“He’s checking.” Caleb smiled. “I’m sure we’ll have a car here in no time.” At least, he hoped they would.
“Sir, your rental car will be delivered to your location by four in the morning,” Jason said, sounding as if he’d accomplished something wonderful.
“Four!” Caleb checked his watch, then shook his head. “Five hours is unacceptable, Jason. Even if the car is coming from Albuquerque, it shouldn’t take more than a couple of hours.”
“I’m sorry, sir,” Jason said, beginning to sound like a broken record. “The agencies in both Truth or Consequences and Socorro are closed, the one in Las Cruces has all of its cars rented right now and the one in Albuquerque is having to call someone in to drive the car down to you.”
Caleb glanced over at Alyssa. She looked fit to be tied.
“So that’s the best you can do?” he asked the young man.
“I’m afraid so, sir,” Jason answered. “If there’s any-thing else we can do for you, please let us know.”
Caleb snapped the phone shut as he turned to Alyssa. “I guess you’ve figured out by now that we aren’t going anywhere until around four tomorrow morning.”
Looking more pale than she had a few minutes ago, she nodded and started for the passenger door. “I think one of us must be related to Murphy.”
“Who the hell’s Murphy?”
“I’m not sure, but his law has plagued us throughout this trip.”
“Ah, yes. Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong, and at the worst possible moment.” He helped her into the truck. “Well, things could be worse.”
She looked at him like he had spit for brains. “How on earth could things be any worse?”
He grinned. “We could have broken down before or after we got to the rest area.”
“Small consolation,” she said, settling herself on the bench seat. “We’re still stranded.”
“Yes, but at least we’re stuck at a rest area with vending machines.” He hooked his thumb over his shoulder. “I’m going to see if they have bottled water. Do you want one?”
She nodded. “Thank you.”
As Caleb walked the short distance to the row of vending machines, Alyssa took one deep breath, then another. How much anxiety could one woman handle before she lost her mind?
She’d been stressed enough over her behavior when he’d kissed her. Then, after the phone call from the se-curity guard, she’d spent the rest of the night tossing and turning as she’d thought of the office gossip that would surely be spreading like wildfire. Now, she was having to spend another night in Caleb’s disturbing presence.
Watching him get bottles of water from the machine, then start back toward the truck, she shivered. He looked darned good in his sports jacket, dress shirt and jeans. On some men, the combination just wouldn’t work. But on Caleb, it was sexy beyond words. And she had to admit that spending more time with him wasn’t an unpleasant thought. He wasn’t just devastatingly handsome, he was intelligent, easy to talk to and had a nice sense of humor. And boy, oh boy, could he kiss.
Her cheeks heated and she had to force herself to breathe. The more time she spent with him, the more she wanted to know about him, the more she wanted him to kiss her again. And therein lay the problem.
For heaven’s sake, they worked together. She shouldn’t want to spend more time getting to know him. And she definitely shouldn’t want his kiss. She knew all too well from past experience that becoming friendly with a coworker spelled disaster with a great big capital D.
But the choice had been taken out of her hands. Fate had stepped in and taken over—first with the room mix-up and now with a broken radiator hose.
When he opened the driver’s door, he handed her two bottles of water and a package of cookies before remov-ing his sports jacket. Tossing it on the seat between them, he rolled up the sleeves of his white dress shirt, then slid in behind the steering wheel.
Her breath caught and she decided she was in real trouble if all it took to make her insides hum was the sight of his bare forearms. But as he turned up his shirt sleeves, the movement drew attention to the play of muscles and sent her pulse into overdrive.
“I thought you might get hungry while we’re waiting on the rental car,” he said.
She glanced down at the package of cookies. It was only a stale vending-machine snack, but his thoughtfulness touched her more than she could have imagined. No one, including her father, had ever shown her a lot of consideration. She’d always been the bookish nerd who blended into the background, no matter where she went or who she was with. There had even been times after her mother had died that she’d suspected her father had forgotten she existed.
“Thank you,” she said, barely able to get the words past the lump clogging her throat.
“Are you all right?” He reached out to put his arm around her, then, moving his jacket out of the way, pulled her to the middle of the seat. “I know being stuck here is upsetting, but—”
“I’m fine. Really.” Wanting to change the subject be-fore she made a complete fool of herself, she asked, “Do you really think going on picnics and getting closer with the employees is going to make Skerritt and Crowe a more efficient consulting firm?”
He nodded. “Let me ask you this. How much do you know about the people who work under you?”
Thinking hard, she shook her head. “Not much.”
“Exactly.” Twisting in the seat to face her, he leaned back against the driver’s door. “Would you say Geena Phillips has been working up to her potential lately?”
She didn’t have to think twice about the matter. The woman had been late several times in the past couple of weeks. “No. Lately, she’s seemed distracted and I’ve been meaning to talk to her about it.”
“Don’t,” he said, shaking his head. “A disciplinary talk will only add to the problem.”
“I take it you know something I don’t.”
His mouth flattened into a grim line. “She’s battling a case of morning sickness. It’s her first pregnancy, she doesn’t know where the father of her baby disappeared to and she’s scared witless that she won’t be able to handle things by herself.”
Alyssa was shocked. “I had no idea Geena was going through anything like that.”
“That’s because in the past it’s been company policy to check your private life at the door when you come to work.” He shook his head. “Geena’s a good accountant who’s hit a rough patch in her life. She needs our support and assurance that she’s not going to lose the job she’ll need to support herself and the baby. That kind of encouragement from an employer can go a long way to instill loyalty in an employee, as well as inspire them to work harder for the company.”
She could see where a change was definitely in order in that area. “I’ll talk to her about coming in a couple of hours later until she starts feeling better.”
Yawning he nodded his approval. “Now you have the right idea.” It seemed that he’d no sooner gotten the words out than he was sound asleep.
As she leaned her head back against the seat and tried to get comfortable, she had to admit that Caleb’s approach to management made a lot of sense. By the book wasn’t necessarily the best way to handle employees.
But the idea of letting her employees know her better still made her extremely nervous. The more someone knew about you, the more they could use against you. At least, that was the philosophy her father had preached to her for as long as she could remember.
She