Adding Up to You Read online

  When his phone rang, it startled him. Who could be calling at…He checked his watch. Midnight. “Mallory Enterprises.”

  “Weston Roth?”

  “Yes. Who is this?”

  “Ray Panziera, a friend of Kenna’s. Listen, she’s not in her room, I was wondering…is she there in the offices?”

  “Hold on.” He jogged down the hall but Kenna’s office was dark. He went back to his. “She’s not at her desk.”

  “Well, who in their right mind would be?”

  Wes sighed. “Would you like to leave a message?”

  “Oh, just wanted to see if she was up for a late-night drink. We do that sometimes.”

  Wes had no idea why that bugged him, but it did.

  “It’s no biggie,” Ray said. “If I know Kenna, which I do, she’s got the late-night munchies and is somewhere in the hotel stuffing her face. If you happen to see her, you might mention she could have called me to share, the bitch. Ciao.”

  Wes stared at the phone, then hung up. Kenna’s friends were as crazy as she was. He tried to put the call out of his head, tried to get back into work, but it was no good. With a sigh, he walked out of the offices and into the elevator. Downstairs, he moved through the lobby and headed for a house phone. He had no idea why really, but something in him wanted to check on her, to make sure everything was okay. It really was late, and maybe she was sick—

  Just as Ray had said, she didn’t answer her room phone.

  He’d now officially done his best to check on her. No way was he going to search this huge place, not at this hour.

  Nope.

  Dammit. There were two restaurants in the hotel, both closed. He could have tried the bar, but somehow he didn’t think Kenna would go to the bar for a late-night snack.

  He headed for the hotel kitchen.

  The lights at the far end were on, and he strode around huge stacking trays that tomorrow morning would be loaded with baked goods, and came to an abrupt stop in front of the large wooden island.

  Kenna stood on the other side of it, one hand holding a fork, the other steadying an entire sheet cake as she leaned over an opened magazine, engrossed in her reading. If he wasn’t mistaken, her mouth was rimmed with chocolate.

  When she saw him, the fork dropped with a clatter.

  Not the magazine, he noticed, which she pressed to her chest.

  Curious now, he stepped closer, not knowing what he expected. Maybe an article on “How to Drive Your Partner Insane.”

  Hell, even voodoo exercises wouldn’t have surprised him. Pushing his glasses closer to his eyes, he leaned in. “You’re reading…”

  “Nothing.” She hugged the magazine closer, which he could now see was Cosmopolitan. “I’m reading nothing. Why are you here?”

  “Ray called looking for you.”

  “At the office?”

  “At the office.”

  “Oh. He probably wanted to go out, we do that sometimes when neither of us can sleep.” She loosened her arms and started to back away. “Thanks.”

  “Uh-huh.” He blinked in disbelief. “You’re reading…” He cocked his head to get a better look. “‘How to Get Your Sexy Partner from the Board Room to the Bedroom’?”

  CHAPTER 13

  UNDER THE GLOW of the harsh lights, Kenna’s cheeks glowed. With heat, embarrassment…Wes had no idea, but he couldn’t stop looking at her.

  “It’s just a magazine,” she said. “I subscribe. It means nothing, honestly. In fact, I read all the articles. Here, look, I just finished this one—” She flipped through the magazine. “See? Right here. ‘How to Get Your Yoga Instructor to Fall for You’, and I don’t even have a yoga instructor.”

  Then she backed away from the island, doing nothing to get rid of the chocolate on her mouth.

  He stared at her lips and reminded himself that eating that chocolate off her mouth would be a very bad move. A very, very bad move. “We need to talk.”

  “I don’t know, I really had my heart set on eating this cake.”

  “Kenna…what are we doing?”

  “I don’t know about you, but I’m eating. I heard this thing calling my name all the way from my hotel room.”

  “Kenna.”

  “Look…why do you care?”

  “That you were eating cake? I don’t. Why do I care that you stay in an office that was never meant for you? That one I’m not sure about. Or that you’re trying so hard at this job, harder than half our employees, which I’ve got to tell you, is impossibly attractive. I haven’t a clue, Kenna, not a single one.”

  She stared at him as if he’d lost his mind, not her. “My office is fine.”

  “Are you staying there because you think you deserve it? Because if you are, damn, Kenna…”

  “You don’t understand. You were born for this job.”

  “And you were born into it. It doesn’t matter.”

  “Why are you being so nice?”

  “I’m always nice.”

  “On my second day in this job, you gave me less than an hour to get up to speed with the union stuff. Was that nice?”

  “It was reality. And now the reality is that you’re here, and so am I, and we’re dealing with it. Together.”

  “Together,” she whispered. “What else are we going to do together?” She stared at his mouth and made him hard.

  But he took a big step back, and a bigger mental one.

  “Right,” she said, shuttering her eyes from him. “This is about work.”

  “Yeah. Goodnight, Kenna,” he said quietly.

  “Sweet dreams.”

  A rough laugh escaped him. “Trust me, there will be nothing sweet about my dreams tonight.”

  * * *

  THE WEEK flew by for Kenna and suddenly it was Friday. Later tonight was her father’s big annual charity event. All the employees were expected to make a showing, and seeing as the night always raised tens of thousands of dollars for various children’s charities across the county, Kenna couldn’t complain.

  Needing some time to herself first, she actually took a few hours off work. She felt the need to get out, to drive, to walk through Old Town or Balboa Park, where she could wander through the science museum and lose herself. Or even just stand on the beach and breathe, if only for a few minutes before having to come back and stuff herself into a fancy dress and make nice.

  She hit the coast first, loving the cool breeze, the salty air. Ocean Beach, her teen hangout, was packed. She got out and started walking through the sand, wanting to put her toes in the water, but everywhere she looked she saw youth and wealth and beauty sprawled out.

  No one appeared to have a single issue, a single problem in their life, and even though she knew it was an illusion that it was all sun and games and vacation here for these people on this glorious summer day, it left her yearning to be somewhere else, where life wasn’t so pretty, where it was more complicated, more…real.

  She got back into her car and drove to the Teen Zone.

  There were two girls in the yard talking. One held a lit cigarette. They weren’t tanned and pretty and full of zest and exuberance, as she’d seen only moments ago at the beach. Instead they seemed hard and tired. They wore jeans snug in the butt, too long in the leg and so low on their hips Kenna couldn’t imagine what kept them up. Each wore a handkerchief top that didn’t come close to meeting the waistband of the jeans. One of them had a tattoo of a fern low on her spine, making it look as if she had a plant growing out of her butt. Kenna felt too old to understand why that would appeal. Both had pierced eyebrows, upper lips and chins.

  Neither smiled.

  Music poured out the windows of the house, where there were probably more surly, untrusting, tattooed, pierced, attitude-ridden teens.

  And Sarah dealt with this every day.

  Here was life, here was reality, and not understanding what drove her, Kenna got out of the car. Strange as it seemed, she understood these girls, not because she’d had to scrape by just to surv