Asking For A Friend Read online

  He excused himself with a quick nod at the girl and closed the door quietly behind him, leaving me alone with the accounting manager my inheritance depended on. Taking a proper look at her for the first time, I sucked in a breath.

  Whoever she was, she was beautiful. Long blonde hair fell past her shoulders in loose, curly waves. One piece had been flipped over her shoulder while the rest of it tumbled past full breasts. She wore a form fitting black dress that revealed a spectacularly curvy body beneath it.

  Looking out at the world through the deepest bluest eyes, framed by thick black lashes, I realized she was examining me as much I was examining her. Rosy pink cheeks glowed from the cold outside, somehow completing the angelic blonde-hair, blue-eyed look she had going.

  Eyes lowering to her hands, I noticed her ring finger was bare. Though she wore several golden rings on other fingers. A tangle of golden bracelets and a wiry watch of the same color adorned her wrists.

  A matching chain with a little ball at the end hung from her neck, the ball resting neatly on top of what I easily imagined to be her ample cleavage, though the dress came up too high to give any glimpse of it.

  Beautiful as they were, her eyes also seemed sharp and intelligent. No more than a few seconds could have passed, but we both seemed to complete our survey of one another at the same time.

  Rising from my seat, I motioned her to the chair Craig had vacated. “Welcome, Ms. Hughes. Please, have a seat.”

  “Thank you.” Her voice was sweeter in person than it had been on the phone. Clearer. “Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to come in today.”

  “Of course.” She moved forward towards the seat, clutching a big black purse to her side that I hadn’t noticed before. The thing seemed to be bulging as she set it down beside the chair.

  Where I’d noticed other women hanging their purses neatly from their seats, this woman simply set hers down on the floor as she lowered herself into the chair. It toppled over as it hit the floor and several items spilled out.

  From what I could see before taking my own seat and having my view obstructed by my desk, there was a wallet, a set of keys, some kind of perfume and a tube of lip gloss now residing on my floor. She made no move to pick them up, sitting back and folding one leg over the other.

  It irked me that she didn’t pick it up. Those things belonged in her purse, not on the floor. A lifetime of being raised by anal nannies and housekeepers had instilled in me a form of OCD. It wasn’t bad to the point of making me socially awkward, but it did make me long for things to be in their proper place.

  As a way of dealing with things out of place, I’d developed the habit of tapping my fingers against whatever surface my hand happened to be on at the time until I could get things back to where they belonged. It soothed me and kept my mind focused on the task at hand, instead of on whatever it was that was out of place.

  A therapist I went to once called it modulating. I started tapping my finger on my desk now, itching to get up and put her things back into the bulging purse.

  I didn’t do it, though. The tapping kept the itch in check as I sat back in my own chair. Things spilling out of her purse didn’t mean she wasn’t fit to work here. Hiring her was part of the deal, and I would have to keep that in mind. Weighing up anything she said and did with that in mind.

  At least the spill distracted me from the initial rush of attraction I felt toward the woman. She was exactly my type, if I had a type at all. Her curves called to me. It wasn’t hard to imagine how soft her skin would be if I trailed my fingers over those curves.

  Dreaming things up for a living, my imagination was better than most. What those blue eyes would look like clouded over by lust and pleasure came to mind easily. My hips practically felt the pressure of her legs wrapped around them.

  Being attracted to this woman wasn’t a good idea. It might even prove to be a lot more dangerous than anything I could have imagined ever before.

  Tapping a little more forcefully against the desk, I made myself stop thinking about the things I would have rather been doing to her besides conducting this interview, and pulled my lips into a smile. Time to get the show on the road. “Shall we begin?”

  Chapter 6

  Marissa

  The last thing I expected walking into the interview this morning was to find a guy who looked like this one sitting across from me. I mean, wow. How any of the women in this office got anything done with a boss who looked like him was beyond me.

  Granted, my last boss was older, so I didn’t have much experience working with men around my age, but this one was bound to make it harder to concentrate for anyone with a pulse and even the vaguest interest in men.

  He was nothing short of gorgeous, and having seen how hot his eyes grew when he was looking me over when I walked in, I was feeling way more aroused than an interview had the right to make me feel.

  As inconvenient as my arousal was, I could hardly blame myself. It had been a long time since I’d noticed a man the way I noticed him, the way that made me feel less like a mom and more like a woman. A woman with needs my trusty vibrator didn’t always fulfill as well as it could have.

  This man looked like he could fulfill those needs and then some. He was tall, and though I hadn’t exactly measured how tall, I guessed he was around six foot two.

  Wearing a suit that I was quite sure had been tailored for him, I could see he had the kind of muscular physique you wanted to sink your fingernails and possibly your teeth into. Muscles that would flex and ripple when he moved above you.

  It was there in the way he filled out his suit, in the way the material stretched just a little across his broad shoulders and over his biceps. He seemed to have a swimmer’s build, his frame leaner than it would’ve been if he was a gym rat. His waist seemed tapered, the suit hanging nicely from his narrow hips.

  His hands though, told the story of an artist. Which seemed fitting, since the signage when I arrived out front told me this was an architecture firm. It made sense then that he would be an architect. Long, narrow fingers tapped lightly on his desk, the only tick I’d noticed about him so far.

  They were graceful and elegant, looking like they belonged around one of the fancy pencils that sat in a neat row on a strange upright table thing in the corner overlooking the city. A drawing table, I thought it was called.

  Peering at me curiously across a slick ultra-modern desk was a pair of light green eyes. They were the color of new leaves at the beginning of spring, but intense. Unwavering. The eyes of a man who knew exactly what he wanted and how to get it.

  If I was going to get a job here, it was time to put on my big girl panties. He wouldn’t be an easy employer to win over. Flashing him the most charming smile I knew how to muster, I jumped right in.

  “I was surprised when I received your call, sir.” It felt weird to address someone who couldn’t be much older than me that way, but I knew some men were sticklers for that kind of thing. “I wasn’t expecting to receive any job offers, and hadn’t gotten around to applying for a new job yet.”

  “Yes, I imagine the call must’ve come as a surprise,” he said. “There must have been a reason my father wanted you to work for me. I thought it was better for us to meet and try to figure out if you working here will work.”

  After a pause, he added. “And call me Layton. My father might have preferred sir, but I go by my name around here.”

  Confusion hit me like a ton of bricks. “Okay—uh, Layton. I’m afraid I still don’t really understand. You keep mentioning your father, why is that?”

  There was something vaguely familiar about Layton. I’d noticed it as soon as I walked in the door, but I’d been too distracted by how good looking he was to give much thought to it before. His repeated mention of his father had triggered something.

  The way he said it. The curve of his jaw and the way he held himself. The sign out front simply read ‘Layton B.’ In smaller letters beneath the name, it said ‘Architecture.’ Layto
n B. Was it possible the ‘B’ stood for what I thought it did?

  Watching him as I connected the dots in my head, he spoke up just before I could ask the question. “My last name is Bridges. Jeffrey was my father. He, uh, left instructions that he wanted you to come work for me.”

  Suddenly, everything became so much clearer. The random call, his familiarity. None of it was random or by chance at all. My former employer had done what he’d always promised me he would, and had taken care of me.

  “Oh my god,” I blurted out, unable to stop the stream of words cascading from my lips. “I should’ve known. I didn’t realize before just now who you were. I’m so sorry for your loss.”

  A ghost of a smile touched his lips. Encouraged, I forged on. “Your father was a wonderful man. I loved working for him. He was so smart, and I learned so much while I was there. You must be devastated, you poor thing. I know I was when I heard. The world has certainly lost a legend.”

  Any hint of a smile disappeared. “Yeah. Thanks.”

  He fell quiet for a beat, then seemed to change gears and relaxed some. “You’re—bubbly, aren’t you?”

  I clapped a hand over my mouth, feeling my cheeks warm. “Bubbly is a kind way of looking at it, but yes, I am.”

  “Good,” he said, bringing his hand up to his chin. He tapped it twice before dropping it back to the table and continuing the light tapping there. “That’s good. I suspect you’d be able to talk people who owe us money into paying, and others into giving us discounts.”

  The flush spread from my cheeks down to my neck. I fought the urge to pull the collar of my dress away from the hot skin there. “I’ve been told I can talk an Eskimo into buying ice, and a man in the desert into giving me his last bottle of water.”

  “Jeffrey told you the latter, didn’t he?” Layton guessed. There was something in his eyes I couldn’t quite place. It had to be sadness. His father had been strict and firm, but fair.

  I hadn’t been exaggerating when I said I learned a lot from him. He was a good man to work for. A mentor to me, in a way. Losing him as a father must have been a thousand times more painful than losing him as an employer and mentor.

  I nodded, a fond smile curling on my lips as I remembered the day Jeffrey told me I would be able to talk a man in the desert into giving me his last water. We’d been going over the numbers of a project a large company wanted to commission him for.

  He wasn’t sure if the work would be worth the money. I told him I would try to get him a better deal and he’d responded with a grin, telling me that if anyone was going to be able to negotiate a better deal for him, it would be me. It was then that he added a man in the desert would give me his water if I tried hard enough.

  “Your dad sure had an interesting way of looking at things, sometimes,” I told Layton. “I do have a bubbly personality, though. Would that be a problem here?”

  My heart thundered in my chest as the man across the desk kept quiet for a second too long. Annie and I couldn’t afford for me to screw the interview up. There would be no more ‘fairy god bosses’ out there who would call out of the blue with a job offer.

  If Mr. Bridges had requested or otherwise instructed his son to make me an offer, it was the only job waiting for me. It also confirmed my suspicions that without Mr. Bridges himself, Brilliant Aviation as I knew it would cease to exist. I didn’t know why or how, if it was the board or what, but things were going to change there.

  I couldn’t think of another reason why Mr. Bridges would have arranged a job for me with his son. I wasn’t prone to fidgeting, but I found myself playing with the rings on my fingers in my lap. Finding another job could take time, and with my last employer deceased, I didn’t have any recent, relevant references.

  Mr. Bridges and I met in Texas and he’d given me a chance. I worked my way up to being an accounting manager under his tutelage and supervision. Without him around, I didn’t know how I was going to be able to convince people I was as good at my job as I was.

  Even if I could overcome that hurdle, applying for a job and the interview process took time. Time that Annie and I might not have, especially if things were going sideways at Brilliant Aviation. All I knew was that we were told to take the week off. I knew nothing about our job security beyond that.

  For all I knew, I would arrive at the office to nothing and nobody. A lump started forming in my throat.

  Layton must have sensed my descending misery, because he cleared his throat and quickly pulled me out of it. “Not necessarily. Tell me a little about what your job entailed at Brilliant Aviation.”

  Breathing out deeply, but quietly, I did as he asked and prattled off my main duties and responsibilities. “I produced financial reports related to budgets, accounts payable, accounts receivable, expenses and so on. I was also responsible for developing long-term business plans based on my reports. I reviewed, monitored and managed budgets and I helped developing strategies to minimize financial risk.”

  Unless I was very much mistaken, I had managed to impress Layton. His eyebrows rose almost imperceptibly as he nodded. “That sounds good.”

  Unbidden, my lips curled into a smile. “Does that mean I have the job?”

  Sighing, he nodded. “I don’t think I have much of a choice but to extend a formal offer to you, do I?”

  “Nope,” I chirped, relief and elation mingling tightly in my chest. As I exhaled a sigh of relief inwardly, I realized the interview was over.

  Standing up from my seat, I realized my purse had titled slightly when I set it down and some things had spilled out of it. Luckily, it was nothing embarrassing. Quickly gathering it all up and shoving it back into my purse, I straightened up.

  Oddly, Layton’s tapping, which had continued throughout our interview seemed to have ended. Maybe he really didn’t like interviews, I thought in passing.

  Preparing to leave, I wondered when he would make the formal offer he mentioned. To be fair, his response that he didn’t think he had much of a choice but to extend one didn’t sound like he was super enthusiastic. But I was too relieved to care, and too thick skinned to be offended.

  I had a job, and that was all that mattered. “Goodbye, Layton. Thanks again for seeing me.”

  “My office will be in touch,” he replied.

  Out of habit and pure excitement over my new job, I went in to hug him goodbye. He deftly avoided my efforts and held out his hand for me to shake instead. As soon as my fingers made contact with his, my skin tingled. It was like he’d shocked me, but it wasn’t painful. It was electricity that zapped through me and warmed me.

  Oh boy. Working with this this man was going to be interesting, to say the very least.

  Chapter 7

  Layton

  Late the next Friday afternoon, I rubbed my tired eyes and looked over a three dimensional mock-up of one of my upcoming projects on my computer at the office. There was something not quite right about it, but I was having trouble putting my finger on what, exactly, was off.

  “Come on, man. Concentrate,” I muttered, squinting my eyes as I titled the image this way and that. Any minute now, I would see what was bothering me. Nothing jumped out, but I was sure it would soon. I just had to keep going.

  I was concentrating so hard, I didn’t notice there was someone else in my office until I heard the soft scrape of a chair against my laminate flooring. My head snapped toward the sound. I sighed internally when I saw who it was.

  Marissa.

  Of course. She was the only one who just walked into my office. No knocking, no waiting for me to call her in. It was an aggravating habit she had, but I didn’t show my aggravation.

  No good could come of it. She just wasn’t like the other people here. Unlike the other people who worked for me, she took my open door policy literally.

  She took a seat, also without having been invited, clutching a slim file to her chest. “I brought this for you.”

  “You can just leave it for me. Thanks,” I told her, but she d
idn’t budge.

  Clearing her throat, she set the file down on her lap. “I was hoping we could go over the numbers for the next project you’re looking to do.”

  “You can leave them on the desk. I’ll get to them in a little bit. I’m just in the middle of something.” Something that was really bugging me. I wouldn’t be able to focus on the numbers until I fixed whatever was off about that mock up.

  “I looked into a couple of things,” she started again, opening the file right there on her lap. “There are some things I’ve done I wanted to run by you. They’ll save you a lot of money if they can be done.”

  “I appreciate the effort, really.” I actually did. I hadn’t asked her to run those numbers. She had shown some initiative by doing it before I had to ask, and that was something I valued in my employees. “Thank you, if you would leave the file on the desk, I’ll get to it as soon as I can.”

  A low sigh reached my ears as I turned my attention back to my computer. I really had to figure out what was amiss with this design. From the corner of my eye, I watched as she finally put the file down on my desk.

  Unfortunately, I also noticed that she’d put the file down askew with some of the papers spilling haphazardly out of the side. Instantly, my attention on the design vanished. The only thing I could focus on now was those damn papers.

  They should have been straight and I was itching to straighten them myself when it became clear she wasn’t going to do it. My fingers started tapping the underside of the desk as I waited for her to leave so I could do what I needed to.

  Shifting her weight on her bright purple heels, she nodded at the file. “If you need me to walk you through what I’ve done, just let me know when you have time. I haven’t noted the details, since I thought we could go through it together. It’s simple, but I’d like the chance to explain myself if necessary. I don’t want you to think I’ve cut corners.”