She cleared her throat and tried to stare him down. “In this case, I thought I’d save both of us a lot of time. It’s a charity event for the Lost Springs Ranch for Boys. I knew if I asked you, you’d say no, then your conscience would plague you because you’ve always contributed to every other fund-raiser they’ve approached you for. Then you’d change your mind when I’d already told them you wouldn’t do it, and I’d have to call back and say you would, and they’d have to readjust their plans. This was easier.”
He stared back at her. “You’re fired.”
She blanched. And blinked. Then her lips parted in disbelief. He saw her struggle against panic.
“I am not,” she said, her voice a little high-pitched.
“All right, you’re not.” He shook his index finger at her. “That was just to remind you which one of us is in charge here. I thought we’d already been through this with the bodyguard thing.”
“A bodyguard is a good idea. You should have let me handle...”
“Jeannette,” he interrupted firmly. “No one handles me. Not bodyguards, not strong women, not competitors out to beat me with trickery rather than talent. I have been looking out for myself for a long time. I’m good at it. Now, would you like to take another approach on this auction thing?”
Amos didn’t know much about Jeannette’s personal life, except that her husband had abandoned her before she came to work at Pike’s, and she had a twelve-year-old son in a private school. He didn’t know whether her tough-as-nails approach had developed before or after her husband left.
He only knew that to prevent her from steamrolling him, he had to be tougher than she was. She seemed to respect that.
She swallowed and put a hand up to smooth her short dark hair. She was herself again. “The Lost Springs Ranch called yesterday while you were in the production meeting and asked if you’d participate in a bachelor auction to raise money to save the facility.”
Save it? He had a running mental image of seesaws and nickel-pipe jungle gyms, the sage-and-sweet-grass Wyoming landscape—he could almost smell it now, as if he were there—and boys of all ages and descriptions, with one thing in common: they were as lost as the springs that had given the place its name.
“What do you mean, save it? What happened?”
She pointed to the folder on his desk. “Lindsay Duncan, the ranch’s owner, faxed some details. Apparently the place has come on hard times and she’s hoping the auction will help them with their financial difficulties. They’ve invited a number of former residents, including you, to come back and save the day.”
Amos had another mental image of those boys with whom he’d played and scrapped and dug his way out of despair, and wondered what kind of adults they’d become. He was intrigued by the possibility of finding out.
He stepped over the lunar module and snagged the folder off his desk.
Jeannette picked up his empty coffee cup. “I’ll refill this while you look that over. I’m...sorry if I overstepped. I thought it was important.”
He sank into his high-backed leather chair and gave her an even look. “I think so, too, so there was no reason to go around me. There is never a reason to go around me.”
She nodded docilely. “I understand.”
He studied her suspiciously for a moment, then turned his attention to the letter from Lindsay Duncan.
Jeannette walked out of the office with a determined step.
* * *
“YOU’RE SURE YOU’RE UP to this, Meggie?” It was the fourth time Meg Loria’s father had asked the question since he’d picked her up for the meeting. “I know how hard it has to be for you with—you know—having to cancel everything. But we really need you on this one.”
“It’s all right, Dad,” Meg replied under her breath as she followed the maître d’ through a sea of tables.
She was sure they didn’t need her at all, that this was simply an effort to distract her from having been left at the altar.
Well, it hadn’t literally been the altar, it had been the courthouse. Daniel was supposed to have met her there to get their wedding license two days ago and he’d never showed.
Certain he’d simply been delayed by a client, she’d called the law offices of Dalton, Emery and Flannigan and learned that as of that morning, they were simply Dalton and Flannigan. Emery had taken off with someone named Cloris Biederman for her summer home on Maui.
Having her fiancé run off with another woman had been hard enough, but when that woman was fifteen years older than Meg, it was traumatic.
Daniel’s fax, waiting for her when she got home, said that he would always consider her his friend, but that he’d come to realize she didn’t have a romantic bone in her body.
“You get better scores on the pistol range than I do,” the fax had further criticized, “and you can throw me three out of three. I’m sorry, Meg. Cloris doesn’t know which end of a gun shoots, and when I put my arms around her, she falls into them. She doesn’t throw me through a plate-glass window.”
What did he expect? When a woman was a trained security specialist, a man should think twice about surprising her from behind on a dark street in Chinatown. Meg had tried to explain that. But neither Daniel nor Jade Wing, whose tea-shop window Daniel had sailed through, had understood.
Meg forced her thoughts back to the moment when the maître d’ stopped at a table occupied by an attractive woman Meg guessed to be in her mid-thirties. The woman had gotten to her feet at their approach and now studied Meg with a frown.
Meg’s father reached around her to offer his hand to the woman. “Ms. Boradino? I’m Paul Loria, of Loria Security.”
The woman smiled and took his hand. “Hello. Thank you for meeting me on such short notice.”
“Of course. Ms. Boradino, this is my daughter, Margaret.”
The woman shook hands with Meg, then pointed her to the chair across from her. “Please. Sit down.” She reached for the arms of her own chair and was momentarily distracted when Meg’s father walked around to seat her with courtly charm. She stared at him a moment, then thanked him.
“You’re very young,” she said to Meg as her father took his place at a right angle to them. “I’m not sure this will work. Mr. Loria, I explained that the situation is dangerous.”
Meg drew a breath for patience and smiled. Rejection on all fronts was making her weirdly philosophical.
“I’m twenty-six, Ms. Boradino,” she confided. “A better shot than my brothers, and I can take you down faster than my father could.” At the woman’s startled look and her father’s quick clearing of his throat, she added quickly, “Not that he’d try to, of course. And...not you, specifically.”
Despite Ms. Boradino’s very formal manner, amusement flickered in her eyes. “Thank you for clarifying that. But when you’re forty-one, twenty-six is very young. And I don’t mean to diminish your skills, but the people I’m hiring protection against are ruthless and rather large. And...if my boss found out who you are...” She suddenly lost her air of control, reached to the middle of the table for a bread stick and snapped it in half. “Let’s just say the bad guys won’t be your only problem.”
Meg smiled flatly at her father. “Thanks, Dad. I’ve always wanted an assignment where I’m in danger from our client as well as whoever’s threatening him.”
“Now, let’s just think about this,” Paul began placatingly. “There’s no reason he has to find out you’re protecting him.” He smiled at Ms. Boradino. “That’s the problem, isn’t it? He doesn’t want protection?”
The