Too Hot To Handle. Barbara Daly

allowed it. So why was it suddenly showing up now?

      It must have been the distraction of his own thoughts that made him blurt out the one thing he most wanted to keep to himself. Either that, or he’d lived in the United States too long. “I ran into an old girlfriend in New York last weekend.”

      That was as far as he got before a collective sigh drowned him out, followed by, “No kidding?” and “Great!” and “Uh-oh, it’s a woman problem.”

      “I told you it had to be something important,” Suzi said. “Tell us all about her.”

      Cornered by his own stupidity, Alex said, “No, no, it’s not like that. She’s just a girl I dated in high school. Hollywood High. When my mother did those three movies—” He made a gesture with his hand. He didn’t need to embellish. Eleanor Asquith was a household name, in cultured households, at least. “She pulled me out of boarding school and brought me with her. She wanted me to see what real Americans were like.”

      “Real Americans at Hollywood High? I don’t think so,” Les said.

      “Sarah was there.”

      The silence told him he’d shocked them. It was a frightening thought, that he might have said more than one of them would have in the same circumstances. What was it that made him babble on? “We fell for each other, but this and that happened, you know how it is with kids, and we broke up. I lost track of her. Last Saturday I found her again.”

      “Something about this reunion did not make you happy.” Mike folded his hands over an incipient paunch and waited.

      Alex had opened the doors himself. There was no going back. “I thought it would be the polite thing to ask her out this weekend. She turned me down flat. I gave her my card and asked her to call if her plans changed.”

      “I didn’t know you were going to New York this weekend,” Carol said, looking worried. “You loaned the plane to Tucker Associates, remember? You don’t have transportation or a hotel suite, and you don’t have any appointments.”

      “Well, obviously,” Alex began, then, realizing he sounded sarcastic, backed up and started over. “I wasn’t going to New York unless she called.”

      “But she didn’t call,” Suzi said.

      “Not yet.”

      “It’s only…well, I guess it is Thursday,” Mike said. “Looks like maybe she’s not going to call.” He winced under the glare Alex sent in his direction.

      “She calls or she doesn’t,” Alex said. “It doesn’t matter. I’m annoyed by her bad manners, that’s all.”

      “If you did something to make her so mad that she’s still mad after all these years,” Suzi said, “it may take her more than five days to get over it.”

      “Or maybe you need to push her a little bit,” Carol suggested. “If this was a business deal you wouldn’t let it go with a single, ‘Let’s take a meeting,’ and then just sit around on your tush waiting for the other guy to call.”

      “If this was a business deal,” Suzi said, echoing Carol, “you’d put together a package for the guy, an annual report, a prospectus, your card, maybe an Emerson Associates paperweight.”

      A lightbulb went off in Alex’s head. A business deal. Of course. It was a road toward Sarah, and it was a way out of the untenable social predicament he’d gotten himself into with his staff. “In fact, it was a business deal I had in mind,” he said smoothly. He let his fingers stray casually toward the most recent prospectus he’d sent to a group of potential investors. It was shiny, glossy, colorful, printed on heavy, expensive paper, filled with photographs, the essential charts and graphs cleverly disguised by their Disneylike style. “This—” he brandished it at them “—didn’t really send the message, did it?”

      He looked up when silence seemed to be the only response he was going to get.

      “I was thinking we should tell the ad agency to look for a new graphics design firm. Somebody with a fresh, quirky approach might make the difference, tip the scale.”

      Meaningful glances sizzled around the table. “Can we infer,” Mike said in his most pompous tone, “that the lady works for a graphics design firm?”

      “Owns it,” Alex informed them, and couldn’t keep the tinge of pride out of his voice.

      With nothing more than graphics design and New York to go on, he’d found her on the Internet earlier in the week. At least he’d found the person who had to be Sarah. She’d been Sarah Langley way back then; when her aunt adopted her after her parents’ death, she’d taken Aunt Becki’s last name. Now she was Sarah Nevins, her father’s name, and the sole owner of Great Graphics! in Chelsea. Five employees. Undercapitalized, barely making it, but getting good feedback on their work.

      The search had made him feel like a cyberstalker, and he didn’t intend to share anything but the firm’s name, even with these people.

      “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Suzi said, interrupting his thoughts. “I meant send flowers.”

      She so obviously wanted to add “You turkey,” that in spite of his annoyance that she still wasn’t listening, Alex couldn’t help but admire her restraint. “Flowers wouldn’t be appropriate,” he argued. “A contract to do our brochures and stuff, now that’s an offer she couldn’t refuse.”

      Thinking of Sarah not refusing him was enough to make him shift discreetly in his chair. He could hardly say her name without getting hard, and picturing her lying soft, sweet and naked in his bed, saying, “Yes, oh, yes…”

      “Oh, yes,” he said firmly, “a big contract will make an impression on her.”

      More silence. “Could we try it my way first?” Suzi pleaded with him.

      “I’d vote for that,” Mike said. “Or candy.”

      “How many times do I have to tell you. This is a business…” Alex said.

      “Candy’s risky,” Les said. “Give my wife candy, she says, ‘You want me fat so you can run off with some skinny bimbo?”’

      “What would she say to a fat contract?” Alex inquired.

      Their sympathetic, patronizing expressions spoke volumes. “Who’s our florist of choice these days, Suzi?” Carol said succinctly.

      “THIS ISN’T COMPANY BUSINESS,” Sarah snapped. “You don’t get to address my personal life in a staff meeting.”

      Each of her loyal colleagues handed her a sheet of paper. She glanced down at the first, which was from Ray. A letter of resignation. Her hands began to tremble as she leafed through one sheet after the other.

      “You’re all resigning?”

      “Or,” Macon said, “we’re going to discuss your personal life in this staff meeting.”

      “Blackmail.”

      “Right.”

      “What precipitated this…mutiny?”

      They all spoke at once.

      “The last grain of sand…” Macon began.

      “The straw that broke the camel’s back…” Rachel said.

      “The lowest blow…” Ray said.

      “The final blow…” Annie said, sounding teary, “was when you told me my Citibank brochure would make great confetti for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade.”

      “It was…vivid,” Sarah said. “It was hard to imagine bank customers relating Mardi Gras to estate planning.” She had to establish control over this situation. “But I apologize for my choice of words.”

      “Your vocabulary has blossomed over the last few days,” Jeremy said. “We