Acquiring Mr. Right. Laurie Paige

that he wasn’t named the COO.”

      The new boss shrugged. “Then he should have shown some real interest in the company at some time during the past twenty years. If he gives you any problems, fire him.”

      Krista nearly choked on her coffee.

      Lance continued. “I felt like doing that this morning when he walked in here unannounced. He was supposed to have been here yesterday for the staff meeting.”

      “He has a tendency to be late,” she explained. “Or not show up at all. I guess he thought he could continue his old ways. My secretary said she heard him raise his voice. If he was insubordinate, why didn’t you tell him to clear out?” The question was pure curiosity on her part.

      “I told Heymyer I’d give everyone who wanted it a chance to stay on.” Lance’s dark eyebrows rose slightly. “You’re the boss. You say who stays and who doesn’t. If Mason doesn’t work out, then he goes. Although I wouldn’t toss anybody out on the first day,” he offered as a suggestion. “It’s unsettling for the other employees.”

      “Mason’s the vice president—”

      Lance shook his head. “The Heymyer officers are gone. You and I are the big bosses now.”

      She did a mental double take on that idea. “So what’s his title?”

      “Whatever you decide.” The winter-gray eyes bored right into her. “It’s your job to run the company, so that’s your call. I will need an organizational chart as soon as you can get one done so my people will know who’s who.”

      After she’d absorbed Lance’s information, she asked, unable to keep the facetious tone completely under wraps, “And what will you be doing while I’m drawing up charts, checking production runs and making sure the company is running smoothly?”

      “Envisioning the big picture, coming up with clever ways to integrate the operations and devising strategies to make it all mesh like clockwork.”

      His grin was…sardonic? Definitely.

      “Well,” she said, “that explains the division of labor. I’m so glad we had this chat.”

      “You have a smart mouth, but that’s okay. I like a woman who speaks her mind.”

      “Good, because I have a couple of hundred questions.”

      For the next hour, they discussed the changes that would be necessary to save the business. It was obvious he’d had experience in smoothly melding new enterprises into CCS’s operations. Krista tried not to look too naively impressed by his acumen.

      “We might move some parts of production to another location,” he told her, his eyes on the middle distance as if he could see those parts being transferred already.

      “You said you weren’t shutting down here,” she reminded him with a fierce frown. “You said no one would lose their jobs, that we’re going to put the company back on track. That’s why I agreed to stay.”

      “I’m not talking about shutting down, but things aren’t going to stay exactly the same. That’s why the company was going downhill—it was static.”

      He held her gaze until she was forced to acknowledge the truth in his words. She sighed. “I know. Sorry. I’ll pull in my claws.”

      He leaned toward her. “Sometimes claws are useful.” He lifted her left hand. Her nails were short and buffed to a shine rather than polished. “With these, I don’t think I have anything to worry about.”

      Her skin burned everywhere he touched her. Maybe he didn’t have anything to worry about, but maybe she did. Shaking off the sensation, she continued their planning session.

      “One other thing,” she said some time later, preparing to leave. “Someone put up a sign with my name on it in a parking space next to your car. Who authorized it?”

      “I did.”

      “Have it taken down. I already have a space I like.”

      “You’re the COO. Don’t you think you’re entitled to a few perks?”

      She was aware of his keen gaze on her as if she were some newly discovered pest under study. “Not that kind. It irritated me when I worked on the production line for the VIPs to assume they had more rights than anyone else. Even Mason, who was rarely here, had a reserved space.”

      “So where are the signs now?”

      She grinned. “When I became CFO, I told the executive staff there wasn’t money in the budget to replace the old signs when they needed repair. James agreed. After that, parking near the door was a perk only to those who got here early. It greatly improved the timeliness of the staff’s arrival.”

      When he chuckled, she again found herself spellbound by the sound.

      “What time do you usually come in?” he asked.

      “Seven-thirty or thereabouts. I had a flat this morning, picked up a nail in a brand-new tire. There’s a lot of construction going on in my neighborhood.”

      “Who changed the tire?”

      “I did. My uncle says people need to be self-sufficient regarding minor emergencies such as flats. He taught us basic car maintenance and simple household repairs.”

      “Smart man.” He paused, then added, “James said your mother died when you were a child.”

      She heard the slight upward inflection and had to decide how much she wanted him to know about her personal life. “Shortly after I turned ten.”

      “So you went to live with an uncle?”

      Krista felt the familiar tightening inside, the shutting down of emotion when someone delved into her life. “Actually he was my stepfather’s brother. He took me and my brother Tony in as well as Jeremy, his nephew. Then Social Services found out and moved me and Tony to a foster home. They said the four of us couldn’t share a two-bedroom home. I slept on the sofa while Jeremy and Tony shared the spare room. At the foster home, Tony and I had our own rooms.”

      “It wasn’t a happy experience,” Lance concluded, his expression becoming grim, as if he could see the unhappiness of those children.

      Unwanted memories flooded her mind. She’d broken a plate at dinner one night. Her foster father had beaten her with his belt. She’d stared into the distance and imagined escaping, running to her mother. At one point she’d felt moisture on her legs and trembled with fear, not knowing what the man would do if she’d wet her pants. But it had been blood running down her legs into her socks.

      That’s when Tony had sneaked out into the night and gone to their step-cousin for help.

      Not wanting to disclose any emotion that those keen gray eyes would surely detect, she went to the window and gazed out at the desert land. “The foster father beat us, so we ran away with Jeremy. He was seventeen. We sort of lived off the land that summer. In the winter, Jeremy got a job at a grocery and we lived in an abandoned gas station that had had living quarters on the second floor.”

      “How long did you live like that?” Lance asked, his voice fathoms deep with a stillness at its center that she found oddly comforting. His reflection appeared in the windowpane next to hers. His heat swept over her, all the way to the hidden place inside.

      “We were caught the following summer on a ranch. The family there went to bat for us and we were returned to our uncle, Jeff Aquilon. He became our legal guardian, and we lived happily ever after.” She cast Lance a saucy grin to show him she was still living that good life.

      His manner was thoughtful, as if he was connecting all the dots while he studied her. “You and your brother took your guardian’s name?”

      “Well, he made it legal, but our mother started using Aquilon for all of us when she married his older brother.” Anticipating the next question of his very logical mind,