The Cowboy's Temptation Page 0,2
her mind. The day turned out to be just as hectic as all the others. She was in and out of meetings, working on the final details of a major sale throughout the day. She skipped lunch and ate a sandwich at her desk in the middle of the afternoon.
By the time she had a chance to think again, it was dark outside her office window. But the deal was done, she thought with a vague sense of disappointment. Elissa said goodbye to her client and hung up the phone, taking a deep breath. Then another. After the third deep breath, Elissa gave in and burst into the tears that had been held at bay all day long. The sobs wracked her too-thin frame, leaving her feeling worse than she did before she started crying.
After ten minutes, Elissa pulled herself together and repaired her makeup. Pulling a mirror out of her desk, she looked at her reflection as she tried to get her mind back together. Her brown, curly hair fell softly to her shoulders, framing her face and curling inward at the ends. She pushed the hair behind her ears distractedly, wishing she could have normal, straight hair that looked smooth and sophisticated instead of this mass of brown hair that had a mind of its own.
Her eyes were still the blue she remembered, but she didn’t know where the dark circles underneath had come from. She needed to get a little sun, she thought as she dabbed powder across her nose to hide the redness, the only color left in her face besides her blue eyes.
At that moment, Jim Tillman the managing director of Tillman and Hirshman Investments walked in preceded by a whiff of expensive cologne. Just as Darrel had done earlier in the day, Jim didn’t bother to knock. “Good job today. What kind of numbers did you close with?” he asked, walking around her office, picking up pictures and looking at them, then setting them back down on her shelf.
Elissa blinked and refocused on the computer screen, wishing she didn’t feel so completely tired. She wanted to shout at the man to get out of her office and leave her alone, but instead, she punched in a few numbers on her computer, calculating the gross profits for the day. “The Hartman account pulled in over a million dollars with my last phone call,” she said.
Where was the exhilaration she used to feel after a day like today? Where was the sense of accomplishment? She’d made a lot of money for several clients today but all she felt was a vague sense of restlessness and overwhelming fatigue.
Jim didn’t sense her feelings, preferring to concentrate on the monetary side of life. “That was only a few minutes ago, wasn’t it? You did some other good deals earlier today,” he said and nodded with approval.
“It was a good day,” Elissa confirmed, but she wasn’t interested in the numbers. The firm realized a ten percent return on all profits for each account and she earned a percentage of that. But she didn’t care anymore.
Elissa waited with a passive face for Jim to get to the point of his visit. She didn’t have to wait long.
He stopped fiddling with the knick-knacks placed around her office and turned to look at her, a practiced smile on his tanned face. “I was wondering if you would consider a merger,” he said, his bland, gray eyes alighting at the idea.
Elissa didn’t like the sound of that, grimacing inwardly. She suspected that this was going to become an awkward conversation. Jim was a handsome man who had just divorced his third wife. He was tall with dark hair elegantly styled to show off his silver temples and wore perfectly tailored suits. she knew he earned a very good salary. with material wealth anymore. “Can you give me more details?” she asked cautiously just in case she was misreading the signs and this was an actual business proposition and not a personal one.
Since he was managing director of the firm,
But so did she. And Elissa wasn’t impressed
Jim turned around and came over to her side of the desk. He sat down on the side, swinging one leg as he faced her. Elissa imagined that he practiced the pose in the mirror at home. “You’re a very beautiful woman, Elissa.”
Elissa was instantly on alert. This was not a good conversation. Jim had a reputation as a womanizer and he didn’t take rejection very well. “Thank you,