“I would have put down your full name,” he told her. “But there’s no way in hell I would have spelled it right.”
She smiled at that. Her last name had been misspelled more times than she could count.
“It took me two days to learn how to spell it when I was a kid. I thought about having it legally changed a couple of times,” she confided, even though she had never gone through with it.
“Don’t,” he told her. “It has character. This is a place that tends to spew out carbon copies,” he said, referring to his industry. “Being unique is a good thing.” He paused for a moment. “When you finish with those, I’ll give you a number and you can fax them to Human Resources,” he told her. “Then we’ll get down to the real work.”
Yohanna had already sat down and begun filling out the employment forms.
* * *
Lukkas looked up from the preproduction notes he’d been working on. The center of his back was aching, the way it did when he remained immobile for a long period of time. It was due to an old college football injury, reminding him that he wasn’t a kid anymore. He didn’t like being reminded.
He glanced at his watch.
It was past seven-thirty in the evening. More than twelve hours since he’d gotten started. Not that that was unusual. He was used to driving himself relentlessly whenever he was working on a project, especially at the very beginning of it.
He was also used to his people wearing out and leaving before his own day ended.
He had to admit he was surprised that this new woman not only hadn’t said anything about the amount of time that had passed since she’d arrived at his house, but she appeared to be keeping up with the grueling pace he had set for himself.
Empty cardboard containers were piled up in the wastepaper basket beside his desk, evidence of the food they’d consumed. He’d sent out for lunch, but that had been close to six hours ago.
He felt his own stomach tightening in complaint, and he was accustomed to this sort of pace. He expected to hear Hanna’s stomach rumbling at any second. He had no doubts that the woman probably thought he was some sort of an inhumane slave driver.
Pausing, he studied her unabashedly. She seemed to be oblivious to it, but that was probably an act. She didn’t strike him as the type to be oblivious to anything in her immediate surroundings.
“You tired?” he asked her.
“No,” she answered as she went over the notes he had completed earlier and handed to her. He’d wanted her to familiarize herself with what was involved on his end of preproduction. He planned to take her every step of the way just once. After that, she had to sink or swim on her own.
Raising her head for a split second to look in his direction, she assured him, “I’m fine.”
“What did I say about the truth?” he asked her.
“Ah, a pop quiz. You didn’t tell me about that.” Her quick grin faded as she gave him the answer he required. “To never be afraid to admit it.”
He nodded and then said, “Let’s do this again. You tired?”
For a second Yohanna debated repeating her denial, but obviously that wasn’t what Spader wanted to hear from her.
“Maybe a little,” she allowed, even though it was against her nature to complain.
When he kept on looking at her, as if his eyes were drilling right into her mind, searching for the truth, Yohanna mentally threw up her hands and said, “Exhausted, actually.”
The smallest of smiles briefly made an appearance on his lips. “There, that wasn’t really so hard, was it?” he asked.
“It wasn’t actually easy, either,” she told him. “Especially since I wasn’t sure what it was you wanted to hear,” she admitted.
“The truth, Hanna, always the truth,” he stressed. He put his pen down. Right now, this was more important than the notes he was making. “You’re not going to do me any good if I have to read between the lines anytime I ask you a simple question. I need total honesty from you,” Lukkas told her.
She spoke before she could censor herself. “No one wants total honesty. They just want their version of total honesty.”
The words surprised him and managed to catch him completely off guard. He scrutinized her for a long moment, as if trying to decide something. “How old are you, Hanna?” he finally asked.
“Thirty.”
He noticed there wasn’t any hesitation before she volunteered the number. Most women over the age of twenty were coy when it came to the age question. She really was unique, he thought.
“Thirty, and already so cynical,” he commented.
But Yohanna had a different opinion about her view. “Not cynical,” she contradicted. “Being completely honest a hundred percent of the time is really cold and unfeeling.”
He leaned back in his chair, rocking slightly as he regarded her. “How do you figure that?”
“For instance, if a girlfriend asks you if what she has on makes her look fat, she really doesn’t want to know that she looks fat. What she really wants is to hear how flattering the outfit she’s wearing looks on her.”
“But if it really does make her look fat?” Lukkas asked, curious as to what her thought process was. “Aren’t you doing that friend a disservice by not telling her the truth?”
Yohanna shook her head. “If it really does look bad on her, she’ll figure it out on her own. She wants to hear flattering words from you.”
“You can’t be serious,” he protested.
“Completely,” she insisted. “What your friend will come away with is that you cared more about her feelings than making some kind of point by being a champion of the truth.”
“In other words, you’re saying it’s all right to lie,” he surmised.
“If you can’t bring yourself to tell her a little white lie, say something nice about the color. Maybe it brings out her eyes, or makes her skin tones come alive.”
“In other words, say anything but the word fat,” he concluded.
She nodded. The smile began in her eyes and worked its way to her lips in less than a second. He found himself being rather taken with that. “Fat only belongs in front of the word paycheck or rain cloud.”
“That’s two words,” Lukkas pointed out, not bothering to hide his amusement.
Yohanna suddenly became aware that she had been going on and on. Her demeanor shifted abruptly. “Sorry, I talk too much.”
“You do,” he conceded. “But lucky for me, so far it’s been entertaining.” Lukkas grinned, then after a beat, asked, “How’s that?”
She wasn’t sure what he was asking her about. “Excuse me?”
“I just threw in the truth, but then said something to soften the blow. I was just asking how you thought I did, if I got the gist of your little theory.”
For a moment, as her eyes met his, Yohanna didn’t say anything.
Was he being sarcastic?
Somehow, she didn’t think so, but that was just a gut reaction. After all, she didn’t really know the man, didn’t know anything about him other than the information she’d gleaned from a handful of interviews she’d looked up and read yesterday before she’d come in for the interview.
Taking