Not Strictly Business!: Prodigal Son / The Boss and Miss Baxter / The Baby Deal. Victoria Pade

I went through the whole ‘I’ve failed’ bit, but I’ve moved on from that. Right now I’m feeling a lot of relief.”

      “It’s a tough time,” he said.

      She nodded. “I had really planned to stay married to the same man for the rest of my life. I thought I’d picked the perfect guy.” She paused. “Not perfect. Perfect for me. But I was wrong.”

      An understatement, she thought grimly. “We wanted different things in nearly everything. I could have lived with that, but he changed his mind about wanting children.” She kept her voice light because if she gave in to her real feelings, the bitterness would well up inside of her. She didn’t want to deal with that right now. Talk about a waste of energy.

      “I’m sorry,” Jack said. “I remember you used to talk about having kids all the time.”

      “I still plan to have them. I think I have a few good years left.”

      “More than a few.”

      She smiled as she spoke. Jack liked the way she curled up on the sofa, yet kept one leg lowered so she could rub Charlie with her bare foot.

      She still painted her toenails, he thought, looking at the tiny flowers painted on each big toe. She even had a toe ring on each foot. None of the women he got involved with were the toe-ring type. Of course none of them wore jeans with flowers sewn onto the side seams or sweaters that looked more like a riot of colors than clothing.

      “Enough about me,” she said. “What have you been up to, romantically?”

      “Nothing that interesting,” he told her. “No wives, current or ex. I was engaged for a while.”

      “Oh. It didn’t work out?”

      “She died.”

      Samantha’s eyes widened. “Jack, I’m sorry.”

      “Thanks. It was a few years ago, just before Christmas. Shelby’s car spun out on an icy bridge and went into the water. She didn’t make it.”

      “How horrible.”

      Samantha was the sympathetic type. She would want to say the right thing, only to realize there wasn’t one. He’d heard all the platitudes possible and none of them had made a damn bit of difference. Not after he’d found Shelby’s note. The one she’d written before she’d died.

      “Was it very close to the wedding?” she asked.

      “Just a little over a week. We were planning to get married New Year’s Eve.”

      She bit her lower lip. “You must hate the holidays now.”

      “Not as much as I would have thought. I get angry, thinking about what was lost.”

      Not for him and Shelby—he’d done his best to let that go—but for her family. They were good people and he knew they’d yet to move on.

      “Relationships are never easy,” she said.

      Charlie chose that moment to roll onto his back and offer his stomach for rubbing. Samantha obliged him and he started to groan.

      “That dog knows a good thing when he has one,” Jack said.

      She looked at him and grinned. “Oh, right. Because you don’t spoil him.”

      “Me? Never.” He sipped on his wine. “Are you overwhelmed by work yet?”

      “Almost. Ask me again in two days and I’m sure the answer will be yes. There’s so much to do, and that’s what makes it all exciting. This is a great opportunity.”

      He was glad she thought so. He wanted energetic people solving company problems as quickly as possible. “Have you heard about the big advertiser party? It’s in a few weeks. It’s an annual function and very upscale. Formal attire required.”

      “Really? You mean I have an excuse to buy a new dress and look fabulous?”

      The thought of her in something long and slinky suddenly made him look forward to the party in ways he hadn’t before. “It’s not just an excuse,” he said. “It’s an order.”

      “And you’ll be in a tux?”

      He grimaced. “Oh, yeah.”

      “I’m sure you’ll look great. All the women will be fawning over you.”

      “Fawning gets old,” he said, doing his best not to read anything into her comment. While he wanted to believe she was flirting, he’d been shot down enough in the past to know that wishful thinking got him exactly nowhere.

      “Do you have a lot of it?” she asked, her green eyes sparkling with humor.

      “Enough.”

      “And just how much is that?”

      He sensed they were in dangerous territory, but he wasn’t sure how to avoid getting in trouble.

      “I date,” he said cautiously.

      “I would guess that you have women lining up to be with you,” she said easily. “You’re good-looking, successful, well-off and single. That’s fairly irresistible.”

      Except for Samantha, that had always been his take on it, too. So why did he get the feeling that she didn’t see the list as a good thing?

      “Some women manage to resist,” he said. “What about you? Ready to start dating?”

      “I don’t think so. Not for a while. Divorce has a way of sucking the confidence out of a person. Or at least it did me.”

      He couldn’t believe that. She had always been confident. Smart, funny, gorgeous. “It doesn’t show.”

      She smiled. “Thanks. I’m getting by on sheer determination.”

      “It’s working.”

      He wanted to tell her she had nothing to worry about—that she was as desirable as ever and he was willing to prove it.

      Not a good idea, he reminded himself. So instead of speaking, or acting, he stood. “It’s late. Charlie and I need our beauty sleep.” He whistled softly. “Come on, boy.”

      Charlie rose and stretched. He licked Samantha’s hand, then joined Jack.

      She got up and followed them to the front door. “Thanks for stopping by. Dinner was great. I appreciated the company, as well.” She crouched down and rubbed Charlie’s ears. “You’re a very handsome boy. We’ll have to get together again soon.”

      Charlie barked his agreement.

      Figures, Jack thought with a grin. After all these years, she falls for the dog.

       Chapter Three

      Nearly a week later, Jack sat behind what had been his father’s desk, cursing his agreement to take over the company, even temporarily. Every day brought a new crisis and, with it, bad news. At this point all he was asking for was twenty-four hours without something major going wrong.

      He’d already had to deal with the IT people informing him that their Web pages were nearly at capacity and, to support the Web expansion, they were going to have to negotiate with their server. The previous quarter’s report showed magazine subscriptions falling for their three best publications. A train derailment had destroyed nearly a hundred thousand magazines heading to the West Coast markets and he’d just seen the layout for the launch of their new home-decorating magazine and even he could tell it sucked the big one.

      There was too much to deal with, he thought. How the hell had his father done all this and run several departments?

      Jack leaned back in his chair and rubbed his temples. He already had the answer to that one—George Hanson hadn’t done it well. Things had slipped and there’d been no time to fix them