Perilously close.
She blew out a silent puff of air, feeling ridiculously warm.
Four years had passed since that time, but it might as well have been yesterday for how clear it was in her mind.
He’d kissed her.
One time.
One … very … memorable time.
And she’d been a head case for much too long afterward.
Which was all over now, thank goodness. No way would she let herself fall into the same behavior as her mother.
“No, I’m not happy.” His voice was short. “And why are you nodding?”
She blinked, focusing in on the present and the look Drew was giving her. “I, um, I was just glad to be finished with the proof.” She raced through the last few sentences and was relieved that it was perfect as drafted and set down her pen.
She turned to her side desk where her computer sat and moved the papers next to her. “Don’t you like the woman your father is marrying?”
“Lily? She’s his cousin’s widow.” He leaned across the desk and slid open her drawer, pulling out the cell phone. It was buzzing, yet again.
Afraid he was going to answer it, she snatched it out of his hand and slid it into the side pocket of her jacket. She definitely didn’t want chancing her mother getting her boss’s ear. “So?”
“So I don’t see why they have to rush into anything. Wouldn’t it just be easier to talk to your mother?”
She let out a faint laugh. Her fingers worked quickly over the keyboard as she made her corrections to his document. “You’re obviously dreading the trip to your father’s wedding. Maybe you shouldn’t be giving me advice on dealing with my parent.”
He exhaled roughly and shoved off the desk again. “It’s not the wedding,” he muttered. “Not entirely.”
Her fingers slowed fractionally and realizing it, she hastened her pace again. Letting Drew get under her sympathetic nerve was not a wise course of action.
His father was getting married. Effectively replacing his mother. And Deanna had seen for herself, up close and personally, how deeply affected he’d been when she’d died.
“Your brothers will be there,” she offered, trying to be helpful. He’d told her once that he had four of them, but only he and one other brother, Jeremy, didn’t live in Texas. “How long’s it been since you’ve seen them?”
“We were all in Red Rock together a few years ago.”
She didn’t have any siblings and so often had wished she had. She wouldn’t have felt so alone in the world. “Well, then, aren’t you looking forward to that?”
He swung his bat like a golf club, but he looked anything but leisurely. “What the hell does it matter?”
Irritation skittered along her nerves. “I guess it doesn’t,” she snapped back, “except that this whole project—” she waved her hand over the stacks of papers littering her desk “—that you insisted had to be done now, is obviously just a way for you to put off going to Texas. Were you hoping that we wouldn’t actually get it finished, so you could claim that you couldn’t get away at all?”
Drew nearly did a double take at his assistant’s tart words. Her hazel eyes were practically snapping up at him and a blaze of color was burning in her lightly tanned cheeks.
Usually, she was the soul of calm.
And for some reason, the fact that she suddenly wasn’t was just one more thorn under his saddle.
“Guess I didn’t realize how important your spa weekend with the girls was,” he countered.
Her lips tightened. “You know, Drew, sometimes you are such a—” She broke off and shook her head so hard that her brownish-red hair bounced around her shoulders. She turned her softly pointed chin back to her computer monitor and began typing, her fingers pounding furiously over the keys.
“A what?”
“Nothing.” She was typing even faster, the keys clicking madly.
“Just say it, Dee.” He blamed the urge to goad her even more on his father. William wasn’t satisfied with ruining his own life with his damn marriage plans, but now he wanted to ruin Drew’s, too. “Why hold back now?”
She gave him a stern look that reminded him, strangely enough, of his mother. Probably because his mother was on Drew’s mind, because she clearly was not on William’s mind, he reasoned.
“Why don’t you just go back into your office and let me finish without distraction?” she countered. She lifted her left hand to wave it in dismissal, and her right hand never stopped moving over the computer keyboard. “Decide what you want your new business cards to say when you replace your dad as the CEO now that he’s retiring. Maybe that will improve your mood.”
“Maybe the fact that I’m not likely to be the new CEO will improve yours.”
The clacking keys went abruptly silent.
She stared up at him and the fiery green glint faded in her eyes, leaving confusion in their depths. “What?”
He tightened his grip around the baseball bat.
He wanted to throw the damn thing through one of the windows.
“I’m not taking over as CEO.” The words tasted like acid-coated boulders.
She looked bewildered. “But everyone knows you’re taking over for him.”
“Yeah, well, I guess Dad didn’t read the memo.” His voice was short.
“Drew—”
He exhaled. “As far as I know, he’s not planning to close down this office. He just wants to close me down.”
The high color faded from her cheeks and she looked pale. “But you do a remarkable job here.”
“Not remarkable enough for him.”
She shook her head a little, making her hair swing again. “Your father’s never seemed anything but proud of the work you’ve done here. For heaven’s sake, he even told me once when he was visiting the office how he thinks you’re a chip off the old block.”
“And there’s the problem,” he said flatly. “Since he thinks he didn’t really get his act together and start up this place until he married my mother and settled down, he’s gone and decided that I have to do the same damn thing!”
He swung the bat hard and it connected with the soft cushion of one of the upholstered chairs sitting outside the door to his office.
The cushion dented, and Deanna let out a startled squeak.
Neither was as satisfying as a broken window, and cursing his father, he tossed the bat onto the chair and stomped back into his office.
Deanna followed him, her hands clenched around the lapels of her drab brown jacket that matched her knee-length drab brown skirt. “Your father thinks you should get married?”
His head was pounding. He wanted a drink. He wanted a cigarette and he’d finally managed to quit the damn things six months earlier. He wanted to forget that the past year had ever happened and he particularly wanted to forget his father’s ultimatum.
If only he could.
He threw himself down onto the chair behind his desk and yanked off his hat. “He doesn’t just think it,” he said wearily. “He expects it. Or no CEO for Drew.”
She slowly sank down onto one of the chairs facing his desk. She looked dazed, which was probably the only reason she wasn’t smoothing her skirt circumspectly around her