Читать книгу: «Boss Meets Her Match»

My love, my strength, my wailing wall, the occasional boot in my rear, my partner in everything: Jason Zwiker. Love you, baby!

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

Dear Reader

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Extract

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

THAT IS THE ugliest thing I have ever seen. Lena leaned forward and squinted at the tiny white sticker in the corner of the painting. Five thousand dollars? Tie a paintbrush to my cat’s tail and she’d do a better job. She shifted on the bench. The sounds of the party echoed loudly from the floor below. Sipping her wine, she wrinkled her nose. Cheap chardonnay.

She didn’t want to be here, which was why she was hiding out on the second floor of the City Gallery. She wanted to go home. Take her shoes off and put pajamas on. Drink some wine that didn’t taste like battery acid. She straightened with a sigh. Might as well get it over with. Dr. Eliot Rutledge, famed neurosurgeon, very old money Charleston—and her first of many clients—was waiting for her.

Footsteps on the hardwood floor caught her attention. A man ambled slowly around the corner, looking at the art exhibited on the walls. Lena cut a glance in his direction. He didn’t fit with the suit-and-cocktail-dress crowd downstairs. His beige linen pants were slightly wrinkled—and that shabby white dress shirt. No. Just no. His dark blond hair was long and tied in a ponytail with a length of leather. A neat beard covered his face. He leaned down, looked at a price tag and whistled. Lena smiled.

“Pretty pricey, huh?” he asked, sliding down on the bench beside her.

She looked directly at him. Damn. That is a fine-looking man. The hair and beard couldn’t hide his high cheekbones and eyes so blue they almost didn’t look real. White teeth appeared as he grinned at her. Her stomach went quivery under that bad boy grin. She looked away and sipped more wine. She didn’t do bad boys anymore.

He gestured at the painting in front of them. It was an abstract, not quite as dense as a Pollock but not as minimalist as Munch. Slashes of red and blue, smears of purple and yellow. “What do you think of this one?”

She shrugged. “Not my style, to be honest.”

“Ah, man. I saw you sitting up here instead of being downstairs with all the mingling and small talk and I thought to myself, now, there’s a woman who doesn’t go for polite society bullshit. Thought you were up here seriously contemplating the meaning of art.”

She tried her perfect one-eyebrow-arch-and-glare trick. “Did you, now?”

All that got her was another of those inappropriate thought-provoking grins. “Indeed I did.”

“I think it’s ugly,” she said, taking another drink. “I think my friend’s nine-year-old could do better.”

His laugh echoed off the narrow corridor. “But one of those people downstairs will buy it.”

“Probably.” She stood. “Excuse me, but I have to find someone.”

“Ah,” Eliot Rutledge said, as he walked around the corner. “You’ve met. Wonderful.”

Lena looked from Dr. Rutledge to the man smiling up at her from the bench. “No,” she said, ice cubes practically dropping from the word. “We have not met.”

“Lena, this is our artist.”

A hot spark of anger flared in her chest and spread to her cheeks. The man stood, still smiling, and held out a hand. “Matt. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Lena.”

“Did you know who I was when you approached me?”

“Nope. Just a happy accident.”

She stared at him until the smile melted from his face. A long string of profanities pushed against her pressed lips. Breathe. Just breathe.

“Matt asked for a recommendation. Told him I wouldn’t have anyone else in the city watch after my portfolio.”

“Thank you,” she said automatically. She turned back to Matt. Gave him her iciest smile. “I’d be happy to discuss this with you. In my office. During business hours. Call my secretary and make an appointment.” She turned to Dr. Rutledge. “Eliot, it was good to see you.”

As she rounded the corner to the stairs, she heard Dr. Rutledge’s voice. “Did you make her angry? I’d recommend not doing that anymore.”

Smiling as she pushed through the doors out into the perfection that was Charleston in October, she nodded. That’s right. Don’t piss me off. Her condominium was a short walk away along Waterfront Park. She ambled past tourists and college kids. There was still light in the sky and it was a perfect sixty-five degrees. Maybe she’d go for a run. Or maybe she’d collapse on the couch, order some Vietnamese and binge-watch something. Her phone vibrated in her purse. She fished it out. Sadie. Her best friend. The woman she called sister. Her finger hovered over the screen. Completely tired of talking to people for the day, she was sorely tempted to dismiss the call.

“What’s up?” she asked.

“Your mother is what’s up.”

Lena smiled. At least she wasn’t the only one being tortured by her mother. “What’s she done now?”

“We went to look at dresses. I swear to God, Lena. I’m going to get married in jeans and a T-shirt just to spite her. You should have seen the dresses she begged me to try on ‘just to see.’ I looked like Scarlett O’Hara’s cousin from the trailer park. A full veil. To the knees!”

“Sounds perfectly lovely. At least she’s off your case about getting married in a church.”

“For now,” Sadie replied grumpily. “What are you doing this weekend? I need a rational human being for dress shopping.”

Lena reached her condo door and leaned against it. She could hear her cat meowing indignantly from the other side. Supper was an hour late. “We can do that. But don’t invite my mother. I’m trying to stay off her radar right now.”

“Yeah, by throwing me at her.”

“You’re the blushing bride. Much more fun than the dried-up old maid.”

“Is she still on that?”

“She’s backed down a bit. I think my aunts are planning something. Every time I see one of them, I feel like I’m being interrogated. Look, I gotta go. I just got home and la gata has complaints.”

“Okay, grumpy. Bye.”

* * *

“KEEP YOUR FUR ON,” she said as she entered her condo and kicked her shoes off. Sass, the cat, did not keep her fur on. Winding her way around and between Lena’s ankles, she complained bitterly of the near-death experience of having supper one hour late.

An hour later, she’d been forgiven by Sass, her business suit had been replaced with pajamas and Bon Banh Mi had delivered dinner. Wallowing happily on the couch, she scooped salad into her face and resumed binge-watching Supernatural. Her phone buzzed and Sass smacked at it. “Sthop,” she said around a chunk of lettuce. Estrella Acosta. Shit. What now?

“Hola, Tia. Qué pasa?”

“Are you coming to church on Sunday?”

Okay. Getting straight to the point. That’s new. “I hadn’t planned on it.”

“Contestame, will you come to church on Sunday?”

Lena made a face at the phone. “I haven’t been to confession.”

“You don’t have to go to confession to go to church, Miss Smarty Pants.”

“Which mass?”

That was important because no way she was getting up at four in the morning on a Sunday to drive an hour for a sunrise mass.

“Ten.” Lena grinned at the clipped tone in her aunt’s voice. “You haven’t been to church since Luis died. It would mean a lot to your mother.”

That melted the smile off her face. She slumped into the couch. “Okay. Yes. I will come to the 10:00 a.m. mass this Sunday.”

“And to the house for lunch too?”

“Yes.”

Sass swatted at her hair hanging over the arm of the couch. “This is why I should have got a dog instead of you, Sass. I’d have to walk a dog. Take it out to pee and stuff. Perfect excuse to stay home. But no. I got a cat.”

It wasn’t that she didn’t want to see her family. It was that ever since Sadie got engaged, everyone was starting to look at Lena like she was supposed to just pick out a man and start popping out babies. Her mother was calling Sadie’s soon-to-be stepdaughter nieta and dropping grandbaby hints like it was her job. Problem was Lena had spectacularly rotten luck with men.

CHAPTER TWO

MATT PLANTED HIS hands on the balcony railing and looked down at the crowd below. He was bone tired and the voices below were echoing off the high ceiling, making his head hurt. The only thing keeping the smile on his face was the memory of Lena Reyes’s departure. Her long black hair swinging side to side as she strode away. He smiled again. She didn’t look like any financial expert he’d ever met. He hadn’t missed the heat in those nearly black eyes either. When he’d sat beside her and she looked at him. There was nothing professional in her eyes at that moment.

A hand patted his shoulder. “Very good turnout, don’t you think?” Dr. Rutledge asked.

“Great turnout. Thank you again for putting it together.”

“I’m seeing a great many sold tags going up. You’re going to be the next big thing.”

“For now. Problem with being the next is there always someone behind you, ready to be the next next.”

Dr. Rutledge laughed. “Very true, but what’s that old cliché? Make hay while the sun shines? Keep this going for as long as you can, give the money to Lena. I don’t know how she does it, but she has the magic touch.”

“If she’ll even take me as a client now.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Dr. Rutledge said. “She’ll get over it. If you’re lucky.”

“I hope so. I really need her help.”

“What you really need is to get back downstairs and charm wallets out of purses.”

“If I must.”

Dr. Rutledge’s rich laughter echoed in the open area. “Just smile at the ladies and remember what this is all for.”

“I never forget that. I will also never forget all your help.”

“You’re welcome, son. But I’m doing it for selfish reasons.”

“I wouldn’t call helping sick kids selfish.”

“No. I’m doing it because of that look I saw in Clarissa’s eyes when she was painting with you. That joy? All her pain forgotten? I want to see that for a very, very long time.”

Matt followed the older man down the stairs and into the crowd. He hadn’t known who the man was who’d come into the playroom at the Children’s Hospital and interrupted his therapy session with several kids in for cancer treatment. The little redheaded girl’s grandfather, he’d surmised by their greetings. He didn’t know then that Eliot Rutledge was a world-famous neurosurgeon who felt helpless as his beloved granddaughter battled leukemia. Matt didn’t know then that his world was about to change. His dream was suddenly much closer.

But it was going to come with a price. He had to go back into that upper-crust society that he’d rejected when he left Maryland. He smiled and nodded and shook hands. It all came back so easily. Too easily. He gave his patented, panty-melting bad boy grin to the little old ladies and was perfectly polite to the single women. Firm handshakes and backslaps to the men. God, get me out of here. His thoughts drifted back to Lena Reyes. She’d stood out. She didn’t even realize how radical an act sitting alone at a function like this was. It intrigued him.

* * *

“I’D LIKE TO know exactly what was wrong with my original plan to get married at the UPS store by a notary.”

Lena stared openmouthed at Sadie, lowering the bridal gown she was holding. “What were those words that just came out of your face?”

Sadie pouted, flipping quickly through the gowns. “No. No. God, no. Not in a million years no.”

“Slow down. You aren’t even looking at them.” Sadie didn’t answer. “Sades? What’s going on?”

“Nothing.”

Replacing the gown on the rack, Lena grabbed Sadie’s hand and pulled her to sit on the bench by the dressing room door. “Digame.”

“It’s nothing. I just... I didn’t want all this fuss.”

“Then why are you doing it? Go to the UPS store then.”

Sadie leaned forward, propping her elbows on her thighs, chin in hands and shook her head. “Because Jules wants to be a flower girl.”

“Wait. You are having this lavish wedding just so Jules can throw some flower petals around?”

“It’s not lavish. It’s very small. And simple.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

“There’s just so much stuff to do. I don’t like to do stuff.”

“See. That’s where you made your fatal error. You let my mom help you because you were lazy. Next thing you know you’re in a Scarlett O’Hara dress. You better pick out something today before she makes up her mind for you. Just sit here. I’ll pick out some choices.”

She returned to the rack. Part of her was a bit annoyed. She hadn’t expected Sadie to turn into a Bridezilla by any means, but this pouting was unexpected. Taking a deep breath, she began to pull dresses. Three. That was Sadie’s problem. Anything new was overwhelming. A store full of dresses was too much.

“Come on,” she said. “Let’s try these on.”

It gave her a small amount of pleasure that it was the first one. She’d known it was the one. Sadie came out of the dressing room looking stunned. The creamy ivory looked good against her fair skin and the cascade of black curls down her back was the only veil she’d need.

“It’s perfect,” Sadie whispered.

“Of course it is. I have excellent taste.”

“Great! You can pick out your own maid of honor dress then.”

“I was going to do that anyway.”

That got a laugh out of Sadie and seemed to relax her. Lena put her hands on Sadie’s shoulders. “You deserve this.”

“I know. I want to marry Wyatt and maybe start a family. I just don’t want to have to do all the wedding stuff. It seems like showing off.”

Sadie turned to look in the mirror. “This is a beautiful dress though.”

Lena grabbed Sadie’s hand as she reached for the price tag. “Don’t look. Just don’t. I’ll take care of it and you can reimburse me after the wedding.”

A look of horror crossed Sadie’s features. “Why? How much? Please don’t pay more for a dress than I’d pay for a car.”

“It’s not that bad. Go change.”

While Sadie was changing, Lena paid for the dress so she couldn’t change her mind. Sadie needed this. She deserved this. After everything she’d been through in her life, Sadie needed to have something normal. And nothing was as normal as a nice fancy wedding.

“All done,” she said as Sadie returned from the dressing room. “It’s yours. We’ll arrange for a fitting closer to the wedding date.”

“How much was it?”

“That doesn’t matter. It’s your wedding day, Sadie. You don’t have to go full formal, princess fairy-tale wedding, but you deserve the day to be special. Be the center of attention for once. Let the people who love you celebrate your happiness with you.”

Sadie rolled her eyes. “Fine. We’ll do it all. Flower toss, garter toss. Everything. Except cake smashing in the face. I despise that.”

“Agreed. It’s a perversion of the original intent.”

“Fine then.”

Lena laughed at Sadie’s bulldog expression. “I’m going to make you love every minute of the wedding if it kills me.”

“I’ll enjoy the wedding. I refuse to enjoy the planning.”

“Deal. But remember, if you leave it to my mother, it’s going to be quinceñera and Catholic wedding meets Designing Women. You need to set limits with her. Come on, let’s get out of here.”

As they walked to Lena’s car, Sadie hooked her arm in Lena’s. “Thank you for the dress. But I can’t be mean to your mom. She’s so sweet.”

Lena made a rude noise. “That’s just a disguise to lure you into her plans.”

The BMW beeped as Lena hit the unlock button and they climbed in. Sadie leaned back and closed her eyes. “It’s just so exhausting. Having to make so many choices constantly.”

“I know. It’ll get better.”

“How? The dress is the only thing we’ve done!”

“And the wedding is in two months? Sadie! Have you picked a place? A cake? Invites? Save the dates? Anything?”

“No.”

Lena let loose a stream of Spanish.

“Hey!” Sadie said. “I understand some of that.”

Lena cranked the engine. “I’m going to send you a list. I want you to do two things on the list every week.”

“Fine.”

“Fine!”

As she pulled out into traffic, Lena glanced over at Sadie. She was pretending to be grumpy but they’d been friends long enough that she knew it was better to give Sadie a single task to do rather than a giant mountain of them.

“Want to come for lunch on Sunday?” Sadie asked. “Jules wants to learn more Spanish.”

“I wish I could. But I promised I’d go to mass and have lunch with the family.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. I think they’re up to something.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know, but it can’t be good.”