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Chapter Two

“We’re working on the, ah, upgrades right now,” Arnie said as he shifted in his seat. “The, ah, first set should be, ah, ready by the end of the month.”

Jack had to consciously keep himself from squirming in sympathy. In his law practice his clients were usually so distracted by the charges brought against them that they didn’t have the energy to be nervous and in court he didn’t care if his cross-examination upset a hostile witness.

But Arnie wasn’t a client or a hostile witness. He was a techno-geek from the information technology department, or IT, and he was obviously uncomfortable meeting with his new boss.

Jack glanced down at the report in front of him, then back at Arnie. “Sounds like you’re totally on schedule,” he said, then smiled at the other man. “Good for you.”

Arnie swallowed. “Thanks. We’ve been trying. Roger, my, ah, boss, sort of said we had to. Oh, but not in a bad way.”

“I appreciate your effort,” Jack said, wishing Roger, Arnie’s boss, had been available for the meeting. Jack couldn’t take much more of the poor man’s suffering.

“You’re going to be working with Samantha Edwards,” Jack said. “She started today. She’s very creative and energetic. I’m sure you’ll be impressed by her ideas.”

And her, Jack thought, wondering what Arnie would think of Samantha’s tall, slender beauty and infectious smile. Or maybe he didn’t have to wonder. Harsh, but true, Arnie looked like the kind of guy who never got the girl. He was pale, with thinning brown hair, light brown eyes and glasses. He wore a plaid short-sleeved shirt and jeans, and his posture yelled, “Please don’t hurt me.”

Arnie’s face contorted as if he were trying to decide if he should smile or not. “I heard there was going to be a lot of Internet expansion. That’s good for my department.”

“It will be plenty of work,” Jack told him.

“We can do it. I’m sure of it.”

“I am, too,” Jack said. “Once Samantha finalizes her plans, she’ll get with you and your guys to work out the details. We may have some capacity issues. I don’t know enough about the technicalities to know. I need you to stay on top of that. And help coordinate the launch date. We need to be aggressive, while being realistic.”

Arnie nodded vigorously. “Okay. Sure. I can do all that. But, um, you know, George was never interested in the Internet. He always liked the magazine side of the business.”

One of the reasons the company was in big trouble, Jack thought. Magazines were expensive propositions when compared with the relatively low cost of maintaining a Web site.

“I see Internet expansion as a quick and cost-effective way to build the business. After the initial start-up costs, we’re spending much less.” He frowned. Shouldn’t an IT guy know this?

“Oh, I agree,” Arnie said quickly. “I think it’s great. So do most of the guys in my department. But, you know, not everyone will agree.”

Jack didn’t like the sound of that. “Like who?”

Arnie instantly looked trapped. “Oh, it’s—”

“We’re a team here,” Jack said. “We’re only as strong as our weakest member.” Hopefully that would be the hokiest thing he had to say this week, he thought grimly. But if it worked …

Arnie squirmed some more, ducked his head, sighed, then said, “Roger, my boss. He’s not real big on change.”

“Interesting,” Jack said, wondering how someone like that rose to the level of running the IT department. Or maybe Jack’s father had wanted it that way, considering his disinterest in all things high tech. “I appreciate you telling me that. I won’t mention this conversation with Roger. You have my word.”

Arnie sighed. “Thanks. I really like my job. I wouldn’t want to get, you know, fired.” He winced as he spoke, then shook his head. “Your dad was a great man.”

“Thank you,” Jack said.

“He was patient and kind and really interested in all his employees. We all liked working for him and felt really bad when he died.”

Jack nodded. He wasn’t sure what to say when people talked about his father this way. They were describing someone he’d never met.

“Knock, knock.”

He looked up and saw Samantha walking into his office. She looked from him to Arnie.

“Am I early or late?” she asked with a smile.

“Neither,” he said. “Right on time. You’re joining our meeting in progress.”

Now that she had the job, she’d obviously decided there was no need to dress conservatively anymore—at least her definition of it. Gone were the black slacks and black-and-white jacket. In their place she wore a long skirt in a swirl of reds, greens and purples. A dark green sweater hung loosely past her hips. She had a patterned scarf draped over one shoulder, a half-dozen bracelets on each wrist and earrings that tinkled and swayed as she walked.

“This is Arnie,” Jack said, pointing to the man sitting across from him at the conference table. “He’s from IT. He’ll be working with you on the Internet expansion. You tell him what you want and he’ll tell you if it’s possible. Arnie, this is Samantha.”

The other man rose and wiped his palms on his jeans, then held out his hand. His mouth opened, closed, then opened again.

“Ah, hi,” Arnie said, his eyes wide, his cheeks bright with color.

“Good morning.” Samantha beamed at him. “So you’re going to be my new best friend, right? And you won’t ever want to tell me no.”

Arnie stammered, then sank back in his seat. Jack did his best not to smile. Samantha had made another conquest.

He wasn’t surprised. She walked into a room and men were instantly attracted to her. He was no exception. She was a weakness for which he’d found no antidote. Even now he found himself wanting to pull her close and run his hands through her curly hair. He wanted to stare into her eyes and feel her tremble in his embrace.

Not on this planet, he reminded himself. She hadn’t been interested ten years ago and he doubted that had changed.

Okay, she’d been interested once. Apparently once was enough where he was concerned. She’d made it more than clear she didn’t want a repeat performance.

“Don’t let Samantha push you around,” he told Arnie. “She has a tendency to do that.”

Samantha looked at him and raised her eyebrows. “Me? Are you kidding? I’m the picture of complete cooperation.”

“Uh-huh. Right until someone gets in your way. Then you’re a steamroller.”

Samantha sat next to Arnie and patted his hand. “Ignore him. Jack and I went to grad school together and he seems to remember things very differently. I’ve never steamrolled anyone.” She paused, then smiled. “Well, at least not often. I can get tenacious about what I want, though. And I’ve read different reports from your department, Arnie. People have been pushing for this expansion for a while.”

That surprised Jack. “I hadn’t heard that.”

Samantha looked at him. “His boss is the reason why. I also read memos from Roger explaining why it was all a bad idea. Apparently he had some backing on that.”

She didn’t specifically say by who, but Jack could guess. He doubted his father had been a fan of growing technology.

“That was the past,” he said. “Let’s focus on the future. You two need to get together and talk about specifics.”

Samantha jotted down a note on her pad of paper. “I’ll e-mail you, Arnie. You can let me know what works for you. I tend to put in long hours. I hope that’s okay.”

Arnie’s pale eyes practically glowed. “It’s fine. Sure. I’ll be there.” He stood and nodded. “Anytime. Just e-mail me.”

“Thanks for your help,” Jack said.

“Oh, yeah. No problem.”

The other man left. Jack waited until the door closed, then turned to Samantha.

“You’ve made a friend.”

“Arnie? He’s very sweet, or so I’ve been told. I think we’ll do fine together.”

Jack told himself that she would never be interested in the other man and even if she was, it wasn’t his business. He didn’t care who Samantha wanted in her life as long as she did her job. He very nearly believed himself, too.

“What have you got?” he asked.

“Lots and lots of great ideas,” she said with a smile. “I had an extremely productive weekend. I went over the existing Web site. It’s pretty basic. There’s so much room to improve and that’s what I want. I want to start with kids twelve and under as our first target audience and I want to dazzle them.”

She set a folder on the conference table and opened it. “We’ll deal with the teens later, but first, let’s get some buzz going. I want us to be the Web site the kids are dying to go to the second they get home from school. I want to do more than help them with their homework. I want us to be the coolest place on the Web. We can talk about sports and clothes and music. Movies, TV, trends. I was thinking we’d have an ‘Ask Annie’ kind of column.”

He stared at her. “Who’s Annie?”

She laughed. “I mean an advice column. Ask the resident expert. Annie, Mark, the name isn’t important. But here’s the cool part—it will be real-time and interactive. Like a chat room. I have a lot of ideas for developing all this. But our biggest concern is security. We’re going to have to go state-of-the-art so the kids are totally safe on the Web site.”

“I like it.”

“Good.”

Her smile widened and he felt it punch him right in the gut. Ever-present need growled to life.

“You don’t need to run all this by me,” he told her, doing his damnedest to ignore the blood rushing to his groin. “I trust you to run your department.”

“I know, but this is big stuff. I’m talking about huge changes.”

“That would be the reason I hired you.”

She studied him. “You really trust me with all this?”

“Of course.”

“Wow. Great. I guess I’ll get my team to pull it all together and then we’ll have a big presentation.”

“I look forward to it.” He leaned toward her. “That’s how I run things, Samantha,” he told her. “Until someone screws up, he or she has free rein.”

“I would have thought you were more the control type.”

“Because I wear a suit?”

“Sort of. You’re a lawyer. That doesn’t help with the image.”

“What if I went into environmental law?”

She grinned. “Did you?”

“No. Criminal.”

“So it’s not just suits. It’s designer suits.”

“Mostly. But even at the law firm, I give my people room to grow and make mistakes. One screwup isn’t fatal.”

She tucked her hair behind her ear. “That sounds so balanced.”

“I like to think of myself that way.”

“You were less balanced in grad school. Much more.”

He looked at her. “Stick up the ass?”

Her mouth threatened a smile, but she held it back. “I would never have said that.”

“But you were thinking it.”

“Maybe a little. You had that study schedule.”

“It kept me on track and freed up my weekends. I had plenty of time for fun.”

“I remember,” she said with a laugh. “Okay, I’ll let it go. You weren’t that rigid. I think you were just so much more together than any other guy I met. It scared me.”

He wondered if that was true. Had he made her uneasy in ways he hadn’t understood? Did it even matter now?

“You were the most unstructured successful person I’d met,” he said.

“I was kind of crazy back then,” she admitted. “I’ve calmed down some.”

“I hope not. I liked you crazy. Remember the time we spent Christmas eve in a stable because you wanted to know what it was like?” he asked.

She laughed. “Yes, and you kept telling me that I needed to pay attention to geography.”

“I was right. We were in Pennsylvania in the middle of winter. Not exactly the Middle East.”

Despite the cold, they’d had a great time huddled together. He’d wanted her with a desperation that had made him tremble more than the cold. The next morning, he’d driven her to the airport so she could fly home to spend Christmas Day with her mother.

Speaking of which … “How’s your mom?” he asked.

Samantha’s smile faded. “She passed away about three years ago.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I really liked her.”

“Thanks. I miss her. It was hard to lose her. She’d been sick for a while, so it wasn’t a big surprise. We were able to say our goodbyes, which made things better.” She collected her papers. “Okay, I’m going to let you get back to work. I have to put my presentation together so that you’re dazzled, too. You will be, you know.”

“I don’t doubt it.”

He walked her to the door, then returned to his desk. Only a crazy man would continue to want what he couldn’t have, he told himself. Which made him certifiable. It was the human condition, he thought.

And now she’d caught Arnie in her web. Jack could almost pity the guy. The difference was Arnie would probably fantasize about happily-ever-after while Jack only wanted Samantha in his bed. He’d learned a long time ago to concentrate on the physical and ignore the emotional. There was no point in engaging his heart—people who claimed to love quickly got over the feeling and then they left.

Samantha hadn’t been sure what to expect when she’d signed up for “executive housing,” but she was pleasantly surprised by all her condo had to offer. There was a spacious living room with a semi-view, a dining area and plenty of room in the kitchen, especially for someone who made it a point to dirty as few pots as possible.

Her bedroom held a king-size bed, a dresser and an armoire with a television. The closet was huge and she’d already soaked her troubles away in the massive whirlpool tub in her bathroom. There was even a workstation alcove with a desk for her laptop, good lighting and high-speed Internet connection.

The only downside to the space was the fact that it felt … impersonal. The neutral colors were so bland and the furniture so functional. There wasn’t anything funky to be found.

Still, the condo worked for now and it was about double the size her New York apartment had been. As she stood in front of the slider leading out to her small balcony and considered take-out options for dinner, she felt a whisper of contentment steal over her.

Coming to Chicago had been a good idea, she thought. She’d needed to leave New York. Despite loving the city, there were too many Vance memories around, and she’d needed to get away from them and him. Here she could start over. Build new memories. There were—

Someone knocked on her door. She crossed the beige carpet and looked through the peephole.

“Jack?” she asked as she pulled open the door.

“I’m presuming,” he said, holding up two brown bags. “I come bearing Chinese food. I have wine, too. Sort of a welcome-to-the-building thing. Interested?”

She was delighted, she thought, stepping back and motioning him to enter. Instead, a black-and-white border collie slipped by Jack and stepped into the apartment.

“This is Charlie,” Jack said. “Do you like dogs?”

Samantha held out her fingers for Charlie to sniff, then petted him. “I love them.” She crouched down in front of Charlie and rubbed his shoulders. “Who’s a handsome guy?” she asked, then laughed as he tried to lick her face.

“He likes you,” Jack said. “Smart dog.”

She laughed. “Okay, now I really want to have dinner with you. Come on in.”

She led the way to the kitchen where Jack opened the wine and she collected plates for their dinner. As she opened the bags and began pulling out cartons of food, she noticed a bright red plastic bowl and a box with a big C on it.

“This is interesting,” she said, holding up both.

Jack grinned sheepishly. “They’re for Charlie. He loves Chinese, so the place I go mixes up a special rice dish for him. It’s beef and chicken, rice, vegetables, light on the salt and spices. He loves it and the vet approves. It’s kind of a special treat.”

Samantha did her best to reconcile the straitlaced lawyer she knew Jack to be with a guy who would special order food for his dog.

“Now I know who’s really in charge,” she murmured.

“Yeah,” Jack said easily. “He’s the boss.”

He helped her carry the cartons to the table. Charlie was served, but he waited until they sat down before digging in to his dinner.

Jack held out his glass of wine. “Welcome to the neighborhood. I hope you like it.”

“Thank you.” They touched glasses, then she took a sip of the red wine. “Very nice. All of this.”

“No problem. I thought you might still be feeling out of place.”

“Some. I like the apartment, but it’s weird because nothing in here is mine. Like these plates.” She held up the plain cream plate. “I would never have bought these.”

“Too normal?”

“Too boring. Color is our friend.”

“Agreed. But you’ll get settled, then you can find a place of your own.”

“I know. But for now, this is great. They make it very convenient.”

Jack passed her the honey-glazed shrimp. “That’s why I’m here. Dry cleaning right downstairs. The corner grocery store delivers. The dog walker lives across the street. There are over twenty restaurants in a five-block square around here and a great park close by where Charlie and I hang out on weekends.”

She glanced at the dog who had finished his dinner and was now sniffing the floor for rice grains he might have missed. “He’s beautiful. But doesn’t he need exercise and attention? You’re a guy who works long hours.”

“He’s fine,” Jack said. “Is it quiet enough here for you? That’s the first thing I noticed when I moved in. How quiet it was. Good construction.”

She started to agree, then realized he had not-so-subtly changed the subject. “It’s great,” she said. “What aren’t you telling me?”

He looked at her and raised his eyebrows. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“About Charlie. You changed the subject.”

“From what?”

“How he gets through the day without tearing up your place.”

“He keeps busy.”

Jack looked uncomfortable. She glanced from him to the dog. “What? He watches soaps and does a crossword puzzle?”

Jack sighed. “He goes to day care, okay? I know, I know. It’s silly, but he has a lot of energy and border collies are herding dogs. I didn’t want him alone and bored all the time so three days a week he goes to doggy day care. There he plays with the other dogs and herds them around. He comes home so tired that on Tuesdays and Thursdays he pretty much just sleeps. I have a dog walker who comes by twice a day to take him out.”

The muscles in his jaw tensed slightly as he spoke.She could tell he hadn’t wanted to share that part of his life with her.

She did her best not to smile or laugh—he would take that wrong—not realizing that women would find a big, tough, successful guy who cared that much about his dog pretty appealing.

“You’re a responsible pet owner,” she said. “Some people aren’t.”

He narrowed his gaze, as if waiting for a slam. She smiled innocently, then changed the subject.

After dinner they moved to the living room. Charlie made a bid for the wing chair in the corner. Jack ordered him out of it. The dog gave a sigh of long suffering, then stretched out on the carpet by Samantha.

Jack glanced around at the furniture, then studied the painting over the fireplace. “So not you,” he said.

Samantha looked at the subtle blues and greens. “It’s very restful.”

“You hate it.”

“I wouldn’t have gone for something so …”

“Normal?” he asked.

She grinned. “Exactly. Too expected. Where’s the interesting furniture, the splash of color?”

“I’m sure you’ll do that with your next place.”

“Absolutely. I miss fringe.”

He winced. “I remember you had that horrible shawl over that table in your apartment when we were in grad school. It was the ugliest thing I’d ever seen.”

“It was beautiful,” she told him. “And it had an amazing color palate.”

“It looked like something from a Dali nightmare.”

“You have no taste,” she said.

“I know when to be afraid.”

He smiled as he spoke, making her own mouth curve up in return. It had always been like this, she thought. They rarely agreed and yet they got along just fine. She liked that almost as much as she liked looking at him.

He’d changed out of his workday suit into jeans and a long-sleeved shirt. The denim had seen better days. Dozens of washings had softened and faded the material, molding to his long legs and narrow hips.

A controlled sex appeal, she thought. Reined-in power that always made her wonder what would happen when he lost control. How big would the explosion be? She had an idea from their lone night together. He had claimed her with a need that had left her shaking and desperately wanting more.

Step away from the memory, she told herself. Talk about dangerous territory.

“Don’t you have some furniture and decorations from your New York apartment?” he asked.

“I have a few things in storage,” she said. A very few things. In an ongoing attempt to control her, Vance had fought her over every picture and dish. It had been easier and oddly freeing simply to walk away.

An emotion flickered in his dark eyes. “I know you’re coming off of a divorce. How are you holding up?”

The news wasn’t a secret, so she wasn’t surprised that he knew. “Okay. It was tough at first. I went through the whole ‘I’ve failed’ bit, but I’ve moved on from that. Right now I’m feeling a lot of relief.”

“It’s a tough time,” he said.

She nodded. “I had really planned to stay married to the same man for the rest of my life. I thought I’d picked the perfect guy.” She paused. “Not perfect. Perfect for me. But I was wrong.”

An understatement, she thought grimly. “We wanted different things in nearly everything. I could have lived with that, but he changed his mind about wanting children.” She kept her voice light because if she gave in to her real feelings, the bitterness would well up inside of her. She didn’t want to deal with that right now. Talk about a waste of energy.

“I’m sorry,” Jack said. “I remember you used to talk about having kids all the time.”

“I still plan to have them. I think I have a few good years left.”

“More than a few.”

She smiled as she spoke. Jack liked the way she curled up on the sofa, yet kept one leg lowered so she could rub Charlie with her bare foot.

She still painted her toenails, he thought, looking at the tiny flowers painted on each big toe. She even had a toe ring on each foot. None of the women he got involved with were the toe-ring type. Of course none of them wore jeans with flowers sewn onto the side seams or sweaters that looked more like a riot of colors than clothing.

“Enough about me,” she said. “What have you been up to, romantically?”

“Nothing that interesting,” he told her. “No wives, current or ex. I was engaged for a while.”

“Oh. It didn’t work out?”

“She died.”

Samantha’s eyes widened. “Jack, I’m sorry.”

“Thanks. It was a few years ago, just before Christmas. Shelby’s car spun out on an icy bridge and went into the water. She didn’t make it.”

“How horrible.”

Samantha was the sympathetic type. She would want to say the right thing, only to realize there wasn’t one. He’d heard all the platitudes possible and none of them had made a damn bit of difference. Not after he’d found Shelby’s note. The one she’d written before she’d died.

“Was it very close to the wedding?” she asked.

“Just a little over a week. We were planning to get married New Year’s Eve.”

She bit her lower lip. “You must hate the holidays now.”

“Not as much as I would have thought. I get angry, thinking about what was lost.”

Not for him and Shelby—he’d done his best to let that go—but for her family. They were good people and he knew they’d yet to move on.

“Relationships are never easy,” she said.

Charlie chose that moment to roll onto his back and offer his stomach for rubbing. Samantha obliged him and he started to groan.

“That dog knows a good thing when he has one,” Jack said.

She looked at him and grinned. “Oh, right. Because you don’t spoil him.”

“Me? Never.” He sipped on his wine. “Are you overwhelmed by work yet?”

“Almost. Ask me again in two days and I’m sure the answer will be yes. There’s so much to do, and that’s what makes it all exciting. This is a great opportunity.”

He was glad she thought so. He wanted energetic people solving company problems as quickly as possible. “Have you heard about the big advertiser party? It’s in a few weeks. It’s an annual function and very upscale. Formal attire required.”

“Really? You mean I have an excuse to buy a new dress and look fabulous?”

The thought of her in something long and slinky suddenly made him look forward to the party in ways he hadn’t before. “It’s not just an excuse,” he said. “It’s an order.”

“And you’ll be in a tux?”

He grimaced. “Oh, yeah.”

“I’m sure you’ll look great. All the women will be fawning over you.”

“Fawning gets old,” he said, doing his best not to read anything into her comment. While he wanted to believe she was flirting, he’d been shot down enough in the past to know that wishful thinking got him exactly nowhere.

“Do you have a lot of it?” she asked, her green eyes sparkling with humor.

“Enough.”

“And just how much is that?”

He sensed they were in dangerous territory, but he wasn’t sure how to avoid getting in trouble.

“I date,” he said cautiously.

“I would guess that you have women lining up to be with you,” she said easily. “You’re good-looking, successful, well-off and single. That’s fairly irresistible.”

Except for Samantha, that had always been his take on it, too. So why did he get the feeling that she didn’t see the list as a good thing?

“Some women manage to resist,” he said. “What about you? Ready to start dating?”

“I don’t think so. Not for a while. Divorce has a way of sucking the confidence out of a person. Or at least it did me.”

He couldn’t believe that. She had always been confident. Smart, funny, gorgeous. “It doesn’t show.”

She smiled. “Thanks. I’m getting by on sheer determination.”

“It’s working.”

He wanted to tell her she had nothing to worry about—that she was as desirable as ever and he was willing to prove it.

Not a good idea, he reminded himself. So instead of speaking, or acting, he stood. “It’s late. Charlie and I need our beauty sleep.” He whistled softly. “Come on, boy.”

Charlie rose and stretched. He licked Samantha’s hand, then joined Jack.

She got up and followed them to the front door. “Thanks for stopping by. Dinner was great. I appreciated the company, as well.” She crouched down and rubbed Charlie’s ears. “You’re a very handsome boy. We’ll have to get together again soon.”

Charlie barked his agreement.

Figures, Jack thought with a grin. After all these years, she falls for the dog.