Now she paced her new office, ten stories up in midtown Manhattan. She swept from corner to corner over the deep oatmeal-colored carpet. Everything was perfectly in place, papers, files, coordinated appointment and address books. Even her brass-and-ebony desk set was perfectly aligned, the pens and pencils marching in a straight row across the polished mahogany, the notepads carefully placed beside the phone.
Her appearance mirrored the meticulous precision and tasteful elegance of the office. Her crisp beige suit was all straight lines and starch, but didn't disguise the fact that there was a great pair of legs striding across the carpet.
With it she wore a single strand of pearls, earrings to match and a slim gold watch, all very discreet and exclusive. As a Hayward, she'd been raised to be both.
Luring a Lady
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"22 West - home office" by AgnosticPreachersKid - Own work.
Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons -
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:22_West_-_home_office.jpg#/media/File:22_West_-_home_office.jpg
Clutter can actually have a negative impact on your productivity and workflow, as marketing software company Marketo explains. Not only that, the company reveals that 57% of Americans admit to judging their coworkers based on the state of their desks.
But what information can your coworkers really glean about you from a pile of papers and notebooks and packages? A lot, actually.
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As offices went, he'd seen worse. And he'd
certainly seen better. Her desk was army-surplus gray steel, functional and
tough, but far from aesthetically pleasing. Two metal file cabinets were shoved
against a wall that would have benefited from a coat of paint. There were two
chairs, one in a lurid purple, the other a faded print, on either side of a
skinny table that held ancient magazines and was scarred with sundry cigarette
burns.
On the wall behind them, as out of place as an
elegant woman in a waterfront dive, was a lovely watercolor of Monterey Bay.
The room smelled inexplicably like a spring meadow.
He caught a glimpse of the room behind her and
saw that it was a tiny and unbelievably disordered kitchen.
He couldn't resist.
Tucking his hands in his pockets, he smiled at
her. "Some digs."
She took another drink, then dangled the bottle
between two fingers. "Have you got business with me, Donovan?"
"Have you got another bottle of
that?"
After a moment, she shrugged, then stepped
over the phone books again to snatch one out of the refrigerator. "I don't
think you came down off your mountain for a drink."
"But I
rarely turn one down." He twisted off the top after she handed him the
bottle. He skimmed his gaze over her, taking in the snug jeans and the scarred
boots, then moving back up, to the tipped-up chin, with its fascinating little
center dip, all the way to the distrustful dark green eyes.
Entranced