LITMIR.BIZ

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linen-covered table and to give him a good, long look at the work she’d done for his company. As a designer, Rebecca was top-notch. Her preliminary sketches for Winston & Reed had blended the company’s disparate elements, its old Boston traditionalism with its modern boldness and direction. Lee knew she wouldn’t be easily replaced, if at all.

      “Are you going to give me any advice?” she asked suddenly.

      Her question caught Lee off guard. “I beg your pardon?”

      “I’ve never been fired without getting unsolicited advice on how to conduct myself in the future. My favorite was from the president of the Dallas-based oil company where I worked a couple of months about two years ago. He told me I ought to get my pretty little self married and start having babies, but then he changed his mind and said he wouldn’t wish a smart-mouthed nutcase like me on any red-blooded male.”

      Lee fervently wished for another martini. His public relations director had alerted him to Rebecca’s résumé and its dizzying list of firms and cities where she’d worked since becoming one of the rags-to-riches business successes of the decade at twenty-five. She and her former roommate at Boston University had created the fun, fast-paced, irreverent trivia game Junk Mind that had become an instant and explosive bestseller. When they’d sold the rights to a Boston-based toy-and-game conglomerate, the roommate had taken a vice presidency with the company and they’d made a fortune. Rebecca, who’d designed the game board now in millions of households across the globe, had continued her drifting. New York, London, Paris, Dallas, Seattle, Honolulu, San Diego, Atlanta—she’d had jobs in them all. Not that she needed to work, but in the short time he’d known her, Lee had gained the distinct impression she didn’t hold a high opinion of the idle rich—or anyone who didn’t work. She’d only been back in Boston five months, making another of her periodic runs at operating her own design studio. But to make a lasting success of a studio, she would finally have to make the commitment not just to her latest project but to a place. Lee didn’t know if she was running from herself, from the tragedies in her past, from her own startling success, or if she was running at all. He wondered if she was just not ready to stay put. With Rebecca, it could be just that simple.

      “I’m not going to give you any advice,” he said, smiling in spite of himself. “I only hope you find whatever you’re looking for here in Boston. And I wish you luck, Rebecca.” He extended his hand across the table. “Truly, I do.”

      “Would it have made a difference if I weren’t a Blackburn?”

      “It would have made a difference,” he said, knowing he shouldn’t, “if you were anyone but who you are.”

      

      Rebecca wasn’t one to turn down a meal Quentin Reed was stuck paying for, but the smell of the fish turned her stomach as the elevator plunged forty stories, its doors sliding smoothly open at the cherry, marble and brass lobby. She started out.

      And stopped. No. She wasn’t going to let Quentin off that easily.

      She marched back into the elevator, tapped thirty-nine, and nibbled on a sprig of crisp spinach on the way up. She wasn’t afraid of Quentin Reed. She’d run and fetched him baking soda and water the time he and Jared Sloan had peed in the yellow jackets’ nest, and she hadn’t told his mother of their idiocy when she’d demanded to know why the two boys were walking so funny.

      The thirty-ninth-floor reception area was, if anything, more opulent than the lobby, but Rebecca had no trouble lying her way past the receptionist into the inner sanctum of the president and chief executive officer of Winston & Reed, Boston’s most prestigious real estate and construction firm. Annette Winston Reed still retained the title of chairman of the board, but the real power of the company now resided with her thirty-seven-year-old son, a circumstance that surprised Rebecca. Annette had never thought Quentin was worth a damn.

      His secretary was a well-dressed, highly efficient woman who informed Rebecca she would require an appointment to see Mr. Reed.

      “I’m a family friend,” Rebecca said, breezing past her.

      On her feet at once, Willa Johnson, willowy and fast, protested, firmly suggesting Rebecca wait while she checked with Mr. Reed—or suffer the consequences of her whisking in security.

      “Mr. Reed and I,” Rebecca said, “were kicked out of the wading pool on Boston Common for taking our clothes off. He was five and I was two.” Supposedly, too, Jared had been the one who’d gotten them dressed and hauled them back to Beacon Hill. Mercifully, Rebecca didn’t remember.

      With Willa momentarily taken aback at the image of her well-bred boss skinny-dipping on Boston Common, Rebecca slipped into his spectacular office.

      Across the room, Quentin Reed slowly hung up his telephone, his pale blue eyes riveted on her. “Rebecca,” he said in little more than a whisper.

      It had been fourteen years.

      A recovered Willa, about to strong-arm Rebecca out herself, heard the emotion in her boss’s raw voice and retreated, quietly shutting the door behind her.

      “Hello, Quentin.”

      He was as handsome as ever. Ash-haired, square-jawed, trim, even confident, although Rebecca suspected that was more in appearance than in fact. Quentin had forever been at war with his sensitive nature. He wore a conservative pinstriped suit of exquisite cut.

      He cleared his throat. “What can I do for you?”

      “Was it your idea or your mother’s to have me fired?”

      “You’re not an employee. It wasn’t a question of firing you.”

      “Semantics, Quentin. You’re not going to weasel out of this one. You found out about me, told your mama and she said to give me the boot?”

      He winced at her bald words, but confirmed her guess with a small nod.

      “Does this mean I’m going to have the long arm of the Winston-Reed clan undermining my business in Boston?”

      “Of course not.” He rose, and she was surprised at how tall he was. She’d forgotten. “Rebecca, look at this situation from our point of view.”

      “I have. That’s why I’m here. You can’t stand the idea of a Blackburn earning a penny off Winston & Reed.”

      “You don’t need the money—”

      “That’s not the point. Quentin….” She exhaled, wishing now she hadn’t gotten back into the elevator. “Quentin, I was hoping we could put the past behind us.”

      He shut his eyes a moment, sighing, and shook his head. “You should have known that’s impossible.”

      She supposed she should have. Twenty-six years ago Quentin’s father and hers—and Tam’s—were killed in a Vietcong ambush for which Thomas Blackburn, Rebecca’s grandfather, was directly responsible. It was a lot for anyone to put aside. But she wasn’t going to give Quentin the satisfaction of telling him that.

      She told him instead, “Bidding on this project was strictly a business decision on my part.”

      “You never were worth a damn as a liar, Rebecca. It’s only your grandfather—”

      “Leave him out of this.”

      Quentin stiffened. “You’d better leave before we both say things we’ll regret.”

      On her way out of the luxurious office, Rebecca debated dumping her fish dinner in the trash, hoping it’d stink up the place. But she resisted, because there’d never been any satisfaction in trying to prove to anyone that the Blackburns still had their pride.

      Three

      San Francisco

      Jared Sloan cursed the sadist who had invented the tuxedo and had another go at his bow tie. It’d been years since he’d tied one. He’d managed all the other parts of the tux with relative ease and probably would

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