Behind The Boardroom Door. Amy Andrews

Mistress

      Anne McAllister

      Best-selling two-time RITA^® winner (with a further nine finalist titles) ANNE McALLISTER has written nearly seventy books for Mills & Boon Modern, Desire, Special Edition and single titles, which means she basically follows the characters no matter where they take her. She loves to travel, but at home she and her husband divide their time between Montana and Iowa. Anne loves to hear from readers. Contact her at: www.annemcallister.com.

       CHAPTER ONE

      “I WAS thinking little square boxes with silver and rose jelly beans in them.” Vangie was saying breathlessly into the phone.

      Sebastian, who wasn’t listening, had his attention on the computer screen in front of him. His sister had been rabbiting on in his ear for nearly twenty minutes. But truthfully, she hadn’t said anything important in the last three weeks.

      “You know what I mean, Seb? Seb?” Her voice rose impatiently when he didn’t reply. “Are you there?”

      God help him, yes, he was.

      Sebastian Savas managed a perfunctory grunt, but his gaze stayed riveted on the specs for the Blake-Carmody project, and his mind was there, too. He glanced at his watch. He had a meeting with Max Grosvenor in less than ten minutes, and he wanted everything fresh in his mind.

      He’d worked his tail off putting together ideas for this project, aware that it would be a terrific coup for Grosvenor Design to get the go-ahead.

      And it would be an even bigger coup for him personally to be asked to head up the team. He’d done a lot of the work. Using Max’s ideas and his own, Seb had spent the past two months putting together the structural plans and the public space layout for the Blake-Carmody high-rise office and condo building. And last week, while Seb had been in Reno working on another major project, Max had presented it to the owners.

      Still he’d had a big hand in it, and if they’d won the project, it made sense that that was what today’s meeting was about—Max asking him to run the show.

      Seb smiled every time he thought about it.

      “Well, I wondered,” Vangie was saying, undeterred. “You’re very quiet today. So…what do you think, Seb? Rose? Or silver? For the boxes, I mean. Or—” she paused “—maybe boxes are too fussy. Maybe we shouldn’t even have jelly beans. They’re sort of childish. Maybe we should have mints. What do you think of mints? Seb?”

      Sebastian jerked his attention back at the impatient sound of his name in his ear. Sighing, he thrust a hand through his hair. “I don’t know, Vangie,” he said with just the slightest hint of impatience himself.

      What’s more, he didn’t care.

      This was Vangie’s wedding, not his. She was the one tying the knot. And since he never intended to, he didn’t even need to learn from the experience.

      “Why not have both?” he said because he had to say something.

      “Could we?” She sounded as if he’d suggested having the Seattle symphony play the music for the reception.

      “Have what you want, Vange,” he said. “It’s your wedding.”

      It was, to Seb’s mind, fast becoming The Wedding That Ate Seattle. But what the heck, if it made his sister happy—for the moment at least—who was he to argue with her?

      “I know it’s my wedding. But you’re paying for it,” Vangie said conscientiously.

      “No problem.”

      Where family was concerned, Seb was the one they all turned to, the one who offered advice, a shoulder to lean on and a checkbook that paid the bills. It had been that way ever since he’d got his first architectural job.

      “I suppose I could ask Daddy…”

      Seb stifled a snort. Philip Savas begat children. He didn’t raise them. And while the old man had plenty of money—the family’s considerable hotel fortune residing in his pockets—he didn’t part with it easily unless it was something he wanted. Like another wife.

      “Don’t go there, Vange,” Sebastian advised his sister. “You know there’s no point.”

      “I suppose not,” she said glumly with the voice of experience. “I just wish…it would be so perfect if he’d remember to come and walk me down the aisle.”

      “Yeah.” Good luck, Seb thought grimly. How many times did Vangie have to be disappointed before she learned?

      Seb could pay the bills and offer support and see that his siblings had everything they needed, but he couldn’t guarantee their father would ever act like one. In all of Sebastian’s thirty-three years, Philip Savas never had.

      “Has he called you?” Vangie asked hopefully.

      “No.”

      Unless Philip wanted to foist a problem off on his responsible eldest son, he couldn’t be bothered to make contact. And Seb was done trying to make overtures to him. Now he glanced at his watch again. “Listen, Vange, I’ve gotta run. I have a meeting—”

      “Of course. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t bother you. I’m sorry to bother you all the time, Seb. It’s just you’re the only one here and…” Her voice trailed off.

      “Yes, well, you should have got married in New York. You’d have had all the help you could use then.” When Seb had come out to Seattle after university, it had been expressly to put a continent between himself and his multitude of ex-stepmothers and half siblings. He didn’t mind supporting them, but he didn’t want them interfering in his life. Or his work. Which was the same thing.

      His bad luck, he supposed, that when Vangie graduated from Princeton and got engaged, her fiancé, Garrett’s, family was from Seattle, and they decided to move here.

      “It will be wonderful. I can see you all the time. Like a real family!” Vangie had said at the time. She’d been over the moon at the prospect. “Isn’t that great?”

      Seb, who had given up any notion of “real family” by the time he’d reached puberty, hadn’t seen anything to rejoice in. But he’d managed to cross his fingers and give her a hug. “Terrific.”

      In fact, it hadn’t been as bad as he’d feared.

      Vangie and Garrett both worked for a law firm in Bellevue. They spent time with each other and with their own set of friends and he rarely saw them.

      He pleaded work whenever they did invite him to one of their parties. It wasn’t an excuse; it was the truth.

      Vangie said he worked far too hard, and Garrett thought his almost-brother-in-law was boring because he did nothing except design buildings.

      That was fine with Seb. They had their lives and he had his.

      But as the date for the wedding approached, things had changed. Wedding plans made months ago now required constant comment and consultation.

      Vangie had begun calling him daily. Then twice a day. Recently it had increased to four and five times a day.

      Sebastian wanted to say, “Get a grip. You’re a big girl. You can make decisions on your own.”

      But he didn’t. He knew Vangie. Loved her. And he understood all too well that her wedding plans were symbolic of her biggest fantasy.

      She’d always dreamed of being part of a “real” family, of having that built-in support. It was what “normal” families did, she told him.

      And Vangie, more than any of them, had always desperately wanted them to be “normal.”