“No. Thank you,” Stephanie whispered back. They joined hands, and Stephanie nodded once. “I’ll remember.”
It was dark by the time they left Duluth, and Stephanie was physically drained from the long day. She yawned once and tried to disguise it. “I like your family, Jonas.”
“They seemed to be quite taken with you.”
They talked a bit more, and Stephanie began to drop off, giving way to her fatigue. Jonas woke her when they reached the outskirts of Minneapolis.
“I’m sorry to be such terrible company,” she said, yawning.
“You’re anything but,” Jonas murmured, contradicting her. He eased to a stop in front of her apartment building and parked the car, but kept the engine running.
“Do you want to come in for coffee?” Stephanie invited.
“No, you’re exhausted, and I have some work that I need to look over.”
“Jonas, don’t tell me you’re going to work now.” She glanced at her wristwatch, shocked to find that it was after eleven.
He chuckled, and leaned over to press his mouth lightly to hers. “No, but it was the best excuse I could come up with to refuse your invitation.”
“Good, I was worried there for a minute. You work too hard.” She yearned to tell him how much the day had meant to her, how much she’d enjoyed the time on the sailboat and meeting his mother and Clara. But finding the right words was impossible. “Thank you for everything,” she said when he helped her out of the car. “I can’t remember a day I’ve enjoyed more.”
“Me either,” Jonas murmured, his gaze holding hers. “Not in years.”
“We’ve got it!” Jan announced Monday morning, as she, Maureen, Toni and Barbara circled Stephanie’s desk like warriors surrounding a wagon train.
“Got what?” Stephanie looked up blankly. She’d only arrived at the office a few minutes before, and hadn’t even turned on her typewriter. “What are you talking about?”
“Your move with Mr. Lockwood.”
“Oh, that,” she returned with a sigh. She hadn’t told her friends about the weekend sailing jaunt, but then she’d been keeping quite a few secrets from them lately.
“We’ve got it all worked out.”
“Answer me this first,” Stephanie said. “Will I need to wear a cast? Date someone’s brother-in-law? Hire a French chef?”
“No.”
“It’s working out great. We’ve got a contact in the janitorial department.”
“A what?”
“All you have to do,” Maureen explained excitedly, “is get in the elevator alone with Mr. Lockwood.”
“Yes?” Stephanie could feel the enthusiasm coming from her coworkers in waves. “What will that do?”
“That’s where Mike from maintenance comes into the picture,” Toni explained patiently.
“He’ll flip the switch, and the two of you will be trapped alone together for hours.”
“Isn’t that a marvelous idea?” Barbara said.
“It works in all the best romances.”
“It’s a sure thing.”
“You’re game, aren’t you, Steph?”
Chapter Nine
“No, I’m not game for your crazy schemes,” Stephanie informed her friends primly. It wasn’t that she objected to being alone with Jonas for hours on end—that she would relish—but to plot their meeting this way went against everything she hoped for in their relationship.
Jan, Maureen, Toni and Barbara exchanged an incredulous look.
“But it’s perfect.”
“Jonas and I don’t need it,” Stephanie said, knowing that the best way to appease her friends was with the truth.
“What do you mean, you don’t need it?” Jan asked, her eyes narrowing with suspicion.
“You been holding out on us, girl?” Maureen barked, her hand on her hip.
“I do believe she has,” Barbara said before Stephanie had a chance to answer.
“Let’s just say this,” Stephanie said with a conspiratorial smile. “The romantic relationship between Mr. Lockwood and me is developing nicely.”
“How nicely?” Jan wanted to know. “And put it into terms we understand.”
“Like on a scale of one to ten,” Barbara added.
“What’s a ten?” Stephanie glanced up at her friends, uncertain.
“If you need to ask, we’re in trouble.”
“Right.” Hot color blossomed in Stephanie’s cheeks.
“If he phoned once or twice and showed up at your apartment—that’s a four, a low four.”
“But if you shared a couple of romantic evenings on the town, I’d call that a six.”
“I’d say meeting his family is an eight,” Toni murmured thoughtfully, her index finger pressed against her face. “Maybe a nine.”
The four romantics paused expectantly, waiting for Stephanie to gauge her relationship with Jonas on their makeshift scale. “Well?” Jan coaxed.
“An eight then, maybe a nine,” she admitted softly, waiting for her friends to break into shouts and cheers. Instead, she was greeted with a shocked, dubious silence.
“You’re not teasing, are you!” There was no hint of a question in Barbara’s murmured words. “You really aren’t joking.”
“No. Jonas introduced me to his mother this weekend. She’s a wonderful woman.”
“It’s going to work,” Maureen whispered in awe, her face revealing her surprise. “It’s really going to work!”
“Speaking of work,” Stephanie said pointedly, glancing at her watch. She was relieved not to be subjected to an endless list of questions from her co-workers, but she was so grateful to her romance-loving friends that she wanted them to share some of her happiness.
As though in a daze, Jan, Maureen, Toni and Barbara turned away from her desk. Each walked in short, measured steps, as if in a trance.
“Do you think Mike will give us a refund?” Barbara asked no one in particular as they moved out the door.
“Who cares?” came the reply from the others.
Stephanie’s boss, George Potter, arrived at the office a couple of minutes later, having recently returned from Seattle. They exchanged a few pleasantries, and Mr. Potter handed Stephanie some notes from his briefcase. “If you get the chance, could you type these up and give them to Donald Black?”
He said the name of his counterpart stiffly; Stephanie knew from experience that there was little love lost between the two men. Stephanie couldn’t imagine her amiable boss disliking anyone, and attributed the low-grade hostility to a personality conflict.
“I can type those right away,” she said with a welcoming smile. There was so much to be happy about now and she felt like humming love songs as her fingers flew across the keyboard. She wondered briefly how Jonas’s day was going, her thoughts often wandering to the president of Lockwood Industries, who just happened to be in sole possession of her heart.
The morning whizzed past. Stephanie was so close to finishing typing up her boss’s notes that she skipped her midmorning coffee break. Five minutes after everyone else had deserted her floor, she pulled the last sheet from her typewriter and sighed. The scribbled notes made for dry reading. She neatly stacked the last page with the others and inserted them into a crisp new file folder.
Mr. Potter was in a meeting, so Stephanie walked down the hallway to give the papers to Donald Black, who was the head of the accounting department.
“Good morning, Mr. Black,” she said, knocking politely on his open door. “Mr. Potter asked me to bring these over.”
“Put them over there,” he said, indicating a table on the other side of the room.
Stephanie placed the file folder where he’d requested and turned to leave, but the middle-aged, potbellied man blocked her way.
“Aren’t you and Jonas Lockwood seeing a great deal of each other?”
A plethora of possible answers crowded the end of Stephanie’s tongue. Jonas had mentioned that he’d prefer to keep their personal relationship out of the office, but Stephanie wasn’t in the habit of lying. Nor was it her custom to discuss her personal relationships with a stranger.
“We’re… friends,” she said, believing that Jonas himself must have mentioned her to the other man.
“I see.” With slow, deliberate movements, Donald placed his pencil on the edge of the file he was reading. “How willing are you to be... friends with other Lockwood employees?”
Stephanie stiffened at the insulting way he uttered the word
friends.
“I’m not sure I understand the question.”
“I’m quite certain you do.”
Stephanie didn’t know what type of games this middle-aged Don Juan was playing, but she had no intention of remaining in his office. “If you’ll excuse me.”
“As a matter of fact, I won’t. We’re having an important discussion here, and I’d consider it a desertion of your duties to this company and to me personally if you left.”
Stephanie wasn’t much into the office gossip, but she was aware that George Potter had no respect for Donald Black. As the head of the accounting department, he’d been through three secretaries in the two years Stephanie had been employed by Lockwood Industries. From her own dismal experience with her former employers, she could guess the reason Donald Black had trouble keeping a decent secretary.
“I’ll desert my duties then,” she replied flippantly. She turned to go, but didn’t make it to the door. His hand reached out and gripped her shoulder, spinning her around. Stephanie was so shocked that he would dare to touch her that she was momentarily speechless.
“Everyone in the company knows you’re being generous with Lockwood. All I want is a share in the goods.”
Still breathless with shock, Stephanie slapped his hand aside. “You sicken me.”
“Give me time, honey, I promise to improve.”
“I sincerely doubt that.” He grasped her by the shoulders then, intent on kissing her, but Stephanie managed to evade him. With everything that was in her, she pushed against his chest with both hands and was astonished at the strength of the man.
Her eye happened to catch the clock, and Stephanie realized it would be another five minutes before anyone returned to the department. Crying out would do no good, since there wasn’t anyone there to answer her plea for help.
“All I want is a little kiss,” Donald said coaxingly. “Just give me that and I’ll let you go.”
“I’d rather vomit,” she cried, kicking at him and missing.
“You stupid—”
“Let her go.”
The quietly spoken words evidenced such controlled anger that both Stephanie and her attacker froze. Donald dropped his arms and released her.
With a strangled sob, Stephanie turned aside and braced her hands against the edge of the desk, weak with relief. Her neatly coiled hair had fallen free of its restraining pins, and hung in loose tendrils around her flushed face. It took her several deep breaths to regain her strength. She didn’t know how or why Jonas was here, but she had never been so glad to see anyone.
“Clear out your desk, Black.” The emotionless, frigid control in Jonas’s voice brought a chill to Stephanie’s spine. She’d never heard a man more angry and more dangerous. Acid dripped from each syllable. An unspoken challenge hung over the room almost as if Jonas welcomed a physical confrontation.
“Hey, Jonas, you got the wrong idea here. Your lady friend came on to me.” Black raised both hands in an emotional plea of innocence.
Stephanie spun around, her eyes spitting fire.
“Is that true?” Jonas asked evenly.
“No,” she shouted, indignant and furious. “He grabbed me—”
“You didn’t hear her crying out, did you?” Black shot back, interrupting Stephanie. “I swear, man, I’m not the kind of guy who has to force women. They come to me.”
“I said clear out your desk.” Jonas pointed the tip of his cane at the far door. “A check will be mailed to you tomorrow.”
Donald Black gave Stephanie a murderous glare as he marched out of the office. “You’ll regret this, Lockwood,” he muttered on his way past Jonas.
Stephanie could see the coiled alertness drain from Jonas the minute Black was out of the room. “Did he hurt you?”
“No... I’m fine.” Stephanie closed her eyes. She was too proud to allow a man like Donald Black to reduce her to tears.
Jonas’s arm came around her, comforting and warm, chasing away the icy, numbing chill that had settled over her. “I’m fine,” she whispered fiercely, burying her face in his shoulder. “Really.”
“Let’s get out of here.” Jonas led her into the hallway and toward the elevator. Stephanie didn’t recall any of the ride to the top floor, but when the thick door glided open, Jonas called to Bertha Westheimer.
“Bring me a strong cup of coffee, and add plenty of sugar.”
“Jonas, really,” Stephanie insisted, her voice wavering slightly. “I’m fine, and I’m certainly not anywhere near being in shock.”
He ignored her, leading her into his office and sitting her down in a thick leather chair. He paced the area directly in front of her until his ever-efficient secretary appeared with the coffee, carefully handing it to Stephanie. The older woman gave Stephanie a sympathetic look that puzzled Stephanie. She couldn’t understand why the other woman would regard her with such compassion, but then she remembered her hair. She smiled back as Bertha quietly left the room, softly closing the door behind her.
“I won’t ever have you subjected to that kind of treatment again,” Jonas roared, still battling his anger.
Stephanie stared up at him blankly as he paced. He marched like a soldier doing sentry duty, going three or four feet, then swiftly making a sharp about-face. She realized his irritation wasn’t directed at her.
“We’re getting married,” he announced forcefully.
Stephanie’s immediate response was to take a sip of the syrupy coffee, convinced she’d misunderstood him.
“Well?” he barked.
“Would you mind repeating the question... I’m certain I heard you wrong.”
“I said we’re getting married.” He said it louder this time.
Stephanie blinked twice. “If I wasn’t in shock before, I am now. You can’t possibly mean that, Jonas.”
“My name will protect you.’’
“But, Jonas—”
“Will or won’t you be my wife?” he yelled.
“Stop shouting at me,” she cried, jumping to her feet. The coffee nearly sloshed over the edges of the Styrofoam cup, and Stephanie set it down before she ended up spilling it down the front of her dress.