to place his hand on hers in a reassuring manner. But the moment his palm touched her satiny skin, a charge of electricity zinged up his arm and quickly spread throughout his chest. Her startled gasp told him that she felt it, too.
Quickly moving his hand, he tried to appear nonchalant about the gesture. But considering his insides were still tingling like he’d grabbed hold of a 220-volt wire, that was mighty damned hard.
“Relax, Ms. Merrick,” he said, wondering what the hell had gotten into him. Surely he didn’t need to get laid so badly that he’d started getting turned on by merely touching a woman’s hand. “Not only do you have my word that your job’s safe, I promise that what I have in mind will improve employee morale and increase productivity.”
At least, that’s what he hoped to accomplish. Considering he didn’t know beans from buckshot about running this or any other company, he’d just have to operate on the trial-and-error system, refer to the management manual he’d picked up at a bookstore and hope for the best.
She defensively folded her arms beneath her breasts and simply stared at him. “I suppose I’ll have to take your word on that.”
“I guess you will,” he said, walking toward the door. He needed to put some distance between them in order to regain his perspective. He was here to take over the consulting firm, not try to figure out why this woman’s reluctance to believe him bothered the hell out of him. Or why he was starting to get turned on by staring into her pretty blue eyes. “I’ll see you tomorrow morning, Ms. Merrick.”
“C-Caleb?” She stumbled over his name, but the sound of it on her soft voice did a real number on his neglected hormones.
His hand on the doorknob, he turned back to face her. “Yes, Ms. Merrick?”
“I suppose since you insist that I use your first name, you might as well call me A.J.”
“Okay, A.J.” He smiled. Maybe they were making progress after all. “I’ll see you first thing in the morning.”
A.J. watched the door close behind Caleb Walker a moment before her trembling legs folded and she collapsed into her leather executive chair. Why was her heart racing? And why did her skin still tingle from his touch?
She removed her glasses and buried her face in her hands. What on earth had come over her? She never had been, nor would ever be the type of woman who let a handsome man divert her attention from what was important. At least not since the fiasco with Wesley Pennington III. He’d taught her a valuable lesson, and one that she couldn’t afford to forget—mixing business with pleasure was a fool’s game, one that ultimately led to disaster.
Normally, it wasn’t even an issue. Since losing her heart, her virginity and her first job due to her naiveté, she’d made it a point to do everything she could to appear as professional as possible. It kept things simple and helped to reinforce her strict policy of keeping coworkers at arm’s length. And it had worked well.
Most people, and especially men, were put off by her all-business demeanor and didn’t bother taking a second glance at her. And that suited her just fine. But Caleb Walker had not only looked twice, he’d focused his disturbing hazel gaze on her from the moment he’d walked into her office.
A tiny tremor coursed through her. He had a way of looking at her that made her more aware of her femininity than she’d ever been in her life. And that was what made him dangerous.
Shaking her head, she tried not to think about the wild fluttering in her lower stomach that she’d experienced when Caleb had smiled at her, and concentrated on the fact that he was her new boss. He was here to take over Skerritt and Crowe and eventually replace her with one of his own people. And even though he’d assured her that wasn’t the case, she knew better. Everything she’d worked to achieve in the past five years was about to go down the drain and she was powerless to stop it.
She put her glasses back on and swiveled the chair around to stare out the plate-glass windows. Blindly watching the late-June sun bathe downtown Albuquerque with its warm afternoon rays, she fought the urge to cry. She had a feeling that Caleb Walker was going to turn her structured, well-ordered world upside down. And there wasn’t a thing she could do to stop him.
There was no telling what kinds of changes he intended to implement or just how quickly he’d decide she was dispensable. And the most upsetting aspect of all was the fact that all she could think about was how intense his hazel eyes were, how his light brown hair hanging low on his forehead made him look more like a rebel than a businessman. And how the combination of his deep baritone and sexy Southern accent made her insides hum.
“Don’t be a fool,” she muttered, turning back to her desk.
She wasn’t interested in Caleb Walker any more than he was interested in her. But as she stared at the documents on her desk, she couldn’t stop thinking about how broad his shoulders looked in his chambray shirt, how his jeans fit him like a second skin or how her hand still tingled where he’d touched her.
When a tiny moan of frustration escaped, she quickly stuffed the pile of accounting reports she’d been reviewing into her briefcase, grabbed her purse from the bottom drawer of the desk and headed for the door. “I’ll be out of the office for the rest of the day,” she told Geneva as she rushed past her.
A.J. didn’t wait for the startled receptionist’s reaction to her atypical behavior. She didn’t have time to worry about that now. She needed to get to her apartment be-fore the cool persona she’d perfected over the years slipped away and she revealed what only her parakeet, Sidney, knew about her.
Alyssa Jane Merrick wasn’t the cold, emotionless automaton everyone at Skerritt and Crowe thought her to be. She was a living, breathing woman who collected whimsical figurines, shed buckets of tears over sentimental or touching moments, and feared failure more than anything else.
As she walked across the parking lot, she quickened her steps and trotted the distance to her sensible black sedan. She was less than a split second away from doing one of two things. She was going to either let loose with a scream loud enough to wake the dead or start crying like a baby. Neither one was acceptable behavior for her professional image.
Unlocking the driver’s door, she threw her briefcase inside, slid behind the steering wheel and closed her eyes. She counted to ten, then twenty as she struggled with her emotions. For the first time in five years, she was close to losing the tight grip she had always held on herself whenever she was at work. And that was something she simply couldn’t afford to let happen.
She had never, nor would she ever allow any of these people to see her lose control. Not only would it be a serious breach of her professionalism, but her late father would come back to haunt her for doing something so typically female.
From the time she’d been old enough to listen, her career-military father had stressed how important it was not to let her enemies see any sign of weakness. And there was no doubt about it, Caleb Walker posed a serious threat to her professional demeanor. But he was also the best-looking enemy she’d ever seen.
“The first thing I want to do this morning is assure all of you that your jobs are secure,” Caleb said, addressing the directors and department managers. He made it a point to look directly at A. J. Merrick. “Contrary to standard corporate practice, I have no intention of letting anyone
