Читать книгу Beyond Business - Elizabeth Harbison, Allison Leigh - Страница 18

It was the first time in her life Meredith had ever even thought about quitting a job halfway through. Her job description of corporate researcher had a lot of mutations, and while she wasn’t usually a corporate spy—or, as some put it, competitive intelligence agent—it wasn’t unheard of for her.

As long as she felt comfortable with the reasons for her research and believed she wasn’t breaching her own personal morals and standards she was able to do a good job.

This time, though, things were getting foggy.

She’d told her employer she might have a conflict of interest, and her employer had guessed right off that it might have something to do with her relationship with Evan.

It was hard for Meredith to explain that it did because of something that had happened a long, long time ago. How could she say that she’d just learned he’d once had the chance to do almost the same thing to her that she was doing to him and he’d opted not to?

It sounded so. unprofessional.

So she’d had to settle for explaining that she’d never before taken this kind of job with a company she had any personal relationship with—even a relationship as tangential and outdated as the one she had with the Hansons—and that she was finding it more difficult than she’d anticipated to completely fulfill her obligations to everyone involved.

Especially when the end result would be the hostile takeover of Evan’s company.

To Meredith’s surprise her employer had assured her that there was no hostile takeover in the works. That they were seeking a merger—a way to take two strong companies and put them together to make them both even more powerful.

Hanson Media Group wasn’t going to lose in this deal, Meredith was told—they were going to win.

That was believable, Meredith supposed. Hanson could accept an offer to share partnership instead of being subject to a hostile takeover and thereby having no choice.

“So are you prepared to stay on and finish the job you began?” her employer had asked.

The sixty-four-thousand—only in this case it was more like million—dollar question.

Meredith thought about it for a moment. Her instincts told her she could believe what she was being told, and in the past few years her instincts had become pretty good.

“Yes,” she said at last. “I am. You can depend on me.”

Evan was starting to have a hard time getting his thoughts straight.

Being at Meredith’s parents’ house the other night was just too strange. How many hours had he spent there in his lifetime, enjoying the company of the girl he had once been absolutely sure he’d marry?

It was weird to come back, now that she was a grown woman—a woman who had spent more than a decade growing away from him—and see her in that same environment.

It gave him a strange feeling, a combination of unease and melancholy.

Not to mention the all-new desire he felt for Meredith as she fit right into his life and his mind now. The way she’d handled Lenny Doss was amazing. More to the point, the way she handled everything at work was amazing. She was a perfect professional, always conservative but always right.

It was ironic that the very quality that had driven him crazy when they were dating—her unwillingness to take a risk—was the very thing he appreciated in her now.

After he’d spent the night in her guest room, he’d gotten up early, written a note of thanks and called a cab to take him back to his car at Navy Pier. It was better that way, he figured: no awkward morning talk, no uncomfortable silences.

He’d been at work for three and a half hours, with no sign of Meredith, when he finally decided to take a casual look around for her.

But she wasn’t in the PR offices, and David said he hadn’t seen her all day. So when Evan found her at a lone computer at the far end of the accounting department, he was puzzled.

He watched her for a few minutes from a distance, clicking on the computer keyboard, squinting and looking closer, then jotting notes down on a pad in front of her.

Now what was that all about?

He moved closer, hoping to catch a better glimpse of her work without making his presence so obvious that, if caught, he couldn’t say he’d just wandered in.

So very carefully he walked up behind her and tried to see what was on the computer screen.

Revenues. Debt. Balances.

Meredith was studying the entire financial profile of the company.

Why?

He backed off again, unnoticed, to contemplate his next move in the hallway.

Was Meredith a corporate spy of some sort?

No, that was too absurd. What had made him even think such a thing? Meredith was far too principled to be dishonest in any capacity, much less lie to someone’s face, as she would have to with Evan, David, Helen and everyone else she came into contact with at the office.

Come on.

It was far more likely that ever-responsible-and-forward-thinking Meredith was checking out the company’s vital statistics because she was interested in some personal investing, rather than reporting back to some supersecret source.

If anyone was bold enough to take a chance on investing in a company at rock bottom, it was Meredith. She’d see, as he did, that Hanson Media would rebound one way or another.

That was definitely more in keeping with Meredith’s personality, yet … Evan wasn’t quite sure. Something about this didn’t sit right with him. An investor would have plenty of ways to monitor the debt-to-income ratio and the viability of the company as a potential investment. There were books, Web sites, portfolios and, hell, people who dedicated their entire existence to providing that kind of information.

Still, the idea of Meredith checking the company information for some sort of nefarious intention was unlikely in the extreme.

He’d have to keep an eye on the situation. He’d keep Meredith close and see if he could figure out what she was up to without his ever having to ask.

* * *

Several days passed since Evan had stayed at Meredith’s house, and they never really talked about it again. His cut healed fairly quickly, she was glad to see. He’d probably been right: she was too paranoid in suggesting he needed to go to the hospital right away for stitches.

The strange thing was, he was barely talking to her.

Despite the great strides he’d made in the company—after getting Lenny Doss, he’d managed to secure contracts with three other famous names, including the Alleyway Guys, who had a popular, irreverent car talk show—his conversations with Meredith were brief and to the point.

She couldn’t argue with his professional decisions, so it wasn’t as if he had that to worry about. The Alleyway Guys, at least, wouldn’t be as great a liability as Lenny Doss could be, and the radio psychologist he’d hired had a reputation for being aggressively conservative, but that always ended up making for good listening, both because of the callers who disagreed with her and the callers who agreed.

So the radio division was shaping up. Despite the risks involved—and they were many—the acquisition of Lenny Doss would probably be a profitable one. Evan was smart to create an interesting but reliable mix of talent. All of them were proven talents with good, solid numbers behind them.

That would undoubtedly help with her employers’ plans for a merger.

“So how’s everything going over at the Web site?” she asked David, late in the afternoon. It was almost time to go, and she hoped it would sound like a casual question that he could answer and then leave without thinking too much.

“Actually, things are great,” David said. “All squared away. Hanson Media Group is on its way back.”

“Really? What do you attribute that to?”

David hesitated. “I guess it’s everything combined. The family has come in and worked really hard to save the company, and I think it’s showing in every department. We’re not in the clear yet, of course, but things are really looking up.”

Meredith smiled. “So you think the company can survive on its own?”

David looked at her sharply. “As opposed to what?”

She’d spoken too fast. “I mean you won’t need to file for chapter eleven or get a loan?”

David narrowed his eyes and looked at her. “Are you worried about keeping your job?”

She was relieved that that was his only question. She opened her arms into a wide shrug and said, “I’m a single woman working to pay for a house and make my way in this world.” She smiled. “It ain’t easy. Any reassurance you could give me about job security would be greatly appreciated.” She hated to lie to him that way—job security was the least of her worries—but she needed his input on how the company was doing. David Hanson’s word was gold within the industry, and she needed a little of that rich, shiny news to take back to her employer.

“I can’t assure you of anything,” David said, to her disappointment. “This is a wildly uncertain business struggling in wildly uncertain times. However, I can tell you that the public interest in Evan’s programming is high. The kid has good instincts, just like Helen figured he would.”

“He’s a little reckless,” Meredith interjected, with a ping of conscience at saying something potentially negative about Evan.

“Ambitious might be a better way of putting that,” David said gently. “He’s been working against the odds, and against the opposition of many within the company, but he’s still arranged for a lineup he feels good about, and the industry buzz is on his side.” David shrugged broadly. “How do we argue with that?”

“Hopefully, we don’t,” Meredith agreed. It was a good recommendation of Evan and his work, and she knew David Hanson was far too meticulous a professional to say anything he didn’t mean, just to flatter his nephew.

“So the company’s in good shape?” She was careful to sound interested but not too eager. “It’s not about to go down the tubes or anything?”

“It’s all good,” David said shortly, but with what sounded like confidence. “No worries.”

“Well, good,” Meredith said with a smile. “I’m glad to know I’ll be safely employed in the immediate future.”

“You can count on it,” David said, looking her in the eye.

And she already knew it. She was safely employed. The question was, how many people at Hanson Media Group could say the same thing?

Not too many.

* * *

She was asking a lot of questions, Evan noticed. Questions that could be normal, in the line of business, but which seemed just a little bit … outside the bounds of her job.

It wasn’t as if he could take a lot of time to follow her around, though, to see what she was up to. Evan still had his own job to do, and after a decade of killing time all day until his bartending shift at night, he wasn’t too keen on the idea of figuring out why anyone should want to the know the Arbitron ratings for the last three years when it was his primary concern to make sure the next three years were more successful.

And somehow he had to do that with Meredith Waters by his side, driving him to distraction with almost every breath she took.

He’d never forgotten her, of course. He didn’t even try to fool himself about that one. But what was really striking him was how interested in her he was getting again. It wasn’t just the shadow she cast in his past—she had grown into a fascinating and exciting woman. A strange blend of professional savvy and goofy good humor.

There were more facets to her than he could count. And he wanted to learn about them all.

Was it just because of what they’d shared once? Was all of the heat he felt between them simply a matter of a once-sizzling love affair? Or was it possible that what he’d seen in her once was something that he needed still, something that complemented his soul in a way that was to be profound all his life?

He turned the thought over in his mind and tried to imagine how they could possibly be together now, even theoretically. He wasn’t going to be here long. Chicago held nothing for him. God alone knew where he’d go next, but it was a fairly safe bet that Meredith wouldn’t want to join him. She had her life here. Her career was here. And one thing about Meredith that didn’t seem to have changed was her inclination to be a homebody.

So there was probably nothing more to say about it than that. The past was the past, and Evan was going to have to get a grip on himself and stop fantasizing about the girl who got away. He’d let her go and there was no getting her back now.

Both he and Meredith needed to look toward the future. Of Hanson Media Group, that is.

Nothing more.

Why couldn’t she get her mind off him?

Meredith sat in her office, trying to do the advertising analysis that David had asked her to do. But all she could concentrate on was Evan.

And he wasn’t even around.

Well, he was around, somewhere in the office, but she’d barely seen him, except for running into him occasionally when she was alone in the copy room and again when she was returning from an early lunch. Both times Evan had been cordial, polite, but basically he’d acted as if they were strangers.

Was he mad at her?

The last time they’d really spoken he’d admitted that he’d known his father’s intention had been to sabotage her father’s business. Or at least he’d suspected it, and that was enough for Meredith. He’d had an inkling of what was to come, but he’d barely alluded to it in conversation, much less actually come out and warned her.

She should be mad at him.

But she wasn’t. That was ancient history now, and whatever his culpability for not revealing what he suspected, he had been part of George Hanson’s campaign to steal her father’s newspaper and, in fact, after warning her in his far-too-subtle way, he’d left the country. So even the greatest cynic couldn’t say he was actually part of the conspiracy.

So, no, she wasn’t mad. Not at Evan. Not for that. Not anymore.

Instead she found herself watching for him every time she heard footsteps in the hall. When someone entered the room, she looked up quickly, hoping it was him. And when it wasn’t, as it inevitably wasn’t, she was disappointed.

What was going on here?

Finally, at almost five o’clock in the afternoon, when she was about to seek him out and ask if and why he was avoiding her, Evan knocked on her door and poked his head in. “Got a minute?”

She should have been cool and professional but she was so glad to see him that she couldn’t help the excited smile she felt on her face. “Sure.”

He came in. “I was hoping you might go out with me and grab a bite to eat. There’s something—” he hesitated “—there’s something I want to talk to you about.”

She frowned. “Sounds serious.”

“It’s not that big a deal. I just thought it would be nice to get out of the office. I’m not used to being trapped under fluorescent lighting all the time.”

“I guess it doesn’t compare to the Mediterranean sun.” There was a tiny sharp edge to her voice, and she hoped he wouldn’t notice it.

However, the quick glance he gave her said he had. “You should try it sometime.”

“Maybe I will.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Really?”

“Why do you sound so surprised?”

“I’m not, I just. You never expressed much interest in travel before.”

She shrugged. “I’ve never in my life had the time to travel. First it was school, then it was work, now it’s like some pathological habit. I think it’s time I broke it.”

He smiled, the smile that had always made her heart flip. “Starting tonight, then. We’ll go to a little Greek restaurant I know on the outskirts of town.”

She was ready to go farther than that. At this moment, she could have gotten on a plane and taken off for Greece itself, with nothing more than a bathing suit and some sunscreen.

Of course, the image was so unlike her it was almost funny, but suddenly she found herself—unexpectedly and uncharacteristically—hungry for something new, and Chicago just wasn’t offering it to her.

Maybe tonight it would at least give her a little taste.

“Should I change my clothes?” she asked, feeling unexpectedly girlish at his offer.

Evan looked her over, and her skin prickled in response, as if he’d touched her. “No, you’re fine.”

Fine. It wasn’t high praise, but it would do. Especially given the way he’d looked at her.

“Okay, then.” She shut her computer down and picked up her purse. “I’m ready if you are.”

They took the elevator down to the parking garage and went to Evan’s car. He went to open the door for her and she mused, “It’s been a long time since someone opened a door for me.”

“Chivalry’s dead, huh?”

“That or it’s been asleep.” She got into the car and leaned back against the buttery soft leather seats. “Sound asleep.”

“So.” Evan started the car. “Do you date a lot?”

She was taken by surprise at his question. “Do I date a lot?”

He nodded, his eyes on the road in front of him. “Or is that an inappropriate question.”

“I don’t know if it is or not.” She thought for a minute. “Do you date a lot?”

He gave a laugh and glanced at her sideways. “Never mind, that is a hard question to answer.”

“Because there have been so many?” She was unable to stop herself from asking.

“Hardly.”

But she wasn’t sure she believed him.

“Let me try this one,” he said after a couple of moments had passed. “Have you been married? Engaged?”

This was so weird to be talking to Evan about this. “I was engaged once,” she said, though part of her didn’t want to confess it to him for some reason. “But it didn’t work out.”

“Why not?”

She looked out the window and gave a dry laugh. “He wasn’t ambitious. Didn’t have solid plans for the future. I was afraid he might not be … reliable.”

The single moment that passed before Evan spoke was so rife with tension that she had no doubt he understood the irony of her failed relationship.

“Maybe you just expected too much of him.”

“Certain expectations are so basic that to call them ‘too much’ is ludicrous.” She kept her gaze fastened on the road, watching the yellow lines on the black street disappear under the car. But inside she was thinking, Please give me a good explanation for what you did, please make me understand.

“Sometimes people can’t fulfill basic expectations for really good reasons,” Evan said. “Sometimes things are different from what you think.”

“All I know is what I see,” she countered, wishing it was enough to believe him but knowing she needed something more. Something concrete. “It’s hard to speculate about ‘theoretically’ when the facts are slapping you in the face.”

He took a deep breath. “If they’re really the facts. In our case, I just.” He lost the words and shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. We’re not talking about us.”

Meredith stiffened in her seat. She felt her face flush hotly. She was far too ready to talk about them. It just wasn’t healthy. He’d moved on. And she’d thought she had, as well.

She just needed to remind herself of that now and then. “Of course not. That was a long time ago. It has nothing to do with now.”

“Right.”

She couldn’t help goosing him a little. “Despite how defensive you seem to be about the past sometimes.”

A mile passed.

“Look,” Evan said. “I’m sorry. We were talking about your fiancé, and I turned it into my own postmortem defense. It really wasn’t appropriate and I apologize for that. I was … just remembering.”

“I remember sometimes, too, Evan.” Please make me understand, please make it believable.

He swung the car in past the Sophie’s sign at the entry to a dingy parking lot and slowed to a halt. Then he turned in his seat and said, “Do you?”

She gave a half smile. “I’m not senile.”

“Do you ever have any regrets?”

“No,” she answered firmly.

They eyes locked, then slowly Evan moved toward her. Meredith sat still, not drawing back, even though her mind screamed for her to run.

Okay, don’t make me believe. Just kiss me and make me forget.

His lips grazed lightly across hers, suggesting the satiation of a desire that had gone unanswered for much too long.

A moment rested in stillness, then Evan’s mouth descended on hers again, but this time it was more fervent. He moved his mouth across hers in a hungry, almost urgent, way, drawing her in by the sheer force of his passion.

His tongue touched hers, and the taste of him sent a shock of remembrance through her core.

She trailed her hands across his upper back and curled them around his neck, resting her arms on his broad shoulders. He pulled her closer, moving his hands across her body and hungrily exploring her mouth with his own.

The sound of their mingled breaths increased as their ardor grew.

Evan ran a strong hand down to the small of Meredith’s back, and she arched toward him, hitting the hard console between them. She didn’t care. The pleasure outweighed the pain by a hundredfold. His fingertips dipped lightly inside her panties, and an explosion of excitement arched Meredith’s back and she gasped against his mouth.

“I want you,” he whispered to her.

“I want you, too,” she said, ignoring the tiny voice of conscience that insisted this was a mistake.

Evan’s kisses deepened and a pulse throbbed in the pit of Meredith’s stomach, extending to her core. It was an ache that only he could reach and she was half ready to let him do it right here and right now.

Evan slipped his hands under Meredith’s shirt and swept them across the bare skin of her back and down again. Her breath caught in her throat. She wanted him.

Oh, how she wanted him.

And she’d told him so.

She realized with sudden horror what she was doing and how crazy it was. She drew back, nearly slamming her head into the window behind her.

“We can’t do this,” she gasped.

“Yes, we can.” He reached for her again and kissed her.

She gave in to it for one languorous moment, then pushed back again. “No, we can’t. I don’t want to.”

“I don’t believe you.”

She took a short breath that betrayed her truth. “You have to.”

“I have to respect the word no,” he said. “I don’t have to believe you mean it. Even if I didn’t know you before, Meredith, what we just had spoke volumes. Your body told me everything you’re not willing to admit.”

“That—” she gestured lamely “—what just happened was … it was meaningless. Curiosity, nothing more.” She swallowed, then continued. “Now that we’ve gotten it out of our systems, it must never happen again.”

“It sure as hell isn’t out of my system,” Evan said. “In fact, ever since I saw you again, you’ve been slowly working your way right back into my system. It’s almost like—”

“Don’t say it.” She raised a hand. She didn’t want to hear it was like old times or that it was as if nothing had changed or, worse, it was like they were meeting for the first time. “Don’t say it. There’s no way you can finish that sentence without sounding like a line from every melodramatic movie ever made.”

Evan gave a sharp laugh. “Thanks.”

Warmth washed over her face. “You know what I mean. Don’t you?”

“Maybe. What I don’t know is why you’re so damn eager to ignore what your heart is telling you.”

“Who said my heart was involved in this transaction?”

“Okay, your body.” He gave a rakish grin. “I’ll take that.”

No you won’t. I’m not giving it again. “No way. There’s nothing to gain by getting involved in something that we both know can never work.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do. Look, Evan, you left once without saying a word. I wasn’t enough for you then, and there’s no reason to think things would be different now.”

He straightened his back and looked out the window in front of him. “I didn’t leave because you weren’t enough for me. It was nothing like that.”

“Then what was it?”

He looked at her, his face shadowed by the twilight. “It was complicated.”

“Too complicated to explain?”

“What’s the point?”

“I don’t know.” She couldn’t admit that she wanted the peace of mind of knowing. It sounded too pathetic. “Maybe there isn’t one.”

There passed a moment of eye contact between the two of them that sent shivers rushing up and down Meredith’s spine. He looked as if he was going to kiss her again.

More to the point, she wanted him to kiss her again; she wanted to feel herself in his arms again; she wanted to feel that rough beard against her cheek. Heat pulsed between the two of them. He moved toward her and she leaned in ever so slightly until he was just the merest breath away.

Then her phone rang.

She started in surprise. Who would be calling her at this hour?

Her first thought was that it might be an emergency, something to do with her mother.

“I’m sorry,” she said to Evan, fumbling through her purse. “I have to get this. It could be my mom.”

She answered the phone.

“I’m sorry to call so late,” the voice on the other end of the line said. “But I’m getting ready to leave for Japan and I need to know if you finished assembling the data you were working on about Hanson Media Group.”