It
Happened
in…
Manhattan
Affair with the Rebel Heiress
Emily McKay
The Billionaire’s Bidding
Barbara Dunlop
Tall, Dark & Cranky
Kate Little

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Affair with the

Rebel Heiress

Emily McKay

EMILY McKAY has been reading and loving romance novels since she was eleven years old. She lives in Texas with her geeky husband, her two kids and too many pets. Her debut novel, Baby, Be Mine, was a RITA® Award finalist for Best First Book and Best Short Contemporary. She was also a 2009 RT Book Reviews Career Achievement nominee for Series Romance. To learn more, visit her website, www.EmilyMcKay.com.

For my mother, Judy Beierle, who has taught me over and over to smile in the face of adversity, to meet challenges with bravery and hope, and to always, always find something to laugh about

One

Kitty Biedermann hated Texas.

That single thought had echoed through her mind from the time the flight attendant had said the words “unscheduled landing in Midland, Texas,” until this moment, five hours later, when she found herself sitting in the bar adjacent the seedy motel in which she would be forced to spend the night.

The last time she’d been in Texas, she’d been dumped by her fiancé. Of course, he hadn’t been just any old fiancé. He’d been the man she’d handpicked to save Biedermann Jewelry from financial ruin. So being dumped hadn’t resulted in mere public humiliation or simple heartbreak. It meant the end of Biedermann Jewelry. So it was understandable that Kitty held a bit of grudge, not just against Derek Messina, but against the whole damn state.

Since being dumped by Derek, her situation had gone from bad to worse to desperate. She had needed Derek.

From the time she was a child, she’d been raised with one purpose—to land a husband with the smarts and business savvy to run Biedermann’s. When Derek hadn’t wanted her, she’d remained undaunted. But now, after six months of working her way through every single, eligible straight man she knew, she was beginning to feel … well, daunted.

With this latest trip to Palm Beach, she’d been scraping the bottom of the barrel. Geoffrey barely had two functioning synapses to rub together, but at least he could read, write and looked damn good in a suit. But even as meager as his qualifications had been, he hadn’t wanted her.

Biedermann’s meant everything to her. It was slipping through her fingers and there didn’t seem to be anything she could do to catch it.

Now, with her elbows propped on the suspiciously sticky bar top and her chin propped in her palms, she stared at the murky green depths of her salt-rimmed margarita glass. She gave the glass a little shake, watching as the ice cubes within tumbled to the bottom of the glass. A lifetime of planning had fallen apart just as quickly. Was this rock bottom?

Her throat tightened against despair. Immediately she straightened, blinking in surprise. She was not given to fits of self-pity. Certainly not in public.

She shook her glass again, studying the contents. Exactly what was in this margarita? After a mere two drinks she should not be succumbing to such maudlin emotions.

Maybe this was what she got for giving the bartender a hard time. When she’d ordered a Pinot Grigio, he’d asked, “Is that like a wine cooler?” Apparently she shouldn’t have doubted him when he said he’d make her a drink strong enough to knock her on her pampered, scrawny butt.

She was still contemplating the contents of her drink when she happened to glance toward the door and saw him striding in.

It was as if someone tossed a bucket of icy water on her. Every cell in her body snapped to life in pure visceral response. The stranger was tall and lean, somehow managing to look lanky but well-built all at the same time. He was dressed simply in well-worn jeans and a T-shirt that stretched taut across his shoulders, but hung loose over his abdomen. No beer belly on this guy. A cowboy hat sat cockeyed on his head, but he wore scuffed work boots instead of the cowboy boots she expected.

Her first thought—when she was capable of thought again—was, Now this is a cowboy. This was what women the world over romanticized. This was a man at his most basic. Most masculine.

Even from across the room, her body responded to him instantly, pumping endorphins down to the tips of her curling toes. Funny, because she’d always preferred her men sophisticated and suave. As well-groomed as they were well-educated.

She was, in fact, so distracted by this mystery cowboy who’d just sauntered in that she didn’t see the other guy sidling up to her. The rough hand on her arm was her first clue someone had claimed the stool beside hers. Swiveling around, she realized that hand belonged to a guy who could not have been more different than the cowboy who’d snagged her attention. This man was short and, um … plump. He was bald except for a few wisps of hair grown long, combed over and plastered down with what she could only hope was some sort of styling product. His cheeks were rosy, his nose bulbous. He looked vaguely familiar, though she couldn’t possibly have met him before.

“Well, hello there, little lady.” He stroked a hand up her arm. “Whadda say we getcha some’tem cold to drink and we scoot on out to that there dance floor?”

“Pardon?” She—barely—suppressed a shiver of disgust at his touch. She tried to wiggle free from his grasp, but he had boxed her in between the bar and the woman on the stool beside her.

Why was he rubbing her arm like that? Did she know this man? After all, he did look familiar.

“You wanna take a turn around the room?”

“A turn at what?” she asked, genuinely not understanding him. She spoke four languages, for goodness’ sake, but Texan was not one of them.

The man frowned. “Are you makin’ fun a me?”

“No,” she protested. Unfortunately, it was then that she figured out where she knew him from. “Elmer Fudd!” she blurted out. “You look like Elmer Fudd!”

Normally, she would not have said anything, but she’d already gulped down two of those wicked margaritas. And all she’d eaten since lunch was a packet of airline peanuts. So her tongue was looser than normal.

Indignation settled over his pudgy features. He leaned toward her, scowling. “Whadja call me?”

“I … I didn’t mean it as an insult.”

“You are makin’ fun a me.” The man’s face flushed red, only increasing his resemblance to the cartoon hunter.

“No! I … I … I …”

And there it was. She, who almost always knew exactly what to say and who could talk herself into and out of almost any situation, for better or for worse, was speechless. Horribly so.

She’d unintentionally insulted and offended a man who was probably armed right now. This was it. She was going to die. Alone. Miserable. In Texas. Murdered in a fit of rage. By a man who looked like Elmer Fudd.

Ford Langley could see trouble coming the second he stepped into The Dry Well, his favorite bar in Midland.

The Well was the kind of seedy dive that rednecks and oil rig workers had been coming to, through boom and bust, for sixty years or so. Since the Green Energy branch of FMJ, Ford’s company, leased land for their wind turbines from a lot of the people in here, he figured they all knew who he was and how much he was worth. They just didn’t care. Frankly, it was a relief places like this still existed in the world.

It was not, however, the kind of place women wore couture suits and designer shoes. Ford had three sisters with expensive taste. He knew a five-hundred-dollar pair of shoes when he saw them.

The woman sitting at the bar looked startlingly out of place. He’d never seen her there before. He came to The Well almost every time he visited Midland, and he definitely would have remembered this broad.

The word broad filtered through and stuck in his mind, because that’s exactly what she looked like. The sexy broad who ambles into the PI’s office in an old film noir movie. Lustrous flowing hair, long silk-clad legs, bright red lipstick, gut-wrenching sex appeal. With just enough wide-eyed innocence thrown in to make a man want to be the one to save her. Even though he knew instinctively that he would get kicked in the teeth for his trouble.

To make matters worse, she was talking to Dale Martin, who, Ford knew, had been going through a rough divorce. Dale had undoubtedly come in looking for what The Well provided best: booze, brawls and one-night stands. Given how completely out of his league the woman was, Ford could already guess which Dale was going to get.

When Ford heard Dale’s distinctive drawl rising above the blare of the jukebox, Ford moved through the crowd, closing in on the brewing conflict, hoping he could cut trouble off at the pass.

He approached just in time to hear Dale accuse her of making fun of him. Hiding his cringe, Ford slung an arm around the woman’s shoulders.

The stubborn woman tried to pull out of his grasp, but he held her firm. “I will—”

“Dale, buddy,” he continued before she could ruin his efforts. “I see you met my date.” He sent the woman a pointed look, hoping she’d take the hint and stop trying to squirm away. “Sugar, did you introduce yourself to my buddy, Dale?”

“It’s Kitty,” she snapped.

Dale was looking from him to her with a baffled expression. Which was fine, because Ford figured confused was better than furious.

“Right, sugar.” Ford gave her shoulder an obvious squeeze. Winking at Dale, he added, “Kitty here’s one of those feminist types.”

She blinked, as if having trouble keeping up with the conversation. “Insisting that I be called by my given name and not some generic endearment does not make me—”

“She’s a bit prickly, too.” Based on her accent, he made a guess. “You know how Yankees are, Dale.”

“I am not prickly,” she protested.

But with Ford’s last comment, a smile spread across Dale’s face and at her protest, he burst out laughing, having forgotten or excused whatever she’d said to offend him. After all, she was a Yankee and obviously couldn’t be expected to know better.

With Dale sufficiently distracted, Ford tugged the delectable Kitty off her stool and nudged her toward The Well’s crowded dance floor. “Come on. Why don’t you show me what you can do in those fancy shoes of yours, sugar?”

At “sugar” he gave Dale another exaggerated wink. She, of course, squeaked an indignant protest, which only made Dale laugh harder.

When they were out of Dale’s hearing range, she once again tried to pull away from him. “Thank you, I’m sure. But I could have handled him myself. So you can’t seriously expect me to dance with you.”

“‘Course I do. Dale’s watching.”

Before she could voice any more protests, or worse, undermine all his hard work, he stepped onto the dance floor, spun her to face him and pulled her close. The second he felt her body pressed to his, he had to ask himself, had he really orchestrated all of that to avoid a fight or had he been angling for this all along?

She was taller than she’d looked sitting on the stool. With her heels on, her head came up past his chin, which was rare, since he dwarfed most women. As he’d suspected, her boxy suit hid a figure that was nicely rounded without being plump. She was delectably, voluptuously curved.

He felt the sharp bite of lust deep in his gut. Maybe he shouldn’t have been surprised. He lived a fairly high-profile life back in San Francisco. As a result, he picked his lovers carefully for their discretion, sophistication and lack of expectations. He had enough responsibility without saddling himself with a spouse. Unfortunately, it had been nearly six months since his previous girlfriend, Rochelle, had gone out for lunch one day with a friend who had kids and came home dreaming of designer diaper bags. He’d been happy to dodge that bullet and hadn’t been in a hurry to find someone to replace her. Which probably explained his strong reaction to this woman. Kitty, she’d said her name was.

As he moved her into a shuffle of a Texas two-step, he felt her body relax against his. If his instincts were right, Kitty was smart, beautiful and used to taking care of herself. In short, she was exactly his sort of woman. She just may be the most interesting thing that had happened to him in a long time.

Kitty had never before found herself in this situation. Naturally she often danced with men she’d only just met. But she kept very careful tabs on the social scene in Manhattan. As a result, she usually knew the net worth, family history and sexual inclinations of every male in the room.

What some might consider mere gossip, she considered her professional obligation. She was in no position to date, marry or even notice a man who couldn’t bring his own personal fortune to her family coffers. Unfortunately, ever since Suzy Snark had caught Kitty in her sights, the business of finding a rich husband had become increasingly difficult. Derek—damn him—had been the perfect choice. Until he’d gone and fallen in love.

But the truth was, she was tired of planning every move she made. This stranger with whom she was dancing, this cowboy, this man she’d never see again after tonight, made her pulse quicken.

From the moment she’d seen him sauntering through the door to the instant he’d pulled her body against his, she’d felt more alive than she had in months. Years, maybe. Somehow the scent of him, masculine and spicy, rose up from his chest and cut through the stench of stale smoke and cheap beer. His shoulders and arms were firm and muscular without being bulky. He had the physique of a man who worked for a living. Who lifted heavy things and shouldered massive burdens. The hand that cradled hers was slightly rough. This was a man who’d never had a manicure, never taken a Pilates class and probably didn’t own a suit.

In short, he was a real man. Unlike the pampered men of her acquaintance. Most of whom, she was sorry to say, were likable, but were just a little bit … well, that is to say … well, they were sissies. And until this moment, she’d never realized that bothered her. She’d never known she wanted anything else.

Her face was only inches from his shirt and she had to fight against the sudden impulse to bury her nose in his chest. To rub her cheek against his sternum like a cat marking her territory.

It had been so long since she felt this kind of instant sexual attraction to someone. Geesh, had she ever felt this kind of attraction? She didn’t think so.

Not that she planned on acting on it. A one-night stand was so not part of her five-year plan.

“I don’t even know your name,” she muttered aloud. “Ford,” he murmured.

He’d ducked his head before speaking so the word came out as warmth brushing past her ear. She suppressed a shiver.

“Like the car?” she asked.

He chuckled. “Yep. Like the car.”

Geesh, indeed. Even his name was masculine. Why couldn’t he have had a name that was just a bit more androgynous? Like Gene or Pat. Or BMW.

She didn’t manage to stifle her chuckle.

“You’re imagining me named after other car brands, aren’t you?”

Her gaze shot to his. “How did you know?”

“It’s pretty common. People usually think one of two things and you just seemed the type to wonder, ‘What if he’d been named Chevy?’”

“Are you saying I’m predictable?” Even though the lighting was dim, she could see that his eyes were whiskey-brown. And just as intoxicating as the tequila in her drink.

“Not at all,” he reassured her. “You could have been thinking Dodge.”

“It was BMW, actually. I can’t see you as something as clunky as a Dodge.” Was she flirting with him? What was wrong with her?

“So you’re a woman who appreciates precision engineering.”

Actually, I’m a woman who enjoys precision in everything.

The words had been on the tip of her tongue. Thank God she swallowed them. Instead she asked, “What’s the second?”

“Second what?”

“You said people usually think one of two things. If the first is other car names, then what’s the second?”

His lips quirked in either amusement or chagrin. “They wonder if I was conceived in the back of a Ford.”

“Ah.” Perhaps that had been chagrin, then. And was that the faintest hint of pink creeping into his cheeks? As if he were just a tad embarrassed. “And were you?”

“That,” he said firmly, “is a question I was never brave enough to ask my parents.” They both chuckled then. A moment later he added, “But I have three sisters and their names are not Mattress, Kitchen Table and Sofa, so I think I’m safe.”

She nearly asked what the names of his three sisters were, but she stopped herself. Somehow that seemed inappropriate. More personal, even, than the discussion of his conception. She didn’t know Ford. Didn’t want to know him longer than the length of this song. Personal details like the names of his sisters didn’t matter. So instead, she gave in to her temptation to rest her cheek against the strong wall of his chest and to breathe in deeply.

After a moment he said, “I hope you don’t judge Dale too harshly.”

“Dale?”

“The guy hitting on you earlier.”

“Ah. Him.” She’d forgotten he even existed.

“He’s been going through a rough divorce. His wife left him for a guy who’s twenty-three years old.”

“Ouch. That’s got to be hard on the ego.”

“Exactly. Which is why he’s been a mite irritable lately. But what exactly did you say to him that made him so mad?”

She cringed, hesitating before answering him. “I said he looked like Elmer Fudd.”

Ford seemed to be suppressing laughter. “I can’t imagine why that offended him. Everybody loves Elmer Fudd.”

“That’s what I tried to tell him!”

They both chuckled. But then she looked up. For a moment, space seemed to telescope around them, blocking out everything else. The smoke, the crowd, even the blare of the music faded until all she could hear was the steady thump-thump of the bass echoing the thud of her heartbeat.

She felt her nerves prickle in anticipation. Desire, hot and heavy, unspooled through her body. Her very skin felt weighed down. Her thighs flushed with warmth.

Who knew that laughter could be such a turn-on?

Their feet stopped shuffling across the floor. That ridiculous grin seemed frozen on her face for an instant, but then it faded, melted away by the intensity of his gaze. There was a spot just over his ear where his otherwise straight hair curled. Before she could think, her fingers had moved to his temple to tease that wayward lock of hair.

He took her hand in his, stilling her fingers. He cleared his throat, and she expected him to say something, something funny maybe, something to lighten the tension between them, but he said nothing.

Who had ever imagined that she’d feel this needy lust for a stranger? Not just a stranger, but a cowboy. A Texan. When she’d sworn she’d never even set foot in this damn state again. She so hadn’t seen this coming.

That’s when it hit her. Here, tonight, was a night out of time. She would never be here again. She would never see him again.

In this strange place, with this man she didn’t know, she had complete immunity. Freedom from her well-planned life. From her routines and her expectations of herself.

Tonight she could do whatever she wanted with no consequences. She could allow herself to do what she would normally never do. She could be stupid and reckless.

Without giving herself the chance to harbor second thoughts, she rose up on her toes and pressed her lips to his. His mouth moved over hers with a heated intensity. The sensual promise in his kiss made her shiver. She arched against him, letting her body answer the call of his. She slipped her hand into his and walked off the dance floor, tugging him along behind her.

As she wove her way through the crowd, the tempo of her blood picked up. After a lifetime of carefully planning, of controlling her actions and emotions, he could be her one rebellion. Tonight could be a vacation from her life.

And even if this was a mistake, he’d make sure she didn’t regret it.

Two

Two months later

“You’ve got to stop moping around,” Jonathon Bagdon said, then added, “And get your feet off my desk.”

Ford, who’d been sitting with his work boots propped up on the edge of Jonathon’s desk while he scraped the tip of his pocketknife under his nails, looked up for the first time since his business partner walked in the room. “What?”

Jonathon swatted at Ford’s boots with the leather-clad portfolio he’d been carrying. “Keep your feet off my desk. Christ, it’s like you’re ten.”

Ford’s feet, which had been crossed at the ankles, slid off Jonathon’s desk. He lowered them to the floor and ignored the insult.

“The desk is worth twenty thousand dollars. Try not to scuff it.”

Finally Ford looked up at his friend, taking in the scowl. He glanced over at Matt, the third partner in their odd little triumvirate, who sat on the sofa, with one leg propped on the opposite knee and a laptop poised on the knee. “Who shoved a stick up his ass this morning?” Ford asked Matt.

Matt continued typing frenetically while he said, “Ignore him. He’s just trying to bait you. He doesn’t give a damn about the desk.”

Ford looked from one to the other, suddenly feeling slightly off-kilter. Together the three of them formed FMJ, Inc. He’d known these men since they were kids. They’d first gone into business together when they were twelve and Jonathon had talked them into pooling their money to run the snack shack at the community rec center for the summer. One financially lucrative endeavor had led to another until here they were, twenty years later, the CEO, CFO and CTO of FMJ, a company which they’d founded while still in college and which had made them all disgustingly rich.

Jonathon, though always impeccably dressed and by far the most organized of the three, might impress some as overly persnickety. But those were only the people who didn’t know him, the people who were bound to underestimate him. It was a mistake few people made more than once.

In reality, it was unlike Jonathon to care whether or not his desk was scuffed, regardless of how much it was worth.

Still, to mollify Jonathon, Ford abandoned the chair he’d been sitting in and returned to his own desk. Since they worked so closely together, they didn’t have individual offices. Instead, they’d converted the entire top floor of FMJ’s Palo Alto headquarters to a shared office. On one end sat Jonathon’s twenty-thousand-dollar art deco monstrosity. The other end was lined with three worktables, every inch of them covered by computers and gadgets in various stages of dissection. In the middle sat Ford’s desk, a sleek modern job the building’s interior designer had picked out for him.

With a shrug, he asked, “Is Matt right? You just trying to get a rise out of me?”

Jonathon flashed him a cocky grin. “Well, you’re talking now, aren’t you?”

“I wasn’t before?”

“No. You’ve been picking at your nails for an hour now. You haven’t heard a word I’ve said.”

“Not true,” Ford protested. “You’ve been babbling about how you think it’s time we diversify again. You’ve rambled on and on about half a dozen companies that are about to be delisted by the NYSE, but that you think could be retooled to be profitable again. You and Matt voted while I was in China visiting the new plant and you’ve already started to put together the offer. Have I left anything out?”

“And …” Jonathon prodded.

“And what?” Ford asked. When Jonathon gave an exasperated sigh and plopped back in his chair, Ford shot a questioning look at Matt, who was still typing away. “And what?”

Matt, who’d always had the uncanny ability to hold a conversation while solving some engineering problem, gave a few more clicks before shutting his laptop. “He’s waiting for you to voice an opinion. You’re the CEO. You get final vote.”

FMJ specialized in taking over flailing businesses and turning them around, much like the snack shack they’d whipped into prosperity all those years ago. Jonathon used his wizardry to streamline the company’s finances. Matt, with his engineering background, inevitably developed innovations that helped turn the company around. Ford’s own role in their magic act was a little more vague.

Ford had a way with people. Inevitably, when FMJ took over a company, there was resentment from the ownership and employees. People resisted, even feared, change. And that’s where Ford came in. He talked to them. Smoothed the way. Convinced them that FMJ was a company they could trust.

He flashed a smile at Matt. “I can do my part no matter what the company is. Why do I need to vote?”

While he spoke, he absently opened his desk drawer and tossed the pocketknife in. As if of their own accord, his fingers drifted to the delicate gold earring he kept stored in the right-hand corner.

The earring was shaped like a bird, some kind of sea bird, if he wasn’t mistaken. Its wings were outstretched as if it were diving for a fish, its motion and yearning captured in perfect miniscule detail.

Ford’s fingertip barely grazed the length of its wingspan before he jerked his hand out and slammed the drawer shut.

It was her earring. Kitty Biedermann’s. The woman from the bar in Texas.

He’d discovered it in the front of his rented pickup when he’d gone to turn the truck in. Now he wished he’d left it there. It wasn’t like he was going to actually return the earring to its owner.

Yes, when he’d first found the earring, he’d had Wendy, FMJ’s executive assistant, look Kitty up, just to see how hard it would be to hunt her down. But then Kitty Biedermann turned out to be a jewelry store heiress.

What was he going to do, fly to New York to return the earring? He was guessing she didn’t want to see him again any more than he wanted to see her. But now he was stuck with this stupid bird earring.

As much to distract himself as anything, he rocked back in his chair and said, “Okay, let’s buy a company. What do they do again?”

“What do you mean, what do they do?” Jonathon grumbled. “This is the company you researched.”

Ford nudged his foot against the edge of the desk and set his chair to bobbing. “What are you taking about? I didn’t research a company.”

“Sure you did.” Jonathon held out the portfolio. When Ford didn’t take it, Jonathon settled for tossing in on Ford’s desk. “The same day I sent out that first list of companies to consider, you e-mailed Wendy and told her to dig up anything she could find on Biedermann Jewelry. Since you seemed interested in them, Matt and I voted and …”

Listening to his partner talk, Ford let his chair rock forward and his feet drop to the floor. With a growing sense of dread, he flipped open the portfolio. And there was the proposal. To buy Biedermann Jewelry.

His stomach clenched like he’d been sucker punched.

Had Wendy misunderstood his casual, Hey, see what you can find out about Kitty Biedermann? But of course Wendy had. She was obsessively thorough and eager to please.

With forced nonchalance he asked, “Have you put a lot of work into this deal yet?”

“A couple hundred man hours,” Jonathon hedged. “Biedermann’s is circling the drain. We need to move fast.”

Matt normally wasn’t the most intuitive guy. But he must have heard something in Ford’s voice, because he asked, “What’s up, Ford? You having doubts?”

“It’s a pretty risky deal,” he said simply. Maybe he could gently redirect their attention.

But Jonathon shook his head. “It isn’t really. Biedermann’s has always been a strong company. They’ve been undervalued ever since Isaac Biedermann died last year. But I can turn them around.” Jonathon’s lips quirked in one of his rare grins. “Kind of looking forward to the challenge, actually.”

Ford had seen that look in Jonathon’s eyes before. Jonathon was ready to gobble up Biedermann’s. Any minute now he’d be picking his teeth with the bones of Biedermann’s carcass.

Unless Ford stopped him.

Which he could do. All he’d have to do is explain about Kitty. And the earring.

But what was he really supposed to say? Don’t buy the company because I slept with her? He usually preferred relationships to last a little longer than one night, but he wasn’t above the occasional fling when the chance presented itself. He’d never had a problem walking away the next day. He just wasn’t a long-term kind of guy. He wouldn’t even remember her name if it hadn’t been for that lost earring.

“So what do you say?” Jonathon asked. “We all in?”

“Sure.” And he sounded convincingly casual about it, too. He pushed his chair back and stood. “Hey, I’m going to the gym. That damn chair makes my back hurt.”

“Don’t be gone long. We’ve got work to do.”

“When do you leave for New York?” he asked.

“Not me, we,” Jonathon corrected. “As soon as I can get the board to agree to a meeting.”

“Great.” It looked like he was going to be able to return that earring after all.

Kitty sat at the head of the conference table, concentrating all of her considerable acting skill on looking relaxed. Today was the first of what would probably be many meetings to negotiate the deal with FMJ. She would never feel good about this, but what choice did she have? Everything she’d tried on her own had blown up in her face. Marty, Biedermann’s CFO, had assured her this was her only option. Her last, best hope to salvage anything from Biedermann’s.

Still, the thought of selling the company twisted her gut into achy knots. Beidermann’s had been in her family since her great-great-grandfather had moved to New York from Germany and opened the first store in 1868. For her, Biedermann’s wasn’t just a company, it was her history, her heritage. Her family.

But it was also her responsibility. And if she couldn’t save it herself, then she’d hand it over to someone who could, even if doing so made her stomach feel like it was about to flip itself inside out.

She should be more comfortable sitting at this table than most people were in their own bedrooms. And yet she found herself strumming her fingers against the gleaming wood as she fought nausea.

Beside her, Marty rested his hand over hers. He seemed to be aiming for reassuring, but his touch sent a shiver of disgust through her.

He stroked the backs of her fingers. “Everything will be all right.”

She stiffened, jerking her hand out from under his. “I beg your pardon?”

“You seemed nervous.”

“Nonsense.” Still, she buried her hand in her lap. She didn’t handle sympathy well under normal circumstances. Now it made her feel like she was going to shatter. He looked pointedly at the spot on the table she’d been drumming on, to which she replied, “I’m impatient. They’re seven minutes late and I have a reservation for lunch at Bruno’s.”

Marty’s lips twitched. “You don’t have to pretend with me.”

Something like panic clutched her heart. So, he thought he saw right through her. Well, others had thought that before. “Don’t be ridiculous, Marty. I’ve been pretending to be interested in your conversations for years. I’m certainly not going to stop now.”

For an instant, a stricken expression crossed his face and regret bit through her nerves. Dang it. Why did she say things like that? Why was it that whenever she was backed into a corner, she came out fighting?

She was still contemplating apologizing when the door opened and Casey stuck her head through. “Mr. Ford Langley and Mr. Jonathon Bagdon are here.”

Awash in confusion, she nearly leaped to her feet. “Ford Langley? Is here?”

Then she felt Marty’s steady hand on hers again. “Mr. Langley’s the CEO of FMJ. He’s come in person for the negotiations.”

She stared blankly at Marty, her mind running circles around one thought. Ford Langley.

He was here? He was the CEO of FMJ? Impossible. Ford Langley was an ignorant cowboy. She’d left him in Texas and would never see him again.

She must have misheard. Or misunderstood her assistant just now. Or misremembered the name of the stranger she’d slept with. Or perhaps through some cruel trick of fate, the CEO of FMJ and the stranger shared the same odd name.

Each of these possibilities thundered through her mind as she struggled to regain her composure. Mistaking her confusion, Marty must have spoken for her and told Casey to show in the people from FMJ.

She barely had time to school her panic into a semblance of calm before the door to the conference room swung open and there he was. Fate had pulled a much crueler trick on her than merely giving two men the same name. No, fate had tricked her into selling her beloved company to the same man to whom she’d already given her body.

What had he expected?

Okay, he hadn’t thought she’d jump up, run across the room and throw her arms around him. But he sure as hell hadn’t expected the complete lack of response. The coolly dismissive blank stare. As if she didn’t recognize him at all. As if he were beneath her notice.

Her gaze barely flickered over him as she looked from him to Jonathon. Then she glanced away, looking bored. Someone from Biedermann’s had stood and was making introductions. Ford shook hands at the right moment, filing away the name and face of Kitty’s CFO.

She looked good. Lovely, in fact. As smoothly polished as the one-dimensional woman in the Nagel painting poster he’d had on his wall as a teenager. Beautiful. Pale. Flat.

Gone was the vibrant woman he’d danced with in The Well two months ago. By the time the introductions were done, one thing had become clear. She was going to pretend they’d never met before. She was going to sit through this meeting all the while ignoring the fact that they’d once slept together. That he’d touched her bare skin, caressed her thighs, felt her body tremble with release.

Which was exactly what he should do, too. Hell, wasn’t that what he had planned on doing?

Just as Jonathon was pulling out his chair, Ford said, “Before we get started, I wonder if I could have a word alone with Ms. Biedermann.”

Jonathon sent him a raised-eyebrowed, do-you-know-what-you’re-doing? kind of look. Kitty’s CFO hovered by her side, like an overly protective Chihuahua.

Ford gave the man his most reassuring smile while nodding slightly at Jonathon. He knew Jonathon would back him up and get the other guy out of there. Jonathon wouldn’t question his actions, even if Ford was doubting them himself.

Something was up with Kitty and he intended to find out what it was.

Kitty watched Marty leave the conference room, fighting the urge to scream. An image flashed through her mind of herself wild-eyed and disheveled, pulling at her hair and shouting “Deserter! Traitor!” like some mad Confederate general about to charge into battle and to his death, all alone after his men have seen reason and fled the field.

Clearly, she’d been watching too many old movies.

Obviously her time would have been better spent practicing her mental telepathy. Then she could have ordered Marty to stay. As it was, she couldn’t protest without Ford realizing how much the prospect of being alone with him terrified her.

The moment the door shut, leaving them alone in the room, he crossed to her side. “Hello, Kitty.”

She stood, nodding. Praying some response would spring to her lips. Something smart. Clever. Something that would cut him to the bone without seeming defensive.

Sadly nothing came to mind. So she left it at the nod.

“You look …” Then he hesitated, apparently unsure which adjective best described her.

“I believe ‘well’ is usually how one finishes that sentence.” Oh, God. Why couldn’t she just keep her mouth shut?

“That’s not what I was going to say.”

“Well, you seem to be having trouble finishing the sentence,” she supplied. “Since I’m sure I look just fine and since I’d much rather get this over with than stand around exchanging pleasantries, I thought I’d move things along.”

He raised his eyebrows as if taken aback by her tone. “You aren’t curious why I’m here?”

That teasing tone stirred memories best left buried in the recesses of her mind. Unfortunately, those pesky memories rose up to swallow her whole, like a tsunami.

As if it were yesterday instead of two months or more, she remembered what it had felt like to be held in his arms. Cradled close to his body as they swayed gently back and forth on the dance floor. The way he’d smelled, musky yet clean against the sensory backdrop of stale smoke and spilled beer. The way her body had thrummed to life beneath his touch. The way she’d quivered. The way she’d come.

She thrust aside the memories, praying he wouldn’t notice that her breath had quickened. Thankful he couldn’t hear the pounding of her heart or see the hardening of her nipples.

Hiding her discomfort behind a display of boredom, she toyed with the papers on the table where she’d been sitting. She couldn’t stand to look at him, so she pretended to read through them as she said, “I know why you’re here. You came here to take control of Biedermann’s.” Thank God her voice didn’t crack as she spoke. It felt as if her heart did, but that at least she could hide. For the first time since he walked into the room, she met his gaze. “You can’t honestly expect me to welcome you. You’re stealing the company I was born to raise.”

His expression hardened. “I’m not stealing anything. FMJ is providing your failing company with some much-needed cash. We’re here to keep you in business.”

“Oh, really. How generous of you.” She buried all her trepidation beneath a veneer of sarcasm. As she always did. It was so much easier that way. “Since that’s the case, why don’t you just write out a nice hefty check and leave it on the table on your way out. I’ll call you in a decade or so to let you know if it helped.”

“A big, fat check might help if all you needed was an infusion of cash. But the truth is, Biedermann’s needs a firm hand at the helm and you can’t have one without the other. You know that’s not how this works.”

His words might have been easier to swallow if he’d sounded apologetic instead of annoyed. No, wait … there wasn’t really any way that anything he said could be easier to swallow.

“No. Of course that’s not how it works. You’ll go over the company with a fine-toothed comb. You’ll tear it apart, throw out the parts you don’t like and hand the rest back in pieces. In the end, everything my family’s worked for for five generations will be gone. All so you can turn a quick profit.”

“Tell me something. Is that really what’s bothering you?”

Of course it wasn’t what was really bothering her. What was really bothering her was that he was here at all. Her safe, what-the-hell-I’m-stuck-in-Texas fling hadn’t stayed where it was supposed to. In Texas. What was the point of having a fling with a stranger if the man ended up not being a stranger at all?

But she couldn’t say that aloud. Especially given the way he was looking at her. With his expression so intense, so sexual, so completely unprofessional, it sent a wave of pure shock through her system.

“W-what do you mean?”

“Come on, Kitty. This anger you’re clinging to isn’t about Biedermann’s at all. This is about what happened in Texas.”

She quickly buried her shock beneath a veneer of disdain. “Texas. I’m surprised you’d have the guts to bring that up.”

“You are?”

“Of course.” She strolled to the other side of the conference table. “I’d think you would be the last person to want to hash that over. But since you brought it up, maybe you can answer a question for me. Was anything you told me true or was it all pretense?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You know. That whole charade you put on to pick me up back in Texas. That aw-shucks, I’m just a simple cowboy trying to make a living act.”

“I never said I was a cowboy.”

“No. But you had to know that’s what I thought.”

“How exactly was I supposed to know that?” His facade of easy charm slipped for a moment and he plowed a hand through his hair in frustration. He sucked in a breath and pointed out in a slightly calmer tone, “You weren’t exactly forthcoming about who you were, either.”

“I did nothing wrong.” True, she hadn’t exactly presented him with her pedigree when they’d first met, but surely it didn’t take a genius to see she didn’t fit in at that bar. If there had been an obvious clue he didn’t, either, she’d missed it entirely. She refused to let him paint himself the victim. “I don’t have anything to apologize for. I’m not the one who pretended to be some down on his luck cowboy.”

“No, you’re just the one who gave me a fake phone number instead of admitting you didn’t want to see me again.”

“If you knew I didn’t want to see you again,” she asked, “then why did you go to the trouble of hunting me down?”

“I didn’t hunt you down. What happened in Texas has nothing to do with FMJ’s offer.”

“Then how exactly did the offer come about anyway?” she asked. “If you didn’t go back to work and say, ‘Wow, that Kitty Biedermann must be really dumb to have fallen for my tired old lines. I bet we could just swoop in and buy that company right from under her.’”

His gaze narrowed to a glare. “You know that’s not how it happened.”

“Really? How would I know that? What do I really know about you other than the fact that you’re willing to misrepresent yourself to get a woman into bed with you?”

“I never lied to you. Not once. And despite the fact that you’re acting like a brat, I won’t start now.”

“Maybe you didn’t lie outright, but you certainly misled me. Of course, maybe that’s the only way you can get a woman into bed.”

Ford just smiled. “You don’t believe that. The sex was great.” He closed in on her, getting right in her face as if daring her to disagree.

God, she wanted to. That would serve him right.

But when she opened her mouth, she found the denial trapped inside her. Between the intensity of his eyes and the memories suddenly flooding her, she just couldn’t muster up the lie.

Instead she said the only thing that popped into her mind. “You can’t convince me that FMJ is prepared to buy Biedermann’s solely so you can get laid.”

He grinned wolfishly. “Boy, you think highly of yourself.”

“You were the one who brought up sex,” she pointed out.

“You didn’t let me finish. I was going to close with the suggestion that we both try to forget it happened.”

“Oh, I won’t have any trouble with that,” she lied easily, barely even cringing as she waited for the bolt of lightning to strike her down.

“Excellent.” He bit off the word. “Then you agree from here on out, it’s all business?”

“Absolutely.” Her smiled felt so tight across her face she was surprised she could still breathe. But she kept it in place as she crossed back to the door.

Jonathon and Marty were waiting in the office outside the conference room. If they’d picked up on the tension, neither commented. Thank goodness. She simply wouldn’t have had the strength to come up with any more lies today. Between the lies she’d told Ford and the lies she was telling herself, she was completely out.

“Everything okay?” Jonathon asked, more to Ford than to her.

However, she didn’t give the treacherous bastard a chance to answer. Instead, she dug deep and pulled out one more lie. “Mr. Langley was just assuring me Biedermann’s is going to be in great hands with you.” She held out her hand to gesture him back into the conference room. “Why don’t you come in and we’ll talk money.”

Kitty’s head was pounding by the time she finally made it back to her office alone. The simple truth was nothing could have prepared her for this.

She thought she’d been ready, but she hadn’t, really. Not to sit in a conference room and listen politely while strangers discussed her beloved Biedermann’s—while they calmly talked about compensation packages. While they talked about key positions in the company they’d need to replace.

Oh, they’d started by reassuring her that she would stay on as president of the subsidiary, but she knew she wouldn’t have control. Not really. She’d be a figurehead, at best. A pretty adornment to make things look good. It’d be pathetic if it wasn’t so sad. But the really pathetic thing was she would let herself be used that way.

She loved Biedermann’s. She’d do whatever it took to save it. Even if she had to sell her soul to the devil. Or in this case, Ford Langley.

Three

If she thought her day couldn’t get any worse, she was wrong. She ran into Ford in the elevator bay.

“Fantastic,” she muttered as she punched the elevator button. “Thousands of people work in this building and I get to ride down with you.”

“I waited for you.”

“How kind.” She didn’t bother to meet his gaze or to inject any real graciousness in her voice. She certainly hoped he wasn’t so dense that he couldn’t hear her sarcasm.

“I wanted to apologize.” He seemed to be speaking through gritted teeth.

Well, she certainly wasn’t going to make this any easier for him. “For your behavior earlier?” she asked as the elevator doors began to open. She prayed there’d be someone else in the car with them, but her prayers went unanswered. Which was the norm of late. “Don’t worry. I didn’t expect better behavior from you. After all, I know what Californians are like.”

It was a twist of something he’d said to her at that bar in Texas, when he’d teased her about being a Yankee. His gaze flickered to hers and for a second they seemed to both be remembering that night.

Damn it, why had she brought that up? She didn’t want to remind him about that. She certainly didn’t want him to think she remembered that night with anything approaching word for word accuracy.

“What I meant,” he said, following her into the elevator, “was that the meeting seemed hard for you. I can’t imagine it’s easy to sell a company that’s been in your family for generations.”

She shot him a scathing look. “Please don’t tax your mental capacity trying to imagine it.”

The doors closed, sealing them inside. For a moment he thought she’d say nothing more, just ride with him in silence. Maybe this was it. Maybe she really was as cool a number as she’d seemed in the boardroom. Maybe selling her family company meant nothing more to her than—

Then abruptly she let loose a bitter laugh.

Okay, maybe not.

“You want to know the really funny thing?” she asked as she punched the 1 button. “This is exactly what I was raised to do.”

“Run Biedermann’s?” he asked.

“Oh, God, no. Don’t get me wrong. My father adored me. Treated me like an absolute princess. But he never thought I was capable of running Bieder-mann’s. I was supposed to transform myself into the perfect wife. I was supposed to catch myself a rich husband to run Biedermann’s for me.”

She slanted him a look as if to assess his reaction. Her tongue darted out to slip along her lower lip and his body tightened in response. He was not supposed to want her. This was about business. Not sex. Now, if only his body would get that memo.

Apparently she’d gotten it though, because she continued on as if the energy between them wasn’t charged with the memory of soul-scalding sex.

She shook her head wryly. “His attitude was archaic, but there you have it.”

“So you decided to prove him wrong,” he surmised.

“No, I didn’t even do that. I really tried to marry the perfect man to take over Biedermann’s. I had him all picked out. Even got him to propose.” When the elevator doors didn’t shut fast enough for her liking she started punching the close button repeatedly. “He just decided to marry someone else instead. I won’t bore you with the details of my love life. Not when they’re available online in several different gossip columns.”

The elevator started to drop and again she laughed.

“See, that’s the funny part, right? Flash-forward a year. I’ve made a complete mess running Biedermann’s, just like my father predicted. You swoop in to rescue the company. FMJ is going to take care of everything. But—” she hastily added, as if he were about to argue with her. “I’ll still get to play at being president of the company. You’ll be watching over my shoulder, so there’s no chance I’ll make things worse. I’ll just get to sit there, looking good, while a big strong man fixes things for me. It’s the job I was raised to do.”

“Kitty—” he began, but the doors opened and she cut him off as they did.

“My father would be so proud.”

She said it with the cavalier indifference of someone who was truly in pain. But damn, she was good at hiding it.

If he hadn’t met her under other circumstances, if he’d never seen her with her guard down, he’d probably even be fooled. But as it was, he saw right through her.

If she’d been weeping and moping, maybe he could have ignored her despair. Or handed her off into the care of someone who knew her better. But these bitter self-recriminations … well, he remembered how he’d felt after his father died. The grief, the anger, the guilt, all rolled into one. He wouldn’t wish that on anyone.

He fell into step beside her, and said, “Look, you’re going through a hard time. You shouldn’t be alone tonight. It’s Friday night. Why not let me take you out for—”

“It’s not necessary. I have plans.”

“Plans?” he asked. “After a day like today?”

She waved a hand, still putting on a brave face. “It’s something I couldn’t get out of. A commitment from weeks ago.”

He quirked an eyebrow, waiting for her to supply more information.

Finally she added, “It’s a fundraiser for The Children’s Medical Foundation. At The Pierre. Very posh. You wouldn’t be comfortable there,” she finished dismissively.

She was either trying to insult him or she’d made up the engagement to put him off. He didn’t believe for a minute that she planned on going to this charity event, even if she had bought the tickets months ago. She was just trying to get rid of him. But he couldn’t stand the thought of her all alone, wallowing in her misery.

“Great.” Why not pretend to buy her story? “I’ll come with you.”

She shot him a look icy enough to freeze his eyebrows off.

Okay, so he couldn’t exactly imagine Kitty wallowing in anything. Here in New York she was as cool and collected as they came.

But he’d seen her outside her element. He’d seen her vulnerable. He knew that a passionate, emotional woman lurked beneath the surface of her icy cool perfection. If he peeled back the layers to reveal that woman, he’d probably find someone who could use a shoulder to cry on.

Kitty stopped in the lobby, ignoring the other people filtering out onto the street. “You don’t need to do that.”

“I don’t have plans.”

“Your partner—”

“Has a teleconference with some people in China.” “Who called a meeting for a Saturday morning?” she pressed.

“You know what they say.” He flashed a smile. “If you don’t come in on Saturday, don’t bother coming in on Sunday, either.”

“I’m fine,” she insisted.

But she wasn’t. He could see the strain in the lines around her eyes and in the tightness of her mouth. Of course, there was a chance his attempt to be kind was only making matters worse, but his gut told him to keep pushing. He was almost past her defenses, but charm alone wouldn’t get her to open up. He needed to change tactics.

“Oh, I get it,” he said. “You don’t want to be with me.”

“Exactly.”

“You’re probably afraid of how you feel about me.” A lock of her hair had fallen free of its twist. He reached out and gave it a quick tug before tucking it behind her ear. He let his fingers linger there, at the sensitive place along the back of her ear.

She rolled her eyes. “That’s not going to work.”

“What?” he asked innocently.

“You’re trying to bait me,” she accused.

“Hey, I understand. You don’t want to be alone with me. Can’t say I blame you.” He dropped his eyes to her lips. He let himself remember what it had been like to kiss her. To feel her breath hot on his skin. When he met her gaze again, he knew she remembered it, too. “It’s probably wise. We should spend as little time together as possible.”

Her breath seemed to catch in her throat and her tongue darted out to lick her bottom lip. Then she seemed to shake off the effects. Her eyes narrowed in obvious annoyance. “Fine.” She turned and started to walk away. “If you’re so desperate for something to do tonight that you’ll pull that cheap trick, you can come along. But don’t blame me if tickets to this fundraiser are outrageously expensive at the last minute.”

He smiled as he fell into step beside her. The spark was back in her eyes. The bite was back in her words. She’d be fine.

“I’ll pick you up at your place,” he offered.

“That’s not necessary.”

“I don’t mind.”

“Well, I do,” she countered. “You don’t honestly think I’m going to tell you where I live, do you?”

“You don’t honestly believe I don’t already know, do you?”

She turned and shot him an assessing stare. “You know where I live? What did you do, hire a private investigator?”

“I didn’t have to. Jonathon has a whole team that researches that kind of thing when we’re looking to acquire a company.”

“I don’t know whether to be creeped out or impressed.” She reached the street and raised her hand to hail a cab, but this time of night the streets were packed. “Creeped out wins, I think.”

“This is just company policy.”

“What, all’s fair in love and war?” she asked with an edge to her voice.

“This isn’t love or war. This is business.”

He held her gaze as firmly as he said it.

She jerked her gaze away from his, turning her attention to the passing cabs on the street. “This may be only business to you. But for me, it’s both love and war. I love Biedermann’s. And I’ve spent the last six months fighting for its survival. This may not be personal for you, but it’s deeply personal for me.”

A look of surprise crossed her face. Like she hadn’t meant to admit that. Or maybe she just wasn’t used to talking about her emotions.

After a minute he said, “Maybe that’s part of the problem.”

“Part of what problem?” He was about to respond, but she stopped him before he could. “And don’t you dare tell me that ‘the problem’ is that I care too much. That I’m too emotionally involved to make rational decisions. Because I don’t believe that my emotional state has anything to do with the flagging economy or the fact that malls across America are doing lower volume sales across the board.” Her voice rose as she spoke, betraying her frustration. “If I could miraculously turn off my emotions and stop caring about Biedermann’s, it wouldn’t make a bit of difference. So if it’s all the same to you, I’m going to go right on caring passionately about—”

Her voice cracked and she started blinking rapidly. Like she was trying to hold back tears.

He reached out a hand to her. “Kitty, I’m sorry—”

But a cab finally pulled up before he could finish the sentence. “Don’t be sorry,” she ordered as she opened the door. “Just find a way to fix it. Because if you can’t, then we’re both screwed.”

She didn’t look back as she climbed into the cab. He watched her go in silence.

She was one tough cookie.

Every other woman he knew was more in touch with her emotions. Or—he corrected himself—maybe just more willing to use her emotions to get what she wanted. Any one of his sisters would have been boo-hooing up a storm halfway through the meeting. But Kitty had just sat there in silence. Listening to every word that was said, but commenting little herself.

If it hadn’t been for her outburst in the elevator, he might never have known how upset she truly was. She was unlike any woman he’d ever known. She wasn’t willing to use tears to get what she wanted. He had to admire that.

But in other ways, Kitty was exactly like the other women he knew. She herself had admitted that she’d been on the lookout for a rich husband.

But somehow the poor bastard had slipped away. Or the lucky bastard, as the case may be. Frankly, he didn’t know whether to feel sorry for the guy or not. Kitty was a hell of a woman.

Sure, he’d used steak knives that were less sharp than her tongue, but for him, that was part of her charm. He had enough women in his life that he had to walk on eggshells around. Thank God he didn’t want to get married. Otherwise he might be tempted to drop to his knees and propose right now. He nearly chuckled imagining the scathing response that would earn him.

Ford had developed a certain cynicism about the institution at a very young age. He’d been about nine or ten when he first discovered that his father had a long-term girlfriend living one town over. Eventually, that girlfriend had developed into a second family, complete with two curly-haired little girls, quite close in age to his own sister.

At first the way his father balanced both families disgusted Ford. By the time he reached adulthood himself, it was no longer his father’s behavior that troubled him. By then he’d realized both his mother and the other woman knew about each other. They’d been content to let the situation slide. As long as there was enough money to go around.

Since his father’s death, Patrice and Suz had become friends in some sick little way. As for the girls, they now treated each other like the sisters they were. He seemed to be the only one who found the situation odd.

Now, standing on the curb watching the spot where Kitty’s taxi had disappeared into the night, Ford nearly laughed himself. If she thought her revelation about her family would scare him off, she had another think coming. His family had more drama than a Greek tragedy.

Ford tucked his hands into his pockets and started walking toward the nearest subway station. It wasn’t far back to the hotel and it was a nice night. He might as well enjoy the weather.

Only then did he feel the earring still in his pocket. It was just as well he hadn’t returned it to her today. She might have been tempted to cram it down his throat.

Kitty’s apartment, a walk-up in the eclectic Murray Hill neighborhood, surprised him. He’d have pegged her for an Upper East Side girl, or at the very least he imagined her in some glossy new high-rise. Instead, she lived in a prewar building that had seen better years.

When she let him into her fourth-floor apartment she wasn’t dressed yet. She left him waiting in her living room for nearly an hour. Probably just to tick him off.

Her apartment was smaller than he’d expected, sparsely furnished with a few antiques. With the exception of a couple of framed black-and-white family pictures, the walls were bare. Either her taste was minimalist or she hadn’t lived here long.

Ford spent the time hanging out on the sofa, first answering his e-mail on his iPhone, then reviewing some specs Matt had sent him, and then finally playing Tetris on his phone.

He might have left, but the truth was, the tension was palpable. Too much remained unsaid between them. Under any other circumstances, he would have let it slide, being something of an expert on unresolved emotional issues. But with Kitty, it was different. He’d never before been in a position where he’d have to work with a woman he’d slept with. The last thing he wanted was some emotional complication mucking up the coming negotiations. If she was going to have a problem working with him, he wanted to clear the air now.

Finally her bedroom door opened to reveal Kitty encased in a shimmering deep purple gown with a low-cut, heart-shaped neckline. Her dark hair fell in sleek waves about her shoulders. He nearly laughed at the expression of surprise that flickered across her face when she spied him.

He stood. “You look lovely.”

She fell into step beside him, not bothering to suppress an exasperated sigh. “You’re still here.”

“Much to your disappointment, I’m sure.” He put a hand at her back to guide her to the door, only to discover a generous expanse of naked skin.

“Not at all,” she murmured, suddenly all charm. “I had trouble with my zipper. You can’t imagine how worried I was you might get tired of waiting and leave.”

“Trouble with your zipper? For over an hour?”

“It’s a long zipper.”

He leaned away to look pointedly at the back of her dress. A delicate triad of beaded straps criss-crossed at her shoulders. Her skin was left bare all the way to just below her waist. The sparkling fabric molded to her bottom before falling in a straight line to the floor. Just over the crest of her bottom he could see the faint outline of the zipper hidden in the seam. It couldn’t have been more than four inches long.

“So I see.”

Kitty was no scrawny fashion model. She had a body that managed to be both slender and voluptuous. Her bottom was lusciously rounded. Just looking at it made his blood throb with lust.

She elbowed him in a way that was both playful and seductive. “Stop looking at my zipper,” she murmured huskily as she locked her door.

He shrugged as they started down the stairs. “If you don’t want people looking at your zipper, you shouldn’t display it quite so prominently.”

“That’s sexist,” she chided.

“No, it would be sexist if we were at work and I ordered you to display your zipper. Or I hired you or fired you based on the size of your zipper. But this is a social situation, so I don’t think either of those apply. Besides, a woman doesn’t wear a dress like that unless she wants to be looked at.”

He hailed a cab when they reached the street.

Kitty frowned, her bottom lip jutting forward in a pout. “Oh. We’re going in a cab. How … prosaic.”

“I try to avoid hiring a driver when I come to the city. They spend too much time looking for parking and driving around. It’s a waste of gas and resources.” He held open the cab door for her, admiring the swath of leg revealed as she slid into the car.

“Hmm. Like I said. How prosaic.”

He climbed in beside her. “Being aware of the environment isn’t prosaic.” A hint of his annoyance slipped into his tone. “FMJ has made most of its money in green industries. Our image as a green company is a priority. Not just for the company, but for all of us.”

She yawned delicately, but with obvious boredom. Annoyed by her attitude, he nearly called her on it, but before he could, it hit him. “You’re doing this on purpose, aren’t you?”

She looked taken aback. “I … I don’t know what you mean. Doing what?”

“This.” He gestured toward her body-skimming dress. “The sexpot dress. The self-indulgent pout. The childish behavior. It’s all a way of keeping me off balance.”

She blinked, and he couldn’t tell if he’d insulted her or if she was merely surprised he’d seen through her. “You’re just trying to distract me. To avoid that conversation we need to have.”

“However did you get that idea?”

“Probably because you’ve been pushing me away ever since I walked into the conference room today. You’ve made it obvious that you don’t want to relinquish control of Biedermann’s. You may have fooled everyone else into thinking that’s the only thing going on. But I can see right through you. I know the truth.”

Oh, God. What did he mean? He knew the truth? What truth? That she was a total fraud? That she had no idea what she was doing?

He leaned closer, a seductive grin on his face. “I know what you’re really afraid of.”

“Afraid of?” she squeaked.

He brushed his thumb across her lower lip, once again sparking the desire that heated her blood every time he touched her.

She should not be attracted to him. He was so not what she needed right now. Or ever, for that matter. Geesh, he wasn’t even wearing a tux. Okay, so he looked fabulous in an Armani jacket thrown over a gray cashmere sweater and black pants. And, yes, the understated elegance of his outfit made him look outrageously masculine. Never mind that he carried it off. Never mind that the day’s worth of stubble on his jaw made her fingertips tingle with the urge to touch him. Never mind that she could tell already all the other men at the fundraiser would look overdressed and foppish by comparison. She couldn’t possibly be attracted to a man who didn’t even know when to wear a tie.

“Yes,” he continued. “You’re afraid of the attraction between us.”

As his words registered, she was flooded with an odd sense of relief. He was still talking about sex. About what had happened between them in Texas.

Maybe it shouldn’t have made her feel better, but somehow it did. Physical intimacy she could handle. Men had been pursuing her since she hit puberty. She knew how to handle that. She knew how to entice without promising anything. To lure and manipulate a man while staying just out of his reach.

What she didn’t know was how to handle a man who was interested in her. Not her body. Not her net worth, but her.

Thank God, Ford was proving no different than any other man she’d ever met. She’d learned long ago the secret to keeping men at arm’s length.

The mere suggestion of sex was enough to distract the average man. The possibility that you might one day have sex with him made most men so befuddled they never bothered to look beneath the surface.

To that end, she let herself sway toward him slightly, as if she couldn’t resist his draw. Then she ran her tongue over the spot on her lip that he’d touched. It was a gesture sure to entice him, but she found it disconcertingly intimate. She could almost taste him on her tongue.

Suddenly memories flooded her of their one night together. How could she have forgotten what it had been like to kiss him? To feel his hands on her body? To give herself over so completely to his touch?

She felt her breath catch in her chest, found herself leaning toward him, not in a calculated way, but as if he were a magnet and the heart pounding away in her chest were made of iron, pulling her inexorably toward him.

He cleared his throat, breaking the spell he seemed to have cast over her. Nodding toward the cab door on her side, he said, “We’re here.”

When had that happened? Damn him. She was supposed to be distracting him. Not the other way around.

Feeling befuddled, she looked from him to the crowded street outside her window, to the cab driver rattling off the fare. Her mind was embarrassingly sluggish, but finally she got moving.

Staying one step ahead of Ford was going to be harder than she’d thought. This was going to take some serious work.

Then just when it seemed like things couldn’t get any worse, a camera flashed a few feet away. Great. Just what she needed.

Paparazzi.

Four

Ford stood near the bar, nursing a tumbler of weak Scotch, wishing he could have ordered himself a Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. He would have thought that at five hundred bucks a ticket, they could have stocked the bar with some decent beer. But of course, the best beer in the world wouldn’t have distracted him from what was really bothering him. His date.

From the moment the first camera had flashed outside the hotel and she’d practically leaped from his side, she’d been avoiding him. At first, he’d assumed she just didn’t want their picture taken together. That she was averting the potential scandal. But things hadn’t improved since they’d made it into the event. She’d immediately sent him off to get her a glass of white wine and she’d been dodging him ever since. Not that he wasn’t having a grand ol’ time, between the event organizer who’d hit him up for a ten-thousand-dollar donation and the drunk society maven twice his age who’d been hitting on him. He hadn’t had this much fun since his root canal.

Then he spotted Kitty across the room. On the dance floor. With another man. A guy who couldn’t have been more than five-six and had very clingy hands.

Ford wasn’t used to women blowing him off. After all, he’d only come out tonight because he’d wanted to make sure she was okay. After the near waterworks in the elevator, he’d been worried about her emotional state. Judging from the way she was laughing at Mr. Grabby’s joke, she was doing just fine. But enough was enough.

He handed his drink to a passing waiter and wove his way through the crowd to the dance floor. He cut in, sweeping Kitty into his arms before she could protest. But he could tell she wanted to. As her hand settled into his, a scowl twisted her perfect features.

“I’m starting to think you’re avoiding me.”

“Whatever gave you that impression? After all, it’s not like you wheedled your way into coming with me uninvited or anything.”

He grinned at her, some of his annoyance fading at the bite of her sharp tongue. In Texas she’d been relaxed and open. Who would have guessed he’d find her bristly defenses just as appealing. “I’m a grown man. I don’t wheedle.”

“Hmm …” She paused as if considering her words. No doubt searching for the best way to skewer him. “How about coerce? Or maybe bully? Are those descriptions more to your liking? Are those masculine enough for you?”

He stared down at her, studying her expression. As they danced, his body brushed hers. He couldn’t help remembering what it had felt like to dance with her in that bar in Texas. There, her body had melted into his; here, she held herself more stiffly. This was less a dance, more a battlefield.

“I don’t like to think,” he said seriously, “that I’ve bullied you into anything.”

She arched an eyebrow. “Then perhaps you shouldn’t be trying to buy my company out from under me.”

“That’s business.”

“I thought you said it was all business?” she countered smoothly.

“That’s not what I meant and you know it.” She felt good in his arms again. Solid, yet soft. Curved in all the right places. Tempting and a little bit dangerous.

Suddenly he couldn’t remember why he was supposed to leave her alone. Something about the business deal, right? It was a bad idea to mix business with pleasure. He knew that.

But Biedermann’s was in serious trouble and FMJ looked like the only people stepping forward to help out. Besides, if everything went as planned, this would leave her even richer than she was now. Kitty was a businesswoman first and foremost.

But she was also a woman. A very desirable, powerful woman. He’d be an idiot to ignore the tension simmering between them. Not just because the sex would be fantastic, but because the more they tried to ignore it, the more likely it was to get in the way of business. He couldn’t let his former relationship with Kitty muck up this business deal. He wouldn’t let his buddies down like that.

Ford smiled. “What’s going on with Biedermann’s is all business. This thing between us isn’t business at all.”

“There is no thing between us.”

Her voice was so emotionless, he almost believed she meant it. But his body had been inside hers. He’d watched her face as she climaxed. Women didn’t forget that kind of thing. Sure, he could let her go on pretending they had no past, but that would just make things worse down the road if this blew up in both their faces.

“There was something between us back in Texas. I’m betting there still is.”

She hesitated, her feet missing the rhythm for a moment. But then she picked up the beat again and fell into step. “You’re wrong.”

“And you’re avoiding the obvious,” he said. “You’re acting like we didn’t have hot, steamy sex in the back of my truck.”

Her gaze narrowed into a glare. “And you’re acting like a sixteen-year-old girl who put out on prom night and now wants to hear the quarterback still respects her.”

He nearly chuckled at the image, but that seemed to only irritate her more.

She leaned closer to whisper vehemently, “You want to know the truth? Yes, the sex was hot and steamy. But it was just sex. Sex with a nameless, faceless stranger. It was never meant to be anything more than that. If you’d wanted a long-term relationship you should have put an ad up on one of those Internet dating sites.”

“Trust me. I’m not a relationship kind of guy. I’m just not willing to be whipped. Least of all by you. Why would I? So far, you’ve been insulting, arrogant and generally a pain in the ass.”

Surprise flickered across her face and he might have felt a twinge of guilt if every word he said wasn’t true. Possibly even an understatement.

“Don’t get me wrong,” he continued. “It’s kind of cute. In a spoiled brat kind of way.”

“Cute? Spoiled brat?” She sputtered as if searching for a response. “How da—”

“How dare I? I dare because whether you like it or not, we have to work together. Whether I like it or not, for that matter. I thought talking about what happened in Texas might make things easier for you.” Though the music continued to play, they’d slowed to the point they were no longer dancing. “Apparently I was mistaken. You don’t want to talk about it? Fine. Just make sure you don’t bring any of this baggage into the boardroom when we start negotiations.”

She pulled her hand from his. Her gazed narrowed to a venomous glare. “Thank you for clearing that up for me. Here I was worried FMJ’s offer might have been motivated by some chivalrous impulse on your part.”

“Sorry, sugar.” He softened his words with a grin. “I don’t have a chivalrous bone in my body.”

“I’m glad you’ve disabused me of that notion. Now I can go about being my normal … what was that phrase you used? Oh yes, pain in the ass … without feeling bad about it. That makes things much easier.”

Shooting him one last haughty look, she spun on her heel and left the dance floor.

“I ‘disabused her of the notion’?” he muttered to the empty spot where she’d been. “Who the hell talks like that?”

He stood there for a minute until he realized the couples around him were staring with interest. He flashed his best charming rogue smile and shrugged. “Women.”

Several men tried to hide their smiles. A couple laughed outright. The women either rolled their eyes or just looked away. But he could see in their eyes that they were more amused than they wanted to be.

If the audience was keeping score, it looked like he’d won another round. It didn’t feel that way, though. If only he’d believed her when she said she wasn’t interested in sleeping with him. Hell, he’d even be satisfied with believing himself.

Kitty’s heart pounded in her chest as she maneuvered through the maze of bodies on the dance floor. Nausea clung to her, sticky and thick. She wasn’t sure how much longer she could maintain any semblance of calm around Ford. Her nerves were frayed to the point of exhaustion.

Selling Biedermann’s was something she’d never thought she’d consider. Just meeting with FMJ to discuss it had been abhorrent. But she’d done it. She’d dug deep to find strength she’d never known she had and she’d done the right thing for the company. And this was how fate had punished her.

Why, oh, why, did it have to be him? Why did he have to be the F of FMJ? Six billion people in the world and the one she never wanted to see again just happened to be the one who held her future in his hands. It was cruelty piled on top of humiliation. It was completely … nauseating.

She flattened her hand against the restroom door and shoved her way inside. The room was thankfully empty. A fact that she only had a second to appreciate before another wave of nausea washed over her. She bolted for the closest stall just as bile mixed with the rich appetizers she’d been so hungry for when she’d first arrived.

Talk about humiliation.

As if throwing up—in public—wasn’t bad enough. As Kitty knelt on the bathroom floor with one hand propped on the toilet paper dispenser and the other wedged against the wall, she heard footsteps outside the stall.

“Oh, my, are you all right?” asked a wavering voice from behind her.

The voice sounded kind—benevolently maternal. Kitty wasn’t taken in. Too many “kind” women were starving for gossip.

“I’m fine,” Kitty managed. She raised her left leg, felt around in the air a bit for the door, then kicked it shut.

“Is there something I can get you, dear?”

Hmm … a cool washcloth? A glass of water? Retrograde amnesia? Any of the above would do.

Kitty shoved the hair out of her face and straightened, wiping at the corners of her mouth with the back of her hand.

“Perhaps I could notify your date that you’re not feeling well?”

Nosy and persistent, then. Kitty stood, smoothing down her dress. In her haste, she stepped on her hem and pulled it out. But that couldn’t be helped. Praying she looked better than she felt, she left the sanctuary of the stall. Kitty turned to see an elderly woman hovering by the sinks. Though she had to be nearing ninety, the woman was well-dressed and obviously took pains with her appearance.

Kitty remembered something her grandmother had often told her. There’s no situation that can’t be improved with a fresh coat of lipstick.

Sayings like that had made Kitty roll her eyes as a teenager. Inexplicably, Kitty chuckled. “I think I’ll just freshen my makeup.”

The older woman smiled. “Always a good idea, if you ask me.”

Kitty faced the mirror. Her hair had lost its smooth sheen and now looked tousled beyond repair. Her face was ashen, her lips dry. Even her eyes seemed to have developed dark circles. She could only suppose they’d darkened to match her exhaustion.

And here she’d thought she looked pretty good just a few hours ago when she’d left the condo.

She sighed. By the sink there was a selection of hand lotions and perfumes, along with a bottle of mouthwash and a stack of tiny cups. She filled one of the cups with water to rinse out her mouth.

Spitting as delicately as she could, Kitty said, “This is quite embarrassing. I don’t think I’ve ever thrown up in public before.”

“Think nothing of it, dear. Every woman goes through it.”

Kitty raised her eyebrows. “Every woman—” she started to ask in confusion.

“Well, not every woman. But when I was pregnant with Jake, my second, I couldn’t keep anything down, either.”

“Oh, I’m not … That is, I’ve just been under a lot of stress.”

The woman gave her a pointed look. “Is that what they’re calling it these days?”

“I’m not—” But Kitty’s protest died in her mouth. “Pregnant.”

Her vision tunneled, fading to black at the edges but staying piercingly bright in the center, where she could see her reflection in the mirror. Pale. Frightened. Terrified.

What if she was? She couldn’t be. But even as she thought it, reality came crashing back.

She was losing Biedermann’s. Ford was back in her life. Running her company. So why wouldn’t she be pregnant?

Ford stood in the grand ballroom of The Pierre, scanning the room one last time as the nasty truth sank in. Kitty had left him standing on the dance floor, dashed off for the bathroom and then—somehow—sneaked past him on her way out.

As unpleasant as the idea was, there was no other explanation. Kitty was nowhere to be found. Hell, he’d waited long enough for her to put in an appearance.

Maybe he had it coming. After all, this wasn’t an actual date. He’d pushed his way in. Bullied her into agreeing, to use her word.

Still, he wasn’t going to let her get away with this.

Forty-five minutes later, he was standing at her door, a lavish bouquet of orchids in his hands.

Her hair was loose about her shoulders, no longer sleek, but tousled as if she’d been running her fingers through it. Her face had been scrubbed clean of makeup, leaving her cheeks rosy. Her mouth was still impossibly pink, though.

She’d changed out of her dress and had a long silk robe cinched tight around her waist. The result was that she looked like one of those forties movie starlets. Somehow, even devoid of makeup and expensive clothing, she still exuded class. As if she’d been simmered in wealth since childhood and now it fairly seeped from her pores.

She eyed him suspiciously, her gaze dropping to the orchids and then back to his face. “What are those for?”

Since she didn’t seem inclined to invite him in, he elbowed past her into the apartment. “They were my excuse to get in the building. One of your neighbors was leaving. I told him I was here to apologize for a date gone bad so he’d let me in.”

“And he believed you?”

“What can I say? I was persuasive.”

After a moment of indecision, she closed and bolted the door. “Don’t worry. It won’t happen again. I’ll hunt him down and kill the jerk.”

“Don’t do that. If you’re mad at me, take it out on me.” While she considered his words, he surveyed her apartment. A dingy kitchen led off from the living room and he headed there with the flowers. “Do you have a vase?”

“I thought the flowers were just a ruse.”

“That’s no reason not to enjoy them. Do you have any idea how hard it is to find flowers at midnight on a Friday night?”

He grabbed a vase out of one of the cabinets. It was an ornate job with elaborate curlicues. As he filled it with water, he waited for her response. She always seemed to have some snappy comeback.

It was her silence that alerted him something was wrong. He dropped the flowers into the vase and turned, thinking maybe she’d retreated to her bedroom or even left the apartment. Instead he found her sitting on the living room’s sole sofa with her elbows propped on her knees and her face buried in her hands.

His nerve endings prickled with alarm.

He sent up a silent prayer. Please don’t let her be crying. Between his three sisters, Patrice and Suz, he’d faced down his share of weepy women.

The one thing his vast experience with crying women had taught him was that running like hell would only make things worse.

“Hey,” he began awkwardly. “What’s—”

Then Kitty stood, her eyes red, but dry.

No tears. Thank God.

She crossed to stand before him, her posture stiff with anger. “What’s the matter?”

She got right in his face, stopping mere inches from him. “I’ll tell you what’s the matter.”

She shoved a hand against his shoulder. Surprise bumped him back a step. “You are the matter.”

She bopped him on the shoulder again. This time he was ready, but she was stomping forward, so he backed up a step anyway. “You come here and push your way into my company. Into my life. Into my apartment. You push and you push and you push.”

With each push she shoved against his chest and with each shove he stepped back, trying to give her the room she needed. But she followed him step for step.

“Maybe it’s time someone pushed back.”

By now he was—literally—up against a wall. With his back pressed to the living room wall, he had nowhere else to go. She stopped mere centimeters away from him, her hands pressed to his chest, her eyes blazing with anger.

“I’m—” he began.

But she didn’t let him finish. “Don’t you dare say you’re sorry. Sorry won’t cut it. Sorry doesn’t even begin to cut it.”

“I—”

“Well?” she prodded.

He gripped her shoulders, resisting the urge to shake her. “Stop. Interrupting. Me.”

Her chin bumped up and she glared at him through stormy eyes. “Well?” she demanded again.

“I—” What?

Suddenly, he couldn’t remember what it was he’d been about to say. All he could think was that this was what he’d wanted for the past two months. He wanted to see her again. To sleep with her. To strip her clothes off her, lay her bare before him in a proper bed and spend hours worshipping her body.

“‘I—I—I—’” she copied, mocking his stammer. “Is that the best you can do?”

Man, she was annoying sometimes.

“No,” he said. “This is.”

Cupping her jaw in his hands, he shut her up the best way he knew how. He kissed her.

Five

What exactly did she have to do to insult this man? She’d sneered at him. She’d acted like a tease. She’d ditched him in the middle of their date. She’d insulted him and made fun of him. And now he was kissing her?

What was wrong with him?

Worse still, what was wrong with her?

A hot and heavy make out session with Ford was the last thing she needed right now. She wanted peace and quiet to process the events of the night. She wanted to kick Ford out of her apartment. She wanted him out of her life. She wanted to go on kissing him forever.

After months of living on memories, he was actually kissing her. Months of pretending she’d forgotten him, of believing she’d never see him again, of shoving him out of her mind during the day, but then dreaming of him when she slept. After months of waking in the middle of the night, panting, heart racing, body moist and heavy with need. After months of that, he was here. In her apartment. Kissing her.

His tongue nudged into her mouth, tracing the sensitive skin behind her lip. She shuddered, opening herself fully to him. He tasted of smoky Scotch and heat, of neediness and lust. So familiar, even though she’d only been with him once. Her body sparked to life beneath his touch.

Suddenly it didn’t matter that he’d sneaked back into her life uninvited. It didn’t matter that he’d deceived her. That he pushed too hard. That she couldn’t intimidate or control him. All that mattered was that he just keep kissing her.

Her body remembered his touch as if it were yesterday. No matter what lies she’d told him earlier, she remembered. She remembered every second of their time together. As if for those few hours they’d been together she’d been more alive than at any other time in her life. As if she’d been more herself than she was in real life. The way he’d kissed her then. The cool night air on her skin when he’d kissed her in the parking lot of that god-awful bar. The heat of his hands against her flesh. The cold metal of his truck door pressed against her back.

His fingers had fumbled as he pulled her shirt over her head. She’d lost an earring. Yet when he’d touched her breasts, he hadn’t been clumsy. His touch was deft. Gentle. His fingertips rough as they’d pinched her nipples, sending fissures of pleasure through her body.

He’d shoved her skirt up to her waist and his jeans had been rough against the insides of her thighs. He’d shoved her panties aside, touched her there. A slow, rhythmic rasping of his thumb that had driven her quietly wild. By the time he’d plunged into her, she was already on the brink of climax. The feel of him pumping inside of her combined with the chafing of his fingers had sent her over the edge.

Now, kissing him in her living room, with memories flooding her, his touch was so achingly familiar. Her body trembled with need. Moisture seeped between her legs as desire pulsed through her. She was ready for him already.

His arm snaked around her back, holding her body to his as he walked her backward, one step, then two, still kissing her. His mouth nibbled hers as if he would devour her one tiny bite at a time. And she felt powerless to stop him.

The backs of her knees bumped against the arm of the sofa just as his hand cupped her breast through the bodice of her robe. The silk provided little protection against his roaming hands, not that she wanted any. She felt her nipple tighten, hardening to his touch. Heard a groan stir in his chest.

He pulled his mouth from hers. “This isn’t how I wanted this to happen.”

But he poured kisses along her neck as he said it. Proof that he was as powerless against her as she was against him.

Her hands clutched the lapels of his jacket. Pulling back, she tried to glare at him. Which was hard to do through the fog of her desire.

“How you wanted it to happen? What about what I want?”

He grinned wickedly, his hand flicking open the folds of her robe. Brushing the outside of her panties, he said, “I think I know what you want.”

Her panties were damp with her need for him. She knew it. Maybe it should embarrass her, this desperate lust for him, the way he only had to kiss her and she went wet for him, but it didn’t. Not when she knew he felt the same way. She may be wet, but he was hard. Panting. Pulsing against her hand when she ran it down the front his pants.

“You do, don’t you?” Her voice came out husky. “Know what I want, I mean.”

“I do.”

His gaze was disconcertingly serious as he muttered the words. For an unsettling second, she considered the possibility that maybe this was about more than just sex for him. For both of them. But she shoved the concern aside.

Sex was all they had. All she wanted.

Because she couldn’t think about anything else. Anything beyond this minute. This very second. She couldn’t think about the mistake she might be making. Or the mistake she’d already made.

She couldn’t think about the pair of pregnancy tests she’d hastily thrown out when the doorbell rang. Couldn’t think about the twin pink lines on those pregnancy tests. She couldn’t think about the baby already growing in her belly.

Logic told him to slow down, but she didn’t let him. One minute he was merely kissing her, the next she was tumbling over the arm of the sofa, pulling him on top of her. He barely caught himself in time to keep from squashing her. He braced one hand on the back of the sofa and the other right beside her head.

For all her height, she felt tiny beneath him. He didn’t want the weight of his body to pummel her. “That was close,” he muttered.

“Not nearly close enough,” she purred, bucking against him. Her hips rocked against his. Not in a light and playful way, but frantically, as if she were seconds from losing all control. One of her legs crept up the outside of his thigh, hooking around to anchor her hips to his.

Then she bucked against him one last time, rolling him off the sofa altogether, following him down onto the floor. Thank God for plush carpet, though even that hadn’t been able to keep the breath from being knocked out of him.

Or maybe it was just her that took his breath away. Kitty. Demanding. Arrogant. Unapologetic. And sexy as hell.

She walked her hands down his chest, slowly pushing herself into a seated position astride his hips. Her robe gaped open, barely covering her breasts as it caught on her nipples. The sash was still tied at the waist, but the robe revealed enough for him to see she was naked except for her underwear. A little scrap of fabric that felt silky and damp beneath his touch. Just kissing him had made her wet. His erection leaped at the very idea, straining against the front placket of his pants.

Head thrown back, she shifted her hips forward, grinding herself against him. She groaned low in her throat, a sound both erotic and unbearably tempting. How could he resist her? Why would he even try?

He slipped his thumb under the hem of her panties and found the nub of her desire. He stroked her there and the moan turned into a chorus of yeses. The steady chant echoed through his blood, pounding against the last of his restraint.

When she reached for his zipper, it didn’t even occur to him to stop her. With a few quick movements, she’d freed him. He lifted his hips as she pulled at his pants, not even bothering to take them all the way off.

She nudged the fabric of her underwear out of the way, then lowered herself onto him. With one smooth movement, he was inside of her. Hot, tight, and unbearably sweet. He squeezed his eyes tightly closed, trying to reign in his pure lust. Sucking a breath in through his teeth, he narrowed his focus. Pleasure rocked through his body, but he stayed just ahead of it. He didn’t want to come too quickly. He wanted her right there with him.

He moved his thumb in slow, steady circles, matching the rhythm of her rocking hips. With his eyes still closed, he focused on the sound of her breath, the quick gasps and low moans. The yeses had dissolved to a series of meaningless guttural sounds.

He felt her muscles clenching around him. Then he made the mistake of opening his eyes. He looked up to see her poised above him, her back arched, her breasts thrusting forward as her hands clutched her heels. With her neck arched her hair fell down her back in wild disarray. He’d never seen anything more primitive, more primal, more gut-wrenchingly erotic.

And then she focused her groans into a single word that sent him spiraling beyond control.

“Ford!”

Sleeping with Ford just about topped the list of stupid things she could have done. Ford had said she’d had a hard day and he didn’t know the half of it.

And as if sleeping with him wasn’t bad enough, she’d slept with him. When he’d picked her up and carried her to her bedroom, she’d actually tugged him down onto the bed with her, draped her body over his and promptly fallen asleep. She’d snuggled with him, for cripes sake.

When she’d peeled herself off him in the morning to sneak away for a shower, she prayed he’d at least have the common courtesy to disappear. But no. Not Ford. He made coffee.

How the hell was she supposed to defend herself against a man who’d made her coffee?

“Oh,” she said joylessly. “You’re still here.”

“We have to talk.”

“So you keep saying.” She crossed the narrow kitchen to the coffeepot and poured herself a cup. “Maybe you think we’re ready for couples’ therapy.”

He cut to the chase. “We didn’t use a condom last night.”

Ah. So that was why he’d stuck around.

Hoping to antagonize him into storming out, she said, “I suppose you blame me for that.”

“I didn’t say that. I just wanted to let you know you don’t have to worry about your health. I get tested annually for anything that—”

“I know,” she interrupted him. “When I got back from Texas I had myself tested. Yes, we were pretty safe, but as we both know condoms aren’t one hundred percent effective at anything.”

She broke off sharply. Please don’t do something stupid. Like cry. Or tell him the truth. “So,” she continued. “I knew that wasn’t a concern.”

Just keep sipping your coffee. He’ll leave soon and you can do all the stupid things you want.

He pinned her with a heavy stare. “Do I need to worry you’ll get pregnant?”

It took all her willpower not to spew coffee all over the kitchen. Instead she equivocated. “Do I look worried?”

“That’s hardly the point. You never look worried.” Well, at least she still had someone fooled. With a self-effacing shrug, she said, “When you’re raised the way I was, you learn to keep your emotions to yourself.”

“Well, you learned well, then.” There was a hint of something dark in his voice. Bitterness maybe, but she didn’t want to consider what he might mean by that. She couldn’t let herself think too much about his emotions just now.

She ignored his comment. “You don’t have to worry about last night.”

“You’re certain?”

“Let’s just say that if I got pregnant from last night, it would be a medical miracle.”

Thank God he didn’t press her for a more precise answer. Still, she didn’t breathe deeply until he’d left and she’d thrown the dead bolt behind him.

Maybe doing something stupid like this was inevitable.

She stood in her kitchen for a long time, sipping her coffee, making excuses for her behavior. What she wanted most was to simply crawl back into bed with her sketch pad and MP3 player. To spend the whole day pretending the rest of the world didn’t exist. Of course, she didn’t have that luxury.

Come Monday, Ford would start pressuring her to cement the deal with FMJ. Whatever else happened, she couldn’t afford to sleep with him again. There was too much at stake, for Biedermann’s and for her. After all, she was going to be.

Kitty broke off her train of thought to stare down at her nearly empty coffee mug. Could pregnant women even drink coffee? Shaking her head, she dumped the last splash of coffee in the sink and washed out the mug. She’d have Casey look that up on Monday.

She paused in the act of drying the mug. Yeah, that’d be subtle. No one would ever guess she was pregnant, between puking every few minutes and having her assistant research the effects of caffeine on pregnancy.

At some point, she’d have to tell Ford about the pregnancy, but she wasn’t ready for that just yet. She needed more time to process it. To figure how she felt about the tiny life growing inside of her and what it meant for her life.

She had no idea how Ford might respond to the news he was about to be a father. But she knew that whatever his reaction was going to be, she’d need to have her own emotional defenses in place before she dealt with him.

How long could she justify not telling him? A couple of days maybe. But she had to tell him and she had to do it soon.

The very thought made bile rise in her throat. She dashed for the bathroom, only to have her nausea fade, leaving her feeling queasy. The minty zing of her toothpaste helped. When she put away the toothpaste, she saw the two pregnancy tests she’d taken the previous evening.

She’d stopped to pick them up at a drugstore on the way home from the fundraiser. Her heart had pounded the whole time, sure she’d see someone she recognized. Or that at the very least someone would comment on the absurdity of a woman in formal wear buying pregnancy tests late at night. She hadn’t cared. She’d needed to know.

She had still been reeling from the shock when Ford had shown up on her doorstep. He’d caught her at her most vulnerable. Again.

But it wouldn’t happen a third time. From now on, she’d be prepared to deal with him. But first, she had to deal with other issues. She pressed a hand to her belly.

Logically, she should still be freaking out about being pregnant. But for some strange reason, she wasn’t. Maybe some weird pregnancy hormone had been working its magic on her subconscious for the past two months. Whatever the reason, she felt strangely at peace.

Why did being pregnant have to be such a bad thing? All her life she’d dreamed of being part of a bigger family. She’d longed for sisters and brothers. How many times had she made her grandmother read Little Women to her? Dozens.

The only thing she’d wanted more than siblings was a real mother. Her grandmother had done her best. She’d loved her and cared for her, sure. But she hadn’t done the things other mothers had done—or rather the things Kitty had imagined other mothers did. She’d never climbed onto the jungle gym at the park. She’d never built forts out of old sheets draped over the furniture. She’d never crawled into Kitty’s bed to cuddle her and chase away the monsters.

Those were things Kitty’s childhood had lacked. But they were experiences she could give to her child. She could lavish this child with love. She could become the kind of mother she’d always wanted for herself. She could create the family she’d craved for so long.

What about Ford? What kind of father would he be? She bet he’d be the kind of dad who coached Little League and charmed all the teachers into rounding up his kids’ grades. He’d spend too much on birthday presents, and …

Whoa. Where had all that come from? Wondering what kind of father Ford would make was the last thing she should be worrying about. It was a completely absurd exercise. Like wondering whether or not the tooth fairy was ticklish. Ford was Mr. Not-Willing-to-Be-Whipped.

There was no way he’d be interested in coaching Little League. This morning, he’d given her the perfect opportunity to tell him about the baby, but she’d balked. She hadn’t exactly lied, but she hadn’t told him the truth, either. And she suspected it had less to do with her mental defenses than it did with the possibility that she already knew how he’d react.

Ford wasn’t looking for long term. Not with her. Not with a child. When he found out the truth, he would cut and run.

At least, dear God, she hoped he would. She could only pray he wouldn’t do something noble like offer to marry her.

She’d been a burden all her life. For once in her life, she wanted to pull her own weight.

Yes, being pregnant now was inconvenient, what with everything that was going on at Biedermann’s. But it didn’t have to be a bad thing. Not at all. The more she thought about it, the more convinced she became. She could be a good mother. She could do this. This was one dream that would not be snatched away from her.

True, she’d probably never be able to run Biedermann’s the way she’d dreamed of. But being a failure as a CEO didn’t mean she’d also be a failure as a mother. After all, her father had been a fantastic CEO, but a less than stellar parent. That was proof enough, if she needed it, that the two jobs didn’t require the same skills. It came down to this: she’d have to be a good parent, because she was likely to be the only parent her child ever knew.

Whenever he and Jonathon traveled together, they got a hotel suite. The combined living space always made it easier to have teleconferences with Matt and to work late in the evenings. It was an arrangement that had worked well. And Jonathon certainly didn’t care that Ford was returning to the hotel, having obviously been out all night. And had he slept with any other woman, Ford would have kept his mouth shut.

But Kitty was not any other woman. This morning she’d seemed fine. But the truth was, he had no idea what she was really feeling. He couldn’t dismiss the possibility that he’d screwed things up. And if he had blown this deal because he couldn’t stop thinking with a certain male part, then Jonathon deserved to know the truth.

“I made a mistake,” he admitted as soon as he walked into the hotel suite.

Jonathan didn’t even bother looking up from his laptop. A fruit plate and a bowl of oatmeal sat untouched beside his computer. “That’s never a good announcement at 7:00 a.m. on a Saturday morning. But you’re a big boy. I’m sure you can handle it.”

“I slept with Kitty.”

Jonathon’s head snapped up. “Kitty Biedermann?”

“It was stupid, I know,” he admitted.

A pot of coffee and a couple of cups sat untouched on the room service tray, so he poured himself a cup. He looked up to see Jonathon with a bemused half smile on his face.

“We just got here. That’s fast, even for you.” When Ford didn’t answer, Jonathon’s smile morphed into a contemplative squint. “That’s not it, is it? You knew her already.”

“I did. We met in Texas about two months ago.” He took a sip of the coffee, relishing the heat as it burned its way down his throat. A stiff drink was what he really wanted for a conversation like this. Scalding hot coffee wasn’t a bad second, though.

Jonathon studied him for a long moment, absently popping a grape in his mouth as he did. “You were the one who wanted to buy out Biedermann’s.”

Ford shook his head. “Biedermann’s was on your list.”

Jonathan stabbed a bite of cantaloupe. “Technically, that was the NYSE’s list. I just referenced it when I was looking for another company to buy. There were seven or eight other companies on that list. You were the one who did all that research on Biedermann’s.” Jonathon paused, chewing slowly as he watched Ford. “Unless you weren’t researching the company at all. You were researching her, weren’t you?”

“Look. I made a mistake. It wouldn’t be the first.” Ford took another drink of his coffee, wishing again it was something stronger. “I asked Wendy to find out what she could about Kitty Biedermann. She was overly enthusiastic. I didn’t even know Biedermann’s was on the list until you’d done most of the work.”

“You should have said something then.”

“I didn’t think it would be a big deal. Neither of us was looking for a long-term relationship. I knew what happened in Texas was just a one-night stand and it would never happen again.”

Jonathon quirked an eyebrow. “Which explains perfectly why you just slept with her a second time.”

“It’s not a big deal.”

“So you keep saying. Are we going to have a problem with the acquisition?”

Ford thought back to Kitty’s attitude. Last night she’d been passionate and demanding. This morning she’d been coolly reserved. “I don’t think so,” he said honestly. “She’s devoted to Biedermann’s. She’ll do the right thing for the company. As for me, she’s not emotionally involved. She’s just not the boil-a-bunny type.”

“How well do you know her?” Jonathon asked.

“Well enough to know that.” Then he noticed that Jonathon leaned over his laptop as he spoke, typing rapidly. Ford just rolled his eyes. “You’re looking her up on Google, aren’t you?” In answer, Jonathon just shrugged. “After all the information about her that Wendy dug up, you think you’re going to find something on the Internet that we didn’t already know?”

Jonathon shrugged. “It never hurts.”

Annoyed, Ford continued speaking. “I know her well enough to know she’s not going to back out of a business deal for personal reasons.”

Jonathon tapped his fingers across the mouse pad while he waited for the slow hotel wireless connection to load the results page. “I hope you’re right. Kitty owns nearly sixty percent of the company. If we don’t have her on board, the deal will never go through, regardless of whether or not we can convince anyone else.”

“I know that.” His tone was a little sharper than he’d intended.

Jonathon raised his hands in a gesture of defense. “Just reminding you.” He clicked on a page, then sat back, waiting for it to load. “If she backs out now, we’ve wasted a decent chunk of change. And I don’t like wasting time, either.”

“She’s not going to back out. Selling Biedermann’s to us is going to make her a lot of money. That’s all the incentive she needs. She’s been rich all her life and we’re going to make her richer. There’s nothing else we need to know.”

But by then Jonathon had leaned forward to read whatever Pandora’s box Google had pulled up. He let out a low whistle.

“What?” Ford demanded.

“You might want to read what Suzy Snark has to say before you say anything else that’ll get you in trouble.”

Tension seized Ford’s stomach. “Who?”

“Suzy Snark. She’s a gossip blogger here in New York. Talks about Kitty every once in a while.” He looked up at Ford. “You didn’t really read that report from Wendy, did you? Suzy Snark was mentioned multiple times.”

The tension that had started in his gut seeped through the rest of his body, leaving him frozen on the spot. He should just cross the room and take the damn laptop from Jonathan, but no matter what orders his brain issued, his feet weren’t following them.

Finally he said, “Stop being so damn cryptic and just tell me what the damn thing says.”

“Trust me, you’re going to want to read this yourself.”

He took the laptop from Jonathan and sat back down on the sofa, only vaguely aware of Jonathan walking away to give him privacy. As he read, his tension coalesced into cold, hard anger.

A few minutes later, Jonathan returned, holding out a shot of Scotch from the hotel’s courtesy bar. Ford carefully set the laptop on the coffee table before accepting the drink. He took several long drinks, then realized his knuckles were turning white from gripping the glass too tightly.

Finally he stood and headed for the door with grim determination, almost too angry to speak.

“Where are you going?” Jonathan asked.

“To find Kitty.”

Six

By the time Monday morning rolled around, Kitty felt marginally more prepared to face Ford. After he left her apartment Saturday morning, she’d decided she simply couldn’t face him again so soon. So she’d abandoned the familiarity of her apartment for a hotel not far from Biedermann’s offices. She’d spent the weekend with her phone turned off, huddled under the blanket watching an I Love Lucy marathon and ordering room service. She’d bawled when Little Ricky was born and then found herself unable to stop crying. Poor Lucy always tried to do the right thing, but always made a mess of things. Sometimes her own life felt like an episode of I Love Lucy, but without the laugh track or the comforting presence of Ethel Mertz.

Maybe this mess would seem more bearable if her own pratfalls could be cushioned by the unconditional love of her own Ricky Ricardo. Maybe if Ford …

No, she stopped herself. She couldn’t think like that. He wasn’t hers. He never had been and he certainly wouldn’t be now that she was keeping this secret from him.

Maybe, she justified to herself, one lie of omission deserved another. In Texas, he hadn’t told her that he was a business tycoon whose company was worth billions. So Saturday morning, she didn’t tell him the whole truth, either.

But of course, she hadn’t outright lied. After all, he truly didn’t need to worry that she’d gotten pregnant then. By the time they’d had sex, she was already two months pregnant.

All of her rationalizations almost made her feel better. Until Monday morning rolled around and she found Marty pacing in her office. With his tie loosened and his hair tousled, he looked as bedraggled as she felt.

She dropped her handbag on the chair by the door and shrugged out of her coat before tossing it carelessly on top. “Honestly, Marty, have you even been home? You look as if you slept here.”

Marty knew her as well as anyone did. Keeping the truth from him would be quite the challenge. Today was a day to channel her inner bitch if there ever was one.

He ignored her comment. “Where have you been all weekend? I’ve been trying to reach you since Saturday. We all have.”

Kitty’s stomach tightened. This didn’t sound good. “I went away for the weekend.” Another lie. Sort of.

What could she possibly have done wrong now? She hadn’t even been here. Running his fingers through his hair again, Marty asked, “Have you been online this morning?”

She faked a yawn to cover any panic that might have crossed her face. “You know I can’t stand staring at a computer screen before coffee. Speaking of which, could you be a dear and get—”

“No, Kitty. Not this morning.” He rounded her desk and popped open her laptop. “Come have a look.”

By the time she reached it, the Suzy Snark blog was loading onto the screen. At the top of the page was a picture of her and Ford climbing out of the cab in front of The Pierre Hotel. Whatever nasty comment Kitty had been about to make was swallowed by her dread.

She stared blankly at the screen, her eyes unable to focus on the jumble of words on the screen. After a second, she realized Marty was looking at her expectantly.

“Well,” he said.

She dropped petulantly into her office chair. “Why should I care what some gossipmonger has to say?”

“You should care because it affects your business.”

“I sincerely doubt it.”

“Are you even going to read it?”

You bet your booty she was. But not now, with Marty looming over her, watching the painful process. “Maybe later. After coffee.”

Marty twisted the laptop to face him and began reading aloud. “Christmas has come early for those of us who love juicy gossip—”

“Honestly, Marty,” she interrupted. “Is this really necessary?”

“Yes.” His tone was unexpectedly firm. “You need to read this before anyone from FMJ shows up.”

She mimicked his tone. “Fine. Then be a dear and get me that mocha latte and I’ll be done reading it by the time you get back.”

As soon as he was gone, she leaned forward and began the laborious process of reading.

Christmas has come early for those of us who love juicy gossip. Readers of this column are probably wondering why Kitty Biedermann’s love life has been so dull lately. Ever since her breakup with Derek Messina, she’s been nursing her broken heart in private. But no longer!

This time she’s set her sights on entrepreneur Ford Langley of FMJ. The two were seen together at the posh Children’s Medical Foundation fundraiser just last night. It’s not surprising the enterprising Kitty would try to land such a hunky catch. The shocker is that they may be entering into professional negotiations as well as personal ones. There are rumors that Biedermann’s is about to get gobbled up by FMJ.

And that’s not even the biggest news. An inside source says Kitty may be expecting more than just a hefty bonus from FMJ. The only question is, once Langley finds out about Kitty’s little bundle of joy, will he still be interested in saving Biedermann’s Jewelry? Or will the heiress have to raise her baby and run her company all on her own?

Kitty felt bile rise in her throat as she sat back in her chair. Oh, dear lord.

Before she even began to ponder the issue, Marty reappeared. The mocha latte he set down in front of her did nothing to settle her stomach. His stony expression did little to quell her fears.

“I got a decaf. Just in case she’s right.” He must have read her answer in her expression, because he propped his hip on the edge of her desk and muttered a curse.

“How did she find out?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted.

“Guess.”

But she couldn’t guess. She’d known herself for less than seventy-two hours. How had Suzy-stinkin’-Snark found out about it?

“I bought a pregnancy test,” she said aloud. “Someone must have seen me do it.”

Marty sighed. “And if it was someone who reads the blog and recognized you, they would have contacted Suzy right away.”

Marty’s obvious annoyance rankled. “Why are you acting all put out over this? This is my private life she’s exploiting.”

“And it affects our business. Why were you out with Ford anyway? Did you think making a conquest of him would make this buyout any easier on you? Do you really think FMJ is going to want to do business with you when you act like this?”

She could only stammer in response. For years she’d put up with Marty’s passive-aggressive kowtowing, and now—the one time she could have really used him in her corner—he was turning on her?

Kitty was saved from having to formulate a defense when Ford appeared at the door.

“Oh, goody,” she muttered. “Because I wasn’t feeling beleaguered enough.”

Ford swept into the room with all the subtly of a tsunami, and he brought flotsam and jetsam in his wake. Jonathon and Casey followed him.

“I assume you’ve both seen it.”

Kitty opened her mouth to answer, but before she could, he turned to her assistant. “We’re going to have to make a preemptive strike. We’ll schedule a press conference. But not for this afternoon. We want to appear proactive, but we don’t want to lend credence to the blog by appearing to be reacting to it. So announce the press conference, but schedule it for a few days out. Wednesday maybe. Jonathon, why don’t you and Marty get started on that? Casey, you can—”

Fear propelled her to her feet. “A press conference?” She tried to scoff convincingly. “Over a piddling gossip blog? Isn’t that overreacting?”

Ford turned the weight of his gaze on her. He crossed his arms over his chest. “Not at all. FMJ’s acquisition of Biedermann’s hasn’t been officially announced yet. It doesn’t look good that the news was leaked.”

Right. The acquisition. The news of her pregnancy had overshadowed everything else. She’d forgotten that the blog even mentioned the buyout.

“But,” she protested. “It was leaked to a gossip blog. One that no one is likely to read. And it’s even less likely that anyone who does would care about business.”

“This blog may have a wider readership than you think. We all read it within a few hours. We have to assume others have, too. If we work fast, we can minimize the damage.”

“Why should we respond at all? We certainly don’t want people thinking that whatever this woman posts online is true.”

Marty’s gaze had been ping-ponging back and forth between them. Ford narrowed his gaze at the other man, giving him a why-are-you-still-here look. Before Marty could respond to the unspoken question. Jonathon ushered both Casey and Marty out with such practiced ease, she couldn’t help wondering if he and Ford had orchestrated the move.

“Wow,” she murmured. “I’m impressed. Normally it’s impossible to get Marty out of my office when he’s got a bone to pick.” She gestured between Ford and the door through which Jonathon had just vanished. “Did you guys plan out that two-pronged approach? Not that I mind. If we have to talk about that blog, I’d much rather do it without an audience.”

“Damn right we have to talk about that blog. Was she right? Are you pregnant?”

“Does it matter?” Kitty countered smoothly.

Her lack of denial was all the confirmation he needed. Ford gritted his teeth against the questions he wanted to throw at her. As prickly as she was, it wouldn’t take much to push her into a full-fledged argument.

“I’d prefer a quiet wedding, but I’ll leave that up to you. We should—”

She spun to face him. “We’re not getting married.”

“Of course, we’re getting married.” A hard note crept into his voice. “I’m not going to desert my family.”

For a long moment, she seemed to be considering him. Then she patted her belly with exaggerated care. “Well, lucky for you, this baby and I aren’t your family.”

Kitty stood there, one hand propped on her hip, chin up, all defiant bravado.

“You’re saying it’s not mine?”

“I’m not saying it isn’t yours. It isn’t yours.”

“But you are pregnant?”

Her chin inched up a notch. “What I am is none of your business. Not your burden. Not your problem.”

“You couldn’t be more than a couple of months pregnant,” he pointed out.

“What’s your point?”

“The timing is perfect for me to be the father.”

She quirked an eyebrow, her expression full of arrogance. “What, you think I came back from Texas so satisfied that I couldn’t even imagine being with another man?”

“I suppose I would like to think that. But the truth is, you’re not the type to sleep around.”

“Oh, really?” she asked, her voice brimming with challenge. “And you’re such an expert on me? How long have you known me, Ford, really? A week? It’s less than that, isn’t it? The truth is, you have no idea what I’m capable of.”

If she was lying, she did a damn good job of it. There wasn’t so much as a sputter of doubt in her eyes to give her away.

He waited for the surge of relief. Pregnant or not, she was letting him off the hook. All he had to do was take her at her word and walk away.

He studied her standing there, taking in the defiant bump of her chin, the blazing independence in her eyes. She was dressed in slim-legged pants and a fuzzy sweater that made her look touchable. But that was the only hint of softness about her, otherwise she was all hard angles and bristly defenses.

Kitty was pregnant. There was a baby growing inside her belly. A tiny life. Maybe his. Maybe not.

But his gut said it was his. Every possessive, primitive cell in his body screamed that her child must be his.

Of course, that didn’t mean it was. “You’re right,” he said finally. “I don’t know you well, but I’m a good judge of character. I know you well enough to know you’re capable of lying to get what you want. The only thing I don’t know is what it is you want.”

She squared her shoulders and met his gaze. “What I want is to save Biedermann’s. If FMJ can do that, then we’ll have a deal. If not, I’ll find someone else who can.”

“Are you sure you don’t want Marty here?” Ford asked as he sat down at the conference table. “He is your CFO.”

“I’m sure.” They were working late, trying to get all the details of the acquisition hammered out before the press conference later in the week. Thanks to Suzy Snark, they needed to work much faster than they might have otherwise. Instead of sitting herself, she stood near the windows, staring out at the cityscape below. Marty made her so damn nervous. She’d asked Ford to set up this meeting between him, her and Jonathon precisely because she couldn’t ask the kinds of questions she needed to with Marty in the room.

Of course, Jonathon made her nervous, too, with his steady gaze and his brilliant head for numbers. He was exactly the kind of person who made her feel twitchy with fear. But Jonathon couldn’t be avoided. She no longer trusted herself to be alone with Ford.

Which was why she waited until Jonathon had settled into a chair at the conference table before speaking.

“If I’m going to hand my family’s company over to your tender care—” Kitty stressed the words tender care, letting them hear her doubts that their management of Biedermann’s was likely to be either tender or careful “—then I need assurances that you actually have a plan in place.”

Jonathon cleared his throat. “If you’ve read the proposal we sent, you’ll see your compensation package is—”

Ford interrupted him. “I don’t believe it’s her compensation package she’s worried about.”

She looked over her shoulder, surprised by his comment. He sat at the table, leaning back in his chair, one ankle propped up on the opposite knee. The posture was relaxed, but there was an intensity to his gaze that made her breath catch in her chest.

“Yes.” She forced fresh air into her lungs. “Exactly.”

Now, Ford sat forward, steepling his hands on the table before him. “Unless I’m mistaken, Kitty is the rare CEO who is less worried about what she’s going to get out of this settlement than how the company is going to be treated.” He pinned her with a stare that she felt all the way to her bones. “Am I right?”

In that instant, the intensity of his gaze laid her bare. All the artifice, all her defenses, the image she’d worked her whole life to build and maintain seemed to vanish like a whiff of smoke, leaving her with the disconcerting feeling that he could see straight through to her very soul.

“You are,” she said simply.

“I don’t understand.” Jonathon frowned, looking down at his laptop as if he expected it to sprout flowers. “Why did you ask to meet with us alone if you weren’t worried about your end of the deal?”

“I thought you’d be more honest in private.” Which was also true and was as good an excuse as any. “I don’t care how much money I walk away with. I don’t care what kind of golden parachutes you offer to the board members. I care about whether or not the stores themselves survive. When this is all over with, is there going to be a Biedermann’s in nearly every mall in America? Are there going to be any of them left?”

The question hung in the air between them. Since they seemed to be waiting for her to say something else, she continued.

“If FMJ gobbles us up, that may solve the immediate problem of our declining stock prices, but that’s only part of the problem.” She turned to Jonathon. “Our stock price wouldn’t be going down if we had strong retail performance. I want to know how you plan to improve that.”

She expected Jonathon to answer. After all, he was FMJ’s financial genius. However, it was Ford who spoke.

“You’re right. For too long, you’ve been relying on people shopping at your stores because they’re already at the mall. However—”

Ford broke off as his cell phone buzzed to life. Reaching into his pocket, he grimaced as he pulled out the phone. “Sorry.”

He turned off the volume on the phone, but left it sitting on the conference table by his elbow. “It’s not enough …”

Even though he continued talking, her attention wandered for a second. She’d seen the name displayed on the phone when it rang. Patrice. What were the names of his sisters? Chelsea, Beatrice and … some-thing else. Certainly not Patrice, though.

Not that it mattered in the least. He probably had the numbers of dozens of women stored in his phone. Hundreds maybe. It wasn’t her business.

She forced her attention back to his words.

“We don’t want shoppers to stop in at Biedermann’s because they’re at the mall. We want to attract them to the mall because there’s a Biedermann’s there. We need Biedermann’s to provide them with services and products that they can’t get anywhere else.”

“We have strong brand recognition,” she protested. “We offer more styles of engagement rings than any other store.”

“But engagement rings are a one-time purchase. You need something that will bring customers back again and again.”

The phone by his elbow began to vibrate silently. Again she glanced down. This time the name display read Suz.

“You can answer it if you need to,” she said.

He frowned as the phone stopped vibrating and the call rolled over to voice mail. “I don’t.”

“Are you sure? Second call in just a few minutes.”

Jonathon was scowling, clearly annoyed. He quirked an eyebrow in silent condemnation when the phone started vibrating again a few seconds later. Rosa this time.

Was that the third sister’s name? She couldn’t remember.

“Just answer it,” Jonathon snapped.

Frowning, Ford stood as he grabbed the phone. “Hey, miha. What’s up?” With a slight nod, he excused himself from the room.

For a long time, Kitty and Jonathon sat in silence, the tension taut between them. She suspected he didn’t like her any more than she liked him. With his frosty demeanor and calculating gaze, every time she glanced at him she half expected to see little dollar signs where his pupils were.

However, after a few minutes of drumming her nails against the armchair, her patience wore out. Or perhaps her curiosity got the better of her.

“Does he always get so many personal calls at work?”

Jonathon scowled, but she couldn’t tell if he was annoyed by the interruption or by her questions. “It’s after hours. But his family can be quite demanding.”

“Those were all family members?” Maybe she’d misremembered the names. Or perhaps misread them?

Jonathon’s scowl deepened. Ah, so he hadn’t meant to reveal that.

“I know he has three sisters, but—”

“If you’re curious about his family, you should really talk to Ford about it.”

And let him know she was scoping out his potential as a father? Not likely.

She met Jonathon’s gaze and smiled slowly. “The problem, Mr. Bagdon, is that whenever Ford and I are alone, we end up doing one of two things. Neither of them is conducive to talking about his family.”

Mr. Cold-As-Ice Jonathon didn’t stammer or blush. Instead, he held her gaze, his lips twisting in an expression that she might have imagined was amusement in a man less dour.

“Interesting,” he murmured.

“What?”

“You expected me to be either embarrassed or distracted by your honesty.”

“But you’re neither?” she asked. What was it with these guys from FMJ that none of them reacted the way normal men did?

“Certainly not enough to be tricked into telling you the information you’re fishing for.”

Well, if her motives were going to be so transparent, then she might as well be honest. “Very well, then. Let’s be frank. I am curious about Ford, but I don’t want to ask him about his family.”

“Because …” Jonathon prodded.

She smiled. “If there’s one thing you and I can both agree upon, it’s that the relationship between Ford and I is complicated enough as it is. Yes, I could talk to him about it, but I wasn’t merely being provocative with my earlier comment. Every time Ford and I are alone we’re either fighting or having sex. I don’t see any reason to add emotional confidences into an already volatile mix merely to satisfy my curiosity.”

Jonathon studied her for a moment, his expression as nonplussed as it always was. Finally he nodded. “Very well. What do you want to know?”

What didn’t she want to know might have been a better question. Ford seemed such a dichotomy. She thought of the easygoing charmer she’d met back in that bar in Texas. He’d seemed such a simple man. Not stupid by any means, but uncomplicated. It was that quality that had drawn her to him in the first place. With his laid-back charisma and magnetic smile, he’d coaxed his way past her defenses as easily as he’d mollified Dale.

That alone should have made her suspicious. A man that could assess and defuse a tense situation like that was no mere cowboy. Far more telling was the way he’d charmed her. She never let down her defenses. Never let anyone close. She should have known that any man who could tempt her into a quickie in the parking lot was a man to be reckoned with.

What was that saying? Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.

Well, she was suitably shamed.

Regardless of all that, Ford—this chameleon of a man, whom she barely knew and couldn’t possibly hope to understand—was the father of her child. She had no way of anticipating how he would react if he were to learn the truth.

She clearly took too long to formulate her question, because Jonathon leaned forward. “If you’ve got a question, you should ask now. He might not be on the phone with his family much longer.”

Suddenly, she was struck by an awful thought. Her skin went clammy as panic washed over her. Dear God, what if the reason Jonathon didn’t want to talk about Ford was because he was married? Choking down her dread, she asked, “By family, you don’t mean wife, do you?”

Jonathon laughed, a rusty uncomfortable snort of derision. “Ford? Married? Hell, no. He’s that last man on earth who would cheat on a wife.”

She clenched her jaw against her innate dislike of being laughed at. “Well, I hardly know him. How am I supposed to know that?”

Jonathon’s smile faded. “Ford’s father kept a mistress for the last fifteen years of his life. He had a whole other family he had set up in a house one town over. While he was alive, he kept all those balls in the air himself. But when he passed away, he’d named Ford executor of his will. All of sudden Ford had to find a way to make peace between these two families.”

“My goodness. What did Ford do?” She asked the question almost without realizing she’d done it.

“Ford did what he always does.” Jonathon’s expression had turned from icy to grim. “He smoothed things over.”

Okay, so she wasn’t exactly an expert on women, seeing as how most of her friends were men. She could only imagine how she would feel if she found out that the man she’d loved had had another family secreted away somewhere. She’d be pissed. No amount of “smoothing things over” would make that all right. And yet, if anyone could do it, she believed Ford could.

“They must just hate each other,” she murmured.

“Surprisingly, they don’t.” Jonathon shrugged as if to say he didn’t get it, either. “They resented each other for a long time, but now they’re friends, strange as that sounds. Ford’s younger sister—his full sister, that is— Chelsea is about the same age as Beatrice. Ford managed to convince both Suzanne and Patrice that the girls all needed each other. Of course, it helped matters that his dad had died practically broke. So Ford was pretty much supporting everyone.”

“How old was he?”

“Twenty-three or so.”

She’d read somewhere that he’d made his first million by the time he was twenty-two. If he was supporting five women not long after that, he must have been highly motivated indeed to keep making money. From what he’d told her, his sisters were only now in college.

She glanced toward the door to her office through which Ford had disappeared. “This kind of thing, with the constant phone calls. This happens often?”

“Only when there’s some crisis they want him to solve. They tend to … um, disagree a lot. When they do, they all call Ford to sort it out for them.”

“So he solves all their problems, but he never lets them get too close, does he?”

Jonathon sent her a piercing look. “Why do you say that?”

“Because it’s what I would do.”

Seven

From where she sat, she could see Ford through the open door of her office. He stood with his back toward them. Tension radiated from him. She could see it through the lines of his shoulders, in the way he shifted them as he spoke, as if he were trying to stretch out the knotted muscles. But she could hear the tone of his voice, as well. Not the words, the tone. Quiet and soothing.

She wondered, did his family know he was lying to them? If not with his words, then with his intent.

She was watching Ford so closely that Jonathon surprised her when he said, “You say that because you think you’re so much alike.”

There was the faintest hint of condemnation in his voice. It made her chuckle. “Oh, God, no. Not at all.” Finally she looked back at Jonathon. “He’s so charming, isn’t he?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“I saw it in Texas. The way he can manipulate people. Talking them into things. Get them to do things they normally wouldn’t.”

“You’re saying he charmed you into bed with him.”

She slanted a look at Jonathon, tilting her head to the side as she studied him. “Do you always do that? Willfully misunderstand what people are saying?”

“I’ve found most people say things they don’t really mean. And mean things they’re not willing to say aloud. I’ve found it’s best to make sure everyone is on the same page.”

She nodded. “Very well, then, maybe he did charm me into bed with him. But I certainly wasn’t unwilling, if that’s what you were asking. No, what I meant was that he has the ability to charm everyone. But I don’t think he lets many people close.”

No, like her, he kept everyone at arm’s length. His charm was as much a weapon as her sarcastic quips. She couldn’t say exactly why she knew that to be true, simply that she understood it on a gut level. The same way she knew that if fate hadn’t thrown them together again, she never would have seen Ford after that one night in Texas.

Somehow the thought made her sad. Ford wasn’t hers to keep, but she was glad she’d had this chance to see him again. To get to know the man he really was. Even if that man wasn’t someone she could let too close.

Jonathon didn’t respond, but studied her with that same steady gaze she found so disconcerting.

“Have I satisfied your curiosity?”

Kitty flashed him a cavalier smile. “You’ve certainly answered all of my questions.”

More to the point, he’d told her everything she really needed to know about Ford. If he found out he really was the father of her child, he’d do everything in his power to take care of her. But he’d never really let her or the baby in. He’d never love her or the baby the way she wanted to be loved. She’d just be another burden to him.

And wasn’t that just the last thing she needed? Another man to coddle her. Yippee.

Ford couldn’t tell how much progress he and Jonathon had made on convincing Kitty to accept their offer, but he sensed something had changed while he’d been on the phone with his sister. He’d come back to the table to find Kitty looking pale and withdrawn. To make matters worse, not much later, Jonathon had gotten a call, as well, and had to leave the meeting.

Now half a day had passed and they were no closer to signing papers. Kitty had vanished after lunch, leaving him to go over the quarterly financial statements with Marty, whose eager nervousness reminded him of a puppy with ADD.

To make matters worse, he’d wandered over to Kitty’s office. He hadn’t planned on coming there. That’s just where he’d ended up. As if he no longer had any control over where his feet took him.

A quick glance in her office told him it was empty. She better not have left early. He’d already turned to leave when he heard a noise from the other side of the office. The door to her bathroom was open.

“Kitty, are you there?” he asked, crossing her office.

He was a few steps from the bathroom when the door slammed closed. “Go away,” said her muffled voice.

He should have taken at her word, but he made the mistake of hesitating just long enough to hear the recognizable sounds of someone throwing up. He cringed.

“You okay?”

“Go a—” More retching.

That sounded bad. Not that hurling ever sounded good. He should definitely leave. He’d almost made it to the door when a voice in his head stopped him in his tracks. She’s obviously sick, and you’re running for the door. What kind of jerk are you? But she’d told him to go.

Of course she did. No one likes puking. You think she’s going to ask for your help? No way. But you can’t just leave her there.

He walked back to the bathroom, praying the door would be locked. That would be the perfect excuse to just turn and walk away. He tried the knob. And the damn thing wiggled.

He opened the door to see her wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. Thick strands of dark hair had fallen down from its twist to hang in her face. Her gaze blazed with anger.

“I said go away.” But her hands trembled as she lowered herself to sit on the ground beside the toilet.

He’d done the right thing.

Shutting the door behind him in case anyone came in, he said, “You don’t have to be so proud.”

“Great. A lecture. Thanks.” She pressed her cheek to the tile wall. “Next time you’re throwing up, I’ll fly out to California to razz you.”

“Yeah, I’ll give you a call,” he shot back. He pulled a paper towel from the dispenser and ran it under the faucet before handing it to her. “Here.”

“Thanks.” She wiped carefully at the corners of her mouth, then folded that edge to the center and pressed the damp cloth to her forehead. A sigh of relief escaped her lips.

The sound stirred something deep within his belly. Some primitive urge to care for and protect. To possess.

Okay, she should not look sexy right now. That was just wrong.

He looked around for something else to do and saw a mug sitting on the ledge under the mirror. After rinsing it carefully, he filled it. He squatted by her side and held it out.

After a second, her eyes flickered open. She stared at him for a moment. If she saw the heat in his gaze, she didn’t comment, but the tension seemed to stretch between them as she sipped the water. He half expected her to come back with one of her customary jabs. Instead she said merely, “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome. Can I get you anything else?”

“One of my lollipops. Top drawer of my desk. Right-hand side.”

Glad to have something to do, he headed straight for her desk. The first thing he saw when he pulled out the top drawer was an artist’s sketchbook. A large pencil drawing dominated the page. In the bottom left-hand corner was a scared little girl in a pinafore dress, with black curls and huge eyes, like a cross between Shirley Temple and Betty Boop with just enough Kitty Beidermann thrown in to make the character unmistakable. She clutched her hands in front of her in exaggerated terror. Behind her loomed an enormous monster, all pointy teeth and glistening drool. Its arms arched over her head, wicked claws gleaming. The monster’s body was formed by the letters F, M and J. The overall effect was both humorous and compelling.

So, she fancied herself an artist, did she?

He grinned as he picked up the sketchbook and flipped the page. However, the other pictures weren’t cartoons but rather sketches of jewelry. It was the same tongue-in-cheek, gothic sensibility, but applied to intricate drawings of necklaces and earrings.

“Find one of the yellow ones, if you can,” she called out from the bathroom.

He looked back in the drawer and saw a pile of lollipops. After digging through for a yellow one, he headed back to the bathroom, flipping through the sketchbook as he went.

When he reached the bathroom, he tucked the book under his arm to pull the wrapper off the lollipop. He held it out to her. “These help?”

She plopped it in her mouth and rolled her eyes at him, either in relief or at his obvious doubt. After several strong sucks that caved in her cheeks and worked her throat in a way that was alarmingly erotic, she nodded.

“They’re specially formulated.” She spoke between sucks. “High in Vitamin C. Sour flavor. Helps with the morning sickness.”

This was morning sickness? Undeniable proof of the baby growing in her belly. The baby that was maybe his, maybe not his. But she was definitely making herself known. He felt as if a hand reached into his chest and gave his heart a squeeze.

Kitty swayed a bit, apparently still feeling wobbly, and he automatically reached out a hand to steady her. Her touch on his arm felt weak and trembling. That hand squeezing his heart tightened to a fist.

Before she could protest, he wrapped one arm around her shoulder and gripped her arm with the other, guiding her out of the bathroom to the sofa in her office.

They’d just left the bathroom when her door opened and Marty strolled in. He stopped dead in his tracks, looking from Kitty and back to Ford, then to the open bathroom door through which they’d obviously just walked. Together.

Marty’s gaze narrowed and his cheek muscles twitched into a frown. “I’m glad with all the work we have to do that you two are finding ways to amuse yourselves.”

Ford waited for Kitty to explain her morning sickness. Instead she pressed her body against his side and slithered her arm around his waist. With exaggerated slowness, she pulled the lollipop from her mouth and smiled. Then she slanted him a look meant to turn men rock-hard.

“Me, too,” she murmured with the faintest wink.

Marty gave a disgusted squawk and fled the room, apparently imagining that they were about to go at it again right in front of him.

As soon as the door shut behind him, Kitty sprawled on the sofa, stretching her legs out in front of her indelicately and popping the lollipop back in her mouth with absolutely no artifice.

“Oh, thank God he’s gone. Like my nausea wasn’t bad enough without having to listen to him.”

“You could have explained.”

“Trust me. The last thing I need is Marty feeling sorry for me.” She shuddered with mock disgust, closing her eyes again to concentrate on her lollipop.

Her hand rested on her belly, her fingers absently toying with the swatch of knit that covered the exact spot where he imagined her baby growing. The way she’d stretched across the sofa, her belly appeared perfectly flat with only the gentlest slope to her stomach. No one would guess she was even a day pregnant. She must not be very far along. More than a month, since she’d already taken the test, but not much more. Maybe two.

The recesses of his brain started doing a little involuntary math, but he shoved the thought aside. She’d said it wasn’t his. She was letting him off the hook. That was enough. He didn’t want to be a dad and he sure as hell didn’t want to inflict himself as a father on any poor kid. It wasn’t just him she was letting off the hook. It was all of them. Until she was far enough along to get proof one way or another, he had to take her word for it anyway.

To distract himself from those disconcerting thoughts, he pulled the sketchbook out from under his arm and started flipping through it again.

“What is this?” he asked.

She opened a single eye to gaze at him. When her gaze fell on the sketchbook, she tensed for a second. Then she closed her eye and forced a breath that almost sounded relaxed. “Just doodles.”

“They don’t look like doodles. They look like jewelry designs.”

He held up the page to reveal a sketch of a necklace and earrings. The set was full of intricate curlicues and elaborate swirls in a style that managed to reference Victorian styles while still looking modern.

“It’s just something I drew up. It’s not even very original.”

“What do you mean?” He turned the page to look at the next design.

“I modeled it after some of my grandmother’s old jewelry. The ones I had to sell. Most of the drawings in there came from pieces of my grandmother’s. A swirl here, a flower there. Just bits I combined together from one piece or another.”

He looked up from the drawings. Her free hand still rested on her stomach, but her fingers had started tugging at the knit. Normally Kitty’s innate confidence bordered on arrogance. If he didn’t know better he’d think she was fidgeting.

He flipped to the next page, staring at the image for a moment before turning the page ninety degrees to get a better angle. “Is this a case for an iPhone?”

She pulled in her legs, straightening. “You know not everyone likes their gadgets to look like gadgets.”

It was the same scrolling design as one of the earlier pictures, but this time the perfect size and shape to enclose a cell phone. The page held three drawings, one of the back; the second depicted elegant, tiny, clawed feet, which wrapped around the front of the phone; the third showed the delicate hinges along the side. He could imagine it in gleaming sterling. The overall effect was a brilliant merging of gothic Victorian and geeky tech. Between the clawed feet and the ghoulish tiny gargoyle face on the back, the piece almost had … a sense of humor.

Like the drawing of FMJ gobbling up Kitty.

“Did you think of this?” he asked.

“It’s similar to my great-grandfather’s cigarette case.”

“Wait a second.” He flipped back a few pages to the drawing of the earrings and pendant. He squinted at the scrawled writing he’d dismissed initially. In tiny letters he saw the words Bluetooth? and ear buds? “This isn’t jewelry, is it? These are gadgets. This isn’t a necklace, it’s a case for an MP3 player.”

She reached to pull the sketchbook from his hands. “You don’t need to poke fun at me.”

“I’m not.” He held the book just out of her reach. “I think it’s brilliant.”

Her gaze narrowed in suspicion as she stepped closer to him, still reaching for the notebook. “It’s completely unrealistic.”

“Says who?” he asked.

“Everyone I’ve ever showed it to.”

“Which is?”

“My father. The board of directors. No one’s gonna buy geeky jewelry.”

He scoffed, dismissing her concern. “Let me guess. Your father was one of those guys who thought iPhones would never sell, either.”

She set her jaw at a stubborn angle. “Besides which, Biedermann’s sells jewelry, we don’t make it.” Once again she reached for the notebook. “We don’t have the means or the experience to even do a mock-up of that kind of thing, let alone manufacture it.”

“Biedermann’s doesn’t.” He thumbed through the pages until he returned to the first image that had caught his attention. He flipped the book around to display the picture of FMJ. “But FMJ does.” He grinned. “Sometimes it’s good being the evil monster.”

She blinked in surprise, then chuckled for a second. But then she studied his face, finally pulling the sketchbook from his grasp. “It’s too risky.”

“No, it isn’t. Matt has a whole electrical engineering department that would love to take a whack at this. Let me just fax him a couple of the pages.”

“No.”

“But—”

She turned on him suddenly. “Biedermann’s is practically hemorrhaging money right now. The absolute last thing we need to do is venture into something like this. If we took a risk like this and it failed, we’d never recover.”

“Then the trick is not to fail.”

“That’s so easy for you to say. Everything you touch turns to gold, right? Buy a company, sell a company. It’s all the same. You make millions in your sleep. Besides, if you’re wrong, and Biedermann’s dies off completely, you can still sell off chunks of us to recoup some of your losses. FMJ could probably use the tax write-off anyway. It may not matter to you whether or not Biedermann’s flounders or flourishes, but it matters to me.”

As gently as he could, he said, “You know, Kitty, for someone who claims to be desperate to save Biedermann’s, you’re sure not willing to take many risks to do it.”

“I am willing to take risks. I’m just not willing to risk everything.”

A second later, she’d snatched her purse out of the desk and was gone. And, damn it, she’d taken her sketchbook with her. He was going to have to find a way to get it back, because he was going to send those drawings to Matt. This could be the key to everything. The niche market Biedermann’s was looking for. Not just upscale jewelry, but high fashion accessories for the gadgets nearly every American owned.

Biedermann Jewelry. It’s not just for engagements anymore. He nearly chuckled at his own little joke. This could really work. Between Matt’s electronic genius and Kitty’s artistic brilliance, they could hit a market that no one else had tapped. Biedermann’s would be back on top. And best of all, Kitty would be responsible for that.

He could do this for her. He could fix her professional life.

God knew there wasn’t much he could do for her personal life.

Eight

From the blog of New York gossip columnist Suzy Snark:

Fiddling while Rome burned. Polishing the brass on the Titanic. Both phrases imply great negligence in the face of disaster. New Yorkers may want to add a new idiom to that list: Getting a massage while your company is being bought out.

I know, we usually eschew the nitty gritty business details for outright gossip, but this tidbit was too salacious to keep to myself. Besides, the business geniuses at FMJ have scheduled a press conference for this afternoon to announce their acquisition of Biedermann Jewelry. I thought you might want something to consider while they’re trying to convince their stockholders it’s a good thing they’re squandering their own resources to bail out Ford Langley’s girlfriend.

Readers will be shocked to learn that while Biedermann Jewelry stock prices continue to plummet, heiress Kitty Biedermann continues to receive daily spa treatments. Sources say she spends upward of two thousand dollars a week on mani-pedis and facials. In a time when her personal finances must be taking a hit, that’s got to hurt.

Is the heiress addicted to pampering? Is she simply careless? Or is there something else going on here? Perhaps she sold all her Biedermann stock back when it was still worth something. Too bad she didn’t see fit to tip the rest of us off, as well.

“Is any of this new blog true at all?” Ford asked.

She glanced at the image on his iPhone. Her stomach clenched at the sight of the scarlet swirl at the top of the screen. Another Suzy Snark blog. Just what she needed.

“Ah,” she quipped, trying to sound completely blasé. “Suzy Snark. What fun.” “Have you read it?” “I don’t read trash.”

He held out the iPhone. “You need to read this.”

Panic clutched her stomach. Her gaze darted from the phone to his face. She wanted nothing to do with any of that rubbish.

“Why don’t you try to sum it up for me?” she suggested in her best spoiled-brat voice.

“It accuses you of negligence.” Ford continued to hold out the phone as if he expected that to be all the encouragement she needed.

Though her heart seemed to stutter in her chest, she didn’t reach for the phone. What exactly had Suzy Snark discovered?

Ford continued, his tone full of exasperation. “She says you’ve been spending your days at the spa. Getting massages and pedicures when you should be working.”

“Is that all?” Her heart started thudding again, a rapid tattoo she was sure Ford would be able to hear.

“What do you mean ‘is that all?’ Is there more?” he demanded. “Is there something you’re not telling me?”

Instead of answering, she tried to sidestep the question. “It’s just a stupid gossip blog. You and Jonathon place entirely too much importance on what this woman writes. What does it even matter?”

He shoved his phone back in his pocket. “It matters. It may just be a gossip blog, but who knows how many people read it. This woman maligns you every chance she gets. Has it occurred to you that Suzy Snark may be the reason Biedermann’s stock is in free fall?”

She sucked in a breath. “No. It hasn’t.”

“I did some preliminary research. Every time she posts about you, the stock price dips. Starting with today’s press conference, we’re going to defend you against this woman’s lies. Now why don’t you—”

But he must have seen the truth in her expression, because Ford broke off. He studied her in silence for a moment before slowly shaking his head. “She’s not lying, is she?”

“I wouldn’t know. I didn’t read the blog.”

Ford ignored her comment. “Is she right? Have you really been spending hours of every workday at the spa?”

“I’m not going to defend myself to you.”

“You’re going to have to defend yourself to someone. The fact that you haven’t denied any of this makes me think it must be true.”

“What is it you want me to admit to? Going to the spa sometimes? Fine, I do that. Every woman I know gets regular manicures and pedicures. Most men I know, too. It’s not a crime.”

“No. But if you’re doing it during office hours, every day, then it looks bad. It looks like you’re not doing your job. It looks like you don’t care about the company. And if you don’t care about it, then why should anyone else?”

“Is that what you think? That I don’t care about Biedermann’s? I would do anything for Biedermann’s.”

“So you keep saying. But, frankly, I’m not seeing it.”

“Are you kidding me? Since I took over as CEO, I’ve poured everything I have into this business. I’ve spent every waking moment trying to educate myself on how to be the best CEO I can. I’ve listened to every damn business book published in the last decade, from Barbarians at the Gate to The 4-Hour Workweek, none of which have been remotely helpful, by the way. I’ve worked eighty-hour weeks. I’ve abandoned my social life completely.

“None of that made any difference. The stock price just kept going down. So I decided to buy whatever stock I could in hopes of keeping the price up. I liquidated all of my assets. Sold everything I had. Furniture, art, jewelry. Things that had been in the family for generations. I quietly auctioned it off piece by piece. A year ago, I moved out of the townhouse where I grew up, where Biedermanns had lived for over a hundred years. I sold it and moved into a walk-up.”

To her embarrassment, her voice, which had been rising in pitch steadily, broke on the word walk-up. She knew where she lived was the least of her worries, but somehow it signified all the things wrong in her life.

Knowing she was being ridiculous didn’t make it sting any less when he said, “Come on, you make it sound like life without a doorman just isn’t worth living. Surely it’s not that bad.”

“Have you ever lived without a doorman?” she asked.

“I live in a craftsman remodel down by campus in Palo Alto,” he deadpanned. “I’ve never had a doorman in my life.”

“Well, I now live on the fourth floor in a building without an elevator. I grew up with staff, for cripes sake. Our housekeeper worked for my family for forty-five years. After I let Maggie go, she couldn’t even afford to pay the tuition for her granddaughter’s college.”

Maggie had been like family. No, more than that. To a girl who’d never known her mother, Maggie had been family. And Kitty had had to fire her. Sweet Maggie had tried to comfort her, made her hot tea and murmured optimist platitudes like, I’ve always wanted to travel. Maggie had been too proud to accept a handout once she was no longer employed, so Kitty had done the only thing she could do. She’d tracked down Maggie’s granddaughter and hired her at Biedermann’s.

“Then why did you sell the house?” Ford was asking her. “And if you had to sell it, why not move someplace nicer?”

At his question, she bumped her chin up defiantly.

“Because,” she shot back. “When the stock price started to drop, I couldn’t just stand by and do nothing. So I bought as much as I could. And then when it kept dropping, I couldn’t even pay the taxes on the townhouse. Selling the house was the only option.”

“You should never have invested your personal assets in—”

“I know that, okay?” she snapped. “I was trying to help Biedermann’s and I made a stupid mistake. I’m really good at making stupid mistakes, thank you very much.”

It was just one of many, many stupid mistakes. Sometimes she felt buried under the weight of them.

“I’m just trying to—” he began.

But she cut him off with a belligerent glare. “I don’t need your help.”

He talked over her protests. “If Biedermann’s really does go under, you’ll have lost everything.”

What could she say to that? All she could do was shake her head and blink back the tears. “If Biedermann’s really does go under, then I’ve lost everything anyway.”

But that wasn’t entirely true anymore, was it? She’d have the baby. She’d have the family she’d always wanted. It was a small consolation that was turning into everything.

“So tell me this,” he said. “If you’re so desperate to keep Biedermann’s afloat, why this elaborate act? Why don’t you want anyone to know what you’re doing? Why spend your days at the spa getting massages and facials? You’ve got to know how bad that looks.”

She met his gaze. “I can’t—” she began before breaking off. Then she swept a hand across her forehead, pushing her hair out of her face. “I can’t explain that.”

“Well, try. Make me understand what’s going on here. Give me something, anything, that makes this make sense.”

“This is just what I do.”

Whenever the influx of written material got too much to handle, she took Casey, went to the spa and had her assistant read aloud to her. The paperwork was so overwhelming. Business documents were the worst. She just couldn’t wrap her head around the pages and pages of words. Listening to them read aloud helped. But what kind of CEO had her assistant read everything aloud? Christ, it was like she was a preschooler at story time. How could she explain that to Ford?

Instead she said, “It’s like a … a coping mechanism or something.”

“You mean the massages are a way of relieving stress?”

She all but threw up her hands in frustration. “No. I mean, I was raised never to reveal my weaknesses. You always have to keep up appearances.”

“I don’t understand.”

“No. Of course you wouldn’t. My mother died when I was young. My father was completely loving and indulgent, but Biedermann’s always came first, so he wasn’t around a lot. I was raised by my grandmother, who was already well into her sixties when I was born. It . . “

She struggled for words. Finally she finished with, “It made for an unusual upbringing. I grew up in the 1990s, but really, it’s like I was raised in the 1950s. To my grandmother, appearances were everything. I know she loved me, but in the world she lived in, you never let anyone see your weaknesses. You never aired your dirty laundry.”

And a child with a disability—a child who was imperfect—was the ultimate dirty laundry. She’d been such an embarrassment to her whole family. Such a disappointment. How could she stand disappointing anyone else?

“So, going to the spa is your way of whistling in the graveyard? Of pretending everything is okay when it obviously isn’t? You’re not fooling anyone.”

“I fooled you, didn’t I?”

“You didn’t fool me so much as make me doubt your sanity.” His words were like a slap. He must have regretted them, because he sighed and scrubbed a hand down his face. “Look, you’ve got to defend yourself against Suzy Snark’s allegations. Whoever she is, you’ve got to let people know she’s wrong about you.”

“And tell them what? That I was completely unprepared to take over as CEO? That I have no discernible leadership skills? That I have nothing to offer the company at all? How would admitting any of that help matters?”

“At least people would know you cared,” he said finally.

Then she sighed, suddenly exhausted by the conversation. “My pride is all I have left.”

For someone who’d lived her life in the public eye, Kitty seemed surprisingly nervous during the press conference. He doubted that anyone in the press noticed.

They stood side by side, along with Jonathon and Marty, a united front against the questions of the press. After he’d made the initial speech about FMJ’s decision to acquire Biedermann Jewelry, Jonathon had stepped forward to outline the basis of FMJ’s financial plan for Biedermann’s.

As Jonathon spoke, Ford stopped listening. It was all stuff they’d discussed before. Instead he focused his attention on Kitty. She stood beside him, dressed in a gray pin-striped dress that wrapped around her waist. It managed to mimic the feel of a business suit, but its curve-hugging lines looked outrageously feminine. Her hair fell in dark, glossy waves, shadowing one side of her face. Bright red lipstick highlighted the bow of her lips. She looked like she’d stepped out of a Maxim photo shoot. A teenage boy’s idea of how a woman should look in the workplace. A sexpot in a business suit.

Probably every man in the audience was mentally undressing her.

Hell, he wasn’t a teenager and even his body had leaped in response to the sight of her. He’d had to battle some primitive urge to drape his jacket around her shoulders and bundle her back to her office, where he could strip her dress from her body and worship her like an acolyte.

At least until he’d noticed how nervous she was. Outwardly, she seemed fine. More than fine, actually. The press no doubt saw the confident, beautiful—if a little overblown—woman that she intended for them to see. That he’d seen at first glance.

It was only at second glance that the illusion began to slip. Her smile, though open and alluring, was a little stiff. It was too unwavering. There was no play about her lips.

This wasn’t just nerves. This was perfectly contained, well-schooled nerves. This was someone who spent a great deal of time and energy learning to hide her panic.

The idea that Kitty—so composed, so polished and poised—might be fighting panic knocked him off balance. So off balance, in fact, that he let the press conference go on much longer than it should have.

Before he knew it, there was a blond reporter who looked about twenty-two saying, “Ms. Biedermann, when your father died unexpectedly last year, you were obviously woefully unprepared to take over as CEO of Biedermann Jewelry. Can you explain why you insisted on serving in a position you have neither the skill nor the training to hold? And furthermore, how do you answer allegations that it’s your gross incompetence that has led to Biedermann’s current predicament?”

Ford kept waiting for Kitty to interrupt the reporter. Sure, Kitty was obviously nervous. But he’d seen the subtle signs of nervousness from her on other occasions in which she’d gone on to cheerfully lambaste him.

From what he’d seen, Kitty never backed down from a fight and never took crap from anyone. So he was blindsided when the reporter made it past the phrase “woefully unprepared” without getting the verbal equivalent of a body slam. Why wasn’t Kitty defending herself?

By the time he heard the phrase “gross incompetence” he was done waiting for Kitty to don her own boxing gloves. He stepped up to the microphone. “If there are any signs of gross incompetence, I haven’t seen them. FMJ would not have invested this kind of money in a company whose leadership we questioned.”

“Then is FMJ merely investing in Biedermann’s?” a different reporter asked. “Or can we expect you to do your signature restructuring and complete overhaul?”

“We’ll be announcing some very exciting things for the stores soon.” He flashed his best charming smile. “I promise you this, within a year everyone in this room will be shopping at Biedermann’s.”

“And about rumors that this acquisition is fueled by a romantic relationship between you and Ms. Biedermann?” This question was again from the annoying blond.

Ford shot Kitty a glance to see if she was finally going to light into the woman, only to see Kitty still had that deer-in-the-headlights look.

So he ducked his head and gave the reporters his most boyishly mischievous smile. “Well, you found me out. This is all just a ruse to ask Kitty Biedermann out on a date. I figured a techie geek from California like me wouldn’t have a shot with a blue blood like Kitty Biedermann. Hell, I couldn’t even get her to return my phone calls before.” A chuckle rumbled through the audience of reporters. “But seriously, my relationship with Ms. Biedermann is purely professional. On my first night in town she took pity on me and allowed me to accompany her to the Children’s Medical Foundation fundraiser. We attended as business colleagues.”

“So you’re not the father of her baby?”

“Ms. Biedermann’s personal life is a private matter. Let’s keep this about business.”

And with that, Jonathon took the cue to wrap up the press conference. A few minutes later, Ford guided Kitty out the room and whisked her up to her office. By the time he had her alone, his shock had given way to anger.

“What the hell was that?” he asked even as he slammed the door shut behind them.

She spun around, her eyes wide. “What?”

“The way you behaved out there with the press.

That’s what.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” she stammered.

She pressed a palm to her stomach as if to still the fluttering in her belly. He grabbed her by the wrist and held her hand out between them. “Look at you. You’re shaking.”

She jerked her hand away and thrust it behind her back. “So what if I am? Those things make me nervous.”

“Yeah. I noticed. But that’s no excuse for letting that reporter walk all over you.”

Kitty glared at him. “What was I supposed to do?”

“You were supposed to defend yourself.”

“How could I defend myself? She was badgering me with questions. There was nothing I could do.”

“Kitty, I’ve watched you go toe-to-toe with a drunken rancher twice your size. Hell, every time we meet you try to rip me a new one. You know how to hold your own in a fight. That ninety-pound reporter shouldn’t have had a chance.”

She turned away, obviously searching for an explanation that would placate him. Finally she said simply, “That reporter was telling the truth.”

“About us?” he asked. “We agreed what happened between us is nobody’s business but our own. If you had a problem lying in a press conference, you should have told me that before—”

“Not about us,” she interrupted. “About me.” Again she turned away from him, but this time he sensed it was because she couldn’t bring herself to meet his gaze. “All those things she said about me were true.”

“Kitty—”

“About me being ‘woefully unprepared.’” There was a disparaging sneer in her voice. “About my gross incompetence. It’s all true.”

He stared at the stiff lines of her back, barely comprehending her words. She looked like someone waiting to be hit.

For a moment he could only stare at her while he sorted through his confusion. “What do you mean? You’re not incompetent.”

“You only think that because I do such a good job hiding it. But I don’t know what I’m doing. I wasn’t prepared to run Biedermann’s. The board never should have named me CEO.”

“Kitty, being a CEO is a difficult job. People are rarely prepared for it. In your situation it was worse because your father’s death was so unexpected and you were grieving for him. I’m sure it feels overwhelming. But that doesn’t make you incompetent.”

She glanced over her shoulder, sending him a watery smile. Where those tears in her eyes?

“You’re not listening to me. No amount of preparation would have been enough. I’m just not smart enough.”

And then he made his biggest mistake. He laughed.

She flinched. Exactly as if she’d been slapped. She was facing the windows again, so he didn’t see her expression, but he would bet those tears were spilling down her cheeks by now.

He wanted to cross the room to her, take her in his arms and offer her comfort, but he knew that stubborn pride enough to know she wouldn’t want him to see her crying. He wouldn’t add insult to injury by making her face him.

“Kitty, I’m sorry, but the idea that you’re not smart is ridiculous.”

“Ford—”

“I’ve listened to you verbally skewer just about everyone you talk to. You can work a crowd like no one I’ve ever seen. Anyone who can hold their own in a room full of wealthy socialites could not possibly be stupid. If you weren’t smart, believe me, I’d have noticed by now.”

She shot him an exasperated look. “Why are you arguing with me about this? When my father and grandmother were still alive, they protected me the best they could. When my father died unexpectedly, I should have had the sense to step aside. But I was selfish. I love this company more than anything. I thought that would be enough. But I only made a mess of things.”

She seemed so dejected, so unlike her normal self, he reached out a hand to her, but she deftly slipped out of his reach.

“You mentioned at the press conference that you’d be doing some restructuring. If you really intend to do everything in your power to ensure Biedermann’s is financially viable, then you’ll fire me.”

Nine

“What the hell is up with Kitty?”

Ford cornered Casey looking for some answers. Casey glanced up from the pot of coffee she was making just as Ford shut the door to the break room.

Casey slanted him a look from under her shaggy bangs. “Do you mean, like, today? Or ever?”

The previous times he’d spoken to Casey, she’d impressed him as being little more than a surly reprobate. He’d wondered how such a girl had gotten a job at Biedermann’s, let alone kept it. Nevertheless, the best way to get the dirt on someone was through his or her assistant. Besides, she seemed to be the only person Kitty might confide in.

So Ford flashed Casey a sympathetic smile. “Kitty must be pretty tough to work for, huh?”

The girl’s characteristic frown darkened to a full-fledged glower as she shoved the coffeepot onto the heating element and flicked the on/off toggle. “If you’re just looking to talk trash about Kitty, you’ll have to find someone else. I’m not into that kind of negative bonding. This job’s too important to me.”

He held up his hands in a gesture of innocence. “I was just trying to be sympathetic.”

“You were just trying to dig for information,” Casey said shrewdly as she pulled a clean coffee mug from the cabinet.

“Maybe I was,” he admitted, more than a little surprised by Casey’s show of loyalty. Since the negative bonding Casey had accused him of obviously wasn’t going to work, he decided to take a different tack. “Kitty’s not always the most forthcoming person. I’m trying to figure her out. That doesn’t make me the enemy.”

Casey shot him a suspicious look, but said nothing as she poured cream and then sugar into the mug. She sent an equally dark look at the coffeemaker, which was gurgling slowly. Poor girl was obviously torn between her need for caffeine and her desire to storm out in a huff.

“I’m trying to help her. But I can’t do that unless I understand what’s going on. Something’s—”

“You’re trying to get her fired.”

“I’m not.” Hell, that was the last thing he wanted. Keeping Kitty employed and well taken care of would at least minimize his guilt. “I’m trying to save her job. But she’s not giving me anything to work with. She’s—”

“She’s too proud,” Casey said quietly, without meeting his gaze.

“Exactly.” Encouraged by the lack of belligerence in Casey’s tone, he pressed on. “Do you have any idea why she would think I should fire her?”

“She said that?” Casey’s voice held a note of panic.

Wasn’t that interesting. “You’re really worried about her losing her job.”

“Hey, I know what people around here think. That she’s such a b—” Casey broke off and seemed to be considering the hazards of cussing in front of the man who was ultimately her boss. “Such a witch—” she corrected “—to work for that I’m the best she can get. But it’s not like that.”

Ford said nothing. He’d wondered himself how exactly a surly, semicompetent girl like Casey had landed a prime job like the assistant to the CEO of a major company.

“She’s the best boss I ever had,” Casey continued. “And if I lost this job, I’m guessing I’d lose the scholarship, too.”

“The scholarship?”

“Yeah. The scholarship that pays tuition for community college for all Biedermann employees. ‘Cause there’s no way I could pay for college on my own. I’d have to drop out of HCCC.” “Oh. That scholarship.”

He’d read just about everything on Biedermann company policy, and he’d never heard of an employee scholarship. Which made him think Kitty was paying for this girl’s college out of her own pocket. Kitty, who’d had to sell her home and had auctioned off family heirlooms, was paying the tuition of this ill-mannered, unskilled girl.

Was Kitty … softhearted? It was easier to imagine the Dalai Lama sponsoring an Ultimate Fighting match.

But what other explanation was there?

He shoved a hand through his hair. Damn it, why did she have to be so full of contradictions? Why did she have to be fragile one moment, all bristly defenses the next? Why couldn’t she just be the manipulative witch that everyone thought she was? That would make his life so much easier.

If he ever wanted to be free of Kitty and all the complicated emotions she stirred up, he was going to have to find a way to save Biedermann’s. And save Kitty’s job.

And apparently Casey’s job, too.

“Look,” he said to Casey. “I’m trying to do the right thing here. Not just for the company, but for Kitty, too. If you help me out, if you help me understand what’s going on here, I’ll make sure you don’t lose your job. Or your scholarship.”

Even if he had to start paying the girl’s tuition himself. And wouldn’t that be just great. ‘Cause all he needed in his life was one more woman dependent on him.

Casey pursed her lips and studied him. “What do you want to know?”

“Kitty told me her father never expected her to run Biedermann’s. Do you know why?”

Casey shook her head. “No. I never met the old man, ‘cause I was hired after he died. But office gossip is he always wanted her to marry someone who’d take over as CEO. You ask me, it’s why that skeezie Marty is so mean to her.”

“You think Marty expected to be made CEO?”

She shook her head, pouring coffee into her mug now that the maker had finally stopped dripping. “Haven’t you noticed that icky way he looks at her? Like she’s his golden lottery ticket or something. I think he wanted to marry her himself.” Casey jabbed her coffee with a spoon and gave it a brisk stir. “That guy creeps me out.”

Ford felt a sucker punch of jealousy. He struggled to bury it. Kitty’s love life wasn’t his business. Or so he kept telling himself. Still, he found himself asking, “Did she and Marty ever go out?”

That was not him giving in to his curiosity. If Marty was smarting from a broken heart, that might be motivation enough for him to make things unpleasant for Kitty. He might even be leaking information about Kitty to Suzy Snark.

“Naw.” Casey waved her hand, dismissing the possibility. “Kitty wouldn’t stoop that low.” But then Casey tilted her head to the side, considering. “But Marty isn’t, you know, smart about women. And you know what Kitty’s like. Marty might have thought she was hitting on him.”

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