Natural Blond Instincts Read online

The air buzzed with activity. Everywhere she looked, well-dressed, darkly dressed employees went about their day doing…actually, she still wasn’t clear on that part because she hadn’t studied the organizational charts and job descriptions yet. But she would be.

  Her cousin Serena, looking extremely Mallory in her perfectly fitted navy-blue business suit, stood next to one of the front desks. It was occupied by a man in his early twenties whipping his fingers across a keyboard.

  “So what, you’re swamped,” Serena said to him, practically hanging over his shoulder. “This is your job, Josh, and my uncle—”

  “Yeah, yeah, we all know who the uncle is.” He shot her an annoyed look. “Now, if you’d quit downloading porn from the Internet, maybe you’ll stop freezing your computer up.”

  “It’s not porn. All I wanted was that firefighter calendar.”

  “How can you tell they’re firefighters?” Josh clicked a few keys and a full body shot of an almost-naked hunk filled the screen. “The only equipment he’s got is his—”

  “Just fix it, computer boy.”

  “Right.” Josh’s tie was loose, his sleeves shoved past his elbows. With his lean body, hunching shoulders and frowning features, he looked quite tense but then Serena tended to do that to a person.

  “What is it with firefighters anyway?” he muttered. “I could look that good in suspenders, no shirt and a fire hat, too. Want to see it?”

  “Not in this lifetime,” Serena said, then she caught sight of Kenna and affixed a superior smile to her mouth. “Well, look who decided to show up for work. Uncle Kenneth told me to make you right at home in a special office, so I picked one out, just for you.” The smile she sent Kenna put her on full alert. “Last one on the left. You’ve got meetings all day, starting…” She checked her diamond-studded watch. “Oops. Ten minutes ago. The first one is a meet-and-greet in Conference Room A. Come on, I’d better take you.”

  “I can find it.”

  “Probably, but it’ll be far more fun to watch you muddle your way through your first real job.”

  “You’re so incredibly sweet first thing in the morning,” Kenna said. “It’s touching.” They moved down yet another fancy hall with marble floors that made her wonder how her father kept from being sued right and left with broken ankles incurred by walking on the high-gloss surfaces.

  Serena opened a set of floor-to-ceiling double doors with an extremely smug expression on her face. The room had a table larger than the apartment Kenna had left in Santa Barbara, and the chairs surrounding it were filled.

  Wes came toward her with a smile on his face that didn’t meet his eyes behind his glasses. She wondered if he’d forgotten to eat his Cheerios for breakfast but didn’t have time to ask him before he started introducing her to staff—marketing director, sales director, customer service director—you name it, she met them.

  “So, tell us, Kenna.” Serena gave her a sweet smile after the intros. “How do you intend to make your mark here?”

  Kenna looked around in surprise. Everyone looked at her right back.

  Including Wes, who raised a challenging brow that made her want to smack him. She lifted the reports she’d worked on in the middle of the night. “Well, I plan on taking an interest in how our projected budgets line up with the finished projects outcome. I noticed that on the renovations, for instance, we’ve gone way over—”

  “Honestly, Kenna.” Serena’s laugh tinkled throughout the room. “You’ll have enough to do in the present without worrying about the past.”

  “The past is quite important to any corporation’s present or future.” Kenna looked around her, but oddly enough, few met her gaze.

  Except Wes. He cocked his head and studied her, the only one in the room to do so directly. “You have paperwork to back up your thoughts?”

  Did she have paperwork? She loved paperwork.

  “Yep.”

  “It sounds extremely interesting.”

  “It is extremely interesting.”

  He wiggled his fingers toward her. “May I?”

  Kenna looked around again. Suddenly everyone was meeting her gaze. What a bunch of suck-ups. “Sure.” She tossed him the reports.

  He caught them with ease, tucked them under his arm and looked around him. “Thanks. Okay, people, here’s how the VP positions are going to work.” He then outlined how the division of duties would affect them, and what it meant to each department, while Kenna used the time to take stock of the fact that dark conservative clothing prevailed.

  Except for Wes and his red tie, that is. She nearly grinned at that. Besides the tie, her turquoise skirt was the bright spot in the room.

  When he finished, she shook a lot more hands. There was Mr. Bad Tie, Ms. Needs Highlights and so many others she hoped like hell she remembered their names later. In the midst of the can’t-wait-to-work-with-you speeches, Kenna caught Serena’s go-to-hell expression. Kenna knew from past experience that Serena was officially out to make her life miserable. Great. Just what she needed. Kenna escaped as soon as possible, looking forward to finding her office and digging into more work. On the way out, she grabbed Serena’s arm. “Which office did you say was mine?”

  An unholy gleam came into her cousin’s eyes. “Fifth one on the right past the desk you saw me at earlier. Later.”

  Yeah. Hopefully not.

  Kenna followed the directions, counting the doors, and had just put her hand on the handle when she heard someone clear their throat.

  Already she knew that sound, as the man it belonged to was a bundle of contradictions—cool and aloof, and yet capable of unpredictable bouts of quick wit and good humor. She’d told herself to ignore him, but deciding it and doing it were two entirely separate things.

  Slowly she pivoted and faced one most definitely not-ignorable Weston Roth.

  His smile was pure trouble. “Next round,” he said, and lifted a stack of papers and files in his hand. “These are for you.”

  7

  KENNA STARED at Wes and took a deep breath. Next round. Perfectly chosen words. Fighting words. And Wes certainly had the build of a finely honed boxer, all tall and toughly lean.

  Oh, yes, this was the next round. Bring it on. “What do you have there?”

  “Since you gave me your paperwork, I thought it only fair to share mine for the day. I’ve got a stack of files and reports that will bring you up to speed for the week’s worth of meetings.”

  She stared at him, she couldn’t help it. He was actually going to bring her into the decision-making process. He was going to treat her like an equal.

  She’d known he’d have to make at least a pretense of it, but it appeared he planned on doing more than that. Why that touched her, she had no idea, but it did. It touched her and took her completely off guard. Clearly she’d been feeling a little more vulnerable than she could have imagined. But she hadn’t gone with the waterproof mascara this morning so she bucked up. Besides, it was one thing to have a bad or weak moment, another entirely to show it.

  “In particular,” he said. “I’ve got employee contracts and union demands. We’re meeting with the reps in an hour to discuss strategies, so you might want to hustle.”

  The lump turned to pure irritation. An hour? She could never—

  “Can you get it together?”

  “Of course,” she said, her nose so high in the air she risked a nosebleed.

  Wes gestured to her still-closed office. “Did you pick this one?”

  “Serena did.”

  His dark-blue eyes, deep and mysterious behind his glasses, gave nothing away, nothing except a small glimmer of amusement. “You two are close then, huh?”

  “Like this.” She lifted two fingers, entwined. “So…we’re working on employee contracts today.”

  “Just this morning. By eleven we’ll be going over the financial statements. Quarterlies just came in.”

  Great, she’d be in her element, as opposed to this morning and the union work, which she knew noth