His gaze narrowed. "I'm glad to hear it. The last thing I need is another assistant who's more interested in me than her work."

Hannah gave him a quick rundown of her responsibilities as Kevin's office manager. Five minutes later, she realized she was babbling and clamped her mouth shut.

"You'll receive the same salary as you did at your previous job, and after the standard thirty-day probationary period, you'll either get a pink slip, or your pay will be bumped up to whatever you're worth to me."

She squirmed under his piercing gaze. It was hard to say whether Jordan Calder simply oozed self-confidence or if he was just plain arrogant. Whichever the case, no one could deny he was beyond movie star gorgeous.

"Welcome to Calder Pharmaceutical, Hannah."

Exactly when had she accepted the position?

He gazed into her eyes as she shook his hand. Her breath caught at the warm tingle that spread from her fingers through the rest of her body.

Jerking his hand back as if he'd touched a live wire, he squinted at her, wearing a puzzled expression. "Uhh-can you start immediately?" he asked, his voice thickening. He picked up the phone. "I'll get personnel to send up whatever forms you need to fill out."

Her heart tripped over several beats as it finally hit home she'd actually been hired. She felt like a total fraud accepting such a prestigious job, but she had rent to pay. "Sure, Mr. Calder." She rose from her seat, vibrating like a plucked fiddle string. "I'll finish the revisions the temp started on that document right away."

"By the way," he added, "in this office, Mr. Calder is reserved for my grandfather. My direct reports call me Jordan, JC, or Pain-in-the-ass. I answer to all three."

A smile forced its way to her lips. Maybe he wasn't so bad. "Which do you prefer?"

He revealed a set of brilliant teeth worthy of a tooth-whitening ad, and a deep set of dimples dented his cheeks. "Since we'll be working so closely together, Jordan would be nice."

Hannah sucked in a shuddering breath, imagining what it would be like to get so close to his spectacular body that it pressed against hers.

No, idiot! She shook off the fantasy. Hadn't she learned her lesson with Kevin? She had to be missing more than a few brain cells to agree to work for such a hunk of male pulchritude-especially in a job where she was so obviously out of her depth.

Unfortunately, she needed a paycheck. At least until she found something else. Anyway, a wealthy dynamic man like Jordan Calder would never be interested in a nobody like her. If worse came to worst, she could always wear a bib to the office to catch her drool.

Chapter 2.

id*i*ot n. 1. A foolish or stupid person. 2. An individual desperate enough to accept a job for which she's clearly under-qualified.

Only an idiot refuses to learn from her past mistakes.

Breathe in, breathe out, Hannah mentally recited the next afternoon while her new boss held the door to the executive dining room for her. If she hoped to avoid coming off as a complete ninny, somehow she had to get through this meal without babbling.

"I don't normally stop working for lunch," Jordan said, "but since you weren't here last week and missed-what's it called now-Administrative Professionals Day?"

"I won't be offended if you call it Secretary's Day." No matter how politically correct the new label might be, she still typed, filed, and answered the phone for a living.

"Whatever. After working overtime last night to help me catch up, you deserve a reward."

His praise ignited a bonfire in her cheeks, making her glad she'd skipped dinner the evening before so she could stay late and still make it to her capital budgeting class on time. "Th-Thank you. This is really nice."

The floor-to-ceiling stone fireplace, rich wood paneling, and brass chandeliers lent the executive dining room the atmosphere of an exclusive club reserved as a perk for upper management and personnel with doctorate degrees. "Don't get too excited. Except for a few gourmet additions, the menu's essentially the same as the cafeteria's."

"Maybe, but being waited on and having my meal served on china with a tablecloth is a lot nicer than standing in line with a plastic lunch tra-"

Oh, God, no. She froze.

He'd stopped next to a large table surrounded by dark suits, only one of which included a skirt rather than trousers. When the men all rose, Jordan glanced at her and smiled. "I figured this would be as good a time as any to introduce you to some of my senior vice presidents. The rest are either traveling or had meetings."

"Trudy,"-he nodded to acknowledge the lone thirty-something woman who'd managed to make it into the mostly boys' club-"gentlemen, I'd like you to meet my new assistant, Hannah Oliver. I'll let you each introduce yourself."

Jordan pulled out one of the remaining two empty chairs for her, centered at the long table. Seven pairs of masculine eyes scrutinized her.

Hannah gulped. At least he'd seated her next to Trudy. The dark-haired woman's smile was warm and welcoming as opposed to the smirks and sneers on the men's faces. Obviously, Hannah wasn't at all what they'd expected.

Half of them had builds better suited to posing for fashion or health magazines than to crunching numbers all day-especially the dark-haired guy she'd seen in Jordan's office yesterday.

"Hi again." He waved from across the table. "I'm Bryce Kendall, VP of corporate operations. You'll be seeing me more often than anyone."

As anxious as the men's attention made her, she'd never remember all their names.

"Uhhh....it's-um-nice to meet you." She extended her hand, praying he wouldn't notice the sweat on her palms. Despite how little respect she might have for her mother, at the moment, she would sacrifice a year of her life to have one tenth of Candace's self-confidence with the opposite gender. Being physically appraised by all these dynamic men had turned Hannah's body into a mass of quivering gooseflesh.

"Jeff Burton, VP of Marketing," said the hunk on the other side of Trudy.

Hannah turned to shake his hand, and in her nervousness, accidentally knocked over a full goblet of ice water right into the woman's lap.

Gasping, Trudy catapulted out of her seat, a frosty glare marring her previously pleasant face. "And here I thought you'd be different than all the beauty queens," she muttered. She turned and smiled tightly at the men. "If you'll excuse me, it seems Miss Oliver thinks I need a trip to the ladies room."

So much for having an ally. Jordan's previous assistants must have been bitchy to the woman. "I'm sorry," Hannah called after Trudy. "I really didn't do it on purpose. I'm just a klutz."

"Don't worry. It's just water." Jordan assured her. "Trudy will dry out."

Right. It had been just water fourteen years ago, too.

"I haven't seen you this relaxed since before you became CEO." Bryce slid the proposed operating budget for the next quarter across the desk for approval.

Jordan scanned the spreadsheet for the revisions he'd requested and scrawled his signature on the proposal. "That's because Hannah runs interference better than a defensive lineman."

In the last two and a half weeks, his new assistant had managed to make herself indispensable. She was a hopeless people-pleaser who, like a female version of Radar O'Reilly, anticipated his every need to the point he felt guilty at times, letting her do so much for him.

He turned his gaze to the outer office and studied her through the open door while she leaned back to proofread what she'd typed, twirling a light brown tendril that had escaped from her prissy braid. Every time he was close to her, his hand itched to yank the clasp from her glossy hair to see what she looked like with it fluffed around her face.

Her complexion was far too flawless for a woman much past her twenties, so she had to be a lot younger than her starchy librarian wardrobe suggested. Her creamy skin reminded him of moonlight-pale and almost luminescent. And the way she constantly chewed on her lip made her disapproving little pout swell until she looked downright pornographic. Seeing her mouth get all puffy sent his imagination to places it definitely didn't belong.

Bryce's forehead wrinkled. "What's with all the plants?"

"Hannah's contribution. She insists they'll reduce my stress level." In truth, his office did feel a lot more peaceful with them.

"She sounds like a kook."

"You think so?" Jordan pushed the large tin that magically refilled itself every Monday across his desk to his friend. "Have one of the kook's cookies."

Bryce selected a buttery walnut ball coated in powdered sugar. He bit into it and moaned, "Mmmm....wack-case or not, keep her."

"I intend to. Otherwise, I'll have to go back to living on vending machine food."

Ever since Hannah discovered Jordan rarely stopped working at noon to eat, she'd returned from lunch each day with a container of soup and a salad platter for him.

Bryce chuckled and reached for another cookie. "I hear Pulaski is pissed about the end run you did around Human Resources when you hired her."

"Stanley's lucky I didn't fire him for discrimination instead of giving him a written reprimand."

His friend raised a dark eyebrow. "You have to admit, JC, after your date announced at the Christmas party that you're a dynamo in bed-"

"That still doesn't excuse him."

"Don't jump down my throat. I didn't draw that cartoon."

"Well, I'd love to know who did. Some employee has way too much free time and a lousy grasp of artistic perspective and proportion."

Despite that he was no porn star, the caricature in the mock e-mail ad depicted Jordan with the horns of a satyr, the body of a Greek god, and the pecker of a Triple Crown winner.

"I don't think it was your proportion that inspired that e-mail," Bryce said.

No doubt. Jordan's long-lasting erections had been the very thing that had caused problems for him in college, too. The phony advertisement for Calder's new Love Machine-inspired by his date, April, after she'd boasted about his size and performance to over a dozen women in the ladies room-had stirred up way too many memories he had no desire to revisit. The ad's fake marketing copy had promoted him as having the vigor of an insatiable sex robot and promised female consumers an all-night screw. An overstatement of his stamina if he ever heard one.

His friend laughed. "I've even heard rumors that you've secretly developed a new male potency drug that will outperform any erectile dysfunction drug on the market."

"Of course guys like to think I have chemical help. Otherwise they'd have to wonder what they're doing wrong in the bedroom." The cartoon had certainly made him look foolish. However, he would really become a laughingstock if anyone discovered his so-called stamina was due to a psycho-sexual disorder, or that he would give his right nut to overcome his guilt. "If I ever find the artist who drew that cartoon, I'm going to beat him to a bloody pulp, right before I fire him."

"I don't know what your problem is." Bryce snorted. "Most guys would kill to have your rep in bed. Maybe in a previous life you were a gigolo."

At times, he felt like one.

"Other guys don't have most of the board of directors buying into Renee's harassment propaganda. They think I'm bedding every female who walks into my office." The only board members who hadn't swallowed the rumors were two female directors who'd already failed in their own attempts to seduce him. "Why the hell would anyone believe I'm some Love Machine rather than recognize April's claims for what they were-drunken exaggeration?"

"Because, at heart, they're all perverts who wish they had as many women chasing them as you-"

"Damn it!" Jordan pounded his desk. "If you knew how few of my dates I actually sleep with-"

"Hey, don't blow a gasket. I know you're no man-whore. I'm just saying maybe that cartoon led Stan to think he could score a few points with you by sending you a parade of centerfolds as temps."

"The only point Stanley H. Pulaski's going to get is the one on the tip of my shoe when I kick his bony ass toward the unemployment office. When I asked why he hadn't considered Hannah for me, the weasel admitted he gave her the brush-off because he didn't think she was my type."

"There you go." Bryce chuckled. "He was probably calling 1-900-HOT-BABE to recruit applicants for you."

Jordan leaned his elbows on his desk. "If I'm supposedly such a super-stud, why would anyone believe I'd need to resort to hitting on my employees?"

Bryce spread his hands. "When a guy takes a different woman to every function he attends, people wonder. Especially if the guy is CEO of one of the largest manufacturers of contraceptive products." He drew his eyebrows together and flashed a wry smile. "Or isn't that why you're known as The Condom King?"

"Very funny." Jordan fished a rubber band from his desk drawer and shot it at his friend's chest. "Add a stanza about marriage and children to that song, and you can sing back-up harmony for my grandfather."

"It's spring. That tune's always number one on his hit parade this time of year."

"Yeah, but since he retired, it's become his theme song." Jordan released a disgusted sputter and nodded toward Bryce. "And you're a fine one to talk about me being a player, Mr. Never-date-the-same-woman-more-than-a-month. No one's accusing you of playing hide the sausage with your secretary."

Some employees had even begun to speculate as to whether Bryce's serial dating might be a cover-up for being gay, which Jordan knew was ludicrous. His pal had simply descended from a long line of womanizers.

"I'm also not heir to the Calder fortune," Bryce reminded him.

"Tell me about it." Jordan's friend had no idea what a burden being Edward's heir could be. Sometimes he wished he could just be an ordinary, average Joe.

Jordan turned his chair and gazed at the expansive view-a hundred and fifty green acres surrounding the seven buildings and four parking lots scattered about the New Jersey corporate campus. He spied his grandfather lounging on his usual bench in the garden at the entrance to the building and shook his head. "He always sits right where he knows I can see him."

Bryce rose and peered out the tinted glass. "Cut the old guy some slack. After working his whole life, it must be hard to suddenly have nothing to do all day."

"He's trying to make me feel guilty about his lack of great-grandchildren to play with."

"Is it working?"

Unfortunately, it was. Edward was his only family. Jordan's mother had walked out when he was eleven, and then at fifteen, he'd lost his dad to a car accident, after which, his grandmother had died. His and Edward's mutual grief, along with their daily working relationship, had forged a bond stronger than the average guy shared with his grandfather.

He would love to give the old geezer half a dozen grandbabies to entertain him in his golden years. But marriage? That was out of the question. Jordan had already dealt with enough loss and rejection for three lifetimes.

He turned his seat back toward his desk and lowered his voice. "I'm a little worried about Gramps. I think he's got a thing for Hannah."

"What?" Bryce's head snapped up. "No, way."

"Yup. He comes in to see her practically every day and keeps bringing her little gifts. He's taken her out to lunch twice already. Then yesterday he asked if I'd considered increasing our advertising for Sildenafil to help promote our entire generic drug line."

Rolling his eyes, Bryce sank back into his chair. "He'll need a lot more than ED drugs to keep up with a woman her age."

"Yeah, like a heart transplant."

"Do you think she's-you know...." Bryce pumped his arm.

"Banging him?" Jordan snorted. "Nah. She treats him like a sweet old man who reminds her of her granddad. I'm just afraid he's reading more into all her attention."

"So what if he does? He's entitled to a few fantasies at his age. Hell, she's old-fashioned enough for him. Maybe he can actually convince her to give him a whirl."

Which was exactly what worried Jordan.

"I say more power to him." Bryce narrowed his eyes. "Or are you afraid he'll want to make her your step-grandma?"

Wouldn't that be great? If Edward became involved with Hannah, it would make Jordan's own preoccupation with her seem that much sicker. Although, his obsession was actually his grandfather's fault. All of Edward's talk about women's mystique had started Jordan wondering what his assistant might be hiding under those shapeless, puritanical outfits she wrapped herself in. Perhaps lingerie as hot as her take-me-now heels?