I didn’t realize what kind of answer I might get.” He sat up straight. “All right, Dan, you’ve convinced me that my father doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about. Let’s do the mail.”
She felt guilty, but she didn’t dare back down. He respected spirit. She’d learned her first week as his secretary that it was either give it back as good as he gave it out, or spend her life in tears. He didn’t pull his punches, and he didn’t respect anyone who did. As she soon discovered, he needed that toughness to deal with the people who frequented this office. Business was hard, and he was equal to it, even during recessions.
All the same, she had the oddest feeling that she’d wounded him. If a woman he called by a masculine nickname could wound him, that was. Sometimes it cut her to the bone when he called her Dan. He made it sound as if she were his fishing buddy or his tennis partner. He treated her that casually, and it had hurt. Maybe that had prompted her uncharacteristic outburst about his lack of morals.
She wondered why he was so promiscuous. In two years, she’d learned next to nothing about him, except about the type of woman he liked. About his feelings and thoughts, she knew nothing. She knew his mother had died ten years ago, and that his father had remarried a lady named Cynthia. Danetta knew that he spent time with them, but he never talked about them. His father did let a few things slip from time to time when he came into the office, but not enough to satisfy her growing curiosity about the enigmatic man she worked for.
He started dictating, pacing as usual, and she had to work to keep up with him. He wasn’t sparing her. She felt the whip of his voice and the ice in his stare until he was finally through and let her go back to her own desk.
He was unusually silent for the rest of the day. She sent people into his office and buzzed him when he was needed on the telephone, but he didn’t offer her coffee or stop to talk. At quitting time, he was out the door before she was, leaving her to close up without even a goodbye unless she counted the curt jerk of his head as he left, attaché case in hand.
Danetta watched him go with mixed feelings. Perhaps she shouldn’t have opened her mouth. Now she’d really complicated things.
She covered the typewriter and the computer, got her purse and sweater, and went out to stand in line for the bus. She watched it approach indifferently, her mind still on her boss. One of these days I will kiss my iguana, she thought vengefully, and he’ll turn into somebody as handsome as Robert Redford and then you’ll be sorry, Mr. Ritter! And he’ll buy me mink coats and diamonds and we’ll live in decadent luxury…
She became aware of amused stares and realized belatedly that she was talking out loud.
“I’m a writer,” she improvised. “It’s a great plot, the iguana prince…”
“Yeah? The part about Robert Redford was great,” an elderly woman said, grinning as she got onto the bus just ahead of Danetta. “But nobody would kiss an iguana!”
Danetta only smiled.
Norman was curled up on the radiator, as usual, when Danetta got home. He opened his eyes and then closed them again, his long emerald-green body sprawled over the warm place.
“You’re so enthusiastic, Norman,” she sighed, pausing to rub his head and tickle his chin. He did look ferocious, she supposed, remembering Mr. Ritter’s horrified expression when she’d mentioned having an iguana. But the reptile’s fierce appearance was just window dressing in Norman’s case. She’d carried him around and petted him since he was barely seven inches long, and she didn’t find him in the least intimidating or frightening. It was hard to be afraid of a creature that liked spinach quiche and responded to a whistle. She was sure that a book she’d read on iguanas said they were stupid. It was a good thing Norman couldn’t read.
She heated up some quiche for him and turned on a Beethoven sonata. When she put the quiche in a bowl with two or three fresh hibiscus petals from the florist, Norman sniffed and oozed down onto the floor. He looked like a miniature dinosaur, Danetta thought as she watched him plod to his food dish and eat hungrily. He wasn’t much on regular meals. He ate about every second or third day, and he was certainly healthy enough. His tail gave her nightmares. It was terribly long and quite handsome, and she lived in fear of stepping on it. Iguanas shed their tails quite easily if they were pulled on, but Norman would never forgive her if she cost him his crowning glory.
She brooded most of the evening over Cabe Ritter’s behavior. First he wanted her to dress in a more feminine way, then he accused her of having a crush on him, then he seemed to be mad because she denied it. He was the most puzzling man she’d ever known.
Finally she went to bed, leaving Norman on the radiator. It was still cool at night, and that warmth attracted him. He was so predictable. She could always find him on the radiator, on his paper in the bathroom—because he was housebroken—or in the kitchen. It was a good thing that Mr. Ritter had never come to visit her at home, she mused as she lay awake. Norman would give him fits.
She closed her eyes with determination, but she kept seeing her enigmatic boss’s broad, hard face. She’d denied her attraction to him for a long time, and it was a good thing she’d learned to hide it. If she’d given herself away today when he’d made that accusation, she’d be looking for another job.
As if she’d ever have a chance with such a man, she sighed inwardly. He could have his pick of women, and did. Danetta wouldn’t even be in the running. She only wondered why he’d been so irritated when she’d made that remark about his being a womanizer. Surely he didn’t want her to have a crush on him! Of course not. She groaned and rolled over. She had to try to get some sleep.
The next morning, she felt as if she hadn’t gotten even one hour’s worth. She went to work dragging, her eyes bloodshot and dark circled. She’d dressed hurriedly in a green-and-lavender-and-brown swirled dress—a shirtwaist dress, although she hadn’t really meant to. She left her hair down, too, mainly because she didn’t have time to put it up after she’d overslept.
Mr. Ritter was usually a half hour later than she was. Today, of course, he was early. Mentally groaning as she tried to tiptoe into the office, she prepared herself for a lecture. He didn’t say anything as it turned out, but he did give her a cold glance as she walked in, his eyes going pointedly to the clock on the office wall, which proved that she was a full ten minutes late. He was on the phone, nodding and muttering to someone on the other end of the line.
She mouthed an apology and started to take off her lightweight car coat.
“Keep it on,” he called to her, covering the receiver. “Get the tape recorder and your pad and pen. We’re going out to a rig to get some data about that new machine part I made for Harry Deal.”
She had to grit her teeth. Harry Deal was an old-line rigger who hated women and made no secret of it. He made her feel like fish bait, and Mr. Ritter knew it. Which was probably why he was dragging her out to the rig with him, she thought miserably. He was getting even for what she’d said the day before.
“Not today,” she sighed to herself. She put her coat over her arm as she got the necessary items together. “I’m just not up to Harry Deal today.”
“Stop moaning,” her boss snapped. He held open the office door, his cold eyes taking in every fact of her appearance. But they lingered on the soft thrust of her breasts and the sensuous curves
