“Hungry?”
She had to raise her voice to be heard over the sound of rushing water .

“Starving, but I really have to be going,” he yelled back.

Sure you do . Against her better judgment, she hovered outside the bathroom door. She couldn’t resist the urge to go in and talk to him—but he was in the bathroom. He deserved his privacy. And he’d be naked. But what the heck, it was her clear shower stall and it wasn’t like they’d been playing tiddlywinks all night. She’d seen him as naked as he could get.

She stepped in.

He was wet and golden and amazing, skin glowing as he scrubbed it down under the steaming flow. She was sidetracked for a moment, watching him. Back turned to her, he bent over to soap his feet…oh, my. Whoever said that men were more easily aroused by visual stimuli didn’t know what they were talking about. Could any woman ever get tired of such a sight? Then she remembered her purpose for entering. “You’re sure I can’t offer you anything? Coffee?”

He turned to her, water dripping off his eyelashes and down his lips. “I’d love to, honey, but time’s against me.”

MILLS & BOON

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SIMONA TAYLOR

lives on her native Caribbean island of Trinidad—a fertile place for dreaming up scorching, sun-drenched romance novels. She balances a career in public relations with a family of two small children and one very patient man, while feeding her obsession with writing.

She has also published three works of women’s literary fiction under her real name, Roslyn Carrington, but it is her passion for romance that most consumes her. When not dreaming up drool-worthy heroes, she updates her Web site, www.scribble-scribble.com.

Meet Me in Paris
Simona Taylor

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Once again, for Rawle and our two little funny-bunnies.

Thank you for the beautiful life we’ve built together.

Hey folks,

Those of you who read my blog, The Scribble Pad, know I’m a scatterbrain. I’m always carrying on about something or other that I forgot to do or said when I shouldn’t have. Well, what with my freelance work, my kids, my books, my blog, my passionate love affair with my kitchen, my reconciliation with my herb garden after a bitter breakup, my pets and the hunky love of my life, who wouldn’t be a flake?

But you want to know how forgetful I was this time? I came this close to shipping off the manuscript for Meet Me in Paris without my “Dear Reader” letter. I must be nuts! This letter is one of the rewards for finishing the book. Why? Because I get to talk to you live and direct. One of the other rewards? When you talk back.

Over the past four years or so, I’ve worked at turning my Web site and blog (at www.scribble-scribble.com) into a fun community. You really ought to pass by and say hi.

I’m also reaching out to readers’ groups from all over the world, just to find out what they’ve been reading and to let them know what I’m working on next. If you want to be on my mailing list, drop me a line. You can e-mail me (come on, tell me what you thought about Meet Me in Paris! ) at roslyn@scribble-scribble.com.

You can also snail-mail the love to me at:

Roslyn Carrington

(or Simona Taylor, I can live with either one)

P.O. Bag #528

Maloney Post Office

Maloney

Trinidad and Tobago

and I’ll bounce some right back.

Till then, take care.

Simona

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 1

Gonna Be One of Those Days

F irst, there was the pantyhose. The last pair of pantyhose in the drawer, and silk ones at that. The last pair in the whole apartment, and considering the current state of Kendra’s finances, the last one she’d be wearing until payday rolled around—and they had a run. Not a dinky, fix-it-with-a-dab-of-nail-polish sort of run, either. It was the kind of run that should be more truthfully described as a ladder, and a four-alarm fire engine ladder to boot.

Then there was the scorch mark on her silk blouse, a Japanese designer original, put there by Kendra herself when, in her irritation over the pantyhose, she’d accidentally set the iron to Wool rather than Silk. The mark snuggled in her left armpit, almost indiscernible, but it was a crime to ruin anything that gorgeous.

Naturally, when Kendra arrived at the towering Farrar-Chase building on Blackburn Boulevard, the elevator was down again. The cab sat forlornly in the lobby, its doors dismantled and its guts exposed, like the victim of a woeful accident. Workmen in blue coveralls stood around drinking coffee and solemnly contemplating the problem.

Kendra’s workplace, the head office of the Wanderlust chain—renamed from Salomon’s Travel and Tours a few months ago, when the new owner blew into town like a tornado—was on the sixteenth floor. Universe 3-Kendra nil. She sighed and began to climb the stairs.

By the time she reached her floor, it was nine-fourteen. Near the swinging glass doors, Mrs. Mertz was lurking, like a ferret who’d heard a rumor that there were nice fat mice on the loose. Lurking and smiling. No, not smiling, smirking. Her lipstick was a scary, bloodied scarlet, the same shade she had been wearing for years. Kendra was sure it was the only color she owned. “Nine-fifteen,” Mrs. Mertz said. She tapped her watch, in case Kendra hadn’t cottoned to the fact that she was talking about the time.

“Fourteen,” Kendra corrected, and pointed to the wall clock. Childish, she knew, but the woman always made her feel like a kid.

“Whatever. You’re still late.” Her too-long eye teeth were tipped with red.

Kendra suppressed a shudder and hurried to her desk, ripping off her favorite Hermès scarf and, more reluctantly, her gorgeous Balenciaga coat, as it bared her laddered stocking for all to see.

Then Iris walked in, and Kendra felt a thumping at her temple, like the band striking up moments before the Titanic hit the iceberg. She hadn’t even had her coffee yet. Iris’s homing device led her unerringly toward Kendra’s cluttered desk. “Busy?” she asked, and sat without waiting for an answer.

Kendra liked Iris well enough. The older woman was as cheerful as they came, although her voice rose half an octave or so above the threshold of human tolerance. But, as many women did when they were flushed with the newfound joys of wifedom and motherhood, she waxed lyrical about the most unsettling things…and did so at great length.

“Uh…” Kendra hit the power button on her computer, knowing even as she did so that the old heap would take forever to get going. “A little,” she hedged, all the while silently yelling, “Hurry, hurry! Boot up!”

Iris smelled of lavender bath salts and Cheez Whiz spread. She was wearing a necklace of spray-painted pasta elbows strung together with odd-shaped lumps of clay by her four-year-old. She wore it as reverently as if it were a string of pearls. On her right shoulder was the grubby handprint of her eighteen-month-old. It was Monday, and that inevitably meant Kendra would be treated to an expansive rundown of the weekend’s antics by the tireless duo. She braced herself.

Iris leaned forward, eyes shining. “You won’t believe this.”

Try me , Kendra didn’t say.

“Zachary did a huge poop last night.”

Kendra nearly fell off her chair. “What?”

“He did a huge poop.” She demonstrated with her hands—as if Kendra needed a visual. “And took his diaper off. All by himself. Then he showed it to us!”

Iris was smiling. Waiting for her to say something. Kendra coughed, searching for an appropriate response, but all she could come up with was, “Oh, really?”

“Right in the middle of Tony’s cocktail party, would you believe it? Everyone was so impressed. He’s so smart for his age. And then he marched inside, and brought out the tub of baby wipes.”

Kendra fished frantically in her In-box. “Wonder if the mail guy passed,” she said, a little louder than necessary. There was nothing there but today’s paper. “Where is he?” All of a sudden the impending appearance—or inexplicable nonappearance—of the mail guy took on a disproportionate importance.

Iris amused herself during Kendra’s mini panic attack by fiddling with the array of knickknacks littering the desk, an assortment of souvenirs from far-flung places in the world. They were gifts from Kendra’s grateful clients for trips she had arranged. In the year or so since she moved here, she had become one of the best sales agents Salomon’s Travel and Tours—or, rather, Wanderlust—had. She loved people, and it gave her the greatest pleasure to hand select the best holiday packages around for the company’s small list of wealthy and fussy clients. They’d been assigned to her since her promotion from sales representative to special accounts executive.

The computer finally obliged and chimed out its little welcome. Kendra tried not to look too relieved. This minor but significant event had no effect whatsoever on Iris, who had moved from a purple koala from New Zealand to a small Bahraini hookah made of brass. Kendra tried again. “Busy around here, huh?” That was when she noticed that, far from being simply a broad hint, her comment was disconcertingly true.

She looked around. A soft buzz hovered above the heads of the employees occupying the twenty or so cubicles on the floor. Many were on their phones, and from the low, excited chatter, she suspected they were talking to each other.

“You betcha, it’s busy! Hammond’s snarling mad. He’s got poor Petreena jumping through hoops. Making phone calls, running around looking for documents…something’s going down. And from what I hear, it isn’t pretty.”

Kendra felt a chilly dread settle upon her shoulders. She looked up. One of Shel Salomon’s brilliant ideas had been to erect the CEO’s office on a huge loft overlooking the general working area, and to construct it almost entirely of glass. That way, he could—and frequently did—sit at his desk and look out onto the floor, like a lion on a hillock surveying his pride.

The disadvantage, as Trey Hammond learned, was that, while the occupant watched his staff, they could—and frequently did—watch him. Because the new owner was a looker. With his long legs and lean, athletic build, he was the hottest stranger to ride into Santa Amata in ages. He had dark brown hair with a hint of warm highlights, skin the exact color of the filling in a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup, and charcoal gray eyes—gray eyes! And—the girls sighed—he had the most beautiful smile.

When he’d arrived, the whole office—practically the whole building—had gone into a frenzy of speculative whispers. Half the unmarried women, and a few of the married ones, related breathlessly to each other the details of their briefest encounters. In the elevator, in the lounge, at the cooler or the coffeemaker—everyone wanted to know who this newcomer was. And why hadn’t he crashed into their lives earlier?

He was up in his glass box now, and Iris was right, he didn’t look happy. Kendra watched with growing unease as he paced the carpeted floor, arms outstretched, gesticulating forcefully as he talked. Even from all the way down here, he was larger than life. The fine tailoring of his navy suit emphasized his height, and his obvious agitation made him seem to fill the large office. Hammond’s executive assistant, Petreena Rai, swayed as she tried to continue facing her boss, even as he wore a path into the gold rug.

Kendra began to feel ill. “What d’you think he’s mad about?”

Iris leaned forward. “Talk around the water cooler says he was in all weekend with the external auditors.”

Auditors? Oh no.

“Talk says someone’s been robbing the company blind!” Iris waited eagerly for Kendra’s scandalized reaction, maybe for a little more information to feed back into the rumor mill.

Oh…God. I’m going to throw up.

Head hurting, mouth dry, Kendra stood and wheeled past Iris, her only thought being to make it to the bathroom before she embarrassed herself.

Iris swiveled in her chair, concerned. “What’s wrong?”

Bathroom, Kendra thought. Bathroom!

“Need some water? You aren’t…” she looked around to see if anyone was listening, and then hissed in a voice that would unavoidably be heard by anyone who was, “You aren’t pregnant, are you?”

Kendra managed to shake her head. Her phone started ringing.

“Want me to answer that? Want a paper bag for your head?”

Only if it comes with a cyanide pill, Kendra thought.

The phone stopped ringing. Kendra evaded Iris and hurried up the corridor. The ladies’ room, and refuge, were in sight. Mrs. Mertz loomed, cutting off any hope of escape. “Miss Forrest! Didn’t you hear your phone?”

“No, I…” Kendra answered weakly. “I…uh…was on my way to the ladies’ room. I didn’t—”

“I was calling you.”

“I’m…sorry?”

“Mr. Hammond wants to see you in his office.” This seemed to make her extremely happy.

Kendra hesitated, looking past the woman’s angular shoulder to the swinging door with its familiar icon, a white-painted female in a triangular skirt. Had she been three seconds faster, she would have been on the other side of that door.

Mrs. Mertz followed Kendra’s longing gaze to the bathroom door. “You’re just going to have to hold it.”

Just going to have to hold it? On any other day, she would have laughed off the directive, suggested to Mrs. Mertz that a cup of tea might improve her mood, and continued on her intended trajectory.

But not today.

Wordlessly, she turned, the terror that had replaced her initial dread eliminating any need to hit the bathroom anyway. She walked back into the main working area. Past her own desk. Mercifully, Iris had left. As she mounted the curved staircase leading to the CEO’s office, she wondered briefly what Marie Antoinette must have felt like as she climbed the scaffold. At least the peasants weren’t hurling insults and rotten cabbages in her general direction. Yet.

The big glass door was etched with the words, T REY H AMMOND , C HIEF E XECUTIVE O FFICER . Beyond it, she could see Hammond and Petreena. The latter was still agitatedly clutching her notepad, reading aloud from it. The former had stopped pacing, and was standing stock still. He was looking right at her.

In one imperious gesture, he motioned for her to enter. The soft pile of the carpet was familiar, as were the warm earth tones of the decor—harvest gold and pumpkin, olive green and cranberry. That was one thing Hammond hadn’t gotten around to changing in the rampage of evaluation and modification he’d gone on.

The warmth of the office was in stark contrast to the demeanor of its occupant. Trey Hammond couldn’t have been thirty-five, but his conservative suit made him seem older. His face was as somber as a graveyard. “Miss Forrest?” he confirmed.

“Yes.” By rights, she should have extended her hand to shake his, but something told her he wouldn’t be keen on taking it. She kept it at her side.

“Have a seat,” he said. It was not a request.

In spite of her churning stomach, Kendra raised her head and held his stare. “I prefer to stand.”

He lifted his shoulders and let them fall. “Suit yourself.” The desk between them was littered with files, documents, and boxes of papers. Right before him, however, in a clear space among the rubble, was a manila folder.

He opened it and removed a single sheet of paper, glanced at it, and lifted his eyes to hers. The much-discussed gray eyes were now a flat, cold, gunmetal gray that sent chills down Kendra’s back. Hammond held the document out to her.

When she didn’t take it, he set it down, turning it around so she could read it. It was printed on the letterhead of a large and respected auditing firm, and appeared to be the cover sheet of the report that still lay in the folder. The word “fraud” leaped out at her.

When Hammond spoke again, she couldn’t bear to look up. His voice was clipped, cold and disdainful. “Miss Forrest,” he began, “can you give me one good reason I shouldn’t call the police?”

Chapter 2

Busted

D eny, deny, deny. The liar’s mantra. Even in the face of overwhelming evidence of your guilt, deny. But she was a lousy liar. Hell, she wasn’t even a good thief. The piece of paper between them was a stark, accusing white. She looked away. As she did so, she caught sight of Petreena, standing anxiously nearby, head dipped, avoiding the unpleasant scene.

Kendra tried to catch her eye, pleading silently for the smallest gesture of support, but Petreena determinedly avoided her. If there was to be any tarring and feathering, she was loath to come anywhere near the brush.

Hammond caught the wordless exchange, and was merciful, at least toward Petreena. “Miss Rai, would you leave us?”

Petreena was off like a bullet, scurrying as fast as her pencil skirt—an excellent Givenchy knockoff that would have fooled anyone who didn’t have Kendra’s discerning eye—would let her.

Then Kendra and Hammond were alone. More damning papers appeared from some infernal place. Kendra recognized most of them.

“As you’ve probably heard, I’ve been meeting with managers, examining the books, and conducting a series of audits.” He waved his hand. “Standard procedure after any takeover. Helps me understand where the company is and decide how I’m going to take it where I want. One of the auditors noticed something.”

He stabbed at a piece of paper with a long finger. “Over the past few months, five payment vouchers were made up to cash, signed off and settled. All were charged to accounts you’re responsible for, but my auditors inform me there’s no way of determining whether the services being invoiced were rendered. Have they?”

Kendra said nothing.

“You should know, Miss Forrest. The signature on the vouchers is yours, I presume?” He waved one of the documents before her face. She flinched, but didn’t need to look at it. Instead, she nodded.

“Have these services been rendered?” He didn’t raise his voice, but the dangerous chill conveyed his anger. “Because if you’re unable to verify otherwise, I’ll have to assume the beneficiary of these payments—fourteen thousand, six hundred and eleven dollars in payments—is you.”

Kendra expelled the breath she’d been holding. It hurt.

“So, let me ask you once again, is there any reason, any reason you can give me, why I shouldn’t call the police?”

“Don’t,” she managed. “Please.”

“Why not?”

She hated the way he was looking at her, taking in her short, glass-smooth pixie cut, carefully made-up face and hand-tailored business suit. The run in her pantyhose felt incongruous in comparison. His eyes moved to the emerald studs in her ears, and then to the matching tennis bracelet, pendant and ring. Her wristwatch wasn’t one of a kind, but it was limited edition. She wondered if he could recognize Prada when he saw it.

From the contempt on his face, she was quite sure he could. “Why not?” he persisted. “An orange jumpsuit not your style? You got a problem with the county not providing emerald-studded handcuffs for its inmates?”

“That’s unfair!”

“Unfair? Is fraud fair? And what about stealing money, falsifying invoices and milking your own employer, not once, not twice, but five times? How fair’s that?”

“You don’t understand!”

“What don’t I understand?” He was asking a question, but he looked as though no answer she could give him would satisfy. “Did you or didn’t you steal the money?”

“I’m not a thief!”

“Did you steal the money?” he roared.

“Yes!” she shouted back with equal amounts of chagrin and affront. Nobody raised their voice at her!

He gave her a cynical, satisfied smile. “Well, then, that makes you a thief.”

Even in the face of her own guilt, she was mulish. “You can’t talk to me that way.”

“I can, and I am. And I have to say I’m disappointed. Your employee record is impeccable. Mrs. Mertz says you’re a hard and productive worker….”

Kendra lifted her brows in surprise. Mrs. Mertz had said that?

“And it seems you’ve been promoted to special accounts executive faster than any employee in the history of the company. Even Shel Salomon seemed to like you. And you do something like this to him. He’s going to be disappointed.”

Kendra’s heart sank. “You’re going to tell him?”

“Why shouldn’t I? In the few months we held negotiations, I’ve never known him to be anything other than a fair, decent human being.”

“He’s a wonderful person,” she confirmed. “I’ve got nothing but respect—”

“You’ve got a fine way of showing it. He deserved more than to be gouged by a greedy, unscrupulous—” He halted his tirade with a sharp inhalation. Then he gathered up the documents—the evidence against her—and began replacing them in the folder. “So, what’s it to be? Cops?”

“No!”

Hammond’s eyes bored into her terrified ones. He seemed to be thinking. Kendra sensed she was balanced, barefoot, on the edge of a sharp sword. Which way would he make her fall?

“Very well,” he said finally. He picked up the phone and dialed. “Mrs. Mertz, Miss Forrest is leaving us. Could you kindly supervise her as she cleans out her desk?”

“You’re firing me?” she gasped.

He looked surprised that she had expected anything less. “Verbally, for the time being. You’ll have formal, written notification from human resources delivered to your home by courier this afternoon. But right now I want you off the premises.”

“But you can’t. I need this job. I need the money!”

His gaze swept her clothes and jewelry again. “Obviously, you’re a woman of expensive tastes. Nonetheless, I’m sure you’ll agree I can’t afford to keep an untrustworthy employee on staff.”

She was outraged by the slur. “I am not—”

He cut her off with an upraised hand, as though he’d had his fill of the unpleasantness and wanted to bring an end to it. “If I were you, I’d consider myself lucky the company isn’t pursuing prosecution.” He gave her a hard, dismissive look. “If I were you, I’d leave quietly.”

“But….” She flailed, unable to comprehend what was happening. Shock made her giddy.

“Good day, Miss Forrest.” He sat heavily in his big chair, and folded his hands on his desk. His expression invited neither opposition nor further conversation.

Struggling to maintain her balance, Kendra turned and walked away. Mrs. Mertz was waiting outside the door. Kendra expected gloating, but saw instead a mixture of surprise, curiosity and the tiniest sprinkling of compassion. She accompanied her downstairs in silence.

From the moment she set foot on the floor, it was evident the glass office above had worked to her disadvantage. Although they could hear nothing that had taken place, everyone knew something was afoot. As she approached her desk in the wake of an electric silence, she could sense every pair of eyes upon her, even though all and sundry were steadfastly pretending to mind their own business.

From the rubble in the corner of her cubicle, she fished out a cardboard box and slowly began to fill it with personal items. Spare makeup kit, toothbrush and toothpaste, thesaurus and atlas, candy jar and bud vase.

She hesitated over the mess of knickknacks given to her by grateful clients. Tiny rum bottles from Barbados. A stuffed camel. A Brazilian rain stick. They were hers, weren’t they? But if she took them, wouldn’t they all be an indictment of her and the trust her clients had placed in her? Could she ever bear to see them again?

She packed in as many as could fit, and left the rest on her desk. It was enough to take a walk of shame in front of one’s colleagues; it was too much to do it a second time just to pick up another box of stuff.

She said nothing as Mrs. Mertz, not being as mean as usual, silently took inventory of all she was taking, as per company procedure. Kendra signed her name at the bottom of the single sheet of yellow legal paper.

“Kendra,” Mrs. Mertz began.

“What?” Kendra asked wearily. It was only a little past ten, and already she felt like she’d put in a brutal day’s work.

“I know we haven’t always…I know sometimes I can be a little…well….” She coughed self-consciously. “I don’t know what made you do…this….”

Kendra looked away.

“But, well, it was a…a pleasure working with you.”

If there was anything more that could have surprised Kendra today, that would be it. She’d always thought her supervisor had hated her guts. She’d thought she was a horrible, mean person. Maybe she’d been wrong about that, too.

“Thank you.” There wasn’t anything else she could say.

“Take care of yourself,” Mrs. Mertz added. She sounded sincere.

Kendra nodded, balancing the box as best she could, and focusing dead ahead to blot out the gaping faces surrounding her, she walked out of the main doors and headed for the stairs.

Chapter 3

Devil Cuts a Deal

K endra couldn’t bear to unpack the box. She set it down on the floor inside her front door, and there it stayed. The lock on the door stayed closed, too. But she wasn’t alone, fortunately—or unfortunately, depending on how you looked at it. She had the company of a few old friends she thought she’d ditched a long time ago: the seductive, unpredictable Miss Betty Crocker and those shameless old scallywags, Ben and Jerry.

For two days, she subsisted on turtle brownies topped with gobs of ice cream. The tight control she’d held for so long over her urges and her eating, was slipping. That scared her. But the feeding frenzy was welcome, too. It kept her mind off her the shame and guilt of what she’d done.

Every time she made it to her fridge door, Fat Kat was there waiting. The old photo was taped to the door, slightly askew. More than once, caught in the act of helping herself to a spoonful of ice cream straight from the tub, or pouring shredded mozzarella into her mouth from the bag, she wanted to tear down the photograph, rip it into confetti, and toss it out the window.

“Don’t condemn me,” she told the photo. “You, of all people, should understand.”

But the moon-faced girl with bad skin and a jumble of crooked teeth had a different expression each time. One minute she looked shocked, the other, disappointed. Pitying, condemning. Her old self, the teenage self she’d tried so desperately to leave behind, was in no mood to forgive.

Kendra couldn’t blame her. What had she done? The escalating circumstances that had led to her scandalous downfall had begun with the best of intentions. First, tired of being overweight, fed up with feeling as if she always had to apologize for her size, she’d used every ounce of willpower to curb her eating sprees. Gradually, the weight had gone down.

Then there were her skin, teeth, hair—so many other things she still hated about herself. Getting that all fixed ate up a huge chunk of her savings. A dermatologist took up what was left. Then there were manicures, pedicures, skin treatments, pampering she’d never had in her life. And over the months, she’d started seeing someone in the mirror who didn’t look half bad.

Then, none of her clothes fit. Although she’d always had a passion for fashion and a huge sense of style, she’d never liked herself enough to wear designer outfits before; but now, with a pretty face, pretty hair and pretty smile, she bought expensive clothes to show it all off. When she’d maxed out her credit cards, she applied for new ones. For a while she was as happy as a pig in mud. For the first time in her life, she’d stopped craving food. And the more she bought, the better she looked, the better she felt about herself.

Then the bills had started rolling in.

Kendra leaned against the wall and squeezed her eyes shut at the memory. Fighting panic, going against all logic, she took cash on one credit card to pay off another…and kept on shopping. She’d replaced her old addiction with a new one.

The collapse came so fast, she’d barely had time to think. She missed a rent payment, an installment on her TV. She had a credit card cut up right in front of her—and then she missed another rent payment. It was awful. Crazy. And then, she’d been doing the finances for a project, her mind buzzing with the kind of low-grade panic that came with impending eviction, when she’d had an awful, desperate idea.

She filled out a voucher to cash.

She’d meant to pay the money back, had every intention of doing it. Then her car got repossessed. Her furniture was in the firing line. The credit card companies were calling, the bank was calling. So she filled out another voucher, and then another one….

“I’d be ashamed of me, too,” she said softly to the accusing photograph of the old her. With nausea bubbling insider her, Kendra dumped her last pint of ice cream into the sink and threw the last two brownies into the trash. “I am. I just wish…” Wished she could do something. Take it all back. Make amends for what she’d done.

Fix it.

Her mind spun around to the office…and Trey Hammond. His disgusted stare, his complete rejection of her. She wasn’t what he thought she was, she wanted him to know. Not really. She was a good person.

A good person who’d done a bad thing. What could she do to get him to believe her?

All that night, she sat in an armchair, too wired, too exhausted, too filled with remorse to sleep. She watched the sun come up, pale and watery, and watched the numbers on the clock tick away until she was sure Wanderlust was open for business.

Then the phone was in her trembling hand.

“Wanderlust, good morning. Trey Hammond’s office. How may I assist you?”

“Petreena?”

“Kendra? What’re you doing calling here?”

“I need to talk to Mr. Hammond.”

The hesitation lasted maybe a second and a half, but to Kendra it was vast. “I don’t know if that would be the best thing.”

“Petreena, please.”

“Kendra, you shouldn’t be calling. I don’t think he’d want to talk to you.”

“Just ask him. I only need a few minutes.”

“Well, he’s, uh, in a meeting.”

“What meeting?”

“That’s confidential.” Click.

Somewhere in the back of Kendra’s skull, steel doors slammed shut. Leaving her out in the cold like a ragged beggar. No, she wasn’t giving up like that. She hit redial.

“Wanderlust, good morning. Trey Hammond’s—”

“Petreena.”

Petreena’s tone was a combination of embarrassment, anxiety and irritation. “Kendra, I don’t think—”

“Petreena, please. Help me. We used to be friends.”

“I’m not too sure about that….”

To be spit out so easily, like a pebble in a spoonful of rice. It shouldn’t have hurt, but it did. For a dizzying moment, she had the sensation of blinking out of existence and then flickering back. If you were denied by people who knew you, did you cease to exist? She accepted her demotion from friend status with grace, but insisted, “Well, we were colleagues, at least. You’ve had coffee at my desk. We’ve split lunch. For the sake of that, if nothing else, please let me speak to him.”

The hesitation was longer this time. Then she heard a series of clicks and blips.

“Miss Forrest.”

The hand holding the receiver had gone cold. It took great effort not to let the phone fall to the floor. “Mr. Hammond, I need to see you.”

“What about? I thought we’d already said all that needed to be said.”

“Please, I need you to know I’m sorry.”

“I’m sure.”

“I mean that. You have to believe me. I made a mistake and I’m sorry.”

Hammond’s deep voice was deceptively melodious, but what he was saying was poison. “Miss Forrest, time is money, and you’ve taken up enough of both of mine already. If you want to apologize, fine. That’s neither here nor there with me. But if your conscience is pricking you, I suggest you find a priest. Absolution is their job, not mine. Now, unless you have a check for fourteen thousand dollars that you’d like to drop by with—”

“I’ve got nowhere near that—”

“Then we have nothing more to say to each other.” The next thing she heard was the dial tone. She stared at the receiver, looking for answers. After a few minutes the phone kicked up a howling that wasn’t half bad, given that it penetrated the silence in the apartment, at least for a while. Instead of clicking it off, she set it down on its side, and let the jarring, obnoxious noise spur her into action.

She took a shower, allowing the hot water to soak away the despair and self-disgust of the past few days, and then surveyed the contents of her closet. Hammond had made a nasty remark about her expensive taste in clothes. That meant he could recognize a genuine designer original, as opposed to a knockoff. As much as she adored the sheer beauty of a well-designed outfit, the last thing she needed was to wear something that would set him off again. Chloe would just have to chill out on the rack for a while. She chose a simple navy shirt dress with long sleeves and a modest hemline. With the kind of eating frenzy that had overcome her over the last few days, she half expected to have ballooned beyond all logic; but it fit her 132-pound frame as perfectly as it had the day she’d bought it. She brushed her short cap of hair, smoothing it down carefully and wrangling it into its pixie shape with holding gel.

Makeup? A little mascara, maybe, and a warm shade of lipstick. Enough to look dressed rather than provocative. Not enough to look vain or self-absorbed. Her pumps were all business and no flash, but she drew the line at giving up her hand-tooled Spanish leather handbag. After all, a girl has to have something to bolster her confidence when she went to seek out a very mean and dangerous fire-breathing dragon.

Kendra stood staring up at the sixteenth floor of the Farrar-Chase building. It was lunchtime, and Blackburn Boulevard was humming like a beehive. The bank of four glass revolving doors at the top of a short flight of stairs were practically whirling as workers spilled out of the building and down onto the sidewalk. Even on this overcast, slightly windy spring day, they were cheerful, chatting in their pairs and threesomes.

The determination that had fueled her thus far abandoned her at the foot of the stairs. Could she really do it? Could she walk past all those desks and cubicles, feel the burning stares at her back, hear the hushed conversations, and know they were about her? And that glass office, Shel’s eye in the sky. Speaking to Hammond in there again would leave her naked. Stripped.

The doors spun again—and out walked chatterbox Iris. Fluffy as a lemon meringue, chubby legs having difficulty with the stairs. Smiling and laughing with Jennifer from procurement.

Panic! Kendra darted back to the curb, squeezing herself between a hotdog cart and the newsstand where she always bought her papers. The newsstand owner gave her a funny look, but didn’t comment.

If she couldn’t go in there, she’d have to come up with an alternative battle plan.

An ambush was her next best bet; the man had got to come out sometime. Bachelor style, he never brown-bagged his lunch and never ate in his office. He prowled the restaurants within a block or two of here, a habit everyone in Wanderlust had grown accustomed to. She could only hope he kept up his pattern today.

But, as had been the trend these days, she was long on hope but short on luck. She watched other employees leave and return, watched Iris and Jennifer saunter back in, and still no sign of Hammond. Round about one thirty, it began to rain. And why not?

She was glad for her camel coat, and even more glad the newsstand owner didn’t seem to mind her huddling under his narrow eave for what little shelter it afforded her. Was the man ever going to come out to eat?

Then, in one of those uncanny moments where everything seemed to have been choreographed by someone with a flair for the dramatic and a deeply ingrained sense of irony, the door on the far right spun again. Out strode Trey Hammond, larger than life and twice as striking. He descended the stairs like a huge ticked-off puma. Long legs eating up the sidewalk, mackintosh open down the front, coattails unfurling in the slight breeze, as though he didn’t care if he got wet. He was limber, graceful, and filled with purpose. Unbelievable, Kendra thought, he even walked like he was on slowed-down film. The only thing missing from the scene was Miriam Makeba on the sound track, warbling the refrain from “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.”

His brows were drawn in an expression that was either pensive or irritated. Her money was on the latter.

Just before he passed the newsstand, she blocked his path. “Mr. Hammond.” Her voice hadn’t betrayed her. Good.

The irritation was replaced by surprise. It took several seconds for him to get over the shock and speak. “You’re aware, of course, that stalking is a crime.”

Ha ha. Funny. She clarified for his benefit. “I’m not stalking you. I was waiting for you.”

“But I’ve told you I don’t want to speak to you. Since I don’t desire your company, doesn’t your persistence constitute stalking?”

She was tired, hadn’t slept for three nights, and her glycemic load was through the roof. She tried to be calm and explain her position as best she could. “Look, Mr. Hammond, all I want is two minutes of your time.”

“Why?”

He really did make her feel like she was in the presence of a huge feline. Even standing still, he was thrumming with pent-up energy. His solid, powerful body dwarfed hers, and his eyes held her in thrall. Cats were known to mesmerize their prey with a stare, weren’t they? She almost forgot what she was about to say.

“I want you to know how sorry I am.” Ah, yes, that was it.

“You’ve already said as much.”

“And you need to know I’m not a bad person. I’m not a thief.”

Unblinking, he still had her pinned. “Miss Forrest, I think we’ve gone over this ground already, and frankly, I’m a little tired of it. I didn’t brand you a thief. You did yourself that disservice.”

That was when the wall of fatigue caved in. It was the wrong time, and definitely the wrong place, but walls had a habit of doing that. And on the way down, it crushed every shred of self-esteem she had left. Horror of horrors, her eyes were burning and her cheeks were wet, and the moisture was a whole lot warmer than the rain. She put her hand up to hide the evidence of her weakness, but it was too late.

Hammond knew tears from rain, and wasn’t impressed. “Oh, please. Spare me the theatrics.”

“What?”

“I know exactly how women like you operate. What you can’t achieve by stealth you achieve by guile. Did you think that leaving your couture outfits and five-hundred-dollar shoes home would impress me with your humility? Did you think that turning on the waterworks would soften me up? For what? What d’you want from me?”

She held her hands out, empty, pleading. “Your understanding.”

“Not interested.”

“Your forgiveness, then.”

“Not my department. Refer to my previous statement about visiting a priest.” He fished in his pocket, and she had the ludicrous feeling he was going to subject her to the humiliation of offering her a few coins, bus fare, maybe, and suggesting she get the heck out of his face. But he withdrew a folded, pale blue kerchief and handed it to her. She stared at it in wonderment. Were there really still men who carried those around?

“Mop yourself up,” he advised her. “You’re making a scene in front of my business.”

The gall of him! “You don’t own the whole of Farrar-Chase, you know. It was here long before you rode in on your hoss and tried to take over. It’ll be here long after you’re gone on your way. There’re at least twenty travel, decorating, new media and marketing businesses in there.”

“Yes, and one of them is mine. You can keep the hankie.” He spun around and walked off.

She did as she was told, scrubbing at her face to remove the tears and the streaks of makeup they’d left, catching the newsstand owner out of the corner of her eye and wondering how much of their conversation he’d heard. The fine linen, rubbed hard into her skin, abraded away her despair, her humiliation and her pain. Then there was only one emotion left. Pure, home-grown, unadulterated, polyunsaturated rage. It was all she needed.

Hammond was walking so fast she could barely keep up, but sheer pig-headedness made sure she did. Two blocks down, he turned into the Blarney Stone, a pseudo-Irish steakhouse she’d been to once or twice. She followed at a distance. He never so much as looked back.

She made it inside a minute and a half after he did. It was good to be out of the drizzle. She could see Hammond seating himself. A waitress was upon him in a single shake of a lamb’s tail. He ordered with a smile that was happily returned by the young lady, who was leaning in toward him a little more closely than necessary. As she walked away, the waitress flipped her hair and gave her shamrock-dotted hips a little swivel. Ick.

Look at him. Sitting there so smug and self-satisfied. Flirting with the waitress. Loading up on breadsticks, as if everything was all hunky-dory, now that he’d given the least likely candidate for Employee of the Month the slip. The more she thought about it, the more she paced. Getting madder and madder.

On her dozenth about-face on the lobby carpet, she found herself toe-to-toe with the hostess, who was all kitted up as a leprechaun. Central casting would have been impressed. The young woman was four feet ten and festooned with stick pins, smiley-face stickers, shamrock key chains, small, fuzzy animals and clunky brass whatnots. She looked like a walking trinket cart at the county fair. “Miss? Will you be dining?”

The apparition jolted Kendra out of her internal rant. She was suddenly aware she must look quite bizarre, half-soaked, whirling back and forth in the lobby, muttering as though she had imaginary friends. She felt her face heat up. “Um, not right now.” She tried to sound nonchalant.

“Are you waiting for someone?”

“You could say that.” Involuntarily, she glanced across at Hammond. He was poring over the menu. Still completely relaxed, damn his eyes.

“Then would you like to have a drink at the bar while you wait?”

A drink? In here? She probably didn’t have enough change in her purse to buy herself a soda. She shook her head. The leprechaun gave her a strange look and left.

Missy with the swively hips brought Hammond a Bloody Mary. Again, the goo-goo smile as she set it down, and again his overwhelming charm as he took it. All this with the ease of a man who’d rid himself of a minor irritant, like he’d brushed a beetle off his coat sleeve. Like she, Kendra, was nothing. No.

Next thing she knew, she was standing at his table. The expression on his face was so precious, if she could have bottled it, she’d have made a million bucks. She took advantage of his momentary speechlessness to lay into him. “Listen up, Hammond. I’ve had enough of you and your attitude. What makes you think you can sit in judgment of me? Where d’you get off acting so superior?”

“Where do you get off hovering over my table while I’m having a drink? For God’s sake, Forrest, if you’re going to ruin my lunch, at least do it sitting down. You’re making me dizzy.”

“I don’t want to sit down. I want you to listen. I’ve listened to every nasty thing you’ve had to say to me—”

“Was any of it undeserved?”

“Be quiet. It’s my turn to speak. I’ve changed my mind. I don’t need your forgiveness, because you’re a rude, arrogant, self-assured bastard, so coming from you, it wouldn’t be worth a damn. But I do expect you to respect me. Don’t you ever, ever turn and walk away from me again. Don’t you ever call me a thief again. I did something stupid, and I admit it. And I don’t have the money right now, but I’ll get it to you if I have to work my fingers to the bone….” She waited for the sneer. She waited for the derisive laughter. None came.

“Okay.”

Okay? That was it? It took the wind out of her sails. What next? They stared each other down like two cats balanced on an alley wall. His stare was thoughtful, contemplative, making her feel like a beetle under a magnifying glass. She hoped he wasn’t directing the sun’s rays at her.

She couldn’t stop him from looking at her, but while he was doing it, darned if she wasn’t going to take the opportunity to size him up, too. He must have known how good looking he was. Why else would he have chosen a suit that was the exact charcoal gray as his eyes? Why else would he have worn a shirt the color of a glacier’s heart, and a tie of garnet that set those coals alight? His silver-rimmed glasses framed his face so well, he could have stepped down from a poster in an optometrist’s window. No wonder he knew the brands she was wearing. He was a bit of a metrosexual himself. And they said women were vain.

His almond-hued skin was clear and bright. His soft, slightly wavy hair was closely cut and razor-marked. Even so, it rippled from forehead to nape. His finely shaped nose was indisputable evidence of mixed blood. His lips…she didn’t want to go there. As she watched him, and as he watched her, something in his face changed. She could have sworn that the deadly steel of his eyes warmed to a deeper shade. Maybe it was that shirt again. He gestured at the chair opposite him, the one she was clutching. “Sit down. Please.”

She sat, discovering that she was heaving with effort.

“Feel better?”

“What?”

“That was a whole lot better than the crying jag back there, wasn’t it?” Unbelievably, he was smiling. Kindly.

She did a quick mental inventory and discovered that she did feel better, but she wasn’t going to admit it. Not to him. So she didn’t say anything.

He didn’t seem perturbed. “What’re you drinking?” he asked, lifting his Bloody Mary as a visual example. She realized she was dying of thirst. Again, there was the problem of her empty pocketbook. That, and the laughable idea of drinking with the enemy. “Nothing.”

“Oh, come on. Storming all the way over here and reeling off a list of my character flaws to the entire restaurant must have made you thirsty. What’s your poison?” He signaled the waitress without waiting for an answer.

“Water, please.”

“I’m buying.” He didn’t say it in a nasty way.

Perceptive. But she insisted. “I like water just fine.”

He sighed. “Have it your way. Still or sparkling?”

“Tap.”

Looking amused by her stubbornness, he turned to Miss Shamrock and said, “The lady will have a glass of water. Tap.”

Witnessing Kendra’s tirade hadn’t diminished the redhead’s effusiveness toward Hammond, but it did earn her a scathing look, of which she got a double helping when the woman returned with a tall, frosty glass of water. She accepted it gratefully and took a long, deep drink.

He handed over the glossy, emerald-green menu. “The mutton here is amazing.”

Was he for real? He couldn’t be inviting her to have lunch. He didn’t even like her, never mind respect her. Was this masochism or just another way to make her squirm? “I’m fine, thank you.” But the smell of the hot food all around tugged at her will, hooking her by the nose like a finger-shaped wraith straight out of Saturday-morning cartoons. Food, her personal demon, always beckoned when she was nervous or upset. Right now, she was both.

“Dieting?”

“No.” Her two-day binge aside, there was no way she’d ever put herself into the position where she’d have to do that again. Not after she’d done so much hard work. She shook her head to underscore her denial.

He accepted it without question, and offered, almost irrelevantly, “My wife used to diet all the time.” That was when she noticed the simple, ridged gold band on his wedding finger. He was married? Someone put up with him 24/7? She hadn’t heard anything about that in all the breathless conversations about him and his indisputable gorgeousness back at the office. She was sure her colleagues would have noticed a ring. Maybe she was just odd woman out. Or hard of hearing.

He cajoled. “Come on, you’ve got to be hungry. It’s way past lunchtime.”

Food. Food! She shook her head, not trusting herself to speak.

Patiently, he explained, “Hey, I’m starving, but my mother didn’t raise me to eat in front of a lady, if she isn’t having anything. So please, it’s almost two o’ clock, and I haven’t had breakfast. Pick something, or I’ll do it for you.”

All she could do was sit in dumb incredulity.

He took that as a cue to proceed, and summoned the redhead again. “We’ll both be having the mutton.”

She spent the rest of the meal struggling with the disorienting sensation that she was having lunch with Trey Hammond’s good twin, or at least the pod person that had replaced him somewhere between the steps of Farrar-Chase and the front door of the Blarney Stone. Her lunch companion was urbane, almost friendly, making small talk about the travel business and asking her opinion about a deal he was exploring. She answered where applicable, hearing her own voice as though it were coming from underwater, but couldn’t scrape up the gumption to initiate a train of conversation herself. The food was delicious, a comforting place to hide. She drew the line at his offer of desert, so they sipped Irish coffee to round off the meal.

He steered the conversation around to her personal life with the suddenness of a rally driver at the Paris-Brest-Paris. “Are you from around here?”

“Where?” she asked stupidly, irrationally looking about the room.

He laughed. The sound was foreign to her ears. “I wasn’t enquiring as to whether you were born under the salad bar. I meant, are you originally from Santa Amata?”

“No, not exactly. I’ve only been here for a couple years or so. I’m originally from Gary.”

“Indiana?”

“Yeah.” She paused to allow him to insert the obligatory Michael Jackson reference, but was disappointed.

“And what brought you out east?”

What, indeed. Getting into too many details about her past would have meant digging up the flat-footed, ugly duckling self she’d tried to escape, and Kendra was never keen on that. She was deliberately vague. “I guess I needed a fresh start.” And she’d made one, a good one, until she’d gone and messed it up.

“So you went to college, stayed in Indiana for a few years, then moved here. And you worked with Shel ever since?”

“Yes. He hired me because of my travel-and-tourism and hospitality courses. This was my first real full-time job. Not much tourism in Gary. I felt like I found my niche here.”

“Wet behind the ears, huh?” The irony couldn’t possibly be lost on him, but he chose not to rub it in. Instead, he finished his coffee and set the spoon in the saucer, next to the cup. He folded his hands on the table, and tilted his head to one side, examining her contemplatively. Calculatingly. Slowly.

Lord, she wondered, what next?

Finally he spoke. “Did you mean what you said?”

“What part?”

“The part about working your fingers to the bone to pay me back.”

“I did. I’m going to pay you back, no matter how long it takes. I don’t know how I’ll get a job in the travel business, considering how small the community is. They must all be talking about me. And it’s not like….” She looked at him, then glanced away. “It’s not like I’m leaving Wanderlust with a glowing recommendation.” In spite of the grimness of the situation, she laughed ruefully. “So I guess I need a whole new career.”

“People have short memories. It’ll blow over faster than you think.”

Easy for him to say. “It might, or it might not. But I will pay you back. I promise.”

Tired from the events of the day, he took a deep breath, as if he were drawing on inner courage to say what he had to say next. “You could pay it off in kind.”

“ What? ” For a second, she wondered if she could get away with throwing her glass in his face. He’d been forbearing so far about siccing the police on her. Would such a gesture of feminine outrage end with her in the slammer?

The shock on her face brought a short, amused laugh to his lips. “Don’t jump to conclusions. That wasn’t what I meant, but I’m flattered you think I’m capable of such a sophomoric idea. I was more in the market for a housekeeper.”

A housekeeper? “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“No, I’m not. I’ve been living out of a hotel for the past few months, and I’ve only just settled on a house. I’ve had my stuff delivered but it’s still all in boxes, and the place’s gonna need a little elbow grease….”

“You want me to unpack your stuff and clean your house?”

“Pretty much. It’d go a whole lot faster if two people tackle the job.”

“Two people? What about your wife? Isn’t she helping?”

“My wife is dead.” Briefly, the chill in his eyes was back, but it was gone so fast, she could have imagined it.

Oops . I’ll have a side of fries with that mouthful of my own foot, please. “I’m sorry.”

He nodded. “Thank you.”

She contemplated his incredible offer. Was he tripping, or was she? On what planet could such a proposition possibly make sense?

He leaned forward, looking at her levelly, challenging. “Too demeaning for you? Afraid to get scuff marks on your Manolos?”

He couldn’t resist that, could he? “You leave my wardrobe out of this.”

He lifted his shoulders. “I was just thinking we could help each other out. You need money, and I need help. I certainly don’t condone what you did, but I’m in need. I’d pay eighteen dollars an hour, that’s above standard rates around here, I’m told. You could get half in cash, and the other half I put toward your debt to me.” He added, “When you get another job, you can feel free to take it up. Then we can make alternative arrangements for repayment. That is, if you really are serious about paying me back.”

She lobbed his challenge right back into his court. “Aren’t you afraid I’d swipe your spare change off your nightstand?”

“I doubt even you would stoop that low.”

Even her? Oh, he was a bastard. But she couldn’t see any other way out of her predicament, and he knew it. He knew it so well, he wasn’t even making any further case for himself. He just sat there, quiet, allowing her to wrestle with her own misgivings and come to the realization that he had her over a barrel.

Times might be tough, but she still had her dignity. She’d show him. She wasn’t afraid of a little work, and she certainly wasn’t as self-absorbed and high-maintenance as he thought she was. Plus, who knew how long it would take her to find another job. So, he wanted to make her pay for her sins in sweat? Bring it on.

“When do I start?”

He pulled out a thin, stylish pen from his breast pocket, scribbled an address and number on a paper napkin, and pushed it to her. “We’ll start on Saturday. I’ll be home all day, so I can show you around. Eight o’ clock. Don’t be late.”

As if.

Chapter 4

Atonement

I f Kendra was going to change her mind, she had a day in which to do it. Truth be told, she came pretty close. Half a dozen times she made it to the phone. Half a dozen times she reminded herself that, if this was a battle of wills, Trey Hammond wasn’t going to win. If it was a test of her character, he wasn’t going to find her wanting.

She was so determined not to be late on Saturday, she slept with one eye on the alarm clock, checking it periodically to reassure herself it was set for the right time. She was up with the chickens. She showered and dressed in sturdy jeans and a plain, long-sleeved, brushed-cotton shirt, throwing on a pair of rugged boots to show Hammond she meant business. She bolstered herself with a bagel and some cranberry juice and marched out of the house well on schedule.

The crumpled napkin bearing Trey’s address was a wadded ball in the front pocket of her jeans, but she’d read and reread it so many times she knew it by heart. His new house was in Augustine, a nice professional area favored by many of the black, Hispanic and Asian businesspeople in Santa Amata.

By bus, it was a convoluted trip. The ones that did the city circuit didn’t cross Falcon River. She had to go all the way down to the main bus station and change there, and even so, it was still a twelve-minute walk from the nearest bus stop. She stepped up her pace a little. It wouldn’t do to lose her time advantage as she was closing in on the finish line. Would he be beastly enough to dock her wages?

Wages. Of all the harebrained schemes. Here she was, a young, bright professional, about to ransom her soul back for the queenly sum of eighteen bucks an hour. She checked her watch. Four minutes to eight. She resisted the urge to run. The man wasn’t going to get her goat.

There was a storybook quality to his street. It was nicely laid out, with orderly rows of pastel-colored houses and duplexes. Yards were separated by neat hedges and filled with tree houses and kennels. Some of the swings and slides were occupied, even at this early hour. Children laughed and screamed, chasing excited dogs and each other. Then she was standing in front of Hammond’s house, double-checking the number on her beat-up paper napkin, although she knew she had the right place.

Surprise left her rooted to the sidewalk. This was the house he’d bought? A mild breeze could have knocked her over. She’d have bet good money Hammond would have chosen an environment as cold and stark as he was. She was expecting chrome, white paint trimmed with gray or black, and a precision-cut lawn. Instead, she got a new millennium version of Norman Rockwell. The air was filled with a hint of fresh paint. The two-story house was a blushing ivory, with doors, windows and gables trimmed in a pale, milky squash. The slanted shingle roof was a deep avocado, and the window panes stained in gemstone colors. Spring was springing up all over. In contrast to the other yards in the street, the grass was a knee-high tangle dotted with stray daisies. A seesaw and jungle gym stood in the far corner, all lonely.

Yellow-bellied sapsuckers and copper-crested whatchama-callems flitted deliriously around, feasting on bugs—and on bananas that somebody had stuck on the branches of the fruit trees that were just pushing out new blossoms. Hammond, a nature lover? Nawww.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw something move in one of the curtainless ground-floor windows. Remembering her purpose for being here, she stopped gawking at the lawn and straightened her shoulders.

The front door swung open. “You going to stand there all morning, or are you coming in?”

Deciding the question didn’t warrant a response, she opened the waist-high wooden gate that led up the flagstone path and met him on his doorstep. “Good morning,” she said as amiably as possible. “Lovely day. How you doing?” Let’s see him try to grouch his way out of that one.

“Morning,” he answered, pleasant as pie. “And I’m fine and dandy, thank you.” He was actually smiling, and glory be, his face didn’t crack. “What about you?”

“Oh, I’m…” It was about then she noticed he had on the best damn fitting jeans outside the pages of a magazine, and a stark white, sleeveless undershirt that he’d probably just pulled from the package. She could still see the creases in it. His feet were bare. What a difference clothes made in a man! What had happened to the young Turk with his custom suit, striding around the office as if all of Wall Street depended on his performance? The man who stood before her was relaxed and comfortable in his glowing skin. His skin, while she was on the subject, made her think of hot toast done just right, dripping with melted butter and deep, rich honey. Oh. Food.

His lean, fit body spoke not of hours of pumping iron but of good health, natural grace and the kind of structure that only came from good genes. The dark brown hair that sprinkled his chest and peeked out from his armpits as he held the door open was slightly curlier than the crisp, well-tended mass upon his head. Kendra, Kendra, stop staring. Even though he was as dressed down as she, she felt almost grubby by comparison. She patted down the front of her shirt in a nervous gesture she hoped he didn’t spot. Fat chance. Those gray eyes didn’t miss a thing. “You look ready to get your hands dirty.”

“I am.”

“Good. Had trouble finding the place?” He almost gave her the impression he was interested in the answer.

She shook her head. “No, but it was a pretty long ride.”

He checked the time. “Still, you hit eight on the nose. What’d you do, sit up all night in a chair fully dressed, just to be sure you’d be on time?”

“Of course not,” she replied with a huge helping of scorn. Not exactly. She stepped in so he could close the door.

He slipped into tour guide mode. “The house is about fifteen years old, but in good repair. I’ve had some work done, but more to suit my taste and my needs than to fix any problems.” He led her into the living room, gesturing as he went. There were traces of workmen’s mess, bits of wood and rubble in the corners—and guess who was going to have to clean it. “I’ve knocked out a wall here to make things more airy, see?” There was a hint of pride in his voice, a homeowner’s excitement at the freshness and promise around him.

She didn’t begrudge him his satisfaction. He’d made this castle his own, and was proud of it. “I see. It’s very nice.”

“My den’s back there.” He pointed. “Bedrooms are upstairs, one master, one guest, and one’s for a…” He trailed off, and then started over. “One’s a child’s bedroom. I haven’t figured out what I’m going to do with that one yet.”

“I saw a seesaw and some other kid’s stuff in the backyard. I guess a kid used to live here, huh?”

“I guess.”

She should have known better, by the look on his face and his noncommittal answer, but before she could stop it, she was cheerily saying, “It’d be a lovely house for children. Lots of space, places to play. Did you ever want children?”

He looked as though she’d whacked him in the gut with a four iron. He took an age to answer, and when he did, his eyes were steady on her face, as if he was afraid to blink. “My wife and I never had the chance.”

Oh God. The late wife. She hastened to apologize for her clumsiness. “Oh, I’m so…”

He shook his head, and the uncomfortable moment was past. “Forget it.” He started moving again. Motion. Good. He continued with his tour, as though she’d created no ripples on the surface of his pond. “Kitchen, of course.” He gestured through the open back door. “There’s a deck out there. The wood needs stripping, but I’ll have to get to that later, when the interior’s in order.” He laughed lightly. “If I ever make any friends here in Santa Amata, maybe I’ll hold a barbecue. I’ve been here only a few weeks and it’s been all work.”

Kendra peeped out politely, but her mind was still on her faux pas. “It’s…lovely.”

His spiel returned to the kitchen. “They delivered the appliances yesterday, but the gas isn’t hooked up yet. We’ll be ordering take-out for lunch. Gas people are supposed to swing by this afternoon, so maybe soon you can taste my hand, as my grandma used to say. Fridge works, though.” He opened it, partly to demonstrate, partly to offer her something. “Had breakfast?”

Last thing she needed right now was to see food. Being on the brink of a self-imposed sentence of community service was nerve wracking enough. “I’m okay.”

“Doesn’t exactly answer the question, but all right. How ’bout some juice?”

“Thank you.”

He reached into a cardboard box, rummaged through packing peanuts and retrieved a glass, which he washed and filled with pink grapefruit juice. “Ice maker needs about twenty-four hours to kick in,” he apologized, “but the juice is sorta cold.”

She sipped it. “It’s fine.” They were standing next to the marble-topped island in the kitchen, with him a little closer than she would have liked, given that she’d suddenly discovered that he had quite a body on him, and that as much as she didn’t cotton to him, her body wasn’t immune to the ripples she could see as he folded his arms across his chest. He looked at her, assessing, until she couldn’t stand it anymore. “What?”

“I half wondered if you were going to show.”

Smart aleck. “I said I would, and I’m here.” She couldn’t resist adding, “Just because I’ve got sticky fingers doesn’t mean that my word isn’t my bond.”

He nodded to indicate that her barb had landed well, but didn’t volley back.

She tried not to sound too disgruntled when she added, “You have to admit you have me over a barrel, Mr. Hammond. I don’t have many options open to me right now.”

“Trey.”

She frowned, puzzled, so he clarified. “Call me Trey. Please.”

In a bug’s eye. “At the office we called you Mr. Hammond.”

“We’re not at the office. In my home people call me Trey.”

She wasn’t in the mood for an argument, so she said, “Okay,” but she wasn’t going to call him a damn thing, if she could get away with it.

“Can I call you Kendra?”

“You’ve called me worse.”

He stepped maybe two inches closer, but two inches was enough for her to catch the slightest whiff of his scent. Sawdust and aftershave. And something else, something manly and warm, but she had to be imagining that. “If we’re going to work together, can we at least make peace?”

The swirly patterns the grapefruit pulp made on the sides of her glass suddenly held her attention to such an extent that she was unable to meet his gaze. Peace. He didn’t know what he was asking. He’d questioned her morals and mocked her values. He’d thrown her out in front of people who’d once respected her. He’d reduced her from a woman in a prestigious position to a scullery maid. Now he wanted peace.

He was waiting for an answer, but not in silence. “I’m not the enemy, Kendra. We’re just two people helping each other.”

She wasn’t so sure about that. “I don’t…”

“Try, at least,” his voice was low, encouraging.

She caved in like a house of straw. “Okay.” The concession took less effort than she’d expected.

“Okay.” His smile lit up his eyes. He held out his hand.

She took it, idly noticing how, although she didn’t have the most delicate hands in the world, his was still capable of engulfing it. She noticed, too, that his skin was as warm as his voice. This was probably the first time she’d touched him, and, considering what that brief contact was doing to her, she was going to do her darnedest to make sure it didn’t become a habit. She pulled her hand away and rubbed it surreptitiously on her jeans. “We should get started.” It was hard to get the suggestion past the little frog in her throat.

He conceded without any argument, easing the glass from her fingers and putting it next to the sink. “We’ll start with my den.” She followed close behind, and came to stand near a pile of cardboard boxes in a corner. He was a careful mover. On the sides of each box he’d clearly written the word “Den” with a fat, black marker. She didn’t need much of an imagination to visualize other piles of boxes elsewhere labeled “kitchen, bathroom, bedroom.” Just one more way in which this man kept his world under strict control. Just one more way in which they were different.

“I thought we’d fix this one up first,” he was telling her, “because I like to have a nice quiet place to work in at night.”

Odd reason, Kendra thought. When you live alone, isn’t the whole house a nice quiet place? Setting up a den in order to have a “quiet place to work” was like building an igloo on a tundra just to have a place to cool down. He was oblivious to the irony. She didn’t draw his attention to it.

“Back in a sec.” He disappeared, then returned with an armload of cleaning supplies—buckets, mops, brooms, cleaning fluids of all kinds—and set them down. She reached for a broom, but he beat her to it, and began to tackle the rubble left behind by the painters and repairmen. He caught her look of surprise. “Did you think I was planning on sitting back with a bourbon and watching you work?”

That was exactly what she was thinking, but she’d rather drink cleaning fluid than admit it. “No, not exactly,” she fluffed.

He stopped sweeping long enough to tell her, “I’m not a slave driver, Kendra. I expect you to put in a fair day’s work, and I’ll do the same.”

“I guess that’s reasonable.” Her surprise was being replaced by admiration for his decent gesture, but she wasn’t about to let him see that, either. “I’ll go fill this bucket, so when you’re done sweeping I can mop up.”

“Attagirl.”

By the time she was back, he’d produced a small CD player and was loading it with albums. “Music to work by. Hope you aren’t one of those modern girls who won’t listen to anything that’s not on the charts this very second, ’cause I’m old-school.” He certainly was. The player began belting out vintage funk, loudly and with great enthusiasm. James Brown. The Average White Band. Rick James. Chaka Khan. And he was right—it was music to work by. Before long, she forgot why she was here and focused on what needed to be done. She forgot that he was, if not the enemy, at least only a guarded ally. Together they found their rhythm.

When the floors were clean, the rug rolled down and the desk in place, they started to unpack his books. The walls of the den were lined on three sides with built-in, floor-to-ceiling shelving. When she first noticed them, she’d thought they were a little excessive; but now that his collection was being revealed, crate by crate and box by box, she was half-worried there wouldn’t be enough room.

She took her time unpacking, reading the covers curiously, trying to gauge the nature of this surprisingly complex man. He was sentimental: he’d kept books from his boyhood, reading primers and adventure stories. Hardy Boys and Treasure Island . He was an escapist. There were science fiction, murder mysteries and legal dramas—John Grisham, Peter Benchley, Stephen King and Walter Mosley. Even more surprising, he had a collection of books on maritime nonfiction. Wars, war machines, boats and planes. These made her brows shoot up.

He caught her look and shrugged. “We’ve all got our vices.”

Amen to that, she thought. At least his weren’t fattening. As she helped him mount a framed MBA from Howard next to a twenty-year-old certificate of excellence in piano, Kendra had the odd sense that the wall of cold air she knew him to be was condensing and warming up into a human being. It was as if he was a huge puzzle that needed solving, and the items in all these boxes were the pieces.

She opened a box of knickknacks and photos. The one on top was fairly faded. It showed a tall, well built, sandy-haired, golden man with slate-colored eyes. He was standing behind a small boy on a bright red bike, his hands steadying the handlebars. Kendra recognized the frown of concentration on the boy’s pointed face. She held the photo up. “You and your dad?”

He knew which photo she was referring to without having to look up. “Yeah. I was five. It was my first bike. I got it for my birthday. Well, Christmas and my birthday, I guess. They’re both on the same day.”

“You’re a Christmas baby?”

“Unfortunately. You know we get about forty percent fewer presents over the course of a lifetime than regular folk?”

She made a rueful face. “Sorry to hear that.”

He gave an exaggerated shrug. “You get used to it.”

She looked down at the photo again. “Your dad’s white?”

He shook his head. “Not exactly, but he could pass, if he’d had a mind to. If my mother had a mind to let him.”

“Which she didn’t.”

“Nope.”

She set the photo carefully down in the area of the bookcase they’d set aside for display items. “Are your parents…”

“Alive and kicking. Both retired, still living in the house I grew up in, a few miles outside of Atlanta. Been there ever since, until now.”

“You’re a southern boy.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Thought I heard something in your voice.”

“Can’t shake it. Wouldn’t want to.”

She rummaged in the crate and withdrew a larger, professionally framed photo. He was all grown up, embracing a beautiful, long-limbed woman on a boat. One arm was around her waist, the other cradled her cheek as she leaned against him. The woman had striking, exotic features, perfect Brazil nut skin and cheekbones sharp enough to draw blood. Her mouth was like a firm fruit, and her makeup looked as if it had been airbrushed on by a fine artist. She bore herself with the poise and elegance of royalty. Kendra felt the slightest chill ripple through her. Trey’s wife, no doubt. She peered closer. Trey was relaxed, happy, smiling, gray eyes full of warmth, humor and life. His lips were parted, teeth white, Adam’s apple faintly visible past the button-down shirt he wore. She almost couldn’t recognize him as the same man.

“My wife died six years ago. Her name was Ashia. She was from Somalia.” Somehow, he’d managed to stand behind her without her realizing he’d moved. Watching her watch the picture. In her embarrassment, she almost dropped it. “I didn’t mean…”

He didn’t answer. Instead, he took the photo from her fingers and placed it tenderly on his desk. When she glanced up several moments later, he was still looking at it. She couldn’t read his face. She went back to work, feeling as though she intruded. Trey left the photo alone and joined her.

The next few boxes were full of model airplanes and ships. “Wonders never cease,” she murmured.

He laughed. “A passion I haven’t shaken from boyhood. I used to love making model planes and aircraft. These were modeled after authentic wartime craft.”

“You made these? From scratch? No kits?”

“Some of the older ones are from kits. Look, this is a German Dornier Do-17. See the fat snub nose? They called it the Flying Pencil. I made it when I was thirteen or so. It’s one of my personal favorites.” He took up a tiny one emblazoned with a rising sun. “This one’s Japanese. A Mitsubishi A5-M. Very fast. I made hundreds of kit models before I got bored. Drove my mother crazy.”

“I’ll bet.” She was warmed by the pride in his voice, and enchanted by the glimpse he was allowing her into the boy he had been.

“My room was so full of models I could barely move about. We used to have ring-down battles twice a year or so. She used to make me throw half of them out. Wasn’t prepared to live in a junkyard, she said.”

“Pity. If you’d saved them you could have made a fortune selling them alone.”

“I’d sooner sell my own soul,” he countered. “You can imagine what it was like when I started making my own out of whatever bits and pieces I could drag home. My mother’s junkyard metaphor took on a whole ’nother dimension.”

She found herself chuckling with him. When the box they were working on was empty, she lifted the lid off another, and unpacked a heavy, wrapped object. Peeling away the layers of bubble wrap, she discovered a ship in a bottle. A rather old ship in a bottle. The shape, the feel of it, transported her back in time. She held it up to the sunlight. The ship inside was exquisite, its sails fully raised, even slightly curved, as though billowing in a gentle breeze. She didn’t know the first thing about models, but she could see it was handcrafted. “This one’s a beauty. It looks old. Where’d you get it?”

He was on her like a pouncing cat, snatching it from her hands. “Don’t touch that.” She watched openmouthed as he picked up a new piece of cheesecloth and rubbed it down, as though her fingerprints would contaminate it. There was a wooden stand in the box where she’d found the ship. He pulled that out, dusted it off just as carefully and placed the ship upon it on the main shelf, at the center of his collection.

She didn’t know what to say. Didn’t know how to react, feeling awkward and ashamed, but still unable to determine the exact nature of her crime. “I’m sorry. I…”

He wouldn’t even look at her. “Maybe we should break for lunch.” Not waiting for her response, he threw the cheesecloth aside and walked off. She followed, not bothering to hide her confusion. What had she done? What had she said?

As the wadding on the kitchen chairs hadn’t been removed yet, they ate Chinese take-out, cross-legged on the floor. Throughout the meal, and after, Trey tried to act as if nothing had happened, but the camaraderie of the morning was broken. She was glad when the afternoon was over. At five o’ clock he called it a day, and walked her to the door.

He handed her a plain white envelope, and she knew without having to open it what it held: half her day’s wages. She took it, face and neck hot with embarrassment over all it implied. She shoved it into her jeans pocket, out of sight.

“Thank you,” he told her. “You were a big help.”

She nodded wordlessly. They stood there on the doorstep facing each other, Trey appearing even taller because he was one step above. It was as awkward as that charged moment at the end of a blind date when both parties wait for someone to say or do something to break the tension…except she wasn’t waiting on a kiss, she was waiting on an explanation—or an apology. She didn’t get one.

Instead, he asked, “Tomorrow? I know it’s Sunday, but I’ll be home all day, and I was thinking we could get the living room straightened out.”

Like I have a choice, she thought. But there was a pleading in his eyes that gave her the odd feeling he didn’t just want her for her work. He wanted her for her company. Damn. Handsome, smart, self-assured, top of his game Trey Hammond is lonely. Don’t that beat all. She nodded. “Tomorrow.”

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