Season Of Strangers. Kat Martin

      Julie closed her eyes and tried not to think of tall, dark and handsome Patrick Donovan. She tried not to see his disarming white smile, gleaming black hair, and perfect V-shaped body, all attractively packaged in expensive custom-tailored clothes.

      Instead she forced herself to think of the wild, drunken parties he favored, the women, the drugs, the careless, reckless spending that was dragging Patrick and Donovan Real Estate right down the tubes. It was Patrick’s fault the company was near financial ruin. Patrick with his selfish overindulgence, his endless schemes, and self-destructive ways.

      As she always did when her mind strayed to Alex’s charming, incorrigible son, she worried about the way he was destroying himself and thought what a terrible waste it was.

      

      Patrick Donovan slammed the door of his sleek black Porsche Carrera a little harder than he meant to, then winced at the jolt of pain that shot from his head to his toes. Jesus, what a hangover. Sex and drugs and rock ’n’ roll. Sometimes he wondered if it was worth it.

      “Take care of her, will you, Monty?” He dangled the keys in front of the little valet who parked cars at Spago, the posh celebrity restaurant half a block down from his office.

      “You got it, Mr. Donovan!” The kid grinned like a fool, grabbed the keys and a ten-dollar bill, and slid behind the steering wheel while Patrick continued on up the sidewalk to work. It was late afternoon. He should have been in the office hours ago, but the juicy little blonde he’d picked up at Jack Winston’s party last night had kept him up until nearly dawn.

      She was into booze, big-time, a cokehead who occasionally got high with a needle, but she was also really built. She knew how to party and better yet, she knew how to screw. The trade-off was worth the price he’d paid for an eight ball of really good coke. And of course he hadn’t minded getting a little grilled himself.

      “What’s up, Shirl?” Resting an elbow on the message center beside her desk, he leaned forward, giving himself a better view of her outrageous cleavage.

      She beamed up at him. “I got tickets for Saturday night—The Jersey Boys. Front row seats. I didn’t really think you’d be interested, but if you’re not already busy—”

      “I meant what’s going on around here. What calls I’ve had and whether or not anyone is desperately looking for me.”

      “Oh.” She looked crestfallen. Shirley Bingham had never been long on brains but she was dynamite in the sack. Too bad getting her in bed meant he’d had to employ her. Shirl loved the job and now he didn’t have the heart to fire her. He was, however, smart enough to ignore the lure of temptation again.

      She straightened in her chair, jiggling her magnificent breasts, and the front of his pants went snug. He might have one helluva hangover, but obviously he wasn’t dead yet.

      “You’ve had a lot of calls, sir. I put them in on your desk. Oh, and Ms. Ferris has been waiting for you to come in. She’s in her office now.”

      Julie Ferris. Patrick sighed as he straightened away from Shirl, turned, and made his way past the twin rows of desks, nodding to a salesman here and there as he walked by. If he had one regret in life it was Julie. He’d been attracted to Julie Ferris since the day she’d walked through the office front door eight years ago. She’d been only twenty then, not even old enough to drink. But she’d had a beautiful body and skin like cream, big green eyes, and the clearest, sweetest laugh he’d ever heard.

      At the time, she was a junior at UCLA, looking for part-time work. He had convinced his father to hire her on the spot and begun to put the moves on her right away. Eventually he’d convinced her to go out with him, but he was seven years older than Julie, and she was wary of a worldly man like him. When he’d driven her to his apartment after dinner to try his hand at seduction, Julie had come unglued.

      “You’re drunk,” she had said, unwinding herself from his sticky embrace and leaving him sprawled on the couch. “I feel like I’ve been out with an octopus, and the whole time we were having dinner, your eyes were on every other woman who walked through the door. That might work with the bimbos you’ve been dating, but it won’t work with me.”

      “Wait a minute, Julie—” He struggled to get to his feet and finally dragged himself upright. “So what if I am a little drunk? We’re out to party, aren’t we? I only wanted to have a little fun.”

      “Fun for you, maybe.” She snatched her coat off the chair. “Certainly not fun for me.” She started for the door. “You don’t have to drive me home. If you tried, you’d probably get us both thrown in jail. I’ll take a cab.”

      Julie had gotten home on her own and she hadn’t gone out with him since.

      He thought of that night as he knocked on the door to her office, then turned the knob and walked in. Things had changed a lot between them since then. He was her boss now. Over the years, she had won his respect and they had come to a sort of understanding. He glanced to where she sat on the sofa, gently massaging her temple. She was usually behind her desk with the phone shoved into an ear.

      “You don’t look good,” he said, noticing the lines of fatigue beneath her eyes.

      “Neither do you.” She glanced up at his drug-ravaged face. It was hard to fool Julie. She always saw through to the truth. “Another rough night, I gather.”

      He grinned boyishly, wishing he could charm her as easily as he could the rest of the women he knew. “Kind of. What about you? Not feeling well?”

      Julie sighed and came to her feet. As always, she looked at him with a combination of regret mixed with disapproval. It always pissed him off.

      “I had a headache,” she said. “It’s pretty much gone now.”

      He knew she was attracted to him, but Julie Ferris wasn’t the kind of girl who went for one-night stands. She disapproved of the drugs he used and badgered him about his drinking.

      “You don’t look like you’re feeling much better,” she said, frowning at the smudges beneath his eyes, the slightly sallow color of his usually suntanned skin. “That stuff is going to kill you, Patrick. How long will it take before you figure that out?”

      Patrick stiffened, drawing himself up to his full six foot three inches. “What I do is none of your damned business.”

      Julie stopped a few feet in front of him, tilting her head to look up at him and fixing those big green eyes on his face. “It is when my clients are involved.” Her brows drew together, moving the tiny freckles across the bridge of her nose. “We need to talk about the Rabinoff deal. You really blew that one, Patrick.”

      “I know, I know.” He raked a hand through his wavy black hair, shoving it back from his forehead. “Things just sort of got away from me.”

      “They got away from you because you weren’t paying attention. You’re too smart for that, Patrick. If you kept your mind on business instead of Shirl’s cleavage or Babs’s derrière—”

      “Okay, okay, I’ll fix it.” He didn’t tell her it was her derrière that usually snagged his attention. “I know the secretary over at the mortgage company. I’ll get her to put a rush on the documents. Anything else you want me to do?”

      She rattled off a list of items, each word punctuated by a green-eyed glare that scorched right through him. Damn, she was pretty. Not beautiful like some of the women he knew, but cute and smart and sexy as hell. He forced himself not to think of what she’d be like in bed.

      After eight years of giving it the old college try, he knew it wasn’t going to happen.

      

      Julie lay in the middle of her big pine bed, listening to the pounding of the surf rolling in on the beach, the intermittent throb of a foghorn in the distance. Her bedroom was white, like the rest of the house, with light pine hardwood floors and woven throw rugs in bright southwest colors—a bit of New Mexico on the California shore.