shut the door and set her briefcase on the floor by the coat rack, then straightened. “Struck dumb?” she asked wryly when he didn’t speak.
Almost. “You’re planning on running my office?” he said, narrowing his gaze.
The mere sight of her in a pencil-slim navy skirt and a high-necked white blouse and a trim navy blazer should have called to mind visions of repressed Catholic schoolgirls. Instead it was playing havoc with his hormones and giving them decidedly inappropriate ideas. Inappropriate ideas were the last thing he needed right now.
“What do you know about office work?” he demanded.
“I run one,” she said. “And I’ve worked in a law office. And I know my mother. Besides, we don’t have anyone else who can do it. So unless you’ve conjured someone up in the meantime…” She let her voice trail off, inviting him to suggest an alternative.
He didn’t have one.
“And you’re right,” she said. “I don’t want you calling my mother.”
Their gazes met, clashed. There was a challenge in hers that defied him to argue. He wanted to argue. He wanted her gone, because besides the challenge, that damnable sizzle was there, too. His jaw tightened. He cracked his knuckles.
But before he could figure out an alternative, the phone on the desk rang.
Natalie was closer to it than he was, also faster off the mark. She picked it up.
“Savas Law Office,” she said, in a voice that was both warm and professional. “Yes,” she said to the caller. “I’ll be happy to. I’m with Mr. Savas right now. Give me a moment and I’ll have a look at the appointment book and we can set something up.”
She put the phone on hold, set it down, tilted her head and looked at Christo. “Unless you’d like to take over.” Even her eyebrows were challenging him.
He sucked his teeth. “Be my guest,” he said gruffly. “Just don’t cry. I’ve got a case to prepare.”
It was going to be a salutary experience. Four days of working with Christo Savas and she’d be well and truly over him.
At least that’s what Natalie had been telling herself since she hadn’t been able to come up with an alternative to Sophy’s, “Well, then, I guess you’ll have to do it,” answer to whom they were going to send to work for him this morning.
“I don’t want to do it!” she’d protested, aghast.
She’d rung Sophy just past six, having spent most of last evening going through her files looking for a suitable temp. But while there were a few who might have some of the office skills, all of them were already on other jobs. And none of them was such a standout that it made sense to juggle things around.
She’d hoped her cousin would be able to think of someone she’d overlooked who could do the job in her mother’s place. But Sophy hadn’t—besides suggesting Natalie do it herself.
“I can’t do it,” she insisted again.
Sophy yawned on the other end of the line. “Why not? Because you still have a crush on him?”
Sophy was the one person Natalie had admitted her infatuation to. And unfortunately her cousin had a memory like an elephant. Thank heavens, she’d never confessed to the mortification in Christo’s bedroom.
“I do not have a crush on him,” she said firmly. “Once I did. Yes, I admit that. But that was years ago. I was a child then.”
“So,” Sophy said airily. “No problem.”
Problem. But she wasn’t going to get anywhere arguing with Sophy. “I’ll see what I can come up with,” she’d said.
“You know what you have to do,” Sophy responded. “I won’t bother you today.” And she’d rung off.
Even after Sophy had hung up, Natalie had tried to come up with alternatives. But short of calling her mother and telling her the problem, she didn’t see one. It was an indication of how badly she didn’t want to do it that once she actually picked up the phone and began to punch in her mother’s number.
But before she finished, she hung up again. She couldn’t be that selfish.
Not that her mother wouldn’t want to come home. Her phone call had made it clear just how much of a trial Grandma Kelling was.
But Laura’s duty, as she perceived it, Natalie knew, was to be there for her no matter how irritating it was.
Just as her own duty was to step in and take over for Laura. Her sense of familial love and responsibility was, after all, one of the moral tenets Natalie most admired about her mother, one her father had turned out to be notoriously lacking. Laura never hesitated to do the right thing even when it was the hard thing—like putting up with Grandma Kelling and her bell.
Like working for Christo Savas.
And so Natalie had dragged herself off to the shower, washed and dried her hair, put on a tailored, professional navy-blue skirt and white blouse, then added a matching navy blazer for good measure. It was armor, and she knew it. But she felt as if she were heading into battle.
Then, shortly before eight, she’d rung Sophy again.
“I’m going,” she said without preamble.
“Of course.” There was the sound of satisfaction in Sophy’s voice. “I knew you would.”
Natalie had known she would, too.
And she was determined to begin as she meant to go on—as the consummate professional. So she shut the door on Christo, leaving him to the files in his office while she went out to the reception area to finish the call she’d taken and schedule the appointment required.
It wasn’t difficult to step into her mother’s shoes. She understood the way her mother did things, her work-flow pattern as it were, the process she used to get things done.
Laura had never done things haphazardly as a wife and mother. She wasn’t rigid, but in the Ross household there had always been a place for things, and things were always in their place.
So it was no trouble now for Natalie to open the middle left-hand drawer of her mother’s desk and find the appointment book right where she expected it would be. She ran her eyes down Christo’s appointments for the next week, understood quickly the general pattern of his days, picked up the phone, and offered the caller three possible times.
She wrote the client’s choice in the book, hung up the phone and realized that Christo was standing in the door to his office staring at her.
“What?” she said.
He shook his head. “Three out of four of them couldn’t find the appointment book. Two of them said it should be on the computer.”
“My mother wouldn’t keep the primary schedule on the computer.”
“I know.” He rocked back and forth on his heels. For a moment
