Hidden Agenda

She shivered slightly. Was it possible? She could think of little nice to say about the man, but could he possibly be a murderer?

In high school, when his cruel prank was still fresh in her mind, she’d envisioned all sorts of ways she might make Conner Blake pay for his crime. Her revenge fantasies had included such soap-operatic scenarios as transforming herself into a siren, tricking him into falling in love with her, then jilting him at the altar. Or waiting until he was running for congress, then revealing to the press what he had done to her just days before the election.

She’d grown up and realized how outlandish her fantasies had been, how improbable and immature. But never in her wildest imagination had she envisioned sending him up the river.

Now, that would be payback—sending Conner to prison. The thought brought her no satisfaction. He might be a despicable fathead, but could she really believe he was capable of taking a human life?

She didn’t have to draw conclusions. She only had to report what she found out and Daniel would follow up. Tonight’s report would be a juicy one.

CHAPTER THREE

THE NEXT DAY, when Conner returned from lunch, he found a surprise sitting on his desk. Jillian had delivered a report based on the armload of trash he’d shoved at her only yesterday. The papers were sorted into file folders, neatly stacked on his chair, and a printed report—complete with graphs, charts and a spreadsheet—sat in the middle of his desk.

He was torn when it came to having an assistant. On one hand, he needed someone to keep him organized. Paperwork, scheduling, computers, meetings—he wasn’t terribly good at any of it. But he hated having assistants underfoot. Give him a nice stand of oak trees and he could read them like a book. He could tell a tree’s health just by looking at the color and texture of the bark, the number of branches and how they grew, the gloss of the leaf.

Stick him behind a desk and he was close to useless.

His job performance as director of timber operations was only so-so. This company was only as good as the wood it harvested, and that harvest was only as good as the men and women out in the field finding the stands of trees, evaluating them, negotiating for the purchase and supervising the harvest. From his office he could give his buyers directions, look at photographs and approve purchases or not. But it drove him crazy not to have firsthand knowledge.

And the paperwork—God, how he hated paperwork. All the hoops they had to jump through to keep this certification or that one, proving they adhered to green policies, that they had performed all the correct environmental impact studies. He’d had no idea how hard his predecessor’s job was when he’d accepted the promotion.

It was easy to blame Chandra, but deep down, Conner had no one but himself to hold responsible. He was the one who’d been thinking with his privates, rather than his brain and his heart, when he’d agreed to the corner office. He’d have done anything to keep Chandra happy.

In the end, though, his decision to settle down had backfired. Chandra had fallen in love with an adventurer and world traveler who brought home exotic presents—carved teak boxes, silks and Oriental rugs. She’d seen him as a modern-day Indiana Jones.

But she’d grown weary of his constant travel and had begged her grandfather to promote him. Yes, because of Chandra, he had advanced in the company at lightning speed, bringing home ever-larger paychecks.

But an executive who’d traded in his bullwhip for a smart phone didn’t interest her any longer. The divorce had been executed with surgical precision. Conner had lost his wife, his home, his dog, his savings, and he’d been left with a job he despised.

He wouldn’t be here forever—that was his only consolation. But leaving Stan—a man as dear to him as his own grandfather—in the middle of this hideous controversy over Greg’s murder was unthinkable. With treatment, Stan might beat the cancer. But prison would kill him.

Conner simply couldn’t abandon the sinking ship.

He’d met with Stan’s lawyer, who at Stan’s request had allowed him to go over the evidence collected by the police. One anomaly stood out to Conner right away. Stan wasn’t strong enough to hoist two hundred pounds of deadweight into a car trunk. That was a point in Stan’s favor.

But Conner still had no clue who might have murdered Greg and framed Stan. Any one of the directors, looking to move up, could be responsible. All of them had been interviewed by the police, including Conner. In fact, they’d looked at Conner pretty closely, since he was Greg’s immediate boss. But once they’d zeroed in on Stan, they’d abandoned all their other suspects.

Conner forced his attention back to his job, looking over Jillian’s report. She’d made a few errors, mostly little details that stemmed from a lack of familiarity with the lumber business rather than outright mistakes. He made some notations, then headed for her desk to return it to her.

Maybe he’d finally found an assistant with half a brain who could get things back on track. Someone to whom he could actually delegate responsibilities.

He found her at her desk, shredding a stack of papers he’d given her permission to dispose of.

“You know, you don’t have to do that yourself. Down on the first floor, there’s a whole department devoted to managing waste and recycling. You just hand someone the papers and they’ll take it from there.”

“I prefer to do this myself,” she said, sending another stack of pages through the slot and pausing while the blades whined. “That way, I know for sure it was done. In case a question ever comes up. I assume some of these numbers, the bids and such, are confidential.”

Today she was wearing a slim black skirt and a short-sleeved, lime-green sweater that showed him more of her curves than he’d seen on her first day. Her breasts were fuller than he’d thought at first, and her waist was so narrow he could probably span it with his hands. Twenty-four inches, he’d bet money on it. He had a lot of experience sizing up the circumference of trees.

Not that Jillian’s body looked anything like a tree trunk.

“Is there anything else you’d like me to work on?”

He snapped back to his senses. He had no business thinking about Jillian’s waist, or any other part of her body for that matter.

“Where did you learn to pull together a report like that?” he asked, instead of answering her question.

“I have a business administration degree from Dartmouth,” she said. “Is it satisfactory?”

“There are some mistakes,” he said gruffly, plopping the report in front of her. “Fix them and print it out again.” He turned quickly and walked away before she could see his reaction to her.

Wow. He fell into his office chair and spun it around. Where had that come from? How long had it been since he’d reacted to a woman like that?

No one since Chandra. Chandra, with her traffic-stopping body and long black hair and eyes like cut emeralds, just as sharp, too.

She did nothing for him now, especially since he knew everything about her was fake, from the hair extensions to the augmented breasts to the acrylic nails.

But it wasn’t just her physical self that was insincere. She had lied without conscience, without a second thought, to get what she wanted. She’d perfected the fine art of saying exactly what a man wanted to hear, and he’d fallen for it.

No reason to believe Jillian wasn’t just the same. She was cut from the same cloth—rich, well educated, groomed to manipulate her way to become a rich man’s wife someday.

To be fair, she’d given no indication that she expected him to fill the role of her husband. She’d been nothing if not professional. Even a bit cool.

Which was odd.

Most women responded to him from a…hormonal perspective. The nastier he was to them, the more they tried to win him over. It was the beauty-and-the-beast syndrome. They wanted to tame him.

But not Jillian. She didn’t flutter eyelashes, or lean over so he could get an eyeful of her cleavage, or flip her hair or lick her lips. In fact, he suspected she might be sneering at him behind his back.

It shouldn’t matter. She appeared to be qualified for her job, and that was the only important thing.

She still seemed familiar to him somehow. Who did she remind him of? If she’d grown up wealthy in Houston, chances were good he’d crossed paths with her at some point—a debutante ball, a charity event, even a high school football game. But surely if he’d met her, he’d remember her. Her looks weren’t forgettable.

Pushing thoughts of his new assistant out of his mind, he focused on his email. Great, just what he needed, another screwup with harvesting in East Texas. Unfortunately, Greg Tynes was involved. Dissatisfied with Greg’s job performance abroad, Conner had brought him closer to home, but he’d continued to make mistakes. Apparently he hadn’t understood the protocol and had marked a snag that was a popular owl nesting site. Owls had to be protected not just because they were cute; they were essential to a healthy forest ecosystem.

Conner would have to go there, apologize for the actions of a dead man and smooth some feathers, perhaps literally. But he welcomed any excuse to spend time in the forest, even dealing with disasters.

He had so little time these days. He wondered briefly if he could delegate the trip, then shook his head. Who would he send? Jillian? She might be good with paperwork, but he had his doubts she could manage trees, owls and angry forest rangers.

No, he’d have to go himself. But perhaps he would take Jillian with him. If she was going to stick around for any length of time—and he had to admit, she seemed a good fit for the job—he might as well start teaching her about lumber so she could really be of service to him.

Conner exited his office and strode into Jillian’s area, standing above her desk until she looked up. She was in the process of entering the corrections for the report.

“I’ll need another twenty minutes for the revised report,” she said.

“That’s not why I’m here. Were you apprised, when you took this job, that there might be some travel involved?”

“No, actually, I wasn’t.”