Page 23 of A Matter of Time

I thought for a minute, calculating what I thought he wanted to hear, but decided to just go with my gut. What could it possibly hurt? “If I work directly for you, Mr. Harcourt, then that’s where my loyalty lies. I would be your personal assistant, no one else’s.”

He nodded. “Thank you, Mr. Keyes. We’ll be in touch.”

I thanked him and would have left then, but it took the both of us in a team effort to catch Shiloh and put him back in the carrier. Once we did, much whimpering and howling soon followed.

“He’s such a faker,” Dane stated, smiling broadly, and his eyes gleamed. “He’s going to be quite a handful.”

I nodded. “I know, but imagine the fun.”

“Imagine the fun,” he echoed, his voice warm.

I looked up at him and smiled. “You’ve been really great about this.”

“What are you going to call him?”

“Shiloh.”

“Civil War fan, are you?”

“No,” I said flatly. “Neil Diamond.”

“Oh.” He was at a loss for words, and I laughed. He was okay.

A day later, the last day I had before I was forced to leave, Jill Kincaid called and offered me the position as Miles Brown’s personal assistant. I accepted immediately and was able to say yes to the guy I had met out at a club a week before. He and four others were moving into a studio apartment, and he had asked me if I wanted to live with them. I had just enough for the first month’s rent if I didn’t have to spend another penny. After I got the call, I forked it all over to the landlord of my new place, the tiny apartment downtown beside the train tracks that looked like heaven after having nowhere to call home. That night I made my new roommates a deal that if they would feed the two of us, my dog and me, for the next two weeks until I got my first paycheck, I’d take care of the groceries and cooking for a month. I was shocked when they all agreed. Turned out that I was unanimously liked, they thought my dog was cool, and the idea of having a home-cooked meal every night for a month appealed to everyone. When Shiloh and I left the YMCA—and how surprised were the people who didn’t even know the dog was there—I felt like I was finally going to be all right. And I was so thankful to the firm of Harcourt, Brown, and Cogan.

When I reported for work, Jill informed me that she had been confused and that I would be Mr. Harcourt’s assistant instead of Miles Brown’s. She was supposed to have been his assistant, but apparently he had other plans. She wanted to know what exactly I had done for him during my interview. I wanted to deck her. Dane saved me the trouble, though, when he walked out and told everyone that I had been the most honest person he’d interviewed. And the dog helped. Jill rolled her eyes, and Miles’s new assistant, Celia Johnson, was baffled. Dog? Had he said dog?

I soon found out, from the steady stream of applicants checking in to see if the position had been filled, the real reason he had chosen me to be his assistant. I was the only one not completely infatuated with him. Women swooned when he walked by. Jill and Celia both wanted my job very badly, and we couldn’t keep a typist. The rotation in the office was about one every two months. That was roughly how long it took them to really piss him off.

Women all fell hard for his casual charm and that smile that lit up his eyes. I saw them lean over his desk to talk to him, and I watched their hands hover over his shoulder when he wasn’t looking, wanting to touch him but not daring to. They all wanted to be close to him—everybody except me. I couldn’t have cared less, so of course I was the only one he let get near him. He was himself with me because, gay or not, I was a guy, and he didn’t have to be careful about physical contact or what came out of his mouth. He was painfully, brutally honest, blunt to the point where I was wincing for a while every time he spoke. But over the passing years, I found that I just plain liked him, and my feelings sprang from a different source than infatuation or longing.

I understood, beneath all the polish and style, that the man’s heart was actually the most amazing thing about him. He hid his warmth and kindness well, but I saw him and his heart. I knew the man had gotten choked up when he drove me home from the vet after I put Shiloh to sleep. My sweet dog had succumbed to cancer at a year and a half, and I could no longer bear to watch him suffer. He’d given me a hard squeeze on the shoulder when I got out of the car. It was all he would let me see, but it was so much more than anyone else got.

“Jory.”

My mind had been drifting, and when I glanced up, I saw how pained Sonja Lawson looked.

“Please, Jory, talk to him. I swear I’m not leaving until he gets back. I want to talk to him. I’m fairly certain I can make this right with him.”

“If you think so.” I conceded, knowing full well that the whole thing was hopeless. “Stay if you want, but I’m trying to give you good advice here.”

“What’s that?”

“Run away,” I teased her.

“That’s not very mature.”

“I’m just letting you know what I think. He wanted you gone, and you’re doing just the opposite. Don’t expect him to be happy when he gets back for lunch.”

She turned away and went back to her desk. I felt really sorry for her, but there was nothing I could do. I had already asked him to reconsider his decision without success. I knew that when she irritated him by staying until he got back, I’d be the one in trouble. The phone saved me from thinking about it.

“You want the number to the doctor’s lounge now?” Nick asked without a greeting.

“You’re seriously demented,” I assured him before I took down the number he gave me. After he hung up, I left for Mediterranean food, because that usually put my boss in a pretty good mood.

I barely heard Sonja when I walked back into the office. She was crying and whining and saying how much she didn’t want to go. I tuned her out after a few minutes while I answered email, checked Dane’s schedule, and ordered flowers for Samantha Palmer, who he was apparently taking to the opera the following night. Her name had popped up on the calendar on my desktop over lunch. So much for Lacey Collins; it sounded like the AIDS benefit would have been their last date.

“Jory!”