Brock

Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Brock Tandell looked around with a sense of loss. All around him volunteers and staff were busy packing posters and pamphlets into boxes and dismantling computers. He’d rented the storefront on O’Keefe to run his campaign out of, and now campaigning was over. Brock had been the mayor of New Orleans for a week now. The campaign office was no longer needed.

His cell phone rang and he glanced at it. It felt like the damn thing hadn’t stopped ringing for the last two weeks. He saw the name on the screen and smiled as he answered. “Marsha, how are you doing?”

“Hey Brock, we’re all settled in. Thanks for the use of the apartment.”

“I won’t be in New York on business for a while, not with the circus going on here, so you’re welcome to stay a while. Probably cheaper than a hotel. How long are you planning to be up there?”

“Uh, you know, I don’t really know. This stuff with my sister happened pretty quickly, you know. I’ll talk to her tomorrow and maybe then I’ll have a better idea. You don’t need me back, uh, right away, do you?”

She was talking too fast. Brock’s assistant, Marsha, was a level-headed woman who had handled the media around his campaign and his accidental outing as a shifter the same way she handled ordering lunch. Something was amiss.

“Marsha, are you sure everything is okay? You didn’t run into trouble along the way, did you? Is there something wrong with the apartment?”

“No. Of course not. I’m just concerned for my sister. We were very close growing up. She’s all the family I have.”

He could hear the lie in her voice. If she’d been standing there, he’d have seen it plain on her face, smelled it on her, but here or there it didn’t matter. She had her reasons for wanting to keep him at a distance on this. Hell, he could think of a dozen reasons she wouldn’t want a shifter involved in her sister’s affairs, and he respected her too much as a co-worker and as a friend to push her on it. “All right. I’m sorry. I’m just worried about you. Anything you need, you just call me, all right? And your job will be here waiting for you when you get back.”

“Oh yeah, about the temp,” Marsha said.

“What about her?” Brock rumbled. He already didn’t like the idea of learning to work with someone new; the thought of complications scraped at him.

“Don’t sleep with her.”

“Ha ha, very funny. Did I ever make a move for you?”

“No, but you were always afraid of my husband.”

Her husband was a large man, but it had been a long time since Brock had lost a fist fight. Having the strength of a bear inside you had some perks. Still, he smiled. “You’re right. Say hi to Brad for me. I’ll see you when you get back.”

“Yeah.” She sounded tired. “Okay.”

He ended the call and clipped the phone back on his belt. Most of the work was being done without him, he didn’t actually need to be there to supervise, but he’d spent a lot of time with these people over the last two months. Most of them he wouldn’t see until it was time for his re-election campaign in four years, if he wasn’t impeached before then. It had been relaxing working alongside them, chatting about kids and the start of the new school year and the upcoming general election in a few months.

He walked back toward the front of the storefront, and that’s when he spotted her. There was a lot of traffic on O’Keefe, both cars and pedestrians, people of all walks of life, but something about her stood out. She wore a white blouse with a high-waisted red skirt and a matching short jacket. Her shoes and handbag were the same shade of red. Her dark hair was up in a simple twist held in place with a red clip—he saw it when she turned to check both ways for traffic.

That made him smile as she looked left, then right, then left again. O’Keefe was one way. That she was crossing mid-street, right in front of his office, set off bells. She was making a beeline for him, he could tell. Being a predator himself, he recognized when someone was on the hunt. He moved toward the door, intending to meet her there to intercept her. The office was officially closed. He was officially on lunch break. He didn’t want to talk to anyone else from the media—not today.

She crossed the street with all the haste her skirt and heels allowed her, reaching the safety of the parked cars on his side just as a delivery truck barreled along behind her.

He opened the door. She looked up at him and smiled, and then her shoe caught on the uneven curb and she spilled toward him. Instinct took over and he let go of the door, closing the distance between them fast enough that he caught her before she scraped her knees and put a run in her stockings.

Was she even wearing stockings? She had great legs, but professionalism demanded he not look too close or consider what might be under the skirt either way.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“Yes. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” She looked at the sidewalk and crouched down suddenly, pulling her arm free of his hand.

That’s when he noted that her purse had not survived the fall as fortunately as she had. Keys, makeup, her phone, papers, gum—all were scattered along the pavement. She reached with both hands, scooping things up and dropping them, jumbled together, into the purse. She paused to check her phone, reassuring herself that the screen was not scratched, before dropping that in the bag as well. She glanced around and noticed him.

He had bent and caught a handful of papers, probably receipts but he hadn’t looked closely, before they had the chance to blow away. Now he was crouched in front of her, offering them to her. She took them with a weak smile. He watched her finish stuffing everything back in her bag while trying not to let his eyes wander to the hem of her skirt. Crouched like that, she was at risk of flashing him, and he could see clearly now she wasn’t wearing stockings—the tanned color was natural.

“Thank you.”

“Not a problem,” he replied and helped her stand. “I’m Brock.”

“Tandell,” she said. “I know.”

“If you’re with the media, I’m afraid I’m not available for interviews right now. I do need to get this place cleared out so the owner can put it back on the market.”

“I know that too,” she said. She held out her hand. “Gia Carosa. I’m your new assistant.”

Those words turned the heat that had been building in his chest ice cold, and he shook her hand, his face a mask of professionalism. “In that case, Miss Carosa, welcome aboard. Come on in. We’re almost finished here.”

“I haven’t had a chance to look over the papers left by your previous assistant,” she said. “I thought I should come down and introduce myself first.”

“Marsha will have left clearer instructions than I can give,” he said.

“We’ll be working closely together,” she insisted, following him through the almost empty room.

His thoughts went to those early morning meetings and the long nights of planning and speech writing that he had spent with Marsha. He hadn’t made a play for her because he respected her, her marriage, her husband, and her friendship. This girl—he didn’t know what to think of her. But she had a point. They would be working together. “What experience do you have?”

“I’ve worked these last four years as an administrative assistant to the CEO of a successful company,” she said, holding her chin up proudly.

Brock took a good look at her. She wasn’t thirty yet, he was sure of it. For her to have worked that long in that position she must have gotten the job straight out of school, which was odd. Most people started in the mail room, or in marketing, or as typists or something. Even he had done his time doing menial tasks for his father before becoming his assistant.

Not administrative assistant, no, they’d had a young woman name Belle, very similar to this Gia Carosa, who scheduled their appointments and took their minutes at meetings. In fact, she’d been Brock’s first serious romance. His father hadn’t approved. He never approved of Brock’s girlfriends. He was holding out hope Brock would marry a shifter to strengthen his chances of a werebear child. Still, they had been happy together for nearly a year until she’d taken a job across the country. Their goodbyes had lasted two days, if he recalled correctly.

“For which successful company?” he said.

“Does it matter?”

“Yes, it does. ‘administrative assistant to the CEO of a successful company’ could mean you helped an old man manage a ‘mom and pop’ produce stand, or it could mean you worked for Donald Trump, or anything in between.”

“City offices thought my credentials were good enough for me to take this job,” she asserted.

“I’m not the city offices. I’m the man you have to work with every day. I’d like to know where you worked before this.”

Her chin and shoulders dropped. “Carosa Holdings,” she said finally.

He nodded, impressed. “Giancarlo Carosa is a shrewd man. He’s beat me out on a few business deals. I take it you’re his niece? His daughter?”

“Daughter,” she confirmed.

“If you’re half as smart as him, I won’t have to worry about a thing.” He smiled at her. “Welcome aboard. You’ll want to know a little about me as well. Yes, the rumors are true—I get furry every full moon.”

“I’ve seen a shifter before,” she said.

He studied her a moment. “Were you at the airport?”

She nodded.

“I’ve never lost control like that, and I’m sure you know from your father just how stressful being a successful CEO can be. You don’t have to fear me or my temper. I may roar at you on occasion, but my bark is far worse than my bite.”

She nodded sharply, her face a tightly controlled mask.

He put a hand on her shoulder, light enough not to scare her but firm enough to demand her full attention. “Gia, I want you to be able to trust me. We’re working in a high stress environment and often in close quarters. If you don’t trust me the media will sense it and will pull us apart. One day soon we’ll find somewhere safe and quiet and I will shift for you.”

Her eyes went too wide. They were very dark, he could see, darker even than he remembered his mother’s had been.

“When you see the bear up close, touch him, let him sniff you, you will see he’s no threat to you, and then you will be able to trust me.”

“Did you shift for your last assistant too?”

“Yes.” He didn’t want to think about Marsha and the trouble around her family, so he said, “Enough of that. These guys have everything under control. Why don’t we go grab a coffee and I’ll try to explain a little more of the job to you?”

“That would be appreciated.” She moved to follow him and stumbled, catching her weight on the desk. “Shit.”

The muttered curse amused him. It was something Marsha would do. “What’s wrong?”

She bent over and slipped her shoe from her foot. Her toe nails were gold. The shoe she held up seemed okay at first, and then he noticed that the heel had come away from the base of the shoe.

“s**t,” he agreed with a smile.

She started to smile, and then it wobbled—and then she broke down crying. Around them, workers glanced up, nervous or curious. He wrapped an arm around her shoulders and led her to the back where the office was. He closed the door on the onlookers and let her cry.

“They were really nice shoes,” he offered. “I bet you could get it repaired.” He’d had a few pairs of his favorite dress shoes resoled, so he was sure the heel of her shoe could be glued back on.

“It’s not just the shoes,” she said as the sobs receded to sniffles. “I was running late this morning and traffic hated me, and I was so nervous about this job. No matter what my father says about this not being an opportunity to prove myself, I just know he’ll lock me behind that damned desk in front of his office until he dies if I mess this up. And then I make a complete fool of myself in the first minutes of my new job and …”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” he said. “You are not a fool.” He sighed and ran his hands through his dark hair. Their hair was almost the same color, he realized. Standing so close to her, he’d also gotten a deep breath of her scent, mostly floral from the products she used in her hair with an undercurrent of laundry soap. Being a werebear allowed him to notice these things and made it almost impossible for him to ignore. “How did you get here?”

“Car,” she said. “I parked in the lot across the street.”

“Okay, look, how about I bring the car around for you and give you a lift home? We’ll postpone coffee until tomorrow morning. Work starts at six. Can you be there at five if I send you home early?”

She nodded. “How will you get home?”

“I’ll take a taxi from your place to City Hall and drive myself home from there.”

“Oh, I don’t want you to have to pay for a taxi.”

“I’m a billionaire,” he said. “I can afford to take the taxi on occasion.” He held out his hand, palm up, and waited.

She dug through the mess inside her purse and came up with a set of car keys which she dropped into his hand.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “The mayor can’t exactly go around stealing cars.”

She managed a smile through the tears.