“Hyla punctatus,” he said sternly.
It took Olivia a moment to realize he wasn’t uttering some dreadful curse over her, but rather was giving her the Latin—or was it Greek?—name of the frog.
“It’s on the verge of extinction,” he said. “And Tyler Warrington just signed its death warrant.”
He spoke slowly, even for a Georgian. The pace lent an unlikely authority to his words, went some way toward countering his oddball appearance. But not far enough.
“I’m Olivia Payne, Mr. Warrington’s secretary. I’m afraid he’s unavailable,” she told him with the dismissive, wellbred Atlanta-belle tone that had served her through her years as a debutante, then as a single woman. Olivia was an expert at giving men their marching orders. Over the years, she’d broken off no fewer than six engagements. Possibly seven, if you counted Teddy Benson, who’d popped the question three years ago. She’d seen the light faster than normal, and broken it off even before the engagement announcement hit the newspapers.
“Thank you so much for stopping by,” she added pleasantly to Silas. Because one should always be polite in one’s dismissal.
He planted both hands on her desk, which might have intimidated her if he’d done it any faster than a hedgehog crossing the road. The movement put his eyes level with hers, close enough to break through the professional distance she’d set with her voice.
She dropped her gaze, and observed that his hands were clean, his fingernails cut so neatly they might be manicured. She recalled that the tree-frog funding application had come from an address in Buckhead—could this man really live in the most expensive area of Atlanta?
“I won’t take no for an answer,” he said, and there was a hint of steel behind the soft drawl.
While his announcement might be tiresome—at this rate she’d be late to Gigi’s house—it was nothing Olivia couldn’t handle.
“Mr. Grant, as you were told in the letter you received, the foundation does not enter into correspondence about its endowment decisions.” The same clean-break policy worked well with fiancés, she’d found. “I understand you’re disappointed, but I can assure you, Mr. Warrington will not see you.”
He straightened, but only so he could reach one long arm to pull up a chair. “I’ll wait,” he said, and sank into it, legs stretched out in front of him.
This had happened before, so she said, “As you wish,” and returned to her typing.
Most people started to fidget within two minutes. After five minutes, they’d bluster some more. But when they saw she wouldn’t be moved, they’d leave. The longest anyone had stayed was fifteen minutes. Something about silence unnerved them.
Today, it was Olivia who was unnerved. Silas didn’t fidget, not once, for fifteen minutes. He sat with his arms folded, quite still.
She kept her gaze fixed on her screen and wished the phone would ring with a summons to collect something from another part of the building, so she’d have a reason to move. But for once, no one called.
“Who else have you refused money to lately?” Silas’s abrupt question startled her, so that she mistyped a word and looked at him before she remembered not to.
“It’s not my money to give,” she said politely. She added, “Nor is it Mr. Warrington’s.”
“What are your views on conservation and the environment?” he asked.
He really did have an attractive voice, one that almost made her want to say those things mattered to her. But, in this respect at least, she was always honest. Better to admit an unnatural lack of sentiment than to pretend to care.
“I don’t have any.” She was concerned, of course, that the planet shouldn’t be flooded or burned up as a result of global warming. But that wasn’t going to happen in her lifetime, so she didn’t lose any sleep over it.
“Hyla punctatus is a Georgia native, not found anywhere else in America.”
“I’m aware of that. From your funding application.”
He ran a considering gaze over Olivia. She half wished she’d had her roots done this week. She wasn’t out to impress him, she scolded herself. And if she was, her hair, worn loose today in its sculpted bob, her artfully applied makeup and the emerald-green cashmere polo-neck that made her neck look longer and slimmer would surely withstand his scrutiny.
“You know what this world lacks?” he said.
She pressed a hand to her mouth and gave a ladylike yawn.
“People who care.” Sharpness tinged his words.
Of course she knew that! She said lightly, “If you can’t beat them, join them.”
Fire sparked into life in his eyes, and his jaw jutted beneath the mouth that she now noticed was firm and well shaped behind all those whiskers.
Olivia had the same keen appreciation for good-looking men that she did for silk lingerie and French champagne. Each of her seven fiancés had been gorgeous by anyone’s standards. So she could only look at Silas Grant and rue the waste of such a fine specimen.
She wondered why his bizarre appearance didn’t exempt him from her appreciation. Discomfited by the thought that perhaps, now that she’d turned fifty-five, she might be desperate enough to let her standards slip, Olivia looked away.
“It’s exactly your kind of apathy that’s sending this world to hell in a handbasket,” he growled.
She’d obviously pressed one of Silas’s buttons, because he began to decry, albeit in an undramatic way, the parlous state of the world, the shallowness of materialism and the loss of life’s simple pleasures.
Olivia, who collected designer handbags, liked to dine on Wagyu beef and had two real fur coats in her wardrobe that she resented being unable to wear, struggled to sympathize.
Yet still, Silas Grant mesmerized her, whether with that unexpectedly cultured voice or with his sheer size. When she found herself wondering what he would look like with a shave and a tuxedo, she realized this had gone far enough.
“What will it take to convince you to leave?” she said abruptly, heatedly. She’d never reacted like this before, not to any of the cranky rejectees who’d turned up here.
“Your promise that you’ll ask Warrington to meet me.” Either Silas had the good sense to say no more, or he’d run out of steam.
Olivia was so relieved to hear the end of that gentle diatribe that she agreed. “I’ll let you know Mr. Warrington’s response.”
“Thank you.” The two syllables stood stark, and for one moment, Silas sounded alone, as alone as Olivia.
CHAPTER FIVE
BETHANY PAUSED on the threshold of Olivia’s office. Tyler’s secretary was locked in a death glare with a bum in a dirty coat. Should she fetch help? She tightened her grip on Ben’s car seat in case she had to run and said, “Olivia?”
The bum didn’t acknowledge her arrival. He said to Olivia, “I’ll be back,” with about as much menace as a low-on-batteries Terminator. He swung around, loped past Bethany with his coat flapping.
Before Bethany could ask Olivia what that was about, Tyler opened the door of his office. “Olivia, have you seen my silver pen? I can’t think where I—” He stopped, distracted by the disheveled appearance of the departing visitor, now out of earshot but still visible. “Who’s that?”
Olivia cleared her throat. “Silas Grant, the guy who’s saving