LITMIR.BIZ

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phone from his pocket and called his office.

      “It’s me,” he said when his secretary answered. “Any messages?”

      There were none but he hadn’t really expected any, considering that he’d phoned only half an hour or so earlier. He disconnected, started to punch in the number for the Beaufort Trust but stopped when he realized he’d just done that only a little while ago, too. He picked up his computer, started to look for a public phone and changed his mind. There were probably no urgent e-mails, either.

      He took the nearest chair, sighed and turned on the machine.

      Solitaire would eat up some time. It always gave him a laugh, how many well-dressed business types sat hunched over their computers on a long flight, playing endless hands of the game.

      He could be industrious, call up his designs for the new world headquarters the Beaufort Conglomerate wanted him to build in Baltimore.

      Or he could just stop being an idiot and deal with reality.

      Slade frowned, switched off the computer and put it away.

      What had happened in Denver was old news. There was no reason all those memories should have come flooding back. The blonde with the slit skirt was nothing like Lara, nothing at all. And even if the situations were similar—the weather delay, the first-class lounge, a man and a woman just looking to kill some time—even if all that was the same, it wouldn’t have ultimately ended the same way.

      A year and a half later, he wouldn’t be sitting around, remembering what had happened, and wondering why in hell he should still be remembering it at all.

      “Dammit, Baron,” Slade said, through his teeth.

      A man standing nearby shot him a funny look, picked up his suitcase and moved away. Slade couldn’t blame him. Guys who sat around airports, looking out at the weather and talking to themselves, were guys sane people avoided.

      He wondered what the man with the suitcase would think if he walked over and said, Listen, pal, there’s nothing wrong with me. It’s just that I picked up this babe a long time back. We had a night of mind-blowing sex, and I still can’t get her out of my head.

      Which was crazy. One hundred percent, loony-tunes crazy. Because the whole incident had been nothing. A meaningless one-night stand. Meaningless, Slade thought, and stared out at the rain.

      But it wasn’t rain he saw. What he saw, in his mind, was snow.

      Snow, heavy and thick, each flake the size of a five-cent coin. Snow had begun falling from the leaden Colorado sky to blanket the field on that December morning. His plane had made an unscheduled landing because another storm had put a monkey wrench into the schedule of every airline flying east of Denver.

      He’d been sitting out the delay in yet another handsome, anonymous, first-class lounge.

      An hour delay, the voice over the loudspeaker kept repeating, even after the hour had stretched to two and then three. The storm hadn’t been expected but it wasn’t anything to worry about. Things would be back on schedule as fast as East Coast Air could manage.

      Except the snow kept falling, and the sky got darker and darker. And Slade’s impatience grew.

      He was heading home to Boston after a long weekend’s visit to his brother in California. It had been a great couple of days filled with laughs and volleyball along the beach outside Travis’s Malibu house. Trav, dependable, as always had even lined up Saturday night dates that had been world-class.

      Now, Slade had thought, sitting in the lounge and stewing, now, he was going to ruin that good time by spending Sunday evening snowbound, trapped at Denver International.

      He’d sighed, told himself to stop being a jerk. The freaky storm was nobody’s fault. He was a pilot, had been since he was a kid. He, of all people, knew that sometimes there was no arguing with the weather.

      The key to getting through this without going nuts was finding something to do. He’d already checked his e-mail. He’d read Time from cover to cover. What next? he thought wearily…

      And then he saw the woman sitting across from him.

      He figured she must have come into the lounge in the last few minutes, while he was reading. Otherwise, he’d have noticed her the same way every man in the room had noticed her. They were all trying to be casual, giving her cautious looks from behind their newspapers, but Slade had never believed in being cautious about anything.

      Besides, a woman like this deserved a man’s complete attention.

      Her hair was somewhere between gold and red. Strawberry blond, probably, but it seemed a tame way to describe a color that reminded him of early autumn mornings. He couldn’t see her eyes—she was looking down at the portable computer in her lap—but he had the feeling they’d be a deep blue. She was wearing what he’d heard women refer to as a man-tailored suit, very proper and demure, but it didn’t look all that demure on her, not even the skirt, which hung primly to her crossed knees.

      He could sense her irritation as she poked at her computer. It was the same brand as his, he noticed. She said something under her breath, looked up—and he saw not just her eyes, as deep a blue as he’d imagined, but a face as spectacular as any that had ever been in his dreams.

      Slade didn’t hesitate. He picked up his things, walked the few feet to her and grinned.

      “Here you go, darlin’,” he said.

      The look she gave him would have turned the snow outside to ice. “I beg your pardon?”

      He smiled, gave the guy sitting in the next chair a pointed look and nodded his thanks when the man fidgeted a couple of seconds, then got up and moved off.

      “I,” Slade said, settling into the newly vacated seat, “am the answer to your prayers, Sugar.”

      Her eyes turned even colder. “I am not named ‘Sugar.”’ She looked him up and down, her pretty mouth curling with disdain. “You’re out of your league, cowboy. If those boots of yours are made for walking, you’d better let them walk.”

      “Ah,” he said wisely, “I see. You think this is just an old-fashioned pickup.”

      “My goodness.” The woman batted her lashes. They were dark, thick and impossibly long. “And you’re going to try to tell me it isn’t, is that right?”

      Slade sighed, shook his head, opened his computer case and took out his spare battery.

      “It’s painful to be misjudged, Sugar.” He held out the battery, his expression one of wide-eyed innocence. “You need a battery for your computer and I just happen to have an extra. Now, does that sound like a pickup line to you?”

      She looked back at him for what seemed forever. Just when he thought she was going to send him packing, he saw the corner of her mouth twitch.

      “Yes,” she said.

      “Well, you’re right,” he said. “But you have to admit, it’s creative.”

      She laughed, and he laughed, and that was the way it all began.

      “Hi,” he said, and held out his hand. “I’m Slade.”

      She hesitated, then took his hand. “I’m Lara.”

      Lara. It seemed just right for this woman. Soft, feminine, yet with a certain strength to it. It was a pleasant contradiction in terms, just like her handshake, which was strong, almost masculine. Still, her fingers were long and delicate, and her hand seemed lost in his.

      A tiny electric jolt passed between them.

      “Static electricity,” she said quickly, and pulled back her hand.

      “Sure,” Slade said, but he didn’t think so. And, from the flush that rose in her lovely face, he didn’t think she thought so, either.

      “I couldn’t help but overhear your,

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