.

the guilt card.

      Zoe turned the key. Her cute little BMW’s precision engine purred to life. “All right. I’ll be there.”

      “Great.” The pleasure in her mom’s voice was almost worth the potential headache of dealing with her dad. “Dinner’s at three or so, but come anytime.”

      Sunday, she got to the ranch at quarter of three just as everyone was sitting down in the dining room.

      Her dad was aggravatingly hearty. “Zoe. How’s my little girl?”

      “Great, Dad. Doing well.” She put on a big smile and reminded herself that when he said “little girl,” he meant it with love. And she was his youngest child—well, if you didn’t count Elena, her half sister, who was a year younger. She went to him and he grabbed her in a hug.

      When she tried to slip free, he put his big hands on her shoulders and held her in place. “What in the hell did you do to your hair?”

      I am not going to let him get to me. She eased free of his grip and smoothed the thick curls that fell below her shoulders. “I always wanted to be a redhead. Now I am.” Like most of her decisions, she’d made it on the fly Thursday, after her interview with Dax Girard, when she went in for a cut. She’d stared at her reflection in her hairdresser’s mirror and decided she was beyond tired of having brown hair. It had to go.

      And no matter what her father said, she knew the vibrant red looked good on her. It set off her fair skin and blue eyes.

      “Ahem, well,” said her dad. “It’s very—”

      “You look so hot.” Marnie, her brother Jericho’s bride of a little over a month now, came to her rescue.

      Zoe turned gratefully into new sister-in-law’s embrace. “Hey. How’s married life?”

      Marnie released her and slanted a happy glance toward her groom. Jericho slowly smiled. It was hard to believe he’d always been the family’s troubled loner. He didn’t seem the least troubled now. For the first time, he was really happy. With his life. And his new wife.

      “It’s good,” said Marnie. “It’s very, very good.”

      “You look beautiful, honey,” Aleta declared, already in her chair. Zoe went over and kissed her mom’s cheek and then sat down.

      They began passing the platters of juicy T-bones, corn on the cob and baked potatoes.

      It was a big turnout for a family Sunday. Everyone had shown up this time except for Travis, youngest of the boys. Travis was always off on some oil rig somewhere.

      Matt and Corrine’s six-year-old, Kira, told them all about her new puppy, Rosie. “Rosie loves Kathleen,” she announced. Kathleen was Matt and Corrine’s second child, born the previous September. “Rosie wants to lick Kathleen all over. That’s what a dog does when she wants to give you a kiss. She licks you. It’s kind of icky and they slobber, you know? But Mommy says it’s only from love, so it’s all right.”

      It was nice, Zoe thought, to have a few little kids around now for family gatherings. Her brother Luke and his wife, Mercy, had a boy, Lucas. Gabe’s wife, Mary, had a girl from her first marriage; Ginny was two now. Gabe doted on her. And Tessa, Ash’s wife and Marnie’s older sister, was four and a half months pregnant, so another niece or nephew was on the way.

      After the meal, Zoe played pool in the game room, doubles, Marnie and Jericho versus Zoe and Abilene, who was Zoe’s older sister by a year. As she bent over the table to set up a bank shot, Zoe realized she was having a great time. Really, she had to remember how much she enjoyed her family. She needed to show up at these things more often, not let her dad’s careless remarks keep her away.

      Around seven, she thanked Luke, who lived at the ranch full-time. She hugged Jericho and Marnie and headed for the door.

      Her dad caught her as she was making her escape. “Zoe, hold on.” She felt the knot of tension gather at the back of her neck as he strode toward her. He was sixty now, but he still carried himself as if he owned the world—and everyone in it.

      She braced herself for more criticism. But he only grabbed her in a last hug and told her not to be a stranger.

      She looked at up at him and smiled. “I won’t, Dad. I love you.”

      Gruffly, he gave the words back to her. “And I love you, too. Very much.”

      Her car waited in the circular drive at the foot of the wide front steps. She slid in behind the wheel, turned the engine on and rolled down the windows. The hot June wind blew in and ruffled her newly red hair. For a moment, she just sat there, staring at the ranch house, which was big and white and modeled after the governor’s mansion, complete with giant Doric columns marching impressively along the wide front verandah.

      Then she laughed and gunned the engine and took off around the circle and down the long front driveway, headed back to SA and her own cute, cozy condo. Life, right then, seemed very good, indeed. She was young and strong and ready, at last, to be more focused, more mature, less … easily distracted.

      Her new job at Great Escapes magazine began tomorrow. She couldn’t wait to get started.

      “What in the hell did you do to your hair?”

      Those were Dax’s first words to her Monday morning, when he got off the elevator and saw her sitting at her new desk where the HR person had left her.

      Zoe pressed her lips together to stifle a cutting reply. She really didn’t want to start right off trading insults with the boss.

      But on the other hand, she needed to be herself or this job wouldn’t last any longer than any of the others had. Being herself would have to include fighting back when Dax pissed her off.

      And anyway, hadn’t he said he wanted someone with personality?

      She yanked open the pencil drawer, grabbed the dagger-shaped letter opener from the tray within, raised it high and stabbed the air with it. “Do you realize that is exactly what my father said to me yesterday at Sunday dinner?”

      He moved back a step and eyed the letter opener sideways.

      She pressed her point—both literally and figuratively. “You don’t need to know all the issues I’ve got with my dad. You just need to know there are issues and you would do well not to turn out to be too much like him.”

      With gratifying caution, Dax inquired, “Are you really planning to stab me with that thing?”

      “Oh, I guess not.” She dropped it back in the pencil tray and shoved the drawer shut again. “I have to face facts. If I kill you, who will sign my paychecks?”

      He was still staring at her hair. “Okay. Now that I’m over the shock, I admit it suits you,” he grumbled.

      She gave him her sweetest smile. “I’ll take that as a compliment. And we can move on.”

      “Coffee first,” he commanded low.

      She peered at him more closely. Killer handsome, of course. But tired, too. There were dark circles under those wonderful bedroom eyes. “Long night?”

      “Aren’t they all?” He named a place around the corner where the lattes were excellent. “Petty cash in the bottom drawer.”

      She pulled out the drawer in question. There was a little safe mounted inside, with a combination lock. He rattled off the combination. She grabbed a pencil and jotted the numbers on a sticky note.

      He said, “Get me the strongest coffee they’ve got, black, extra-large. When you bring it in to me, come armed with a notebook or your laptop and we’ll get down to what I want from you today. After that, you get with Lin Dietrich.” He turned and gazed over the large open workspace of desks, tables, machines and semi-cubicles. “Lin!”

      A slim, beautiful Asian woman with a streak of cobalt blue in her thick, straight black bangs popped