followed it, marking the action.
“What can I do for you?” he asked simply.
He was not the same boy she remembered. She could see hints of his teenage self in the way he held his body, and small things such as the length of his lashes were the same, but his gaze had grown hard and opaque. It was almost as if he’d grown an extra layer between himself and the rest of the world and no one was allowed to breach it. One of the things she’d always liked about Reid Chamberlain was his smile. And that was noticeably absent.
The man was—according to the news articles—reclusive, and wealthier than King Solomon, Croesus and Bill Gates put together. But it didn’t seem to have made him happy.
What could he do for her, indeed? Probably not much. But maybe she could do something for him. “You can smile for me, Reid. It might actually break this awkward tension.”
* * *
Against all odds, the corners of Reid’s mouth twitched. He fought to suppress the smile because he didn’t want to encourage Nora Winchester into thinking she could command him into doing her will five minutes into their renewed acquaintance.
Besides, Reid didn’t smile. That was for people who had a lightness of spirit that allowed for such a thing. He didn’t. Normally. Nora had barreled into his office and the moment he’d seen her, it was like a throwback to another time and place—before all the shadows had seeped into his soul.
Which sounded overly dramatic, even to himself. That was why he never thought about his own miserable existence and instead worked eighteen hours a day so he could fall into bed exhausted at the end of it. When you slept like the dead, you didn’t dream. You didn’t lie awake questioning all the choices you’d made and cursing the genetics that prevented you from doing a simple thing like becoming a father to your orphaned niece and nephew.
Nora’s presence shouldn’t have changed anything. But it had. She’d breathed life into his office that hadn’t been there a moment ago and he was having a hard time knowing what to do with it.
It was troubling enough that she’d tracked him down in the first place. And more troubling still that he’d been anticipating her arrival in a way that he hadn’t anticipated anything in a long while.
“Smiling is for politicians and people with agendas,” he finally said.
The air remained thick with tension and something else he wasn’t in a hurry to dispel—awareness. On both sides. Nora was just as intrigued by him as he was by her. Reid was nothing if not well versed in reading his opposition. And in his world, everyone was the opposition, even Nora Winchester, a woman he hadn’t spoken to in nearly fifteen years and who’d apparently interpreted his note as an invitation to invade his privacy.
He should be annoyed. He wasn’t. That made Nora dangerous and unpredictable. Unexpectedly, it added to her intrigue. The heavy pull between them tingled along his muscles, heating him to the point of discomfort. He hadn’t been this affected by a woman’s presence since he was a teenager.
“Oh, really. And you don’t have an agenda?” Nora crossed her arms in an exaggerated pose he suspected was designed to mimic his. “What was with the note, then?”
“It’s polite to include a note with a gift,” he replied as he fought a smile for the second time. He hadn’t expected to like the grown-up version of Nora as much as he did. What was he supposed to do with her?
When his admin had called Iguazu to check on the delivery, imagine his surprise to learn that a mystery woman from “his office” had already called. A quick check-in with the hospital told him that Nora had indeed received his note. It hadn’t taken much to guess she’d figured out that he’d sent the catering and would be along to see him in short order. He’d been right.
“Uh-huh. And is it customary to use a private joke in said note and then pretend you didn’t intend for me to figure out you sent it?”
Her wide, beautiful mouth tipped up at the corners and communicated far more than her words did. She was toying with him. Maybe even flirting. Women didn’t flirt with him as a rule. Usually they were much more direct, wrangling introductions from mutual acquaintances and issuing invitations into their beds before he’d learned their last names.
He’d taken a few of them up on it. He wasn’t a monk. But he’d never held a conversation with one or called one again. Not since the day when his father had killed more than half of his family, including himself.
Nora was a first. In more ways than one. His body’s awareness dialed up a notch. She was close enough to touch but he didn’t reach out. Not yet. Not until he got a much better handle on his reaction to her. And maybe not even then. Nora certainly hadn’t dropped by to be seduced by the CEO of Chamberlain Group. But that didn’t automatically mean she’d be averse to the idea. It just meant he needed a clearer sense of the lay of the land before he made a move on a childhood friend.
“Are you...accusing me of deliberately trying to get your attention with a throwaway signature line on a note?” Reid hadn’t enjoyed interaction with a woman this much in so long, he couldn’t even say how long.
Her gaze narrowed. “Are you denying it?”
Cordially Yours. He hadn’t uttered that phrase in over a decade. How had she remembered that joke? Or maybe a better question was: why had he put it in the note?
Maybe he’d intended for this to go down exactly as it had.
When he’d heard about Sutton Winchester’s terminal diagnosis, Reid’s first thought had been of Nora. They hadn’t spoken in a long time, but she’d played an important role in his youth, namely that of a confidante for a boy trying to navigate a difficult relationship with his parents. He remembered Nora Winchester fondly and had never even said thank you for the years of distraction she’d provided, both at school and at parties.
The gift had been about balancing the scales. Reid didn’t like owing anyone anything.
He certainly hadn’t sent the food for Winchester’s benefit. The old man could—and most definitely would—rot in hell before Reid would lift a finger to help him. The man had more shady business deals and crooked politicians in his back pocket than a shark had teeth. Reid wouldn’t soon forget how Chamberlain Group had been on the receiving end of a personal screw-over, courtesy of Sutton Winchester.
“The food was for old time’s sake. Nothing more.” Nor should he pretend it was anything more. “Let’s just say I wasn’t expecting a personal thank-you for the catering, and leave it at that.”
She laughed and it slid down his spine, unleashing a torrent of memories. Nora was an old friend, and for a man who didn’t have many, it suddenly meant something to him that he had a history with this woman. A positive history. She’d known his sister, Sophia, and that alone made her different from anyone else in his life except Nash.
Yeah, letting her walk away untouched wasn’t happening. Reid had long ago accepted his selfish nature and he wanted more of Nora’s laugh.
“Obviously you were expecting me.” Nora’s gaze raked over his body as she called him on it. “Your staff couldn’t have been clearer that they’d been waiting for me to arrive. How did you guess I’d be coming by?”
“Oddly enough, you tipped me off. My admin called Iguazu and learned that Ms. O’Malley from my office had already inquired after the status of the delivery.”
Guilt clouded Nora’s gaze and she shifted her eyes to the right, staring at a spot near his shoulder. “Well, you didn’t sign the note. How else was I supposed to figure out if you were the one behind the nice gesture?”
“I don’t make nice gestures,” he corrected her. “And you weren’t supposed to figure it out. Is Ms. O’Malley a fake name you use often to perform nefarious deeds?”
He couldn’t resist teasing her when it was so obvious she hadn’t a deceptive bone in her body. Flirting, teasing and smiling—or nearly