They both lived where they worked. Aaron had a penthouse suite. Celia’s rooms were smaller, of course, and several floors below his.
She’d always loved that, living on-site. She loved the glamour and excitement of her life at High Sierra. In many ways, the resort was its own city. A person could eat, sleep, shop, work and play there and never have to leave. The party went on 24/7, as the tired saying went.
Celia was far from a party animal. But working for Aaron, she felt as if some of the gold dust and glitter rubbed off on her. Growing up, she’d been just a little bit shy, and not all that popular—not unattractive, really, but a long way from gorgeous. She came from a big family, the fourth child of six. Her parents were good parents, but a little distracted. There were so many vying for their attention. She felt closer to her two best friends, Jane Elliott and Jillian Diamond, than she did to her own brothers and sisters.
She’d earned an accounting degree from Cal State Sacramento and worked for a Sacramento CPA firm before she stumbled on a job as secretary/assistant to one of the firm’s clients, a local morning talk-show host.
Celia adored that job. It suited her perfectly. She needed to be organized and businesslike—and she also needed to be ready for anything. She handled correspondence and personal bookkeeping, as well as shopping and spur-of-the-moment dinner parties. Her duties were rarely the same from one day to the next.
The talk-show host had done a segment on High Sierra. Aaron had agreed to a brief interview. And then he’d been there, behind the scenes, for the rest of the shoot. And he’d remembered the girl from his hometown.
Two months later, the talk-show host got another show—in Philadelphia. Celia could have gone, too. But she decided against the move.
Aaron’s human resources people had contacted her. She flew to Vegas to see him and he hired her on the spot.
“You’re just what I’m looking for, Celia,” he had said. “Efficient. Cool-headed. Low-key. Smart. And someone from home, too. I like that. I really do.”
It had been a successful working relationship pretty much from the first—impersonally intimate, was how Celia always thought of it. She was a true “office wife” and that was fine with her. She was good at what she did, she enjoyed the work and her boss knew her value. She’d had a number of raises since she’d started at High Sierra. Now, she was making twice what she’d made in the beginning. She’d been happy with the talk-show host, but she’d really come into her own since she became Aaron’s assistant. Now, instead of shy, she saw herself as reserved. Serene. Unruffled.
She was that calm place in the eye of any storm that brewed up at High Sierra. Aaron counted on her to keep his calendar in order, his letters typed and his personal affairs running smoothly. And she did just that, with skill and panache. She was a happy, successful career woman—until she had to go and fall for the boss and ruin everything.
Now, it was all changed. Now, it was the agony and the ecstasy and Celia Tuttle was living it. Everything about being near him excited her—and wounded her to the core.
By the fourth day, she felt just desperate enough to consider telling him of her feelings.
But what for? To make it all the worse? Make her humiliation complete? After all, if he were interested, even minimally, wouldn’t he have given her some hint, some clue, by now?
She told him nothing.
By the sixth day, she found herself contemplating the impossible: giving notice. Less than a week since she’d fallen for the boss. And she’d almost forgotten how much she used to love her job.
Now, work seemed more like torture. A place where she suffered constantly in the company of her heart’s desire—and he was totally oblivious to her as anything but his very efficient gal Friday.
Maybe she should quit.
But she didn’t. She did nothing, just tried to get through each day. Just reminded herself that it really hadn’t been all that long since V-day—yes, that was how she had started to think of it. As V-day, the day her whole world went haywire.
She hoped, fervently, that things would get better, somehow.
The seventh day passed.
Then, on the eighth day, Celia got a call from her friend Jane in New Venice.
It was after midnight. Celia had just let herself into her rooms. A group of Japanese businessmen had arrived that afternoon. High rollers, important ones. The kind who thought nothing of dropping a million a night at High Sierra’s gaming tables. The kind known affectionately in the industry as whales.
Aaron had joined these particular whales for their comped gourmet dinner in the Placer Room. He’d asked Celia to be there, too. She’d been in what she thought of as “fetch-and-carry mode.” If there was anything he needed that, for some reason, the wait staff or immediately available hotel personnel couldn’t handle, Celia was right there, to see he got it and got it fast.
The phone was ringing when she entered her rooms. She rushed to answer it.
And she heard her dear friend’s voice complaining, “Don’t you ever return your calls?”
Celia scrunched the phone between her shoulder and her ear and slid her thumb under the back strap of her black evening sandal. “Sorry.” She slipped the shoe off with a sigh of relief, then got rid of the other one and dropped to the couch. “It’s been a zoo.”
“That’s what you always say.”
“Well, it’s always a zoo.”
“But you love it.”
In her mind’s eye, she saw Aaron. “That’s right,” she said bleakly. “I do.”
“Okay, what’s wrong?”
“Not a thing.”
“You said that too fast.”
“Jane. I love my job. It’s not news.” Too bad I also love my boss—who does not love me. “What’s up?”
“You’re sure you’re all right?”
“Uh-huh. What’s up?”
Jane hesitated. Celia could just see her, sitting up in her four-poster bed in the wonderful Queen Anne Victorian she’d inherited from her beloved Aunt Sophie. She’d be braced against the headboard, pillows propped at her back, her wildly curling almost-black hair tamed, more or less, into a single braid. And she’d have a frown between her dark brows as she considered whether to get to why she’d called—or pursue Celia’s sudden strange attitude toward her job.
Finally, she said, “Come home. This weekend.”
Celia leaned back against the couch cushions and stared up at the recessed ceiling lights. “I can’t. You know I can’t.”
Jane made a humphing sound. “I don’t know any such thing. You work too hard. You never take a break.”
“It’s Thursday. Home is five hundred miles away.”
“That’s why they invented airplanes. I’ll pick you up in Reno tomorrow,
