Anna Meets Her Match. Arlene James

his big belly leading the way. Looking down his nose at her, his sandy brown mustache quivered with suppressed anger. Her coworker Howard gave her a pitying shake of his graying head before turning back to his task. Dragging up a smile, Anna faced her employer with more aplomb than she truly felt, but that was the story of her life. She had made an art of putting up the careless, heedless front while inwardly cringing.

      “They want a lot of stuff,” she told him cheerfully, “and they’re interested in a special logo, something unique to the fund-raiser. I’ll just draw up some designs and get together some estimates.”

      “They better be good,” Dennis warned.

      “Of course,” she quipped. “Good is my middle name. Isn’t that why you keep me around?”

      “Miranda is your middle name,” he pointed out, shaking his head in confusion.

      Howard sent her a chiding look. He was right. Dennis was the most sadly humorless man she’d ever known. All attempts at levity were lost on him.

      The chime that signaled the opening of the front door sounded. Smile in place, Anna turned to greet a potential customer, only to freeze. Correction. Dennis was the second most humorless man she’d ever known.

      “Well, if it isn’t Reeves Leland.” Twice in an hour’s time. Some day this was turning out to be. She bucked up her smile and tossed off a flippant line. “Playing errand boy for your aunties?”

      “Something like that.” Reeves opened the front of his tan wool overcoat, revealing the expensive suit that clearly marked him as executive material.

      Howard shook his head and turned away, as if to say she’d blundered again. Anna admired Howard. Despite his thickset build, he appeared fit for a man nearing sixty. He and his wife were devoted to one another and led quiet, settled lives, the sort that Anna could never seem to manage. Her parents had died just months after her birth in a drug-fueled automobile accident, leaving her to the oppressive care of her grandmother. Anna had rebelled early against Tansy’s overbearing control, and at twenty-six, she continued to do so.

      “Can I help you?” Dennis asked Reeves, elbowing Anna out of the way as he bellied up to the counter.

      Reeves barely glanced at the big, blustery man. “Thank you, no. I need to speak to Anna Miranda. About my aunts and the BCBC fund-raiser.”

      Trembling inwardly, Anna pulled out her most professional demeanor. Reeves Leland had come to speak with her, and she couldn’t imagine that was good. Please, God, she prayed silently, don’t let him be here to cancel the order. Dennis would blame her for certain. She waved toward her desk around the corner. Whatever Reeves wanted, it was best dealt with in private.

      “Take a seat.”

      She tucked her notepad under one arm and followed. Reeves glanced around at the illustrations pinned to the walls, his expression just shy of forbidding. Be still my foolish heart, she thought. But it was no joke. To her disgust, Reeves Leland, with his sinewy strength, cleft chin and dark hair, still had the power to send her pulse racing.

      Dropping her notebook on the desk, Anna parked her hands at her waist and cut to the chase. “What’s up?”

      Reeves just looked at her before folding himself down onto the thinly padded steel-framed chair beside her utilitarian desk. He made himself comfortable, stretching out his long legs and crossing his ankles. All righty then. She’d play. Pulling out her armless chair, she turned it sideways and sat down, facing him.

      “Okay. First guess. You’re going to pay the print costs for the fund-raiser. Sky’s the limit, right? Oh, joy,” she deadpanned, waving her hands. “My job’s secure.”

      “Is that what you’re trying to do,” he asked, “secure your job at my aunt’s expense?”

      She blinked at that. “Hey. They called us. I didn’t call them.”

      Reeves folded his hands over his belt buckle, appearing to relax. “Okay, so maybe you didn’t solicit their business, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have a secret agenda.”

      “Like what?”

      “You tell me.”

      Suddenly angry, she snapped her fingers. “I never could pull anything over on you, could I, Stick? After all these years I’ve finally found a way to get you back for not asking me to the homecoming dance.”

      Ack! Had she said that out loud? It wasn’t as if she’d ever actually expected him to ask her to the homecoming dance. But she’d hoped. Oh, how she’d hoped. Not that he’d believe it. He smiled thinly and sat forward, one forearm braced against the corner of her desk.

      “I’m warning you, Anna Miranda,” he rumbled in a low voice. “You better not make my aunts the object of one of your pranks.”

      Pranks? Anna goggled. She hadn’t pulled a prank in years, since high school, at least. She’d been much too busy trying to feed and house herself.

      “And to think,” she hissed, “that I was feeling sorry for that crack I made. I heard about your wife, how she took off, and I felt bad about saying women made a habit of leaving you. Now I’m thinking maybe they got it right.”

      The color drained from his face. For an instant, raw pain dulled his copper-brown gaze, and once more regret slammed her. “Reeves, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that.”

      “My aunts,” he said in a strangled voice, climbing to his feet. “I’m watching you, Anna Miranda Burdett. If you hurt or disappoint them…” Shaking his head, he started to turn away.

      Desperate to convince him of her sincere regret, she reached for his arm. They jerked apart as if zapped by electricity.

      “Never,” she vowed, gazing up at him repentantly, her tingling hand clenched at her side. “I would never hurt your aunts. They’ve always been kind to me. I have the greatest respect for them, and I’ll give them my very best work. You have my word.”

      “I haven’t always found your word trustworthy,” he reminded her quietly, “like the day you swore you hadn’t seen my keys.”

      Anna flushed. “Oh, that.”

      What was it with men and their precious cars? She’d been fourteen, for pity’s sake, just a kid caught in the throes of an unrequited crush. She wasn’t about to apologize for something that had happened twelve years ago.

      Reeves nodded sharply. “Yeah, that.” After staring at her for several seconds, he whirled and strode away.

      Anna slumped against her chair, feeling more alone than usual, though why that should be the case, she couldn’t say. She’d always been alone, after all. Obviously, that was how God intended her to be. But at least she could show Reeves Leland that he was wrong about some things. She did have talent, and she wasn’t afraid to use it.

      As she’d promised Reeves, she would give the Chatams her very best effort, if for no other reason than to secure her job. She’d only been here a few months. After a long string of pointless, temporary positions, she’d finally found work that she enjoyed, even if the boss was difficult. She would hate to lose that, especially since her grandmother expected her to. Also because she had to pay the rent.

      The tiny one-bedroom apartment where she had lived since the age of eighteen in no way compared to the two-story, gingerbread-Victorian house where she had grown up, but Anna would crawl across glass on a daily basis to keep from moving back in with Tansy. She would do worse, she realized suddenly, to raise Reeves Leland’s poor opinion of her, and that’s exactly what she feared she would do. Worse.

      Nevertheless, for the remainder of the week, she concentrated on showing up for work early and giving the BCBC job her best. She contacted the university and got permission to incorporate their insignia into her designs, then she experimented with fonts, illustrations and document styles until she had a handful of satisfactory possibilities to offer for consideration, along with detailed estimates for those items already