Authors: Elisabeth Naughton
He swiveled his chair to look out over the bay as she talked. Darkness was setting in, and the lights of the city reflected off the water. Darkness that suddenly mirrored his sinking mood.
“My point is,” she went on, “you don’t seem to enjoy any of the benefits you have from the work you do, so I’m curious why you’re pushing so hard to expand AmCorp.”
“I have my own reasons.” And he’d be damned if he was going to explain them to her or anyone else.
“But what’s the point if it’s not making a difference in your life?”
His gaze cut to her. “You’re one to talk. You’re as dedicated to this company as I am.”
“Sure I am, but I also have a life outside the office. You don’t.”
His jaw clenched again. Any enjoyment he’d had in the meeting earlier had trickled away. He didn’t need her blunt realism smacking him in the face. “My private life is none of your business.”
Tension floated in the air as she stared at him. Their relationship was professional yet friendly, and they shared not only a love of this company but a mutual admiration. However, she’d just crossed a line—a big one—and they both knew it.
Long seconds passed in silence. Finally, she set her water on the table, then stood and retrieved her papers. “You’re right,” she said as she reached for her briefcase. “I’m sorry. I was out of line. I’m flying to Denver Monday morning, so I’ll be around this weekend if something comes up.”
Shit. Now he felt like an ass. But dammit, his personal life was just that—personal.
The knock on the door had them both looking over as Mitch peeked into the room. “You planning on sleeping here tonight or what? Hey, Hannah.”
“Hey, Mitch.” A weak smile tugged at her mouth as she finished gathering her things.
One glance at the clock told Ryan it was already after seven. He tossed his reading glasses onto the papers littered across his desk and scrubbed both hands over his face. “I didn’t realize it was so late. We were just finishing up.” He dropped his hands. “What are you doing here?”
“I thought I’d come rescue you.” Mitch tipped up his blue Mariner’s baseball cap. Unruly curls peeked out from beneath the hat. He dropped into a leather chair opposite Ryan’s massive mahogany desk and propped his dirty sneakers on its sleek surface, then smiled Hannah’s way.
Ryan’s brows drew together. “You’re gonna get crap all over my work.”
“Your work is crap.” Mitch grinned. “Wanna get a beer?”
A cold beer in a noisy bar where he couldn’t think sounded like heaven right about now.
“Sure, just let me get my stuff together.” He glanced toward Hannah, hoping to ease some of the tension still lingering in the air. “Hannah, you want to join us?”
“Tempting, but no. I have a date.”
“With who?” Mitch asked.
“Kevin Moreland.”
Ryan shot her an amused look. Kevin Moreland was doing a promo spot for one of their drugs. “Now who’s handling the models?”
“
I
am not the CEO of this company. No one notices what I do.”
Ryan slipped on his jacket, relieved her playful tone had returned.
“Besides,” she added, “Mitch has never gotten around to asking me out, so I have to settle for the young, hot models to fill my time.”
Mitch’s brows snapped together. “Hannah, sweetheart, I would ask you out, but you scare me. A woman in a suit intimidates me.”
She leaned close and ran a coral-tipped fingernail down the stubble on his cheek. “Power is a very sexy thing. You just never know what it’s going to do next.” She headed for the door. “I’ll call you next week, Ryan.”
“Hannah,” Ryan called. She looked back. “What type of car should I buy?”
A wide smile spread across her face. “How about a Jag?”
He thought about it a minute, then nodded. “Tell Christy to get me some brochures tomorrow.”
“I will.” The door snapped shut behind her.
“A Jag?” Mitch asked. “Dude, if you’re buying Jags, I’ll take one.”
“You’d take it into the mountains and coat it with mud. No way.”
Mitch chuckled as he pushed to his feet. “Chicks dig dirty guys.”
“In your dreams, mountain man.” Ryan reached for his jacket. “Where’s Julia? I thought she was with you this afternoon.”
“Mom and Dad took her to get ice cream. I wanted beer. I was outvoted.” He shoved his hands into the front pockets of his jeans while Ryan moved around the room, gathering his things. “They’re leaving tomorrow morning and wanted to take her out for a little fun before they head back to Seattle.”
Ryan was all too aware they were leaving. He loved seeing his in-laws, but this week had been too emotional with the recent crash. He was looking forward to getting his house back to normal. “I thought you were going to Chicago, some geologist’s conference?”
“I was. Opted out. Not really feeling like traveling right now. I have a ton of work sitting on my desk. We’ve identified a new site off the coast of British Columbia. It’s pulling in all kinds of controversy.” He rolled his eyes. “This one chick, this editor for the
Geologic Times
, wrote this article totally bashing our oil company and any sort of exploration off Queen Charlotte Sound. Made some smart-ass comments about our drilling possibly causing massive earthquakes and tsunamis in the area. It’s such bull, and she had basically no scientific evidence. So now I’m stuck running interference, trying to convince the investors it isn’t a big issue. Like we’re not monitoring the fault lines seismically and testing radioactive gas emissions day and night as it is anyway.”
Mitch could drone on and on about geology and not care if anyone was listening. In that respect, he was just like Annie. In fact, this was one of those controversies Annie would have loved to argue with him about. She’d always goaded him about his career choice as an engineering geologist working for an oil-and-gas conglomerate. While she’d claimed her work as a seismologist was important to the world of science, she’d teased him that his was only important to the world of profit.
“I bet she doesn’t even have a degree in geology,” Mitch went on. “She’s just some nut-job editor who’s read one too many papers and now thinks she’s an expert. I ran a search on her. No credentials listed at all. I bet she’s some environmental hippie chick. Probably a tree hugger.”
“Who?” Ryan was barely listening. He grabbed his cell phone and dropped it in his briefcase.
“That editor who wrote the article.” Mitch followed him out into the lobby. “I think her name was Kate Alexander, something like that.”
They rode the elevator to the parking garage while Mitch mumbled on and on about some article Ryan could care less about and the idiot who’d written it. Ryan pinched his forehead as they climbed into Mitch’s mud-coated Land Rover.
“She’s here in San Francisco. I think I’ll go over to her office tomorrow and give her a piece of my mind.” Mitch pulled out into traffic.
“You do that,” Ryan said.
“Oh, hey, forgot to tell you. You got a call this evening, some lawyer here in town. Um, Simone Conners. Sounded pretty sexy.”
Ryan recognized the name. “She’s an old friend of Annie’s.” He knew Simone lived in the area, had seen her at several charity functions, but preferred to ignore her. He generally ignored anyone who had known his wife. Making polite chitchat about the good old days wasn’t his idea of fun. “What’d she want?”
“Don’t know, wouldn’t say. If she was a friend of Annie’s, she was probably calling about the crash the other day, though.”
“Yeah, probably.” Ryan looked out the window at the city lights.
“You gonna call her?”
“What?” He glanced over. “I doubt it. She was more Annie’s friend than mine. I didn’t know her that well.”
“Sounded pretty hot on the phone.”
“You can tell that just from hearing her voice, huh?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“She was married the last time I talked to her, at Annie’s funeral.”
“So maybe she’s not married anymore.”
“She was Annie’s friend, moron. I’m not interested.”
“Why? Was she fat? Ugly? What’s the story?”
“God, you’re a piece of work. No, she was attractive, at least she was the last time I saw her. Petite, brunette, big eyes. You’d like her.”
A grin tugged at Mitch’s mouth. “Maybe I should pop over to her office tomorrow, scope her out.”
“I thought you were gonna scope out the tree hugger at the publishing house.”
“I can do both.” Mitch’s eyes flashed in the dashboard lights. “Now there’s a thought.”
“You’re a sick and twisted man.”
“You have no idea.”
Ryan raked a hand through his hair. “I think I’m gonna need at least two beers tonight. Preferably big ones.”
Chapter Four
Kate stared at the computer screen. Photos of the Stromboli Volcano in Italy stared back at her, an article half done that needed a lot of work. She heaved out a sigh and pressed the heel of her hand against her forehead. There was no possible way she was going to be able to focus on editing today. The article would just have to wait until tomorrow.
Jill stepped into her office a few minutes later with a steamy mocha. “Sure to cure writer’s block every time.”
“Thanks.” Kate smiled and reached for the cup. “You’re a peach.”
“I’m just buttering you up.”
Kate sipped her drink and glanced over the cup with raised brows. “Why do I get the feeling I’m not going to like what you have to say next?”
Jill wrinkled her nose, the nose ring the twenty-something assistant wore making a clinking sound Kate didn’t want to ponder too much. “Because I’m really bad at this kind of stuff. Here.” She held out a note. “This guy stopped by today while you were out. Really familiar looking for some reason, but I can’t remember where I’ve seen him. Anyway, he wanted to speak with you about something, but since you weren’t here, he left you a message. His phone number’s at the bottom.”
Kate scanned the note, then looked back at Jill. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
Jill cringed. “Sorry.”
Her day was heading straight for the toilet. Kate reached for the phone. The jerk had listed about ten facts from her article he deemed inaccurate and inconclusive.
She dialed and tapped her foot against the floor while she waited. With everything else going on in her life, she didn’t need this crap right now. A woman answered. “Mitch…” Kate checked his name at the bottom of the paper, “Mathews, please.” She waited another minute. “No, that’s fine, I’ll leave a message.”
Cradling the phone between her ear and shoulder, she fished out a bottle of aspirin from her desk. After dry swallowing two pills, she glanced up at Jill, who was hovering in the doorway. A male voice clicked on the line, and Kate grasped the phone with her hand, wrinkled her brow. Something about the voice was vaguely familiar.
She looked back at the name. Mitch Mathews. Ran it around in her head. Didn’t recognize it. But there was something so familiar in that voice...
Whatever. She’d never met the jerk before. After this wouldn’t talk to him again. She waited for the incessant beep.
“Mr. Mathews,” she began in a smug voice. “This is Kate Alexander at McKellen Publishing. I wanted to take the time to personally thank you for the kind note you left with my secretary today. We really appreciated the pointed and colorful language. Seeing as you had the time to not only track me down but also leave such a lengthy thesis on Queen Charlotte Sound, I must assume you are the
expert
in this field. From now on I’ll be sure to defer all questions and comments about this and future articles straight to you. One note, however. Jackass is spelled with two s’s, not one. I would have thought they’d teach you that in donkey school. Good day, Mr. Mathews.”
Kate gathered the papers in front of her and pushed to her feet. “I have an appointment this afternoon, Jill. You can forward my calls to my cell.”
“Ah, sure thing. Kate? Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. Why do you ask?”
“You just seem” —she glanced at the phone and back— “a little on edge.”
Kate took a calming breath. “I’m fine. I’ll be back later.”
Glancing at her watch, Kate realized she was already behind schedule. She climbed into her Explorer and headed across town. Normally, reader comments didn’t even faze her, but there’d been something in the tone of Mitch Mathews’s note that had really grated on her last nerve.
She found a parking place two blocks from her destination and figured that was a sign her day had to be getting better. It couldn’t get much worse. Her
life
couldn’t get much worse. As she stood in the building lobby and waited for the elevator, a chill spread over her shoulders and a ripple of anxiety rushed down her spine. She was just nervous. That was normal. If this didn’t pan out, she wasn’t sure where to go next.
The elevator pinged, the doors opened. She drew in another calming breath as she stepped into the law firm lobby, which was quiet but for the click of fingers on a nearby keyboard. The secretary looked up as she approached. Kate tried to smile, but her insides felt like they were on a continuous loop-de-loop roller coaster. There had to be a reason she’d fixated on this lawyer’s name amidst the hundreds listed on the Internet. “I’m here to see Simone Conners.”
“Ms. Conners is fairly busy today,” the secretary said. “Do you have an appointment?”
“Yes. Kate Alexander.”
The young blonde picked up the phone, mumbled into it then glanced back at Kate. “Ms. Conners is expecting you. Go on in.”
“Thank you.”
Kate worked to settle her swirling nerves as she pushed open the double oak doors and stepped into the room. Wide windows ahead looked out over a view of San Francisco. To the right, bookcases lined with legal tomes filled the shelves, and to the left, a grouping of leather couches sat in front of a long conference table covered with books and papers.
But it was Simone Conners who drew Kate’s attention. The petite woman rose from her desk in front of the windows with the whitest face Kate had ever seen. A face that wasn’t the least bit familiar, dammit. “Oh, my God.”
Kate looked behind her just as the door snapped closed. She didn’t see anyone else. Turning back, she stared at the lawyer with chocolate brown hair cut in a stylish bob and bronze-colored eyes that looked like they’d just seen a ghost.