didn’t exactly bode well for their working relationship, but it was too late for regrets. Beth Krayton was officially his new assistant.
He held out his hand and she placed hers in it. Her fingers were unusually long and graceful.
He frowned.
She looked alarmed, and he shook his head.
“Welcome to Banick Enterprises,” he told her, trying to smile the way Patrick or his father might have.
She smiled back. “I’m happy to be here.”
“You’ll start at nine tomorrow morning.”
Beth nodded. “I’ll let you know where I’m staying as soon as I have an address.” She started to withdraw her hand, but Carson was still holding on.
“You don’t even have a place to live?”
She shrugged and blushed. “I left home suddenly.”
“Suddenly?”
“This morning.”
Carson nodded, wondering what exactly he had gotten himself into. He was, of course, going to do a background check on Beth Krayton. He wondered what it would turn up.
Not that it really mattered. He wasn’t interested in anything about her except for her ability to help him get this job done.
He was on a mission and nothing, especially not a pint-size woman, was going to stop him.
CHAPTER TWO
BREATHE DEEPLY.
The next morning, standing in the doorway of her creepy little rental room on the far edge of town, Beth coached herself to breathe, trying not to think of how much had changed in one day. This temporary home had been all she could afford, and it wasn’t exactly pleasant. It was a far cry from the clean, bustling beauty of most of the lakeside town, but that was all right. For the first time in her twenty-five years she was living on her own, a fact that brought a sense of triumph to her soul. Moreover, she had survived her interview with Carson Banick and she’d landed a decent job. Now all she had to do was keep it, get settled and stop thinking about her new employer’s dangerous silver eyes.
Beth took another deep, ragged breath. “Well, that solved one problem,” she finally said to herself. She was definitely breathing deeply now.
Too bad it was the thought of her boss’s eyes that was causing her to hyperventilate, because that just wouldn’t do. This would not be like her last job. No one was matchmaking. Carson Banick wasn’t interested in her. It was good that she could think logically about the situation, because she had been stupid about men before.
Beth tried not to think about how idiotic she had been about Harrison, the man she’d fallen so hard for two years ago, thinking he loved her when he’d only wanted a physical relationship. She came from a poor family so they weren’t from the same class at all, he had explained, as if she should have known that his words of love had been lies. But what she had realized after she finally stopped hurting was that her foolish mistake had given her brothers even more reason to protect her.
As surrogate parents, they had always worried she would be an easy and naive sexual target. In the past Beth had never told them about the passes men had made. She’d never believed any of the lies until Harrison had lied more convincingly than the rest. Now, her brothers knew for sure that she had been used. At last they had been proven right, and, despite the fact that she was an adult, they had set out to protect her in every way they could.
Which was well meaning, but…
Sighing, Beth tried not to think of her brothers as captors. They had raised her after their parents’ deaths when she was ten. Her brothers loved her, and she adored them, but as the only girl and the youngest, a somewhat rebellious youngest at that, she had frequently wanted to escape their smothering ways. Now, she had taken the first steps in that direction.
Her brief conversation last night with Roger, her eldest brother—when she’d finally decided to let him know that she was safe and settled—had gone as she’d expected. Poorly. Roger had threatened to come to Lake Geneva, but she’d held her ground.
“I’ve got a good job and a good place to live,” she said, stretching the truth. “If you come up here in your current state, you might jeopardize my situation.”
“I wouldn’t hurt you, Bethie,” he argued.
“You wouldn’t mean to,” she agreed, “but I told my boss I was capable of acting independently. This job is temporary, but it can be a stepping stone to something better. I’m working directly under Carson Banick of the Banick Enterprises Banicks.”
Roger had sworn. “I’ve read about him in the business pages. He lives a reckless existence.”
“I’m not helping him do that. I’m helping him build a hotel. That’s all.”
“Beth…”
“Roger. I love you and Jim and Albert and Steve, but you’re not letting me breathe. Mom and Dad wouldn’t want you to stand in the way of my success.”
“That’s not fair.”
It wasn’t. She knew they just wanted her to be happy. But they wanted her to be happy by treating her the way they had when she was ten. “When this job is done, then I’ll let you know if I’m ready to come home,” she promised.
“I’ll come now.”
“If you do, I’ll just have to go somewhere else. You have to let me make it on my own, and I can’t do that if you and everyone else are standing around frowning and waiting to see if I fall so you can pick me up. I have to make my own mistakes.”
He grumbled at that and told her he would be reading up on Carson Banick. He wasn’t leaving his baby sister alone with a man who might try to take advantage of her.
“He doesn’t even see me as a woman,” she promised.
Finally Roger agreed to keep his distance and let her spread her wings unsupervised.
Not that Beth was fooled by his agreement. Eventually her brothers would show up in Lake Geneva to check up on her. Knowing them, they wouldn’t wait long.
“I’d better turn myself into a success quickly,” she told herself. When her brothers finally arrived, she needed to be rooted, an independent woman rather than the perpetual little sister. Never again would she sacrifice her pride or dignity for what appeared to be love. She wouldn’t live under a man’s thumb. Nor would she freely give her heart away, at least not to the wrong kind of man.
Thank goodness Carson Banick was the wrong kind of man.
Carson looked at the calendar and grimaced. Three months behind schedule.
“We need you to get this right,” his father had said last night. “The family has fallen down on its commitments to the business, to our communities and to our loyal employees, Carson. One failure affects everyone who associates with Banick. It has always been that way, going back
