indeed?” he murmured, thinking back, for a second, to his own solitary life. It hadn’t always been that way.
Talking about herself always made her feel uncomfortable. Yohanna was quick to return to the salient point of all this. “The bottom line is that there isn’t anyone to complain about my hours even if they do turn out to be extensive.”
“No ‘if’ about it,” he assured her. “They will be extensive. I’m afraid that it’s the nature of the beast. I put in long hours and that means so will you.” Again he peered closely at her face, as if he could read the answer—and if she was lying, he’d catch her in that, too. “You’re all right with that?” he asked again.
“Completely.”
“You haven’t asked about a salary,” he pointed out. The fact that she hadn’t asked made him suspicious. Everyone always talked about money in his world. Why hadn’t she?
“I’m sure you’ll be fair,” Yohanna replied.
Again he studied her for a long moment. He didn’t find his answer. So he asked. “And what makes you so sure that I’ll be ‘fair’?”
“Your movies.”
Lukkas’s brow furrowed. He couldn’t make heads or tails out of her answer. “You’re going to have to explain that,” he told her.
“Every movie you ever made was labeled a ‘feel good’ movie.” As a child, the movies she found on the television set were her best friends. Both her parents led busy lives, so she would while away the hours by watching everything and anything that was playing on the TV. “If you had a dark side, or were underhanded, you couldn’t make the kinds of movies that you do,” she told him very simply.
“Maybe I just do it for the money.” He threw that out, curious to see what she would make of his answer.
Yohanna shook her head. “You might have done that once or twice, possibly even three times, but not over and over again. Your sense of integrity wouldn’t have allowed you to sell out. Especially since everyone holds you in such high regard.”
Lukkas laughed shortly. “You did your research.” He was impressed.
“It’s all part of being an organizer,” she told him. “That way, there are no surprises.”
There were layers to this woman, he thought. “Is that what you consider yourself to be? An organizer?”
“In a word, yes,” Yohanna replied.
He nodded, as if turning her answers over in his mind. “When can you start?”
There went her pulse again, Yohanna thought as it launched into double time. Was she actually getting the job?
“When would you want me to start working?” she asked, tossing the ball back into his court. It was his call to make.
He laughed shortly. “Yesterday.” That way, he wouldn’t have lost a productive day.
“That I can’t do,” she told him as calmly as if they were talking about the weather. “But I can start now if you’d like,” she offered.
Was she that desperate? he wondered. Or was there another reason for her eagerness to come to work for him? Since his meteoric rise to fame, he’d had friends disappoint him, trying to milk their relationship for perks and benefits. As for strangers, they often had their own agendas, and he had become very leery of people until they proved themselves in his estimation. That put him almost perpetually on his guard. It was a tiring situation.
“You can start tomorrow,” Lukkas told her.
She wanted to hug him, but kept herself in check. She didn’t want the man getting the wrong impression about her.
“Then, I have the job?” she asked, afraid of allowing herself to be elated yet having little choice in the matter.
“You can’t start if you don’t,” he pointed out. “I’ll take you on a three-month probationary basis,” he informed her. “Which means that I can let you go for any reason if I’m not satisfied.”
“Understood.”
He peered at her face. “Is that acceptable to you?”
“Very much so, s-si—” She was about to address him as “sir” but stopped herself, uttering, instead, a hissing sound. “Lukkas,” she injected at the last moment.
“I’m currently producing a Western. We’re going to be going on location—Arizona. Tombstone area,” he specified. “Do you have any problem with that?”
She wanted to ask him why he thought she would, but this wasn’t the time for those kinds of questions. They could wait until after she had entrenched herself into his life. The fact that she would do just that was a given as far as she was concerned now that he had hired her.
“None whatsoever,” she told him.
“All right. Then go home and get a good night’s sleep. I need you back here tomorrow morning at seven.”
“Seven it is. I’ll be bright eyed and bushy tailed,” she responded, thinking of a phrase her grandfather used to use.
“I’ll settle for your eyes being open,” he told her. “See you tomorrow, Hanna.”
Yohanna opened her mouth to correct him and then decided she rather liked the fact that her new boss was calling her by a nickname, even if she didn’t care all that much for it. She took it as a sign they were on their way to forming a good working relationship.
After all, if someone didn’t care for someone else, they weren’t going to give them a nickname, right? At least, not one that could be viewed as cute. If anything, they’d use one that could be construed as insulting.
“See you tomorrow,” she echoed. “I’ll see myself out,” she told him.
Lukkas didn’t hear her, his mind already moving on to another topic.
Yohanna had to hold herself in check to keep from dancing all the way to the front door.
The landline Yohanna had gotten installed mainly to placate her mother—“What if there’s a storm that takes out the cell towers? How can anyone reach you then? How can I reach you then?”—was ringing when she let herself into her condo several hours later that day.
Yohanna’s automatic reaction was to hurry over to the phone to answer it, but she stopped just short of lifting the receiver. The caller-ID program was malfunctioning, the screen only registering the words incoming call.
Frowning, she stood next to the coffee table in the living room and debated ignoring the call. Granted, everyone she knew did have this number as well as her cell number, but for the most part, if they called her, it was almost always on her cell phone, not her landline. That was for sales people, robo calls and her mother.
Which
