Two hours later, his head was spinning only a little. Thankfully, he knew enough about target markets, niche markets, product, pricing, promotion and distribution that it didn’t really matter that he knew next to nothing about olives.
“It’s a lot to think about,” Tara said afterward. “Back-end databases and shopping cart systems. Technical support. Programming languages. God, I don’t know anything about Basic HTML or JAVA.”
“How many providers will you be talking to?” Joe asked her.
She looked at him. “Those are the first two. Paige is setting up meetings with two more. Why?”
He shrugged. “Two isn’t enough. Their prices are wildly different and so are their ideas.”
Her hands stilled on her keyboard. “I think Imagemakers, the first group, are the ones I’d like to go with.”
“Why is that?”
She was silent for a moment, watching him. Her intense, sparkling eyes raised his body temp a few degrees, but he kept his mind firmly on business.
“They get me,” she finally said.
He almost snorted. “What the hell does that mean?”
She frowned. “They get me. They get my ideas. They know where I’m going.”
Now he did laugh. “You’ve met with two groups. Imagemakers was double the price of the other one and you want to go with them because ‘they get you’?” He shook his head in amusement. “Have you got a project plan for this?”
She frowned. “No.”
Oh man. He sighed. “Just because you have one retail outlet doesn’t mean setting up to do business on the net is going to be easy,” he told her bluntly. “You need your entire information technology team involved in this project.”
“We contract out our IT services.”
“Fine.” He shrugged. “You still need to involve them. And where’s your market research and analysis?”
She stared back at him, eyes wide, lips rolled in.
“You have done market research?”
“Um…”
He sighed. “Sweetheart, designing the website is such a tiny part of this whole thing. You need a business model. You need to do more research. You need to think about distribution channels, warehousing, inventory control…”
She scowled. “Do. Not. Call. Me. Sweetheart.” The words squeezed out between her clenched teeth. “And do not tell me what to do.”
Whoa. Heat surged through his veins. She had no idea how those words inflamed him. Challenged him. Urged him to not just tell her what to do, but to make her do it… More inappropriate images flashed through his mind, sizzling hot ones of Tara restrained and helpless with no choice but to do exactly what he wanted.
He shook his head. He had to focus on the business challenge here, not the challenge of dominating a hot little spitfire.
He could only imagine the kind of trouble she could get herself—and the company—into if she just plunged into this blindly. For him, though…wow. He was figuratively rubbing his hands together, raring to go, ready to dig into the challenge and get to work.
“We’ll grab some lunch before we head up to the ranch,” she told him, back to being Mistress of Ice. “I’ll get Paige to go pick up some sandwiches for us. What would you like?”
“Doesn’t matter to me.”
She left the office and returned a few moments later, dropping into her chair behind her desk. “I need to check my voice mail.” She picked up the phone. He watched her as she pressed buttons, listened and scribbled notes on a pad of paper on her desk, quick and efficient. Finally, she hung up.
“I have two calls I need to return, but I’ll do that on the drive to Santa Ynez.” She started typing on her computer keyboard. “I want to make some notes of my meetings.” And she proceeded to ignore him.
He sat there for a few moments, then started tapping his fingers on the arm of his chair. She shot him a glance at one point, then frowned and refocused on her computer screen.
She was doing it on purpose. Making him feel insignificant, useless, in the way. He recognized it because he knew just how to play that game. But as the saying went, two could play. And patience and self-control were only a couple of the things he’d learned from playing that game.
She was obviously pissed off he’d dared to question her business planning. Or lack of business planning, he should say. And if he thought she’d been icy Friday afternoon, that was nothing compared to now. Probably their little encounter at Le Château had increased her annoyance. The thought amused him.
Paige knocked on the door of the office, then walked in with a paper bag in her hands.
Joe regarded the new secretary he shared with Tara with interest. Her black and purple hair stood in spikes, a ring pierced one eyebrow and thick black makeup ringed her eyes. She was tiny, maybe five foot one, wore heavy black combat boots and a short black skirt with a striped T-shirt.
“Here’s your lunch,” she said. She set the bag on Tara’s desk. “There are three kinds of sandwiches, some coleslaw, napkins and forks in the bag. Do you want me to make some coffee?”
“Yes please,” Tara said immediately. Joe smiled at Paige and got his more familiar interested smile in return, a stark contrast to the icy response he was getting from Tara. Paige was young, looked like she was just out of high school, and despite the raccoon eyes, she was kind of cute. He looked down at his suit. He’d definitely gotten the impression from what he’d seen so far that he was overdressed. Whatever. Better to overdress the first day on the job.
Tara opened the bag and pulled out the food, spreading it across her desk. He slid his chair closer and selected a thick sandwich that turned out to be roast beef. Excellent. It was delicious and he was starving.
Tara ate half a tuna sandwich and he devoured the roast beef, piled thickly on squishy fresh bread. The tang of horseradish nipped his tongue. Then he ate the pastrami and the other half of her tuna when she had pushed it away. The coleslaw was really good too, some kind of Asian creation with crunchy noodles, sunflower seeds and a tangy dressing made with soy and sesame oil.
Tara watched him finish off the coleslaw, one eyebrow raised. “You have a big appetite.”
He grinned. “Oh yeah. For many things.”
Chapter Four
Was that some kind of reference to sex?
Tara stared at him and he held her gaze as he lifted his fork to his mouth. He had to be making some kind of perverted reference to their meeting at Le Château. Heat sizzled over her skin at the memory. She’d managed to pretend it had never happened all morning, but now one little comment had her burning. She looked down at her desk.
All those muscles must let him eat that much food. All that muscle must burn a whole hell of a lot of calories. And, as she knew only too well from seeing him Friday night, those were some really nice muscles.
Really nice.
Her cheeks heated even more as she peered down into her coffee cup.
The caffeine probably wasn’t necessary. She was alert, edgy, almost vibrating with nerves and energy. All due to her new colleague, who followed her around, listening to her with such focused intensity it was making her self-conscious.
He was making her more than self-conscious. He was making her feel like an idiot. Intelligence shone in those black-coffee eyes and he asked smart, succinct questions about stuff she—and it killed her to admit this—knew nothing about. Dammit.
She wanted to growl, wanted to pick something up and throw it. Throw it at him. She clenched her fists. “Okay,” she said, covering her feelings with briskness. “We should go. It’ll take about forty minutes to get to the ranch.”
The thought of being in a car alone with him for the next hour or so was almost enough to make her lose what little control she still had, but she grabbed her purse, briefcase and cell phone. Joe again followed as she ran down the stairs, this time turning left and exiting the building through a back door. She strode up to her car, all sparkling chrome and glass in the hot mid-day sun, and dug around in her big purse for her keys.