Prodigal Son (2 page)

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

“W
e’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 IT department, 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 digital 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 and no one could ignore the power of the Internet these days.

“I see Internet expansion as a way to build the business and expand our reach.” He frowned. Shouldn’t an IT guy know this?

“Oh, I agree,” Arnie said quickly. “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 on her hips. She had a 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 website. 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 website 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. 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 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 good lighting and a desk for her laptop.

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.