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Marco reached for the phone, stabbed the button for his HR manager.
“What is happening about finding me an assistant?”
She told him that she had contacted an agency that specialized in administrative assistants of the highest caliber.
“I explained the urgency of the situation, Mr. Santini, and they’re sending what they assure me are three excellent candidates for interviews this morning. I’ll narrow it to the one who seems most suitable and send her to you for your approval.”
One problem down.
Another thousand to go, including one that was personal.
He took a piece of letterhead engraved with his name, gave what he would write a minute’s thought before coming up with words that were brief, to the point and not open to interpretation.
For shared memories.
He scrawled his name beneath the words, put the note in an envelope and sealed it, and then he phoned Cartier, just a couple of blocks away on Fifth Avenue, arranged for a duplicate of the diamond bracelet raffled off the night before to be delivered to Jessalyn along with the note, which he sent to the store by messenger.
Excellent.
Now he could concentrate on organizing the data he’d need for his trip to Paris tomorrow morning.
Had Emily ever seen Paris?
Marco frowned.
What a foolish thought. And what was she doing, back in his head?
Maybe he should send something to her, now that he’d sent something to Jessalyn. Not jewelry, of course. Nothing that intimate. Chocolates. Flowers. And a note saying he hoped things would go well for her and if they didn’t, she should feel free to get in touch with him and…
And what?
Chocolates and flowers and notes of any kind would be a bad idea. Hadn’t he just been telling himself he’d been mistaken in thinking he’d been attracted to her? Yes, she was different from the women he knew and that made her interesting, but the truth was, how long would such an interest last?
He already knew that she was unsophisticated. Her accent told him that she was a girl from somewhere in the South, probably a small town where life moved at a slower pace. He figured she was in her twenties. It was easy to imagine her finishing high school, trying to find work as a pianist—a piano player, he thought, smiling—and, after coming up empty, taking a job in an insurance office or maybe at a small retail shop for a couple of years while she saved up enough money to come north to the Big Apple.
She would know nothing of the life he led. She’d be as uncomfortable as the proverbial fish out of water.
Last night had been a page torn out of time.
Besides, suppose he did send her flowers. Or asked her to dinner. Once she realized who he was, what he was, a man building an empire, no matter how unsophisticated she was, that would change things. Like the easy way she’d dealt with him. Of course it would.
Plus, what would they talk about? Not that his conversations with the women he dated were ever deep and meaningful. Hell, he wasn’t looking for deep and meaningful, only that the women who passed through his life fit into it.
Seamlessly.
But he’d bet anything in the world that his rain-soaked tigress would fit into his arms.
Into his bed.
Emily, her skin silken and hot under the stroke of his hands, her mouth sweet and parted to the thrust of his tongue, her body arching against his, her cries of need and desire rising into the silence of the night…
His elbow jerked.
Half the stack of messages tumbled to the floor.
Marco muttered a curse, retrieved them, dumped them on his desk and shot to his feet.
The window wall behind him offered a breathtaking view of the city. He swung toward it, flattened his hands against the cool glass and took long, deep breaths until his mind emptied of everything.
