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  She started to slip her arms around his neck but caught herself in time. His embrace tightened, sending a tremor of anxiety through her body. This was wrong, very wrong. She had to break it off immediately and make sure he understood that under no circumstances would it happen again.

  She summoned all the self-control she could muster and finally managed to step away from him while fighting to bring her breathing under control. The heated flush of excitement spread across her cheeks. Her embarrassment prevented her from looking at him. She reached for the door, then quickly ran out of the house.

  “Wait!” Jared’s voice reached her but she refused to respond to his shout. All she wanted was to get away from the intoxication of his mesmerizing presence.

  Four

  Jared stood at the door and watched as Kim’s car moved down the long driveway. Confusion and mixed feelings swirled around inside him. He wanted to go after her but knew it would be a mistake, just as his actions had been a mistake. It was the first day of their work agreement. He had expected a lot more objection from her about the tasks he had given her, but to his surprise she hadn’t made too many protests.

  Things had gone smoothly…right up until he had insisted she stay and have dinner with him. Even Terry’s interruption had not put a damper on what he had hoped would be a pleasant evening. He wanted to know his adversary a little better, not as man and woman, not as opposite sides of a feud, but rather as one person to another. He wanted to know about her understanding of the generations-old family feud. What was her side of the numerous incidents over the years that had fueled the conflict? Why did she think their families had continued to do business together in spite of the hard feelings raging around them?

  The only things he really knew about the Donaldsons were his father’s ongoing battles with Paul Donaldson and Terry’s comments about Kim. The opinions of his half brother and his father were not important to him.

  He closed and locked the front door of the house, retreated to the kitchen, opened the bottle of wine he had brought from the cellar, then popped a frozen dinner into the microwave. He stared at the large Saint Bernard who sat next to him as if waiting for something to happen.

  “Well, Lurch, what do you think of Kim? I think she likes you. She must—” he chuckled softly at the memory of Lurch knocking her to the floor on their first meeting “—otherwise she probably would have told me to get that damn dog off her.” He bent on one knee and lovingly stroked the dog’s head and scratched behind its ears. “So, what do you say? Do you think the two of you can be friends? That means you have to stop knocking her to the floor.”

  Lurch cocked his head as if considering Jared’s words, then let out a loud bark and wagged his tail.

  Jared stood. “I’ll take that as a yes.” He poured himself a glass of wine, stared at the microwave and watched the timer count down the seconds until his dinner was done. As soon as it was ready, he took his meal from the oven and carried it and his glass of wine to the den. It would be another evening spent at home in front of the television.

  A quiet laugh, half amusement and half irony, escaped his throat. It was not exactly the high-living lifestyle of a womanizing playboy. He allowed a little scowl to wrinkle across his forehead. Tomorrow was a very busy day, and he had to add Terry’s latest fiasco to his workload. He clenched his jaw in anger. This time his irresponsible half brother was not going to get away with using the corporate offices to secure his personal toys. If Terry wanted a new sailboat, he could find the money to pay for it himself.

  Jared’s thoughts turned to Kim, to the heated moment when she had briefly responded to his kiss. It certainly hadn’t been his common sense that had been in charge when he’d kissed her. Not only had it been a totally inappropriate action, considering the circumstances, it had been just plain stupid on his part. He couldn’t deny the attraction but was unable to understand it.

  Perhaps it had been a bad idea to coerce her into working off her father’s debt. A twinge of guilt poked at him—especially in light of his subsequent suspicions about the validity of that debt. Paul Donaldson had signed a promissory note and a contract. It was legitimate, but there was still something about the transaction that didn’t sit right with him. Knowing his father’s penchant for underhanded dealings, and with the feud raging between the two men, the more he thought about it the more he believed there was something wrong with the deal. He didn’t have any evidence, but the possibility disturbed him.

  What would happen if Kim discovered irregularities among her father’s papers? Would she think he had a hand in it? It was too late to terminate the letter of agreement and consider the matter closed. She would understandably want to know why he had suddenly changed his mind after being so insistent about payment. Leave the deal intact or terminate it? It seemed that either way could produce unwanted results.

  Troublesome and conflicting thoughts continued to circulate through his mind for the rest of the evening, occupying his attention until he finally went to bed.

  Kim spent a very unsettled evening and a restless night. Sleep had been intermittent, and she finally got out of bed at five-thirty. Work began at eight-thirty. She stared at herself in the bathroom mirror. She hoped she could cover the dark circles under her eyes with some makeup.

  Confusion ran rampant as she thought back to the previous evening at Jared’s house. How could she have allowed him to kiss her like that? And worse yet, she had gone so far as to respond to that kiss and had come within a fraction of a second of putting her arms around his neck. It was so unlike her. She was not into casual relationships, indulging an impulse, as Jared had said. She was not impulsive, either.

  An unexpected chuckle caught her by surprise when she recalled the way she had torn up the letter and thrown it at Jared’s lawyer. Perhaps she was occasionally impulsive, but not in her personal relationships with men. She had learned that lesson when she had impulsively become engaged to what turned out to be the wrong man.

  So what if Jared’s kiss curled her toes and took her breath away? There was no denying it was a good kiss. A good kiss. Who do you think you’re kidding? It was a great kiss. A quick surge of irritation set a frown across her forehead. He’s had a lot of practice. He should have it down to perfection by now. But that didn’t excuse her actions or ease her guilt. Honestly, Kim, how did you get yourself in this mess? And how are you going to get yourself out of it?

  As much as Jared excited her, the idea of continued contact with him over the summer frightened her. Where it could lead scared her even more. Several times during the night she had allowed a fleeting thought of what it would be like to have Jared make love to her, a thought that embarrassed her and disturbed her.

  She had turned the problem over in her mind for most of the night and had not come up with anything that resembled an acceptable plan of action. Everything came back to that letter of agreement she had foolishly insisted on, the one that said she would work for Jared to satisfy her father’s debt. If she refused to show up for work he could file that lawsuit against her father’s estate, and she couldn’t afford to have that happen. She felt truly trapped between what she had to do and her fears about where her attraction to Jared Stevens could lead.

  She checked the time, grabbed a quick shower, forced down some breakfast and dressed for work. Promptly at eight-thirty she drove onto the grounds of the estate and entered the office complex.

  To her surprise, Jared was at his desk with papers and file folders spread across the surface. She watched him for a few minutes. He seemed totally absorbed in work and not aware of her arrival. She thought of the previous day. Each time she had been in the office he seemed to be hard at work. Maybe she had been a little hasty in her assumption that he was nothing more than a figurehead who left all the work to others. The memos he had her type showed decisions coming from him rather than him asking for other people’s advice about what to do. Of course, they didn’t involve any serious business decisions, but still…

&nb
sp; The ringing phone interrupted her thoughts. She turned toward the desk in the reception area, intending to answer it, but Jared grabbed it before she could get there.

  “Stevens.” After a brief pause, Jared’s voice turned angry. “I’m not going to discuss this with you on the phone. We have an appointment for ten o’clock. We’ll discuss it then.” He slammed down the receiver, then sat staring at the phone for several long moments before shoving back from the desk. He grabbed the carafe from his credenza and poured coffee into his empty cup, but only a couple of swallows came out. Obvious irritation covered his face as he turned toward the open French doors in his office.

  “Fred, are you out there?”

  Fred Kemper stepped into the office from the patio, a watering can in his hand. “You need somethin’?”

  “Are you busy? I seem to be out of coffee. Could you…”

  Fred emitted a soft chuckle. “Sure. I’ll fix up a new pot.” He cocked his head, glanced at his watch and stared at Jared for a moment. “It ain’t even nine o’clock yet and you’ve already gone through that much coffee? You must have a passel of problems on your mind this mornin’.”

  “I do. In addition to the labor situation at the Oakland plant, contract negotiations on the purchase of a small fabricating shop, a collection problem with a client who looks like he’s on the verge of bankruptcy and some shoddy merchandise from a new vendor we were trying out, I have one of our biggest clients pushing me to host some kind of a fund-raiser for his wife’s favorite charity.”

  “Don’t you have other folks who are supposed to be takin’ care of some of that for you?”

  A sheepish grin caught the corners of Jared’s mouth. “Yeah, I do…but sometimes I have trouble divorcing myself from the day-to-day and delegating to the proper department heads. It’s something I really need to work on. Maybe I should just take off one of these days and go sailing…clear out my head and totally relax.”

  Jared heaved an audible sigh. “And as if all that isn’t enough, I have to confront Terry in a little over an hour about his latest caper.”

  Kim saw a hint of fatigue on Jared’s face as he recited the list of problems he’d been wrestling with. As much as she hated to admit it, she felt a rising admiration for his management abilities and his willingness to accept responsibility.

  Jared handed the empty carafe to Fred, then turned toward his desk. Kim saw a look of surprise dart across his face when he spotted her standing in the doorway.

  He offered a tentative smile. “I didn’t hear you come in. Have you been standing there long?”

  “No, I just arrived.”

  Jared motioned toward the open French door. “Fred will have some coffee here soon.” He glanced at the nearly empty cup in his hand, then looked at her with a guilty grin. “Apparently I drank the entire pot I made a couple of hours ago.”

  Kim glanced at her watch. “It’s only eight forty-five. How long have you been at your desk?”

  “Since about six-thirty. I have a lot of things to do today and needed to get an early start.”

  Jared had not made any mention of what happened between them the previous night. Had that type of behavior been so routine for him that he didn’t give it a second thought? Kim wasn’t sure what to say or how to act. An involuntary reaction to the memory of his kiss caused her fingers to go to her lips. She could still feel the heat of his passion, which only went to inflame the memory. Tension churned in the pit of her stomach.

  She nervously ran her fingers through her hair and shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “Well, if you’ll give me my list of chores for the day—” she inwardly cringed when she heard the negative edge she had put on the word chores, something she hadn’t intended to do even though she still felt a certain level of resentment about the menial tasks. “Uh, I mean if you’ll tell me what you want me to do, then I can get out of your way so you can go back to work.”

  Jared immediately caught her uneasiness and the edge in her voice. He had been so busy all morning he hadn’t had time to think about the previous evening…or perhaps it was that he didn’t want to think about it. He had managed to do away with the awkward feeling until he turned and saw her framed in the doorway.

  Myriad emotions, thoughts and feelings circulated through his consciousness. He regretted making the advances toward her, but at the same time he was not sorry he had kissed her. Her taste, the sensation of having her in his embrace…they had left an indelible impression on him. And he didn’t know what to do about it.

  “Uh, sure.” He turned toward his desk and picked up a list he had made first thing that morning. The tension shoved down on him. Perhaps not mentioning the incident would be the best way to proceed. He held out the list to her.

  She took it from him and glanced over the items. “Well, another day of mostly menial tasks and errands.” The words had escaped without her meaning them to. She regretted having said them but could not deny her displeasure. She caught the quick look of amusement that darted across his face—as if he was taunting her with lowly errands. Was that his game? His purpose in having her work? She glared at him, which he seemed not to notice.

  Jared gestured toward the list. “First thing is a trip to the vet for Lurch. It’s time for his annual rabies shot and new tags—”

  As if on cue, when his name was mentioned, Lurch came charging in through the French door and headed straight for Kim.

  This time she was prepared. She braced herself against the desk and waited for the inevitable, but it didn’t happen. Instead of jumping up and putting his paws on her shoulders, Lurch settled his body next to her and leaned his one hundred eighty pounds against her leg while he enthusiastically wagged his tail.

  Kim reached down and stroked the dog’s head. It was a relief to have the tension broken. “Come on, Lurch. I guess we’re off to the vet’s office.”

  She took the dog for his shots and an hour later returned to the office complex with Lurch. She turned the Saint Bernard loose in the backyard using the gate at the side of the garage, then went around the building and entered the reception area rather than cutting through Jared’s office. She poured herself a cup of coffee, settled in behind the desk, then looked at the next item on her list. She was halfway through typing a memo when a familiar voice cut into her concentration and interrupted her work.

  “What did Jared do—” an unmistakable note of condescension surrounded the words “—hire you to work for him? Is this his donation to charity?”

  She glanced up and saw Terry Stevens standing in front of her desk. A smug look of superiority covered his features. Anger rippled through her body. The years since high school had not changed him at all. He had been an arrogant jerk then, he had been rude last night, and this morning his attitude was equally untenable.

  Jared’s voice intruded. “Your appointment is with me, not Kim.” He turned and walked into his office. Terry shot one last disdainful look at Kim, then followed Jared.

  Kim rose from her chair and edged her way closer to the small conference room that separated the reception area from Jared’s office. She felt a pang of guilt—eavesdropping wasn’t polite—but her curiosity got the better of her sense of right and wrong. The ensuing argument between the two men was loud enough that Kim could easily hear what was said in spite of the fact that Jared had closed his office door.

  “I’ve had it with you, Terry, and with your totally irresponsible attitude about everything. This hundred-thousand-dollar contract you signed for the sailboat is null and void. I’ve made it clear to Tony Williams that you have no authority to sign contracts in the company’s name, and if he sells the sailboat to you, the corporation will not be financially liable for the payment. That it’s between him and you, and if—”

  Terry’s angry response cut off Jared’s words. “You have no right to do that!”

  “Wrong!” Jared’s anger matched Terry’s. “I have every right to make that decision.”

  “Apparently that decision o
nly applies to me. I notice that you still have your sailboat docked out back.”

  “That sailboat was paid for by me personally, not with corporate funds. As president and chairman of the board of Stevens Enterprises, I’m responsible for seeing that the corporation is run in an ethical manner while making a profit and that’s not been easy with some of the shady deals Dad pulled off.

  “As for you…for some reason you seem to feel that you’re entitled to whatever you want without having to work for anything. Dad left you with a monthly income large enough to cover your living expenses. It’s up to me to determine if that allowance needs to be increased. You’re not a kid anymore. You’re thirty years old. Until you can show some responsibility and initiative, there won’t be any more free handouts coming from the corporation. If what you have isn’t sufficient, you might try getting yourself a job…although I can’t imagine what you’d be qualified to do.”

  The voices dropped, preventing Kim from hearing what was being said. She returned to the reception desk and continued with her work, although Jared’s words about the importance of ethics and his having problems with some of his father’s business deals circulated through her mind. A few minutes later Jared’s office door banged open, and Terry stormed through the reception room and out to the parking area.

  “I want to apologize for Terry.”

  Kim turned toward Jared. His words caused a flash of surprise to dart through her. Jared Stevens apologizing to her? This was certainly unexpected.

  “He never learned good manners. His mother instilled a you are better than everyone else and are entitled to whatever you want type of attitude in him predicated on the family money, and he’s yet to figure out that it just isn’t so.”

  She covered her embarrassment. “That’s all right. I got used to his rudeness in high school.”

  “It’s not all right.” Jared extended a sincere smile. “But it’s nice of you to say so.”