Texas Proud and Circle of Gold (Long, Tall Texans #52) - Diana Palmer Page 0,88
there, with his pale eyes piercing and intent. A blond man with broad shoulders and a hard, lean face that seemed to be all rocky edges. It was not John Callister.
She stopped in front of the desk with her heart pounding and didn’t bother to sit down. Gil Callister was obviously doing the interviews, and now she was sure she wouldn’t get the job. She knew John Callister from the drugstore where she’d worked briefly as a stock clerk putting herself through secretarial courses. John had talked to her, teased her and even told her about the secretarial job. He’d have given her a chance. Gil would just shoot her out the door. It was obvious that he didn’t like anything about her.
He tossed a pen onto the desk and nodded toward the chair facing it. “Sit down.”
She felt vulnerable. The door was closed. Here she was with a hungry tiger, and no way out. But she sat anyway. Never let it be said that she lacked courage. They could throw her into the arena and she would die like a true Roman... She shook herself. She really had to stop reading the Plinys and Tacitus. This was the new millennium, not the first century A.D.
“Why do you want this job?” Gil asked bluntly.
Her thin eyebrows lifted. She hadn’t expected the question. “Because John is a dish?” she ventured dryly.
The answer seemed to surprise him. “Is he?”
“When I worked at the drugstore, he was always kind to me,” she said evasively. “He told me about the job, because he knew I was just finishing my secretarial certificate at the vocational-technical school. I got high grades, too.”
Gil pursed his lips. He still didn’t smile. He looked down at the résumé she’d handed him and read it carefully, as if he was looking for a deficiency he could use to deny her the job. His mouth made a thin line. “Very high grades,” he conceded with obvious reluctance. “This is accurate? You really can type 110 words a minute?”
She nodded. “I can type faster than I can take dictation, actually.”
He pushed the résumé aside and leaned back. “Boyfriends?”
She was nonplussed. Her fingers tightened on her purse. “Sir?”
“I want to know if you have any entanglements that might cause you to give up the job in the near future,” he persisted, and seemed oddly intent on the reply.
She shifted restlessly. “I’ve only ever had one real boyfriend, although he was more like a brother. He married my best friend two months ago. That was just before I moved to Billings,” she added, mentioning the nearby city, “to live with my aunt. So, I don’t date much.”
She was so uncomfortable that she almost squirmed. He didn’t know about her background, of course, or he wouldn’t need to ask such questions. Modern women were a lot more worldly than Kasie. But she’d said that John was a dish. She flushed. Good grief, did he think she went around seducing men or something? Was that why he didn’t want her in his house? Her expression was mortified.
He averted his eyes. “You have some odd character references,” he said after a minute, frowning at them. “A Catholic priest, a nun, a Texas Ranger and a self-made millionaire with alleged mob ties.”
She only smiled demurely. “I have unique friendships.”
“You could put it that way,” he said, diverted. “Is the millionaire your lover?”
She went scarlet and her jaw dropped.
“Oh, hell, never mind,” he said, apparently disturbed that he’d asked the question and uncomfortable at the reaction it drew. “That’s none of my business. All right, Kasie...” He hesitated. “Kasie. What’s it short for?”
“I don’t know,” she blurted out. “It’s my actual name.”
One eye narrowed. “The millionaire’s name is K.C.,” he pointed out. “And he’s at least forty.”
“Thirty-seven. He saved my mother’s life, while she was carrying me,” she said finally. “He wasn’t always a millionaire.”
“Yes, I know, he was a professional soldier, a mercenary.” His eyes narrowed even more. “Want to tell me about it?”
“Not really, no,” she confided.
He shook his head. “Well, if nothing else, you’ll be efficient. You’re also less of a distraction than the rest of them. There’s nothing I hate more than a woman who wears a skirt up to her briefs to work and then complains when men stare at her if she bends over. We have dress codes at our businesses and they’re enforced—for both sexes.”
“I don’t have any skirts that come up to my...well, I don’t wear short ones,” she blurted out.