Read Rescued in a Wedding Dress for Free Online Page B

to his senses.
    He had to apply his own rules right now, to set an example for her. Don’t form attachments. Don’t care too deeply. Not about people. Not about programs.
    And he needed to take away that feeling he’d been seen. Being despised for his severity felt a whole lot safer than that look she’d just given him.
    He was laying down the law. If she didn’t like it, too bad. It was his job to see if she was capable of doing what needed to be done. Miss Viv wanted to hand this place over to her. There was absolutely no point doingany of this if six months later soft hearts had just run it back into the ground.
    “Prom Dreams is gone,” he said coolly. “It’s up to you to get rid of it.”
    She bit her lip. She looked at her shoes. She glanced back at him, and tears were stinging her eyes.
    There was no room for crying at work!
    And absolutely no room for the way it made him feel: as if he wanted to fix it. For Pete’s sake, he was the one who’d created it!
    “I can see we are going to have a problem,” he said. “You are a romantic. And I am a realist.”
    For a moment she studied him. For a moment he thought she would not be deflected by Prom Dreams, by his harshness, that despite it she would pursue what he had accidentally shown her.
    But she didn’t.
    “I am not a romantic!” she protested.
    “Anyone who shows up for work in a wedding gown is a romantic,” he said, pleased with how well his deflection had worked. It was about her now, not about him, not about what experiences he did or didn’t know.
    “I didn’t arrive in it,” she said, embarrassed and faintly defensive, again. “It was a donation. It had been put on my desk.”
    “So naturally you had no alternative but to try it on.”
    “Exactly. I was just checking it for damage.”
    “Uh-huh,” he said, not even trying to hide his skepticism. “Anyone who wants to buy dresses instead of feeding people is a romantic.”
    “It’s not that black and white!”
    “Everything is black and white to a realist. Rose-colored to a romantic.”
    “I might have been a romantic once,” she said, her chin tilted proudly, “but I’m not anymore.”
    Ah, the cad. He shoved his hands under his desk when they insisted on forming fists.
    “Good,” he said, as if he were the most reasonable of men. “Then you should have no problem getting on board for the kind of pragmatic changes that need to be made around here.”
    He knew she was kidding herself about not being a romantic. Despite the recent heartbreak Miss Viv had told him about, it seemed that Molly had hopes and dreams written all over her. Could she tame that enough to do the job Second Chances needed her to do?
    “Couldn’t we look at ways to increase funding, rather than cutting programs?”
    Ah, that’s what he wanted to hear. Realistic ideas for dealing with problems, creative approaches to solutions, coming at challenges from different directions, experimenting with angles.
    For the first time, he thought maybe. Maybe Molly Michaels had the potential to run the show. But he let nothing of that optimism into his voice. It was just too early to tell. Because it couldn’t work if she was so attached to things that she could not let go of the ones that were dragging the organization down.
    “Believe me, I’m looking at everything. That’s my job. But I still want every single thing Second Chances funds to have merit, to be able to undergo the scrutiny of the people I will be approaching for funding, and to pass with flying colors.”
    “I think,” she said, slowly, “our different styles might work together, not against each other, if we gave them a chance.”
    He frowned at that. He wasn’t looking for a partnership. He wasn’t looking to see if they could work together. He wanted to evaluate whether she could work alone. He wasn’t looking for anything to complicate what needed to be done here. It already was way too complicated.
    Memories. Unexpected