His Indecent Proposal by Lynda Chance Page A

Private
college was for her. At the time, the smaller setting seemed more
conducive to studying. She had been a serious student, and didn't
feel the need to party as much. And look where she had wound up.
Over a hundred grand in debt with a fine arts degree that
apparently meant nothing.
    Oh, the irony of it all. She had actually had
to dummy down her resume to get this job. As far as the people she
was working for knew, she didn't have any college under her belt,
much less a degree. After months and months of looking for a job
that made good use of her degree, the recession had finally forced
her to take anything she could get. And she was damn glad to have
it. A girl had to eat. And now she sat all day in front of a
terminal, inputting information for accounts receivables for this
wholesale safety distribution network.
    She looked up from her bare drawer and
glanced around the office. She worked in a large central room, at
one of many open desks lined up and surrounded on two sides by
cubicles. The cubicles were the offices of mid-management and were
adjacent to the executive corridor that was better known as mahogany row . That was where the offices of the corporate
executives were located. Where the guys sat at mahogany desks all
day. The men that controlled the business. The guys in suits. She
had worked here for six months now, and had never spoken to any of
them. She would recognize them on the street, but that was about
it. The highest ranking employees she had ever had a conversation
with worked in Human Resources.
    Her stomach rumbled, and she knew with a
sinking heart that she wouldn't get to feed it until she got home.
But she was young and strong and she had gone without meals before,
so this wouldn't kill her. Still, a cup of coffee would dull some
of the hunger pains. Coffee with lots of creamer and sugar. She
needed some carbs, and if empty carbs were all she could get, oh
well .
    She stood up and made her way to the lunch
room. It was almost two o'clock, and the small room was deserted.
She poured the last dregs of the coffee into a Styrofoam cup and
dumped three sugar packets in. She upended the creamer container,
but it was empty. Opening the cabinet below her, she knelt down and
began opening a new box of coffee supplies.
    She heard the door shut, the shuffle of feet
and an irritated male voice. " Goddamnit , let it go. What the
fuck am I supposed to do, post a job opening for a wife?"
    Jenna heard the disgusted words and amusement
came to the fore. Advertise for a wife? How funny was that?
    She stood to her feet and turned in a
graceful movement to face the men she realized hadn't seen her when
they entered. Her eyes landed on the first man, a tall,
good-looking blond with an easy-going expression on his face. She
vaguely recognized him from mahogany row. Before she could stop
herself, she heard the words that impetuously popped from her
mouth. "Do I apply in H.R.?" She gave him a teasing smile and moved
her eyes to the next man and the smile fell from her lips. David
Bennett .
    She froze by the countertop as she recognized
the man that ran the company. She had seen him from a distance many
times, and the girls in accounting had certainly pointed him out
when she was first hired. They all thought he was freaking God's
gift, but Jenna didn't see it. Whenever she saw him, the only thing
she felt was vaguely threatened . She had found his eyes on
her more times than she could count when she glanced up from her
computer screen as he walked to the elevators. As if they were
connected by an invisible live wire, she could feel when he
watched her. And he watched her often.
    When it came to men and attraction, she had
encountered two types of men in her life. One type looked right
past her to the blue-eyed, skinny blonde girls of the world. The
other type of men saw her and stared . They stared at her
C cups, down her hourglass shape, and back to her C cups as if
they'd died and gone to heaven. David Bennett was