Slade Baron's Bride. Sandra Marton

you, Nancy.”

      She sounded calm. That was good. She looked it, too, she thought as she took out her compact and peered into it. But her hand trembled a little as she smoothed back her hair.

      “Don’t be an idiot, Lara,” she told her reflection. She was prepared. She knew what she had to do and how to do it. She’d get Slade Baron out of Baltimore so quickly it would make his head spin. As for facing him—that wasn’t a problem. What she’d felt for him, what she’d thought she felt, had never been real.

      Lara smoothed down her skirt, plucked the folder from her desk and left her office.

      CHAPTER THREE

      LARA swiped the palms of her hands against her skirt as she rode the elevator to the conference room level.

      Stop it, she told herself angrily. The advantage was hers. Slade wouldn’t be expecting to see her. He hadn’t known her last name, any more than she’d known his. He was going to be the one who would have to work at showing no reaction to the discovery that Beaufort’s chief auditor was the woman he’d slept with on a snowy night in Denver.

      She had to calm down, otherwise she’d not only lose that advantage, she’d never be able to carry this off. Slade would see her panic and he, smug male animal that he was, would take it as a sign that she was overcome with excitement at seeing him again.

      Overcome, yes. But not with excitement. With fear. And there was nothing to fear. Nothing.

      The elevator door slid open. Lara took a breath, squared her shoulders and strode down the hall.

      “They’re waiting for you,” Dobbs’s secretary chirped.

      Lara took her chances and tried a smile. “Thanks.”

      It worked. The secretary didn’t leap to her feet and run, screaming, to the elevator, which, Lara supposed, meant she really was smiling and not just pulling her lips back from her teeth like a rabid dog baring its fangs. But that was certainly how it felt.

      The massive doors to the conference room stood open. Lara’s heart thudded. She hesitated in the doorway while she scanned the room for Slade. Where was he? The room was big. Huge, really. Six months ago, when she’d transferred from the Atlanta office to this one, she’d attended a meeting in it and been amazed at the room’s enormity.

      There he was, standing at the windows with his back to her. It didn’t matter that she couldn’t see his face. She knew him just the same. His height. The width of his shoulders. That midnight-black hair. And the way he stood, with a sort of sexy, king of the universe arrogance.

      It was Slade, just as she remembered him. Slade, the fantasy-lover whose arms had held her all through that long-ago night. Whose arms still held her in the dreams she acknowledged only in the darkness before dawn…

      Slade, whose long, lean body suddenly stiffened.

      She held her breath, told herself it was impossible he’d sensed her presence but even as she gave herself all those reassurances, she knew. She felt like a trapped animal as he turned toward her.

      A dozen reactions raced across his handsome face. Surprise. Shock. Then a slow, sexy smile of delight.

      Oh, God.

      The room spun; her vision narrowed but she stood her ground, looked at him coolly and then looked away. He wasn’t going to seduce her again. Not this time, not even into complacency. The sooner he understood that, the better.

      “Ah, there you are, Ms. Stevens.”

      Lara tilted her chin and turned away, toward Edwin Dobbs.

      “Mr. Dobbs,” she said pleasantly. “I hope I haven’t kept you waiting.”

      “No, no. You’re right on time.” Dobbs took her arm and moved her forward, and a good thing he did, Lara thought, because it felt as if she were walking on a carpet made of marshmallow. “I believe you know all the members of the board.”

      “Certainly. How do you do, Mr. Rogers? Nice to see you again, Mr. Kraemer.”

      She smiled. She shook hands. Answered yes, the weather was unusually cool, participated in the mindless chitchat the directors undoubtedly thought would make them seem like regular fellows.

      Inside herself, she trembled.

      She’d caught Slade off balance—that look on his face, before he’d realized he had no effect on her anymore, had said it all. The trouble was, for one heart-wrenching moment, she’d wanted to smile back, to run across the room and into his arms.

      “…our new architect, Mr. Slade Baron.”

      Lara’s heart banged into her throat. Dobbs had led her across the room, to Slade. And Slade had stopped smiling. He was looking at her as if he’d moved a rock and uncovered a new species of life.

      “Mr. Baron,” she said politely, and held out her hand.

      “Such formality, Lara,” Slade said, just as politely, and clasped her fingers in his.

      Dobbs’s eyebrows rose. “Do you two know each other?”

      “No,” Lara said.

      “Yes,” Slade said, at the same instant, and laughed. “I suspect what Lara means is that we don’t actually know each other very well. Isn’t that right, Lara?”

      Lara looked up at him. He was smiling now, but there was a tiny muscle dancing at the corner of his mouth, and his eyes were as gray as a storm-tossed sea.

      “Yes,” she said stupidly, because Slade had taken command of the game. All she could do was follow where he led and hope to hell she could get out in one piece. “We, uh, we don’t know each other very well,” she parroted, and pulled her hand from his.

      Dobbs nodded thoughtfully. “Isn’t that interesting? Ms. Stevens, you never said a word about knowing Mr. Baron.”

      “No. Ah, no, I didn’t. You see—you see—”

      “Well, she couldn’t.” Slade flashed a lazy grin. “Considering that we never did get around to exchanging last names.”

      Oh please, Lara thought, please, let the ground open up and swallow me.

      “We met at an airport, oh, a year and a half or so ago, and ended up spending a bit of time together. Isn’t that right, Lara?”

      “The weather,” she said jerkily. “It was—”

      “Snowing. My oh my, it surely was.” Slade laughed politely. “I don’t think I ever saw that much snow before, Mr. Dobbs. But your Ms. Stevens is a clever lady. Between us, we found lots of ways to pass the time.”

      “Did you, now?” Dobbs said, with a puzzled smile.

      “Oh, yes. We…But I’ll let her tell you all about it.”

      Dobbs looked at Lara. Lara licked her lips. “I—I can’t imagine you’d be interested in—in the details, sir.”

      “Of course he is,” Slade said.

      “Of course I am,” Dobbs echoed, his brows still lifted.

      “There I was,” Slade said, “trying to figure out how I could possibly make the time do anything but crawl.” He looked at Lara, the smile still on his face but his eyes as flat and cold as ice. “And then, fortunately for me, your Ms. Stevens and I struck up a conversation.”

      “About nothing,” Lara said, with a tight little laugh. “You know how it is, Mr. Dobbs, two strangers just—just dealing in a lot of small talk, to pass the time.”

      “But,” Slade said lazily, “as it turned out, we had a lot in common. Ms. Stevens’s battery needed charging. And mine just happened to be fully charged.”

      Lara could feel her face burning. “Computers,” she said wildly. “That’s what he’s