added to the charm that was Manhattan Multiples just as much as the pastel decor and soothing music that was piped in during the day.
Self-taught and pleased with herself, Josie grinned. “Hey, I wrote a new poem.” She held up the piece of paper she’d labored over all last night. It was filled with handwriting only Josie could decipher. “Anyone want to hear it?”
In her off hours, Josie wrote poetry and gave readings all over the city to receptive groups of budding poets and would-be musicians in search of lyrics. Her bright-blue eyes jumped from one woman to the other, as if eagerly waiting for a response.
“Only if it’s something that would inspire a fight rally,” Eloise told her.
Allison was already withdrawing. Although they were friends, they were as different in their approach to life and in their interests outside the center as night was to day. The expression on her heart-shaped face was apologetic. “Maybe later.”
Undaunted, Josie pretended to sigh. “A prophet is never honored in her hometown.”
“You hold that thought,” Eloise advised with a laugh, patting her shoulder. “And in the meantime, see if you can come up with something catchy that we can use to help fry our illustrious mayor’s butt.”
“That seems like a waste,” Josie confided. “The man’s got one hell of a cute butt.”
“Josie!” Allison looked at her friend incredulously. “He’s the mayor.”
“That doesn’t stop him from having a cute butt—although the odds are against it.” She grinned, turning toward Eloise. “I’ll see what I can do,” she promised.
Spinning on her heel, Josie headed back the way she’d come. Break was almost over and she had a desk to oversee and people to welcome.
It had been five days.
Jason flipped back the pages on his desk calendar. Time to stop trying to find fault with her, he decided. He pushed the calendar back on his desk. That was what he’d been doing, he thought. Consciously and unconsciously he’d been searching for flaws, for ways to get Mindy to give up and quit.
Who would have ever thought that he would one day be trying to push Mindy Conway away?
Mindy Richards, Jason reminded himself. She was Mindy Richards now, and with a husband in her life or not, she had no place in Jason’s.
Nothing and no one had a place in his life except for work. He owed the people who paid him good money for advice 110 percent of his abilities—and the same portion of his mind. They weren’t paying him to spend his time thinking about Mindy. Wondering about Mindy. Yearning for Mindy.
There, he’d said it, albeit silently. He wanted her. Wanted her in every sense of the word. That was no way for an employer to feel about someone who worked for him. That embodied the cornerstone of sexual harassment.
Except that he hadn’t, of course. Hadn’t touched her, hadn’t harassed her. Had hardly said very much of anything that wasn’t absolutely work related after that first day. The way he treated her, she might as well have been a stranger who had come in off the street.
Except that she wasn’t.
Still, it was doing her a huge disservice to try to fire her when she was so damn good, so damn eager. She actually looked as if she liked what she was doing. Nathalie was already saying that Mindy was invaluable and she didn’t know how they’d gotten along without her all these years.
Nathalie would say that.
Having someone competent as an administrative assistant freed her up to enjoy her own life a little more. Not that Nathalie had conducted her life like a cloistered nun before Mindy had come on the scene. Twice married, and divorced just as many times, Nathalie knew how to kick up her heels and enjoy life to the fullest. None of the inhibitions that plagued normal men and women seemed to have been woven into her makeup.
That he behaved like a monk in a secluded mountainside monastery had always been a source of discontent for her. Nathalie acted as if getting him to come around was her own personal crusade. He was certain that the temps she’d hired before Mindy had all been chosen not for their office proficiency but for their looks. Each seemed to have been more pretty than the last. And all had been largely empty-headed.
Which brought him back full circle to Mindy.
Beauty and brains. It was a hard combination for a man to resist, and he found himself less and less inclined to do so with each day that went by. If it wasn’t for the fact that he had a disastrous marriage in his background, he’d be sorely tempted to break self-imposed employer-employee regulations and ask Mindy out.
And ask for trouble along with it.
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, right?
And right now, Mindy Richards was the best thing that had ever happened to Mallory and Dixon since they had opened their doors. If he didn’t want to scare her away, he knew he should just keep on going the way he had. Silently.
He had no business thinking what he was thinking. Had even less business getting up from his desk the way he was doing and proceeding to the outer office as if he was on automatic pilot.
Maybe he’d be lucky and she would have left for the day. For the weekend.
But he knew even before he set foot outside his own office that Mindy was still sitting at her desk. For one, she never left without saying good-night, her very words ensuring that at least it would be, as long as he could continue replaying the sound of her voice uttering them in his head.
For another, there was her perfume. It was still as gut-stirringly present as ever. He wondered if there was some way he could get her to stop wearing it so that it would stop haunting him.
He was right. She was there, in the process of powering down her computer and getting her things together. For a second he just stood and watched her. Why did every movement she made seem like poetry?
This was no way for a grown man to think, he told himself.
It didn’t stop him.
He had to say something before she turned around to see him staring at her. He didn’t want her to think he was stalking her. Even if they did belong in the same office at the same time.
Not wanting to startle her, Jason cleared his throat. “Getting ready to go home?”
He could see by the way she jumped that he’d startled her, anyway.
His deep voice shimmered along her skin, melting into her consciousness. Mindy swung around in her chair to look at him.
Jason hadn’t talked to her very much these past four days. Just small sound bites aimed at whatever detail he wanted her to see to. And then he’d been gone, lingering like smoke in her mind but not in fact.
She half thought she imagined the sound of his voice now, but there he was, in his doorway. The next moment he was walking toward her.
Mindy nodded toward the clock on the wall. “It’s after five. I thought I’d close up shop.” Nathalie had already left for what she’d announced was going to be a very long,
