Emmy watched her run the gamut of unattached wolves at the bar. When she turned back, Nick was in Lindy’s chair. “Déjà vu,” she said. “Except this time you weren’t invited.”
“You want Lindy to come back and protect you from me?”
No, Emmy thought, I wanted Lindy to come back and protect me from myself. Nick was sitting there, all handsome and smiling—a little scruffy, sure, but she was even beginning to like the two-day stubble. She wondered how it would feel if she ran her fingers through it, if it would be soft or scratchy against her cheek, and her lips—
“Tongue-tied?” he asked. “Anything I can do to help?”
Great, more mental pictures she had no business viewing. “We’re not going to talk about me,” she said, and she definitely wasn’t thinking about her body parts anymore, especially not in any context that involved Nick.
“Okay,” he said as the waiter arrived, “let’s talk about me.”
“Exactly what I had in mind.” Emmy sat back a little so her meal could be set in front of her. The waiter hesitated, clearly disappointed, then he placed Lindy’s plate in front of Nick. It was some sort of fusion cuisine in keeping with the trendy restaurant, a bristling tower comprised of asparagus, something white and mashed that may or may not have been potatoes, and what appeared to be thinly sliced beef. The whole thing was drizzled with some sort of brown sauce, and swirls of the same sauce decorated the white plate.
Nick turned it in a full circle, studying the tower from all sides, then picked up his fork and knocked it over.
No finesse, Emmy thought, but it wasn’t his eating habits that offended her. “Don’t have a lot of patience, do you?”
“Not when it’s something I really want.”
“Then I guess that means you don’t really want to save your father’s company.”
Nick put down his fork, slowly, his face for once blank. Emmy had a suspicion that she’d said something wrong, but she couldn’t imagine what.
“You’ve got me all figured out,” he said, his smile teasing. “Lindy help you with that, or were you studying more than my work flow this past week?”
“Lindy’s a lawyer. She’s learned to read people pretty well.” Not to mention she’d had enough psychoanalysis to be able to sum up anyone in a couple of sentences. But Lindy’s past was none of his business, and neither was Emmy’s present. “I didn’t need Lindy to tell me about you. You’re obviously attached to your company, and the people who work there. You said yourself it’s like a family.”
“And that’s bad?”
“Of course not,” Emmy said, even if the concept of family was foreign to her—at least the concept of a happy family. “The problem is, you own the place, and that makes you responsible for everyone else who works there.”
Nick abandoned his meal again, crossing his arms on the table and focusing intently on her. “I still don’t see the problem.”
“It’s like being a parent. You can be a friend to your kids on occasion, but not all the time. Somebody has to provide stability and control, make the hard decisions even though it means the people affected by those decisions may be resentful or unhappy. That somebody is you, but you seem to be happy letting them run the show.”
“Some of those ‘kids’ have been with Porter and Son since I was in grade school. They know the business better than I do.”
“They know the back end—production and shipping. It’s the front end of the business that’s suffering, Nick. Sales, purchasing, product placement, advertising. That’s your job, and you haven’t been doing it very well. Hiring me is a good first step—”
“At least from eight to five.”
Emmy sat back in her seat. She’d noticed his slight hesitation at signing the contract, and then promptly forgotten about it. There was no knowing what was going on in Nick Porter’s head, but she’d taken it for granted that he’d faced the fact that Porter and Son was in trouble. It appeared, however, that he wasn’t entirely comfortable accepting help to rescue his company. She’d forgotten that some clients were like that, even after they’d hired her. She should have been more tactful, but she hadn’t edited her opinions, and now he was on the defensive. “I’m sorry. I tend to get caught up in my work.”
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