almost dying under two tons of coal, Jake put down his hammer and scrubbed the black dust from his skin even though he’d known he’d never quite get it out of his blood. Then he’d headed east. It had taken a while but a quirky combination of luck, guts and a hard-won university degree had turned his life into a dream.
It was a life he liked, just the way it was.
He had an office in Rockefeller Center, an apartment on Park Avenue, a weekend house in Connecticut and a vintage Corvette.
He had Emily.
Yes, life was good…except for this current mess, with Brandi.
Jake groaned, kicked back his chair and put his feet up on his desk. How come he hadn’t read the signs? Her career was all that mattered, she’d told him, but it wasn’t true. First she gave him a key to her apartment. He hadn’t asked for one, hadn’t offered her the key to his, but she handed hers over, anyway, with a casual smile that would have made him look like an ass not to have accepted it. Then she bought him a tie at Bloomingdale’s. Nobody bought Jake ties except Jake, but she said some hotshot actor had been wearing one just like it when she’d posed in an ad with him, and how could he possibly turn down such a simple gift?
And then, last week, the final touch. He’d taken her home, was in the process of saying good-night—he hadn’t felt like spending the night with her which, in retrospect, he should have recognized as the beginning of the end—when she reached into her pocket, pulled out a pair of airline tickets and waggled them at him.
“Surprise,” she’d said gaily, and explained that she was flying home to Minneapolis for the weekend and he was going with her.
“It’s my parents’ thirty-fifth anniversary, Jake. They’re having the whole family to dinner and they’re just dying to meet you!”
The tie around his neck—the very one she’d bought him, which he hated but had worn that evening because she’d asked him where it was—suddenly felt like a noose, growing tighter and tighter until he stabbed two fingers under the knot and yanked it away from his throat.
“I can’t go,” he’d said, and she’d said yes, yes, he could, and he’d said he couldn’t and she, with her lip trembling, said he could if he wanted to and finally he’d said well, he didn’t want to…
“Oh, Jake,” she’d whispered, and the next thing he’d known, she was crying into his shirt.
What did women want, anyway? Well, not all women. Not the Emilies of this world but then, Emily wasn’t a woman. Not a real one. She was his P.A.
Jake sighed, rose from the chair behind his desk, walked to the window and looked out. Forty stories below, people crowded the street. He hoped Brandi wasn’t one of those people. She’d been there this morning, waiting for him.
“Jake?” she’d said, and before he could decide what the heck to do, whether to pretend he didn’t see her or hustle her into the lobby and up to his office before she started bawling, she’d thrown her arms around him and tried to kiss him.
“Hell,” he whispered, and leaned his forehead against the cool glass.
Still, he had no desire to hurt her. He didn’t want to say anything cruel or unkind…
“Mr. McBride?”
Because she was a nice woman. And even though it was time to move on, that didn’t mean—
“Mr. McBride? Sir?”
Jake swung around. Emily stood in the doorway. For the first time in what felt like hours, he smiled. If only all women were as pragmatic, as sensible, as she.
“Yes, Emily?”
“Sir, I thought you’d like to know that I sent that e-mail memo to John Woods.”
“Fine.”
“His reply just came in. He says he likes your suggestions and hopes you’re free to fly to San Diego to meet with him next week.”
“Am I?”
“Yes, sir. You’re free Monday and Tuesday. You have a meeting Tuesday afternoon but it can be easily postponed.”
Jake nodded. “Make the arrangements, please. What else?”
“A fax from Atlanta. Nothing important, just a confirmation of your conference call.”
“Good, good. Anything else?”
Emily looked down at the notepad in her hand. “You’re having a late lunch with Mr. Carstairs tomorrow at the Oak Room.”
“Ah. Thank you for reminding me.”
“Yes, sir. And you have a dinner appointment this evening. Eight o’clock, at The Palm. You asked me to remind you to mention that new oil field opportunity in Russia.”
Jake smiled and shook his head. “What would I do without you?” he said pleasantly. “You’re the epitome of efficiency.”
“Being efficient is my job, Mr. McBride.”
“Jake, please. I don’t think we need to be so formal. You’ve been working for me for, what, a year?”
“Eleven months and twelve days.” Emily smiled politely. “I’m comfortable calling you Mr. McBride, sir. Unless you find it uncomfortable…?”
“No,” Jake said quickly, “no, that’s fine. Whatever you prefer is okay with me.”
It sure as hell was. He’d never had an assistant like this one. When he looked ahead, he could see Emily Taylor by his side well into the distant future. Emily wouldn’t find a man, get married and quit her job. Her career meant as much to her as his did to him.
He was fairly certain she never even dated.
He supposed he ought to feel guilty for being happy she didn’t, but why should he? Emily was just one of those women who wasn’t interested in men. There was a long and honorable list of them, going back through the centuries. Betty Friedan and the women’s libbers. The Suffragettes. Joan of Arc. They’d all devoted their lives to Causes, not to men.
How could a man feel badly if a woman made a choice like that?
Emily wasn’t even a distraction.
Some of the women he’d interviewed before hiring her had been stunners, but the word for Emily was “average.” Average height. Average weight. Average face. Average brown hair and average brown eyes.
“A little brown sparrow,” Brandi had said after meeting her, with what Jake had recognized as a little purr of relief.
An accurate description, he thought. On his runs through Central Park, he saw lots of birds with flashier plumage but it was the little brown sparrows who were the most industrious.
Emily, Jake thought fondly. His very own little brown sparrow.
He smiled again, folded his arms and hitched a hip onto the edge of his desk. “Emily, how much am I paying you?”
“Sir?”
“Your salary. What is it?”
“Eight hundred a week, Mr. McBride.”
“Well, give yourself a hundred bucks more.”
Emily smiled politely. “Thank you, sir.”
Jake smiled, too. He liked the no-nonsense way she’d accepted her raise. No little squeals of joy, no bouncing up and down, no “Oooh, Jake…” But, of course, she wouldn’t call him “Jake” any more than she’d squeal. Squealing was for the women he dated, who greeted each bouquet of long-stemmed roses, each blue-boxed Tiffany trinket, with shrieks of delight.
“No.” Jake strolled towards her. “No, thank you, Emily.”
He clapped her lightly on the back. That was another thing he liked about his P.A. Her posture. She stood ramrod