Acquiring Mr. Right - Laurie Paige

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carefully held all the old emotion in check while planting a smile on her face. “Nah, that was the fun part. The hard part was getting up the courage to run away.”

      “But you did it.”

      “Because of Jeremy. He’s the one who figured out what to do. He took care of us, but he didn’t have to. He wasn’t kin to us by blood or legal ties. When his father, the oldest Aquilon brother, died, Jeremy came to live with us. About six months after my mother and stepfather divorced, my stepfather died in an auto accident, so Mom told Jeremy to come back to us. Jeff, the youngest of the three brothers, had been in the hospital at that time.”

      Silence surrounded them like a blanket. Krista felt as if she couldn’t breathe, as if she were being smothered as the past pushed past her defenses and closed in on her.

      Then a big, warm hand touched the back of her neck. Strong fingers massaged the tense muscles in her shoulders.

      “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry I made you remember.”

      The gentleness of his touch, the sympathy she sensed in him, caused her eyes to burn. But she’d learned long ago that tears didn’t help. She managed to shake her head as if it didn’t matter, to make herself not care. “Everything came out okay. Uncle Jeff got a bigger house, so that satisfied the family services people. When he married Caileen, who was the new counselor from the county welfare office, we became one big happy family. Caileen had a daughter, Zia, so I got a big sister out of the deal. That was nice.”

      “Ten years old,” he murmured. “That’s an impressionable age. Things happen that can never be forgotten.”

      His hand glided down her back, stopped at her waist. A need to lean into him, to feel his strength as well as his heat, alarmed her. It was time to end this conversation.

      “Well, you don’t forget,” she admitted, stepping away from him, “but you move on.” She glanced at her watch. “Speaking of which, I’d better get those organizational charts done, then I have some ideas to run by two of the production managers about merging their lines.”

      To her surprise, laughter erupted from him.

      “Go for it,” he said.

      Later, in her own office while waiting for a new spreadsheet to come up on her computer, she studied her hands. There was the faintest tremor in them.

      In helping her practice for her presentation, her aunt Caileen had told her to act calm and assured in uncertain situations and it would follow that she would become calm and assured. With Lance Carrington, Krista wasn’t sure that would work. Something about him reached right down into her inner equilibrium and shook its moorings.

      “What is going on over there?” Marlyn asked on Thursday when Krista met her for a quick lunch.

      Krista smiled as her best friend’s expression mirrored the shock of other residents upon learning about the company changes. “Heymyer sold us out without a word.”

      It was through Marlyn, whom she’d met in her freshman year at college, that she’d gotten the job with Heymyer Home Appliances. She and Marlyn had both used the work/study program to pay their way through school. They’d shared apartments, clothes and books during those years of work, study and counting pennies.

      “And the new guy wants you to stay on?”

      “Right.”

      “I thought raiders always fired all the executives and put in their own people.”

      “He asked me to stay six months, I guess to help with the transition. Then he’ll fire me.”

      “You think?”

      Krista shrugged. “We’ll just have to wait and see. I’m not worried about finding a new job, but for others who’ve lived and worked their whole lives in this town, what happens to them?”

      They both thought this over.

      “His picture was in a big spread the paper did on him and CCS.” Marlyn tilted her head and studied Krista. “He’s only thirty-four. Rich and handsome.”

      When she waggled her brows, Krista had to laugh. “He’s also strictly business.”

      For the briefest instant, she recalled how she’d felt when he’d stood behind her at the window, as if he’d sensed the turmoil his questions about her past had caused. His touch had been comforting.

      It had also been exciting, reaching right down and stirring something inside her. A hunger, she realized, a need for touching, caressing…for fulfillment.

      Enough, already, she warned her libido, or whatever it was that kept sending forbidden longings through her.

      “So how are things going with your business? Does everyone in town want the famous Marlyn Reynolds of Reynolds’ Interior Design to redo their homes?”

      “Oh, yeah.” Marlyn sighed, then smiled. “Actually things are going well with business. I just wish I could say the same about my personal life. Or lack thereof.”

      “Come on,” Krista said, “you and Linc are solid.”

      “Are we?” Marlyn finished her salad and peered out the window at the mesas and rugged canyons cut by eons of wind and water erosion. “He called and said he wouldn’t make it home this weekend. I told him if he didn’t, not to bother coming at all, ever.”

      “Marlyn, you didn’t!”

      To Krista’s consternation, tears filled the other woman’s dark brown eyes. “I mean it, Krista. I’ve had it.”

      “But you’ve loved him since third grade. You told me it was love at first sight for both of you.”

      “Well, I saw him more in school than I have since we married. I’m tired of it.”

      “You need to talk to Linc. Surely you two can work things out.”

      There was a troubled silence. “I don’t know,” Marlyn admitted. “I’m not sure how I feel about Linc and marriage and making it as a couple anymore.”

      Krista couldn’t conceal her shock. “Go to a counselor,” she urged. “Don’t give up, not without trying something.”

      “I’ll think about it,” Marlyn said halfheartedly, “but I’ve been so miserable lately. I’m married and I’m lonely as hell. I have a husband I see only when he can work me into his schedule.”

      Linc was a civil engineer. He worked for a big company that had a contract with the government for a new dam across a stream up in the mountains east of town. It was a two-hour drive over a winding road to get to town. He stayed in an RV trailer during the week and came home on weekends.

      Sometimes, Krista added truthfully. Lately, he’d been tied up at work more and more on weekends. She could understand Marlyn’s grief with that.

      “How can he know how you feel if you don’t tell him?” she asked with great practicality. “If you talk honestly with each other, that could help get your marriage back on track.”

      She recalled those were the words Lance Carrington had used with her. Together they were going to get the appliance company “back on track.” Studying her friend, she thought things were changing in both their lives.

      Change. One of the big C-words.

      From her experience, change had often meant confusion—and chaos.

      Chapter Four

      Lance threw down the pen and looked at the clock. “Time to quit,” he said. “I think a fourteen-hour day is long enough, don’t you?”

      Krista glanced at him, then back at the diagram she was working on. “Merging these two production lines will be much more efficient,” she said, as if she hadn’t heard him. “I want everyone cross-trained so that each

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