“It’s a toy. It must be a winner because you’re playing with it,” she teased.
He dropped it like a hot rivet. She’d gotten him on that one, and he grinned sheepishly.
“Tell me about your date.” She handed him the iced tea and daintily sipped hers.
“She’s a friend of an old acquaintance. Remember Tess Morgan?”
“Isn’t she the sweet girl who tutored you in British lit?”
“That’s her. She owns Baby Mart in the Rockstone Mall. She’s doing me a favor by introducing me to friends of hers. I promised her a sneak peek at the new product line.”
He walked around the office, noting without enthusiasm that she still had tons of pictures of him, Zack and Nicky on the walls. The cutesy photos used in early catalog ads embarrassed him. Poses of curly-haired twins with Bailey toys made him remember how bored he’d been as a child model—bored but successful. To her credit, his mother had refused to let them work for any of the agencies that besieged them with lucrative offers. She even stood up to Marsh in limiting how much work they did for the annual Bailey catalogs. It was one of the rare disputes his mother had actually won when it came to showdowns with Marsh. She did much better these days, but as chairman of the board, he was still a tyrant.
“I guess there’s no problem at this late date,” Sue said thoughtfully. “The new catalog will be ready next month for wholesale Christmas orders. A leak now wouldn’t be serious.”
“Tess isn’t an industrial spy,” he said dryly.
“Of course not. Actually, this is a good time to give her a preview. We have a display set up in one of the design labs for some potential investors.”
“Investors? Is Marsh going to go back on his word and agree to a buyout before he retires? Does he want to go public?”
“He’s always playing around with the possibility. It’s his way of keeping everyone on edge.”
His mother didn’t sound concerned. Cole was. It wasn’t his employees Marsh wanted to unnerve. Cole’s grandfather was holding the threat of a sellout over his head and Zack’s. He’d better find Ms. Right soon and insure that his mother wouldn’t lose control of the business.
“Why don’t you and Tess join your grandfather and the investors tomorrow? Their tour is scheduled for 9 a.m.”
He’d rather eat nails!
“I had in mind a private sneak preview. You know, give her a chance to look it over without the pressure of having Marsh there.”
“A private showing with Tess. I see.”
His mother smiled—slyly, he thought.
“She’s only a friend. I owe her. Tess and me? No, no way. Not my type at all, and she remembers me less than fondly from high school.”
“If you say so. Why did you persuade her to help you get dates?”
When his mother put it that way, it did sound ludicrous. When had he ever needed help meeting women? The only blind date he’d ever had was Zack’s fault. Some girl wouldn’t go out with him unless he found a date for her friend.
“She’s not getting me dates, Mom.” Maybe he sounded juvenile, but he wanted his mother to be perfectly clear on this. “She’s only putting me in the loop with some nice women. I don’t meet any when I spend all my time on the job.”
“She’s doing this just so she can see our new line?” She sounded skeptical.
“No, I’m showing it just to be nice.”
“Then why?”
He hadn’t been grilled like this since he drove without a license when he was fifteen.
“She lost a bet.”
He was getting The Look. His mother was a head shorter than he was, and slender to the point of being too thin, but when she raked him with her smoky gray eyes, he still squirmed.
“Two out of three games of pool.”
“This was a fair contest?” she asked, accusing him.
“Tess plays in a pool league. I nearly lost to her. Anyway, I can’t leave the site of the condos we’re building during the workday. I was thinking of bringing her around nine in the evening.”
“Okay. The after-hours codes have changed, so I’d better write them down for you.”
She took a legal pad and wrote a neat series of numbers and letters.
“Your grandfather has been tinkering with the new security system again. He’s obsessed with catching industrial spies.”
“He’s not happy unless he can meddle,” Cole said with undisguised bitterness. He wished Marsh would be content fiddling with mechanical things and leave people—especially his family—alone.
“The important part is punching in these numbers at exactly twenty-minute intervals. There’s a panel in the lab as well as in the hallway.” She pointed with one neatly polished, but not long, fingernail. “Best to set the timer on your watch. There’s only a thirty-second margin for error.”
“Got it. Thanks a lot, Mom.” He bent his head and kissed her soft, smooth cheek.
“Don’t let the security alarm go off. It would put your grandfather in a dither.”
He patted her shoulder, then bolted for the door.
“Trust me, Mom.”
He wasn’t sure he trusted himself when it came to picking a wife, but he did have a date Friday night. She was a friend of Tess’s, so she had to be a nice girl. Didn’t she?
4
“WHY ARE WE sneaking in?” Tess asked in a breathy whisper.
“We’re not sneaking.” Cole answered a little louder than necessary to make his point.
“This feels sneaky. It’s dark and creepy in here.”
“The corridor lights dim automatically at night, that’s all. My mother has no objection at all to having you see the new products. The catalog will be out pretty soon anyway.”
“I still feel like a yuppie cat burglar. Why are you wearing all black?”
“These are the only clean jeans I could find, and I have a lot of black T-shirts. Do you see me wearing a ski mask?”
“I still feel funny.”
“I cleared it with the head honcho, who also happens to be my mother.”
“Not your grandfather?”
“Kicked upstairs to chairman of the board.” He didn’t want to talk about the old man. “Here we are. I have to punch in the after-hours code.” He pulled out the slip of paper his mother had given him and entered the sequence of numbers on the panel beside the door.
“Just like in spy movies.” She giggled nervously. “Are you going to eat the code when you’re done?”
“Can’t. I have to enter another sequence of numbers at twenty-minute intervals.”
He opened the door and snapped on the bright overhead lights, gesturing for her to go ahead of him. He stepped into the big room behind her and took a couple of seconds to set his watch.
“What happens if you don’t?”
She seemed more interested in the security system than the products she’d come to see. Darn, he’d forgotten about her raging curiosity. How long would it take for her to ferret out his real reason for wanting to meet her friends?
“The lab self-destructs,