LITMIR.BIZ

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of one of the scores of businesses he owned. Unlike Matthias, who had never offered any indication that he would ever consider Kendall for anything more than his assist—

      Dammit. She was thinking about him again.

      She pushed Matthias out of her brain—again—and looked for another street number. Two more blocks.

      When she braked for a red light, she used the opportunity to get her bearings. A glance at her watch told her it was just coming up on three o’clock, precisely the time she’d anticipated arriving, knowing her room would be ready by then. She was supposed to meet Stephen and the other trainees at six for an informal dinner, so they could all get to know one another, and training officially began at eight in the morning. Dress would be casual, but Kendall had packed a couple of suits in with her trousers and shirts, just in case. She was, after all, a consummate professional.

      Of course, she was in Lake Tahoe, too, so she’d also included blue jeans and T-shirts and shorts and sandals, her preferred attire for relaxing. She wasn’t such a workaholic that she didn’t take advantage of her off time. Unlike Matthias, who—

      Dammit, she was doing it again.

      The light changed green, so she banished thoughts of Matthias—again—and urged the accelerator down lightly, taking the last two blocks slowly. The lake was in view now, but she didn’t see any hotels large enough to qualify for corporate lodgings up ahead. She took her eyes off the road long enough to glance down at the passenger seat, where she’d laid the directions and a map, to confirm she had the address right. Maybe she’d written it down wrong, she thought. Because this block and the one beyond it was nothing but more quaint shops and cafés and cozy B and Bs.

      Just as she neared the end of the last block and began to look for a place to turn around, she saw a sign with an arrow pointing to the right that read Parking for Timber Lake Inn. Braking quickly, she was able to make the turn just in time.

      But the drive led to the entrance of a tidy, cheerful little bed-and-breakfast. Kendall frowned, wondering where she’d gone wrong, then noted a sign above the door that identified it as the very hotel she’d been looking for. Huh. That was odd. The place looked more like a honeymoon hotel than it did a corporate facility. Stephen DeGallo must like to use places like this to make his new hires feel more comfortable. Yet another way in which he differed from Matthias, who, Kendall was sure, would have scheduled an orientation for…

      Well, actually, Matthias would have trained people in the buildings where they would be working, she thought. Or rather, he’d have other people training his new employees in the buildings where they would be working. It would be more professional that way. More businesslike. God forbid he should ever want anyone to feel any other way.

      When Kendall realized she was thinking about Matthias again, she shoved the thought away again—harder this time—and pushed open the car door. By now a bellman had emerged from the hotel and was descending the stairs to help her with her bag. Instead of the liveried uniform he might have worn at a larger hotel, however, he was dressed in khaki shorts and a polo bearing the logo of the Timber Lake Inn stitched on the breast pocket. Coupled with his shaggy blond hair and ruddy complexion, he looked as if he should be standing at the edge of the ocean toting a surfboard instead of lugging bags for a lakeside hotel.

      “Dude,” he greeted her with a smile, reinforcing the image. “Welcome to the Timber Lake Inn. I’m Sean. I’ll get your bags.”

      “Thanks,” Kendall replied with a smile of her own as she reached into the car to pop the trunk open. “I’m Kendall Scarborough. I’m here for the OmniTech orientation session.”

      Sean nodded. “Well, wherever that’s going on, you can probably get there by walking. We’re pretty centrally located here.”

      The comment puzzled Kendall. “It’s going on here,” she said. “At the hotel.”

      Sean’s eyebrows shot up at that. “Whoa. First I’ve heard about it. But then, I was on vacation last week and just got back today. All I knew about going on this week was the Tyson-Gerhart wedding and the Truckee Ski Club reunion. Those have got us booked to full capacity.”

      Kendall looked at the hotel again. It didn’t look big enough to host those functions and a training session. Not that she’d expected the OmniTech orientation to be a huge event, but since it would run for a week, and since Stephen DeGallo himself would be part of it, she’d just assumed the company would be training quite a few people. A business that size employed hundreds in San Francisco alone, and Kendall had been under the impression that this session would include new hires from all over the Northwest. There must be more to the hotel than the two stories she could see.

      Sean collected her bags and she followed him into the lobby, which immediately made her feel comfortable. It was everything a place called the Timber Lake Inn should be, from its knotty pine walls to the huge creek stone fireplace on the opposite side of the room. The hardwood floors were covered here and there by woven rugs in Native American geometrics, and wrought iron fixtures hung from the exposed log ceiling. A wide staircase to the right of the reception desk led up to a line of rooms on the second floor, but none of them seemed to be meeting rooms. As if to illustrate that, one of the doors opened and a couple exited, looping their arms around each other and cuddling like newlyweds.

      Nothing about the place suggested it was used for business events. In fact, the place looked…well, cozy. That was the only word that came to Kendall’s mind.

      The word returned when she entered her room…until she discovered it was actually a suite appointed with more pine walls and more exposed ceiling beams and more Native American rugs. In the main room, French doors opened onto a spacious balcony that offered a glorious view of the lake, which was picked up again in the bedroom by a broad picture window. The bathroom boasted a jacuzzi and small television, and there was a wet bar tucked into the far side of the living room. An enormous basket of fresh fruit and wine sat at the center of the dining table, and a massive bouquet of flowers, fragrant and splashy, was perched on the desk. Envelopes bearing her name—her first name—were tucked into each.

      “Still think DeGallo wants you only for your MBA and your business savvy?”

      Kendall spun around with a start at the question to find Matthias leaning in the still-open door to her room. Her lips parted in surprise, but not entirely because of his unexpected arrival. He looked…different. And not just because he was casually dressed in clay-colored trousers and a navy-blue polo, where she was more accustomed to seeing him in suits. She’d seen him dressed for non-business-related functions before, everything from rugby in the park to black-tie opening nights. It wasn’t Matthias’s clothing that looked off today. It was Matthias.

      His clothes were a little wrinkled, his hair was a little shaggy, and his eyes were a little shadowed, as if he wasn’t getting quite enough sleep. In fact, his whole face looked a little shadowed, a little leaner, a little rougher. And Matthias had never been “a little” anything. He was an all-or-nothing kind of man, emphasis on the all, especially where his physical appearance went.

      She ignored the little pang of concern that pinched her at seeing him in his less-tidy-than-usual state. It was none of her business if he was working too much. None of her business if whoever he’d hired to take her place wasn’t keeping him on track the way she had. She wasn’t her boss’s keeper. Especially since Matthias wasn’t even her boss anymore.

      “What are you doing here?” she asked by way of a greeting, congratulating herself on keeping her voice steady, clear and indifferent. “I mean, I know why you’re in Tahoe. But what are you doing here? At my hotel?”

      He raised a shoulder and let it drop, then pushed himself away from the doorjamb. As he strode into the room, he told her, “I made better time driving from San Francisco than I thought I would, so I’m a little ahead of schedule. I don’t have to meet the caretaker for another hour, so I thought I’d drop in and say hello.”

      Kendall eyed him suspiciously. It wasn’t like Matthias to “drop in” on anyone, for any reason. And he must have

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