Perfect Partners

quarter’s sales figures. He was stunned to discover that she had been asking questions all over the building, and that by noon she had a disconcertingly thorough grasp of Thornquist Gear’s current financial picture. It was sheer blind luck that she had not stumbled into information that would clue her into the Copeland Marine Industries takeover.
    Joel had gone straight down to Accounting that afternoon and instituted tighter controls on all computer printouts ordered from the president’s office. Henceforth the requested printouts were to be sent to his office first. He would personally go over them with the new president.
    Sooner or later, Joel thought as he reached the third floor, he was going to have to deal with the Copeland Marine situation. After all, once he made his final moves, there would be no way to keep the takeover a secret. He had to have his explanations ready. They had to sound like good business and nothing more.
    Problems. Firecrackers waiting to explode
.
    And the most potentially explosive factor of all, Joel now realized, was his own personal fascination with Letty Thornquist. It was dawning on him with increasing pressure that he wanted her. Badly. And he was not altogether sure why.
    The acute awareness he had experienced that night at her father’s house in the mountains had not been a fleeting attraction fed by exercise endorphins, moonlight, and the proximity of a lady in a nightgown. He still wanted her.
    He had tried telling himself it was the novelty. Letty was very different from any other woman he knew. It was not just her oddly innocent enthusiasm or even her unusual, rather fey looks. Nor was it the vibrancy of her features, which more than made up for whatever she lacked in conventional beauty.
    It was something else that drew him, and it worried him. Letty was sweet, even endearing in some ways. She called forth a protective response in him that was ludicrous under the circumstances. He was the one who needed protection, Joel thought ruefully. As long as she owned Thornquist Gear, she was dangerous.
    Unfortunately that knowledge did not alter the surge of desire he felt whenever he was near her or the sense of possessiveness that was beginning to pulse just below the surface.
    In the past few days Joel had begun to realize that he was not only trying to keep a lot of firecrackers in the air, he was also trying to walk a tightrope.
    Maybe he should have gone to work for a circus instead of Thornquist Gear. Lately it was hard to distinguish between the two.
    Joel heard Letty’s voice as soon as he opened the stairwell door and started toward the large conference room. Either she was talking to herself or there was someone else in the room with her.
    “That can’t be right,” Letty called out. “Read that one again, Cal.”
    Cal Manford’s voice droned in response. “‘Insert brace pole into section B of number three upright pole.’”
    “That’s ridiculous. It doesn’t fit. Are you sure?”
    “That’s what it says, Ms. Thornquist.”
    “Who wrote that manual, anyway?”
    Cal hesitated, apparently thinking. “Someone in the manufacturing design division, I imagine.”
    Joel reached the doorway of the conference room and beheld a small scene of chaos. One of the new tents that had been manufactured to Thornquist specifications and carried the new Thornquist Gear Pack Up and Go label was in a state of partial erection.
    Not unlike his own condition these days, Joel thought. And for the same reason: Letty was in the vicinity.
    To be more accurate she was somewhere inside the precariously tilting tent. He could see one small, beautifully arched, nylon-clad foot peeping out from where the zippered door flapped open. A trim little ankle and a few inches of nicely curved leg were also visible.
    Cal Manford, the head of Marketing, stood nearby. He looked harried and useless with the instruction manual in his hand. He had taken off his jacket and was in his shirtsleeves.
    Manford was in his mid-fifties and sported a fringe of gray hair and a definite paunch. The paunch was the reason he was rarely seen without a jacket. Apparently the tension of trying to help Letty pitch a tent had overcome Cal’s concern about the way his stomach hung out over his belt. Joel noticed there were damp stains under Manford’s arms.
    Joel also noticed with a sense of irritation that Cal was staring at Letty’s foot instead of the loose-leaf instruction manual.
    “Well,” Letty