Kitabı oku: «An Engagement Of Convenience»

Chapter One

“So, you’re the one!”

At the sound of her boss’s angry voice, Lili Soulé tried to cover the papers on her drafting table, but it was too late. The flier demanding that the management of the Riverview Building keep its child care center open was in full view—along with a charcoal sketch of Tom Eldridge, publisher of Today’s World magazine and Lili’s boss.

For a man who took great pains to avoid associating with employees, Eldridge sounded friendly enough at weekly staff meetings. But he sure didn’t sound friendly now.

Lili’s heart raced. She’d been working as a graphic artist at the magazine for two years, and her crush on the publisher was as strong as ever. Tom Eldridge was six feet of rugged masculinity, with a square jaw and chocolate-brown eyes—eyes that were unmistakably angry as he regarded the damning evidence. The frown that creased his forehead did nothing to calm her racing heart, but now that her identity as the child care center’s staunchest advocate was out in the open, she intended to defend herself. She nodded cautiously.

“So you’re the person who’s been circulating fliers and a petition to keep the day care center open?” he asked.

Lili tried to hide her discomfort as she looked up at him. “Someone has to do it.”

His scowl made her toes curl. “And that someone had to be you?”

Lili couldn’t deny his accusation, not with the evidence right in front of her. The damage was done. Still, if ever there was a time to assert herself and her right to free speech, this was it. After all, she reminded herself, her cause was just.

“Yes. I have twins in the after-school program. Once I heard that Riverview’s management might close the center, I felt I should do something before it was too late.” Her defiant reply seemed to surprise both of them.

Raised in a small town in the south of France by grandparents who had taught her to treat everyone with respect no matter how she felt about them, Lili seldom raised her voice. Especially not around the office. Until today.

Eldridge’s eyes narrowed. He pointed to the assignment sheet pinned to the corner of her drawing board. “With a family to support, I would have thought you’d be spending your time designing the magazine rather than causing trouble.”

Lili swallowed hard. “Actually, I was working on the magazine, but other things got in the way.”

“Yeah,” he agreed, glancing down at the betraying evidence. “It sure looks as if they did, and they’re causing problems for everyone, including me.”

This time, Lili’s heart plunged to her toes, but she didn’t intend to back off. The center had provided day care for her children for the past two years. Now that the twins were in public school, she still needed after-school care. Besides, no matter how Eldridge felt about her underground activities, a lot of parents depended on her campaign. She wasn’t in this just for herself.

“I heard that the building’s management has called a meeting of the tenants in two weeks to vote on the center’s closure,” she said when she realized that if she didn’t speak up, Eldridge might fire her. “I’m not the only parent in the building involved, but since I am the only artist, I felt it was up to me to create this flier.”

“You might be an artist, but I’m sure you can still do the math, Lili,” Eldridge said. “Anyone who reads the newspapers has to be aware that insurance liability rates have gone up every year and are still climbing. So are the wages for well-trained caretakers and everything else that goes into a quality day care center like ours.”

At his use of the word quality, Lili perked up. At least Eldridge recognized the center’s worth. “Yes,” she agreed. “But for the employees, it is both more convenient and less expensive than hiring baby-sitters.”

“Perhaps,” he agreed, “but for tenants like this magazine, the costs of operating the center keep rising. I realize children’s welfare is involved here, but to the management, business is business.”

“I know,” Lili agreed, wishing she weren’t so distracted by the sound of Tom’s voice, even when he was angry with her. “That is why the next thing I am going to do is start a fund-raising campaign.” Too late, she realized that by advertising her future plans, she was adding fuel to a burning fire.

“You haven’t heard a word I’ve said, have you?” Eldridge muttered grimly.

“But of course I have,” she retorted. “It is just that we do not seem to agree.”

“There’s nothing personal in this, Lili.” He gave a slight shrug. “I’ve been trying to tell you that while I understand the problem, I don’t own the building. Any decision the management may come to will be based strictly on financial considerations.”

Lili saw red. “Ensuring the proper care of an employee’s children should be just as much a part of running a business as making a profit,” she argued. “As long as the children are taken care of, absentee rates will stay down!”

Tom shook his head. “It’s not only me, you know. Even if I sympathize with you, in the long run I don’t matter. Some of the building’s tenants are not too happy with those petitions and fliers you’ve been circulating. They’ve complained that employees are being distracted from their work. Riverview’s management has no choice. The word is out to find and stop the culprit.” He gestured to the drafting table. “The flier you’re working on is only going to stir things up again.” He turned to leave. “I’d advise you to tear it up and go back to work.”

Lili impulsively reached out to stop him. His tense arm muscles told her he was still angry.

“Not if you help us to buy time. You can ask for a postponement of the meeting. That would give me time to find a way to keep the center open.”

“I only have one vote, Lili,” Eldridge said, glancing down at her hand. “What I think isn’t worth much. Not in tight financial times like these. As I just said, from the management’s viewpoint, business comes first.”

“And from yours?”

Eldridge hesitated, then took a step closer to her drawing board. “I might sympathize with your problem, but I don’t have a great deal of influence.”

To Lili’s dismay, he reached over, picked up the charcoal drawing she’d been working on and held it up to the light. “What’s this supposed to be? A wall target for you to pitch darts at?”

That’s not what Lili had intended when she’d started the sketch of his face. Rather, she’d been wistfully wondering what it would be like to kiss him.

That was ridiculous, she knew. After all, she was a mature woman, a single mother, not an infatuated teenager.

“No,” she said softly. “I heard the sound of your voice and somehow started drawing your face….” It was not a very convincing explanation, but it would have to do.

Tom put the sketch back on the drawing board, reached for the piece of charcoal and filled in the eyebrows. “As long as you’ve gone this far, it might as well look more like me.” He handed the drawing back to Lili and, in a voice that set the hair at the back of her neck tingling, warned, “Let’s just say that if I were you, I’d stop causing any more trouble around the building. I’m willing to forget I found the flier this time, but I might not be able to the next.”

Lili silently stared after Eldridge as he left the studio. Whatever fantasies she’d had about getting to know him on a personal level had just been destroyed. She turned back to her work. No matter what he said about not circulating petitions or handing out fliers, she was determined to find some way to keep the center open.

TOM MADE HIS WAY back to his office, wondering how he could have been so off the mark when it came to Lili Soulé. Could this be the same ethereal woman who had floated in and out of the art studio for the past two years? There obviously lurked a will of steel under that shy smile. Lili was the last person he would have expected to be the mastermind behind the fliers and petitions circulating through the buildings.

A red-blooded man, he couldn’t help noticing Lili’s sapphire-blue eyes and blond tousled hair whenever he wandered into the art studio or attended staff meetings. But that was where his interest ended. He had a Business Only policy when it came to his employees and he didn’t intend to change now.

As far as delaying Riverview’s monthly meeting or voting to keep the center open, hell, he was as sympathetic as the next guy, but it was his job to keep Today’s World out of the red and his lease out of trouble.

Since it had been a dire complaint from the building’s management that had brought him to the art studio this morning in the first place, he didn’t know why he hadn’t fired Lili on the spot when he’d discovered that flier. There was a clause in his lease that stated Today’s World’s rental agreement could be canceled if an employee undertook any activity that could be construed as defaming management. Maybe it had been the scent of her perfume, or perhaps her quaint French accent that had distracted him. Either way, he was beginning to feel as if he’d been seeing Lili for the first time. And he had to admit he liked what he saw—a mixture of an old-fashioned woman and a tantalizing modern one.

Too bad she was off-limits.

The way Riverview’s manager had put it, one-half of the business owners were in favor of closing the center. Another third were for keeping it open, and the rest appeared to be undecided. Lili obviously was out to get that minority on her side, and the process was turning Riverview’s tenants into warring camps.

All things considered, he was actually proud of the way he’d kept his cool with Lili instead of firing her.

LILI HEADED STRAIGHT for a heart-to-heart with her close friends April Morgan Sullivan, one of the magazine’s editors, and Rita Rosales Callahan, the magazine’s research librarian, who had just returned from her honeymoon. Confessing her undercover activities and her disastrous meeting with Tom Eldridge might not be wise, Lili realized, but if she couldn’t ask her two closest friends for advice, whom else could she appeal to?

Lili found the two women at the watercooler.

“No way!” Rita said when Lili finished telling the story of how Tom had caught her planning another flier and sketching his likeness!

Rita’s dark eyes lit up with interest. “I know I advised you to try to get Tom’s attention, but that sure was one heck of a way to go about it! What happened after he caught you?”

Lili shivered as she mentally revisited the scene in the art studio. “For a minute I thought he was angry enough about the flier to fire me. Instead, when he noticed the sketch of him I was making, something about him seemed to change.”

Rita grinned. “What did he say?”

“Not much,” Lili confessed, “although I knew he was still upset. For that matter, so was I.” She frowned. “Until today, whenever he visited the studio, I was sure he was trying to satisfy his artistic side.”

“Tom, an artist? No way,” Rita scoffed. “All the man seems interested in is the way the magazine’s circulation is going through the roof after he published those rules of Lucas’s.”

Rita was right, Lili thought. Not that she blamed Tom. Lucas Sullivan was a sociologist and Tom’s long-time friend. After his six recommendations to guarantee a happy marriage—Sullivan’s Rules—were published in Today’s World, the magazine sold more copies than in its entire history. But there had been an even more delightful result as well—Lucas had fallen in love and married Lili’s friend April, his editor.

“I would love to have seen the expression on his face when he caught you working on another one of those fliers,” April said.

“He didn’t look happy. He warned me to stop, but not before he practically took the piece of charcoal out of my hand and filled in the eyebrows on my sketch.”

“Get outta here!” Rita exclaimed. “I didn’t think the man had a sense of humor. But if you really are interested in him, I hope you took the time to talk about something besides work.”

“No.” Lili doubted Tom had been interested in a personal conversation. “I’m afraid it was all business.”

Rita tossed her empty paper cup into a wastebasket. “All this time I thought you wanted him to notice you…to get to know you.”

“Well, he did notice me, but not in the way I would have wished,” Lili admitted.

Rita threw up her hands. “I can’t believe you wasted such a great opportunity to get personal. Now, if it had been me and I hadn’t already met my Colby, I would have…” She stopped and grinned happily. “What happened then?”

“Not much. He told me I should stick to business during working hours.”

“Well, I suppose any conversation is a start. Although I think you could at least have cracked a joke or two about having been caught.”

“A joke?” Lili said doubtfully. “Mr. Eldridge is always so serious, I’m not sure he has a sense of humor.”

“Sure he does.” April broke in with a laugh. “He managed to bring Lucas and me together when I was Lucas’s editor. Considering the way Lucas and I disagreed about those rules of his, only Tom could have thought the two of us belonged together.”

Rita sniffed. “From what I’ve seen, Tom’s a man without a romantic bone in his body. Just what is it that attracts you to him anyway, Lili?”

“Well, to begin with, his eyes.” Lili smiled as she also remembered Tom’s deep, husky voice—even if he had been telling her off. “I know neither of you thinks Mr. Eldridge is sexy, but I do.”

“Ha!” Rita scoffed. “Don’t get me wrong, Lili. I’m the first to respect Tom for the way he’s brought the magazine’s circulation around. But if the man’s sexy, then I’m the tooth fairy.”

April waved her hand in warning as other members of the staff began to drift back from lunch. “Don’t worry, Lili. Knowing how decent a man Tom really is, I’m convinced he won’t stay angry with you for long. If you want us to help, I’m sure we can figure out a way to keep the center open without causing a riot.”

“I agree,” Rita said airily. “I might need to use the center myself someday.”

Lili gaped at her. “You are expecting a baby already?”

Unabashed, Rita grinned. “You might say I’m working on it.” She turned to April. “What about you?”

April laughed and shook her head. “Not for a while. Lucas and I are busy researching a new slant on his old study about the mating game.”

“It’s about time,” Rita said. “Anyone who believes in his rules about the subservient way a woman ought to behave toward a man in the twenty-first century should have their head examined. As for you, Lili, I actually think Tom has more ‘Sullivan’ traits in him than most men do. Maybe what he needs is someone like you to show him what women really want.”

“Just look at Colby and you, Rita,” April teased. “The poor man had to get himself shot before he realized he loves you just the way you are—the way you’ve been ever since you were kids back in Texas. Still—” April winked at Lili “—maybe it’s too much to expect you to take Rita’s advice about Tom.”

“Sheesh,” Rita grumbled. “I didn’t tell her to…well, not exactly. I just told her to do something to try to get Tom’s attention.”

“Yeah, I remember that conversation,” April said dryly. “But it’s what you suggested Lili do that was the problem. No matter how you put it, your advice boiled down to sex, sex and more sex!”

Instead of denying April’s accusation, Rita looked pleased with herself. “It was all talk, I swear, but the truth is,” she added with a wicked grin, “making love with Colby instead of talking was what finally worked for me. You have to remember, Lili, you’re never going to really get Tom’s attention if you keep calling him Mr. Eldridge instead of just Tom, the way the rest of us do.”

“I know,” Lili said wistfully. “I find it difficult to be familiar with him without an invitation. After all, he is my boss.”

“And he’s all business when he’s at work,” Rita added. “If you’re ever going to catch his interest, you’ll have to spread a little honey instead of making fliers.”

“Maybe the problem is that you actually believe in Sullivan’s Rules, Lili,” April interjected. “You’ve already told us you were brought up to believe that a woman’s role in a relationship is actually a lot like Lucas’s rules for marriage.”

“It is true,” Lili agreed. “The women in my family were taught from childhood to defer to their father, then their husband. I know it sounds very old-fashioned compared to the way women here in the United States think, but it is different in my country. Especially for a girl like myself, who was raised by her grandmother.”

“Then you and Tom ought to get along just fine,” Rita said soothingly. “I think he actually believes in Sullivan’s Rules. Provided you get over your shyness, and if you can do something to get him to see you’re a mixture of the woman in Lucas’s article and today’s woman, you’ll be okay.”

“Rita’s right,” April agreed. “All Tom needs is to realize you’re almost as old-fashioned about men as he is about women.” She paused to look critically at Lili. “Or are you really an old-fashioned woman? Sometimes when I see the look in your eyes, I think there are hidden depths within you.”

Lili blushed as she recalled her physical reaction to Tom whenever he was near. “Maybe so.”

“Yeah.” Rita grinned. “Personally, I believe that most rules are made to be broken—including Sullivan’s.”

Wide-eyed, Lili shook her head. “I do not want to do anything to make Mr. Eldridge more angry. I need his help to postpone the management meeting.”

“Actually, you don’t have to break Sullivan’s Rules,” Rita said. “All you have to do is bend them a little to make them work for you. Heck, if I hadn’t bent a couple, I wouldn’t be with Colby now.”

“There are so many rules to remember,” Lili said as Arthur, the office gofer, came around the corner pushing his refreshment cart. The last thing she wanted was for her situation to become office gossip. “Which of Sullivan’s Rules are you talking about?” she whispered.

“Rule number five, or for that matter, all of them,” Rita replied, carefully eyeing Arthur’s progress down the hall. “They all seem to advise a woman to try to make a man feel masculine.”

Lili’s eyes widened. “How?”

“By showing him how much you like and appreciate him,” April said.

Rita leaned closer to Lili. “Of course, it’s only part of rule five you need to think about. I’m sure you realize from your own experience that if you sublimate your own desires and allow things to happen naturally, you’re never going to get anywhere with a man like Tom.”

As Lili nodded solemnly, the subject of their conversation approached them. The three women froze.

“Good morning, ladies,” Tom said amiably as he eyed Lili. “I hope this is a business meeting.”

With that not-so-subtle warning, and without waiting for an answer, he raised an eyebrow and walked away.

TOM FELT THREE PAIRS of disapproving eyes boring into his back as he walked down the hall. If not for Lili’s crusade, he wouldn’t have thought about the survival of the day care center. He actually felt sorry about the situation, but it was out of his hands.

Besides, beyond polite conversation, or, he admitted reluctantly, sometimes not so polite conversation, fraternizing with his staff outside office hours had been a no-no ever since he’d taken over as publisher. His father may have considered all his employees as one big happy family, but not him. It only led to trouble. Lili was a case in point.

Besides, managing the magazine took most of his waking hours. The last thing he needed was to have Riverview’s management raise the figures on his lease agreement or, perish the thought, cancel the lease when it came up for renewal next month.

If only the magazine’s annual employee picnic wasn’t coming up next Sunday, he would have felt easier about the future. If he’d read Lili’s determined body language correctly, he was going to have to listen to a hell of a lot of arguments from her about keeping the day care open, and the picnic would provide her with the perfect opportunity to corner him.

TOM PASTED A SMILE on his face as he politely greeted employees arriving for Today’s World’s annual picnic. In no time, the magazine’s staff, their families and friends were scattered over the lush green meadow in Lincoln Park, enjoying games and each other’s company. Overhead, the sky was cloudless, and the temperature had climbed into the seventies.

Just his luck, Tom thought as he shook another hand and acknowledged another greeting. He might have wished for a late spring rain to break up the picnic early, but the sun was shining brightly, the flowers were blooming and the trees were sprouting buds.

Since Lili and her friends were undoubtedly out there formenting trouble, he intended to keep a close eye on the day’s activities. At the moment, things were going so well, he found himself waiting uneasily for the first sign of a problem.

Sure enough, it came with a bang, but not in the way he’d expected.

“Look out!”

At the frantic shout, Tom ducked instinctively. Considering there were at least three different ball games going on in front of him, he wasn’t sure what he was supposed to watch out for. A baseball? A soccer ball? A volley ball?

He found out the hard way when he was hit squarely in the groin by a black-and-white soccer ball apparently hurled into space by an energetic player.

With a muffled curse, he caught the ball before it had a chance to roll away. To his mortification, the private part of him he preferred to keep private hurt like hell.

Tom glanced down at the wet ball he held and noticed the large glob of brown mud smeared across the fly of his shorts. If he’d hoped to keep the point of contact a secret, he was out of luck.

A little girl, cheeks flushed with sun and excitement, her blond ponytail flying out behind her, skidded to a stop in front of him.

“Sorry mister. The ball was going too fast. I couldn’t kick it the other way!”

Tom took a series of deep breaths until the red haze in front of his eyes cleared. The blow might have been an accident, but the region south of his belt hurt like hell. The rest of him, including his head, was pounding in sympathy. Still, he tried to keep his cool.

He surveyed the apologetic half-pint in front of him. There was no use being angry. He could recognize innocence when he saw it.

Besides, with so many games going on, he should have been more alert. If he’d been hit in the head with the same force, he would have been knocked out like a light.

Fortunately, the pain in his groin was dulling to a steady throb. He moved gingerly to test the results of his injury and sighed with relief. He might not be home free, but everything seemed to be in working order.

Before he had a chance to tell the kid not to worry, that he was sure he’d live, a young woman came charging across the field toward him.

Lili Soulé.

How much worse could the day get? Tom wondered bleakly.