From Boss to Bridegroom. Victoria Pade

waking to pour himself a cup of coffee, grab the just-delivered Washington Post and climb back into bed to read it before he showered.

      But this morning, current events weren’t holding his interest. His gaze kept straying to the clock on his nightstand as if that would make time go faster.

      He didn’t understand why he was so eager to get to work. He hadn’t felt that way in a long while now.

      In fact, he hadn’t felt particularly eager about anything in a while now.

      There were family problems back home in Prosperino, California, and he’d tried to tell himself that was the cause. But the truth was that there was something about his own life that seemed to have taken a turn when he wasn’t looking.

      He didn’t understand it, and he couldn’t explain it. But in the last several months he’d lost some of the joy he’d found in things before. In his work. In his everyday life. In everything.

      He still had the same intense drive to succeed, the same burning need to win his cases. That was just his nature—maybe because he was a firstborn. But he didn’t feel that old desire to charge into his day anymore. Nor his after-hours activities either, whether it was dinner with a supermodel in town for a shoot, a party at the White House, a fund-raiser for one of his pet causes or a weekend in the country with a gorgeous woman. It was as if everything had become mundane to him. Even excelling at what he did or being on the A-list around town.

      Yet here he was this morning, excited to get his day under way.

      Why was that?

      The day ahead of him was like any other one. He had calls to make, clients to see, briefs and motions to write, a court appearance after lunch and then more of the same when he got back. Then he had the evening working with Lucy Lowry to straighten up the messes left by the previous secretaries.

      Lucy Lowry.

      Thinking about her intensified his sense of eagerness.

      His latest temporary secretary was causing it?

      That couldn’t be.

      But there it was, irrefutably. What he was looking forward to today was seeing her again.

      If that wasn’t the oddest thing, he didn’t know what was. He’d come away from their meeting yesterday thinking that he was who had really been interviewed. That he’d ended up being told how things were going to be run more than being the one to tell her. That she’d made the rules and left him to take it or leave it rather than the other way around. She was bossy and bold and outspoken.

      So why was he so anxious to put himself in line for more of it?

      She was great-looking, that was likely part of it. He was a sucker for a slender but curvy body with breasts that were just full enough. And that flawless ivory skin didn’t hurt anything. Or that curly mahogany hair—she’d no doubt thought she’d camouflaged its natural seductiveness by trussing it up.

      She had a pert little nose, too. Upturned at the end. That wasn’t something he usually noticed, but for some reason he could picture it in his mind’s eye as if he’d fashioned it himself.

      Then there were her eyes. Wide eyes that offset her simmering sexuality with a more innocent, doelike quality. Sparkling, crystal-blue eyes the color of a clear mountain lake in springtime. They were alight with life, with vigor, energy and spunk. Plenty of spunk.

      In fact, he realized as he watched the sunrise through the sliding doors that led from his bedroom onto the balcony, she had so much spunk she reminded him of the characters Katharine Hepburn had played in so many of her movies with Spencer Tracy. Beautiful, feisty, sharp, smart and able to hold her own with Tracy whether as a lawyer or a reporter or a business whiz.

      That was Lucy Lowry—beautiful, feisty, sharp and smart.

      And he couldn’t seem to get the image of her out of his mind—any more than he could slow the increased beat of his heart every time she slipped into his head.

      So what did that mean? That after fifteen minutes with her he was infatuated?

      That was ridiculous.

      He hadn’t been infatuated-at-first-sight with anyone since his first year in college. He hadn’t been particularly infatuated even after-first-sight with anyone for longer than he could remember. He enjoyed the company of the various women in his life. He looked forward to spending time with them, to everything they did together. But infatuated?

      That was something else entirely.

      That was like having a schoolboy crush and that wasn’t something Rand Colton did.

      But how else could he explain being so excited about going to work?

      Maybe he was just glad to finally have someone competent onboard. Maybe the idea of getting his office in order again had just gone to his head.

      Of course it would help if she hadn’t put that five-o’clock stipulation on things, he thought, actually searching for something contrary to find in the situation.

      What was that all about anyway? She’d been so adamant.

      There had to be a man behind it, he decided. Some guy she was rushing home to, whether she admitted it or not.

      But that possibility rankled Rand and again he looked for a reason.

      He had so much work he needed taken care of—that was all. And there she was decreeing that her day would end at five o’clock on the dot no matter what.

      Decreeing—that rubbed him wrong, too. And there’d been plenty of it. Plenty of decreeing and dictating. And big baby-blue eyes or no big baby-blue eyes, he didn’t like it.

      Any better than he liked the thought that she might be running to some other man….

      Oh, brother, there was that again.

      Some other man? As if he were involved with her and a boyfriend would be another man in her life?

      “Maybe I’ve been working too hard,” Rand muttered to himself, disgusted with his own train of thought.

      Lucy Lowry was just one more in a string of women who had passed through his office since Sadie’s retirement, he told himself reasonably. There had been a dozen before her, there would be more after her, and that was all there was to it. What she did outside the office and who she fraternized with were her own business and no concern of his.

      And being eager to see her again this morning?

      It was just…

      Well, he didn’t know what it was. But it wasn’t infatuation.

      He tossed aside his unread newspaper, set his coffee cup on the nightstand and got out of bed, feeling more agitated than eager now. Because the very idea that he might be interested in Lucy Lowry was too much to bear.

      Women didn’t come into his life and tell him what to do. And he sure as hell didn’t like them if they did. He was only tolerating it in Lucy Lowry because he was in dire need of office help and Sadie had assured him he would get it from her niece.

      Yet despite all his sternness with himself, all his reasoning and rationalizing, as he headed for the shower Lucy Lowry popped into his mind’s eye again and he found himself wondering what that burnished hair of hers looked like down, falling in loose curls around her face.

      And if she might wear it that way today…

      Lucy’s doorbell rang at precisely seven-twenty-nine.

      She opened the door, expecting to find Rand Colton on the stoop and instead faced a stout, balding older man in a chauffeur’s uniform.

      She glanced beyond him at the long black Town Car parked at the curb and assumed her boss was waiting there.

      “I’ll be right out,” she informed the driver.

      Then she closed the door again and went into the living room where Max sat on Sadie’s