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  But that wasn’t possible or advisable on so many levels.

  “What?”

  Stunned, Yohanna looked at him. She replayed his words in her head. “Oh.” Belatedly, she realized that he was teasing her and giving her a way to save face at the same time.

  She silently blessed him for it.

  “Okay, the next time I find myself trapped in my seat and you come to my rescue, I’ll remember to shake your hand. How’s that?” she asked him, playing along.

  Lukkas nodded as he escorted her from the plane and down the metal stairs. Her heels hitting the metal made a rhythmic staccato sound.

  “It’s been a long day. Let’s get you home.” When he saw her slanting a startled look at him, he clarified, “Your home.”

  “Oh.” She was relieved—and yet somehow, just on the fringes of her mind was another feeling lurking.

  Disappointment.

  * * *

  Determined not to have Lukkas harbor any sort of doubts about the way she saw her actual job description and the subsequent performance evaluation that would eventually come, Yohanna threw herself into her work, determined to be the ultimate employee. It wasn’t hard. She was good at this.

  She came in early, stayed late and, bit by bit, brought complete order to what had otherwise threatened to dissolve into an utterly chaotic mess where nothing of any importance could be located—easily or otherwise—when it was needed.

  She took to the work waiting to be done around her with amazing precision, organizing Lukkas’s schedules, his meetings, all the while making certain that there were no overlaps and that none of the people Lukkas dealt with fell through the cracks.

  And as always, she kept lists.

  Lists of the people he could count on for financial backing for his project no matter what, and lists of people who needed to be wooed a little.

  Or a lot.

  In addition, she began to compile files on each of these people, noting their likes, their dislikes, their affiliations as well as the names and ages of their family members. In short, she did whatever it took to round out the mental picture for Lukkas so that he knew exactly who he was dealing with and just how to deal with them. Her research allowed him to always remain two steps ahead of anyone he interacted with.

  The first time she showed him what she had worked up—and it was always going to be a work in progress, she assured him, since new people came into his life all the time—Lukkas found himself all but speechless.

  The amount of time and effort she had to have put into organizing his life was astonishing.

  “You did all this?” he marveled as Yohanna scrolled through the information on one of his new associates, a man who had come on board for the film Lukkas had produced just last spring.

  Yohanna curbed the desire to tell him that the tooth fairy was behind all this. She wasn’t sure if he could take a joke—or reject it because it wasn’t of his own making.

  “Yes,” she replied instead.

  She could see by his expression that he found the work she’d done to be extensive. In her opinion, it had to be. Otherwise, why else bother putting it together in the first place?

  “Is Eli the only one you’ve worked up like this?”

  Instead of answering him, Yohanna went back a couple of screens on the laptop, stopping when she pulled up the directory that she had created.

  Silently, she scrolled down all the entries.

  For the moment it seemed as if there were too many to count.

  “When did you have time for all this?” Lukkas asked.

  She shrugged. “I found pockets of time here and there.” And then she elaborated a little for him. “I did it when I wasn’t inputting your storyboard.”

  “You did what to my storyboard?” he asked uncertainly, glancing at the item under discussion. The storyboard was off to the extreme left-hand side so it would be out of everyone’s way until needed.

  A film’s storyboard was literally a large board on which drawings of the movie were pinned in their proper sequential order. It was the entire movie summed up as succinctly as possible. The director used it to help remind himself of the movie’s ultimate focus or message.

  Lukkas had asked her just to put up the drawings in their proper sequence.

  She was obviously not referring to the corkboard that could be wheeled onto the set if he needed to have it brought there.

  “I made up a virtual storyboard and saved it onto a USB drive as well as your smartphone. That way, you can always access it and make changes no matter where you are.”

  “You sure you never worked in the industry before?” Lukkas asked, scrutinizing her. She had such natural instincts about what was necessary—and what wasn’t—he was having a hard time believing that she’d been a complete novice just a few weeks ago.

  “I’m sure. I just know how to anticipate a boss,” Yohanna replied, flashing her take-no-prisoners smile at him.

  “Oh, really?” His tone had her bracing herself, instinctively knowing that he had just decided to throw her a curve. Thinking of it as a challenge, she was ready for anything. “Did your powers of anticipation allow you to anticipate being asked to that premiere and the party afterward that I have to attend?”

  Yohanna was well aware of the premiere and subsequent party Lukkas had to attend since he’d had her call each of the major stars in the movie to coax, cajole or plead with them, doing whatever she had to do to get them to promise to appear at the showing.

  She had just assumed he’d already had someone to go with. This was a whole new twist she hadn’t prepared for and, for a moment, she was at a complete loss as to how to respond.

  “You’re asking me to attend?” Yohanna asked in disbelief.

  He gave her a look that whispered of moderately bridled impatience. “I’m pretty sure I was just speaking English, so yes, I’m asking you to attend the premiere—and the party—with me.”

  “Why?” The question had slipped out like a stunned whisper.

  This man was one of Hollywood’s most eligible bachelors. What was the man doing, asking her to attend a premiere with him? And the party afterward? He could easily have his pick of any one of a large number of stunning women. She couldn’t begin to compete with any of those.

  So why was he asking her to come with him to this premiere?

  “Because if I go alone, aside from speculation about my playing the lonely widower, since I’m the producer and I’m under seventy with all my own teeth, I will be a walking target for any starlet on the rise and willing to go to great lengths to get to the top of the heap. I’ll also be easy prey for any backer who has a female relative he’d like to see married or at least involved with someone.”

  “And you don’t want to be that someone,” Yohanna ventured.

  Lukkas nodded. “Give that young lady a prize,” he declared like a carnival barker.

  “So you want me to be your beard,” she summarized astutely.

  The label conjured up the wrong image—at least in his head. “I’d rather think of you as my entanglement repellent.”

  Yohanna laughed at his choice of words. “That makes me sound like a bug spray.”

  Lukkas shrugged. He went to his desk to take something out of one of the lower drawers. “Call it any way you see it as long as you’re ready to be picked up at five-thirty tomorrow.”

  She felt her stomach quickening. She wasn’t quite as blasé about things as she would have liked to portray. “I know this sounds clichéd, but I don’t have a thing to wear for something of this magnitude.”

  If she thought that would be the end of it, she was sadly mistaken. Lukkas was not a man who gave up easily and he could be just as stubborn as she could.

  Possibly more so.

  Lukkas reached into his back pocket, to
ok out his wallet and almost without looking selected a credit card, which he then in turn handed to her.

  “Here,” he told her. “Get something that’ll make a good showing at tomorrow’s premiere of Diamonds and Dust—but not so much that it takes the focus off the movie,” he warned.

  Yohanna stared at the credit card. Specifically, she stared at his name embossed on the credit card. She had her own credit cards, but since she had taken over issuing payment checks for his bills, she knew that her cards had a far lower cut-off ceiling than his did.

  She looked back up at him incredulously. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “If I were kidding, laughter would be involved somewhere. Real laughter, not nervous laughter,” he attested. “You hear any?”

  Yohanna slowly moved her head from side to side. “No.”

  “Then, I’m not kidding,” he concluded. He glanced at the card he had just given her. The same one she was still clutching as if she expected it to either burst into flame or levitate away from her. “You want to take a few hours off to go shopping?”

  Her first response was to say yes, but then her stubborn streak kicked in. She was not about to take advantage of either him or the situation—no matter how tempting it might be.

  “No, I’ll take care of it on my own time,” she answered.

  Admittedly, Yohanna was still a little shell-shocked over what had just happened, but she instinctively knew what to do to take care of herself—even around drop-dead gorgeous men, a club that Lukkas clearly belonged to.

  “Have it your way—you do know that there’s such a thing as being too good to be true, right?” Lukkas asked her.

  Lukkas started to leave his office when he stopped to impart one last thought on the subject. “Oh, and by the way, do something with your hair.”

  Her hand automatically came up to touch the back of her hair. Did he find it lacking? Distracting? Or—what? She needed to know to understand how to remedy the situation.

  “My hair?”

  “Yes. Wear it up,” he answered, waving one hand around in the air as if he were a wand-wielding fairy godmother, able to make things do his bidding with a flick of his wrist. “This is going to be on the formal side.”

  “Are you sure you want me to go with you?” she asked, hoping that he’d change his mind at the final moment.

  Lukkas rephrased her question and turned it into an answer. “Am I sure I don’t want to be inundated with women who, for one reason or another, see me as a means to an end? Yes, I’m sure. Think of it as part of your job description,” he instructed.

  “What part?” she challenged.

  “The part that comes under ‘miscellaneous,’” he answered as he left the office.

  She stared at his credit card for several moments before she finally put it away into her own wallet. Her fingertips felt almost icy as she handled the card. It represented a great deal of power in its own right, she thought, tucking the wallet with Lukkas’s card into the depths of her purse, otherwise known—according to Lukkas—as “no man’s land.”

  * * *

  A quick but intense review of the contents of her closet that night only told Yohanna what she already knew—she did not own a single suitable dress she could wear to a premiere, certainly not something that wouldn’t stand out like a sore thumb when she crossed the red carpet beside Lukkas.

  She shook her head as she closed her closet. This all still felt so surreal to her. Her, at a premiere. With one of Hollywood’s most eligible bachelors. Who would’ve thunk it?

  Whenever she found herself in unfamiliar waters and treading madly, her natural inclination had always been to seek help. But in this case, the only one she could actually turn to would be her mother.

  However, she knew if she did, while she would be playing into her mother’s fantasy, she would also be opening up such a huge can of worms, she wouldn’t have a prayer in hell of ever being able to close it again.

  Besides, her mother had already called her several times since she’d started working for Lukkas. The calls all revolved around the same issue. Her mother wanted progress reports and, more specifically, her mother wanted to know exactly how far she had progressed in her relationship with Lukkas.

  That there was no relationship in progress other than their professional one was not something she seemed to be able to get across to her mother.

  It was clear that the woman was absolutely starving for romance. Romance in her life, not actually in her own, Yohanna thought ruefully. Her mother was one of those women who lived vicariously through their offspring.

  Not for the first time, Yohanna wished that she had a sister, or at the very least a cousin she could hide behind or possibly divert her mother’s attention to.

  But, knowing her mother, she supposed that would blow up in her face, as well.

  She could just hear her mother saying, “Why can’t you get married and have a husband and kids like your cousin Rachel?”

  No, she was better off this way, with no one to be compared to, Yohanna decided.

  But she still needed help.

  Mentally, she reviewed the women she could call for some sort of advice in a situation like this. And then she realized that there was only one logical candidate.

  She fervently hoped that she wouldn’t be disturbing the woman, but really, if it hadn’t been for her, most likely she would still be sitting in her condo—a condo that would look far less tidy than it did now—out of work and out of hope.

  Her present dilemma was both Cecilia’s fault and her gift to her, Yohanna thought. In any case, she felt she could attain a sympathetic ear from the woman—as well as a minimum of questions. Cecilia was obviously the kind of lady who cared, but by the same token, she wasn’t the kind to pry or to insert herself into someone’s life—possibly not even when invited to do so.

  Making up her mind, Yohanna picked up the phone and called Cecilia.

  Chapter Nine

  “Not that I’m not honored as well as touched that you called me to help you pick out something special to wear to the premiere of Mr. Spader’s new movie, but why isn’t your mother here instead of me, dear?”

  After attempting to repress the question during the drive to Rodeo Drive and an exclusive boutique she was familiar with, Cecilia’s curiosity had gotten the better of her. She knew that if she found out her daughter had gone to another older woman for advice rather than come to her, she would have been heartbroken.

  Cecilia had tried to sound as casual as she could, broaching the question as they walked into the boutique.

  Yohanna loved her mother dearly but, in her estimation, that didn’t mean she had to put up with her mother’s theatrics, and there would be theatrics if the woman found out about this.

  “Because,” Yohanna patiently explained, “if my mother finds out that I’m going to be attending something with my boss that involves walking across a red carpet, I guarantee that five minutes later, she’s going to be hiring someone to write the words Mr. Spader, please marry my daughter, Yohanna across the sky.”

  Two sleek, tastefully made up saleswomen started walking in their direction. Cecilia waved them back. To Yohanna’s astonishment, the women retreated.

  Cecilia obviously had clout here.

  “Now, dear,” Cecilia was saying, commenting on the scenario Yohanna had just painted for her. “You’re exaggerating—”

  Yohanna laughed drily as she went to the first display of evening gowns. “No, I’m not. You obviously haven’t met my mother.”

  “No, I have not,” Cecilia admitted. “But even if I haven’t—”

  Yohanna proceeded as if Cecilia hadn’t attempted to continue. “She’s the one who told me that a real woman cleans her own house and said I was throwing money away on a cleaning service.”

  Ce
cilia winced just a tiny bit. “Ah, an old-fashioned woman.”

  “If the fashions are from the 1900s, then, yes, she is an old-fashioned woman. She is also a very determined woman. Right now, what she’s determined about is to marry me off to someone. Anyone short of Attila the Hun is a viable possible candidate. In my mother’s eyes I’m in a very precarious place, teetering on the edge of a downhill slope that’ll send me sliding right into becoming an old maid.”

  Cecilia smiled indulgently at her. “Nobody really uses that term anymore, dear.”

  But Yohanna could only smile, as if her point had been made. “Like I said, you haven’t met my mother. What do you think of this one?” she asked, holding one of the gowns up against herself.

  “It’s not your color,” Cecilia pronounced, dismissing the gown with a wave of her hand. Yohanna returned it to its original space as Cecilia began to look through the various gowns. “Have you stopped to think that this event might be covered by one of those cable channels and the camera might pick up your presence there? Since you’re attending the premiere with the movie’s producer, I can guarantee that cameras will be trained on you.

  “This does assume, of course, that your mother watches these kinds of programs. If she doesn’t, then you’re home free.” Cecilia looked at her face and drew her own conclusion. “She watches these shows, doesn’t she?”

  Yohanna could only nod, feeling a definite pressure from the weight accumulating on her chest. “But every now and then, she does miss one occasionally.” There was a breathless, hopeful note in her voice as she mentally crossed her fingers.

  “Then, for your sake, I hope she’s busy watching something else,” Cecilia replied. She debated over a gown, then shrugged and moved it aside. “It’s Saturday night. Does she go out with your father, or perhaps some friends?” Cecilia asked hopefully as she went on looking and rejecting gowns one after the other.

  Yohanna could only look on, leaving the selection entirely in the older woman’s hands because she felt she needed someone steadier than she was to make the final decision.

  “My dad died years ago,” she said, replying to Cecilia’s question. “But Mom does go out with a couple of her girlfriends sometimes. I don’t know if it’s on Saturday nights or not.”