Chapter 28

Cursing, Danielle Yost kicked the door shut behind her, dropped her purse on the entry console table, and shoved her umbrella in the umbrella stand.

"I hate my job. I hate this town," she muttered as she strode to her small kitchen and made herself a stiff drink.

The old-fashioned answering machine connected to her kitchen phone flashed the number three. Probably hang ups from telemarketers, she thought, and in fact the first two messages were hung ups. The third interested her, though.

"Dr. Yost, my name is Charles Wingate. I'm with Executive Placements International. Our firm has been employed to perform a national search for a Ph.D. in a field applicable to charitable organizations. I'm calling from the west coast, so you can return my call anytime before eight o'clock your time this evening." Wingate said his toll-free phone number twice and hung up."

The West! Danny Yost thought. She'd missed the West where she'd been raised by an old man in Reno, Nevada. She smiled when Gabby's wrinkled face came to mind. Gabby was a nickname, given to him by cowboy friends, not because he talked all the time or because he resembled Gabby Hayes, a supporting actor in old Western movies. Gabby had told her that he'd acquired the nickname because he was a man of few words.

"That's for sure," Danny said out loud.

She reached for the telephone and dialed Wingate's phone number.

"Mr. Wingate, this is Dr. Danielle Yost. I'm returning your call."

"Yes, thank you," Wingate said.

"Tell me about this job. Is it located on the west coast?"

"No, Phoenix, Arizona."

Even better, Danny thought.

"The job calls for a Ph.D. in a field that would be applicable to operating charitable organizations," Wingate said.

"You said that on the message you left me. Tell me something new," Danny said, becoming impatient with the slow-talking man.

"The employer is a philanthropist. You would be his assistant, and one of your first duties would be chairman of the board of an organization that provides shelters for battered women and children. The philanthropist is also involved in providing housing for the homeless. The salary is negotiable and will be commensurate with your experience and qualifications. There's a full benefit package, including a 401K plan that is matched 100% by the employer. That's most unusual, Dr. Yost."

"Mr. Wingate, I'm not currently working in the non-profit industry. I'm a lobbyist, albeit a lobbyist for the Coalition for the Homeless, which means I'm being paid well, or at least better than most employees with my experience and qualifications working for non-profit organizations. To interest me, the salary must meet or exceed my current income."

"Which is?" Wingate said.

"$150,000 annually," Danny said.

"No problem. If you're interested, please e-mail a current resume; I'll forward it to the employer, and if he's interested, I'll arrange a flight to Phoenix for a face-to-face meeting."

"I'm interested, and I have a current resume," Danny said. She jotted down Wingate's e-mail address. "What can you tell me about the philanthropist?"

"Nothing. I haven't met him. A colleague in our Phoenix satellite office took the placement order. I tried to call him before I called you. He's not working today."

They said goodbye and hung up.

A philanthropist, huh, she thought and pictured a doddering old man as she sat at her computer to e-mail her resume to Wingate.

Phoenix! The Old West! The high desert. Mountains nearby. Wide open spaces. She glanced towards the heavens. "Waddaya think, Gabby?"

She received no answer, but she knew what the old man would say. "Follow your heart, but only after your mind kicks in." That's what Gabby would say.

To celebrate, she freshened her drink and thought about where she was and how she'd arrived. She was an orphan, and Gabby had raised her, said he'd found her when she was a baby, plucked her out of a snow bank. She was about ten years old when he'd dispensed that information. She'd asked him how he could have possibly known her name if he'd found her in a pile of snow, and he'd said he hadn't known her name, that he'd named her Danielle because he liked the name, but he'd never called her Danielle, always Danny. The old man had also given her his last name, said it made it easier for them because Danny could tell everyone that he was her grandfather.

When she was nine years old, he'd asked her why she didn't like school.

"'Cause it's boring," Danny said. "I already know all the stuff they're teaching."

Gabby checked with her teachers, pushed his weight around a little, and after a guidance counselor gave her some tests, school administrators shoved her ahead a couple of grades. A year later, the school moved her ahead once more. She'd graduated from high school at fifteen and from the University of Nevada at eighteen, living with Gabby and using grants to finance her college education.

Tears misted in her eyes. One week after she graduated from college, Gabby passed away. Danny suspected he'd hung on to see her receive her degree in sociology.

"Don't quit, sweet pea," he'd said on his deathbed. "Go on, get your Ph.D. Make me proud."

"It took a while, Gabby. There was that ill-fated detour loosely termed a marriage, but I did it," Danny said out loud.

Her phone rang. Wingate was calling her again.

"The employer wants a photograph, a headshot would be fine, he said," Wingate said.

"Why?"

"Don't know."

"All right, I'll send one right now," Danny said as she sat at her computer, thinking that the philanthropist was probably a dirty old man. Maybe she should send a photo of her wearing a bikini. Naw. "There, it's on its way," she said as she clicked on the send button.

"Will you be reachable in the next hour or two?" Wingate asked.

"Yes, why?"

"I might be able to schedule the face-to-face meeting tonight," he said. "How soon could you travel to Phoenix?"

"I'm flexible," Danny said. "One or two day's notice would do it."

"Good. I'll get back to you."

An hour later, Wingate called yet again. "The employer would like you in Phoenix on Thursday this week. If, after the initial interview, you are both still interested, he'd like you to remain in Phoenix through the weekend to meet everyone involved in his enterprises. He also wants to know how much notice you need to give your current employer."

"If I'm interested, staying through the weekend on the philanthropist's nickel would be fine." If I'm not interested, I'll probably stay through the weekend anyway for a past-due, much-needed mini-vacation, she thought. The West! High desert! Mountains! "About notice, two weeks would be adequate," she said. "The employer, what's his name?"

"David Stanley," Wingate said. "If you plan to check him out, good luck. I tried and got nowhere."

Danny laughed. "An anonymous philanthropist, huh?"

Wingate laughed with her. "If and when I become aware of your flight and hotel arrangements, I'll call you and pass them on."

Danny spent an hour on the Internet. David Stanley was indeed anonymous. Oh, she'd found some David Stanleys, but none in Metro Phoenix that fit the philanthropist role. There was a kid with an MBA from Phoenix College. Well, maybe not a kid. He'd be twenty-seven years old now, she thought, five years younger than my thirty-two. Naw, couldn't be. She checked out a few other David Stanleys around the country, but they didn't appear to be philanthropists either.

With a sigh, she strolled to the kitchen, plucked a frozen dinner from the freezer, and popped it in the microwave.

"I hate my job. I hate this town," she said softly. "And I'll hate my dinner."
Would David Stanley, the anonymous philanthropist, change her life for the better?

David was looking at Dr. Danielle Yost's portrait photograph that he'd printed from the.jpeg he'd received via e-mail when Darla walked into his office.

"Hi," she said as she perched her pretty butt on the corner of his desk.

"Hi, yourself," David said and dropped the photograph to his desk.

Darla picked it up. "Who's this?"

"A candidate for my assistant, who, if she works out, will also be Chairman of the Board of J&T."

"Attractive," Darla said. "Trust you to find a beautiful woman for an assistant."

"Mom's recommendation," David said. "She said I'd clash with another alpha male. I said Flint was an alpha male. Mom said Flint was an alpha male as a fighting man, and that I deferred to him as such. Otherwise Flint defers to me, so Flint and I make it work."

"True," Darla said. "Speaking of the fighting man, as we speak, he is fucking your special agent. I stopped by to see if I could entice you to do the same to me."

David chortled and said, "I can be enticed, and what's more, with you, enticing is easy, but I'm curious. How did you plan to entice?"

She glanced behind her. "First, I'd lock that door." She hopped off the desk and locked the door. "Then I'd raise my dress and peel off my panties." Her panties hit the floor. "Then I'd sit on your desk facing you in your chair like this, let my knees fall apart, and say something sexy like, 'Eat me, please.'"

David leaned forward and lapped his tongue up through her crease. She was sopping!

"As a guess," he said, "you watched your fighting man fuck my special agent for a while."

Darla grinned. "I did. They didn't see me, and I didn't want to intrude, but watching them made me hot. Lick me again."

David nuzzled his face in her cunt and licked and sucked until she stiffened in orgasm. While she was recovering, he rose to his feet and dropped his trousers and boxers down around his ankles. He then stuffed his hard cock into her cunt.

Darla moaned with pleasure and met his driving cock with hunching motions of her hips. They didn't speak; they just took each other to a quick, satisfying climax.

"Perfect," Darla breathed when she her breathing normalized. "Just what I wanted. Besides being a stellar ghost, are you also a mind reader?"

"No, because we've been lovers for so long, I think we both intuitively know what the other wants." He wiped his cock and her dripping pussy with tissues from a box on his desk, pulled up his boxers and pants without fastening them, and shuffled to the bathroom connected to his office. He returned with a damp washcloth and bathed his sister's vulva with it.

"Thanks," Darla said, hopped down, retrieved her panties and pulled them up over her hips. "I found J&T's PR gal today, David, a brassy middle-aged woman named Nancy Reese. During my interview with her, she recommended a man named Kent Parson to help us with the demographics and how best to connect with Mr. & Mrs. Household in Metro Phoenix. He's managed a number of local and national political campaigns, some successful, some not. Still, Nancy says she works well with him, and for what we want to accomplish that he'd be perfect for the job. I'm meeting him tomorrow morning."

"Great!" David said, pleased not so much with what she'd accomplished, although that was considerable, but more because she appeared to be enjoying the task.

Darla picked up Danielle Yost's photo from the desk and studied it. "She looks a little like that actress Katherine Ross. How old is she?"

"Thirty-two."

"Married? Single?"

"Divorced. No children. A brainiac. Graduated from high school at age fifteen, bachelors degree at eighteen, masters at twenty. A year later, she got married, which lasted two years. She returned to school and obtained her Ph.D. in sociology at twenty-six, worked for the State of Nevada Department of Health and Human Services for three years in a variety of capacities, each with increasing responsibilities. Then went national, working for HUD in Washington, D.C., again at different jobs. She's currently a lobbyist for the Coalition for the Homeless."

Darla sighed. "All that and gorgeous, too." She grinned and waved the photograph. "Better watch out or this alpha female will trip your alpha male ass."

David laughed and said, "I'm taken times three. She'll be here Thursday for an interview. I'll want you to speak with her. At first, she'll be working more with you than me."

"Does she know about us?" Darla said.

"No, and I can't connect with her to investigate her past to find out until after I meet her." He glanced at the clock on his wall. "It's coming up on dinner time. What's the dress tonight?"