Mel regarded Justin with slightly narrowed eyes. “If you weren’t such a good journalist, you’d be somewhere eating dirt.” He savored the lobster bisque. “You coulda had this, and it wouldna cost you a cent. As I was saying, your attitude could use some fixing.”
“Probably could, depending on whose company I’m in. What about the six months’ leave? Do I get it or not? I promise to send you an occasional piece, but this job and this story will take up most of my time.”
“All right. I’ll expect you back full-time October first.”
“Thanks,” Justin said, and handed Mel a statement authorizing his leave of absence. “Would you sign this, please? I’ve learned to have anything important in writing.”
“Yeah. I see you typed it on the paper’s letterhead.” Mel signed and dated the document and handed it back to Justin. “If you let any other reporter on the staff know about this, I’m through with you. Get it?”
Justin folded the paper and put it in his shirt pocket. “Fair enough. I’ll keep in touch.”
Justin said goodbye to Mel Scott and walked to his apartment on West End Avenue. He wondered if Gina Harkness had noticed his upscale address. Would she have hired him for the job if she had? Was she familiar enough with New York neighborhoods?
What a woman! He had expected an older woman and not one so solidly in control of her life. And he certainly had not expected to see a woman who took his breath away. She wasn’t as beautiful as she was perfect. When she smiled and stood to greet him, tremors had streaked through him. He knew he was looking at a warm, loving woman who liked what she saw when she looked at him.
Justin was used to having women take a second and then a third look at him, not that it fazed him one bit. He considered female admiration as much a nuisance as anything.
He flagged a taxi and got in it seconds before a heavy rain shower would have drenched him. When the car reached the building in which he lived, he paid the driver. Although he sprinted to the door, he still got soaked. Upstairs in his apartment, he stripped, hung up his wet clothing, sat on the side of his bed and phoned a close friend in the Department of Transportation.
“Hi, Jake, this is Justin. I have a difficult assignment, and I need a chauffeur’s license today. Can you manage it?”
“Sure thing, man. E-mail me a photo and fax me a copy of your driver’s license. It’ll be ready in an hour. You’ll have to come for it because you have to sign it.”
“Thanks, buddy. I owe you one.”
“Gotcha.”
Gina answered her office phone that Friday morning hoping the caller wasn’t Miles. She did not plan to give him a daily accounting of her activities, though she suspected that he would like that. “Hello. This is Gina Harkness. How may I help you?”
“Miss Harkness, this is Justin. Where do I come for you Tuesday morning?”
She gave him her address on Broadway. “It’s very temporary, Justin, because I’ll be moving in a few days. Actually, I probably don’t need you until after I move.” She listened to the silence. “Are you still there?”
“Yes, ma’am. I’m here. I was just thinking maybe I could help you move. I want to earn my pay. Besides, you have to get to work, don’t you?”
She thought for a moment. Maybe he needed the money. “Justin, I was hoping that you’d be willing to check out suitable cars for me and help me choose the best one for my purposes. We’ll have to take some long-distance trips occasionally. I’m not interested in prestige, I want comfort,” she said.
“Fortunately, you don’t have to choose between comfort and status in this case, ma’am. The cars with the most prestige usually offer the most comfort. I take it you don’t want a limo,” he said.
“Nope. Not my style,” she said. She wouldn’t know how to sit in one of those things, she thought. “Definitely not, but I want a car that was made here. Seems as if we import everything, and if that weren’t enough, we ship the rest overseas wholesale.”
She thought she heard him clear his throat. “My sentiments, precisely, ma’am. That leaves us with a choice between a Lincoln and a Cadillac.”
“Is there a big difference?” she asked him.
“To me, yes, ma’am, but you have to be satisfied. Why don’t we meet tomorrow and shop around? We can even test drive a few models.”
“Oh, dear. I was going to pack, but—”
“Miss Harkness, excuse me for making a suggestion, but why don’t you hire a good moving company and let the movers do the packing.”
“Good gracious, I hadn’t thought of that. Great idea. Would you say four hours is all we need to shop for a car tomorrow?”
“Absolutely.”
“Good. Call a car service and make arrangements for them to pick you up, then get me, and we’ll go shopping?”
“Works for…Yes, ma’am. I’ll be at your place at ten o’clock tomorrow morning.”
She called a moving company, agreed to an estimate and rubbed her hands together, symbolic of freeing herself from the packing chores. “Maybe I’ll eventually learn how to live like someone who doesn’t have to count pennies.”
What did a woman wear when she was going shopping with a gorgeous chauffeur to pick out a car that cost as much as her previous year’s salary as an accountant? Gina stepped out of the shower, sat on the little stool in the corner and began drying her feet. “This is stupid,” she said to herself as she got up and toweled her body. I’ve never been so discombobulated. Maybe poor is better. You just go to a used car lot and get the cheapest model they have. No fuss. No choices and no wasted time.
Gina enjoyed a good laugh at her silliness and then decided to wear whatever she liked. After all, it was none of Justin Whitehead’s business how she dressed. In a green silk suit, black accessories and with her hair down, she told herself she’d dressed for a casual day of shopping. However, when she put gold loops in her ears, she knew she’d lied to herself. She wanted to make an impression on the man she’d hired to be her chauffeur? “I was never stupid,” she said aloud in an effort to console herself.
Butterflies seemed to have found a home in her stomach, so she made coffee and managed to drink half a cup before the building guard—the building in which she lived didn’t have a doorman, but an armed guard—rang her buzzer.
“A gentleman here to see you, Miss Harkness.”
“Thanks, Arthur, I’ll be right down.”
She managed one more swallow of coffee, locked her door and headed for the elevator. She hated to keep anyone waiting, and it seemed as if the elevator would never come. When she stepped into the lobby, she saw him leaning against the guard’s desk.
“Sorry to keep you waiting,” she said, and suspected from Justin’s raised eyebrows that she’d said the wrong thing.
“My time is your time,” he said with a half bow, and she knew she’d made a mistake. She could only thank God that Miles hadn’t been there to witness it. Her feeling of discomfort at his appreciative appraisal was immediately overlaid with feminine pride that such a stunning man found her attractive.
He opened the back door of the hired car for her, closed it and then sat beside the driver.
Had she actually expected him to sit in the back with her?
Justin sat with