LITMIR.BIZ

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why she’d majored in advertising, why she’d chosen to work at a fledgling agency headed by an inexperienced owner fresh out of college?

      He didn’t have a clue.

      Any more than he knew she’d turned down three lucrative job offers from competing agencies in the past year alone!

      “Elizabeth?” a deep voice boomed from an open doorway on her left.

      She whizzed past. Tim’s complaint du jour about Mitch could hold. Better yet, Cameron could deal with the fueding account executive and art director. After all, they were his problem now.

      “Hey, where’s the fire?” Susan called from the office on Elizabeth’s right.

      She sped by without turning her head. One sympathetic look from the agency’s media director would turn on the faucet, and she had to stay tough. She had to stay mean.

      She had to stay mad.

      Firming her trembling lips, she hit the spacious tiled lobby at a near jog. From behind the curved receptionist counter, perpetual phone pressed to her ear, Rachel smiled her dear smile and motioned Elizabeth to come there.

      Instantly her nose burned and her throat thickened. She never slowed.

      Entering the second hallway, she focused on the fourth doorway up ahead. Almost safe. Just a few more seconds.

      “Yo, Elizabeth!” Pete called from her left.

      Not my problem, she told herself sternly. He was a copywriter. Let him write an interoffice e-mail if he couldn’t ask in person. Cameron was a jerk, but he wasn’t a monster. He’d let the man leave early for his son’s T-ball game.

      The next two offices were blessedly empty.

      She veered inside hers, slammed the door and slumped gratefully back against wood. Hallelujah. Peace and quiet. No curious eyes. She was safe at last.

      Hiding from the real world in my nice safe office…

      Elizabeth’s eyes slid closed against the sting of fresh tears. Despite Cameron’s intimidating verbal explosions, he wasn’t a violent man. His hot temper burned out quickly, leaving him rational and ready to deal with whatever had set him off. She’d grown proficient at dousing many of his flare-ups before they occurred, and failing that, had learned not to take them personally. His anger was usually about small stuff, not worth sweating over in the scheme of life.

      But this stuff was big. A huge hot cauldron of seething emotion. Heaven knows how long this stuff had simmered inside Cameron before boiling over and spilling free. Without the added fuel of tremendous stress, he might have kept the lid on his true feelings forever. But he hadn’t. Intentionally or not, he hadn’t.

      Bottom line, she was only another employee to Cameron. One he clearly didn’t consider a partner in any way.

      She dragged in a shuddering breath and forced her tempestuous emotions to calm. Could she really abandon the agency—or Cameron—during the most serious crisis to date? No one else knew the company’s infrastructure or its leader half so well.

      He’d been her first market-research study. A high school project she’d updated yearly. Once she’d inoculated herself against his physical beauty, she’d been able to observe him objectively. By now she knew his strengths and weaknesses, his habits and quirks, the name of every revolving-door girlfriend, every Malloy family trait—

      He called your mother “Marian” an inner voice jeered. He didn’t remember your parents are getting a divorce!

      Elizabeth flinched, then opened her eyes.

      Financial worries could consume a person’s thoughts to the exclusion of all else. Her father was a prime example, and she’d forgiven him, hadn’t she? Did Cameron deserve any less?

      What about you? Don’t you deserve more?

      Of course she did! But…never again to walk through those lobby doors?

      Always to go home to an empty apartment?

      But…never again to be called “Lizzy”? Never again to see Cameron’s irresistible grin?

      Never to be the center in a man’s universe? Never to be a wife and mother?

      But—

      He’ll never love you! Accept that and move on. Do it.

      But—

      Do it now, before you get the hots and need estrogen therapy more than sex!

      Elizabeth’s shoulders sagged. Oh, God, reality sucked.

      Pressing a fist between her breasts, she bled for the June wedding that would never be, the golden-haired babies she would never hold, the happily-ever-after she would never live with the man who directed her actions each day, and starred in her dreams more nights than not. When the last fairytale hope drained from her heart, she waited, curiously detached.

      Nothing. Not even the tiniest blip of life.

      So be it.

      She lifted her chin and pushed away from the door. It was past time to get a life. Preferably her own, this time.

      At her desk, Elizabeth booted up her sleek Macintosh PowerBook computer and glared at the newspaper folded carefully beside her telephone.

      “Don’t scowl at me,” she told bachelor number six. “You’ll land on your feet. You always do.”

      Sniffing, she focused on the screen and composed the most difficult letter of her life. Short, but definitely not sweet. Sweet was the old Elizabeth. The good sport, the team player, the referee and cheerleader rolled into one. The new Elizabeth was head coach of her own game, with her own rules. As of now, Cameron would sit on the bench.

      She’d just written “Sincerely” when a soft knock sounded on her door.

      “Go away,” she ordered, still typing.

      Silence, then three sharp raps.

      “Not my problem,” she yelled louder, saving the document.

      The door rattled open. Elizabeth looked up. Cameron stood hesitantly in the threshold.

      Maybe it was knowing she wouldn’t see that timber wolf stare in the future that weakened her immunity now. Whatever the reason, she desperately needed a booster shot.

      The former heartthrob of Lake Kimberly High had matured into a major heart attack.

      His extraordinary golden eyes gleamed beneath thick sable lashes, the contrast still as unexpected—the impact still as thrilling—as during her first day in Mrs. Connor’s English class. But today he wore expensive designer duds, not hand-me-downs from Travis. Chosen, she suspected, like the agency’s decor to show that its owner wasn’t “small potatoes”…as if anyone would make that mistake. Whether wearing Armani or Salvation Army, Cameron would exude a confidence impossible to miss. That much, at least, hadn’t changed.

      But his hair had darkened over the years from sunny blond to antique gold. His jaw had hardened, his shoulders broadened, his legs lengthened, his muscles thickened. He’d reshaped an otherwise classically perfect nose while helping Seth worm a fractious mare. The tiny white scar bisecting one eyebrow was courtesy of Travis. A miscast fishing lure, as she recalled.

      Watching him walk to her desk, she admitted the imperfections only enhanced his masculine appeal. The rough edge to his polish turned females of all ages into drooling simpletons.

      As he pulled out one of her guest chairs and made himself comfortable, Elizabeth swallowed hard.

      I have to stay mad. “What don’t you understand about the words ‘go away’?”

      He tilted his head. “What’s ‘not your problem’?”

      “Anything to do with you, that’s what,” she lied.

      In point of fact, everything about him threatened her future happiness.

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