Married to His Business / Six-Month Mistress: Married to His Business. Elizabeth Bevarly

that it mattered now, Kendall told herself, since she wasn’t going to be a part of his pursuit—or his success—much longer. She had a pursuit—and success—of her own to accomplish, and she should have started years ago. With her MBA from Stanford, she’d been overqualified for the position of personal assistant when she’d taken the job with Matthias. But she’d known that working for someone like him for a couple of years, even as a personal assistant, would offer her entrée into an echelon of big business that most recent grads never saw. She’d learn from a legend and make contacts up the wazoo, swimming with the proverbial sharks. But “a couple of years” had become five, and Kendall was savvy enough around the sharks now to be able to grill them up with a nice wasabi sauce.

      It was time to go.

      “Okay, where were we?” Matthias asked.

      “Well, sir,” she began, “you’d just, um, concluded your call with Elliot Donovan at The Springhurst Corporation, and I—” She inhaled a deep breath, steeled herself for battle, and said, in a surprisingly sturdy voice, “I was about to give you my two weeks’ notice.” To herself, she added silently, And this time, I’m going through with it, no matter how hard you try to change my mind.

      His head snapped up at her announcement, and his bittersweet chocolate eyes went flinty. “Kendall, I thought we’d already talked about this.”

      “We have, sir, several times,” she agreed. “Which is why it shouldn’t come as a surprise. Now that your wedding to Miss Conover is off—”

      “Look, just because Lauren and I canceled our plans,” Matthias interrupted, “that doesn’t mean I don’t still need you to take care of things.”

      His now-defunct wedding to Lauren Conover had just been the most recent reason he’d used for why Kendall couldn’t leave his employ yet, but she was still surprised he would try to use it again. Technically, the wedding hadn’t been canceled. There had just been a change of date and venue. Oh, and also a change of groom, since Lauren was now planning to marry Matthias’s twin brother, Luke.

      “Anything left to do will be taken care of by Miss Conover and her family,” Kendall pointed out. “If there’s anything left to do.”

      And she doubted there was. Matthias hadn’t spoken much about his broken engagement, but Kendall hadn’t been surprised when she’d heard the news. Well, maybe the part about Lauren’s falling in love with Luke Barton had been a little surprising. Okay, a lot surprising. But even without Luke’s intervention, the marriage, as far as Kendall was concerned, would have been a huge mistake. Matthias had proposed to Lauren Conover only because he’d wanted to merge his business with her father’s, and Lauren Conover had accepted the proposal only because…

      Well, frankly, Kendall was still trying to figure that one out. She’d met Lauren only a few times, but she’d never gotten the impression that Lauren was in love with Matthias—or even in like with him. Obviously she hadn’t been in love, because she wouldn’t have fallen for his brother, identical twin or not, if she had been. Personality-wise, Luke and Matthias Barton couldn’t be more different from each other—save the fact that Luke was as driven professionally as his brother was. At least, that was what the office scuttlebutt said. Kendall had never met the other man in person.

      There was no question that the match between Luke and Lauren was indeed a love match. With Matthias, however, any life he’d envisioned building with Lauren had been more about business than pleasure, more about ambition than affection. There were times when Kendall wondered if the man could care about anything but building his business.

      Matthias said nothing for a moment, only met Kendall’s gaze levelly. “But there are other things I’m going to need you to—”

      “There is nothing,” she quickly, but firmly, interjected, before he had a chance to create and/or fabricate a host of obligations that anyone could see to. “We’re coming up on the slowest time of the year for Barton Limited,” she reminded him. “I have you up to speed on everything for the next month. Now that the Stuttgart trip is out of the way, you don’t have any international travel scheduled until the fall. No conferences until September. Nothing pressing that whoever you hire to take my place won’t have plenty of time to prepare for. And since you’ll be spending the entire month of July at your friend’s lodge, anyway, that makes this the perfect time for me to—”

      “I’ll need you more than ever at Hunter’s lodge,” Matthias interrupted. “Even with all the preparation I’ve done—”

      You mean I’ve done, Kendall thought to herself, since it had been she, not Matthias, who’d made all the arrangements.

      “—it’s still going to be difficult, being away from the office for that length of time. It’s essential that I take someone with me who knows what’s going on.”

      “Then I’d suggest you take Douglas Morton,” Kendall said, naming one of Barton Limited’s newest VPs.

      “Morton needs to be here,” Matthias said. “You need to be with me.”

      So now he was going to use the mysterious month at the mysterious lodge to keep her on her leash, Kendall thought. She knew his upcoming trip to his friend’s lodge on Lake Tahoe was much more than a trip to his friend’s lodge on Lake Tahoe, even if she had no idea exactly why. All she knew was that, in January, he’d received a letter out of the blue from some law office representing the estate of a friend of his from college. The man had passed away, but before going had imparted a dying wish he wanted fulfilled by his old friends. They were each to spend one month in a lodge he owned on the lake.

      Why? Kendall had no idea. But Matthias had driven her crazy for weeks, trying to rearrange his spring schedule so that he could spend his assigned month of April in Lake Tahoe. Then, when he’d been unable to reschedule a trip to Germany in April, he’d driven her even crazier rearranging everything she’d spent weeks rearranging so that he could switch months with his brother Luke—whom he hadn’t even spoken to in years at that point—who had been assigned July.

      There were seven friends in all, Kendall knew, dating back to Matthias’s time at Harvard, all of whom had gradually lost touch with one another after graduating. Matthias hadn’t wanted to talk about it in detail, and Kendall had respected his wishes. She’d also managed the impossible, reworking his schedule and obligations—twice—so that he could abide by his friend’s last wishes and spend his month in Lake Tahoe.

      It would have been so much better if he’d been able to stick with the original plan. Not only because she would have saved herself a lot of trouble, but because Lake Tahoe was where Kendall would be going to complete the necessary training for her new job—starting the first week of July. She was dreading the possibility—however remote—that she might run into Matthias there so soon after severing ties with him. He was bound to be unhappy about her leaving. Even more so once he discovered who her new employer was.

      “I can’t be with you, sir,” she reiterated. Inhaling a deep breath, she told him the rest. “I’ve been offered a position elsewhere that I’ve already accepted. They want me to take part in a week-long training seminar that starts the first of July—two weeks from today,” she added for emphasis. “And I’ll report for work at the company immediately after completing my orientation.”

      Matthias said nothing for several moments, only leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms over his expansive chest. Then he looked at her in a way that made Kendall feel like her backbone was dissolving. Fast. Finally, he said, “You’ve already accepted a position somewhere else?”

      She nodded. And she hoped she sounded more confident than she suddenly felt when she told him, “Um, yes?”

      Oh, yeah. That sounded totally confident. There was nothing like punctuating a statement with a question mark to really hammer home one’s point. Provided one was a four-year-old child.

      “Mind telling me where?” he asked.

      Kendall braced herself for his reaction, reminding