Authors: Grace Marshall
Kendra had always loved the Pneuma Complex. It was one of the most beautifully designed, environmentally friendly work spaces she had ever seen. She always felt as though she was walking in botanical gardens when she visited. The Pneuma Building housed Ellison Thorne’s cutting-edge company, Pneuma, Inc., the company Dee now helped him run. The Pneuma Annex provided office space for companies with a similar mind set to Pneuma Inc., as well as space for short-term rentals. The annex’s green, economical design was from the fabulous mind of Wade Crittenden, the creative force behind Pneuma Inc., which meant office space could be offered for less money than similar sites. It also meant those who leased offices in the annex enjoyed the PR boost that came from being in an environmentally friendly building.
Sites in the Pneuma Annex were coveted and hard to come by, and Kendra was pleased that Tess Delaney had an office there. Though she was pretty sure the woman hardly ever occupied it. She was hoping today would be the exception. Certainly, if the desperation in Don Bachman’s emails and their discussion on the phone were any indication, she’d be meeting the woman in person.
She did a quick touch-up of her make-up and hair in the restroom of the annex’s sunny atrium before she made her way to Tess Delaney’s office.
The recessed door of Suite 3B reminded Kendra of a grotto hidden away in the thick foliage of ferns and strange vining plants. A brass plaque to the right of the door read
Gary Rose
in bold sans serif script. Kendra paused to straighten her jacket one last time, then she hoisted her bag neatly onto one shoulder and gave a crisp rap on the door.
She waited.
When there was no answer, she knocked again. And when there was still no answer, she cracked open the door and stuck her head inside. There was a small waiting room decorated in clean lines and Zen colors, fronted by a desk, to the right of which was another door. Kendra’s pulse jumped. Was the woman herself behind that door? And where was the secretary? Certainly for someone who guarded her privacy so fiercely, having the secretary as the vanguard was essential. Where was Mr. Rose?
She cleared her throat loudly and stood in front of the desk, shifting from foot to foot. It wouldn’t do for Tess Delaney to think she’d been late. She paced the length of the waiting room a couple of times, then made an executive decision and knocked gently on the door by the desk.
Nothing.
Had she been stood up? Had Tess Delaney gotten cold feet? Quickly she checked her iPhone to see if she’d had any last-minute messages from Gary Rose or Don Bachman. But there was nothing. She shoved it back into her bag, cleared her throat a little louder this time, and was just getting ready to knock a little harder when the door burst open and she found herself almost nose to nose with Garrett Thorne.
‘What the hell are you doing here?’ they both said at the same time.
Then he grabbed her by the arm, hauled her into the office, and closed the door behind them. ‘I’ll ask you again,’ he said between barely parted lips, his chest rising and falling like he’d just run a fast mile. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘What do you mean what am
I
doing here? What are
you
doing here?’
‘Look,’ he said, glancing down at his watch nervously. ‘I’m expecting someone at any minute now, Kendra. I don’t know how the hell you got here or what you want, but you have to leave. Now.’ He tried to push her back out of the door, but she turned on him and glared up at him. ‘There must be a mistake. I have an appointment with Gary Rose, set up by Donald Bachman, from the Bachman Agency, and if this is some kind of a joke, it’s not funny.’
‘Hold it, hold it.’ He ran a hand through his hair and the way it fell over one eye would have made her forget about why she was here if the reason had been a little less important. ‘Don sent you?’
‘You know Don Bachman,’ she said.
‘Of course I know him, he’s my …’ The laser stare they gave each other probably would have been deadly if they hadn’t cancelled each other out. ‘Jesus, Kendra. You’re … You’re not …’
She held his gaze. ‘I’m here to see Tess Delaney.’ She glanced around the room, but there was no one else there. ‘Where is she?’
‘You’re the one Don chose for the job?’ He stepped back and shook his head further mussing his bedroom hair. ‘That can’t be right. That can’t possibly be right. He promised me that the Ryde Agency never failed. He promised me that Ryde had found me just the perfect person for the job. He promised me that –’
Suddenly she felt like the floor was tilting, and her heart raced. ‘Wait a minute, he promised you?
You
?’ She stepped back and grabbed at the door knob to steady herself. ‘There has to be some mistake.’
Her denial was mirrored by his own. ‘Don said the Ryde Agency was the best. Don said Ryde would send me the perfect person, and then Ryde sends you? Is this a joke, is this the man’s idea of a joke?’
Kendra took a deep breath and stepped forward, using all of her self-control to keep from punching the jerk. ‘I am K. Ryde, you asshole, and you’re a fine one to talk to me about a joke. Now, what the hell is going on and where’s Tess Delaney?’
It was Garrett’s turn to step forward, once again nearly nose to nose with Kendra, his breath hot on her cheek. ‘You’re looking at her, and if you tell anyone, I swear to you I’ll –’
‘No! No fucking way can you be Tess Delaney!’ She pushed past him and paced like a trapped animal in front of his desk. ‘Tess Delaney’s a woman. You’re not.’ He didn’t move, but just stood glaring at her, looking as though his chest were about to explode from his efforts to breath. ‘She writes novels. You don’t do anything.’ She wasn’t sure but what there might be steam coming out his ears. He was furious. Well, so the hell was she. ‘She’s famous because of her work. You’re famous because of your brother.’
She turned on him. ‘What was Tess Delaney’s fourth novel?’
‘
Golden Moments
,’ he replied instantly. ‘About Terri Sorenson, a woman with a rare form of cancer, and Del Hendricks, the doctor who cures her.’ Before she could respond, he shot back another question. ‘Who’s Turk Bishop?’
‘A washed-up prize fighter who falls in love with his manager’s niece, Andrea Livingston, one of the few successful female boxing managers. From Tess’s seventh book,
TKO
.’
‘Who was terrified of elevators?’ Garrett said, moving back to the nose-to-nose, Mexican stand-off position.
‘Delilah Benton from
High Flyers
. She’d been trapped in one alone for 12 hours as a little girl.’ She shoved her hands onto her hips and glared at him. ‘Deke Arnold’s drink of choice?
‘Gin martini made with Bombay Sapphire,’ he said. ‘Sarah Masters’ biggest weakness?’
‘Lapsang Souchang tea and chocolate éclairs from Finnegan’s Bakery.’
‘Jesus!’ They both spoke at the same time, then turned and paced in opposite directions.
‘Why?’ he asked, sounding like she had just murdered his favorite pet.
‘What do you mean, why? Because I admire the woman’s work.’ She shook her head and rubbed her eyes. ‘Admired the woman’s work, and I’m the best in my field. I jumped at the chance to work for her … Well, who I thought she was.’
Their pacing became synchronized.
‘You mean to tell me Kendra Davis, the queen of bad temper, reads romance novels?’
‘You mean to tell me Garrett Thorne, the epitome of ambition-free living, writes romance novels?’
‘And just what did you think you were going to do for me … For Tess? Throw drinks at her? Slap her around? Try to drown her?’
Once again they found themselves nose to nose, and Kendra couldn’t believe the sense of loss she felt, the sense of rage that this man had, in less than five minutes, destroyed her hero. And damn, she was furious! She was actually fighting back tears. How could she have let the bastard reduce her to this? ‘Fuck you.’ Her voice was little more than a whisper. ‘Tell Bachman to find someone else.’ She shrugged her bag up her shoulder, turned on her heels, and headed for the door.
‘Wait.’ He grabbed her by the arm, more gently than she would have expected, and swung her around to face him. The look on his face was desperate, a look K. Ryde had seen often. Suddenly, he struggled to hold her gaze. ‘Are you as good as Don says you are?’
For a second her anger flared, but the look on his face was earnest, and she held her tongue. ‘Would I be here if I weren’t?’
He studied her unabashedly for a moment, and she returned the favor.
‘There isn’t time for Don to find someone else.’ He gave a desperate glance around the room and shook his head. ‘I need help now.’
If there had been even the least hint of subterfuge, she would have punched him hard and left. But she’d made a living at reading people. The man was desperate. K. Ryde came to the forefront. She took a deep breath. ‘All right. Tell me what you need.’
Instead of moving behind the desk, he guided her to a sand-colored sofa flanked by a small woodland of tall plants, then he sat down on the edge of a matching chair facing her, hands folded in his lap, leaning forward into her gaze. ‘I need you to be Tess Delaney for me.’
She blinked twice. ‘You what?’
‘I need you to be Tess Delaney.’
A pot of strong coffee and two cans of Diet Pepsi later, neither of them had moved, and Kendra had to admit that, in spite of the nervous riot of unrest raging in her stomach, in spite of the cold sweat breaking on the back of her neck at the very thought of putting herself out there again in such a public way, she was more intrigued than she had been in her whole life.
He looked like a nervous schoolboy about to ask a girl out for the first time, and she had to admit she sort of liked that look on the arrogant face of Garrett Thorne – er – Tess Delaney. ‘What do you think? Can you do it on such short notice?’
She should have told him no. This was so not what she expected Tess to require of her. There were reasons, good reasons for telling him no, not the least of which was that the idea itself was insane. No doubt that’s why it intrigued her. Instead, she found herself saying, almost as though her voice had ignored the rage of nerves and the fears and the bad memories and acted unilaterally, ‘Of course I can do it. Don wouldn’t have called me if I couldn’t.’ What the hell was the matter with her? She didn’t need to impress Garrett Thorne. She didn’t care what he thought about her. She was just about to tell him that, though she could do it, she would have to turn him down.
And then he said, ‘You do have a temper.’
She smiled at the thought that he might be just a little intimidated by her. ‘Kendra Davis has a temper,’ she said. ‘K. Ryde simply does what she has to do to get the job done. If you need me to be Tess Delaney for the Golden Kiss Awards, well, I’m up for the challenge.’ No, she wasn’t! What the hell was she talking about? She should be running away now! She didn’t like Garrett Thorne. Let him deal with his own mess. This was not something she should get involved with. It was too much deception. That she could handle. But it was way too public a situation for her to deal with, way too soon. She couldn’t guarantee how she would react, she couldn’t guarantee if she could keep the past in the past and just do her job. It wasn’t fair to him. It wasn’t fair to Tess. It wasn’t fair to anyone, and besides, the very thought of what would be involved in such a ruse scared the hell out of her.
Just when she was about to back-pedal, just when she was about to extricate herself from a situation that she really wasn’t ready for, he breathed a huge sigh of relief and moved onto the sofa next to her. ‘Good, then we’ll have to get our stories straight. We’ll have to create a life and hobbies and a past and the whole nine yards for Tess, and we’ll both have to know it.’
And he had her. She knew it. Once he’d actually started scheming, once her mind had actually latched on to thoughts of how they could make it work, he had her. She was in. She would be his Tess Delaney. Besides, the past was the past. The only way to shake it off was to move forward. She breathed a sigh of her own and scooted closer on the sofa.
‘No, Garrett, we don’t both have to know it. You’re my date. You can know relatively little about me. And Tess, being the recluse that she is, isn’t likely to give very much away even if she’s up on stage. All you have to do is trust me enough to let me lead the way.’
‘But you don’t know Tess like I do, and there’s so little time.’
She reached out and touched his arm, feeling the tension pass up through his body under her hand. ‘Listen to me, Garrett, the less everyone knows about the Tess you see in your head, the better. It’s really fairly simple. We go to the banquet and, with any luck, we’ll have to do nothing more than smile and nod, maybe have a few microphones shoved in our faces, and I’ll make short, evasive answers. We’ll sit through the meal smiling and nodding, then make our escape at the earliest possible moment.’
‘What if someone follows us?’
‘They won’t. Trust me, I’ll make sure they don’t. Tess is not the first celeb I’ve had to keep away from the press, Garrett. It’ll be all right.’
He didn’t look like he believed her, but she’d seen that look before too.
He made a weak attempt to laugh, then he stood and moved to look out the window with his broad back to her. ‘Who’d have thought this would happen? Who’d have thought I’d end up depending on you?’
She bristled but calmed herself. ‘Who’d have thought Garrett Thorne was Tess Delaney?’
He turned so quickly that he nearly knocked over one of the potted ferns in his effort. ‘Don’t say that. Don’t ever say that out loud.’
‘All right.’ She sat with her hands folded around a half empty Diet Pepsi can and watched as he paced again. ‘Mind if I ask why not?’
‘You’ll laugh,’ he said, dropping back onto the sofa next to her.
‘Try me.’
‘It’s just that saying I’m her, or she’s me … Well, it feels like it’ll jinx it all somehow. I know that sounds stupid, but it just feels that way.’
‘Doesn’t sound stupid at all,’ she said. ‘I’m astounded you’ve been able to keep her a secret all this time, that you’ve been able to keep the world thinking you’re living the life of luxury off your brother’s money. How have you managed to get Ellis to agree with this arrangement? I can’t imagine he’s pleased with it.’