“I just—I just wondered if—if I should phone the restaurant and—and tell them there’ll be only three for dinner.””
Merda! This was going from bad to impossible. Did the entire world know what had happened?
“Did I ask you to do that?”
“No, sir. I just thought—”
“Don’t think. Just do what you’re told.” The girl’s face collapsed. Hell. So much for controlling his emotions. “Denise. I’m sorry I snapped at you.”
“It’s Elise,” she said in a wobbly voice. “And you don’t owe me an apology, sir. I just—I mean, I know you’re upset…”
“I am not upset,” Lucas said, forcing a smile the way he’d done when he was a boy. “Why would I be upset?”
“Well—well, Miss Jansson—when she was here a little while ago—” Another gulping swallow. “Mr. Gordon was at my desk. And we couldn’t help but hear—I mean, I couldn’t stop Miss Jansson from going by me and then, once she got inside your office…”
“So,” Lucas said, through his teeth, “I had an audience.” He attempted a smile but suspected it was more a grimace. “What about everyone on the other floors? Were they in attendance, too? ”
“I don’t know, Mr. Vieira, sir. I could ask around, if that’s what—”
“What I want,” Lucas said, “is that you never mention this again. To me or anyone else. Is that clear?”
The girl nodded.
Mental note, Lucas thought dryly. Offer to quadruple regular P.A.’s salary when she returns from vacation if she swears never to leave her desk again barring death, disease, or God forbid, marriage.
“It is, sir, and I want you to know how sorry I am that you and Miss Jansson—”
“Go back to your desk,” Lucas snapped. “And do not interrupt me again or you’ll find yourself at HR, collecting your final check. Understood?”
Apparently, it was. Denise, Elise, whoever in hell she was, slunk off, shutting the door behind her. Lucas glared at it for a couple of seconds. Then he sank into the chair behind his desk, tilted it back and stared at the ceiling.
Wonderful. In a couple of hours, he’d be meeting with a man who spoke little English and a woman who only wanted to get her hands inside his fly. He had no translator, and now his private life was the topic of discussion among his employees.
Why wouldn’t it be?
Elin had made one hell of a scene, storming in, demanding to know about “that blonde bimbo” as she tossed a photo on his desk. It had appeared online, on some gossip site, she said. One look and Lucas knew it was a Photoshopped miracle but done so carelessly that the “bimbo”—an actress, the text said—seemed to hover next to him, her feet a few inches off the ground.
He’d looked up, already smiling, a second away from telling Elin exactly that. Then he’d looked at her icy eyes, the grim set of her mouth, and inconsequential annoyances suddenly began to add up.
Elin’s little makeup bag, left in a vanity drawer. The jeans, shirt, and sneakers left in his closet. So she could get out of a cab at her place at seven in the morning, she’d purred, without raising eyebrows.
Stupid, he’d thought, worse than stupid! Elin didn’t care about raising eyebrows. Besides, half the women in Manhattan got out of cabs in the early morning, still dressed as they’d been the prior night.
And maybe the most obvious part of that lie was that he could count on one hand the number of times Elin, or any other woman, had slept in his bed the entire night.
He wasn’t into that. Sex was sex; sleep was sleep. You did one with a woman. You did the other alone.
“You think it’s funny that you sneaked around? That you cheated on me?” Elin had slapped her hands on her hips. “I’m waiting for an explanation.”
That did it.
Lucas had risen to his feet. Elin was tall but at six-three, he towered over her.
“I do not cheat,” he’d said coldly. “I do not sneak. And I do not explain myself. To you or anyone else.”
She had grown very still. Progress, he’d thought, and he’d gone on, calmly, to remind her of how things were between them. That they were having an affair and it was enjoyable, but—
She’d screamed something at him. In Finnish, but still, he could tell what she’d said was not complimentary.
A second later, she was gone.
No big thing. That was what he’d thought. In fact, it was long past time they said goodbye to each other…
And then, reality had come rushing in.
The dinner. Leonid Rostov. His wife. For one wild second, Lucas had imagined going after Elin and asking if this meant she wasn’t going to go with him tonight…
He stalked to the built-in rosewood cabinet across the room, bypassed Denise-Elise’s witch’s brew, opened a sliding door and took out a thin Baccarat highball glass and a bottle of Macallan single malt Scotch.
It was all his fault. He should have known better than to mix business with pleasure but it had seemed perfect. A beautiful, sophisticated woman who would know which fork to use even as she translated Russian into English and English into Russian. Where in hell could a man find a woman like that at the eleventh hour, even in New—
“M-M-Mr. Vieira?”
“Damnit,” Lucas snarled, and swung toward the door. His P.A. was trembling. Beside her stood, hell, Jack Gordon. Lucas had hired him a year ago. Gordon was bright and innovative. Still, there were times Lucas wondered if there was more to Gordon than met the eye.
Or maybe less.
Lucas jerked his head. Denise-Elise stepped back and closed the door, and Lucas turned an icy look on Gordon.
“This had better be good.”
Gordon blanched but he held his ground. Lucas had to admire him for that.
“Sir. Lucas. I think, when you hear what I have to say—”
“Say it and then get out of here.”
Gordon took a breath. “This isn’t easy…” He took another breath. “I know what happened. You and the Jansson woman…Wait a minute, okay? I’m not here to talk about that.”
“You damned well better not be.”
“She was supposed to go with you tonight. To that meeting,” Gordon said hurriedly. “You mentioned it Monday morning, how Rostov didn’t want real translators, so he’d talk through his wife and you—”
“Get to the point.”
“Sir. I know someone who’s fluent in Russian.”
“Perhaps you weren’t listening to everything I said on Monday,” Lucas said with icy precision. “Rostov refuses to have anyone he thinks of as a functionary present tonight. He says that’s what official translators are, and perhaps they are, in his world, but what it comes down to is—”
“Dani can pretend to be your date.”
Lucas’s mouth twisted. “I don’t think I can fool our Russian friend into thinking I’ve suddenly decided to go in for boys.”
“Dani’s a girl, sir. A gorgeous girl. She’s smart, too. And she speaks Russian.”
Lucas felt a flare of hope. Then he faced reality. A girl, sight unseen? For an evening as important as this? No way. For all he knew, he’d be compounding what was already a mess into a disaster.
“Forget