Читать книгу: «Love, Your Secret Admirer»

Chapter One

Timing is everything.

Sarah Morris, the executive assistant to the Senior Vice President of Accounting for Wintersoft, looked up from her work when Penny Rutledge, Wintersoft’s petite blond receptionist, set a huge crystal vase containing one dozen long-stemmed white roses on her desk.

“Oh, my! They’re beautiful!”

“Open the card,” Penny said shifting from foot to foot, dancing with excitement.

Sarah pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose, then fingered the practical braid she’d woven her waist-length red hair into as she peered down at her ordinary gray suit. “They’re for me?”

“Of course they’re for you, silly! Open the card.”

The scent of roses filled the air as Sarah fumbled with the envelope. The seal finally gave and she pulled out the brightly colored rectangle and read out loud, “Your Secret Admirer.”

Penny all but swooned. “Ohh!”

“I have a secret admirer?” Sarah said, her voice confused and uncertain. She had moved from North Dakota to Boston a year ago, but didn’t get out much. The only man she knew more than casually was…

An amazing thought occurred to her and she glanced over her shoulder to the office behind her. Her boss, Matt Burke, sat at his desk, making his to-do list for the next workday because that’s what he did every day at five minutes till five. Fridays were no exception.

He diligently scribbled in his calendar, oblivious to her scrutiny, but Sarah drank in every detail of his short, spiky brown hair and handsome face. Because he was writing, she couldn’t see his eyes but knew they were a soft blue, trimmed with unusually long black lashes. More than once she had dreamily gazed into them when he was focused on something else.

It couldn’t be…

Matt wouldn’t…

“So who do you think it is?” Penny asked as she happily rearranged the flowers to make the bouquet perfect.

“I don’t know,” Sarah said, trying not to look behind her again. Working one-on-one the way she and Matt did, they knew enough intimate details of each other’s lives to throw them into the category of friends. But Matt had never shown one ounce of interest in her as a woman.

“No idea at all?” Penny said, smiling as she leaned a hip against Sarah’s desk and got comfortable. “No guy you met at a bar or museum or church on Sunday morning?”

“I don’t go to bars. People don’t usually strike up conversations with me at museums and they are even quieter in church.” Which made it highly unlikely that she would have a secret admirer. And that took her back to Matt. He was the only man who could have sent her these flowers. The question was…why?

“I heard you got roses!” Carmella Lopez said as she walked down the open corridor to Sarah’s workstation. Lloyd Winters’ executive assistant was a beautiful Hispanic woman with short, graying black hair and warm brown eyes. A fifty-something widow with no children, Carmella was also a sweet and sincere office mother hen who read romance novels. It didn’t surprise Sarah that she would be one of the first people in the office to congratulate a woman who got flowers. “Who are they from?”

Sarah glanced at Carmella. “A secret admirer.”

Matt stepped out of his office, and, as always, Sarah’s attention was immediately consumed by him. Tall and broad-shouldered, ruggedly attractive even in his dress shirt and tie, he looked more like one of the employees on Sarah’s dad’s ranch than a quiet, focused senior vice president for a software company. Sarah suspected that was why she had such a crush on him. In her mind, he combined the best of both worlds. He had the masculinity of a cowboy and the brains and conceptualizing ability of a Forbes, Ford or Gates.

His gaze flitted to the roses then swung to hers. “Well, look at this,” he said, his voice filled with that odd tone men used when they tried to be happy about something girlie, but didn’t quite know how to pull it off. Or, when they were in some way faking their response. “Somebody sent you flowers.”

It was him! Sarah thought, tamping down the unrealistic hope that he’d sent her flowers because he was interested in her. The tone of his voice was too patronizing and too brotherly. If he’d sent them, it was to cheer her up. Or—she squeezed her eyes shut then quickly opened them again before anyone noticed—because he felt sorry for her. He knew she didn’t go out on weekends. He knew she hadn’t had a date since she’d arrived in Boston.

“Yes, and aren’t they beautiful?” Carmella fingered a pristine petal. “White is for what?”

“Purity,” Sarah replied, her eyes narrowing. Purity? Purity!

“So some man thinks you’re very sweet,” Matt said, smiling his warm, wonderful, I’m-a-friendly-guy smile and Sarah wanted to deck him. The man she was crazy about thought she was pure. While she daydreamed about his kisses, he saw her as someone inexperienced and naive.

For fifty cents she’d take him to her dad’s ranch where she played poker with the hands and held her own during cattle drives when the cursing was thick and biting. She would show him firsthand that she wasn’t naive, she wasn’t inexperienced and she sure as hell wasn’t pure.

“Well, you can’t leave them here,” Carmella was saying as Sarah forced herself out of her reverie. “They’ll die over the weekend.” She smiled at Sarah. “Besides don’t you want to enjoy them?”

“No,” Sarah said, surprising herself as much as everybody else around her. “I don’t want to enjoy them, because I don’t want them at all. Penny, you can have them.”

“No!”

“No!”

“No!”

Matt, Penny and Carmella said the word simultaneously. Penny said it like a woman who didn’t want the flowers of another woman, no matter how lovely.

Carmella sounded shocked that Sarah would give away such beauty. Matt said it as if she had suggested prematurely withdrawing money from her IRA.

The red numbers on Sarah’s digital clock blinked and 4:59 became 5:00. Sarah opened her bottom desk drawer, withdrew her backpack and rose from her seat. “Then leave them for the cleaning people,” she said as she left her office.

Tears stung her eyes. Her gray skirt shifted across her calves. Her fat braid bounced along her back. Damn it! She was pure. Well, not exactly pure, more like conservative. Well, not even conservative, more like comfortable. She had thick unruly hair that fell to the bottom of her back, so it wasn’t just convenient to wear it in a braid. It was comfortable. Her glasses were less effort than her contacts. And long skirts were all-covering, easy to match and the most logical thing to wear when she was constantly bending and stretching to reach files.

She was dowdy, and conservative by virtue of the fact that she dressed for comfort, and there was no way she would have a secret admirer. She hadn’t even had a date since she’d set foot in this city! Combining her lack of dates with her dowdy clothes, Matt probably saw her as some kind of charity case. Did he know she was still a virgin, too?

Purity flowers took on a whole new meaning, sending anger careening through Sarah’s veins. The probability that Matt had sent those flowers because he felt sorry for her became more and more obvious by the second. By the time she reached the elevator, she just wanted to die.

Matt Burke stood with Carmella and Penny, watching Sarah as she marched, head high, to the elevator. His thoughts were in such turmoil and the situation was so unusual—not to mention uncomfortable—that he wasn’t sure what to do.

“Go after her.”

Matt faced Carmella. “What?”

“Go after her. She can’t leave these beautiful flowers.”

Matt almost said, “Yes, she can,” but he changed his mind. He wasn’t sure why seeing Sarah get flowers caused a tightening in his chest, he only knew it did. Now that he’d gotten over the shock that Sarah would waste perfectly good roses, he wasn’t upset to see her leave them behind. In fact, he had an ungodly urge to toss them out his office window.

“I’ll take them to her,” Penny said, grabbing the flowers and pivoting toward the door.

“No!” Carmella yelped as she caught Penny’s hand, but she lowered her voice and said, “Matt will take them to her.” She paused to lift the vase from Penny’s grasp, and her smile reappeared as she offered the roses to Matt. “You drive by her apartment complex on your way home. You can take them right to her door.”

“Oh, no!” Matt said, backing away from the flowers as if they were poisonous. “She doesn’t want these.”

Carmella chuckled. “So what? If she refuses to take them from you, the worst that could happen is that you’d get stuck with a dozen long-stemmed roses and a beautiful vase.”

Penny said, “Maybe he’s afraid someone will mistake him for a delivery man.”

Matt sighed heavily. “I’m not afraid of anything! I just know she doesn’t want them. I’ll feel like an idiot going to her door with flowers that she doesn’t want.”

Carmella sauntered around Sarah’s desk and picked up the card. “I don’t think she ran because she didn’t want the flowers.”

Matt said, “Huh?”

“I think she ran because she did want the flowers.”

“Ohhhh!” Penny said. “I get it. When I set the roses on her desk she was excited. When she saw the card, she got mad. It’s like she wants flowers from somebody, but she doesn’t know who sent these.”

Carmella nodded. “So she doesn’t know if her secret admirer is the man she wants it to be. And if it is the man she wants it to be, she’s probably angry that he wasn’t mature enough to sign his name.”

“You guys are nuts,” Matt said, though their rationale did make an odd kind of sense. Sarah might be too calm and pragmatic to behave like a swooning female. But if there was somebody she liked, somebody she really, really liked and she wanted to get flowers from him, Matt could see Sarah getting angry that the guy was too chicken to sign his name.

In Matt’s opinion, Sarah was much too good for this coward.

Penny reverently whispered, “She must really like him.”

Carmella only smiled.

Matt felt as though somebody had punched him in the stomach. He couldn’t believe that Sarah had fallen for somebody and that he hadn’t noticed. He couldn’t believe the man she’d fallen for was a spineless idiot who didn’t know how to make a decent move. A move that involved admitting who he was. He couldn’t believe Sarah falling for someone bothered him more than the fact that the guy was a spineless idiot. But he did know it probably wasn’t wise for him to be the person going to her apartment right now.

“A woman should do this.”

“I have a salon appointment,” Carmella said. “Penny lives across town. Besides, she has kids to go home to.”

“I can’t take these to her!”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m not that sensitive. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how to get her to accept these flowers.” And he wasn’t even sure he wanted to. That was the tricky part.

Carmella sighed. “Matt, what day is it?”

“August 29.”

“What’s Monday?”

“September 1.”

“What happens on September 1?”

“It’s Labor Day, but on Tuesday my staff goes to work on the quarterly report.”

Carmella handed him the vase of roses. “A wise man who had a quarterly report due would want his executive assistant at her desk on Tuesday morning. Sarah looked pretty mad when she left. You don’t want her to spend her long weekend brooding and be too tired or too upset to come in.”

Matt groaned.

“Take these flowers to her, make her understand that it doesn’t matter who sent them. What matters is that somebody cares about her.”

Matt shook his head, as affronted as Sarah. “Then why couldn’t he sign his name?”

Carmella shrugged. “Haven’t you ever been so tongue-tied with someone that you watched from a distance because you couldn’t go up to her and talk?”

Matt swallowed. He did know what it was like to be so tongue-tied with someone that he watched her from a distance rather than make real contact. It wasn’t a lover or potential lover. It was his mother. And he had been ten at the time.

“Think of this guy like that. Somebody who is inexperienced or somebody who likes Sarah so much that he’s afraid to make a mistake.”

Matt stared at the flowers. His situation wasn’t anything like the situation Carmella was describing, but she had struck the right nerve. The feeling was the same. He’d never approached his mother back then because the fear of rejection was stronger than the hope that she’d welcome him with open arms. He knew this flower-sender’s emotions like the back of his hand.

“When you give the flowers to Sarah explain that somebody who doesn’t know how to admit it likes her and she should be flattered.”

“And you think that will cheer her up?”

Carmella and Penny simultaneously said, “Yes.”

“Fine,” Matt said, turning to go into his office for his briefcase. “Get me her address.”

Forty minutes later Sarah opened her apartment door and there stood her boss, holding the purity flowers he had sent her because he felt sorry for her. Heat scalded her cheeks as her blood pressure and anger rose.

“Hi.”

She drew a long breath, not sure what to say that wouldn’t contain a curse word. Pure. Ha! If he pushed her she would show him pure.

“Carmella was right. You can’t just leave these at the office over the weekend.”

“Sure I can.”

“Well, it’s physically possible,” Matt agreed, “but it’s not right.”

“Sure it is.”

“No, it’s not. Let me in so I can explain these flowers to you.”

For three seconds Sarah only stared at him, blown away by his very casual admission that he had sent the roses. How else would he be able to explain them?

Too curious to hear what he had to say to reject him out of hand, she said, “All right. Come in.”

Sarah saw him glance around as if trying to waste some time before delving into the explanation he probably suspected would get him punched. As he looked at the solid khaki sofa and chair, accented by fat floral pillows and thick wood end tables with brass lamps, she didn’t say a word.

He set the roses on her coffee table. “I figured out why you’re mad about these.”

She tossed her head and crossed her arms beneath her breasts, shifting her braid over her shoulder and bunching the bulky material of her skirt at her waist. She felt like Mother Hubbard. “Did you?”

“Yes. You’re upset that someone can like you but be too cowardly to sign his name to a card when he sends you flowers.”

Though that wasn’t it at all, Sarah considered his explanation. At the core of it was an admission that he liked her. Of course, he could be saying that he liked her as a friend, but if that was all it was, he could have signed his name.

“What else?”

Matt shook his head. “What do you mean? What else?”

“You’re the expert here. I’m just the person who got the flowers.”

“I’m not sure I’m an expert, but I do understand this guy’s feelings.” He caught her gaze. “Haven’t you ever liked somebody enough that you stood across the street and stared at their house, too afraid to approach them?”

“I grew up on a ranch.”

“Okay, have you ever called somebody and then hung up when they answered?”

“Not since caller I.D.”

“You’re not helping, Sarah!”

“I don’t want to help you. I want to understand.”

Matt sighed. “I’m not sure I understand it myself.”

“Well, if you don’t understand,” Sarah shouted, angry again. “How the hell am I supposed to understand?”

Matt’s face lit with enthusiasm. “Now, see, there’s one thing right there. Saying hell isn’t such a big deal, but it reminds me that you grew up with a bunch of men, and when you get angry you can curse better than most of my friends.”