“Can you use MS Word?”
She smiled and nodded. “Of course.”
“Okay.” I breathed out slowly. “You can keep things in order? I mean… you have organizational skills?” Man, what was I saying? I could feel the interview slipping away from me. All I could think about when she was sitting there was the massive response I was having in my loins and how much I wanted to kiss her. I was sure I was making an utter fool of myself.
She looked at me blandly. “Of course I can.”
“You have a good manner with people?”
She raised a brow. “You think you would know what that was?”
I grinned. I didn’t know what to say to that. This felt like a battle to me. “Point taken,” I said.
We looked at each other. She caught my gaze and held it. I was surprised when she smiled. The expression tugged at my heart, and I felt as if the whole world got brighter.
“Okay,” I said after recovering somewhat. “Are you sure you’d want to be a receptionist?”
“Try me,” she shot back.
I smiled. She was so quick! I was enjoying this more than I imagined. “I mean,” I elaborated, “that being a receptionist can be demanding. And you might have to work long hours.”
I was fishing there, and I knew it. If she was in a relationship, she might be reluctant to work late. If it was going to be an issue, it should be discussed now.
She smiled. “I’m fine with that. You pay hourly, right?”
I nodded. “We do.”
There was another pause. I looked at her and wished from the depths of me that I could offer her the job, but I really felt that we needed somebody with more experience than her.
“Okay,” I said again. “Well, then. In that case, if you could give me your number? Then, when I know more, I’ll get back to you.”
She gave me a look. I knew she was too smart for me. She knew my inquiry about her details was just a way for me to not have to tell her she wasn’t who we were looking for in a direct way.
“Fine,” she said. She looked at me.
“Um, what?” I asked. Man, what had I done now? I felt like I was the one taking some harrowing interview and she was the boss. It wasn’t an altogether unpleasant feeling—not for someone who was expected to be in control permanently.
“How can I give my details when I have nothing to write with?” she asked.
“Um… yeah!” I blinked. “Here,” I added, passing her the pad of paper I’d placed near the phone. As she wrote down her name and phone number in neat handwriting, I realized I’d already messed up my own organization system, just by handing her the pad of paper. She handed back the paper. I so badly needed a receptionist around here.
I just, despite my thoughts about her, didn’t think that she was the one we were looking for.
3
Amelia
I drew a deep breath and tried to think straight. Here, in front of me, was a guy that looked like a cross between The Hulk and Hercules. I had never met anyone who had such an effect on me.
I studied him surreptitiously while he read through my details on the pad of paper. He was square-jawed and dark-haired, with big shoulders and a strong presence that smelled of manliness. I had never seen somebody so alluring in my life, and I was having trouble thinking clearly.
“Okay,” he said, looking up from the sheet of paper. “So. Thanks for dropping in, Amelia—we appreciate it.” His voice was pleasant and deep.
I swallowed hard. He held out a hand to me. I took it.
I almost groaned as his fingers gripped mine. Strong, solid, calloused—his hands were easily the most stunning things I’d ever seen.
I looked up at him. His dark eyes held my gaze. I coughed, trying to break my discomfort. I wanted him, even though I knew he was also the rudest man I had ever seen in my life. One of them, anyway.
He was also tall and muscled and he had the most beautiful gray-blue eyes. He had his hair just over an inch in length, brushed severely back, and I could see a little gray sparkling in his dark hair. He must be in his late thirties or early forties, I thought, older than me for sure, but incredibly pleasing to look at.
If he was only a bit more friendly, I could fall for him.
“Bye,” I said. My voice sounded unusually tight.
I walked to the door.
“Bye,” he said, in a voice so gorgeous that I thought I might actually die.
I was about to walk out the door when a young man burst through the door in front of me, almost flattening me against the wall. I gasped, but neither he nor the boss seemed to notice. He went straight to the desk.
“Bro, listen. We’ve got a problem. I need help.” He sounded frightened.
“What is it?” Boss-man asked, instantly shooting to his feet.
I stayed where I was. I was stuck there as the two men moved through the door.
“It’s the Harley,” the young man said. “I don’t know what’s wrong with the gears, but we just started it up, and there’s this terrible smell, and… ”
“It could be that the clutch is overheating,” the boss said as they ran outside. “Have you changed the transmission fluid? Sometimes this happens if you don’t change the fluid properly… ”
I was sneaking out after them, and just then, the phone rang. I reached for it.
“Hello?”
Answering the call had been so automatic that it was only now, when I was standing with the thing in my hand, the customer on the other side speaking to me, that I realized what I had done. I breathed in.
“Brand’s Bike shop,” I said. “Can I help you?”
“Hi,” the customer said. “I have a new bike, and it’s giving me problems with starting up.”
“Okay,” I said, reaching for a notepad and pen. “What kind of bike is it?” My mind filled in the details that I knew. It sounded like the sparkplugs, a repair that I knew wouldn’t take long.
“A Honda. VFR800,” he said.
“Okay,” I said, tapping the pen briefly against my teeth. “What year is it?”
He told me. I became aware that I was no longer alone in the office—in fact, there were two pairs of eyes watching from the doorway. I felt my cheeks go red.
The nerve! Staring at me like that.
I willed Boss-man and his friend to go away. As if he hadn’t been offensive enough to me today, now he and some guy were making me feel like some kind of specimen. I tried to ignore them. It was hard. Knowing he was there made my heart beat fast.
“When will you be able to bring it by?” I asked, paying attention only to the caller.
“Um… can you look at it tomorrow?” he asked hopefully.
“Tomorrow?” I felt my heart thud. It was hard enough to do a job that wasn’t mine without having to give answers to questions like that. I grabbed the first thing I saw that looked like a schedule. As luck would have it, the page I got was the one for this week and there was empty space right after lunch. “Sure,” I said.
“Great. What time?”
“Tomorrow at one?” I asked. There was a break of about an hour there, and I was sure that the mechanics in such a good establishment would have plenty of time to diagnose the problem with his motorcycle.