Authors: Brooke Hastings
"Paved the way?" Randy repeated, laughing herself now.
"You wore him down where you were concerned, but what good does that do
me
?"
They finished their lunch in increasingly good spirits,
laughing and reminiscing over the foibles of fathers.
Luke knew he'd been acting like an infatuated high school
kid ever since returning from Philadelphia, but he couldn't seem to
help himself. With the exception of a three-day weekend spent in Dallas
he'd been in the store constantly for the last week, and perhaps that
was part of the problem. As long as he kept his mind on his job he was
fine, but all too often during the day he'd find himself wondering what
department Miranda was working in and how she was doing. It wasn't so
bad to lie in bed at night and remember how sweetly passionate she was
in his arms, because at least no one was around to notice the effect it
had on him. But one of these days he was going to allow his attention
to wander during a meeting and wind up totally embarrassed.
Yesterday he'd reached either the high point or the low
point of his folly. He'd actually called around to find out where she
was and then gone down to house-wares to look at her. Not to speak to
her, just to look at her. That in itself was bad enough, but then, when
she wasn't around, he'd approached one of the other saleswomen in the
department and asked where she was. Upon learning that she was eating
lunch in the store restaurant he'd taken the elevator back upstairs
again.
He shook his head in disbelief, thinking that some
mysterious virus must have afflicted him, to send him up to the
restaurant after her. But virus or not, he had felt like killing her
when he finally found her. She was sitting with another woman and
laughing about something. What right did she have to laugh, he asked
himself, when he was going quietly out of his mind? In his more honest
moments he admitted to himself that sooner or later he was going to
cave in and confront Bill Dunne about her, but he hadn't quite reached
that level of desperation.
At first he didn't pay any attention to Miranda's
companion, but then the resemblance between the two of them hit him
with almost physical force, and he realized that he was looking at
Linda Franck. The two were very much alike, so much so that if Miranda
hadn't just changed her hairstyle, a casual acquaintance who met one of
them in the street might have wondered which sister he was seeing. Luke
began to feel a little less stupid about the mistake he'd made.
He grimaced as he watched them talking and laughing,
wondering if the two of them were cooking up another diabolical scheme
to drive him crazy with. Probably not, he supposed. Miranda could
easily have manufactured some excuse to come to his office if she'd
wanted to see him, but she hadn't. Up till now she'd done most of the
chasing, but things had obviously changed. Or maybe it was her feelings
that had changed. He couldn't help but notice that she'd finished
almost an entire chef's salad.
Totally disgusted with how much that frightened him, Luke
had gone back to his office and thrown himself into his work. And the
next day, as Bill Dunne wrapped up a meeting with Luke and a group of
senior executives, he firmly dismissed the temptation to ask for an
extra five minutes alone with the boss. He was a rational man, after
all, and as such, he understood that he'd have to be a fool to
jeopardize his career for a woman he'd met less than six weeks ago and
thus couldn't possibly love. Not only did they barely know each other,
but he wasn't about to get trapped into any commitments just yet. It
made no difference that he couldn't get her off his mind, and had
absolutely no desire to see anyone else.
Logic, however, failed to explain why his heart started
pounding double-time when Bill said casually, "Luke, stick around for a
while, will you?"
Everyone else filed out of the room, leaving the two of
them alone, facing each other across Bill's desk. "Today is my
thirty-first anniversary," he said.
Luke realized that Bill looked almost as uneasy as he
himself felt. When Bill didn't come to the point, he made the obvious
comment. "Congratulations. I envy you and your wife—she's a
very special lady."
Bill picked up his pipe, stared at it and then put it back
in the ashtray. "Damn it, Luke, at the rate I'm going there won't be a
thirty-second. Emily never yells, but she's made it clear that she
thinks I was wrong about you and Randy. Okay, I
know
I was wrong about you and Randy. Your relationship with my daughter has
nothing to do with your performance as an executive, and I never should
have tied the two together. I'm sorry."
"Apology accepted." Luke was far too cautious to say
anything more. Obviously Bill wasn't through with him yet, and he
wanted to judge the lay of the land before he responded.
"But that doesn't mean that my feelings as a father are
any different from what they were two weeks ago," Bill went on. "It's
just that if I keep interfering the women in my family are going to
openly revolt. It was bad enough when it was just Emily and Randy I had
to contend with, but now that Linda's in town…" He ran a
hand through his hair in a defeated gesture and then winced at his own
words. "Uh… does that present any problem for you? The fact
that Linda's around?"
"No," Luke said. He might have explained that his opinion
of Linda Franck had undergone substantial revisions, but he didn't
bother. "As a matter of fact, I saw Miranda and Linda in the restaurant
yesterday."
"Did you?" Bill shook his head. "I only hope Randy was
eating for a change. I know she's unhappy—Linda and Roger are
the only people who seem to be able to get a smile out of her lately.
That's Roger Bennett, by the way. He and my older daughter are what I
think you'd call a 'hot item'."
She doesn't eat? Luke thought. She doesn't smile? He felt
as euphoric as a kid who'd just stolen home. Naturally he didn't admit
that, but calmly remarked that Miranda had once mentioned that her
sister was dating Roger Bennett, and that he hoped that whatever was
troubling Randy would work itself out.
In the past Bill Dunne and Luke had laughed over the
latter's talent for playing it close to the vest, but on this occasion
it seemed to seriously annoy Bill. "You know bloody well what's
troubling her!" he said. "Do I have to spell it out for you, Luke?"
"It would be nice," Luke answered evenly.
But instead of spelling out anything, Bill smiled
sheepishly and admitted that part of the reason he'd hired Luke was for
his ability to outflank the competition. "But I don't much care to have
you use that poker-faced routine on me," he told him. "I'll make it
easy for both of us. Emily and I are going out for our anniversary
tonight, to Windows on the World. The two girls and Roger are coming
along also. Why don't you join us? Our reservation is at seven-thirty."
Luke wasn't taking any chances—not when victory
was so close. "Does that constitute an official blessing?" he asked.
"More or less. I'll trust that your intentions are what we
used to call honorable, Luke. Why don't you go downstairs and talk to
Randy? She's selling shoes today."
Luke got up and started to leave, then turned around and
held out his hand. The handshake was more than an empty formality. It
signified that they'd reached an understanding, and Luke didn't know
which of them was more relieved.
"Why is it," Randy complained to her co-worker in the shoe
department as she headed toward the stockroom, "that I always get the
ones with the weird feet? Do we even
have
anything in 11AAA?"
"If you'd read our ads you wouldn't have to ask," the
woman informed her with a laugh. "We're the ones who like to boast that
we're the best department store in the city for narrow sizes, remember?
But you'd better grab the ladder, Randy. We keep the narrowest widths
together, all the way in the back on the top few shelves."
At least I'm not afraid of heights, Randy thought as she
climbed to the top of the ladder. A bulb was missing from one of the
overhead fixtures, making it a little hard to read the writing on the
boxes. She reached up for one, only to nearly drop it when a male voice
called out, "Miranda?"
Luke, of course. Everyone else called her Randy. "All the
way in the back," she called to him. The only reason she
hadn't
dropped the box was that his appearance wasn't a total surprise. One of
the saleswomen in housewares had mentioned that he'd stopped by
yesterday when she was at lunch, and the news had made her day. She
knew it had to be personal—if it had been business he would
have sent her another one of his blasted memos.
He walked over and looked up at her, commenting that he
didn't understand how she could see what she was doing.
"I manage," she told him. "You've come at a very good
time." She threw down the box of shoes, saying, "Here, catch!"
Two more boxes containing the only pumps in the store even
vaguely resembling the customer's request quickly followed. "I have an
11AAA out there," she explained as she started to back down the ladder.
She was pleased with herself for appearing so calm when
actually she was fast becoming a nervous wreck, wondering what Luke
wanted to say to her. Her pulse rate jumped when he set the shoes on
the floor and placed a hand on either side of her waist, gently lifting
her the rest of the way down.
He didn't release her once her feet touched the ground,
however, but took a few steps forward until the front of his lean body
was pressed against her back. "The 11AAA can wait," he murmured into
her ear. Randy stiffened when his mouth moved lower, nipping at the
spot he'd first discovered in Maine, and then made a helpless, guttural
little noise.
After a week of not seeing or touching him his lips were
even more effective than usual, arousing her to pliant cooperation even
more quickly than before. "Unfair," she moaned. "Illegal offense."
Luke turned her around in his arms, twining a hand through
her hair to firmly tilt her head back. His lips brushed across her
mouth, then lifted a fraction. "I always play dirty when I'm
desperate," he said.
The next instant their lips were clinging, their tongues
hungrily tasting and exploring. As Randy arched against him her hands
slipped around his waist to hold him close. It feels so right, she
thought to herself. Like being home again.
She pulled away to break the kiss, but their fore-heads
were still touching, their lips playfully meeting every few seconds for
a gentle kiss. "The 11AAA," she murmured.
"Such dedication." Luke traced the line of her jaw with
his lips, then turned his attention to her earlobe. "There's one thing
you don't know about me, Miranda. I go wild over shoes. Any other
department and all I would have done is kiss you a few times and then
tell you that I'm coming to dinner with you tonight. But
shoes…"
"Are you?" Randy twisted away to free her earlobe from his
teeth, acutely interested in the conversation all of a sudden. "You
mean you talked to Dad?"
"Umm. I think I have his seal of approval as long as I
behave with reasonable propriety. But you should have stayed out of the
stockroom, Miranda." Without warning Luke picked her up and started
toward the darkest corner of the room.
"Luke, where
are
you going?" Randy
asked with a giggle.
He nodded straight ahead. "Over there. I'm going to throw
you down on the floor. I told you, shoes drive me wild, especially size
11AAA pumps. I can't control myself around them."
When he put her down, pulled her roughly into his arms and
sweetly ravaged her mouth, a bemused Randy began to wonder if he were
serious. She was clinging to him with a kind of confused abandon when
he finally decided to release her.
"The 11AAA," he groaned.
"She's probably gone by now," Randy murmured, her lips
exploring the curve of his neck.
He put his hands on her upper arms to hold her a safe
distance away from him, then took a few steps backward for insurance.
"Don't you know you could get into trouble for messing around in the
stockroom during working hours?" he demanded.
"With the boss?" Randy asked.
"I'm not the boss in Manhattan." Luke put an arm around
her shoulders and nudged her toward the waiting trio of shoe boxes.
"I'll see you tonight, okay? I have some work to finish up, so I'll
meet you at the restaurant."
"Windows on the World at seven-thirty?"
"Right, angel." Luke pecked her on the lips and picked up
the three boxes of shoes.
Randy's first problem was to placate her irate customer,
but Luke solemnly apologized, explaining that he was a vice president
taking a special inventory of the shoe department that had required
Miss Dunne's cooperation for a few minutes, and the customer nodded in
bewilderment and allowed Randy to show her the shoes.
Randy was so happy with the thought of having Luke at
dinner that night that it was hours before she realized that Linda
would be there also. She wondered if Luke knew.
Her conversation with her father as they walked home that
evening reassured her that Luke not only knew but didn't mind, and that
Bill Dunne had indeed decided to remove himself from her personal life.
She wasn't naive enough to believe that he could really accept a love
affair between herself and Luke, but realized that he simply preferred
to look the other way and pretend it wasn't happening. Randy had no
intention of doing anything that would remind him.
Like Luke, Linda and Roger were meeting Randy and her
parents at the restaurant, which was located on the 107th story of the
North Tower of New York's World Trade Center. Randy had never been
there, so the first thing she did when she walked out of the elevator
and into the lounge was to look out the window. She could make out the
Statue of Liberty guarding New York Harbor. She was so wrapped up in
the view that when she felt a man's lips on her bare shoulder she
started violently and whirled around. The gown she wore, a
one-shouldered dress of silk chiffon in shades ranging from royal blue
to deep violet, almost invited such liberties.