With the Seattle project on track, his main focus now was the HuntCom campus outside New Delhi. The expansion there was scheduled for completion next year. Not that falling behind schedule might even matter. With his future hanging on him and his brothers finding brides, it was entirely possible he wouldn’t see that or any other HuntCom project to completion.
Which was all the more reason he should have called Candace for dinner, he mentally muttered. He just hadn’t had the time to come back to Portland until now.
“There’s nothing you can do to get the funds?”
His focus sharpened on the distress in Amy’s furtive tones as she asked how much the person on the other end of her line was talking about. He just couldn’t hear what else she said in the moments before he realized he was eavesdropping again.
Giving up on his messages, he saw her nod as she murmured something into the phone. Her short hair feathered around her face. From what he could see of her profile, her dark eyes looked huge and worried. But it was the strain in her voice that truly betrayed her concern. She seemed more worried now than she had stuck ten floors up in an elevator.
Or so he was thinking when he heard her tell her caller that there had to be something they could do, that she would get back to her when she thought of it, then punched a button on the console to say, “Mr. Taylor is here. Would you like me to bring him back?”
With a quiet, “Okay,” she hung up the phone and took a deep breath. As if totally accustomed to burying her concerns in the time it took most people to blink, she turned a calm smile in his direction.
“Candace will be right out.”
He couldn’t help wonder how often she was required to make that sort of emotional transition. Suspecting from its ease that she’d had considerable practice, he hitched at the knees of his slacks.
“No hurry,” he said, when he usually hated waiting.
He’d never been a man to sit and speculate when an answer was available. He wanted to know what was going on with her; what it was putting the strain in her pretty smile. Figuring the time they’d spent stumbling upon bits of each other’s respective baggage in the elevator allowed him a little license, he was about to ask.
He’d barely approached her desk when Candace emerged in the hallway.
“Jared, I’m so sorry to keep you waiting. It’s good to see you again.”
His intent interrupted, he offered Amy a distracted smile of his own and moved toward her stepsister. The ad exec in the black designer suit moved with the long, leggy grace of a model. She had everything going for her. Beauty. Hair. Dazzling smile. Being male, he couldn’t help but notice it all. Still vaguely preoccupied with her younger stepsister behind him at the desk, that was as far as his thoughts strayed.
“You, too,” he replied, mentally shuffling priorities back to his plan. “You have my preview ready?”
“We have some ideas we’d like to share with you,” she confirmed. “You understand this is all preliminary.”
“Understood.”
“Amy?” Candace arched one perfectly shaped eyebrow. “Will you have the team meet us in the conference room in five minutes, please?”
What J.T. figured would take ten minutes took twenty. The concept and design team presented him with options for logos, all of which were projected on a screen accompanied by an impressive power-point presentation of how each had been designed to make a different statement about him and his own designs. He was offered catch phrases, all incorporating variations of the buzzwords he’d liked when Candace had asked him if he had a mission statement.
He was asked if he would supply photos of buildings he’d designed and executed. Their Web master wanted to catalog them on the Web site he’d mocked up. The art director felt that taking a particularly unusual or impressive element from one of his structures would make a nice background for print copy.
There was more. All of it well done, considering how little he’d given them to work with, a point that was raised ever so tactfully by the quick, decidedly enthusiastic Candace. The woman was clearly a motivating force with her team. The collective effort of that team for the success of the client seemed to be what counted to her. It was also what impressed him most about her right then. He just found himself too distracted through much of the presentation to feel more than polite interest in the offerings. First by the way she dangled one high-heeled shoe from her toes. But mostly by the curiosity and the odd concern he felt for the young woman who was again on the phone when Candace finally escorted him back to the reception area.
On the desk in front of her, Amy had the Yellow Pages open to Realtors. From what he could hear her saying about needing to “get it on the market as soon as possible,” it seemed she was arranging to sell a house.
Candace was talking, too. With his attention divided, he nearly missed the blonde’s question about how long he would be in town.
“I know you have to return to the project you’re working on in Singapore,” she said, trying to catch his eye. “But I can have my assistant make the contract changes we discussed and have the amendment ready for you to sign first thing in the morning. If you’ll still be here,” she added, hinting.
Singapore. She had pressed, politely, to know where he was now working. Since he’d had to come up with a place, he’d mentioned the location everyone at HuntCom thought would be the next logical place to develop a presence. He’d been to that thriving city and he would, hopefully, start checking out potential real estate soon. So he’d let her and the team think he was working on a complex there for a client who didn’t wish to be identified until the project was complete.
He hadn’t wanted her digging around for information on him in India. He had no idea if his name had appeared in any of the business newspapers in New Delhi lately or what the translations would say if it had. There were employees in the company paid to keep track of any mention of HuntCom or those connected with it, but that wasn’t the sort of thing he stayed on top of himself.
He also hadn’t wanted to supply them with pictures of his former projects, all of which could be identified as HuntCom properties. But that had been easier to finesse. He’d simply told the truth; that the properties were designed under the name of the partnership he would soon be leaving. While the designs were his, they were owned by the partnership and he wasn’t at liberty to use the images on his own.
Candace’s people weren’t happy about not having art. But then, he figured they were even. He wasn’t too happy with the reason he’d had to come to them in the first place.
The reminder of why he was being forced to have a fallback company also reminded him he was losing time in his pursuit of a wife.
“I’m staying until tomorrow,” he finally told her, switching gears from Plan B. A muscle in his jaw jerked. He wasn’t at all comfortable with the subterfuge he was being forced to employ. “I have some other business I need to take care of here, so signing tomorrow works fine. If you’re free tonight, I’ll buy you a drink to toast the new campaign. If you’re available I could meet you about seven.”
She didn’t hesitate. Tipping her head, she smiled. “Seven will be perfect.”
“Can you suggest a place?”
“Where are you staying?”
He told her he was staying at The Benson, and caught the immediate, approving lift of her eyebrows at his choice of accommodations. He’d stayed at the beautiful old hotel with its venerable architecture and refined service the last time he’d been there. In one of their penthouses.
His accommodations weren’t quite as spacious now, though. When he’d checked in before, he hadn’t been thinking about the Bride Hunt or the rule about the prospective woman not knowing he had money. This time, he was in a decidedly