His Challenging Lover (5 page)

By the middle of the next day, she was exhausted and hiding out in her office. She slumped down in her chair, idly scrolling through her e-mail messages, trying to find an issue that could be taken care of without her needing to leave the confines of her office.

“What are you going to do about finding me an administrative assistant?” Xander asked, stepping into her office.

Autumn jerked upright, her hungry eyes taking in his tall, handsome frame despite the furious look in his eyes and his hands fisted on his hips.

“Um…” she blinked. She’d been avoiding that issue for the past several days, not sure how to work with him without actually talking to him, seeing him or getting close to him in any way.

“I need someone, Autumn. The last three haven’t worked out at all. So the next one has to be pretty exceptional.”

She knew that. She’d found fabulous assistants for all three of his brothers, plus all of the other lawyers. She’d just had miserable luck trying to find someone to handle Xander.

“Yes. You’re right,” she said, digging deep within herself to find the last vestiges of her professionalism. “I’ll get right on that. And I’m sorry that…”

His voice was almost gentle but still firm when he interrupted her. “No more sorries, Autumn. Just find me someone who can dig me out of this administrative mess the last one created. I know you have a slew of resumes that you keep on hand of potential candidates. Go through them and bring me the best ones by four o’clock. We’ll start the interviews again in two days.” With that, he walked out of her office.

She sighed and slumped right back down into her chair, her head dropping into her hands in defeat.

“Are you okay?” Mary asked, walking into Autumn’s office.

Autumn grimaced. “I guess so.” Her fingers flicked over her keyboard. “Know of any good assistants who are looking for a job?” she asked. Xander was right. She had an archive of support personnel, but he’d already rejected the good ones that she had on file.

Mary shrugged. “I know a couple of people. They aren’t legal assistants though.”

Autumn could just imagine Xander’s reaction to that. “Probably not good,” she replied. “I guess I’d better call around to the agencies, see what they can give me.”

“I thought that approach was more expensive.”

“It is,” Autumn explained, mentally irritated that Xander was putting her to that level of effort just because he was so demanding. He’d rejected several, very good candidates because he had such specific needs for his administrative support staff. “But I’ve got to get someone really good this time. Someone who can fix all the issues that the previous three messed up.”

“I can help,” Mary said. “Maybe if the two of us worked on the files, we could get things cleaned up.”

Autumn thought about that for a moment. She knew she could get the files fixed relatively quickly, but that would mean being close to Xander all day long. She needed to avoid that if possible. “I’ll keep that offer in mind. But let me see what I can dig up before we go that route.”

Mary disappeared and Autumn picked up the phone. For the next two hours, she called the employment agencies, review resumes and created a chart with the various possibilities and their skills, the pros and cons of each candidate. She also generated a comment sheet to prepare for the interview process, a system she’d developed over the years as a good way to write up notes on a candidate while the ideas and impressions were fresh in the interviewer’s mind.

At four o’clock, she nervously brought all her materials into the conference room, set up the copies for Xander and set hers on the other side so she was facing him. In the past, he’d sat down next to her and it had always made her nervous. This way, she could at least have some space and maybe she wouldn’t get so angry by his rejections.

Of course, if he rejected candidates without any reason, she’d fight him on the issue. She hated it when he rejected a candidate, simply saying, “I don’t like him,” or “She struck me wrong.” It wasn’t fair to the candidates to not have a fair shake at the job simply because they formatted their resume differently than he preferred.

Xander walked into the conference room and saw the stack of resumes placed on the opposite side of the table. He knew exactly what she was doing. For a moment, he thought about letting her get away with it, but in the end, he wasn’t that nice of a guy.

He grabbed the papers from across the table and slid them in front of the chair right next to hers, ignoring the look of horror in her eyes. “So who are we going to look at today?” he asked, stretching his legs out so they were close to hers.

For the next two hours, they argued over the candidates’ resumes. Back and forth, Autumn pointed out the benefits of one person over another while he chose other candidates that he thought looked better, at least on paper.

“You can’t reject someone simply because they ‘sound’ too young,” Autumn snapped at him.

“Yes I can,” he countered coolly. “He doesn’t have enough experience. Next?”

“Stop! That’s ridiculous. What part of your requirements does he not have?” she demanded, sliding the job description towards him.

He actually had the audacity to sit there and point out that the resume didn’t spell out a person’s organizational skills. “That’s a big deal to me after the last person you brought in.”

“You agreed that Rosa was a good candidate!” she cried back, defending their joint decision.

“Only after you argued that she would work out. You convinced me. I took your advice. Rosa was nice, but she was an idiot. I need someone who can think.”

“You need someone who can follow orders blindly!” she snapped right back. “You don’t want a human being,” she said, exasperated by all of his demands. “You want a robot.”

“Do you have one?” he came right back.

She tossed her arms up in the air, defeated. “So none of these candidates meet your requirements?” she asked, totally dumbfounded.

“Not a single one,” he said and leaned forward, ostensibly to look through all the dozen or so resumes she’d brought with her. But in reality, he just wanted to smell her hair, feel her soft skin one more time. He didn’t touch her, not getting any signals that she would be receptive to any touch from him. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t dream.

He stood up, needing to get away from her before he took her into his arms and kissed her senseless. “Have some more resumes for me by tomorrow morning.” Without another word, he walked out of the conference room, leaving her glaring at his back while her eyes shot arrows at his head.

The following morning was exactly the same. By the end of the hour, he’d rejected all of the candidates and Autumn was flabbergasted. “You’re being unreasonable!” she yelled at him and then looked at him with a horrified expression.

“I’m sorry!” she gasped. She’d never yelled at anyone before but she was too nervous around him to be able to control her temper. She could smell his cologne and his soap and she ached to just curl up in his lap and feel his strong arms wrap around her, make her feel better.

Xander stared back at her for a long moment, then burst out laughing. “Don’t be sorry,” he said and put a hand on her back. She flinched away and he pulled back immediately, but he wanted so badly to…well, to do everything to her.

“How about if we go out to lunch today to discuss options?” he suggested, leaning against the conference room table.

Autumn took a deep breath, trying to calm herself down. “Perhaps we should just meet and discuss your requirements again.” And maybe get two people in to help him out since no one candidate seemed to meet all of his needs. “We don’t need to go out to lunch.”

Xander looked down at his watch, shaking his head. “I didn’t think it would take this long to get some candidates lined up for interviews. The only time I have available is lunch time.”

Autumn sighed, resigned to having lunch with him. “Fine,” she said, thinking she could just run down to the deli and grab both of them something so they could eat while they discussed new resumes. Although how she was going to find even more resumes in just a couple of hours she had no clue. Not to mention, her stomach always acted weird around him so eating might be difficult. Maybe if he would finally sit across the table from her instead of next to her!

He walked out of the conference room at that point and she slumped down in the soft, leather chair, feeling defeated. She’d gone through all of her resources to find this second set of resumes. She couldn’t figure out where else to go for a new batch. Maybe if she were honest with him, told him that she was stumped, he would relent a bit.

Then she thought about his irritated expression when she’d passed by his office earlier today. Tilly must have been looking for some file and Xander was standing behind her impatiently. Normally, she required her support staff to know exactly where things were, to have files pulled before they were needed. If Xander had a meeting with a client, he’d need the files for that client pulled the night before so he could take them home to review at night if he’d wanted. The fact that Tilly was just pulling a file while Xander stood waiting must mean she wasn’t doing an adequate job.

Par for the course, she thought as she gathered up all of the resumes and charts she’d created. Perhaps someone had come into one of the agencies this morning that would be the ideal candidate. And maybe, if all the planets aligned and the stars were shining down on her today, the candidate could come in for an interview this afternoon. Then she’d be free from any further discussions with the man she was growing to hate.

She walked slowly back to her office, wondering where all of his charm had gone. Xander used to be one of those men who could make women go gaga with just his smile. How had he ended up with such horrible employees lately?

Okay, the last one was her fault. But what about the ones before? The previous two had been wonderful. Until the day they’d walked out in fury over Xander’s continuous demands. She’d spoken to them as they’d cried out their frustration with their jobs. Nothing they had told her seemed unreasonable. Perhaps she’d been with The Thorpe Group for so long she didn’t realize the pressure new people had to endure to get up to speed. Things probably worked faster here. People definitely looked busy non-stop throughout the day.

She passed by Xander’s office again on her way back and she cringed when she caught Xander once again leaning against the wall, impatiently waiting for Tilly to find something for him.

She hugged her files closer to her and walked on by, head down and ashamed that she hadn’t been able to fix this problem. It had been going on for much too long and Xander was right. He should have someone that can do the job properly. He had too much to worry about and the lack of a good support team was an enormous burden.

Hurrying back to her office, she dumped the rejected resumes and picked up her phone. She would get him the perfect candidate, even if it killed her. Ninety minutes later, she had five more resumes to show Xander. She walked nervously down the hallway with her notebook and pencil, clutching the resumes in her hand.

She hesitated before she knocked though. Looking at him, her heart did something weird inside her chest. He looked so serious as he sat behind his huge desk, reviewing something that looked complicated and important. She stared at his tanned, sexy hands and long fingers that could touch her so gently she went wild. Currently, though, they held a red pen; she wanted to lean over his shoulder and see what he was scribbling in the margins. He had his suit jacket off so she could better see the muscles in his arms and shoulders, muscles she remembered touching so well that her fingertips ached to feel them again.

“Ready to go?” he asked, tossing his pen down onto his desk and standing up.

“Go?” she repeated blankly, still standing in his doorway. “I was just going to run downstairs to the deli and grab a sandwich for us,” she replied, her pen hovering over her notebook, ready to take his order so she could escape quickly. “We can just eat our meal in one of the conference rooms.”

He shook his head and grabbed his suit jacket, sliding those long, strong arms into the sleeves. “We’re getting out of here. A change of scenery is probably going to help.”

Autumn was shaking her head even as he walked out of his office, coming closer to her so quickly she had trouble telling her feet to move out of the way. She stood beside his door, awkwardly trying to argue with him, but he just ignored her stammers and spoke directly to his temporary assistant. “Tilly, could you call Mary and have her grab Autumn’s coat? We’ll meet her in the lobby.”

Autumn didn’t like this one little bit. She didn’t want to leave the office with him. She felt safer here, more secure and able to keep her mind on business. Going out of the office meant dangerous territory. Unknown territory. She didn’t like unknown and dangerous. And Xander scared her on so many levels. So much more now than before she’d been in his house and in his bed.

“You really don’t…”

“I really do,” he countered and put a hand to the small of her back, nudging her out of his area.

The ever efficient Mary was already standing in the lobby with Autumn’s coat and purse. Xander handed Mary the notebook and pen Autumn had been holding, then held her coat up for her.

Autumn stared up at him, her stomach clenching at the idea of putting her arms into her coat because then his hands would be on her shoulders. It would almost feel like he was hugging her. Her knees started wobbling at that idea and she took a deep, painful breath. There was nothing to do but put her coat on, and move out of the way as quickly as possible. Her hands dove into the sleeves but the rest was a blur. She felt his hands on her shoulders and froze. Then he did something equally crazy. His fingers moved carefully under her hair, sliding against her neck and sparking more shivers to shoot down her spine.

She had no idea what he was doing. All she knew was that his hands were touching her. She’d dreamed about him doing this again so often over the past few days and now it was happening. His fingers tangled in her hair, running through the tresses. To a casual observer, it probably looked like he was just pulling her hair out from under her coat, but it was so much more than that. It was a caress. A sensual, titillating touch of his fingers that almost knocked her flat.