Hired: The Boss's Bride

He ran a hand up the back of his neck and tried to remember the last time he’d eaten.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Veronica pat Kristin on the shoulder and ask her something that had them both looking his way.

‘Right,’ Kristin said, shaking her head. ‘I’d forgotten all about him.’

Way to build me up as the dominant player in this here situation, Mitch thought.

He shot Kristin a look that had her biting her lip, then he turned his attentions back to the newcomer. He reminded his professional self how much he needed an interim stopgap to save the family business. He informed his personal self that this interloper was the exact antithesis of the kind of cool, cavalier blondes who usually caught his eye. While in the back of his head Kristin’s voice told him she was the answer to all his dreams.

‘Mitch Hanover,’ he said, walking the final two steps towards her. He held out a hand. ‘You must be Veronica Bing.’

‘What gave it away?’ she asked, taking his hand and shaking. Hard, sharp, determined, like a man. But at the same time she gave a saucy little curtsy, one foot tucked neatly behind the other as she bowed her head with respect.

He slid his hand away; slow enough it wouldn’t draw suspicion, fast enough he wouldn’t have to put up with any superfluous lingering memory of her touch upon his skin.

‘The other three interviewees didn’t object when I offered them plane tickets to come here,’ he said, glancing past her at her ostentatious car. ‘Return plane tickets.’

One thin dark eyebrow shot skyward, and her tongue darted out to moisten her full lower lip. ‘It seems my irrational fear of flying has given me an edge over my competition. I knew one day it would come in handy.’

Her mouth curved into a slight smile. He felt his own tug at the corners. He caught himself just in time.

‘I’m sure Kristin has informed you of the importance and immediacy we have placed on the auctioneer role. We have a massive new show set to kick off next week, no auctioneer in place and half the staff down with the flu.’ Though Mitch thought it more likely that they figured, in most cases correctly, if they came back in, they’d be sacked on the spot. ‘The very future of this business depends on filling this position with exactly the right person.’

At this point the other three interviewees had respectively been sanctimonious, blasé and terrified. Veronica Bing, on the other hand, grinned.

‘Well, now, that’s the most unappealing sales pitch I’ve ever heard. Mitch Hanover, I do believe you need me more than you even realise.’

Her bold words hung between them like a bright, shiny red apple: tempting as all get out, and just as likely to be poisoned as not.

He inwardly cursed the last inept auctioneer who’d brought the place to its knees with his lackadaisical ways, the doddery old curator for having no clue about current market trends and his parents for being so good to him he couldn’t let them down.

But he was here now. And so was Veronica Bing. He might as well get it over with.

‘Why don’t you head on through the gallery and I’ll join you in a moment?’ he asked, waving a hand in the direction of the rear office.

‘Whatever you say, boss.’ She swanned across the shiny grey carpet of the wide-open lobby and up the polished wood stairs and disappeared behind the huge brick partition hiding the gallery itself from the road view.

‘Isn’t she something?’ Kristin asked from behind him.

Mitch sucked his breath in through his teeth. ‘She’s something, all right. I’m just not quite sure what.’

Veronica took the moment to herself to try to stop her knees from shaking.

‘So far so good,’ she whispered to herself. ‘You’re doing fine. Chin up, back straight, look him in the eye and wow him with your confidence.’

Confidence? Ha! She could barely remember what the word meant. A week ago this move had sounded so fantastic by the light of a message machine that had been blinking with a dozen messages left by a man who didn’t seem to understand the word ‘No’.

But now, here, in this big, old, musty, gilded building that echoed with the cultured voices of people who’d walked in her shoes, she felt more than a little intimidated.

The grey papered walls were faded, the massive chandelier in the middle of the entrance looked as if it hadn’t worked in a century and the gunk on the walls, gilded frames around pictures of fussy-looking, overfed royalty, what she could only assume was supposed to be art, were so far beyond her taste and life experience as to seem alien.

Then there was Kristin, the girl who’d once had more piercings than Veronica had handbags, now with a slick dark bob and dressed in an elegant beige trouser suit, while she’d trundled up in her tight jeans and knee-high boots and T-shirt, the exact kind of thing she’d worn to work every day in her last post, auctioning patents on computer-game intellectual property.

She bit back a groan as she imagined throwing herself on the bonnet of her beloved Corvette while it was taken away by goons hired by her bank.

She glanced back over her shoulder. Whatever predicament she had landed herself in, the answer came down to Mitch Hanover; the man who had her future in his firm, long-fingered hands.

Kristin had called him a slave-driving stuffed shirt on more than one occasion. Veronica had thus pictured a balding, overfed, pompous, pasty, married guy on daily blood-pressure medication. Compared with her last boss, the personable, clean-cut and ultimately indiscreet Geoffrey, that combination of traits had sounded like her salvation.

Salvation, as it turned out, had been offered to her in the form of a man whose dark grey suit, darker tie and crisp pinstriped shirt were pressed to the point of agony. But it was the stuff stuffed inside the shirt that made the bigger impact.

Mitch Hanover was beautiful. The kind of beautiful a young girl with dreams of princes and fairy wings and all that jazz would go weak at the knees for.

A shade over thirty, a bit more over six feet tall, with matinee-idol looks, an assemblage of dark preppy hair, sharp jaw and persuasively curved mouth. Stuck in a room with a young Cary Grant and Paul Newman he would have held his own.

But the things that had hit her first, last and every moment in between were his eyes. He had the kind of deep grey eyes that gave her the feeling it wouldn’t take all that much to make them sparkle.

Unfortunately she hadn’t managed it. Yet. But since he hadn’t turned her on her heel and sent her packing, she had time. All for the sake of getting the job, of course. That was why she’d come home. Not to ogle, or allow herself to be consistently ogled, by a colleague. Supremely ogle-worthy though he might well be.

Downstairs Kristin began whispering to her boss animatedly, arms flailing, going pink in the face, no doubt talking her up, while Mitch remained cool, aloof, unflappable. It didn’t ease Veronica’s mind any.

In fact, watching him standing there surrounded by all that gilded finery, his fine mouth pressed into a straight line, his eyes unreadable, his whole mien making him seem as if he took life far too seriously, he made her feel distinctly nervous. Little butterflies came to life in her stomach and she slid a hand beneath her T-shirt and tried her best to silently talk them down.

As though he knew he was being watched Mitch chose that exact moment to glance up at her, his intense grey eyes sending the tummy butterflies into hysterics.

Car payments, car payments, car payments, she repeated inside her head.

She slid her hand from her tummy and casually waved it at a random picture on the wall, some great hulking green monstrosity that looked as if it had been painted by a blindfolded monkey. She poked out her bottom lip and nodded, feigning great appreciation.

Mitch’s gaze trailed away, lingered for a moment on the painting, then shifted back to her. From that distance she could have sworn his eyebrows raised a very little, and that his already enticing mouth turned upwards into the lightest of wry smiles, as though he wasn’t of the mind to take the thing home and stick it on his wall, either.

But then he blinked and once again became a wall of poised professionalism. Shame, she thought. When he let his latent charm shine on through she thought he had great potential for fun.

She cleared her throat and reiterated the new grand plan she had come up with once she’d realised how ridiculous the Barbie hair, wings and fairy-dust ambitions really were: Be good. Work hard. Take care of you. Eat more greens. So long as she stuck to those rules, surely her life would change for the better.

Mitch barked some instructions at Kristin, who nodded and was on the phone sounding professional and brisk in an instant, before he jogged up the stairs to arrive at Veronica’s side. He brought with him a flutter of subtly sexy aftershave that had her breathing deep through her nose, then mentally berating herself for being so weak.

‘Whatever Kristin’s been telling you about me,’ she said, ‘believe about half.’

‘But which half would I choose?’ He glanced sideways at her as he strode past and her knees began to shake all over again.

She jogged to catch up. ‘Whichever fools you into thinking that, beneath this ravishing style icon before you, I’m actually more like you than you’re thinking; I’m sophisticated, responsible, meticulous, fair and open to new ideas and challenges.’

‘Now, what makes you think I am any one of those things, Ms Bing?’

‘Eternal optimism?’ she tried.

He kept walking a step ahead of her, but this time she sensed the wry smile for sure.