His Girl Friday

“Mr. Ritter, I don’t want to catch his eye,” she’d replied. “He’s not my type at all.”

“You’d settle him,” he continued as if she hadn’t spoken, nodding his silver head as he towered over her, with eyes as pale a blue as Cabe’s. “Keep him away from these party girls he takes around. He’ll die of some god-awful disease, you know,” he whispered conspiratorially. “He doesn’t even know where those girls have been!”

At that point, Danetta had excused herself and made a dash for the rest room, where she collapsed against a wall in tears of hysterical laughter. She’d wanted so badly to tell her boss what his father had said about him, but didn’t know how to bring up the subject.

Cabe’s curious scowl finally caught her attention. “Well, don’t just stand there, Dan, sit down,” he muttered, watching her watching him. “I don’t know what’s gotten into you lately, but your mind’s just not on your work.”

Her eyebrows lifted sharply. “I beg your pardon?” she faltered, standing beside the chair across from his massive desk.

“Sit!” he said shortly.

She sat. The curt authority in that deep voice had the same effect on his male employees. He was so used to throwing out orders that he didn’t have any inhibitions about doing it at restaurants, other peoples’ parties—just about anywhere. Hostesses were said to sigh with relief when he left.

“No wonder your father doesn’t approve of you,” she muttered. “You’re just like him.”

“Insults are my line, not yours, kid,” he reminded her. He leaned back in the chair and it squeaked alarmingly. He was no lightweight, even if it was all muscle. His pale blue eyes stared a hole through her. “You don’t look very cheerful this morning. What’s wrong?”

“You had two bites out of me before I got in the door, and it wasn’t my fault,” she replied.

“So? I have two bites out of you most mornings, don’t I?” His eyes glittered with faint humor. “It goes with the job description. You cried for the first two days you worked here.”

“I was scared to death of you those first two days,” she recalled.

“Then you threw the desk calendar at me.” He sighed. “It was nice, having a secretary who fought back. You’ve lasted a long time, Dan.”

Maybe too long, she wanted to say. But she didn’t.

“No comment?” He jerked forward in his chair with one of those lightning moves that always threw her off balance. For a big man, he was incredibly fast. “Look here, we’ve got to do something about my father.”

She blinked at the sudden change of subject. “We do?”

He glared at her. “Yes, we. He’s feeding the rumor mill again. His latest favorite bit of gossip is that I’m looking for a wife. My phone rang off the hook last night with offers from the aged eligible of Tulsa.”

She grinned at his irritated expression. She could just see the spinsters getting their arrows out. “You know why, don’t you?” she asked. “You changed the lock on your apartment and now he doesn’t have a key that fits.”

“My God, I had no privacy at all! I had to do it. He was waiting for me at the apartment last Friday night,” he said, his eyes narrowing angrily. “I took Karol home with me after dinner and there he stood, sharpening his knife on a whetstone. He took one hard look at her and invited himself for coffee and a drink. He didn’t go home until after midnight. Meanwhile he treated Karol to a monologue on the fine art of castrating calves, mucking out stables and assorted other disgusting subjects that made her sick. She went home.”

“Oh, I can understand that,” she agreed, trying to convince herself that it didn’t matter about Karol going home with him. It did irritate her, though, that she minded his careless attitude toward his conquests, when she should have been grateful that she wasn’t among them. “I once heard him tell one of your women friends about the treatments you were taking for some contagious condition.”

His eyes widened. “It was Vera, wasn’t it? Wasn’t it? My God—” he banged his fist on the desk “—that’s why she left in such a hurry and without saying goodbye! The venomous old snake!” Vera, Danetta recalled, had been his steady date before Karol.

“Is that any way to talk about your father, Mr. Ritter?” she asked gently.

He gave her a tolerant stare. “Dan,” he began, using the appalling nickname that he and he alone had stuck her with, “when he was in here last week, one of the kinder things he said about you was that you dressed as if you had pull at the Salvation Army surplus store.”

She was so insulted that she forgot to protest the destruction of her name. “The venomous old snake!” she exclaimed.

He raised an eyebrow. “That’s what I thought you said. Any ideas?”

“None that won’t get you arrested,” she replied. “Why is he interfering so much lately?”

He sighed, brushing a huge hand through his thick, wavy hair. “He thinks I need a wife. So he’s going to find me one.”

“Maybe he’s just bored,” she murmured thoughtfully. “You could ask your stepmother to take him on a world cruise.”

His eyes hardened. “I have as little contact with my stepmother as possible,” he said curtly.

“Sorry.” She knew that was a sore spot with him, but she didn’t know why. He was a very private man in some ways.

He shrugged. “I guess your parents are still married?”

She smiled. “Yes, sir, for thirty years last November.”

“Don’t call me sir,” he said harshly. He broke a pencil and got to his feet, moving toward the window like a human steamroller while Danetta caught her breath at the bite in his voice. He pulled open the blinds and looked over the flat landscape of the city. “I don’t want to get married. I don’t want to love anyone.”

She stared at his broad back incomprehensibly.

He fingered the blinds thoughtfully. “You haven’t volunteered any information about Karol to my father, have you?” he asked suddenly, turning toward her.

His height was intimidating when he loomed over her that way. She shifted gracefully in the chair. “No, si—” She cleared her throat. “No, Mr. Ritter. He did all the talking. As usual.”

“What did he say?”

She muffled a giggle. “That you were going to catch some god-awful disease if he didn’t save you from those women.” She leaned forward. “You don’t know where they’ve been, you see.”

He burst out laughing. The sound was deep and rich and pleasant, because he wasn’t usually a laughing man. It took some of the age from his hard face, made his blue eyes sparkle. She smiled at him because he looked wickedly handsome when he was amused.

“So that’s his angle. Maybe I can have a long talk with him about modern life.”

“That will only work if you tie him up and gag him first.”

“He’s confiding in you lately, is that it?” He pursed his lips and studied her with that quiet scrutiny that was becoming more and more frequent. “How old are you now, Dan?”

“Twenty-three.” And if you don’t stop calling me Dan, I’m going to wrap you in cellophane tape and hang you out the window, she added silently.

“You were barely twenty-one when you came here,” he recalled thoughtfully. “Gangly and nervous and painfully shy. In some ways, you’re still shy.”

“How kind of you to notice,” she said, “now about the mail—”

“You don’t date,” he said as if he knew.

She crossed her long legs. “Well, no. Not a lot,” she said with obvious reluctance.

His blue eyes searched hers. “Why?”

She chose her words carefully. She’d never had this kind of personal discussion with him before, and she wondered why he’d brought up the subject. Surely his father hadn’t been trying to play Cupid for her? “I’m not modern enough to suit most men,” she replied finally.

He perched himself on the corner of his desk and looked down at her quietly. “Modern as in sexually liberated?”