“Can you pick up my dry cleaning on your lunch hour?”
“Sure,” Amy murmured, too accustomed to such requests to consider the imposition on her personal time.
With a quick smile, Candace snatched her empty Kelton & Associates coffee mug and handed it to Amy to get it off her desk. “Oh, and when he gets here, give me a few minutes with him before you alert the rest of the team. I’ll buzz you when I’m ready for you to call everyone else.”
Holding the mug, Amy acknowledged the request with the lift of her chin, grabbed the water glass and headed into the hall. Another glance at her watch told her she had ten minutes before Jared Taylor’s appointment. In theory that gave her enough time to make her call to the director now.
“Hey, Amy.” Eric Burke, their electronic media director, strode toward her, five feet ten inches of faintly flamboyant creativity in navy worsted and cranberry cable knit.
“Hey, Eric.”
“Where are you going for lunch?”
“Martinotti’s.” It was closest to the cleaners.
He turned as they passed, still talking as he walked backward. “Bring me back a turkey on multigrain, everything but mayo?”
“No problem,” she assured him, now walking backward, too.
“By the way, love the schoolgirl look you’ve got going there.”
Schoolgirl? she thought. That was so not the image she’d had in mind for today. With a grimace she muttered, “Thanks.”
Savannah poked her head out of her office, her sharp wedge of cinnamon-red hair swinging. “You’re making a deli run?”
Amy barely noted the graphic artist’s hopeful expression before her backward progress was halted by hands on her upper arms. Amber Thuy, one of Savannah’s crew, stepped around her. “I’d love a salad, if you are. Which deli?”
“Martinotti’s,” Eric called, and disappeared into the supply room.
Glancing behind her to make sure she wouldn’t back into anyone else, Amy kept going. “Write down what you want and I’ll order it,” she told the women. “Right now I need to make a call.”
She got a thumbs-up from Savannah, a quick “Thanks” from Amber and hurried into the break room to deposit mug and glass in the sink. Reminding herself to wash them later, she headed to the front desk and punched out the number for Elmwood House, the facility her grandma lived in, before anyone else could delay her.
Kay Colman, the facility’s director, immediately came on the line. Just as she did, the main office door opened.
Jared Taylor walked in, six feet, two inches of long, lean masculinity in a charcoal turtleneck and a tailored black leather jacket. His quicksilver eyes flicked from his watch to the clock on the wall. With the command of a man with an agenda to keep, he kept coming, his focus shifting to where she sat at the reception desk with the phone to her ear.
Her glance had stalled on his broad chest. Realizing that, she jerked her focus to his face to acknowledge him and turned her attention back to her call. Now was not a good time to think about how he’d held her there, next to all that hard, solid muscle.
“I’m so sorry,” she murmured into the phone, “would you hold for just a moment please.”
Suddenly aware of her heartbeat, she put the director on hold. She just wasn’t sure if her pulse felt uneven because of the hesitation and concern she’d just heard in the director’s voice, or because of the easy way Jared smiled at her as he walked up to her desk.
“How’s the weather?”
“The weather?”
“The black cloud that was following you around. You said bad days get better,” he reminded her, sounding as if he might have doubted her optimism somehow. “I just wondered if yours did.”
A faint smile formed. “I think you witnessed the worst of it.”
Torn between her need to get back to the woman waiting on the phone and wanting to know if he was feeling better about the venture that had brought him there, she glanced back to the telephone console. The line she’d just put on hold was blinking. Candace’s line was lit.
“You’re busy.” Sounding as if he might have had something else to say, he nodded toward the hall. “Is she in?”
“She’s on the phone.” He didn’t look any more enthused, she decided. If anything, he just looked tired. “If you want to have a seat, I’m sure she won’t be long.”
The overhead lights caught the gray silvering the dark hair at his temples as he gave her a preoccupied nod. Preoccupied herself, she pulled her attention from his broad shoulders when he turned and reconnected herself with Kay.
“I’m sorry,” she repeated, her voice hushed. “You said earlier that my grandmother is okay.” Her voice dropped another notch. “If she is, then what’s the matter?”
From the corner of one eye, J.T. saw Amy slowly rise from her chair at the curved Lucite desk. He didn’t know if she was trying to keep him from overhearing what she said, or if what she’d just heard had just caught her off guard. Either way, there was no mistaking the disbelief entering the quiet tones of her voice.
“Close? The whole facility?” She paused, listened. “But you said drastic changes aren’t good for her.”
For a long moment she said nothing else as whoever was on the other end of the line etched concern deeper into the delicate lines of her face.
She had her back to the reception area. Her hand covered her face as she rubbed two fingers against her forehead. Even turned away from anyone who might have walked through, there was no mistaking the unease she couldn’t quite mask. That disquiet was in the hushed tones of her voice when she spoke again, and in the furrows of her brow when she turned to write on a notepad.
It was feeling his own brow pinch that made J.T. aware of how blatantly he was eavesdropping on her conversation. He’d caught enough of Amy’s side of it to realize something was going on with the grandmother she was working to support. Edna, he remembered, was the woman’s name. She’d mentioned that while she was trying not to panic in the elevator.
There wasn’t much he didn’t remember about her. More, specifically, about their conversation. He just didn’t want to think about how accurate her insight had been about the new company he might—or might not—start. Or about how he was now feeling the definite need to get on his sloop and disappear for a few days, thanks to how she’d so perfectly described the freedom he felt when it was just him and the water. He would overlook the fact that he’d found no peace in the solitude of the island the last few times he’d been there, and that the challenge of fighting the wind had…lacked. Those were aberrations, he was sure. As it was, he had no spare time to indulge himself. Not for at least a month. With as much as he had to do between now and then, that month felt as if it was a year away.
Telling himself that what he’d overheard was none of his business, he turned his attention to the Blackberry he’d pulled from his pocket and started to check his messages. He’d spent the past eight days in Seattle in conferences with Gray, avoiding Harry and shuffling personnel in his department to make sure the schedule for the warehouse expansions there and in Jansen, Washington, would be met. It was a point of pride with him to come in on time with every project he undertook. The more challenging the project, the better.
High-stakes anything had always attracted him. It didn’t matter if it was sports, cards or real estate. He worked as hard as he played, and much to the bafflement of his infinitely more cerebral father, he freely admitted being drawn to just about anything legal that involved a risk. His reputation for being a player worked well for him in business. Anyone who knew him, knew him as the master of the deal, the man