That Boss Of Mine. Elizabeth Bevarly

idea he hadn’t had for a very long time. And it would be just perfect for what Otis Denby was looking for in a commercial design. Quickly, before the idea could escape, Wheeler gathered his pens and began to sketch.

      What Denby had promised wouldn’t take a minute, in fact, did not take a minute. It took about thirty minutes. But Wheeler scarcely noticed, because he spent the entire length of time sketching madly and enjoying a brainstorm that made Godzilla look like a cute little newt. And when that length of time finally had passed, it wasn’t Denby who entered Wheeler’s office—it was Miss Finnegan. She was humming under her breath an off-key rendition of what sounded like The Flintstones theme song, and carrying two cups of coffee, which, naturally, led Wheeler to believe that one of them was for him.

      Damn.

      Surprisingly, she only stumbled once as she entered, and even at that, she spilled just a few drops of coffee—merely enough to slightly enlarge two of the half-dozen or so coffee stains that had appeared on his rug over the past week. But he was still preoccupied by the last few drizzlings of his idea, so he barely registered the new stains. When she extended a cup toward him, he noticed that she had an ace bandage wound about her wrist. He was about to ask her what had happened when she spoke up, scattering his thoughts.

      “Mr. Denby is a very nice man,” she said.

      Wheeler nodded dispassionately, curling his fingers around the coffee cup, which just went to show how suicidal he began to feel at the mention of his former client. “Yep. Denby’s account was the best one I had. I’m hoping maybe this sketch I’m working on now will win him back.”

      “Had?” Miss Finnegan echoed. “Win him back? What are you talking about? He’s still your client.”

      Wheeler glanced up, surprised. “He is?”

      His secretary shrugged. “Sure.”

      “Then...why was he here this morning? Other than acting as your orchid mentor, I mean?”

      She shrugged, clearly unconcerned by his worry. “He just needed to get a few things straightened out about the new design you’re doing for him, that’s all. Why did you think Mr. Denby wouldn’t be your client anymore?”

      He hesitated before answering. Naturally, it hadn’t escaped his notice that Audrey Finnegan wasn’t the most observant human being in the world. But surely even she could see how badly Rush Commercial Designs, Inc. was foundering. He had, after all, pretty much spelled it out for her that first day. And then there was that small matter of him having virtually no furniture, nor any clients. That seemed to him as if it would be kind of a dead giveaway. But then, that was Wheeler. Always assuming the obvious.

      “Well,” he began slowly, speaking his thoughts aloud, “there is that small matter of my having lost nearly every other client I have. I shouldn’t think Mr. Denby would be too different in that respect.”

      “Oh, that,” Miss Finnegan said as she sipped her coffee. Amazing. She didn’t grimace once. “Mr. Denby is different, actually. And you didn’t need those other clients, anyway.”

      Wheeler rather begged to differ, and didn’t hesitate to tell her so. “Oh, I think, Miss Finnegan, that I did need those other clients. Desperately, in fact. I do have bills to pay.” And lots of them, he recalled.

      She wrinkled her nose as she shook her head, and Wheeler couldn’t help but think, for some reason, that the gesture was really...very...well, cute came to mind.

      “No, you didn’t need them,” she insisted lightly before enjoying—enjoying—another sip of her coffee.

      “I didn’t?”

      She shook her head again. “Nah. They were alarmists.”

      “They were?”

      This time she nodded. “Those kinds of people are ready to bail at the slightest sign of adversity. They have no staying power whatsoever. You would have lost them anyway, eventually.”

      “I would?”

      She offered him an expression that assured him he was dreaming if he thought otherwise. “Oh, yeah. I’ve been going over your files as I’ve been rearranging them, and—”

      Wheeler sat up straight at that, eyeing her in a panic. “You...you’ve been rearranging my files?”

      She enjoyed another unconcerned sip of coffee. “Well, of course I’ve been rearranging your files. They were a mess—all alphabetical and everything. They made no sense at all. With all due respect to your former secretary, she could have learned a thing or two about filing.”

      Wheeler closed his eyes. Rosalie, his former secretary, had been an absolute whiz at organizing his accounts. Although she wasn’t the biggest people person on the planet—okay, so she’d been abrasive, gruff and borderline obnoxious—her filing system would have been the envy of the Pentagon and the IRS. His associates had always considered her a file Nazi, but Wheeler had been a bit more charitable, thinking her more of a file queen. No, scratch that. What Rosalie had been was a file goddess. And now Miss Finnegan, the pretender to the throne, had “fixed” those files.

      Oh, no...

      “Anyway,” she went on, “I’ve been trying to familiarize myself with your different clients, and, in my opinion at least, a lot of them were just fly-by-nights. I mean, I know you were starting up a new business, so you had to take whatever came your way, but some of these people, Mr. Rush...they just weren’t the kind of clients you need. What you need to do is focus on attracting a more reliable, more stable account base.”

      Wheeler narrowed his eyes at her. She sounded, almost, like she knew what she was talking about. “How so?” he ventured.

      She waved a negligent hand through the air. “Don’t you worry about that,” she said. “You just focus on your designs. I’ll handle your accounts.”

      Oh, no, no, no, no, no. I don’t think so. “Um, Miss Finnegan,” he began, striving for a diplomacy he was nowhere close to feeling in his surging panic, “I appreciate your wanting to take some of the heat, but honestly, I think you should tell me what you’re talking about.”

      She smiled, those luscious lips that he just couldn’t quite ignore looking more tempting than ever. “Just trust me,” she said mildly. “I know what I’m doing.”

      That, he thought, was open to debate. “But—”

      “Is it okay if I take an extra half hour for lunch today?” she interrupted him. “I need to see about Marlene’s car.”

      The change of subject nearly gave him mental whiplash. “No, before we talk about that, I think we need to talk about this other thing first.”

      She studied him in confusion. “What other thing?”

      “This thing with my accounts,” he prodded. “You’re not suggesting that you—”

      “I’ll make the half hour up tomorrow,” she said, still not quite grasping the topic he wanted to put first. “I’ll only take thirty minutes for lunch, so it doesn’t mess up the time thing.”

      “No, Miss Finnegan, before the time thing, back up to the other thing...the thing we were talking about a minute ago.”

      She squinted at him. “Were we talking about another thing a minute ago?” she asked. “What was it? I can’t remember.”

      “That thing,” he repeated emphatically. “That account thing. You know... That thing about how I should be attracting a more reliable account base. I want to talk about that.”

      She squinted some more. “Did I say something about an account thing?”

      He nodded. Vigorously. And he battled the urge to start pulling his hair out by the roots. “Yes. You did. Or, at least, you started to. And it sounded like what you were going to say about the account thing was going to make sense and be very helpful. What was it?”

      She