After a long Labor Day weekend of visiting salons, shopping and long discussions over choices at the makeup counter, Sarah sat on the fat khaki chair in her living room across from Carmella Lopez and Emily Winters, daughter of Lloyd Winters, owner of Wintersoft.
When Sarah had called Carmella Friday night, Carmella had suggested they enlist Emily’s help with Sarah’s makeover because Emily bridged the gap between Carmella’s and Sarah’s generations. And she had been correct. Using bits and pieces of the experience of three females of varying ages, they had turned Sarah into a stunning woman. With a closet full of new clothes, a new hairdo and just the right makeup, she now had as much confidence about her looks as she had about roping cattle.
“So, are you nervous about tomorrow?” Carmella asked, setting her teacup on the wooden coffee table, right beside the vase of white roses that had started all this.
Sarah looked lovingly at the white blooms. “Surprisingly, no. I know I asked for your help as part of a plan to show Matt I could be feminine, but something else happened. I feel like I’ve finally found the real me.”
“Finding the real you is actually the point of a makeover,” Carmella said with a short laugh.
“And simple and sensual is definitely you,” Emily agreed. A satisfied smile curved her lips, and her sapphire-blue eyes sparkled with approval. “You look great.”
“I feel great. I feel confident enough to conquer the world.”
Carmella frowned. “I hope this doesn’t mean you’ve changed your mind about Matt!”
“No!” Sarah said. “I really like Matt. If he’s interested in me, I want a chance with him, too.”
“Well, if he doesn’t get that message from your new look, then he’s blind,” Carmella said, rising from the sofa.
“Right,” Emily agreed as she also rose. “We’ll see you tomorrow. Remember, come to work a half hour early. The weather report says rain, so you may want some time to pull yourself together before you make the walk down the hall to your office.”
Already at the door, Carmella asked, “Are you sure you’re not uncomfortable making an entrance?”
Sarah laughed. “I think it’s what I need to do. Go for the shock value, get my new self out in the open right off the bat and see how he reacts.”
“I think so, too,” Carmella said and squeezed Sarah’s hands. “We’ll see you tomorrow.”
Sarah let her new friends out of her apartment, then closed the door behind them, wondering if she would get any sleep. She wasn’t nervous about seeing Matt. But she did know he might not react the way Emily and Carmella believed he would because she hadn’t exactly done as he had asked her to do.
For the first time since she’d received the flowers, she was glad for the secret admirer cover. Just as Matt had used it to get his point across to her, Sarah planned to use it to get her point across to him. Looking for her femininity had brought out a sexy side of her personality that even Sarah hadn’t known she had. But when she considered her natural boldness, she knew being confident about her sexuality was her true personality, a part of who she was, and she couldn’t change that. If Matt didn’t want her as she really was, it would break her heart, but at least they would have the cover of anonymity so no one besides Carmella and Emily would know the exchange had occurred.
Matt looked up from his desk Monday morning and the sight that greeted him caused his breath to catch and his mouth to fall open in awe. Sarah walked up the aisle to her workstation, her head high, a smile on her lips.
Her long red hair had been cut and her braid had been replaced by a hairdo that could only be described as sensual. Fat locks of looping curls cascaded to her shoulders and bounced with every step she took.
Her cinnamon-colored suit looked like suede. The skirt was short and Matt could see enough of her legs to realize she hadn’t been hiding just a feminine woman beneath the bland skirts and jackets she usually wore. She had been hiding a goddess.
He rose from his seat and cautiously made his way to the workspace she shared with Sunny Robbins.
‘Sarah?’
“Oh, good morning, Matt.”
She greeted him as if there was nothing different about her appearance today, and for ten seconds Matt couldn’t decide if he should say something or let it alone. He knew he had been the one to tell her to change the way she dressed, but he hadn’t expected she would turn into a completely different person, and he wasn’t sure his real reaction to her new look would be appropriate. What he wanted to do was whistle.
She bent to toss her little brown purse into her desk drawer and Matt’s gaze traveled the curve created by her shapely derriere, down the long length of leg to brown high heels of stiletto proportions and he felt as if his heart stopped. His common sense, boss instincts and attraction all got jumbled and before he knew what was happening, he gasped, “What did you do to yourself?”
Sarah straightened quickly, a stricken look on her face. “You don’t like it?”
“Like it? Dear God. You’re going to give half the men on staff coronaries.”
Her face brightened. Her well-painted lips curved into a smile. “So, I did okay?”
“Okay? Sarah, you look like a totally different person.”
Her stricken expression returned. “I hope you mean that in a good way.” She paused and bit her bottom lip. “Because this is the real me.” She caught his gaze. “And I want my secret admirer to see the real me.”
The quivering that had set up residence in Matt’s abdomen turned to a rock of misery. He might have been the one to instruct Sarah to change a bit for her secret admirer, but, at the time, the guy had seemed more theory than a real person. With that comment, Sarah turned Matt’s “theory” into a living, breathing male. No longer a concept, but competition. “You did this for your secret admirer?”
“You said I needed to be more feminine.”
“I said feminine,” Matt argued, not because he didn’t like her look, but because he did. He really did. But he couldn’t have her. Some other guy would be the recipient of all this femininity. “I didn’t say…”
“Sexy?” Sarah said, interrupting him. Her enthusiasm returned and she smiled broadly. “That was my idea.”
“Why?”
Sarah walked around her desk and stood directly in front of him. “Because after talking to Carmella and Emily on Friday night, I realized that feminine for me would be sexy.”
Matt’s brow furrowed. “Carmella Lopez and Emily Winters?”
“Yes. After our discussion about the roses I decided I needed some help with my makeover, I called Carmella and she brought Emily. But we didn’t run to a store the minute they arrived at my apartment. We talked first, and they told me that feminine could mean a lot of things.”
Not at all willing to hand over this Sarah to another man, Matt said, “Yeah, like flowered dresses, little white purses and lace-trimmed gloves.”
“I’m sure there are proper ladies in the South who would agree with you.” She took a step closer and smiled the smile that made Matt’s knees weak. “But I’m not like one of those ladies and I believe my secret admirer needs to see the real me.”
“And this is the real you?”
Holding his gaze, she nodded.
Matt stifled the urge to tug at his shirt collar because with her standing about a foot in front of him, smiling her confident, positive, sexy smile, the room was suddenly very warm. “You’re sure?”
She nodded again. “Carmella says it’s all about confidence and this is the most confident I’ve felt in years. If I were in a dainty dress with little white gloves I would feel like a fake.”
She shifted away from Matt so she could hit the switch to turn on her computer monitor and Matt took the opportunity to loosen his collar so he could catch his breath.
“But the plain suits weren’t me, either,” she continued. “So we experimented with a few looks until we got to this one and, voilà,” she said, facing him again. “Suddenly I felt like me.”
“Holy cow!” Sunny Robbins, paralegal to Grant Lawson, Wintersoft’s in-house counsel entered the office. Her chin-length sun-kissed brown hair had been tossed about by the September breeze and her black pantsuit was rain-splattered.
Matt quickly glanced back at Sarah. She hadn’t worn a coat or a rain hat. Yet her suit was dry and her hair was perfect.
Sunny stopped beside Sarah and ran her gaze from the top of her head to the tips of her perfectly dry, brown, high-heeled sandals.
“Holy cow!”
Sarah laughed. “Thanks. I think.”
“Oh, my ‘holy cow’ definitely deserved a thanks,” Sunny said as she rounded Sarah’s desk and tossed her purse onto her chair. “You look great.”
“I feel great! I feel terrific!”
Sunny laughed. “I would feel terrific, too, if I looked like that! What brought this on?”
Matt glanced at dry, perfectly coifed Sarah again. Something was wrong here. There was no way she got from the bus to this building without getting wet. She must have stopped somewhere and fixed herself up before stepping into the office. If he didn’t know better, Matt might think she had actually made an entrance.
His voice slow and cautious, Matt said, “Sarah has a secret admirer.”
Both of Sunny’s eyebrows rose. “Really?”
“Yeah, he sent me flowers late Friday afternoon,” Sarah said. Hearing the odd tone in Matt’s voice, she glanced at him, saw the confused expression on his face and decided that look was the final nail in the coffin. From the second she’d arrived, he’d been sputtering and arguing with her choices. Now his quiet voice and unhappy expression confirmed what she’d guessed all along. He didn’t like her new look.
The thought made her stomach churn and her knees shake like two leaves in the wind. Worse, her breath wanted to come out in quick panting gasps, but just as Carmella had taught her over the weekend, Sarah controlled all that. Because, deep down inside, she genuinely believed what she had told Matt. This was the real Sarah Morris. If Matt didn’t like the real her then she had to move on, find a guy who would like her, exactly as she was. No matter how much it hurt that it wasn’t Matt.
“I left the flowers here, Matt brought them to my apartment and we got to talking about why someone would send me flowers anonymously,” Sarah said, watching as Matt disappeared into his office. “Matt guessed that the guy wanted some kind of signal from me that I was interested in dating, and this is what Carmella, Emily and I came up with.”
Sunny shot her a skeptical look. “Matt told you that changing your look would signal the secret admirer to ask you out?”
“Yeah.”
Sunny laughed. “Just goes to show what he knows! The truth is, Sarah, secret admirers are usually friends trying to cheer you up.”
Sarah frowned. She had thought exactly that. Right from the beginning she’d decided that if Matt had sent her those flowers it was to boost her morale.
“But in your case, I think Matt took advantage of the flowers to go one step further.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well,” she said, pointing at Sarah. “Look at you. You look wonderful. One of your friends might have sent you the flowers, but Matt used them to get you to come out of your shell. Lots of guys are going to ask you out. He did you a huge favor.”
With every sentence Sunny spoke, tears pricked Sarah’s eyes. She finally understood. She still believed Matt had sent her the flowers, but she now knew he hadn’t done it so she would bring out her feminine side for him. It was of no consequence whether or not he liked her new look. He’d encouraged her makeover so she’d find another man.
She’d thought she and Matt were using the secret flower sender facade to protect Matt, but the truth was he might have created the secure forum of a secret admirer for her. That anonymity was the only thing keeping her from dying of embarrassment right now.
But it wasn’t doing a darned thing to protect her bruised heart. He’d never wanted her. He probably hadn’t even considered wanting her.
Matt drove to his father’s house that evening feeling as if someone had punched him. He’d spent the day watching out his office door as every woman and probably fifty percent of the men employed by Wintersoft had trickled into Sarah’s office to see her new “look.” All the women had gasped with envy. All the guys had gasped in awe. The single men had asked her out. And Matt’s teeth were now ground down to about half their size.
He pulled his SUV into his dad’s driveway and climbed out, not sure it was a good idea to keep his long-standing every-other-night dinner date with his dad. He knew he wasn’t going to be good company. Worse, he knew his dad would demand to know why.
He didn’t even get the whole way up the walk before his dad, Wayne Burke, also a CPA and probably the picture of what Matt would look like at age fifty-five, with his short brown hair, broad shoulders and blue eyes, opened the door.
“Somebody stole your fire truck,” he said, referring to the fact that when Matt was seven a neighbor kid had run off with his toy and wouldn’t return it until Matt’s dad had interfered.
“No,” Matt said, as he stepped inside the neat-as-apin foyer of the Cape Cod house, not in the mood to play this silly game with his dad.
“Just give me the name and I’ll go talk to his father, get it back for you.”
“This isn’t funny tonight, Dad.”
“I think it is. I think it’s hysterical,” Wayne said and laughed heartily to prove it. “I love it when you’re in a bad mood. Gives me a reason to poke into your personal life since you’re usually not too free with information. Here, give me your raincoat.”
Though he tried to smile and look like his usual happy-go-lucky self, the raincoat reminded Matt of seeing bone-dry Sarah walk into the office and sent his blood pressure soaring again. He could only figure that Sarah had made an entrance this morning. Given that he and Grant Lawson, Wintersoft’s legal counsel, were the only two men in that section of the office, that had to mean Sarah believed Grant had sent her those flowers, and she wanted to look picture-perfect the first time he saw her new look.
But the more Matt thought about it, the more he decided that Sarah would have to know that men like tall, handsome, suave Grant didn’t need to send women flowers anonymously. They were bold enough to come right out and say whatever they wanted whenever they wanted. They didn’t need to be secret admirers.
Grant himself backed up Matt’s theory. If Grant had been the person to send Sarah flowers Friday afternoon, he would have been eager to see her reaction—which in this case was an eye-popping makeover—and he would have commented. Instead, he didn’t seem to notice Sarah’s makeover when he arrived, and he had stayed sequestered in his office most of the day.
But Matt’s whole hypothesis had fallen through when Wintersoft’s general counsel had stepped into Sarah and Sunny’s workstation two minutes after Sunny had left and started making small talk with Sarah.
Small talk! Lawyers never made small talk. Every word they spoke had a purpose. And, in this case, the only purpose could be that Grant was putting the moves on Sarah.
Matt wanted to punch him.
Wayne closed the closet door and headed for his bright yellow kitchen. “I made your favorite. Roast beef and mashed potatoes.”
Matt followed his dad down the hall. “I’m not hungry,” he said, then wished he could bite his tongue.
His dad stopped, faced Matt and shook his head. “You know I’m going to get this out of you before the end of the night.”
Matt sighed. “There’s nothing to get out.”
“Great, then I’m sure you’ll want seconds on potatoes.”
“All right,” Matt said, realizing he wasn’t in the mood for two hours of twenty questions while being forced to eat mass quantities of food that would taste like sawdust, so he might as well tell the truth and get it over with. “If you have to know, I’m preoccupied because Sarah has a secret admirer.”
“Your assistant Sarah?” Wayne asked, pushing open the swinging door that led to his kitchen. The round oak table had been set for dinner.
Matt walked to the refrigerator and grabbed two beers. “Yes.”
Wayne laughed. “And you’re jealous.”
“No. I’m concerned because I think it’s Wintersoft’s legal counsel, Grant Lawson.”
Matt’s dad thought for a second before he said, “I must not know him.”
“He’s a nice enough guy,” Matt said, taking his usual seat and setting his napkin on his lap. “But he’s divorced and I get the impression he’s soured on marriage enough that he’ll never take the plunge again.”
“Oh, so you’re worried about Sarah?”
“Yes,” Matt said, sighing with relief that his dad understood. He wasn’t jealous. Really. He was concerned.
“And you’re not even a little jealous?”
“No. Just very concerned,” Matt said, but a picture of Sarah in her cinnamon-colored suede suit popped into his head and his chest tightened.
“That’s why your face just turned beet-red. Because you’re not jealous.”
Matt tossed his napkin to the table. “I don’t know why I come here to have dinner with you.”
“You come here because I’m your dad and I don’t let you get away with lying. Especially not to yourself.” Wayne served himself a thick slice of pot roast. “Which means you want me to be honest, so I have to come right out and say this. You’ve got the look of a jealous man on your face.”
Matt sighed. “Okay, you want me to come clean. I’ll come clean. Sarah got flowers Friday night and, yeah, I got a twinge of jealousy. But I squelched it because bosses are not supposed to date the women they supervise.”
Wayne took a big bite of mashed potato, chewed, then said, “So get her transferred.”
Matt gaped at his dad. “That would be idiotic.”
“Why?”
“Why? Because she’s a good worker. I need her.”
“You know what, Matt? You’re thirty-one. At this point in your life I would much rather hear you say you need a woman sexually than as a good secretary.”
Matt squeezed his eyes shut. “Here we go again!”
“I’m not getting any younger. Neither are you. I would like to have grandkids while I still have energy enough to bounce them on my knee.”
“You might want grandkids now, but I can’t afford kids for another few years. Besides, you’re the one who always told me not to get involved with a woman until I’m ready. So butt out.”
Wayne’s face reddened, and he looked down at his green beans.
Matt was instantly repentant.
“Dad, I’m sorry, I…”
“No, it’s all right. You’re right. A man needs to be ready to get married and even more ready to have kids. If you think you’re not there financially, then I support you.”
Matt said, “Thanks.” But he felt awful, really and truly awful. Not because he had insulted his dad, though he had. But more because he wasn’t ready. And because he wasn’t ready he couldn’t give his dad the family he wanted.
Worse, he felt awful because he couldn’t protect Sarah.
The next morning, Matt sat behind his desk feeling like the starship Enterprise on red alert. Grant had to pass through Sarah and Sunny’s workstation to get to his office and if he said one word that Matt didn’t like, Matt was pouncing. He couldn’t save Sarah by dating her because he was her boss, but that didn’t mean he would let her get involved with a man who had no intention of settling down. So far neither Grant nor Sarah had arrived, but Matt was ready.
Even as he finished that thought, Sarah turned the corner from the main entryway. As she had the day before, she walked down the hall to her office as if in slow motion. The thick curls of her beautiful red hair bounced around her. Her long legs ate up the space to her office as if it were nothing. Her navy-blue suit fit her as if it had been made for her. Her flawless makeup made her look like a model rather than an accounting assistant.
“Good morning, Matt!”
He cleared his throat. Without getting up from his seat he called, “Good morning.”
Grant Lawson picked that precise second to walk down the corridor. Reading a newspaper and carrying a briefcase, he nearly walked into Sarah.
“Oh, I’m sorry!” he said, dropping his briefcase and grabbing her shoulders to right her when she swayed on her tall navy-blue shoes.
Sarah smiled at him. “It’s okay. No harm done. I should know better than to stop in the hall.”
Gazing into Sarah’s eyes, Grant grinned and Matt’s pulse began to hammer. He rose from his seat and rounded his desk. He was halfway to Sarah’s workstation before he realized he had no clue what he would say, and no right to say anything anyway.
Grant stepped back. “I still should have been looking,” he said, then picked up his briefcase. “Would you tell Sunny to buzz me the second she gets in? I’m closing my door today. I don’t want to be disturbed.”
Sarah turned and walked to her desk. “Sure. I’ll be glad to.”
Grant stuck his nose in his newspaper again. “Great. Thanks.”
Matt stared at the scene, deciding he must have imagined anything flirtatious he’d thought he’d seen in the beginning of that mess. Not only did Sarah not look interested in Grant, but Grant didn’t look interested in Sarah. A swell of relief filled Matt’s chest, until he realized he really was jealous. And not just the I-wish-I-was-like-him kind of jealous. He was full-blown, man-woman jealous. And there wasn’t a darned thing he could do about it.
“Do you need something, Matt?” Sarah asked curiously and Matt recognized that he had been standing in his doorway, staring at her, for at least thirty seconds.
He looked at her beautiful red hair cascading around her and at her pretty green eyes. In that second, he knew that if the situation were right, he would be dating her. And it didn’t seem fair that he couldn’t.
But, fair or not, it was life. Not dating a subordinate was a rule made not to protect bosses, but to protect the people who worked for them. Because he would never, ever, do anything to hurt Sarah, Matt turned and walked into his office without a word. He would get beyond this. He had to.
But as the morning wore on and the parade of men continued, Matt began to get tense. He also noticed something else. Not one other executive in this company seemed concerned about dating a subordinate. True, none of them was Sarah’s immediate supervisor as Matt was. But they were still supervisors. And supervisors didn’t date subordinates! They all should be staying the hell away from her.
The flirting and silliness went on throughout the afternoon, and Matt’s irritation grew. The whole world seemed intent on thumbing its nose at rules Matt held sacred. He became more and more angry at the injustice of it, until he snapped at Carmella that night when she stopped in his office to deliver a copy of a confidential memo from the head of the company, Lloyd Winters.
“Sorry,” he said, then ran his fingers through his short hair, spiking it.
Carmella smiled at him. “That’s okay. It’s nearly eight o’clock,” she said, obviously referring to the fact that he was working late. Not only was the quarterly report due in six weeks, but also he did his staff review for Lloyd the first two weeks in September. “It’s been a long day for you.”
“Yeah. A long day made longer by the parade of men stopping by to flirt with my assistant.”
Carmella grimaced. “I’ll talk to her.”
“It’s not Sarah that’s the problem. It’s the guys coming to ogle her.”
Carmella studied Matt for a second and he felt his face redden as she smiled knowingly. “You’re not angry. You’re jealous.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to.” She took a seat on one of the captain’s chairs in front of Matt’s desk and grinned at him as if this were some sort of game. “So, what are you going to do?”
“Nothing,” he said, tossing his pencil to his desk, confused that he seemed to be the only reasonable person in this company since Sarah got her makeover. “In the first place, she’s my assistant. Asking her out is a sexual harassment suit wait to happen.”
“I don’t think Sarah would…”
“It doesn’t matter,” Matt said, interrupting her, deciding that the entire office had gone around the bend and there was no sense trying to persuade Carmella with an argument she wouldn’t understand. Particularly since he had a better argument up his sleeve. One she couldn’t dispute. “There are more considerations here than just the boss/assistant thing. For one, I’m not in a position yet where I could ask somebody to marry me.”
Carmella only stared at him. “Are you kidding?”
He stared back. “About what?”
“Oh, come on, Matt. I know you’re one of those people who likes to be prepared, but don’t you think it’s a bit overboard not dating a woman because you can’t ask her to marry you?”
