Deceptive Love

 
(Candlelight Ecstasy Romance, #33)

The phone shrilled insistently. He knocked his hand painfully against the nightstand, fumbling in the dark to cut off its shattering summons.

"You've got to come home! That girl is wrecking my life!'

The newly wakened man ran a weary hand over his stubbly chin and squinted at the luminous dial of the wristwatch lying by the phone. He dropped his head back on the pillow, mouthing a silent curse. It was three
a.m.
and he'd been
in his
bed for little more than an hour. Thinking
comes hard in
those circumstances, especially
when
the
woman on the
other end of the phone is hysteri
cal and
an
ocean and
part of
a
continent away.

"Calm
down,
Denise," he advised with commendable forbearance.
"Who is
she
and what's
she
done to your life specifically?"

"She's
trying to
take Schyler away from
me,
that's what!
I want you
to fire her and make sure she
never
gets
work again." An acid hatred coated each word as it spat from the phone. Denise had had more than one drink, and alcohol made her vicious.

"Who the hell is Schyler?"

"He's my
fiancé
and we've only been engaged two weeks. Now he wants to break the engagement because of that tramp. Dain, you've just got to do
something!"
It was a familiar demand, punctuated by hiccuping sobs, also familiar. He closed his eyes on the darkness of his room in exasperation.

"Schyler who, Denise?" he questioned patiently. He knew only patience could extract coherence from his mercurial sister in this mood. "How long have you known him? I've only been gone four months and this is the first I've heard of a Schyler, much less one who's engaged to my sister." He was holding on to his temper with both hands. At her most rational Denise was trying. Hysterical she was impossible.

"Schyler Van Metre, of
the
Van Metres . . . you know . . . Van Metre and Company and all of that." He could just picture her vague, encompassing gesture. "I met him two months ago—at a party. He
just
gave me the most gorgeous diamond engagement ring and now he says that since he's found this woman again he can't marry me." A pleading note, well-practiced and cajoling, entered her voice. "I want him, Dain. She works for you, so
you
get rid of her. That's where he saw her again, so it's all your fault."

Ignoring the magnificent irrationality of this statement, he asked reasonably, "All right, next question: who is
she?"

"Her name is Keri Dalton and what he sees in her is beyond me" was the enlightening answer.

"I don't know any Keri Dalton, Denise," he responded with ebbing patience. "Are you sure she works for me? All right, all right. So she was hired three months ago." He broke through the babble of sound ruthlessly. "I'll be home in a few days," he promised wearily. "I'll see what I can do then. Good night, Denise." He dropped the receiver back onto its rest, cutting off the further spate of words in mid-flow.

Dain Randolph is coming back. Word flew through the office grapevine with the speed and degree of accuracy of all such organs. It was served as speculation with the morning coffee rolls and as established fact over the lunch hot-plate special. It meant less than nothing to Keri. No premonitory chill ghosted over her skin. No misgiving prickled the hairs at the nape of her neck as she worked composedly at her desk.

To the office staff she was the efficient Miss Dalton, of impeccable qualifications and calm impersonality. She could have been an employee of long years' seniority, so smoothly and unobtrusively had she carved her new niche. Keri had chosen her job well and had great hopes of at last being able to settle down.

George Simonds, her new boss, was in his mid-fifties and dotingly in love with his motherly wife. He saw Keri purely as the formidable Miss Dalton and never delved into her personal life. Mr. Simonds and Keri had no social discourse, except for the perfunctory "Good morning, Miss Dalton. How are you today?" to which she invariably replied, "Fine, thank you, Mr. Simonds. Your mail is waiting for you on your desk." Keri had set the tone firmly on her first day at work and had allowed no deviation during her three months at RanCo. She
intended to
allow none.

When Keri had found it necessary to quit her fourth job, in New York, six months before, she had ruefully decided that only drastic measures were going to suffice if she ever hoped to hold a job for any appreciable length of time.

Keri was honest with herself. She wouldn't want to be
ugly
, but she was more than just a body. She deeply resented the masculine assumption that a nicely curved body indicated a willing libido, especially when that assumption slipped over into her working life. Being a man's secretary did not also indicate a willingness to be his bed partner!

So she decided: If the men she worked for could not or would not leave her alone, she would henceforth make sure that they saw nothing worthwhile, from a masculine standpoint, to distract them during business hours. She would keep her business and private lives totally separate.

She hid her emerald green eyes behind clear-lensed horn-rimmed glasses and ruthlessly subdued her glorious titian hair in a tight French twist. Her lush figure, the source of much of her problem, disappeared under severely tailored suits of uncompromising primness and drab coloring. There wasn't much she could do about the shapely perfection of her long, slender legs except wear "sensible" shoes.

Instead of making up, she made down. She used a lighter than normal lipstick to de-emphasize the full lower lip and curved upper lip of her cleanly modeled mouth and the outsized horned-rims overwhelmed the classic nose and high cheekbones. A dusting of sallow powder did the rest, destroying the effect of her flawless skin.

"disguise" complete she was subtly aged to a colorless, indeterminate "over-30."

Even her voice at the office bore little resemblance to the husky contralto of her normal usage. She had adopted a brisk, no-nonsense intonation which was polite but chill in its precision. She was a dragon of the most formidable, with a breath of ice rather than fire.

As a masquerade it had proved satisfactory and efficacious, but she had thought it all for naught one day last week when Schyler strolled past her in the hall. She had tensed, braced for exposure, but he showed no flicker of recognition on that handsome, petulant face. She had forced her legs to continue their measured pace down the long corridor until she reached the sanctuary of her office.

She had dropped the papers she carried in a scattered drift atop her desk and slumped into her chair. Senseless to feel so shaky, to let the sight of a man she had hoped never to see again unnerve her so badly, but he had marked the final link in an unpleasant chain of experiences.

Schyler Van Metre, scion of Van Metre and Company. Down that corridor strode her reason for retreat into protective camouflage, but it would seem, she assured herself hopefully, that he was also a testament to its effectiveness.

She had worked for his father, executive secretary to the chairman of the board of Van Metre and Company, until father and son, between them, made
it
impossible for her to continue. The son had pursued her ruthlessly and the father had tried to buy her for his son. If she
never
heard the name again, it would be too soon! But Keri had what she wanted now—a boss who didn't see her as a woman and a pleasantly active social life totally separate from her
business persona. She had the best of both worlds and she intended to
keep
them.

Now, a week after her nerve-twisting confrontation, she could relax. There were evidently to be no repercussions, no word from Schyler, and best of all, no further sight of him. He had disappeared from the corridors of RanCo as mysteriously as he had appeared.

She covered her typewriter and gathered her purse with a thankful sigh. She enjoyed her work, but it was always a relief to go home and shed her dowdy image.

"Good night, Miss Dalton. Have a pleasant weekend."

"Thank you, Mr. Simonds." Keri turned away so that Mr. Simonds couldn't see the mischievous smile which she was unable to restrain. Probably thinks I'm going home to my lonely apartment and my tabby cat! Maybe I should bring a basket of some anonymous gray knitting to work with me every once in a while, to reinforce the image. When she turned back she had schooled her errant expression and was able to present him with a demure nod before preceding him to the parking lot where her car awaited her, crouched like a dangerous, snarling, jungle beast, ready to roar to powerful life at the touch of her hand on the key.

Eyebrows were always raised when she drove out
of
the
com
pany parking lot, but she had balked at extending her masquerade to her beloved car. The sight of the prim
Miss
Dalton expertly guiding her dark green
Porsche
among the staid Fords and
Chevrolets
was an
anomalous
sight. She had gotten
it
two years ago when her
parents had
left for a new assignment abroad.

Her father was
an
officer
in
the army and had recently received his second star. Keri had grown up feeling at home all over the world, with a flair for languages encouraged by multinationaled playmates. She spoke French and German flawlessly, Italian and Spanish fluently, and Japanese understandably. She was familiar with many of the world's capitals and was an accomplished hostess. Rank did not awe her. Her godfather was a distinguished retired ambassador, still consulted for his expertise and shrewd analysis of political complexities. She had friends in high places and she breathed easily in rarefied air.