Hot Under Pressure. Kathleen O'Reilly

In the end, Ashley was a survivor. When she was working on a new store window—surrounded by encouraging mannequins draped in subtly fitted, beautifully crafted, casual couture—the dream returned. She could do it. All she needed was to keep the faith.

      She gave hot man a weak smile, and he covered her hand, a grip that was supposed to be comforting.

       If you’d only twitch the thumb, a tiny caress…

       Shut up, Valerie.

      He had large hands, warm hands, with long, long fingers that looked so full of possibilities.

      “Everything all right?”

      “Peachy.” The engines start to roar.

      Quickly she took out the air-sickness bag.

      Just in case.

      DAVID MCLEAN hadn’t been excited about a side-trip through Chicago to see his brother. Ex-brother. Chris had lost any claim to family bonding after he’d slept with David’s wife. Yeah, nothing like a little wife-sharing between brothers. Four years, and it still pissed him off.

      Still, in the face of pink bunny slippers and shoved in close quarters with a young psycho in training, David felt something unfamiliar tug at his face. A grin. Yes, that was definitely a grin.

      The woman was just nervous enough to be unthreatening. He liked her. Her hair was dark, nearly black, and she had soft brown eyes and a nose that was too big to be called pert. But it gave her a little something extra—character. And she had a nice mouth, plump lips that were always held slightly parted, like a kid viewing the world for the first time, or a woman in the beginning throes of climax.

      There was something stirring in his khakis—trouble. Sex held the whip hand, and turned men into stupid dogs. Like, for instance, Chris. And Christine. When he first introduced his future wife to his brother, all three of them had laughed about their matching names. The day he had found them in bed together, the laughter had stopped.

      He shot a furtive look at the bunny slippers.

      “I’m David,” he said, carefully displacing thoughts of Chris and Christine.

      “Ashley.”

      “Are you from Chicago?”

      “Born, bred and will most likely die here as well.”

      “Cubbies fan, aren’t you?” It was there in her eyes, that sort of lost hope, winning seasons long denied. Idealistic dreamers—a rarely seen species that was going to naturally select itself into extinction.

      She winced. “I know, it’s pathetic, isn’t it? Are you from Chicago?”

      “New York.”

      “Ah, home of the Yankees.”

      “What can I say? I live in New York. We always back the money team.”

      “Sad to be bought so easily.”

      He shrugged, and looked out the window. The plane had stopped moving toward the runway. They were returning to the gate.

      Immediately Ashley noticed. “Something’s wrong, isn’t it?” Her finger jammed at the call button, just as the captain came on the speaker, his voice Prozac calm and soothing, which only made her more nervous.

      “Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve had a slight mechanical issue. Nothing to worry about. I’m going to pull us back to the gate and have the mechanics check things out. We’ll have a short stop where you can disembark, if you choose. However, you will need your boarding pass to reboard.”

      “We’re not flying?” she said, and he noticed the relief in her voice.

      “We’re going to fly,” answered David, wanting to reassure her, but more importantly, he needed to get to L.A. The sooner he left Chicago the better.

      “I’m not taking off my slippers,” she answered. “They can’t do that to me.”

      “It’s okay, I’m sure it won’t be long,” he told her, not his usual brutal honestly, but he suspected there was normally more color in her face, and if bunny slippers made her happy, who was he to take them away?

      “What sort of mechanical problems do you think we’re stuck with? I was on a flight to Miami when they thought the landing gear was hosed, but it turned out fine.”

      “Let me tell you about the time that I was flying to Houston. The engine blew…” Her eyes shot up four sizes, the pale color bleached to a ghostly hue, and he clamped down on his tongue. Hard. Okay, David, great going here. “Sorry. We landed fine. They have back-up engines, so if anything fails…” He realized he wasn’t helping, so wisely he decided to shut up.

      Damn. He liked talking to her. Normally he pulled out his computer and worked through flights, but this afternoon had left him feeling unsettled. Two weeks ago he had told his ex-wife that he would be in Chicago for a meeting. He would finally see them. But then he’d arrived at O’Hare and the city of big shoulders closed in on him.

      He shouldn’t have called them. Christine had said she was pregnant—oh, joy!—but in the end, David lied, leaving a message saying that his meeting had been canceled and he wouldn’t be stopping in Chicago after all.

      David didn’t like being a coward. He never did—except for this.

      The pregnancy had stung. Not that he wanted Christine back, but it irked him that she preferred his brother, that fidelity wasn’t part of her vocabulary, and that he, a man who evaluated million-dollar business opportunities on a daily basis, could do so poorly when picking out wife material.

      “I know of a little knockwurst place in Terminal One,” he blurted out, because he didn’t want to sit here sulking over the social implications of having a nephew birthed by his ex-wife. Bratwurst and sausage were so much more appealing. Then he glanced down at her feet. “Oops. Never mind.”

      “Down by Gate B12, between the ATM and the security check?”

      “Yeah, you know the place?”

      “Heh. I eat there all the time.” Her mouth parted even more, drawing his eyes. Trouble stirred once more. “There are few things to get me out of my bunny slippers, but knockwurst and blown engines will do it. Let’s go before junior scarfs down another chocolate bar.”

       2

      HIS NAME WAS David McLean. His hair was a rich brown, cut conservatively short, but it suited him, suited the all-American, man-most-likely-to-know-how-to-fix-a-car-engine allure. Yes, he’d never model like one of those designer-wearing scruffy-jawed man-boys, but there was something about him that fascinated her. He was curious and intelligent, asking questions about everything, yet not so willing to talk about himself. Eventually she discovered why.

      He was divorced and his jaw clenched like a vise when he’d mentioned it, so it wasn’t one of those “parting as good friends” situations.

      The restaurant was quiet and dark, the wait staff moving efficiently and effortless, and the large, overstuffed booths were conducive to divulging confidences to perfect strangers.

      “It’s not easy, is it?” she asked, thinking of her own divorce. Two weeks of wounded pride, several weeks of sorting out the finances and understanding what was whose and five months of awkward questions and well-meaning advice from friends. But then Ashley woke up one cold December morning and she knew she would be okay. Not fine, not great, but she was going to live. It was while in that fragile state that Valerie convinced her that she should do something radical with her life, live out her dream and buy a chain of four small Chicago boutiques. Start fresh.

      “Not going that well?” asked David, when she told him what she did.

      “Why would you think that?”

      “I don’t know. You don’t