“Sure,” he said at once. “I’m here, aren’t I?”
Melanie gestured toward the computer that he’d been glancing at longingly ever since her arrival. “Unless you’re on there doing your Christmas shopping, I don’t think this qualifies.”
He regarded her with a vaguely puzzled expression. “When is Christmas?”
“Less than three weeks.”
He nodded, then reached for the pocket computer he’d tossed on the counter earlier, and made a note.
“Reminding your secretary to get your shopping done?” she asked him.
He looked only slightly chagrined at having been caught. “Winifred’s better at it than I am,” he said, not sounding the least bit defensive. “She has more time, too. I give her a few extra hours off to do her shopping, along with mine.”
Melanie nodded. “A successful man always knows how to delegate. Do you give her a budget? Suggestions? Does she tell you what’s in the packages, so you’re not as surprised as the recipients on Christmas morning? I’ve always wondered how that worked.”
He took the question seriously. “Most of the time she puts little sticky labels on the wrapped boxes so I can add my own gift card. She seems to think my handwriting ought to be on there.” His eyes glinted with sudden amusement. “Occasionally, though, she likes to go for the shock value, especially with my brothers. Last year I gave my brother Mack—”
“The former Washington football hero,” Melanie recalled.
“Exactly, and one of the city’s most sought after bachelors.” He grinned. “My secretary bought him a rather large, shapely, inflatable female. I’m pretty sure Destiny had a hand in that one. She’d been trying to convince Mack that he doesn’t have to make it his personal mission to date every woman in the entire Washington metropolitan area. She seemed to think he might be better able to commit to a woman with no expectations.”
“Your family has a very odd sense of humor, if you don’t mind me saying so.”
“You don’t know the half of it.”
“Did it work?”
“Not so’s I’ve noticed,” he admitted. “Mack is still happily playing the field.”
“I see. And my job would be to see to it that no one else discovers these little family quirks?” Melanie asked, daring to broach the subject that had brought her to this cozy, out-of-the-way cottage. “If I get the job, that is.”
“I thought we’d pretty much settled that question last time we met,” Richard said.
Melanie shook her head. “I didn’t like the outcome. I’m here to change it.”
“Darn. I thought maybe you were here to seduce me,” he said, almost making his expressed disappointment sound sincere.
Melanie gave him a hard look. That was a line of conversation that needed to be cut short in a hurry. She hadn’t liked the seduction angle when she’d guessed it was part of Destiny’s plan. She liked it even less coming from Richard. Okay, maybe she was marginally intrigued, but it was a bad idea any way she looked at it.
“Not in a million years,” she said emphatically.
He seemed startled by her vehemence. “Why is that?”
“Been there, done that.”
His gaze narrowed. “Meaning?”
She opted for total honesty so he’d understand just how opposed she was. “I made the serious mistake of sleeping with my last boss. I thought I was madly in love with him and vice versa. When the affair ended, so did my job. Now I work for myself. I won’t make the same mistake a second time, not with a boss, not with a client.”
“Good rule of thumb,” he agreed. “But I’m not your boss or your client.”
“I want this consulting contract more than I want you,” she declared, proud of herself for managing to make the claim without even a hint of a quaver in her voice. Deep down inside, she knew the balance of that equation could change if she let it.
He chuckled. “At least you’re admitting to the attraction.”
Melanie silently cursed the slip. “Doesn’t matter,” she insisted. “It’s not powerful enough to make me lose my focus.”
“Now there’s the way to win a man’s heart.”
Realizing that her attempt to make a point might have bruised his ego, she quickly added, “Not that you’re not attractive and rich and an incredible catch for some woman.”
“Nice save.”
“I’m quick on my feet in tense situations. It’ll serve me well as I’m fending off the media when you decide to run for office.”
“I thought the whole idea was to captivate the media, not to fend them off.”
“Well, of course it is,” she said irritably. The man had a way of twisting her words to suit himself. She leveled a look into his eyes to prove she could hold her own, no matter what the level of intimidation. “But there are bound to be things you don’t want to talk about, skeletons in the closet, that sort of thing.”
His expression turned grim. “I don’t have skeletons in my closet.”
“No trail of brokenhearted women who’ll feel the need to tell all when the stakes are high?”
“No,” he said tersely.
She studied him with a narrowed gaze. “Men?”
He laughed. “Hardly, unless you consider the accountant I fired for trying to steal from the company to be a potential problem.”
“Good to know. Then you should be a dream client.”
His gaze met hers and he shook his head. “I don’t think so, Melanie.”
“But I have a plan,” she said, reaching for her proposal. It was a darned good one, too. She’d slaved over it for days.
His gaze never left her face. “So do I.”
Her pulse kicked up a notch. “We’re not on the same track, are we?”
“Not so far,” he agreed, his expression sober, his eyes filled with unexpected heat.
To Melanie’s sincere regret, somewhere deep inside, she wasn’t nearly as upset by that as she should have been. Even so, she was holding out for what she wanted…the very lucrative contract. Sleeping with Richard to get it simply wasn’t in the cards.
“Then I suppose I should help you clean up,” she said as if the rest of it didn’t matter. “Then I’ll get out of your hair so you can go back to work. Good thing I’m never without a good book to read.”
“No room for negotiation?” he inquired.
“None,” she said flatly.
“Fine,” he said, giving up what had been little more than a fainthearted battle to begin with. “Never mind cleaning up. I’ll take care of it. You can take the guest room at the top of the stairs on the left. The bathroom’s next door.”
It rankled that he thought he could dismiss her so easily. “You cooked,” she said with determination. “I’ll clean up.”
She met his gaze, challenging him to argue. He didn’t. He merely shrugged. “Suit yourself.” He turned his back and headed to his computer. Within seconds, he appeared to be thoroughly engrossed in a screen of what appeared to her to be incomprehensible columns of figures.
Obviously the man didn’t like to lose, didn’t like the fact that she’d thwarted his plan to turn this weekend into a romantic encounter. Never mind that the encounter was one