Wife on Approval Read online

  "No, it just means I forgot it." Paige flipped through the bits of paper. Most were requests from Rent-A-Wife clients for errands to be run or small jobs to be completed. There shouldn't be anything urgent in this stack; if someone had called with a time-critical job, Eileen would have passed on the message to one of the partners immediately.

  Eileen's gaze sharpened. "Forgot it? I suppose she chose it at that lingerie place she likes so well. No doubt you'd be better covered in a swimsuit."

  Paige began sorting the messages into stacks. "Thanks for taking such good care of the phone calls today, Mom."

  Eileen shrugged. "What else do I have to occupy myself these days? That pest called again this afternoon."

  "Which pest? Do you mean we're getting prank calls?"

  "I suppose you could call it that. I'm talking about Ben Orcutt. The message he left is in there somewhere."

  "I suppose his dishes need washing again." Paige sighed. "Sometimes I wish he hadn't taken Sabrina seriously when she suggested that if he called us more often instead of letting the mess pile up to the ceiling, he'd have visitors on a regular basis."

  "Lately," Eileen sniffed, "he seems to want visitors about three times a week. It would have been more useful, you know, if Sabrina had taught the man to wash his own dishes - but I don't suppose she's practical enough to think of that. You could certainly do without him as a client, now that you have plenty of others."

  "Even if she'd given him lessons, Mother, he'd still be a client. He would just have to come up with another excuse to call. He's lonely, that's all."

  Eileen sniffed. "Most men are incapable of amusing themselves. To say nothing of actually seeing and taking care of what needs to be done. Your father, for example - "

  With the ease of long practice, Paige sidetracked the conversation. "I can't quite read this sentence. The message from Carol Forbes - what kind of paper does she want me to pick up? Wallpaper?"

  "No - an issue of the Denver Post that had an article about her nephew."

  "Oh, that's right. I see the date now. If you wouldn't mind, Mother, we could use a hand with the phones again tomorrow. Cassie's going to try to decorate Christmas tree for four clients tomorrow, and I have to work on arrangements for the staff holiday party at Tanner." She set message slips aside.

  Eileen shrugged. "I certainly don't have anything better to do these days, while I'm sitting at home waiting for you."

  Paige reminded herself that just because her mother handed her a ticket didn't mean she had to take the guilt trip. "I thought perhaps you and I could go out this week end to choose our tree."

  Eileen shrugged. "Not a lot of point in having one. I don't care much about Christmas, anyway, and you're so tired of the holiday by the time it arrives that the whole thing is more effort than it's worth."

  Paige took a long breath. "It's still Christmas," she said firmly. "We have to do something to celebrate."

  "Go through the motions, you mean." Eileen stirred the soup again. "Or are you feeling a little sentimental?"

  "Christmas used to be my favorite holiday."

  "I know," Eileen said dryly. "Back in the old days. You surely aren't thinking about trying to patch things together with Austin, are you, now that he's in town?"

  Paige spun around, and her sleeve caught the stack of message slips and sent them whirling into a blizzard of pink snow. "How did you know - " She caught herself, but it was too late.

  Eileen looked pleased at the reaction. "I saw a story on the business channel about his new job. You weren't even going to tell me he'd come back to Denver, were you?"

  Paige said stiffly, "I didn't think you'd be particularly interested."

  "How could I not be interested in the man who used my daughter and then tossed her aside? You're not having any foolish ideas, are you?"

  "About wanting him back? Of course not."

  "That's good," Eileen said with satisfaction. "Because, of course, it can't be done. And if, instead of rose-colored romantic notions, you're really cherishing any feeble ideas of taking revenge for the way he treated you - well, I don't think you could possibly pull that off, either."

  Her mother's blithe assumption that she would fail - that she wasn't attractive enough, feminine enough, or smart enough to succeed - acted on Paige almost like a challenge. So she couldn't possibly win Austin back, could she? And she couldn't possibly figure out a way to get even with him for dumping her? Or, best of all, to accomplish both things at the same time?

  Paige was half tempted to take on the dare, not to put Austin in his place but simply to prove that her mother was wrong about her.

  Except, of course, she reminded herself, that it would be such a childish thing to do.

  Austin had only been inside the offices of Tanner Electronics once before, and that had been just a walkthrough to get the lay of the land in order to help him decide whether he wanted to take the job. On that visit Caleb Tanner had been beside him all the while. It was time, he thought, to get a real sense of the people and the business and the surroundings, with no one interpreting or interfering.

  So when Austin came into the big glassed-in atrium lobby at the front of the building shortly after lunchtime, he deliberately didn't head directly for the executive wing. He strolled up and down the halls instead, peeking into office cubicles and conference rooms, studying computer screens and listening to discussions.

  Tanner was a young firm, small and intimate and suffering from growing pains. That much Austin had known before he'd ever considered associating himself with the business, and it was part of what he'd found so attractive about Caleb Tanner's offer. The challenge of grooming a new company beyond financial success into a position of status intrigued him.

  By the time he eventually arrived at Caleb Tanner's corner office, however, Austin found himself frowning. There was no secretary in the outer room - there hadn't been on the day he visited, either, Austin recalled - so he strolled over to the open door of the inner office and knocked softly.

  Caleb's back was to the door; he was leaning over the once-gleaming surface of his teak desk, where a no-longer-identifiable electronic device lay in a million pieces, and he was whistling softly as he studied the bits. He turned at Austin's tap, looking startled. "I didn't expect you till Monday," he said, stretching out a hand in warm welcome.

  "I got Jennifer enrolled in school this morning, and since she wanted to stay and get started, I thought I might as well come in for a few hours and begin to get acclimated."

  "Sabrina said you'd stopped by last night, but I thought you'd take the rest of the week to settle in."

  "I intended to," Austin said. "But there's not much settling left to be done. Your Rent-A-Wife team did wonders."

  "Not mine," Caleb said. "Or, at least, not all mine. I suppose I have to take responsibility for Sabrina, terrifying as the idea is, since I'm marrying her in a couple of weeks. But the other two - "

  "An interesting business," Austin said. "Rent-A-Wife, I mean. I wonder what inspired it."

  "It was Paige's idea, I guess. You've met Paige?"

  Austin nodded. He wondered what Caleb would say if he told him exactly how long - and how well - he'd known Paige. But he'd closed that door behind him last night. She had made a misleading statement - not a lie, exactly, but a good long way from the whole truth - and by not correcting it then and there, he had in a sense promised that he would continue to be silent.

  Besides, he told himself, perhaps that approach was the best one, anyway. Their marriage had been so brief as to be almost nonexistent, and it was so far in the past that dragging it up now would create nothing more than shock value.

  "She wanted a more flexible job," Caleb said, "to allow her to take care of her sick mother, so she started up the firm and then the other two partners signed on a few months later. So what do you think of Tanner now that you're on board? The first thing, I guess, is to get an office set up for you. I intended to move out over the weekend so this fancy desk would
be waiting for you Monday morning, but you beat me to it."

  Austin couldn't see the whole surface because of the electronic gadgetry scattered over it, but the part he could see was covered with deep scratches. The desk, he thought, was teak, and it had once been a showpiece. Now it looked more like a workbench. "Thanks, but I wouldn't want to put the chairman of the board out of the space you've grown accustomed to. There are a couple of rooms down the hall that will do fine for me. I'd rather be just a little off the beaten path, anyway - I get more work done that way."

  Caleb grinned. "My point exactly. This corner of the building is like dead center of the target, and I've been looking forward to getting out of it. I'll just move out my personal stuff and leave everything else, and you can settle right in to the executive suite and get to work."

  On the contrary, Austin thought; moving Caleb out looked like a fairly big job. There were boxes, books and papers - to say nothing of electronic bits and pieces - scattered everywhere in the big room. And the physical clutter might not be the worst of the debris that Caleb had collected, Austin suspected. If the employee who was supposed to occupy the outer office was as inefficient as it appeared, he or she wasn't likely to be a success at working for Austin. "I'd rather hire my own secretary, Caleb," he said firmly. "Fresh start, new loyalties, all that stuff."

  Caleb frowned. "What are you talking about? Oh, you thought I was leaving mine for you? I've never had one."

  At least, Austin thought, that explained why the outer office was always empty. "I see. Well, even hiring a secretary isn't the first thing on my list. Security is."

  Caleb's eyebrows rose. "You mean things like new locks and guards around the building?"

  "And some other measures, as well. If you aren't suffering a leakage of information, it's only a matter of time."

  "My people are loyal."

  "That's beside the point, when a stranger can loiter in the hallway till an office is left empty and then go look at the specs still blinking on the computer screen."

  "Industrial spies, you mean? What makes you think they could get by with that kind of behavior?"

  "Because I did." Austin's tone was uncompromising. "I've been here for a couple of hours already, walking the halls, and no one challenged me or even asked where I was headed."

  Caleb shrugged. "Maybe everyone recognized you and knew you belonged here now."

  "I think it's more likely they didn't even notice me." A flash of movement in the outer office caught his eye, and with sudden suspicion Austin leaped up to check it out. If that room was supposed to be empty, who was listening at the door?

  He burst into the outer room and pulled up short at the sight of Paige standing at the desk, arranging a plate where the blotter ought to be.

  "What are you doing?" The question came out more sharply than Austin had intended.

  "My job," she said crisply. "I'm delivering Caleb's weekly order of cookies. I'd have brought the plate into his office because he prefers to have them while they're still warm, but I heard voices inside so I didn't interrupt." Her gaze flicked over him without apparent interest. "You're not wasting any time getting into the part, are you, Austin?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "Acting bossy. It didn't even occur to me that you'd have taken over Caleb's office quite this fast - but if that's the case, you will tell me where to take the cookies, won't you?"

  Caleb, still comfortably stretched out in his chair, called, "Come on in, Paige. I haven't moved just yet, and I need those cookies to give me the strength to pack."

  She picked up the plate.

  Austin, feeling just a little embarrassed, followed her across the room, and with nothing better to do at the moment, he let his mind dwell on the twitch of her skirt. Her voice had been sticky-sweet, but the swing of that long skirt showed pure irritation. He'd been right in his assessment last night; her command of sarcasm had improved by leaps and bounds...

  Though sarcasm was hardly the first thing which that skirt brought to mind, he admitted. It was unfashionably long, leaving just a peek of slim calves and tiny ankles, and he was reasonably sure Paige thought the style was modest and old-fashioned and pretty much all-concealing, or she would never have brought the thing home from the shop. But then, Austin reflected, she'd obviously never got a good look at it from the back. The fine camel-colored wool draped lovingly around her, showing off slim hips and delicately hinting at legs that went on forever.

  Or perhaps that was his memory instead, reminding him of the supple body which he had known so well....

  He reminded himself abruptly that he had no time for - or interest in - speculating what Paige McDermott looked like these days without her clothes.

  But she couldn't have changed too much, he knew, because the sleek, deceptively simple lines of that skirt couldn't lie.

  Caleb had unwrapped the plate and was happily inhaling the still-warm scent of chocolate.

  "Macadamia nut next week?" Paige asked. "Or would you rather have frosted sugar cookies, in honor of Christmas?"

  "More of these would be just fine with me."

  Paige was smiling, Austin saw. "You're a creature of habit, Caleb. It's just too bad Sabrina doesn't know the difference between an oven and a dishwasher, or you could have cookies all the time."

  "Oh, no," Caleb said comfortably. "That's the real beauty of Rent-A-Wife, you know - I have the best of three worlds."

  She laughed at him, ignored Austin, and went away. Austin settled back into his chair and tapped his fingers on the upholstered arm.

  Without looking directly at him, Caleb offered the plate of cookies. "I should have doubled my order this week, I suppose."

  Austin shook his head. "Not for my sake."

  "No cookies? You'll regret that choice, I guarantee it. If you don't mind a bit of advice," Caleb said carefully, "it's not a good idea to get one-third of Rent-A-Wife mad at you by accusing her of being an industrial spy."

  "I didn't."

  "Well, you may want to hunt her up and make it clear that wasn't your intention, because the last thing you want is to get blacklisted. This business of having a wife on call comes in handy at the strangest times." He bit into a cookie and sighed in contentment. "Of course, if someone had told me a few months back that I'd be saying anything of the sort, I'd have - "

  "Caleb, the point is that anyone could walk into that room and listen to your private conversations."

  "If they're really private," Caleb offered, "I usually remember to close the door."

  "Good idea," Austin said dryly. "But security has to be improved throughout the building. Passes for visitors, identification badges for the staff, a check-in desk in the lobby so guests aren't allowed to wander all over - "

  Caleb held up another cookie, obviously savoring the aroma. "The staff won't like it."

  "They'll have to get used to it."

  "Well, let me think it over."

  Austin opened his mouth to point out that the question was his to deal with, now that he was the CEO, not Caleb's. Then he decided not to push the matter at the moment but let it rest till tomorrow instead. No matter how much Caleb was looking forward to returning to his engineering duties, the fact remained that for years he'd been the final authority for every decision at Tanner Electronics - and it couldn't be easy for him to step out of that position and turn over a good share of the responsibility to someone else. It would be no surprise if the adjustment took him a little time - and Austin could afford to be flexible.

  It was, after all, the main reason he'd come to Tanner. To be flexible.

  What was euphemistically called a cafeteria at Tanner Electronics was really just a row of vending machines, a microwave, and a few plastic booths. Paige eyed the offerings without enthusiasm. Candy, chips, and a freezer case of hot dogs and hamburgers which she'd bet tasted more like cardboard than real food...

  But what Tanner employees ate for lunch wasn't her problem, of course, and it wasn't the reason she was in the cafeteri
a in the first place. She'd been looking for a location for the holiday party she was supposed to be planning - the first Christmas event since Rent-A-Wife had taken over the social functions of Tanner Electronics - and it was apparent from a glance that the cafeteria was out of the question. Not only was it too small, but the atmosphere was downright depressing.

  That left the atrium lobby as the only suitable location, and in order to pull off the event with any style at all she'd have to rent tables, chairs, linens, steam tables... And it was already the first week of December, with the party less than three weeks away.

  Paige stood on the stair landing which overlooked the lobby, pulled out a notebook, and began to make a list.

  The atrium was big enough, no question about that. There would be room not only for tables to seat all of Tanner's employees and their families, but both a gigantic tree and a throne where Santa Claus could chat with the staffs’ children.

  Behind her a door opened and automatically she hugged the railing so it would be easier to pass. But instead of slipping by her, the newcomer paused. "Caleb says I should apologize to you," Austin said.

  Paige forced her suddenly stiff muscles to relax. "For what?"

  "He thinks that in effect I accused you of eavesdropping, by bursting out of his office the way I did. I happen to believe you have more sense than to think that, or to be offended by it."

  "Certainly I have," Paige said.

  "Good. I'm glad you agree that no apology is necessary." Austin started to walk on.

  "Oh, I didn't go that far," Paige mused. "As soon as you saw me outside Caleb's office you stopped being suspicious - but I'm not sure whether I should be flattered because you trust me not to listen, or annoyed because you think I'm not capable of understanding what I was hearing.

  "Oh, for - " He tugged irritably at the cashmere muffler tucked under the collar of his wool overcoat. “You haven't always been this touchy, Paige - or is it just that I didn't notice?"

  "And in any case, why should I waste my time looking for silly reasons for you to apologize, when you have plenty of really serious ones?"