LITMIR.BIZ

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he walked away.

      2

      CLAUDIA WAS STILL FUMING the next day when she arrived at work. She hadn’t seen Leandro Mandalor’s face when he’d walked away from her, but she’d bet her house, her car and her job that he’d been smiling. The smug bastard.

      Her responding to his kiss didn’t mean a thing. He was obviously a practiced seducer, a charmer from way back. She’d allowed him to work his wiles on her, and it had been amusing. Entertaining, for a brief, unimportant moment in time. Then she’d gone back into the ballroom and reveled in her win and hadn’t looked at him once more all night.

      So there was no need for him to feel as though he’d achieved something, just because she hadn’t slapped his face or gagged with disgust. It had been a kiss, nothing more. No big deal.

      Slamming her car door shut, Claudia grimaced at her reflection in the tinted glass of her side window. Her eyes were deeply shadowed from lack of sleep—and not because she’d been partying endlessly all night with the gang from work. As usual, she hadn’t touched a drop of alcohol and she’d rolled into bed and closed her eyes at the very respectable time of midnight.

      And promptly not slept a wink for the entire night.

      And not because of excitement, either. At least, not excitement over their win.

      No. Unfortunately, it had been the other kind of excitement that had kept her up. The Leandro-Mandalor-induced kind.

      One kiss, and she’d been ready to drag him up to her suite and ride him like a pony at the fair. She closed her eyes as she imagined how monumental her regret would be this morning if she’d actually followed through on that instinct instead of limiting her transgression to a single kiss.

      Although, technically, it hadn’t been her who had limited it. Leandro had been the one who had walked away.

      Which brought her back to her favorite two words for the day: smug bastard. Why hadn’t she been the one to push him away, to smile up into his face and deliver a sassy line? Why, why, why?

      Thank God she wasn’t still at the convention. A small saving grace. With a bit of luck, she wouldn’t have to look him in the eye again for a full twelve months.

      Collecting the award from her back seat, she clicked her car shut and made her way into the building. The news of their win had spread through the office and she was mobbed the moment she walked in the door.

      It took her a full half hour to make it to her desk, but by then her mood had improved dramatically. It was great to see how proud her staff was of the award. As she’d said last night, television was a collaborative medium. No one person could take credit for the success of the show, and it was great to be able to pass the joy around. There was an official display cabinet for awards in the conference room, but she decided that this latest gong might find a home on the reception desk for the first few months. That way everyone could remember their win when they walked into work each morning.

      Crossing to her office, she saw Sadie was at her desk already, looking bright-eyed and not in the least hungover. Claudia narrowed her gaze on her friend, taking in Sadie’s glowing complexion and suddenly remembering the untouched wineglass at her friend’s place setting last night.

      Suspicion hardened into certainty as she walked into Sadie’s office and Sadie fumbled to hastily open a new screen on her Web browser.

      Claudia smiled, propping her butt on the edge of Sadie’s desk and swinging her foot casually.

      “Have a good time last night?” she asked idly.

      “Of course. Not every day we get a People’s Vote Award,” Sadie said.

      “So you’re not tired at all?” Claudia probed.

      Sadie shrugged. “Not really. We didn’t tie one on, since both Dylan and I had to work today. I don’t understand why they hold the awards night on a Monday.”

      Claudia nodded, then stood. “It’s so we don’t enjoy ourselves too much. God forbid that anyone ever feels comfortable in this industry.”

      Moving toward the door, Claudia waited until she was on the threshold before she spoke over her shoulder. “And by the way, I think Amazon is having a special on baby books this month.”

      “Yeah? Thanks,” Sadie said brightly, then she bit her lip and blushed hotly.

      “Huh! Gotcha!” Claudia said, pouncing. “You’re pregnant.”

      Sadie just smiled ruefully. “I told Dylan there was no point trying to keep it from you and Grace. He doesn’t understand about female intuition.”

      Claudia ignored the small flicker of hurt that her friend would want to keep such great news from her in the first place. Plenty of couples liked to wait until they’d passed the crucial first trimester before spreading their good news far and wide. There was nothing unusual in Sadie and Dylan wanting to hold tight to their secret for a little bit longer. Except…for a while now, it had been just the three of them—her, Sadie and Grace. Perhaps it was an index of how wrong Sadie’s first engagement to Greg had been that Claudia had never felt this way about their relationship. But Sadie and Dylan were utterly committed to each other. They’d been married for just six months, and now they had a baby on the way. The friendship between her, Sadie and Grace would never be the same again.

      Of course things were going to change, she scolded herself impatiently. She knew that; it was a part of life. Grace and Sadie had fallen in love and settled down. Claudia had simply been too busy working and looking in the other direction to really notice what was happening around her.

      “How many weeks?” she asked, pushing her own feelings aside to celebrate her friend’s great news.

      “We think eight. I’ve got a doctor’s appointment tomorrow,” Sadie said.

      Claudia rounded her friend’s desk to hug her.

      “I’m so happy for you. For both of you. A little Sadie or Dylan. I can’t wait to meet him or her,” Claudia said.

      “I still can’t quite believe it. A little person is going to grow inside me. How weird and amazing is that? I keep thinking about those scenes in Alien. Is that wrong, do you think?” Sadie asked worriedly. “Shouldn’t I be knitting booties or something instead of worrying about a monster bursting out of my abdomen?”

      Claudia laughed. “Leave it to you to turn pregnancy into a science fiction gore fest. You’ll be fine, Sade. Worse comes to worst, you can sleep through the whole birth these days and watch it on video later.”

      “Now you’re talking,” Sadie said with enthusiasm. “I know I’m supposed to want the whole yoga-aromatherapy-natural-birth thing, but pain is not my friend. I want whatever they’ve got in big, industrial doses.”

      “A woman after my own heart. If I ever had a kid, I’d want them to just induce a coma in the last week of pregnancy and then wake me when the kid’s toilet trained,” Claudia said.

      Sadie blinked with surprise.

      “You know, that’s the first time I’ve ever heard you talk about having children,” she said.

      “Hey, you’re the one who’s pregnant, not me. I was speaking hypothetically. You know I don’t want kids,” Claudia said, picking a piece of lint off her trousers.

      A groan sounded behind them.

      “All I want to know is, does one of you have a handgun?”

      They both turned to find Grace standing in the doorway, her already pale complexion alabaster and her eyes hidden behind her cat’s eye sunglasses.

      “It would be a mercy killing. You could take me out to the car park and do it quietly,” she moaned, flopping into Sadie’s visitor’s chair. Swooning theatrically, she pressed a hand to her forehead.

      “I feel like Tallulah

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