LITMIR.BIZ

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But he’d treated her to that same silent stare she’d come to know so well.

      She couldn’t continue letting her father down. She’d worked her fanny off to be the kind of employee and daughter of whom he could be proud and she’d failed. She owed him for taking her in when he hadn’t wanted her. He hadn’t wanted custody during the divorce from her mother, and he hadn’t wanted custody after Aubrey’s jerk of a stepfather had crawled into her bed and offered to keep her from getting lonely while her mother was out of town.

      Aubrey had heard her father arguing with Jane after she’d revealed that dreadful secret. His bellow had carried through his closed office door. “What in the hell am I going to do with a teenage girl?”

      Aubrey hadn’t heard Jane’s reply. In fact, Aubrey hadn’t heard anything from either of her parents until hours later when her mother had stormed into Matthew Holt’s office with Aubrey’s belongings and dumped them on the floor. She’d glared at Aubrey and said, “Look what you’ve done with your lies,” and then left.

      Pamela Holt Curtis hadn’t asked for Aubrey’s side of the story. She’d chosen to believe her young husband’s version. He’d claimed Aubrey had invited him into her room and that she’d been flirting with him for weeks.

      Aubrey had been left with a mother who no longer wanted her around and a father who had never wanted her in the first place.

      “Liam.”

      Liam blinked his unfocused eyes and looked up from the papers on his desk to the man rapping on his office door. Cade McCann, the executive editor of Charisma, EPH’s high-fashion magazine, also happened to be Liam’s good friend, probably his best friend.

      “Got a minute?”

      “Sure, Cade. Come in.” Considering Liam’s mind had been elsewhere since this morning’s monthly meeting with the editors in chief of the different magazines, Cade wasn’t interrupting anything. Liam hated the tension invading the formally congenial meetings.

      This week he’d been distracted by thoughts of Aubrey and he’d barely managed to relate the pertinent facts and figures. For a split second Liam considered asking Cade how to wipe a woman from his brain, but nixed the thought. His friend hadn’t been too successful on that score, a fact proven by his recent engagement.

      “What brings the rooster out of the henhouse?” The question was a running joke between them. Cade was a rare male on Charisma’s predominantly female staff. A lesser man would have been henpecked into submission, but not Cade.

      “Are you having woman troubles?” Cade asked as he settled in the chair in front of Liam’s desk.

      Alarm straightened Liam’s spine. “Why do you ask?”

      “Because I called you three times before you answered.”

      Liam silently swore. His mind had been on Saturday night and the phone call he shouldn’t have made. Pretty damned stupid of him to throw fuel on a fire he was trying to put out. “What’s up, McCann? Spit it out.”

      Cade’s direct gray gaze said he wasn’t fooled by Liam’s evasion. “Okay, if you want to play it that way. You’ll have to lay your cards on the table eventually.”

      “Cade—”

      “I want you to be my best man when I marry Jessie next month.”

      Jessie Clayton was the Charisma intern who just happened to have stunned them all with the revelation that she was Aunt Fin’s daughter—a daughter Fin had been forced to give up for adoption twenty-three years ago. Until Jessie had revealed that shocking secret, Cade had questioned her loyalties and suspected her of being a plant from another magazine.

      No doubt about where Aubrey Holt’s loyalties lay. Liam rolled his shoulders, but the knot at the base of his neck didn’t ease. “I’d be honored to stand up with you, Cade. Being your best man means I get to give you one hell of a bachelor party.”

      “I’m all for that. Jessie might not be. But no naked women. I have the only one I’m interested in looking at.”

      “What about the rest of us?”

      Cade leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his knees and clasping his hands. “Want to talk about her?”

      Her. Cade didn’t mean Jessie. “You’re offering to give me dating advice? Last month you were asking for it.”

      Cade snorted. “And some good you were.”

      “Hey, I told you to go for it.”

      “Well, I’m telling you the same thing. Last month I was battling the current and trying not to get sucked into the love whirlpool. Looks like you might be in the water this month. Don’t fight it, man. Let it pull you under. You’ll be glad you did.”

      Love? Hell no. He’d only spent a few hours with the woman. But lust? Oh, yeah. He had a bad rash of that and it itched 24/7. “I can’t.”

      “Why not?”

      “She’s—” Damn. He hadn’t meant to let that slip. “Because the only problems I’m having are EPH problems. She’s been a bitch of a mistress since January, compliments of Patrick and his damned competition.”

      Cade shook his head. “You’re lying through your pearly whites, pal. When you want to talk, let me know. In the meantime, see if you can clear your calendar for the weekend after this one. Jessie’s father’s throwing us an engagement party in Colorado next Saturday. I’d like you to be there. I don’t want to be the only city slicker on the ranch.”

      Liam looked at the stacks of files and reports on his desk. With his workload, dropping everything and flying to Colorado sounded insane, but it might be worth it if putting some mileage between him and a certain female could get her out of his head. “I’ll be there.”

      “I’m heading for the cafeteria. Coming?”

      “No, I have an errand to take care of.” A fool’s errand.

      Aubrey stood in front of her father’s desk, feigning calm she didn’t feel. Why had he requested this late afternoon meeting?

      He kept her waiting while he scanned the blueline in front of him. Checking the magazine proof was the production manager’s job, but her father tended to spend a lot of time looking over everyone’s shoulders—especially hers. He second-guessed each decision she made, which made the rest of the staff do the same. He claimed he hadn’t gotten to the top by letting others do all the dirty work, and delegating wasn’t something he enjoyed.

      Finally, she asked, “You called?”

      He put the blueline aside, revealing the folded newspaper beneath it. Aubrey’s tension eased. She suspected he’d seen the photo in the society section. He should be pleased. She and Buck Parks had done exactly as he’d requested and garnered a little free publicity from not only the newspapers but a few celebrity magazines as well.

      But that wasn’t an approving smile on her father’s face.

      “You sat beside Liam Elliott at the dinner. What did you learn?”

      She concealed a wince. Yes, Liam’s face was easily recognizable in the picture. She’d hoped her father wouldn’t notice. “Um, nothing. Buck was my date. I talked to him, not to Liam Elliott.”

      In fact, she’d done her best to ignore Liam throughout the mediocre meal and the soporific speeches afterward. Her best hadn’t been good enough. She’d been hyperaware of each shift of his body. And any change in the ventilation of the stuffy banquet hall had wafted his cologne in her direction. As if that weren’t bad enough, his phone call Saturday night had only worsened her preoccupation. Warmth swept through her at the memory. She bit her lip and vowed once again to quit thinking about him.

      Very slowly her father lowered the paper. “You missed your chance at lunch. You could have redeemed yourself at the gala. How many times

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