Married to His Business (Millionaire of the Month #5)(22)
Author: Elizabeth Bevarly

Ah, hell. What were they talking about?

"Then I guess you don’t care that I have a coffeemaker like that myself," Kendall said, "and know how to fix it. If there is, in fact, anything wrong with it," she added in a way that he knew was meant to ruffle him.

It did.

"It doesn’t work," he repeated, more emphatically this time. "I’ve done everything. Even the clock on it is wrong."

She patted him on the shoulder—something that sent a strange ripple of warmth through him—and crossed to the counter where the coffeemaker sat. Mocking him. Again, she pressed some buttons that made a couple of quick

beeps. Then she pushed the big red button Matthias hadn’t wanted to push himself, fearing it might trigger a nuclear strike over North Korea, and a little green light came on. But there was nothing to indicate the machine was working, no whirring of the grinder, no hiss of water as it heated, no gurgle of coffee as it dripped into the carafe.

"See?" he said. "It doesn’t work."

"I set the timer for you," she told him, sidestepping his insistence that it didn’t work. And it didn’t work, Matthias was sure of that. "As long as you fill it with coffee and water every night, it’ll start brewing at six-thirty in the morning."

He gaped at her. "How did you do that?"

She pointed to the little green light. "I set the clock to the correct time, then pushed the button that says, ‘Timer.’ The machine walks you through the steps after that."

Matthias hooked his hands on his h*ps and said nothing, only stared at Kendall in wonder, trying to figure out how the hell he was supposed to manage for the rest of his life if she was working for someone else. Because he had no choice but to admit then that he needed Kendall. Really needed her. What was beginning to scare him was that he was starting to suspect it wasn’t only in the office where he had that need.

She smiled at him and extended her hand. "Okay, give it to me," she said, her voice tinted with laughter.

He shook his head in confusion. "What are you talking about?"

"Your new BlackBerry," she said. "The one you brought to the hotel earlier this week. I’ll program it for you."

Damn, he thought. She would ask about that now. "It’s not necessary," he told her.

She arched her brows in surprise. "You programmed it yourself?"

"Not exactly."

"Then give it to me and I’ll do it for you." He expelled an exasperated sound. "I can’t." "Why not?"

"Because it’s at the bottom of Lake Tahoe."

Kendall looked at him in disbelief for a second, then she started to laugh. It was a nice laugh, Matthias thought. Full and uninhibited without being an obnoxious bray. He tried to remember the last time he’d heard Kendall laugh.. .and realized he never had. Not until this evening. She’d always been so serious at work. So pragmatic and professional. So enterprising and efficient. He’d always thought she was so straitlaced. So somber. It had never occurred to him that there was a woman lurking beneath her gender-neutral attire.

He watched her as she made her way back to the microwave to remove their now-warmed dinners. She was dressed as she always dressed for work—dark trousers, pale shirt, her hair pinned up on her head. But she was more relaxed now than she’d been when she worked for him. She smiled more. Laughed. Spoke to him familiarly. Called him Matthias. When she wasn’t working for him, she was.. .different. Softer. Warmer. More approachable.

He began to feel a little warmer himself as he watched her carry their plates back to the table. Though not particularly soft, he realized with no small amount of surprise. He wondered what she’d do if he.. .approached.

"The steak formerly known as tartare," she said as she set his plate back on the table with a flourish. "Have at it."

Matthias smiled at her wording. Have at it could mean anything. And there were a lot of its he wanted to have. Fortunately, he and Kendall had a nice long leisurely evening ahead of them.

Kendall shook her head as she watched Matthias fiddle with a knob on the telescope, wondering what had come over him this week to make him so.so.so.

Human.

Tonight, he’d been… She smiled as a word came to her. She tried to push it away, so wildly inappropriate a description for him was it, but it wouldn’t budge. There was just nothing else that was as accurate. Tonight he had been.. .adorable. All evening long. Never in her wildest dreams would she have thought she would use such an adjective to describe him. When she’d been working for him, he’d been a lot of things—gruff, focused, no-nonsense, intense—but never, ever adorable.

The closest she’d ever seen him come to being soft had been when he’d returned from this very lodge two months ago, after seeing his brother Luke for the first time in years. For a few days after his return, Matthias had seemed distant and distracted and, well, soft. But the softness had still been tempered with an edge, thanks to whatever had happened between the two men while they were here. They’d even brawled at one point over something. Although Matthias hadn’t confided in Kendall what the fight had been about, he’d come back from that trip with a black eye that she’d naturally asked him about.

But even with all the changes that had come over him on that occasion—as temporary as they’d been—he hadn’t seemed like a normal human being, any more than he ever seemed like a normal human being. He’d still been a powerful force to be reckoned with.

Tonight, though, that force was a soothing breeze. Just like the one rolling off the lake that nudged a stray strand

of hair into Kendall’s eyes. She brushed it back as she continued to watch him by the telescope, tucking it behind her ear, though, instead of bothering with trying to poke it back into the bun. By now, several such strands of hair had escaped and blew freely about her face. Short of freeing her hair and starting all over again, there wasn’t much she could do about them. Not to mention there was something about the languid, peaceful evening—and okay, something about Matthias, too—that prevented her from wanting to be her usual buttoned-up self.

The broad deck stretched along the length of the back of the house, dotted here and there by sturdy wooden furniture and the occasional potted greenery. The sun hung low over the mountains behind them, spilling a wide, watery trail over the lake as it left the sky, bisecting the rippling water with a shimmer of gold. The temperature had dropped with the sun, tumbling from the eighties into the sixties, and she knew that, with full nightfall, it would go lower still. She wished she’d thought to wear a jacket. But then, she hadn’t planned on leaving the hotel, had she?