LITMIR.BIZ

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left to her own devices? Jessie felt her new “do” managed to look like she had slept with a demon-possessed rolling pin. Desperate for some semblance of order from her unruly hair she had taken to wetting it down, plastering it against her head and letting it dry like that. Without looking in a mirror, she knew the result was less than stellar, a drowned rat mixed with a helmet-head kind of look.

      And makeup? A tiny line of gloss around her lips, a hint of mascara, a touch of blush. The result? Dull. Dull. Dull.

      Stop it, Jessie commanded herself. The order of business was not to sit here wishing for another opportunity to make that all-important first impression. If she had it to do again, she should not waste her wishes on beauty. Why should she care if Garner Blake thought she was attractive? She was already taken, engaged, not available for the man-woman game anymore. She was relieved about that. The rules and procedures had always seemed just a little nebulous. She was a disaster at interchanges with the opposite sex, and she was darned lucky to have found Mitch, who appreciated her for her mind.

      No, if she was throwing wishes around, she should opt for a chance to look brilliant.

      Just a year from her doctoral degree, if she chose to continue her prairie dog study, and she had managed to present herself as a complete imbecile from the moment she had stepped out of her smoking car.

      She had confidently proclaimed her master’s degree qualified her to look after his office, and she could clearly see it would take something much more than that.

      “A combination of the Queen of Clean and Trump,” she muttered out loud.

      Sitting at this horribly messy desk in a building that smelled of grease and other mysterious and extremely masculine substances, and that was heating up more by the second, it occurred to her she should have asked more questions of her father.

      Still, he hadn’t really given her much opportunity. He had passed her off to James to get details like location, date and time. She remembered her father had sounded frail in a way that had made her uneasy—and eager to please.

      She might not like this job, but she was not letting her father down!

      And she was not letting that arrogant ass—who happened to be her boss—win!

      “And I am certainly not being defeated by a coffeepot,” she decided, and leapt to her feet. She focused furiously on her task, ignoring the almost constant jangling of the phone. The pot was a huge silver monstrosity that did not bear any resemblance to the one she had at home on her kitchen counter. She found grounds, dumped in approximately enough to sink the Titanic, found the on switch and got it working.

      “‘I like it strong.’” She mimicked his deep voice.

      Still, when the office began to fill with the smell of coffee, Jessica King felt inordinately pleased with herself.

      “There’s no problem so great a good mind can’t solve it,” she said to herself, quoting Mitch. With new confidence she picked up the ringing telephone.

      Okay, she might be in the shadow of her gorgeous younger sister, Chelsea, who the world and the press could not get enough of. And she was definitely in the shadow of Brandy, who was so bold and adventuresome.

      But Jessie had her talents. She was the brainy princess, and K & B Auto—and Garner Blake—were about to find that out! That good-looking oaf didn’t think she could do it. She couldn’t think of a pleasure greater than proving him wrong.

      “So, uh, Garner, what do you think?”

      He didn’t have to ask, “About what?” Clive, the best mechanic in his shop, looked like a biker and was as mild and shy as a groundhog fresh out of its hole. He and his wife had just had their first baby. Garner had been named godfather.

      “She makes lousy coffee,” he said, couching his answer in carefully diplomatic terms. What he was thinking was I hate rich girls.

      In just a few moments of acquaintance she had called him mucky and tacky. The business he had spent his whole life building had been reduced to a mess and a mistake. She hadn’t even known she was being insulting. She’d just been exercising that unconscious superiority of the very rich.

      “I like the coffee,” Clive said with just a touch of stubbornness. “Garner, you try being nice for a change, or she’ll up and quit like all the rest of them.”

      We can only hope. Garner had chosen not to mention to these guys that their new office manager was one of those Kings. It would bring up a whole lot of questions that he didn’t know how to answer.

      “I ain’t working here another week if you keep on trying to do all the jobs, including billing, booking and answering the phone.”

      Garner tried not to groan. Clive was going to make his stand over this girl, the one he needed to get rid of? Resentfully, he reminded himself that his loyalty to this man who was threatening to quit was part of the reason he found himself in this predicament in the first place.

      “Look, I’ll run the business, you pull the wrenches.”

      “I miss your aunt,” Clive said glumly.

      Garner’s aunt Mattie had done the office managing since he was a child. She was old and efficient and not the least distracting. Imagine her abandoning K & B for the dubious pleasure of marrying Arnold Hefflinger and moving to Quartzsite, Arizona! She’d given fair notice, but somehow Garner hadn’t taken her seriously, or understood exactly how much she did and how hard she was going to be to replace, until it was too late.

      “Them last two gals left in tears,” Clive said, faint warning in the look he sent Garner.

      But Garner could only hope it had been good practice for getting rid of this one. Though even as he thought it, he knew he didn’t ever want to see Jessica King’s big green eyes filming with tears.

      Spitting with anger was another thing altogether.

      “The second one looked awful good in a miniskirt,” Clive remembered wistfully.

      Garner sighed. Something they weren’t going to have to worry about with Jessica King. She wasn’t the miniskirt kind. In fact she looked like she had taken a wrong turn on the way to finding her kindergarten class—not what he’d expected at all. But those rich kids could be real good at that—the wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing game.

      Still, he’d expected, as a King princess, she would have been a whole lot flashier. Manicure, makeup, clothes, hair, jewelry. Jessica’s hair had been a pretty color, but short, flattened to her head in a very unflattering manner. The boxy, refrigeratorlike design of the suit had successfully disguised any lines beneath it, which was a good thing. Her nails had been neat and filed. The only jewelry had been that ring.

      She had the attitude, though, in spades. Mucky, tacky and messy, he reminded himself.

      “I hope she brings cookies to work,” Clive said.

      “That girl hasn’t ever baked a cookie in her life,” Garner said.

      “What would make you say that?” Clive asked innocently.

      Garner stifled a snort. One thing he knew for sure: Rich girls did not bake cookies.

      But Clive saved him from having to reply by shuffling off to his bay, where Mrs. Fannie Klippenhopper’s thirty-year-old Impala was up on the hoist.

      Aunt Mattie, of course, had provided cookies. Cookies and comfort. She had been part den mother and part drill sergeant and the sad fact of the matter was she was going to be irreplaceable as the office manager of K & B Auto.

      He was willing to bet Jake King’s daughter not only hadn’t ever baked a cookie, she hadn’t ever canned peaches, ridden a public bus or worried over a bill, either. Despite her rather surprising academic achievement, normal—like working the front end of a garage—would not be in her life experience. Normal to her was probably denting a very expensive car and walking away from it with a shrug and an oh well.

      Unwillingly,

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