Almost Forever Read online

  She relieved the young woman and sent her back to her own job. When she sat down at her desk, Claire felt more normal, as if things were settling back into their rightful place. Then the door to Sam’s office opened, and someone stood there watching her. It wasn’t Sam—she had never felt that tingle of awareness sweep over her from Sam’s gaze. Without looking at Max, she gathered her notes on the documents that needed typing.

  “Leave those,” he ordered, coming to stand behind her. “I’m taking you to lunch.”

  “Thank you, but I’m not hungry. I’ve just had breakfast.”

  “Then you can watch me eat.”

  “Thank you, no,” she repeated. “I have a lot to do—”

  “This isn’t personal,” he interrupted. “It concerns your job.”

  Her hands stilled. Of course. Why hadn’t she thought of that? Sam would no longer need a secretary, so she would no longer have a job. The guarantees that applied to the others could hardly be expected to apply to her. She raised shocked eyes to Max, trying to cope with the idea of being so abruptly unemployed. There were other jobs, of course. Houston was a boomtown, and she would find other work, but would she enjoy it so much and would it pay so well? Though her apartment wasn’t an expensive one like Max’s, it was nice and in a good section of town. If she had to take a large cut in pay, she wouldn’t be able to afford it. For a terrible moment she saw herself losing not only her job but her home.

  Max reached down and pulled her to her feet. His eyes were gleaming with the success he’d had in putting his plan into motion. “We’ll go to Riley’s. It isn’t quite noon, so we should get a good table away from the crowd.”

  Claire was silent as they left the building and crossed the street. It was a hot spring, with the daytime temperatures already climbing into the low nineties, and though the sky was a deep, clear blue now, the forecast was for more thunderstorms in the afternoon. Even on the short walk to Riley’s her navy-blue dress began to feel too warm. Worry ate at her. How much notice would she be given? Two weeks? A month? How long it would take to move Sam completely into research?

  They just beat the lunch crowd at Riley’s and got one of the secluded booths in the back. Claire ordered a glass of iced tea, earning a hard look from Max. “You might eat a little something—you’ve lost weight, and you had precious little to spare.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “So you said. The point is, you should eat even though you aren’t hungry to gain back the weight you’ve lost.”

  Why did he keep harping about her weight? She had lost only a pound or two, and she had always bordered on thinness, anyway. She had other things to worry about. “Are you firing me?” she asked, keeping her expression blank.

  His eyebrows lifted. “Why should I fire you?”

  “I can think of several reasons. The most immediate is that my job is being phased out, since Sam won’t need a secretary in research, and whoever takes over as CEO will probably bring his own.” She met his gaze squarely, her dark eyes fathomless and a little strained, despite her efforts to keep all expression from them. “There’s also the fact that this would be a good opportunity to get rid of a bad security risk.”

  Swift anger darkened his eyes. “You’re not a bad security risk.”

  “I leaked confidential information. I trusted the wrong person, so I’m obviously a terrible judge of character.”

  “Damn it, I—” He interrupted himself, glaring at her from narrowed, brilliant eyes. “You aren’t being fired,” he finally continued in a clipped voice. “You’re being transferred to Dallas, to Spencer-Nyle headquarters.”

  Stunned anew, she opened her mouth to say something then closed it when nothing came to mind. Transferred! “I can’t go to Dallas!”

  “Of course you can. It would be foolish of you to refuse this opportunity. You won’t be executive secretary to the CEO, of course, but there will be a substantial increase in salary. Spencer-Nyle is much larger than Bronson Alloys and pays its employees well.”

  Panic edged into her eyes, her voice. “I won’t work for you.”

  “You wouldn’t be working for me,” he snapped. “You’ll be working for Spencer-Nyle.”

  “In what capacity? Shoved into a closet sorting paper clips, so I can never get my hands on any valuable information?”

  He leaned over the table, rage turning his eyes dark green. “If you say another word about being a security risk, I’ll take you over my knee wherever we happen to be, even if it’s the middle of the street—or in a restaurant.”

  Claire sank back, warned by the look and the barely controlled ferocity in his face. How had she made the colossal mistake of thinking him civilized? He had the temperament of a rampaging savage.

  “Now, if you’re through with the sarcastic remarks, I’ll give you your job description,” he said icily.

  “I haven’t said I’ll take the job.”

  “It would be foolish of you to turn it down. As you pointed out, your job at Bronson Alloys will no longer be there in a short while.” He named a figure that was half again as much as she was currently making. “Can you afford to turn down that much money?”

  “There are other jobs in Houston. My entire family is here. If I moved to Dallas, I’d have no one.”

  His jaw tightened, and his eyes went even darker. “You could visit on weekends,” he said.

  Claire sipped at her tea, not looking at him. It would be foolish to turn down that much money, even though it meant moving to Dallas, but her instinct was to turn it down, anyway. If she relocated to Spencer-Nyle’s headquarters she would be in Max’s territory, seeing him every day, and he would have authority over her. It wasn’t a decision she could make immediately, even though logic said she should jump at it.

  “I’ll have to think about it,” she said with the quiet stubbornness that her family had learned to recognize.

  “Very well. You have until Monday.”

  “That’s just three days, counting today!”

  “If you decide not to take the job, another person will have to be found,” he pointed out. “Your decision can’t be very complicated—you have to relocate or join the unemployment lists. Until Monday.”

  She saw no sign of relenting in his eyes, even though three days seemed like no time at all to her. Claire didn’t hurry toward change; she liked to do things gradually, becoming used to changes by slow increments. She had lived all of her life in or near Houston, and to move to another city was like asking her to change her entire life. Things were difficult enough now without being lost in a totally new environment.

  Max’s prime rib was served, and he devoted himself to it for a few minutes while Claire nursed her tea and turned the idea of moving over and over in her mind. At last she pushed it away. She couldn’t decide now, and she had other things she wanted to ask him.

  “What did you tell Sam?”

  He looked up. “Concerning what?”

  “Last night. The fill-in secretary said that Sam told her I’d fainted and wouldn’t be working today.”

  “Embellishment on his part. When he asked me this morning what the hell I was doing following and harassing you last night, I told him to mind his own bloody damn business and that it was a good thing someone made certain you got home safely because you collapsed.”

  “I didn’t collapse.”

  “Really? Do you remember when I undressed you?”

  She looked away, her cheeks heating. “No.”

  “I didn’t cheat. I don’t take advantage of unconscious women. When I make love to you again, you’ll damned well be awake.”

  She had noticed that the more irritated he was, the more crisp his accent became, and he was practically biting off his words now. “If I don’t go to Dallas,” she whispered, getting up from the booth, “it will be because of you, because I can’t stand being near you.” Then she walked off before he could say anything, fleeing back across the street to the relative safety of the office.