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“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.
Chapter Three
Nearly a week later, Jack sat behind what had been his father’s desk, cursing his agreement to take over the company, even temporarily. Every day brought a new crisis and, with it, bad news. At this point all he was asking for was twenty-four hours without something major going wrong.
He’d already had to deal with the IT people informing him that their Web pages were nearly at capacity and, to support the Web expansion, they were going to have to negotiate with their server. The previous quarter’s report showed magazine subscriptions falling for their three best publications. A train derailment had destroyed nearly a hundred thousand magazines heading to the West Coast markets and he’d just seen the layout for the launch of their new home-decorating magazine and even he could tell it sucked the big one.
There was too much to deal with, he thought. How the hell had his father done all this and run several departments?
Jack leaned back in his chair and rubbed his temples. He already had the answer to that one—George Hanson hadn’t done it well. Things had slipped and there’d been no time to fix them before the next crisis had appeared. Despite hiring department heads, Jack was still overwhelmed by the sheer volume of work.
As far as he could tell, there was only one way for Hanson Media Group to survive—he had to get more help.
He buzzed for his assistant. When Mrs. Wycliff entered his office, he motioned for her to take a seat.
“I need to get in touch with my brothers,” he said. “Do you know where Evan and Andrew are these days?”
