“I could hit you over the head and then I wouldn’t have to finish this conversation.”
Emmy waited, but there was no smart-aleck retort from Lindy. She’d frozen with her martini glass to her mouth, staring over the rim.
“Are you going to help me or not?”
“I found him.” The glass thunked onto the tabletop, sloshing vermouth and gin over the rim.
Lindy tended to be a drama queen, but it had to be something earth-shattering for her to waste good alcohol, so Emmy turned around, peering through the midafternoon gloom of the hotel barroom. “The guy by the door? Tall, dark and disheveled?”
“He’s yummy.”
“He’s messy.” His hair looked like it had been attacked with a hacksaw, he sported a pair of worn-out jeans and a long-sleeved Henley shirt that had seen better days, and he needed a shave. “It’s the middle of the afternoon on a workday and he’s dressed like a bum.”
“He could change his clothes, or better yet take them off entirely.”
“He’d probably leave them on the floor.”
“You’re no fun.”
Roger had accused her of that, too, Emmy recalled. It was harder to ignore the comment coming from her best friend, even though she knew Lindy wasn’t serious.
Emmy had never pictured a man with his clothes off, but once she tried it she discovered some definite advantages—and not the ones she might have suspected. She hadn’t considered herself a judgmental person either, but she realized she had a tendency to jump to conclusions about people based on what she saw on the outside. Once she ignored the packaging, all she saw was a tall man with dark hair, a five o’clock shadow, and a smile that lit up his entire face and threatened to spill over into the room. She knew that because he’d turned that smile on her, full wattage, and she definitely felt brighter. And warmer.
She mentally slapped the worn jeans and ratty shirt back on him before her temperature increased to a point where she risked setting off the overhead sprinklers. “Okay, maybe you have a point.”
“And you didn’t even have to make a list. Go talk to him.”
“I have a client meeting me here…fifteen minutes ago.”
“He’s probably not coming. And since you have the next forty-five minutes dedicated to speaking with a man, why don’t you see if this guy is willing to fill in?”
“My client is late, that’s all.” Not everyone had her sense of punctuality—hence the need for an efficiency expert. “He’ll show up.”
“Not before that guy does.”
Sure enough, the man at the door was threading his way between the tables aiming, unmistakably, for theirs. And now that he was closer, Emmy could see his eyes. If his smile was trouble, his eyes were pure catastrophe, brown and warm and…interested. In her.
She grabbed Lindy’s martini and downed what was left of it in one long gulp.
“Uh-oh. What was that for?”
“That was in case I do something stupid. Then when I wake up tomorrow morning I’ll have something to blame it on.”
“Sounds promising. Are you planning to wake up alone?”
“Yes.” Absolutely. Not having anything to do with this man. When he got to the table she’d let Lindy do all the talking. But if he kept looking at her like that, there was no telling what would happen. Because when he looked at her like that she couldn’t think of a single reason why she shouldn’t ditch Lindy and her client and spend the rest of the day figuring out why this complete stranger knocked the lists right out of her head.
SHE WAS the wrong woman. Nick Porter knew that, even if he couldn’t seem to keep his feet from carrying him in her direction. Sure, she had blond hair and blue eyes, which was the description he’d been given, but the blond hair was a head full of flyaway curls and the eyes were as blue as…something really, really blue.
There was more than one blond woman in the hotel bar, but this was the one Nick wanted to meet, which was convenient since he found himself standing beside her table. Unfortunately, his brain wasn’t routing anything to his mouth so all he could do was stare at her, while she looked back at him with a quizzical, slightly amused expression on her face.
“Mr. Right?”
“What?” Nick glanced toward the sound of that voice, realizing for the first time there was another woman sitting at the table. The only response that came to mind was “you’re in my seat,” so he turned his attention back to the blonde and let the sight of her chase that rude comment out of his brain.
“That’s my cue to leave,” the second woman said. “I stand corrected, Emmy. It may be as easy to replace Roger as you think. And you get to trade up, too. Why did I ever doubt you?”
“The lists never fail,” Emmy said.
“I don’t think it’s the list. I think it’s testosterone.”
Nick filtered their exchange through the impact the blonde’s smile had on him, only picking up necessary information, such as her name. Emmy.
“Here, Mr…”
“Porter,” he said absently, taking the chair the other woman vacated. “Nick Porter.”
“Oh,” Emmy said.
“You don’t like my name?”
“Your name is fine. It just means you’re my client.” She watched her friend make her way to the door, and when she turned to him again, she’d traded in her resigned expression for one that was pleasantly blank. Businesslike. “I’m Emily Jones. Jones Consulting.”
“Emmy,” he corrected before the rest of her introduction battered its way through the brick wall of attraction he felt toward her. “You’re the efficiency expert?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sure?” he asked again, because he couldn’t quite believe it. No self-respecting efficiency expert would go around looking so adorable. Efficiency experts carried clipboards and stopwatches and dressed in neat suits, not skirts and sweaters that tried for conservative without any real hope of pulling it off. They didn’t slam back martinis, they nursed gin and tonics to make sure they didn’t consume more than one ounce of alcohol per hour. And they were supposed to be all about work, not about driving every thought of it from a man’s mind.
“I’m the efficiency expert,” she insisted.
She was dishonesty in advertising is what she was, Nick decided. All that soft-looking blond hair and those big blue eyes, and she expected him to focus on business? But he took the hand she held out and immediately he was fine with that. “So you’re the efficiency expert,” he said. “Good.” Now he didn’t have to feel guilty for almost blowing off his meeting. Okay, so there wouldn’t have been a whole lot of guilt, since one of his best friends from college—also known as his banker—had strong-armed him into this thing to begin with. It was that or no loan, and he really needed a loan.
The company he’d taken over from his father had been showing a little red ink lately, but it was just a temporary downturn in business. A loan would do the trick, Nick had decided, help Porter and Son last until the slow economy got back on its feet. Unfortunately, it wasn’t as easy as that. He’d been turned down by nearly every bank in Boston. Except the bank where his friend worked, and even that approval came with a condition. Hire a consultant, get a turnaround plan and use the loan to put it into practice. Nick had no choice but to follow those instructions, at least until he got the damn loan. Then he’d put his own turnaround plan into place. He wasn’t sure exactly what that plan might entail, but he knew that he was going