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  "He's working with Lloyd's IT personnel—such as they are—getting a handle on their network. Do you want me to bring him back?"

  "We don't need him." Another of those smiles. "I've got a meeting scheduled with the volunteers today at five-fifteen. I sent you a memo about it?" He nodded and she said, "At the open house, when the recruits start coming in at three in the afternoon, Jason will take their resumes, prescreen them, and mark them as candidates or not, then introduce them to one of the volunteers. Accountants get someone from accounting; developers get a developer. Depending on the prescreening, the volunteer will either take the recruit to an interview or an information session about Tremaine's. The NFT's—not for Tremaine's—will get the information film about the company, refreshments—"

  "And be told to buzz off."

  "Nicely," she said with another of those smiles. "The ones we interview will either be passed on up for a second interview or marked NFT, and sent to the information session."

  "This better work. We need those developers yesterday."

  "We've had good feedback, plenty of phone calls. We're hoping for five hundred people at the open house. It's going to be hectic, but it's innovative. Developers don't like working for stodgy companies, and this open house tells them that we're part of the new wave, not the old guard."

  "You've done a good job, Sam." Had he told her that often enough? What exactly was it that motivated her? He didn't think it was power—she was too good at delegating. Money? Praise?

  "I'm having fun," she said, hitting him with that smile again. He had the urge to move closer instead of pacing back to the window. For perhaps the thousandth time, he blocked the images her smile so often drew to his mind: Sam wearing something soft and clinging in place of that gray suit, her feet bare, her shining brown hair flowing free. How long was her hair? Shoulder length? What if....

  No! Samantha Jones was far too valuable to be risked in a temporary romance.

  The ring of a telephone interrupted his fantasy.

  "I told Dee not to put any calls through," he growled.

  "I'm expecting a call." Sam walked rapidly to the telephone and picked it up. "Hi, Marcy.... Yes, put him through."

  He frowned at the tension on Sam's face as she wedged the receiver between shoulder and chin and pulled her electronic organizer from her jacket pocket.

  "Hello, Dexter." She frowned and juggled her stylus, organizer, and telephone. "Any way we can put it off? No, Friday's impossible. Can you—Yes, I agree. I—yes, I'll be there."

  "Problems?" he asked when she'd cradled the receiver again.

  "No," she said. She switched off her portable computer and slipped it into its case.

  "Sam, hold on a minute."

  She stood waiting for his words, eyes inscrutable, lips unsmiling. This was pure impulse, but he'd learned to trust his impulses.

  "We signed a contract when you started working here. I assigned you a block of shares that would become vested in two years."

  Her eyes met his, unblinking. "Provided you're satisfied with my work."

  "I'm satisfied." Why the devil were they talking so formally? "I've been making things hard for you these last few weeks."

  "You've been a nuisance, Cal, but I know you're itching to get started on this project. Once this recruitment is over, you'll get off my back."

  "I think it's time to vest your shares, give you that seat on the board. I'll call the lawyer in the morning and set it up."

  She looked stunned.

  "This wasn't supposed to happen for another six months." She picked up her computer case, looking a hell of a lot less pleased than he would have expected.

  "What the hell's going on, Sam?"

  She shifted her grip on the computer. "We've got a meeting in about ten minutes. Can we talk afterward?"

  "Yes," he agreed. "We'll talk afterward."

  We'll talk afterward. Samantha shivered as she closed her office door.

  She should have told Cal when she hung up from speaking to Dexter, but until that moment she'd thought she could rely on phone calls and the lawyer to keep everything under control up in Canada—at least until after the open house.

  If Samantha didn't show up at the family court hearing, the court would give temporary custody to the Ministry of Children and Families. Kippy would be with strangers. Just a baby... she wouldn't understand; she'd be pining for Dorothy. Maybe Samantha wasn't Dorothy, with her easy, maternal ways, but at least she'd held her niece in her arms many times. Kippy would know her.

  She needed to convince the judge that she was the obvious person to care for her niece until Dorothy got back home, that there was absolutely no need for a foster home.

  She should have told Cal during their meeting in the boardroom, but first she needed to organize the details.

  She pushed the intercom and called Marcy in.

  Mercy stepped into her office a few seconds later. "HR has all the handouts ready for the meeting."

  "Thanks, Marcy. While I'm in the meeting, book me a flight to arrive in Nanaimo by two P.M. tomorrow. You'll probably have to route me through Vancouver, Canada."

  With any luck, there'd be a jet flying to Vancouver about noon, with a connecting flight to Nanaimo on Vancouver Island. She probably couldn't get everything done in time to fly back home tomorrow evening. She'd have to rent a car, take a ferry to the mainland and drive home—probably with a baby in the car.

  With any luck, she'd be back at work Friday morning.

  She'd need day care for Kippy. Tomorrow morning she'd call the employment agency.

  She was glad she'd told Cal to hold off on the board seat. Bad politics to accept, then irritate him with an unscheduled absence. After the meeting, when he'd seen how completely everything was organized, she'd tell him she needed half a day, just a few hours to straighten out a personal matter across the border in Canada.

  Maybe she wouldn't mention Canada. It made the journey sound bigger than it was. She'd have her cell phone and computer with her, and she'd be back hours before the open house to settle any crises.

  She'd never before had a personal crisis that interfered with her job at Tremaine's. She'd prided herself in being the perfect businesswoman—reliable, available, and driven to succeed. She'd seen other women distracted by lovers, by marriage, by motherhood, and Sam knew she didn't want any of that. Lovers and husbands, with their potential for conflict and fighting, were the last thing she needed.

  After the lessons in married life she and her sister Sarah witnessed as children, she'd been amazed when Sarah married. But Jonathan Morrison had been a good man, considerate of Sarah, and Sarah had claimed to love him madly.

  Tragically, Samantha's sister and her new husband weren't given the opportunity to test their marriage with time. Last December, en route to Mexico a few weeks after the birth of their first child, Sarah and Jonathan lost their lives in an airline crash off the coast of California.

  Samantha pushed away the familiar grief. She had a meeting to orchestrate, then Cal to face. Tomorrow, she'd convince a judge that she was a fit guardian for Kippy Morrison until Dorothy got out of the hospital. One way or another, she was determined to manage both as Calin Tremaine's second-in-command and Kippy's substitute mother, for as long as Dorothy needed her help.

  By the time the meeting concluded, Samantha knew Cal was impressed. The employees were determined to make this open house a huge success.

  "They love being in on exciting projects," she murmured as the room emptied. "Your projects."

  She laughed when she realized he didn't know what to say to that. For a man determined to carry the world along with his own vision of the future, Cal was remarkably naive about the power of his own charisma.

  "Let's get something to eat," he said. "I need food."

  And she needed to talk to him. During the meeting, Marcy had slipped her the bad news from the travel agent. No available flights. She would have to drive, although she had no right to take twenty-four hours for
private business tomorrow. No choice, either.

  "I just need a couple of minutes of your time, Cal. There's no need for a dinner meeting."

  "Did you have lunch?"

  "I'm not—"

  "I'll meet you down at the parking lot."

  Frustrating man, she decided, watching him walk through the meeting room's double doors. Over dinner it would be difficult to avoid explaining the reasons for her trip to Canada, almost impossible to keep the distance she needed between her private and professional lives.

  She didn't want Cal thinking of her as someone with encumbrances, someone he couldn't count on because of a complex personal life.

  She headed for her own office to pick up her purse, cell phone, and portable computer. Downstairs in the parking lot, the spring evening felt pleasantly warm. She breathed in the salt air from the harbor and remembered childhood days spent running on the grassy hill below Dorothy's house, sea smells carried on the wind, and Sarah laughing as they raced for the water.

  Sarah, who would never laugh again.

  Cal opened the passenger door of his low red sports car as she approached. Better to take separate cars but awkward to tell him so. She'd never felt so awkward with Cal before. Their relations had always been strictly business.

  This was business, too, and of course he wasn't going to be unreasonable about a personal emergency, but it could change the way he thought of her. She'd never to let him down … until now.

  She wondered what her stepfather would say about this whole predicament, and she figured Wayne would probably tell her she should get comfortable with having weaknesses, that maintaining the image of superwoman was an impossible task.

  Better not to make an issue of sharing the ride in Cal's car, she decided.

  "Thanks," she said, slipping into the passenger seat. Leather and horsepower, the red Porsche suited its owner to a "T".

  "I thought Eduardo's," he said as he started the engine.

  Should she tell him before dinner? After?

  After, she decided. Less time for him to work on getting details from her.

  "How's Tom doing in New York?" she asked when the waiter seated them in a quiet corner of Eduardo's.

  The distraction worked, and they discussed Tom's struggles to make sense of Lloyd's outmoded computer network until the waiter delivered seafood salad to Samantha, and a medium-rare New York steak to Cal.

  He cut a piece from his steak and said, "Once we've got the e-commerce teams in place, you should take some time off."

  Now was the time to tell him she'd be taking tomorrow off, abandoning him in the crucial hours before Friday's event. It shouldn't be hard to say the words, but her throat felt dry. She realized she was hoping for a magic solution that would let her look after both Tremaine's and Kippy's needs without sacrificing either.

  "What about you? Will you be taking time off?"

  "I might grab a week, once the teams are in place and working."

  She speared a prawn with her fork, but her stomach protested at the thought of food. "Where would you go?"

  "Maybe fishing. A week in the mountains."

  Cal hadn't been fishing in more than a year. There'd been that one trip, two months after she started working for him. He and an old friend had flown into the mountains for a week with fishing rods and packs. He'd returned four days later, exploding with questions about events in his absence.

  "No cell coverage in the mountains," she said wryly. "With this new project, you'd never last forty-eight hours."

  "True," he admitted. "I can’t go off the grid, not now. I'll probably visit the family in San Francisco. "

  "Go to Hawaii or Tahiti. You'd still have cell and Wi-Fi, but also beaches and sunshine—and it's harder to hop a shuttle home."

  If he did go to one of those island paradises, she wondered if he'd take a woman with him. Dee, his personal assistant, had mentioned sending flowers to one woman, booking dinner for Cal and another. He was an obviously virile man, but she'd seen little evidence of his private life over the last eighteen months. If he had a steady girlfriend. Dee didn't know about it.

  "What about you, Sam? Where will you go on your vacation?"

  "I haven't decided."

  She would go to Gabriola Island, help Dorothy clean out the storeroom and hold Kippy, doing her small part to give her orphaned niece a home and a loving family.

  When the waiter took away their plates—Samantha's almost untouched—Cal placed his elbows on the table.

  "I offered you a seat on the board today. Your reaction was less than enthusiastic. What's wrong?"

  She picked up her coffee and cradled the cup in her hands. "I—Just, not yet. I don't think this week is the right time."

  "Why?" His eyes were gray, too penetrating.

  "I need tomorrow off. I'd put it off until next week if I could, but I have no choice. I don't want you calling the lawyer to vest my shares and set up the board meeting and feeling annoyed with me for taking off tomorrow at the same time."

  She expected an immediate reaction, certainly questions. Not silence while he studied her for a few seconds, his eyes unreadable.

  "The open house is Friday, day after tomorrow."

  "I know, but everything's organized, delegated. I'll be in touch by cell phone to tie up any loose ends. I'll be back late tomorrow night, at work early Friday in time to put out any fires before the event starts at three."

  He studied her as if he could see beyond the calmness of her voice. "Personal business?"

  "Yes." His gaze was too intense and she said irritably, "The reason doesn't matter, unless details of my private life are a requirement of my employment?"

  She flushed at the sound of her own words. "I'm sorry, that was nasty."

  "And unprovoked?"

  "Yes." What on earth was wrong with her? She'd done battle with Cal before, had always held her own, but this time she’d overreacted, before he even asked the questions. She supposed it was because, for the first time, the subject was her own personal life.

  "I'm sorry. You've never probed about my personal life."

  "It hasn't been relevant to your job until now. What's so urgent, Sam?" His eyes told her he knew he had the upper hand.

  "My grandmother is in the hospital."

  "Seriously ill?"

  "She says not. I wouldn't take off at a time like this if it weren't necessary."

  The frown lines radiating from the corners of his eyes told her he wasn't satisfied. "When do you leave?"

  "Early tomorrow." Had she told him she was leaving town? "I'll be back late tomorrow night."

  "Flying or driving?"

  She put her cup down on its saucer, the sound of china on china ringing between them like a warning bell. "Does it matter how I travel?"

  "Yes."

  She'd shared her ambitions with Cal, her ideas and plans for Tremaine's, but not herself. She knew he regarded her as an efficient mystery, knew he didn't understand how she smoothed the chaotic waters around him, but he respected her. She liked it that way, the balance of power even between them, her own feet firmly on the ground, immune to the winds of his forceful personality and volatile emotions.

  Nine out of ten women in her position would be overwhelmed by him, probably in love. Samantha was the tenth; she'd seen enough of passion and volatility to know the dangers. She admired him, loved working for him, understood him well enough to make herself indispensable professionally. But she wasn't tempted by his gray eyes, his love of a challenge, his waving dark-blond hair. She certainly wasn't about to let herself slip into some kind of "personal friends" situation that gave him a handle on her own vulnerabilities.

  "Why do you need to keep your travel plans secret?"

  "Why do you need to know them?"

  He looked as if he'd scented something intriguing and meant to explore it. "If I see news of an air crash on television tomorrow, shouldn't I know whether or not you were on the plane?"

  She swallowed hard, remembering endle
ss hours after last December's air crash, watching CNN nonstop with Dorothy, keeping the phone lines clear because someone might call to tell them Sarah and Jonathan were alive and well.

  "Sam?"

  For heaven's sake, Samantha M. Jones, snap out of it!

  "I'm driving."

  He said nothing, just waited, until she added, "To Nanaimo."

  "Canada? You'll be driving north to Vancouver, taking the ferry to Vancouver Island?"

  "You know Nanaimo?"

  "I can even spell it. I did a cycling tour about fifteen years ago. The Canadian Gulf Islands: Galiano, Salt Spring, and Gabriola."

  "My grandmother lives on Gabriola," she said before she could filter the words. "I grew up there."

  "I didn't know." He leaned forward, curiosity in his eyes. "How did you go from being a Canadian kid to an American woman?"

  "Dual citizenship. Look, I need to leave. I’ve got my cell. If there's anything you need tomorrow, just call."

  "What time do you expect to arrive in Nanaimo?"

  "Two-thirty in the afternoon." She put her napkin neatly on the table beside her plate, pushed her chair back.

  "We'll go in the chopper. We'll leave at noon. The flight will be less than two hours, but we should allow some time for customs."

  She couldn't spend two hours in Cal's helicopter, two hours worrying about Kippy and Dorothy, with Cal right there, watching. "I don't need—You have other things to do."

  "You know damned well there's nothing for me to do but wait for Friday. It’s driving me nuts."

  Flustered, she shook her head and felt strands of hair coming loose. "I need my car when I get there."

  "I'm sure a competent M.B.A. like Samantha Jones can manage to rent a car at the Nanaimo airport."

  He had her trapped. She was half standing, the urge to run pumping through her veins, and she realized suddenly just how out of proportion her response was. As if Cal were threatening her, instead of offering help.

  "You' re right." She forced her voice to calm appreciation. "I'll arrange a car rental. I'll see you tomorrow at noon." She stepped back, pushed her chair into the table, and even managed a smile as she picked up her portable computer and handbag. "Thank you for dinner. I'll take a taxi back to my car."