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Buying herself time, she headed toward her table and tried not to look anxious while she accepted congratulations for a job well done from guests who stopped her on the way. At any moment, she expected the society reporter from the newspaper to pounce, photographer in tow. Her acceptance of the check from the man everyone was now talking about would be a photo op no self-respecting journalist would pass up.
Ashley had to concede that the passing of the check would also be excellent publicity for the charity—and raising funds for the Shelter Project had been the entire evening’s goal.
Her goal now was to prepare herself for the moment she would turn and find Matt behind her. The effort, however, was wasted.
The reporter appeared as predicted to obtain a quote about how delighted Ashley was for the opportunity to actively participate in the building of a Shelter home. Ashley also told the woman that she did, indeed, know the gentleman who had put her up for bid. His name was Matt Callaway, and he was a friend of her brother Cord.
Looking as if that association alone was enough to explain the man’s clearly unpredicted—and unprecedented—actions, the reporter then directed her photographer to get a shot of Ashley and her committee and went off in search of Matt.
Matt, however, had disappeared.
She was one hundred thousand dollars short.
Ashley sat in her modest office with its art prints on the walls, blinds tilted to mask the less than impressive view of a rooftop from the tenth floor of the Kendrick Building, and frowned at the neat columns of figures on the sheet in front of her. Every single item that had been donated for the auction had been purchased and paid for. Season tickets to the opera, to the symphony, to Washington Redskins games. An original oil painting. Baskets of gourmet foods. Cooking lessons. Dinners at some of the areas finest restaurants. Massages. A facial peel. Golf clubs. A spa membership.
The list went on.
The totals added up.
Everything was accounted for. Everything other than the last item of the evening, which one of her committee members had written on the recap sheet as Ashley K.-$100,000!
Ashley would have smiled at the exclamation point had the bid come from anyone but Matt. And had she not dreaded having to go after him to collect it.
She reached for the coffee cooling by her neatly aligned in-box, stapler and mouse pad of Monet’s water lilies. She would send a letter first. If that didn’t work, she would send her no-nonsense, very married assistant Elisa Jenkins to ask for it, since Elisa could sweet-talk her way into or out of just about anything. She just didn’t want to have to talk to him herself. She was too embarrassed, too confused by what she had done, and somewhere between baffled and furious about what he had done in return. Being painfully honest with herself, however, she had to admit she was far more upset with herself than she was with him.
She had spent years going out of her way to avoid any situation that could embarrass herself or her family. For most of her life, she had lived in fear of proving that she would never be as refined as her mother, as capable as her younger sister, or that she would make a mistake that will wind up all over the press the way it so often had with Cord. Like her oldest brother Gabe, a senator now running for governor, she understood her duty to her family and its reputation, and had learned long ago to suppress every rebellious instinct she’d ever had.
Or so she’d thought before last Tuesday night.
She set the blue mug with its bright sunflowers back down, rubbing her forehead as if the motion could somehow erase the memory. It seemed to be one of those annoying paradoxes that the more a person tried to forget something, the more she thought about it. And thinking about her behavior with Matt piled guilt on top of regret and a whole host of other emotions she knew she didn’t deserve to escape. She’d never in her life had a one-night stand. Never even considered it.
Until Matt.
She’d always been afraid she was susceptible to him. She’d just had no idea how susceptible she truly was. It seemed he’d barely touched her and she’d not only thrown caution to the wind, she’d flat-out forgotten caution existed.
A movement across the room rudely interrupted her self-flagellation.
Dropping her hand, she felt her heart jerk against her ribs.
It seemed she wouldn’t have to go after Matt after all. He filled her doorway, a six-foot, two-inch wall of raw male tension civilized by a beautifully tailored navy-blue suit.
His steel-gray eyes skimmed from the neat twist of her hair, down the buttons of her tailored black jacket and moved back up to settle with an invasive jolt of heat on her mouth.
The inhibitions he’d stripped away right along with her clothes returned in spades.
Taking a step into the functional but feminine room, he lifted his bold glance to her eyes. “You didn’t return my call.”
There was a reason for that. “I…didn’t know what to say.”
“How about, ‘I made it home fine.’ Or, ‘I had a good time. Yes, I’d like to go to dinner sometime. Maybe take in a play.’”
He didn’t understand. The woman he’d been with, the one it seemed he’d wanted to see again, hadn’t really been…her. “Please.” She rose, glancing past him, uneasy with fear that her assistant might arrive any moment and overhear. “Would you close the door.”
“No need.” His chiseled features seemed as tight as the deep tones of his voice as he crossed the industrial-gray carpet. “I’m not here about anything but the auction, Ashley. I got your message loud and clear.” He stopped in front of her desk, the overhead lights catching hints of silver in his sun-bleached blond hair. “I just came to bring you this.”
Reaching inside his jacket, he removed a check from its inner pocket and held it out to her. “You don’t need to work on the project. I’ll donate the money, anyway.”
She looked down at the bold writing on his personal check. He’d written it out to the foundation in exactly the amount he’d bid. But it was his hand that held her attention. He clearly didn’t run his business from behind a desk. His hands were a working man’s. Broad, blunt fingered, capable. There were calluses at the base of his fingers. She knew. She’d felt them when he’d cupped her face, skimmed them down her naked back.
The thought brought other memories she’d desperately tried to erase. Taking what he offered, she forced herself not to snatch it in her haste to mentally change the subject.
Her glance barely grazed his chin.
“I appreciate the donation,” she murmured, relieved that he seemed as anxious as she did to forget what had happened. “And I appreciate that you want to let me off the hook. But I do have to do the work.
“The story about you bidding for me was in the society section of yesterday’s paper,” she informed him, politely, because manners were the shield she used to get through just about everything. “Entertainment Tonight and People magazine have already picked it up, and a network called this morning to send a crew to film my progress for a documentary. The money they offered to the foundation for the rights will build a hundred houses. I’m not in a position to back out now.”
That had not been at all what Matt had been prepared to hear. He’d thought he’d walk in, hand over the check, tell her he expected nothing in return and let it go at that. But then, he had to admit that he hadn’t been prepared for anything that had happened with her lately.
He could feel the acid in his stomach churning as his glance moved from her impeccable clothing to the painfully neat and organized space surrounding her. Not so much as a paper clip was out of place in the cool blues and grays of the surprisingly unassuming office. The prints on the walls—a Monet, a Renoir, a Degas—were nicely framed but inexpensive. Her oak desk and blue chair were very much like the one her absent secretary or assistant used in the outer office. He’d been under the impression that Kendricks did everything on a grand scale. The ones he associated with now certainly did, anyway.
The modern thirty-story building was populated mostly by law and accounting firms that rented space from Kendrick Management Company. The upper four floors belonged exclusively to The Kendrick Group, Inc. Located there was an enormous boardroom, her father’s suite of offices, an office Cord saw maybe once a quarter, and the offices of the sizable staff it took to oversee a conglomerate involved in everything from computers and commodities to wineries and world-class sports teams.
Everything upstairs spoke of wealth and power.
By comparison, the offices of the Kendrick Foundation were downright austere. What he saw here was pleasant enough, almost serene, he supposed, but it spoke of an almost obsessive bent toward order.
The rigid control she seemed to surround herself with probably explained a lot about her, he thought. But with her studiously avoiding his eyes, he was far more interested in how her air of untouchable refinement could still provoke defenses in him.
There had been a time when she had made him feel as if he were nowhere near good enough to deserve her attention, wasn’t worthy enough for even a few moments of her time, much less her interest. The way she would turn away when she saw him coming, or hurry past without speaking had only added to the quiet rage of inequity that had simmered inside him for so long he hadn’t even known it was there.
He could have sworn he had grown beyond the buried anger and resentments of his youth. After the other night with her, he’d thought she’d grown up, too, or at least grown beyond the snobbish, pampered-princess stage that had made it nearly impossible for her to go anywhere near him.
It seemed little about her had changed, though. Apparently, her mood and a half a bottle of one of California’s better vintages had only masked her feelings about him. She hadn’t even had the decency to return his call when he’d phoned to make sure she’d made it home all right.
She was clearly back to avoiding him again. Which was fine with him. The less he had to do with her himself, the better off he would be. It felt demoralizing enough to think that she’d had to nearly get drunk to let him touch her. It only added insult to injury that he couldn’t get the feel of her out of his mind.
He was working on it, though. He just wished he hadn’t totally forgotten about the media attention she would attract.
Jamming his hands into his slacks’ pockets to keep from jamming them through his hair, he mentally kicked himself for what he’d done. Watching her the other night, seeing her so cool and poised, he had simply wanted her to acknowledge that he existed. He had no idea now why that had mattered. He wasn’t feeling particularly proud of his actions, either.
Picturing her on a construction site was impossible.
“I suppose you don’t have a lot of choice now,” he conceded, figuring he should probably be grateful all that polished poise was there. Considering what he’d gotten her into, it probably kept her from going for his throat. “When do you plan to go?”
“I haven’t planned anything yet.”
“There are a couple of projects scheduled here in Richmond for the first of September. Those will be the easiest in terms of proximity.”
She shook her head, strands of champagne gleaming among shades of pale wheat. “September is when our scholarship recipients start school.” There would be child care to help the ladies arrange. Paperwork with the various colleges to complete. Part-time jobs to find. “It’s far too busy a time for me to be gone then. The only time I’m free is the first of August.”
“The only projects then are in Florida. August is a miserable month there.”
“It’s the only time I can go.”
“Go earlier. Get someone to cover for you.” His voice tightened as he looked up from her smooth, perfectly manicured hands. He was trying to help her out here. He was trying to help both of them, actually. “You really don’t want to go to Gray Lake, Florida, that time of year.”
“I don’t want to ask anyone to cover for me.” Her delicate brow pinched. “And how do you know so much about Shelter’s schedule?”
He knew the schedule because he’d helped draw it up. He’d donated a project supervisor and manpower to each Shelter project from the construction company he’d started ten years ago. He didn’t care to explain that, though. He especially didn’t care to explain how he’d become involved with the charity in the first place. Not to her. “The schedule was in the publicity material.”
“In the newspapers?”
“At the dinner. It was on the tables.”
“Why were you even there?”
It seemed she couldn’t imagine any reason for his presence at such an event—except, possibly, to make her life miserable.
His defenses already up, Matt ignored the anxiety in her tone. All he heard was the phrasing that seemed to suggest he hadn’t belonged in the socially and politically prominent circle she ran with.
Two seconds ago, he’d struggled with guilt and a fair amount of self-reproach for letting her get the better of him. Now, any guilt he felt about what his actions had committed her to disappeared like water drops on a hot griddle. Any desire for further discussion evaporated right along with it. Although he might have pointed out that she hadn’t seemed to mind his lack of pedigree the other night had his basic sense of decency—and his friend—not stopped him.
“Hey, there you are. Dad’s secretary said I’d find you here.”
Ashley’s glance jerked to her brother Cord as he stopped in the doorway. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen him in a tie. His nod to family convention today had been to throw a sports jacket on over his collarless shirt and slacks. It didn’t matter that the black shirt was imported silk, the slack’s cashmere and the jacket a beautiful hand-tailored Italian cut that were hardly the uniform of a rebel. She suspected he refused to wear a tie simply because their father and their older brother did.
His rakish smile died as his glance bounced from her to the side of Matt’s head. “What’s going on?”
A muscle in Matt’s jaw bunched as he pulled his hands from his pockets. “I needed to hand over a check. I thought I’d do it before our meeting.”
“Dad’s on his way to the conference room now. If we get ourselves up there, we can be out of here in an hour.
“Hey, Sis,” he said to her, oblivious to the strain snaking through the room. “I’m sorry I missed you with those papers. Edna just cornered me with them.”
Edna was their dad’s personal secretary, had been for nearly thirty years. Knowing the amazingly efficient, no-nonsense woman as she did, Ashley could almost picture the sixty-something matron taking Cord by the ear, sitting him down in his office and insisting that he wasn’t leaving until the document was read and signed.
As much as Ashley had hated being pulled off her own job to chase down her brother, she’d hated even more that she hadn’t been able to accomplish what her father had sent her to do.
It had been a day of system failures all the way around.
“Come on, Callaway.” Cord’s voice cut through the strain. “As soon as we get through this proposal, I’m heading home. Sheryl has a friend in town. Want to go for a sail?”
It sounded as if the two of them had put together another project for the real-estate development arm of the Kendrick companies. Despite his penchant for play, Cord had proven himself a bit of a genius at spotting potential business properties and buying them for a song—which was undoubtedly why their father hadn’t disinherited him over some of the messes he’d gotten himself into. Flings with models, female rock stars and incidents with race cars and gambling establishments raised their socially and politically conservative father’s blood pressure enough. But a paternity suit last year had nearly put him over the edge.
“I’ll pass,” she heard Matt mutter. “I need to get back to Atlanta.”
“You just came from Atlanta.”
“That’s because I’ve got another project going there.”
“You need a break,” Cord grumbled.
“Call it my own form of risk management. Work keeps me out of trouble.”
Standing the same impressive height as Matt and with his blue eyes and sun-streaked hair, Cord could have more easily passed for the brother of the big man radiating tension beside him than the one he actually had. Gabe was dark like their father. So was their little sister, Tess. Ashley and Cord had both inherited their mother’s fair coloring.
Any other similarities between her and her next oldest sibling, however, ended there. As much as Cord tended to distance himself from family, other than for business, she felt she barely knew him at all. There were only three years separating them, but with their difference in interests and attitude, those years could be measured at the speed of light. From the time he’d been a teenager, it seemed he’d gone out of his way to break the rules.
Matt’s influence back then hadn’t helped at all.
If she remembered correctly, it had been Matt who’d shown him how to hot-wire a car.
“You’re turning into a bad example,” Cord informed his friend. “If I hang around with you much longer, I might almost turn respectable myself. Are you through here?”
She could practically feel Matt’s finely honed tension when he glanced toward her.
“Your sister and I have nothing else to discuss,” he said, speaking to Cord, looking at her.
“Then, let’s get out of here.” Cord slapped him on the back. Without another word to her, they both turned to the door.
“What was the check for?”
“That auction.”
“Oh, yeah,” she heard her brother muse. “I can’t believe you got her to agree to that. Are you really going to let her do it?”
Matt was already out the door. Cord was right behind.
She had no idea why her brother thought Matt had any say in whether or not she worked on a house. They gave her no clue, either. With their voices fading with their footsteps, she couldn’t hear another thing they said.
She could, however, still feel the tension Matt had left in his wake. It rubbed her nerves like sandpaper, making it impossible to stay still.
Crossing her office, she closed the door before Elisa could arrive and walk in as she always did, eager to share whatever it was her precious six-month-old daughter had accomplished the night before and launch into her usual lecture about what Ashley really needed was a husband and babies. She would adore having a family of her own. Now just wasn’t the time to think about how useful it would be to first meet the right guy.
With her hand still on the knob, she rested her forehead against the smooth wood. All she could think about now was what had happened with the wrong one.
It seemed that the Fates weren’t satisfied with letting her stew in her own disappointment in herself. To make up for her lapse in judgement with Matt, she must now suffer a situation she truly did not want to be in.
She knew nothing about building a building. Her interests were in her family and in her charities, in the scholarship program for single moms and in the impoverished women and children she tried to help by finding out where their needs were and raising funds to meet them. Her talents lay in organization and an eye for detail. That was why her mother had entrusted her with the Shelter Project fund-raiser. But just because she could raise the money to buy bricks or boards, didn’t mean she knew how to put them together.
Worse than that, the press would be around whether she wanted them there or not.
She lifted her head, slowly turned back to the papers on her desk. Only months ago, the press had had a field day with Gabe before he’d married their head housekeeper’s daughter. Cord’s name hadn’t shown up in at least six weeks, so he was due to fall off the good-behavior wagon any day now. Their little sister, Tess, had settled into domesticity with her husband of barely a year in Boston and rumors were rumbling that her marriage was already in trouble. Tess staunchly denied it. But her smile had seemed awfully strained to Ashley when they’d met a few weeks ago for lunch.
Staying out of the limelight seemed impossible for Ashley, too. Just trying to avoid it had caused her problems enough. She’d tried lying low a few years ago and speculation had ranged from her being ill to her being a recluse. She’d had no problem overlooking the tabloid’s claims that she’d been abducted by aliens, but her mother had finally made her face the fact that their family would never have the privacy others had. Unless she wanted to live her life in total seclusion, her only defense would be to hold her head high and give the world as little as possible to criticize.
She would do her best to do just that. But she couldn’t help feeling a disaster coming on with the building thing. It seemed to her that the only positive in the situation was that what she would do would be for a very good cause. That, and now that she had his check, there was no imaginable reason for her to have to deal with Matt again.
