Ineligible Bachelor (2 page)

Kiernan watched for a while. “Impressive.”

Logan paused the slideshow. “I have a few more adjustments to make, but I think I can sell it.”

“You know Sherwin’s retiring,” Kiernan said, turning and walking toward the door. “Junior partner pays twenty-five percent more with an annual bonus, based on productivity, and an assistant to help with the paperwork.” He pointed to the laptop. “Provided you close the deal.”

Logan immediately calculated the difference in salary and thought of three or four investment possibilities. “I’ll close the deal all right. You just make sure the corner office is repainted in time for me to move in on Monday.”

“There’s another project you’ll have to deal with first,” Kiernan said. “But it’s more of a fun thing than a work thing. We’re very excited about it.”

Logan felt his brow furrow. “And what one would that be?”

Kiernan patted Logan on the shoulder. “Want it to be a surprise for the partners, do you?” He made a zipping motion across his mouth. “Mum’s the word.” Then he saluted Logan and closed the office door on his way out.

Logan stared at the door for a while. What the heck was Kiernan talking about? The man was always cryptic and loved throwing coworkers offtrack. Logan looked at the laptop screen as the slide show finished. No sense trying to figure it out now. He had a multimillion-dollar pitch to make.

He ran the presentation again, his future entirely in his own hands and the memory stick of his flash drive. The sale was in the details, so he pressed the enter key and watched the ad campaign run another time, just to be sure his proverbial ducks were all in a row.

He watched the blonde model he’d hired run across the set in the Arizona desert with her beautiful feet in white running shoes. As he contemplated the ad sale, a clammy feeling suddenly started in his stomach. He recognized it as the same clammy feeling he got just before something happened to change the course he had set for himself. It was the same feeling he got right before he decided not to run with the bulls in Pamplona when his friend did and got gored, the same feeling that kept him from skydiving, the same feeling that seemed to warn him about needy women.

And it was the same feeling he remembered having when he was in Pee Wee football, right before he got tackled by Rikka McAllister in the championship game.

He tossed his shoulders. Wow. Weird. Though he saw Rikka all the time, he hadn’t thought about that particular game in a while. He shook the thought from his mind and pushed the call button for the receptionist.

“Yes, Mr. Gabriel?” she replied.

“Angie, I’ll need you to hold all calls for the next few hours. No one disturbs me.”

He barely had the last word out of his mouth when he heard a commotion outside his door. He looked up in time to see Rikka burst through it, Angie right on her heels.

“We have to leave right now!” Rikka shouted at him.

Angie put herself between Rikka and Logan. “I’m sorry, Mr. Gabriel. I tried to stop her, but she pushed right by me.” She put her hand on Rikka’s arm. “You’ll have to leave now. Mr. Gabriel is busy.”

Rikka shrugged it away. “Doesn’t look that way.” She walked around the desk, grabbed the briefcase she saw on the floor, and began throwing papers into it. Then she pulled back Logan’s chair. “We really need to leave.”

He turned to her, and Rikka suddenly felt as though she couldn’t breathe. Haloed in light from the window behind him, Logan looked almost angelic. His square chin seemed sculpted, his cheekbones defined like a decisive stroke of an artist’s brush. She fought to keep her face neutral. He came across as so appealing, even though the look in his ice-blue eyes was one of the most confused expressions she had ever seen on a person’s face.

Logan took the briefcase from her hands, shut it, and put it back on the floor. “Freddy, what are you doing here?”

“I wish you’d stop calling me that.”

“Sorry. Habit.”

She grabbed his arm. “We can work on that later. We really have to go.”

Angie shouldered past her. “Should I call security, Mr. Gabriel?”

“No, Angie, Freddy is…”

“Rikka,” she corrected.

His eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “Rikka and I are friends.” Angie looked back and forth between them a few times. “Really. It’s okay,” he assured. “You can go, Angie.”

Angie gave them each one more glance, then nodded and left.

“Now,” Logan said, turning to Rikka. “Want to tell me what’s going on, Freddy?”

“I don’t want you to call me that anymore.”

Logan grinned. “You came all the way to Morristown to tell me that?”

His playful smile tripped her heartstrings. She hoped it wasn’t the last one she would see, especially when he found out what she had done. She put her hands together like she was praying. “No, but I really need to talk to you, and I need to do it now.”

He gestured to the chair opposite his desk. “So talk.”

“Not here.”

“Why?”

“Because.”

“We’re not in school, so that’s not going to work.”

Rikka checked her watch. She was running out of time. She figured she had about two minutes to get Logan out the back door before the camera crew came in the front.

She put both hands on his shoulders. “Do you trust me?”

His brow furrowed. “Do I have reason not to?”

She pushed his chair back and began to drag him to his feet. “No. Yes. Maybe.”

“Which one is it?” he asked, standing.

Almost at the same time, his office door opened. Rikka felt her heart drop to her knees. Fear stopped her from turning around.

But Patt’s distinctive voice gave her renewed hope. “You, you beat me here.” She closed the door behind her. “What’s the plan?”

“Thank heavens it’s only you.” Rikka latched onto Logan’s right arm with the intensity of a death grip and gestured to his left with a lift of her chin. “Help me get him out of here.”

Patt grabbed on and together they started to drag him to the door.

Logan tried to dig his heels into the thick carpeting. “Stop.”

“No time,” Rikka said, still trying to get him out the door.

Logan grabbed onto the door frame with both hands. “I have a bad feeling about this. Tell me what’s going on.”

Rikka tried to pry his fingers free. “Nonsense. Everything’s fine.”

“I sincerely doubt it,” he replied in protest, just as she and Patt manhandled him out the door. Angie appeared frozen in place as she watched them from her desk chair in silence, telephone receiver pressed against her ear.

The trio had just gotten into the hallway when they were blinded by bright lights. A microphone boom appeared over their heads while a cameraman leaned in to get the shot with his remote.

“Congratulations, Logan Gabriel,” a clearly feminine voice said, a national TV station logo recognizable on the microphone in her hand. “You have been chosen as
Elan Magazine
’s Most Eligible Bachelor. Tell the country how you feel.” She held out the microphone to him and waited for his response.

Rikka looked at a monitor being held to her left. Captured on it, probably for later viewing as an intro to the show, she and Patt looked like deer caught in headlights, holding on to the arms of the man who was already on the cover of the magazine the reporter held in her hand.

“What?” Logan asked.

“You’ve won.”

“Won what?”

“The title of
Elan Magazine
’s Most Eligible Bachelor and the chance to meet six bachelorettes, one of whom you will choose for an adventure of a lifetime.”

The reporter held up the magazine. Logan took it with both hands. Not only was he on the cover, but he recognized it as a picture taken at the backyard pool of his mother’s house. The strategic placing of some branches through which the shot had been snapped made it seem as though he’d been posing naked for it.

His eyes widened. There could be only one angle from which the shot had been taken. From the neighbors’ backyard. The McAllisters’.

He turned, magazine in hand. “Freddy!”

“Rikka,” she said in a small voice as Patt laughed and pulled out her cell phone to take pictures. She looked from the picture to Logan’s face. “My bad.”

Mr. Kiernan appeared in the hallway and pushed his way through the camera techies. “You are a genius, Gabriel.”

“I am?”

“Certainly. This is a great opportunity for the firm. You’ll be on national television, and so will we, by association. Great exposure.” Kiernan patted Logan’s shoulder. “Terrific exposure.”

Patt looked at the magazine cover. “I’ll say.”

Rikka swiveled her head and gave Patt the keep-quiet look.

“And you are?” the woman with the mike in her hand asked, angling it toward Kiernan.

“I’m the bachelor’s boss.” He sounded like a proud father.

“Tell me how you feel about this,” she pressed.

Rikka could hear a few of his words as the TV crew turned the cameras on Kiernan. “Clients. Partners. Business.” She didn’t have to hear more to know Logan’s boss was on board with the idea. Maybe it would be all right after all. If his boss wanted Logan to do this, maybe Logan would.

A crew member pulled Logan inside the ring of reporters and placed him next to Kiernan, who looped an arm across his shoulders. “Yes, this is one of our brightest stars,” Kiernan said. “And I’ll just bet he’s going to be one of prime time’s, too.”

The itchy feeling Rikka had earlier crawled its way up her spine in concert with the annoyed look spreading across Logan’s face.

“What about my clients, Mr. Kiernan?” Logan asked, blinking against the bright light.

“They’ll be temporarily reassigned. Don’t worry about anything except having a good time and getting the right amount of publicity for the firm.” Then he hugged Logan like he would a six-year-old. “Pull this off and the junior partnership is a slam dunk.”

The attention then shifted to Rikka. Someone pushed her next to Logan.

The reporter thrust the microphone in her face. “Tell America why you entered Mr. Gabriel in the contest, Ms. McAllister.”

Logan crossed his arms over his chest. “Yes, do tell America,” he agreed.

Rikka looked from Logan to the reporter to Patt and then around the crowded hallway. It seemed like every employee in the building had come out of their offices and was waiting for her answer.

What on earth was she supposed to do now? She couldn’t possibly tell them the truth. She couldn’t tell anyone. Not now. Maybe not ever.

Logan and Rikka sat on opposite sides of the bench seat in the back of the stretch limo, so far apart you could have fit two other people between them. Rikka looked out the left side window, Logan, the right. The magazine lay on the seat between them.

Rikka glanced at it several times, more than tempted to slowly walk her fingers over to it and slide it toward her with the intent of tossing it out the window. Not that it would have mattered. In a day or so, every newsstand would have a copy of it.

She looked at Logan, his profile perfectly outlined against the glass. His neutral expression did nothing to take away from the finely sculpted details she loved so much: his nose with the little dent put there from one too many tackles on the football field, his cheekbones shadowed by long lashes.

Her heart hitched. Why
did
she do this? She used phrases like “on a whim” and “never thought we’d win” to successfully answer the reporter’s questions. The careful and neutral sound bites bought her some time, but Logan wouldn’t be satisfied with anything less than the truth.

But the truth was the one thing she could never bring herself to tell him, almost from the first day they met.

At twelve, her family moved in next door to his, and she thought he was the cutest boy she had ever seen. At fourteen, she couldn’t
make it through the day if she didn’t somehow find a way to talk to him, even though he went to private school and she went to public school. At sixteen, she thought she’d die when he broke her heart without even knowing it by asking Rita Rose Donald to his junior prom. At eighteen, she pretended to be excited when he accepted a college scholarship to New Hampshire State in Henniker, knowing she would be attending community college in the next town.

During their college years, she kept tabs on him through stories his mother shared with her mother or through chats on the Internet. During holidays, when he came home from school, and over summer break, she made sure she saw him at least once a day. When he moved back home after he got his master’s degree, she was in heaven. But when he found his own place in another town a year later, she couldn’t eat for days.

Her silly schoolgirl crush had taken root in eighth grade and became a living, breathing part of her as the years passed. Sure, she dated, and so did he, but never each other.

Over those same years, when she did try so many ways to get him to notice her as more than just a friend, all she managed to get from him were comments like “Skirt’s too short, Fred” or “The smoky eye thing is not working for you. You look like a raccoon.”

To him, she was Freddy McAllister, right tackle and the “little sister” he never had.

The only thing she did have on her side was the unwritten rule that neither of them could bring anyone else to the get-togethers at The Huddle, a local sports bar, where they met bimonthly with a group of mutual friends. There she had him all to herself, factoring out the other twelve or fifteen people who joined them regularly, of course.