by Karen Booth
Adam narrowed his stare. “That’s so strange. He’s never done that with anyone he’s never met. Ever.”
Melanie shrugged, averting her eyes and scratching behind Jack’s ears. “Maybe he senses that I’m a dog person.” Or maybe Jack and I hung out in your kitchen before I left your apartment in the middle of the night.
The only sound Melanie could hear were Jack’s heavy breaths as Adam stepped closer, clearly appraising her. It made her so nervous, she had to say something. “We should get started. It’ll probably take me a while to get back to my hotel.”
“I’m still not sure how you got up the mountain, but you aren’t getting back down it anytime soon.” He nodded toward the great room windows. It was raining sideways. “There have been reports of flash floods in the foothills.”
“I’m a good driver. It’ll be fine.” She really was nothing more than a skittish driver. Living in New York meant taxis and town cars. She kept her license valid only for business trips.
“No car can handle a flood. I have room for you to stay. I insist.”
Staying was the problem. Every moment she and Adam spent together was another chance for him to remember her, and then she’d have a lot of explaining to do. This might not be a great idea, but she didn’t have much choice. She wouldn’t get any work done if she was lost at sea. “That would give me one less thing to worry about. Thank you.”
“I’ll show you to one of the guest rooms.”
“I’d prefer we just get to work. Then I can turn in early and we can get a fresh start in the morning.” She took a pair of binders from her bag. “Do you have an office where we can work?”
“I was thinking the kitchen. I’ll open a bottle of wine. We might as well enjoy ourselves.” He strode around the kitchen island and removed wineglasses from the cabinet below.
Melanie lugged her materials to the marble center island, taking a seat on one of the tall upholstered bar stools. “I shouldn’t, but thank you.” She flipped open the binders and slid one in front of the seat next to hers.
“You’re missing out. Chianti from a small winery in Tuscany. You can’t get this wine anywhere except maybe in the winemaker’s living room.” He cranked on the bottle opener.
Melanie closed her eyes and prayed for strength. Drinking wine with Adam had once led down a road she couldn’t revisit. “I’ll have a taste.” She stopped him at half a glass. “Thank you. That’s perfect.” The first sip took the edge off, spreading warmth throughout her body—an ill-advised reaction, given her drinking buddy.
Jack wandered by and stopped next to her, plopping his enormous head down on her lap.
No. No. You don’t like me. Melanie squirmed, hoping to discourage Jack. No such luck.
Adam set down his glass, his eyebrows drawing together. “I swear, Miss Costello. Something about you is so familiar.”
Two
“People say that I have a familiar face.” Melanie’s voice held a nervous squeak. She turned and practically buried her face in her project binder.
Adam considered himself an expert at deciphering the underlying message in a woman’s words, but he was especially fluent in coy deflection. I can’t believe she’s going to try to hide this. “Have you done any work for me?”
She shrugged and scanned her blessed notebook. “I would’ve remembered that.”
Time to turn up the heat. “Have we dated?”
She hesitated. “No. We haven’t dated.”
To be fair, she might have him on a technicality there. They hadn’t really been on a date. He scoured his brain for another leading question. “Do I detect an accent?” A slight twang had colored the word dated.
She screwed up her lips and sat straighter, still refusing to make eye contact, which was a real shame. Her crystalline blue eyes were lovely—plus, he’d be able to tell if she was being deceitful. “I grew up in Virginia.”
“I met a woman from Virginia at a party once. She was a real firecracker. Maybe a little bit crazy. If only I could remember what her name was.” He rubbed his chin, took another sip of wine, rounding to the other side of the kitchen island and taking the seat next to hers. Jack hadn’t moved, standing sentry at her hip. That’s right, buddy. You know her.
“I’m sure it’s difficult to keep track of all of the people you meet.” She pointed to a page titled “Schedule” in his notebook. “So, the interviews...”
He scanned the page, getting lost in a confusion of publication names and details. “No wonder my assistant was panicked this afternoon.” He flipped through the pages. “I generally work eighteen-hour days. When exactly am I supposed to find time for this?”
“Your assistant said she’ll rearrange your schedule. Most interviews and photo shoots will take place at your home or office. I’ll do everything I can to make sure your needs are met.”
Right now, his greatest need was to seek comfort in a second bourbon as soon as he’d dispatched the Chianti. Continuing this charade held zero appeal, and her refusal to own up to their past was frustrating as hell. He needed the question that had been hanging over his head for the past year to be answered. How could a woman share an extraordinary night of passion with him and then disappear? Even more important, why would she do that?
“For the moment, the biggest interview is with Metropolitan Style magazine,” she continued. “They’re doing a feature on you and your home, so that will entail a photo shoot. I’m bringing in a professional home stager to make sure that the decor is picture-perfect. Jack will need to see a groomer before then, but I’ll take care of that.”
Adam bristled at the idea of home stagers messing with his apartment, but no one decided what happened with his dog. “Jack hates groomers. You have to hire my guy, and he’s always booked weeks out.” Of course, his groomer would make himself available whenever Adam needed him, but it was the principle.
“I’ll do my best, but if he isn’t available, I’ll have to hire someone. Jack is important. People love dogs. It will cast you in a more favorable light.”
“How did you know I have a dog anyway?”
She cleared her throat. “I asked your assistant.”
She had a roundabout answer for everything. He’d never endure an entire weekend of talking in circles. “What if I didn’t already have a dog? What would you do then? Rent one?”
“I do whatever is needed to make my clients look good.”
“But it’s all a lie. Lies catch up with you eventually.”
Dropping her pen down onto the notebook, Melanie took a deep breath. She rolled up the sleeves of her silky blouse with a determination that made him wonder if she wanted to flatten him.
“The home stager is a waste of time,” he added. “My apartment is perfect.”
“We need it to look like a home in the photographs, not a bachelor pad.”
He saw his chance. She knew what his apartment looked like, but only because he’d seduced her in it. “So I have to get rid of my neon beer sign collection? Those things are everywhere.” He hadn’t owned one of those since college, but he wouldn’t hesitate to fabricate absurdities to get her to spill it.
She twisted her lips. “We can work around that.”
He had to up the bachelor-pad ante. “Now, what about the stuffed moose head above the mantel? Does that scream single guy or does that just say that I’m manly?” That was hardly his taste either, and she knew it.
“I don’t know.” She rubbed her temple. “This isn’t really my area of expertise. Can we come back to this later?” Melanie clenched a fist, waves of frustration radiating from her.
“No. I want to get this straightened out now.” His mind raced. His goal in sight, he was prepared to crank out crazy ideas for hours. “There are the beer taps in the kitchen, and I need to know if they’ll photograph my bedroom. I have a round bed, like in James Bo
nd movies.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Why? Lots of men have moose heads and James Bond beds.”
“But you don’t,” she blurted.
The color drained from her face, but that gorgeous mouth of hers was just as rosy pink as he’d remembered. Just thinking about her lips traveling down the centerline of his chest charged every atom in his body. She didn’t say another thing, but he swore he could hear her heartbeat, drumming between her heavy breaths.
“How would you know?” he asked, wishing he felt more triumphant at having caught her.
She straightened in her seat, struggling to compose herself. “Uh...”
“I’m waiting.”
“Waiting for what, exactly?”
“Waiting to hear the real reason why you know I have a dog and what my apartment looks like. I’m waiting for you to just say it, Mel.”
* * *
Melanie’s shoulders drooped under the burden of her own idiocy. Her mother had always been emphatic that a lady never lies. Melanie had already skirted the truth, and she didn’t want to be that person. “You remember me.”
“Of course I do. Did you honestly think that I wouldn’t?”
His disbelief made her want to shrink into nothingness. How could she have been so foolish? “Considering your reputation with women, I figured I was a blip on the map.”
“I never forget a woman.”
His response might have prompted extreme skepticism if he hadn’t said it with such conviction. He hadn’t forgotten her. She knew for a fact that she hadn’t forgotten him. Of course, there were probably lots of other women he hadn’t forgotten, too.
“You changed your hair,” he said.
Her pulse chose a tempo like free-form jazz—stopping and starting. He really did notice everything. “Yes, I cut it.”
“The color’s different. See, I still remember what it looked like splayed across the pillows of my bed.” He rose from his seat and stalked back around the kitchen island, refilling his wineglass. Plainly still angry, he didn’t offer her more. “Did you really not see a problem with taking this job even though we’d slept together? I’m assuming you didn’t reveal that little tidbit to my father. Because if you had, he never would’ve hired you.”
Adam was absolutely right. She’d stepped into a gray area a mile wide, but she needed the payday that came with this job. Her former business partner had crippled her company by leaving and sticking her with an astronomical office lease. The crushing part was that he’d also been her boyfriend—nearly her fiancé—and he’d left because he’d fallen in love with one of their clients.
“I would hope we could be discreet about this. I think it’s best if we just acknowledge that it was a one-time thing, keep it between us, and not allow it to affect our working relationship.” Mustering a rational string of words calmed her ragged nerves, but only a bit.
“One-time thing? Is that what that was? Because you don’t seem like a woman who runs around Manhattan picking up men she doesn’t know. Trust me, I meet those women all the time.”
Did it bother him that it had been a one-night stand? She wasn’t proud of the fact either, but she never imagined it would even faze Adam. “I didn’t mean to say it like that.”
“What about the contract my father had you sign? The clause about no fraternization between you and the client?”
“Exactly why I thought it best to ignore our past. I need this job and you need to clean up your image. It’s a win-win.”
“So you need the job. This is about money.”
“Yes. I need it. Your father is a very powerful man, and having a recommendation from him could do big things for my company.” Why she’d put her entire hand out on the table for him to see was beyond her, but she wasn’t going to sugarcoat anything.
“What if I told you that I don’t want to do this?”
She swallowed, hard. Adam was doing nothing more than setting up roadblocks, and they were becoming formidable. If he wanted to, he could end her job right then and there, send her packing. All she could do now was make her case. “Look, I understand that you’re mad. The scandal is horrible and I didn’t make things any better by hoping that you wouldn’t recognize me. That was stupid on my part, and I’m sorry. But if you’re looking for a reason to go through with this, you don’t need to look any further than your dad. He’s not just worried about his company and your family’s reputation. He’s worried about what this will do to your career. He doesn’t want your talents to be overshadowed by tabloid stories.”
Dead quiet settled on the room. Adam seemed deep in reflection. “I appreciate the apology.”
“Thank you for accepting it.” Had she finally laid this to rest? She took a deep breath and hoped so.
“And yes, it was incredibly stupid on your part. I’d go so far as to call it harebrained.”
There went the instant of newfound calm, just as Melanie’s stomach growled so loudly that Adam’s eyes grew as large as dinner plates.
“Excuse me,” she mumbled, horrified, wrapping one arm around her midsection to muffle the sound.
“Coming up with bad ideas must’ve made you very hungry.”
“Very funny. I’m fine.” She shifted in her seat, mad at herself for not owning up to the fact that she would’ve killed for a day-old doughnut. Her stomach chimed in, as well.
“I can’t listen to that anymore,” he declared. “It’s unsettling.” He marched to the fridge and opened it, pulling out a covered glass bowl. “My cook made marinara before I sent her home. It’ll take a few minutes to make pasta.”
“Let me help.” Desperate for the distraction of a new topic, she shot out of her bar stool and walked to the other side of the island. Jack followed in her wake.
“Help with what? Boiling water?” He cast her an incredulous smirk. “Sit.”
“Are you talking to me or Jack?”
He cracked half a smile and she felt a little as if she might crack. In half. “You. Jack can do whatever he wants.”
“Of course.” She filed back to her seat and watched as he filled a tall pot with water and placed it on the six-burner cooktop. “Careful or I might have to book you an appearance on the Food Network.”
“You should see me make breakfast.” He sprinkled salt into the water then placed a saucepan on the stove and lit the flame beneath it. “I could’ve made you my world-famous scrambled eggs if you hadn’t done your Cinderella routine that night and taken off.”
The man had no fear of uncomfortable subjects. What was she supposed to say to that?
“Care to comment, Cinderella?”
“I’m sorry.” She cleared her throat and picked at her fingernail. “I couldn’t stay.”
Adam spooned the sauce into the pan, shaking his head. “That’s a horrible excuse.”
Excuse or not, there was no way she could’ve stayed. She couldn’t bear the rejection of Adam running her off the next morning. She couldn’t bear to hear that he’d call her when she knew that he wouldn’t. She’d already suffered one soul-crushing brush-off that month, from the guy she’d thought she would marry. The pain of a second would’ve prompted the question of whether she might make a good nun. “I’m sorry, but it’s the truth.”
Wisps of steam rose from the pot, and the aroma of tomato sauce filled the air. Adam dropped in a package of fresh pasta and gave it a stir. “All I’m wondering is why you wouldn’t stick around when you have that kind of chemistry with someone. At least say goodbye or leave a note. I didn’t even know your last name.”
When he had the nerve to say it out loud—to be so rational about it—it sounded as if she’d done the most insane thing ever. Wait. Chemistry? She’d assumed that what she’d felt was mostly one-sided, a lethal combination of champagne and Mr. Smooth. Regret and embarrassm
ent weighed on her equally. What if she’d stuck around? Would he have said what he was saying now? “Hopefully you can find a way to forgive me.”
He narrowed his gaze, eyes locking on hers. “Maybe someday you’ll tell me the real reason.”
Oh, no, that’s not going to happen.
The timer buzzed. Adam gripped the pot handles with a kitchen towel and emptied the contents into the prep sink. Steam rushed up around his face and he blew a strand of hair from his forehead. He slung the towel over his shoulder, capable as could be, adding the noodles to the sauté pan and giving the mixture a toss with a flick of his wrist. The most brilliant man to hit the business world in recent history, the man who’d given her the most exhilarating night of her life, was toiling away in the kitchen. For her.
Adam divided the pasta into two bowls and grated fresh Parmesan on top. He set one bowl before her and filled her wineglass then topped off his own. Tempting smells wafted to her nose, relief from her epic hunger in reach. He took his seat, saddling her with a return of nerves. Now that they were shoulder to shoulder again, she was acutely aware of the specter of Adam Langford.
“Cheers,” he said in a tone still more annoyed than cheery. He extended his arm and clinked her glass with his.
“Thank you. This looks incredible.” She took a bite. It was far better than her usual Friday night fare, Chinese takeout on the couch. She dabbed at her mouth with the napkin. “This is delicious. Thank you.” Quieting her rumbling stomach was wonderful, but they hadn’t resolved the greater issue—she still wasn’t sure he was willing to let her do her job. “Now that we’ve talked through things, are we okay to get to work tomorrow? We need to bury the Party Princess scandal.”
“Can we put a ban on saying that? No man wants a scandal, but the princess part just makes it worse.”
“I know it’s awful. That’s precisely why I’m here. I can make all of that go away.”
“I don’t see why we can’t just ignore it. Aren’t we feeding the fire if we go on the defensive?”
“If we had a year or more, that might work, but with your father’s illness, there just isn’t that kind of time. I’m so sorry to say that. I really wish that part was for a different reason.”