Have Gown, Will Wed Read online

  He nodded.

  “Well, then, you see how beneficial this could be for you. I’m about to push off on a massive expansion, Mr. Hommes. In the next six months alone, I’ll need your help to find a CFO, COO, and a number of senior scientists, marketers ... My business is booming. Do this for me, and yours will be, too.”

  Holy…

  Except, he was still convinced that she had to be kidding. Any moment, one of those pithy hipsters from some “You’ve Been Punked” show was going to leap out and prove him the fool, because there’s no way in hell he looked anything like Chuck Woolery.

  He stood and mirrored her somber pose. “I can’t make guarantees that you’ll find any of my proposed candidates acceptable. This is something different entirely from my normal MO. Chemistry isn’t usually a qualification I have to worry about, unless we’re talking about a PhD in Organic.”

  A smile cracked across her face at his quip. “I trust in your abilities, but we must have some measure of success, mustn’t we?”

  “Indeed,” he agreed. As his thoughts turned toward determining a benchmark, he reached up and rubbed his chin. Only a moment later did he catch Rosalind’s eyes lingering on his hand. The audience brought him to a frustrating cessation. “As only you will determine if any candidate is desirable, I will consider the position filled when you propose marriage to the candidate of your choice.”

  “Me propose?” Rosalind blanched. She coughed once, then resumed her determined tone. “That’s not really the usual way things are done.”

  “Neither is using a headhunter to find a spouse, Ms. Betters, but I’m trying to fit the proverbial cure to the disease here.” Xavier leaned down to a desk drawer and pulled out his standard contract, filling in where needed the necessary information. “Furthermore, as you are the one tasking me with this service, I feel it’s only appropriate that my commission become payable when you propose regardless of the answer you receive from your intended.”

  She chewed on that a moment, exchanging a glance with Carmen who deigned a concurrent nod. “Okay, we have a deal. You agree to provide me with a list of potential spouses, and I’ll commit BetaHouse to Hommes HQ for one year, and your fee will be payable upon execution of my proposal for marriage, regardless of the response of the third party.”

  His hand jutted out, ready to accept hers across the desk. “Eighteen months and we can shake on it.”

  Looking at first surprised, her features softened in to a mask of satisfaction. As she pressed her hand into his, the corners of her mouth rose again. “Deal.”

  “Good!” Xavier’s pen scratched out his signature on the contract. He handed the document across the desk to Rosalind, who examined it for a passing moment. “That is my standard form, with a few notes and my required commission noted on the second page. We’ll have my assistant send a copy to Carmen’s attnetion for your files.”

  Rosalind turned the page as a grin covered her face. “Am I financing a boat for you, Mr. Hommes?”

  “Yes, a small dinghy, so I can row myself out to Alcatraz and be locked away when all this turns out to have been as crazy as it first sounded. Perhaps they’ll be room in it for us both, Ms. Betters.”

  Turning to leave, Carmen was right at her heels, but both paused in the doorway when Xavier raised his voice.

  “Ms. Betters, I believe that you are familiar with my method. As you said, it involves a very intimate inspection of the person under whom the candidate will be working.” And in the case of a husband, he supposed those words were more than just metaphorical. “If I can ask Ms. Flor to stay behind a moment, I’ll work out a time on your calendar in the next week or so for me to start that process.”

  Rosalind nodded. “Of course. Carmen, I’ll see you for the five o’clock con call with Singapore?”

  “I’ll be back over to the office just as soon as possible.”

  As Rosalind exited, Carmen and Xavier remained, both on the edge of laughing. Still, now that the assignment was his, Xavier supposed he should start treating it with some respect.

  “Carmen, if I’ve put you in a position where you feel uncomfortable, I take full responsibility. If Rosalind Betters is a closeted crazy given to irrational actions, I’d be happy to float your resume around. I have several clients in the area who would benefit from your qualifications.”

  “Rosalind isn’t crazy, only this idea of hers is.” She folded her arms over her chest. “She’s just scared.”

  The words seemed impossible to apply to someone with such a bold spirit. “Of what?”

  “Of being the last one.” She looked down at her iPad. “I have a four o’clock open tomorrow afternoon. Just thirty minutes. Will that be enough?” Her eyes hung on his answer.

  “Where?”

  She masked over in confusion. “At BetaHouse of course.”

  He shook his head. “No, it has to be in her home. No office appointments.”

  “Um, okay. 7:30 p.m., Tuesday night? Does that work for you?”

  Rounding his desk, Xavier pulled up his own calendar and checked against it. “Yeah, that will work.”

  Carmen tapped furiously at the tablet’s screen. “Actually, not a bad idea. If you catch her at the office, she’ll be distracted and pulled in a hundred directions. If you get her at home, you have a fifty-fifty chance of actually having her undivided attention.”

  Perfect, because if there was one thing he needed from her, it was her attention.

  Dinner & a Date

  No form of exercise known to man prepared one for what Rosalind thought of as “the human is eaten by snake.” The proper form called on one to: 1. Hold a briefcase in one hand; 2. Fish out keys with the other; 3. Simultaneously use the arm of choice to secure a bag of take-out food; and 4. Keep in position a cell phone against one ear using only a shoulder as you had again misplaced your Bluetooth earpiece for what must be a world record number of times. For advance practitioners, using one foot to push the newly unlocked door open while balancing gracefully on a single high-heeled shoe could be added for an extra challenge.

  “Koji-san, I understand where you’re coming from, but you have to understand, I just don’t have that kind of bandwidth right now. My schedule is stacked tighter than a 6 p.m. Tokyo train. I couldn’t possibly get to Japan anytime in the next few days.” Her keys, a moment before aligned with the lock on her door, slipped to the right and dropped to the floor. “God damn you!”

  The man on the other end of the line stumbled for confirmation. “God damn-o me?”

  Rosalind did her best to pick up her keys from the floor and her place in the conversation. National Geographic could make a documentary on this impossible dance she performed each night, complete with a team of observers speculating about the meaning behind her manic gesticulations and pivots. Somehow, she managed to retrieve the keys from the floor without letting go of anything else or dislocating a shoulder.

  “No, sorry, not you Koji-san. I was cursing at inanimate objects.”

  “Again?”

  Her silence was all the answer he needed.

  “Next week you come then,” came the excessively accented voice. Koji had spent his formal years in Honolulu. What game he was playing at pretending that he barely spoke English was beyond her. “We plan your visit-o.”

  “Maybe. Only for a day, two tops. I’ll have my assistant call yours in the morning to work out the details. I really have to go now.”

  “Hot date?”

  She could practically hear the grin in his voice.

  “Yeah, with my dog. Crap, Strudel! Down.”

  The German Shepherd leapt up the moment the door opened, forcing her to drop both the bag of Chinese food containers and her briefcase. Normally the pup would have arrived with her from the office. Today, however, she had asked Carmen to swing by and deposit the dog at home so she could stop at Madam Ming’s. It seemed to he
r that Strudel was eager to make up for lost bonding time.

  Rosalind managed to say a polite, if rushed good-bye, and toss the cell and her keys on an accent table adjacent to the door. A flash of black-and-tan went long, in pursuit of a paper sack that had landed a few feet away. Panicked, Rosalind dropped to the floor and pawed in pursuit on all fours, reaching her goal just as Strudel’s nose nudged into the bag. The dog whined when the opportunity to perform an olfactory inspection and possibly, sample the victuals to ensure the food was not poisoned was denied.

  “No, boy,” she said, waving the bag in front of the pooch’s snout. “That’s for momma and her guest.”

  The acknowledgement of a second round of knocking only registered on her radar when it was accompanied by the realization that something tall, dark, and handsome was eying her from behind.

  She, down on all fours. In a pencil skirt.

  Rosalind’s head turned, her jaw dropped, and her dignity left the building. The good news was that she hadn’t yet turned on the light inside the entry. The bad news was that the light that hung overhead outside her door spilled in over her, making her look like some Fortune 500 version of a cabaret performer.

  “Oh, God…”

  He took two steps in, his black trench coat still misted from San Francisco’s persistent fog. He must have come up in the elevator with her; one couldn’t get in on this floor unless they were with someone who knew the code or unless someone had buzzed them up. Had she really been so absorbed in her own world she hadn’t even noticed Xavier Hommes standing in the elevator?

  The vague memory of feeling like someone was watching her in the lift came back.

  Crap.

  The headhunter had the good grace not to inquire. Not about why she was currently in what one of her exes had referred to as “the receiving position.” Not to ask why she stayed frozen in said position while her mouth went into suspended animation. Not to ask why she was unable to speak.

  Had Rosalind Betters known that this man looked as though he might have come into his profession following a career as a Men’s Health cover model, she might not have insisted on meeting with him in person. How she had managed to get out of his office a few days before without embarrassing herself then remained a mystery. It defied precedence, that was for sure, but hell, she was certainly making up for it now. For all her brains, her beauty, and her bravado, putting Rosalind in front of a man that gorgeous usually turned her into a fidgeting, awkward, blabbering pile of geek goo. She’d first discovered that fault in herself in college, and had took on a persona as an ice queen in part to avoid potential opportunities to out herself. Had the meeting not had a business purpose to distract her from how attractive he was, he’d probably be in serious doubt of her sanity.

  Which, given that thirteen seconds had passed and still she gaped at him over her shoulder while she played Clan of the Cave Bear on her Persian carpet, he might think anyhow.

  “Ms. Betters?”

  When he took another step toward her, flipping on the light switch next to the door as he did so, Strudel leapt. The well-intentioned mutt went into guard dog mode, circling behind his master and putting himself between her and the intruder, a rumbling growl filling the soundscape.

  Rosalind snatched the paper sack and at last managed to rise.

  “Strudel, heel!”

  As though she had slapped the dog on the nose with her words, Strudel’s posture eased. He whined again as he nuzzled his cold nose into her empty palm.

  “Sorry about that,” she said to Xavier. “Strudel’s a little protective of me, but he only attacks when commanded. Or when he sees a squirrel.”

  Xavier closed the door behind him, removed his coat, and took off his hat. While not ignorant of fashion, she admired the classic style Xavier represented. He could have just walked off the set next to James Cagney and no one would find him a step out of place.

  “I’m glad.”

  She looked at him over her shoulder. “My dog threatens you and you’re glad about it?”

  “Exceedingly,” he assured her as he hung his coat. “A beautiful, successful woman living on her own in this city? I’d be worried if you didn’t have at least a dog.”

  Rosalind shook a knowing finger. “Ah, I see.”

  “What?”

  “That your throwback style doesn’t stop at your trench coat and your fedora. You’re one of those men who thinks a woman always needs a protector, that she can’t fend for herself.”

  His dark eyes closed as he exhaled and shook his head. “With all due respect, you’re the CEO of a multimillion dollar company in one of the most cutthroat markets in the world. I think you’ve already more than proven you can fend just fine. Even the most diligent person can overlook seemingly obvious risks. For example, riding up in an elevator while so distracted by her phone conversation that she doesn’t notice a man like me standing next to her and following her off.”

  Despite the lack of ridicule in his voice, Rosalind felt her cheeks blush in embarrassment. She turned and took up as much as her arms could handle, desperate to flee into the kitchen where she could put a counter and a few breaths between them.

  Xavier let his eyes take a wider survey of both her and their surroundings. “Can I help you with something?”

  Before she could speak, he’d taken the paper bag out of her hand and was en route to the kitchen. She’d have questioned his instinct about the direction, but the layout of a loft like hers didn’t exactly confuse. Outside of a walled off bathroom, her own bedroom, and the stairs leading up to the guestroom, the space flowed; from her entry door her abode spilled out into an amoebic procession of kitchen, dining area, living room, and home office.

  “I hope you don’t mind takeout,” she called to him as she took advantage of his absence to kick off her Jimmy Choos and take off her coat. “I didn’t know what you liked, so I had Carmen order a few things randomly.”

  “Actually, I wasn’t expecting dinner at all, so this is a treat.”

  “You made an appointment to see me at home at seven-thirty, did you think I would send you away hungry?” By the time she joined him at the kitchen island, Xavier already had several white boxes open to inspect the contents. “What were you planning on doing otherwise, just stare at me while I checked email?”

  He shrugged, pulling out a drawer and taking from it some serving spoons. “Basically.”

  “Isn’t that a little, you know, creepy?”

  “Not if you’re getting paid to do it. Do we just eat from the boxes or do you want to get out some plates?”

  “Whatever you’re comfortable with. Help yourself to anything, except,” Rosalind’s hand dashed out when he cracked opened the final box, “that one.”

  As Xavier’s now empty hands remained clutching a phantom container, he narrowed his dark eyes on her. “Interesting.”

  She didn’t like the way he grinned. “Why do you say that like I’m a cheetah and you’re David Attenborough?”

  He didn’t answer directly, but proceeded with his roundabout explanation as he turned to her cabinets and began looking for plates. He found them in the second drawer, pulled down two and set one in front of her, the other in front of himself. “You noted that I have a specific method for finding just the right candidate for a job, Ms. Betters. Observation is the core principle of that method. The decisions you make in your environment, seeing how you function, it tells me tons about the sort of personality that will work best with yours.”

  With a mouthful of chicken, she spluttered, “My love for Kung Pao tells you what kind of husband I should have?”

  “Not so much that as how you took the box out of my hands like you were Gollum and it was the one true ring.”

  In her best tribute voice, she growled “my precious” while giving the box in her hands a doughy glance. Her fork speared a tender morsel dripping in sauce.
“But clearly spoken like someone who’s never had Madam Ming’s signature dish.” Through a mouth half-filled with food, she continued, “Tell me something, Mr. Hommes, why are we doing this at all? Jack already worked up a profile on me when I came to you for a PA. Can’t you just borrow his notes, or something?”

  On his fork Xavier had speared a piece of broccoli so green, Kermit would wonder if he was related to it. “Insufficient for this assignment. The whole profile lacks a central characteristic intrinsically necessary to make this placement successful.”

  Her arched eyebrows forced him to continue.

  “Jack observed you in an office environment, and the questions he asked during his meeting with you were of an entirely different bent. He profiled you as a professional, and due to the nature of this placement, I really need to understand who you are when you’re not at the office. That’s why I’m meeting you at home. Your loft is, for better or worse, the board room of your domestic life. I’ll also need to explore an entirely different aspect of your personality, but we’ll get to the new set of questions later.”

  “So glad to see you’ve come around on this. For a while the other day, I thought you were going to call the police and have me put under observation for my own good.”

  He fixed his eyes into a container of fried rice. “It’s still an option I’m considering.”

  When he looked up at her, the crooked half-smile playing on his face struck her deep inside as something not entirely professional. As though he had picked up on the thought, Xavier coughed to clear his throat and straightened his posture. Another few bites of steamed veggies and rice, and he pushed the food aside.

  “With your permission, I’d like to have a look around.’

  “Why?”

  “Building your profile in my mind, Ms. Betters. Mind you, this is a lot more intimate than I tend to get with a subject, but not unprecedented. I’ve done something similar before, when I placed an estate manager with one of the more prestigious families in the area.”