drawl demanded.
“I guess I did,” she mumbled with resignation. “God knows, I turned loose the last hurricane that hit the coast and I’m sure I cause gingivitis and tooth decay—”
“Shut up and come in here.”
She picked up her pad and pen, smoothing her skirt over her full hips and straightening her white midi blouse. She was tall, but she had a perfect figure and long, sexy legs. Her thick light brown hair reached to her waist when she let it down. She looked very pretty with it left long, but she always pulled it up into a chignon while she worked and she was careful not to apply more than a touch of makeup to her face, barely highlighting her soft, pale gray eyes with shadow. Her face was a perfect oval, and its gentleness gave the skin a delicacy beyond words. She wasn’t beautiful, but she was attractive, and most bosses probably would have noticed her even though she didn’t draw attention to her assets.
She downplayed them because her boss was a womanizer, and she didn’t want to risk her heart to him. She knew that she was vulnerable, because he’d given her a long, smoldering look last Christmas when she’d dressed up for a party with some of the other office girls in the building. He’d captured her under the mistletoe just as she was leaving, and her heart had all but beat her to death when he bent his dark head toward hers, with his pale eyes glittering on her soft mouth and no expression at all on his hard face. She knew she’d stopped breathing entirely. But to her surprise, he’d suddenly checked the downward movement of his head, muttered something under his breath and the kiss had been redirected to land on her cheek. He’d walked away with a curt “Merry Christmas.” After that, he’d suddenly started calling her “Dan” instead of “Miss Marist” and treating her like a younger brother. She’d pretended not to notice, but since he’d made it so obvious that he wasn’t going to make another pass at her, she’d never dressed up since. It was safer to be his younger brother.
Her parents in Missouri would have approved of her caution. He seemed to prefer blondes, and very sophisticated ones at that. He was quite openly a playboy, and that turned Danetta off completely. She’d never told him how she felt about his life-style, since it was none of her business, but she’d never want to get serious about such a man.
Anyway, she was only twenty-three to his thirty-six, and he seemed to think of her as a child because in the two years she’d worked for him, he’d never made a single real pass at her. He talked to her as if she were a younger man, about sports and sometimes even about his women. He didn’t seem to notice that his bluntness made her blush; he seemed to be talking more to himself than to her anyway.
Lately he was dating a very elegant and cool blonde named Karol Sartain, and she’d settled him somewhat. He was much less restless than he’d been for the past few months, even if his temper was growing shorter by the day. Just yesterday, Danetta had caught him watching her with the oddest expression she’d ever seen. He’d looked at her as if he suddenly wished her in Siberia, and she didn’t understand why.
Well, it was probably better that he disliked her. A man of his experience was hardly the perfect partner for a repressed maiden who kept a giant lizard for a pet.
She opened his office door and walked in. His sheer physical presence always took her breath away, especially combined as it was with his spectacular good looks. He was tall and muscular, a big man with an aggressive personality. He was a world-beater, and he looked it, with pale blue eyes that could burn holes in steel and thick, wavy dark hair that fell onto a broad forehead. He had thick black eyebrows over his deep-set eyes, and high cheekbones. His nose had been broken at least once, and his chin had a slight cleft and a couple of tiny scars etched into his dark complexion. But despite those slight flaws, he was devastating to look at, and women couldn’t seem to resist him. He had all the charm in the world when he wanted something, and if that didn’t work, he had fists like hams. He was afraid of nothing on earth. Except snakes. Danetta had never told him about her pet. She wondered if his fear ran to lizards.
Muscles rippled when he moved. He was all muscle. He’d worked on drill rigs until he started his equipment company, and he looked like a crew chief. These days he didn’t work on rigs, but when he was in a really foul mood, he went out and worked it off on his father’s ranch outside Tulsa. The elder Ritter had been a semipro baseball player back in the heyday of that sport, and he’d wisely invested his earnings in a small ranch and a string of filling stations in Texas and Oklahoma. With keen business sense, he’d parlayed that start into a successful oil business and his son, Cabe, had helped until he’d decided to get away from his father’s well-meaning dominance and start his own company—which manufactured and sold parts for drill rigs.
He’d been at it for ten years, quite successfully, but his father annoyed him by never mentioning exactly what Cabe did for a living. In fact, by way of revenge, he liked to tell his friends that Cabe was a janitor at a local bar. Danetta hadn’t understood the amazement of new clients at first when they realized whose son Cabe was—because old man Ritter was something of a legend in the oil business, and many of his cohorts bought their parts from Cabe. But now that she was in on the joke, it was alternately amusing and exasperating.
The elder Ritter had never quite approved of his son’s independence. He liked running the whole show, and everyone’s life that was in any way connected to his own. Just as his son did. When Eugene frequently visited Cabe at the office, he was full of helpful suggestions for Danetta. His last had been that she stop calling his son “Mr. Ritter” and concentrate on wearing clothes that emphasized her nice figure.
“You’ll never catch his eye that way, you know,” the old man had muttered, clearly disapproving her neat skirt and blouse.
“Mr. Ritter, I don’t want to catch his eye,” she’d replied. “He’s not my type at all.”
“You’d settle him,” he continued as if she hadn’t spoken, nodding his silver head as he towered over her, with eyes as pale a blue as Cabe’s. “Keep him away from these party girls he takes around. He’ll die of some god-awful disease, you know,” he whispered conspiratorially. “He doesn’t even know where those girls have been!”
At that point, Danetta had excused herself and made a dash for the rest room, where she collapsed against a wall in tears of hysterical laughter. She’d wanted so badly to tell her boss what his father had said about him, but didn’t know how to bring up the subject.
Cabe’s curious scowl finally caught her attention. “Well, don’t just stand there, Dan, sit down,” he muttered, watching her watching him. “I don’t know what’s gotten into you lately, but your mind’s just not on your work.”
Her eyebrows lifted sharply. “I beg your pardon?” she faltered, standing beside the chair across from his massive desk.
“Sit!” he said shortly.
She sat. The curt authority in that deep voice had the same effect on his male employees. He was so used to throwing out orders that he didn’t have any inhibitions about doing it at restaurants, other peoples’ parties—just about anywhere. Hostesses were said to sigh with relief when he left.
“No wonder your father doesn’t approve of you,” she muttered. “You’re just like him.”
“Insults are my line, not yours, kid,” he reminded her. He leaned back in the chair and it squeaked alarmingly. He was no lightweight, even if it was all muscle. His pale blue eyes stared a hole through her. “You don’t look very cheerful this morning. What’s wrong?”
“You had two bites out of me before I got in the door, and it wasn’t my fault,” she replied.
“So?
