumptions already?

"Ultimately," she began, "I’d like to move higher on the corporate ladder, but I think this would be a good entry level position for me, because it would offer me the opportunity to learn from, well, if you’ll forgive my momentary gushing, a legend in the business world."

Suck-up, Matthias thought. But he kept his expression bland.

"University courses," she continued, "can only go so far in imparting information. I’m hoping that by coming to work for you fresh out of college, Mr. Barton, I could gain some professional experience that would enhance what I learned in the classroom at Stanford. At the same time, I’ll do an excellent job keeping your schedule organized and making sure you have everything you need at any given moment. All modesty aside, my organizational skills are exemplary, and as you can see from the letters of recommendation I’ve supplied from five of my professors, I routinely led my classes when it came to completing assignments promptly and neatly."