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“Not that.”
He waited.
Color flared on her cheeks, but she continued to hold his gaze. “Because of what happened that night. When we …” She cleared her throat. “You know. Were intimate.”
“Water under the bridge,” he said easily, mostly because it was true. He’d never been one to dwell on the past. Not even on a night that had made him believe in miracles. Probably because in the bright light of day, he’d learned that dreams were for fools and miracles didn’t really happen.
Promptly at four in the afternoon, Mrs. Wycliff knocked on Jack’s office door.
“Come in,” he said as he saved the work on his computer, then looked up at his father’s former assistant.
“Here are the daily reports,” she said, placing several folders on his desk.
“Thank you.”
He frowned as he looked at the thick stack that would make up his evening reading. In theory, he knew plenty about running a company. He had the MBA to prove it. But theory and reality often had little in common and this was one of those times. If one of the employees was accused of homicide—that he could handle. Right now, a charge of first-degree murder seemed simple when compared with the day-to-day ups and downs of a publicly traded corporation.
“How is the staff holding up?” he asked the older woman. Although he was confident Mrs. Wycliff hadn’t been born into her position, he couldn’t remember a time when she hadn’t worked for his father.
She clutched the back of the chair and shook her head in refusal when he invited her to take a seat.
“They miss him, of course. Your father was well liked in the company. Of course he would be. He was a good man.”
Jack was careful to keep his expression neutral. George Hanson had been a man of business. He had lived and breathed his company, while his children had grown up on the fringes of his life. That wasn’t Jack’s definition of good.
“Several people have stopped by to tell me how much they miss him,” Jack told her. It happened at least once a day and he never knew what to say in return.
She smiled. “We all appreciate you stepping in to run things. Hanson Media Group has been home to a lot of us for a long time. We’d hate to see anything happen to the company.”
“Happen?” He’d only been on board a couple of weeks. From what he’d been able to find out, the only problems seemed to be his father’s need to micromanage departments. Once Jack got the right people in place, he figured the firm would run smoothly.
Mrs. Wycliff smoothed her already perfect gray hair and absently fingered the bun at the back of her neck. “Your father was very proud of you. Did you know that?”
Jack wasn’t fooled by the obvious change in subject, but he figured he would do a little digging on his own before he grilled his assistant for information.
“Thank you for telling me,” he said.
She smiled. “He often talked about how well you were doing at your law firm. Of course he’d wanted you to come to work for the family business, but if the law made you happy, he was happy, too.”
Jack tried to reconcile that description with the angry conversations he’d frequently shared with his father. George Hanson had tried everything from bribes to threatening to cut Jack out of the will if he didn’t come work for the company.
He’d long suspected his father had shown one side of his personality to the world and kept the other side more private.
“We had a deal,” he said. “After law school, I got my MBA. Then I decided which I liked better.” He shrugged. “It wasn’t much of a choice.”
“You followed your heart and your talents,” Mrs. Wycliff told him. “That’s what your father always said.” She smiled. “He brought in champagne the day you made partner.”
“Junior partner,” Jack corrected absently. Champagne? When he couldn’t get hold of his father, he’d left a message with Helen, his stepmother, telling her about the promotion. She’d sent a card and a stylish new briefcase as a gift. Ever polite, Helen had signed both their names, but Jack had known it was all really from her. His father had never bothered to call him back.
“He was a good man,” Mrs. Wycliff said. “Whatever happens, you have to remember that.”
“That’s the second time you’ve been cryptic,” he told her. “Want to tell me why?”
She had dark blue eyes and the kind of bone structure that spoke of great beauty in her youth. If she had been a different kind of woman, he would have suspected something between her and his father. But while George might have been interested, Jack was confident Mrs. Wycliff herself would not have approved.
“I can’t,” she said, her voice low.
“Can’t or won’t?”
She clutched the back of the chair more firmly and met his direct gaze. “I don’t know anything. If I did, I would tell you. You have my complete loyalty.”
“But there’s something?”
She hesitated. “A feeling. I’m sorry. I can’t be more specific. There’s nothing more to say.”
He’d known the woman all of two weeks, yet he would have bet she wasn’t lying. She didn’t know. Or she was a damn fine actress.
Feelings. As a rule, he didn’t trust emotion, but gut responses were different. He’d changed his line of questioning during a trial more than once based on a feeling and each time he’d been right.
“If you learn anything,” he began.
“I’ll tell you. I’ve been talking to people. Listening.” She swallowed. “I lost my husband a few years ago. We never had children and a lot of our friends have retired and moved south. This company is all I have. I’ll do anything to protect it.”
“Thank you.”
She nodded and left.
Mysteries he didn’t want or need. As for Mrs. Wycliff, while he appreciated her concern and her willingness to provide him with information, who was to say if they had similar goals? She wanted Hanson Media Group to go on forever, he wanted out. If those two objectives came into conflict, he had a feeling his once-loyal secretary would become a bitter enemy.
With employment came paperwork, Samantha thought two days later as she sat in an empty office and filled out her formal job application, along with pages for insurance, a security pass, a parking space and emergency contact information.
She worked quickly, still unable to believe she’d landed her dream job with little or no effort on her part. She’d been so excited to get going, she’d come in before her start date to do the paperwork.
“Thank you, Helen,” she murmured, knowing her friend had somehow managed to get her name on the short list of candidates. She’d wanted to mention that to Jack during their interview, but on Helen’s advice had kept quiet. For reasons that made no sense to Samantha, Jack, along with his siblings, thought Helen was little more than a trophy wife.
Hope I’m around when they all discover that there’s a very functioning brain behind those big eyes, Samantha thought.
She signed the application and moved on to the next piece of paper.
“Morning.”
She looked up and saw Jack in the doorway to the small office. He looked tall, sexy and just-out-of-the-shower tempting. What was it about a freshly shaved man that got her body to pay attention?
“Hi,” she said.
“I heard you were here taking care of details.” He leaned against the door frame. “Thanks for accepting the job.”
“I’m the grateful one,” she said with a laugh. “I can’t wait to get started. But first there’s all this to work through.” She patted the papers. “I’ve been promised that if I do everything correctly, I get my own ID badge at the end of the day. And the key to my office.”
“I heard that rumor, too. My intrepid assistant informed me we already have a meeting scheduled.”
“Monday afternoon,” she said. “I’ll be working all weekend, bringing myself up to speed. I’ll want to discuss parameters with you before I set my team on the task.”
“You’re not expected to work 24-7,” he said.
“I know, but I’m excited and it’s not as if I have a lot of things planned. I’ve just moved to Chicago. I’m still finding my way around.”
“All the more reason to get out and explore.”
She tilted her head. “Hmm, is my new boss discouraging me from working? That’s a new one.”
“I don’t want you to burn out your first week. I need you around longer than that.”
She knew they were just joking around, and she enjoyed that she and Jack seemed to have kept some remnant of their friendship intact. But why did she have to be so aware of him?
Even now, with him standing several feet away, she would swear she could hear him breathing. Heat seemed to radiate from his body, in a way designed to make her melt.
It had been like this before, she thought glumly. Back in grad school, she’d spent two years in a constant state of sexual arousal. She’d needed the friendship more than she’d wanted a lover, so she’d ignored the physical attraction between them. She’d been careful to always seem disinterested.
Until that one night when she’d been unable to stand it a second longer.
“I promise to explore often and well,” she said. “But later. Right now I want to get to work.”
He held up both hands. “Okay. I give up. Be a slave to your job. I’ll stop complaining.” He dropped his hands to his sides. “Are you already settled in your new place?”
“I have exactly two suitcases in my hotel room. It didn’t take long to settle.”
“Aren’t you going to get an apartment?”
“Eventually. I’m too busy to look around right now.” A partial truth. Apartment hunting would give her too much time to think. She wanted to avoid bursts of introspection whenever possible.
“My building has executive rentals,” he said. “They come fully furnished and are rented by the month. That’s how I found the place. I took a two-month lease, found I liked the building and bought something larger.”
“Sounds interesting,” she said cautiously.
He grinned. “Don’t worry. It’s a huge high-rise. We’d never run into each other.”
Did he think she thought that was a problem? Okay, yeah, maybe it was. She had a feeling that running into Jack outside of work could be a complication, if not outright dangerous for her mental health. But hadn’t she promised herself to face life head on? Wasn’t she done with hiding from the truth?
“I appreciate the information,” she said. “Do you have a phone number or person to contact?”
“I have a business card in my office. Let me go get it.”
He walked down the hallway. Samantha turned her attention back to the paperwork in front of her, but instead of seeing it, she saw the empty apartment she’d left in New York only three weeks before.
She’d thought she would always live in New York. She’d thought she knew what to expect from her life. Funny how a lifetime of dreams could be packed up into a half-dozen boxes and the man she’d once trusted to love her forever had turned out to be nothing more than a lying thief.
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.
