his desk, her half lenses perched on the end of her nose as she glanced over his calendar.
Judith was old school, and when it came to organizing Brandan’s calendar, had a tendency to forget such things as spreadsheets and Microsoft Excel.
Neither did she deem it professional to take him up on his many requests for her to call him by his first name. She was all business, from the top of her neatly coiled hair, to the conservative three-piece suit, to the bottom of her appropriately-heeled navy blue pumps.
“Thanks, Judith,” he replied before taking a drink of the coffee she’d sweetened perfectly to his taste.
“Umm…perfect,” he murmured, and was rewarded for his praise with a minute uplift of her thin lips in what he thought was a smile.
“Thank you, Mr. Walters,” she replied, and sat very straight on her chair, her legs close together as she perched on the edge of the leather chair.
The way she sat always reminded him of a tiny bird preparing for flight at any moment.
She even looked like a bird, Brandan thought, surreptitiously running his eyes over her small, frail-looking form.
At six feet, six inches tall, he was used to towering over most women, and many men. Judith couldn’t be much taller than five feet, as the tip of her neatly coifed chignon barely reached his midsection. He always felt like a giant next to the small woman.
Although he’d instructed her on her first day working for him five years ago that business attire around the office was casual, Judith continued to wear variations of the same business suit she wore today: dark blue skirt and matching jacket, dress shirt, and sensible shoes.
Nothing like the beauty in the lobby, he thought, his mind again going back to the woman he’d encountered.
“Ahem…are you ready, Mr. Walters?”
Brandan shook his head and felt his cheeks warm. Damn. Caught daydreaming like some schoolboy with a crush.
“Sorry about that, Judith. Just thinking about the downtown project,” he said, though he could have sworn he saw her brow rise as though she could read his thoughts and knew he hadn’t exactly had his mind on acquiring the new commercial property.
He adjusted himself in his chair before he gave Judith his full attention, firmly putting the woman from the lobby out of his mind.
“Yes, well, shall we go over your calendar, sir?”
Leila furtively looked up and down the long hallway, making sure no one saw her. She felt a bit crazy, knowing she was acting way over the top.
One would think she was attempting to break into Harry Winston’s to steal the Hope Diamond the way she was acting.
She checked her watch. It was close to lunch.
After her duck into the elevator to avoid the two Charlies’ watchful eyes, her triumph had been short-lived when she realized she didn’t know which floor held the offices of Sanchez, Walters and Reed. She’d had to do a retreat and regroup, trying to figure how she could find out without going back to the lobby and risk running into either Charlie.
So, she’d done it the hard way.
Thankfully, it was past time that most people used the elevators, after most were settled into their offices, and not yet time for the mass exodus of lunch.
So she’d pressed each button—all thirteen of them—gotten out, and checked each glass door. Most had the name of the company displayed, and only a few times did she actually have to go inside the doors to find out. It was on her sixth try, that it finally hit her: Just ask one of the receptionists which floor held Walters’s business.
She cursed Brandan Walters, mentally blaming him for her unusual denseness, particularly when she found out he was on the top floor.
The penthouse.
Figures, Leila thought with a curl of her upper lip.
That accomplished, she’d thanked God there was no special key to access the top floor.
Now here she was acting like a cat burglar as she crept down the long hallway, her heels sinking into the thick, plush carpet. At the end of the hall a large glass door with a small discrete plaque proclaimed itself to be the office of Sanchez, Walters and Reed.
What was she going to do now?
In her mental figurings and planning, she hadn’t exactly thought of just what she was going to do once she reached his office, only that she had to seize the opportunity quickly.
Opportunity for what? that unwanted voice of reason asked. What was she going to do? Storm inside, demand that Brandan see her, and once he did, he’d listen to what she had to say and abandon his plans to buy her out?
Fat chance.
She’d once tried to make an appointment with one of his partners, but to no avail. The man hadn’t even had the decency to return any of her calls.
And then she’d gotten a passive aggressive note from Brandan Walters, explaining that she was the lone owner holding up progress, and it had been on between them, at that point.
The two of them had gone back and forth, first in letters, and then in emails. She’d not gone the route of demanding a face-to-face conference, hadn’t even called him. Call it pride or whatever, but she wasn’t up for being ignored again.
But then he’d likened her to a Dr. Seuss character, and she’d lost it. She called him and had gotten his voicemail. She hadn’t even been aware of what she said to him, she’d been so angry. But she was sure it was something that would have had her great-aunt, had she still been alive, washing her mouth out with lye soap.
Although, in his emails, Brandan hadn’t made her feel ignored at all. Truth be told, she had begun to look forward to their emails, his always professional, yet she felt his humor coming through on several occasions.
Particularly when she all but called the man a lowlife, an unscrupulous hustler, out to make that almighty dollar by any means necessary.
Okay, so maybe she’d gone a tad too far on that one. But Aunt Sadie’s meant everything to her. It wasn’t about the money. The money they’d offered had now doubled, and the initial offer had been lucrative. She knew some of her neighbors weren’t exactly pleased with her.
Yesterday she’d caught several of them going to Ms. Mayflower’s shop late at night. She knew the woman had never really liked Aunt Sadie because of an old rivalry over some man long forgotten. Her great-aunt had been a beautiful woman and had never settled down with one man, but always had some handsome man calling on her.
But no matter what, she knew her great-aunt never messed around with another woman’s “leftovers,” as her aunt had laughingly once put it. So whatever beef Ms. Mayflower had with Sadie, it had been one-sided at best.
As soon as the offer had come from Sanchez, Walters and Reed, Ms. Mayflower had been the first one to jump on board. When it became known that Leila was against the buyout, that had seemed to spur the old lady on to start a campaign against her.
Leila shrugged
