Chapter One
He entered her life at 6:22 on a Tuesday evening, and suddenly nothing was the same.
The sky outside her office window rolled with gray-black clouds at the time, uncertain if it wanted to weep, or spit late-season ice. Until it made up its mind, Danielle Dempsey Harrington chose to ignore it. She maneuvered a toy car along the miniature driveway that surrounded the elaborate model of the newest Harrington resort and she frowned.
The plans were solid, and construction would begin in twenty-six days, but now she wondered whether the grand entrance loggia should face the sea or the mountains. It was just last-minute jitters, she thought, but she fretted. The sea would be more dramatic. The mountains, dignified and majestic.
“Eeny, meeny, miney, mo,” she murmured aloud. “Front or back? Beach or mountains?” And what would her project supervisor do if she changed her mind now?
“So this is how the movers and shakers get things done.”
Danielle yelped at the unexpected voice behind her. She spun away from the model, and the little car sailed from her hand. It landed on her desk—amazingly, wheels down—and raced across the polished ebony surface. The man caught it in one hand just as it nosedived off the far edge. He looked down at it as it lay nestled in his palm.
“More lives saved,” he murmured. “It’s my calling.”
Then Danielle knew who he was.
She stared at him. She couldn’t breathe, she realized distractedly, then she dragged in air. Nothing—nothing—could have prepared her for Maxwell Padgett in the flesh, if only because that flesh was so incredible.
She’d known of him, of course, though she had never actually met him face-to-face before now. He was the boon of the newly elected Senator Stan Roberson’s recent campaign. She thought they might be related somehow, but she couldn’t remember the details. It didn’t matter. Max Padgett was a force to be reckoned with on his own. She knew. His Coalition for Wildlife, Fields and Streams had been hammering at her for months now, mostly through correspondence and political maneuvering. His effort to have half a million dollars worth of Harrington land taken by eminent domain had been his most brazen bid. He’d lost, but not before costing her a small fortune in legal fees.
For that alone she should have detested him. And she had, for months. But as he stood smiling at her now, her anger and irritation siphoned out of her and left her mind blank.
“Cat got your tongue?” he asked.
Danielle opened her mouth to respond. She snapped it shut again and looked from the car, to his face, to the car again. She needed a snappy comeback but she couldn’t dredge one up because, that quickly her gaze got stuck on his hands.
They were get-things-done hands, she thought a little dazedly. Not soft, not pampered, not manicured, but with a force and presence all their own. Suddenly she imagined them on her skin—a searing image that came out of nowhere and couldn’t have been more alien to her nature than pigtails and a pitchfork, yet flashed through her mind nonetheless. Her heart began moving with alarming, unnatural urgency.
Hands? This was happening to her because of his hands? Then again, there was still the matter of the rest of him. His impact wasn’t diminishing despite the amount of time he’d already spent in her office.
“What do you want?” She opened her mouth, and the words fell out, blunt and rattled.
“A few minutes of your time.” He closed the distance between them and placed the car back on the model driveway. He did it the way he might handle one of the birds he was so hell-bent on saving lately—the ones he’d tried to grab her land for. He had gentle, forceful hands, Danielle thought, and she shivered.
She hadn’t shivered in, well, maybe forever. She was losing her mind.
“Here’s the part where you acknowledge my request,” he suggested. “A simple yes or no will suffice.”
Danielle cleared her throat. “You can have fifteen minutes.”
“I’ll use it wisely then.” He slid those hands into his trouser pockets. “You know, I thought you’d be more glib. A wizard with words. A great verbal fencer. That’s what they say about you.”
Danielle recovered a little more. “I am, but you just walked right in.” She frowned. “You startled me, and that put me at a disadvantage.”
“Ah.” He made the word vibrate with pure masculine satisfaction. “I did that, yes.”
“It was rude.” What, she wondered, was that cologne he was wearing?
“Should I go out and come back in? Start all over again and do it right?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” Danielle tried for her trademark glib charm and waved a hand. “Have a seat. My secretary’s gone for the day. That means there’s no coffee.” She wanted to mention that most people met on matters such as this during regular business hours. But to be fair, he’d requested several appointments with her and she’d declined all of them.
Danielle went to an entertainment center of gleaming black wood built into the wall next to the windows. She stooped to the lower level and opened a small snack bar there, half of it given over to a compact refrigerator. “I can offer you bottled water, a soft drink, papaya juice or scotch.” She straightened again to face him. She had herself together now.
“Good scotch?” he asked.
“Absolutely.”
“And you’re having?”
She heard Richard’s voice whispering in her mind, imparting implacable lessons as he always had. He had been gone for three years now but he could still pop into her head at times like this. Never drink while you’re doing business, my dear. Just pretend you are, in order to be sociable. You don’t want your head to get muddled. She wouldn’t mind Max Padgett’s mind going a little soft for the next fifteen minutes or so, Danielle decided. She didn’t intend for him to stay any longer than that. “Scotch,” she said.
Max Padgett nodded. “I’ll join you.”
She took two crystal glasses from an overhead shelf and began to make the drinks. Max watched her, contemplating this turn of events.
He’d expected her to show him the door, maybe call security to make sure he went on his way, not offer him a drink. Grace under fire, he thought, appreciating it. She wasn’t much like he’d anticipated at all.
He’d seen her picture in the papers a few times. None of them had done her justice. Her hair was inky black and reasonably short, curling gently at her collar. She wore it tucked behind seashell ears that wore large diamond studs. She was surprisingly petite—all the photographs he had seen of her had given the impression of more stature. She couldn’t be more than five foot two. She was slender as a reed and moved like one giving way to the wind. She wore gold-rimmed eyeglasses that kept trying to slide down her nose as she looked into the scotch tumblers. Cute.
She put a bare splash of scotch in her own glass, more than an inch and a half in his, and topped both off with water at the wet bar. Max grinned to himself. Petite or not, she wanted an edge here, and she was enough the corporate warrior to do what she had to do to get it.
When she made a move toward her desk, he settled into the deep leather chair in front of it. He accepted the glass she passed to him and watched her relax into her own chair. She leaned back coolly, one very elegant leg coming up to cross over the other. She held her own glass in her lap with both hands, and her long, manicured fingers wrapped around it with a smooth ease that gave him a moment’s pause and kicked at his pulse.
Damned if the lady didn’t have an effect on him. It would make their war interesting, he thought.
“Where were we?” she asked.
“Hmm,