LUCKY WAS EXHAUSTED by the time he’d settled into the seat on the flight to New York. The commuter flight from Cheyenne to Denver had been a white knuckler, even for someone who believed man was meant to fly. Which Lucky didn’t. Unfortunately, the one from Denver to Las Vegas had been even worse as the plane had bucked like a bronc with a burr under its saddle through a thunderstorm that had required the cabin crew to spend most of the flight buckled into their seats.
There was something unnatural about sitting thirty-thousand feet in the air, surrounded by an oversize tin can, putting your trust in some guy—or woman, these days, he allowed—you’d never even met.
It wasn’t really that he was a control freak, Lucky assured himself as the jet taxied down the runway. A rancher couldn’t hope to control his environment in a business where so much depended on the weather, fate or God’s often bizarre sense of humor. But he still felt a lot more secure atop a horse than he did in an airplane.
The flight attendant on the final leg of the flight was a willowy woman who appeared to be in her early thirties, with a pert red hairdo that swung against her cheekbones, slanted cat’s eyes outlined in kohl and glossy red lips that matched her scarf. The gold band on her finger revealed she was married, making him wonder if her husband minded her gallivanting all over the country, smiling and serving drinks to strange men. He surely wouldn’t like it.
But then again, since he’d be highly unlikely to ever marry such a polished city type—there wasn’t all that much need for silk scarves and lip gloss in Cremation Creek—Lucky decided it was a moot point.
The idea of marriage got him thinking about Kate again. He almost wished he believed in divorce; then he could just bring Kate and Dillon back to Cremation Creek where they belonged and the hell with that skunk his sister had married. Although there’d never been a divorce in the O’Neill clan, Lucky figured that it wouldn’t be the end of the world if his sister’s marriage did break up. The only problem was, for some reason Lucky couldn’t fathom, she seemed stuck on the guy. Which just went to show there was no explaining the female mind.
“Is something wrong, sir?”
The female voice shattered his dark thoughts, making Lucky realize he’d been scowling.
“Not a thing, ma’am.” He flashed her his friendliest grin. The one that had worked wonders with women during his college rodeoing days.
“Could I get you a drink? Or a pillow? Or perhaps put your hat in the overhead bin?”
Lucky’s fingers instinctively tightened on the brim of his dress gray Stetson. He’d watched the harried-looking businessmen shoving overstuffed carry-on bags and laptop computers into the overhead compartments. There was no way he was subjecting his best hat to that.
“No, thank you, ma’am,” he said politely. “I’m just fine.”
Her answering smile was friendly. “I thought that’s what you’d say. My husband feels the same way about his favorite Resitol. You couldn’t get it out of his hands at gunpoint.”
“Your husband?” Lucky figured she must be married to one of those fake rhinestone cowboys who liked to dress up in western duds and line dance on Saturday nights.
“He’s third-generation rancher. His family has a spread on the front range outside Denver.”
This time Lucky’s grin was sheepish. That’s what he got for tying to pigeonhole people. Still, he was having trouble seeing this sleek woman with the red lips and fingernails castrating bulls and branding calves.
“Nice country.”
“We think so.” Her cat green eyes had a knowing look that suggested she knew exactly what he was thinking. “Well, I’ll leave you to get some sleep.”
Worried as he was about Kate, Lucky didn’t think that was very likely, but he thanked her just the same.
As it turned out, the long wet day had taken its toll on him and sometime over Kansas, Lucky did indeed fall asleep, not waking up until the pilot announced the plane’s descent into New York City.
He stretched in an unsuccessful attempt to work out the kinks earned from spending the night cramped in a too-small space, welcomed the warm damp towel the Colorado rancher’s pretty wife offered him and enjoyed the lingering memory of a dream of an old-time western necktie party. With that coyote Jack Peterson as the guest of honor.
After making his way through the crowded terminal, where the myriad voices jabbering away in countless tongues reminded Lucky of the ancient Tower of Babel, he climbed into a yellow taxi that looked about as banged up as he felt.
He gave the turbaned driver the address of Kate’s apartment. Then, remembering his one and only trip to Manhattan for his sister’s wedding, Lucky added one vital instruction.
“And take the bridge.”
“The bridge is backed up.”
“The entire city is probably backed up most of the time. But we’re taking the bridge.”
He might, on occasion, be forced to fly. But there was no way Lucky was going to risk going beneath the water in some tunnel. If the underwater trap wasn’t bombed by damned urban terrorists, it would surely crack from structural damage and drown them all.
His usually easygoing tone was hard. And final. As if sensing he wasn’t dealing with his usual fare, the driver glanced up into the rearview mirror, met Lucky’s unwavering stare, and then, with a muffled word in some language Lucky couldn’t begin to understand, shrugged and pulled away from the curb.
“I told you,” the driver said twenty minutes later when they were caught in the tangled snarl of urban gridlock. “I’m going to have to charge you waiting time.”
“Fine.” Lucky folded his arms and glared back at the dark eyes glowering at him in the mirror. Even breathing toxic exhaust for thirty more minutes was preferable to arriving in the Hereafter soaking wet in a battered yellow cab.
It turned out to be an hour. Which didn’t exactly have Lucky in the best of moods when he climbed out of the taxi outside Kate’s building.
“May I help you, sir?” Although Lucky towered over the man dressed in navy blue livery with gold epaulets, the doorman still managed to look down his nose at him.
“I’m here to see Kate Peterson. Mrs. Jack Peterson.”
“Ah, Kate.” The doorman surprised Lucky by actually smiling. “She’s at work.” Despite his surprise that Kate would be up to going to work after the way she’d been crying, he was able to catch a hint of the auld sod in the man’s voice. His great-grandfather, who’d died when Lucky was ten, had the same faint second-generation American brogue. “But Mr. Peterson is in, if you’d like to speak with him.”
So the skunk had returned. Lucky wondered if he’d come back for his clothes. Or, perhaps, the storm had blown over. In which case, he and Peterson still had a few things to get straight. Like making sure he never made Kate cry again.
“Yeah. I’d like to speak with Mr. Peterson.”
The doorman rang the apartment, then Lucky heard Jack’s voice, instructing the man to send his brother-in-law up. He certainly didn’t sound contrite, Lucky thought as he took the elevator up to the tenth floor, beginning to get irritated all over again.
The door opened at Lucky’s first knock.
“Hey, Lucky.” His brother-in-law’s handsome face split in a smile as he stuck out his hand. “What a sur—”
Lucky cut off the welcome with a quick left to Jack’s jaw. The punch caught Jack Peterson by surprise, sending him reeling backward, where he tripped over a small wrought-iron-and-wood end table, scattered a group of miniature enameled boxes, then fell sprawling on his back on the gray Berber rug.
“What the hell’s gotten into you?” Jack glared up at him.
Lucky’s temper flared even higher when he realized the skunk didn’t even have the gall to look guilty. He strode across the floor to stand over him, hands on his hips as he glared bullets down at the man who’d scrambled to a sitting position and was rubbing his jaw.
“You’re just damn lucky I don’t shoot you, Peterson.” His gaze slid threateningly from his brother-in-law’s face. “Or better yet, I should have brought along my nut-cutters. You ever hear of Rocky Mountain oysters?”
When Jack arched an aristocratic blond brow, Lucky had to give him reluctant credit for not groveling. At least the skunk wasn’t a coward.
“If you’re referring to what I think you are—”
“I’m talking about the leftovers after you turn a bull calf into a steer. Now, you’d probably make a painfully puny serving, but—”
“That’s crude, even for you.” The other man stood up, his gaze shifting momentarily to the scattered boxes. “Hell, Kate’s going to hit the ceiling if anything happened to those. She’s been collecting them since her first year at Harvard.”
Which was where she’d met this weasel in the first place, Lucky reminded himself, thinking that he should have backed up Buck when his grandfather insisted Kate could get just as good an education at the state university.
“She’s got a lot more to be concerned about than a few expensive knickknacks. Like her philandering husband for starters.”
“Philandering? I’ve never looked at another woman since the day I met Kate!”
“Then why did you walk out on her?”
“I didn’t.” The denial was instantaneous.
Lucky caught hold of the silk tie and pulled Jack closer, so their faces were mere inches apart. “She called me last night, you son of a bitch. In tears.”
“Kate was crying?”
“Hell, yes, she was crying. I’d say that was fairly normal behavior for a woman whose husband had deserted her. And their child,” he added through clenched teeth. Buck was right. They should have just shot Peterson from the get-go.
“I never deserted her! I never would.”
“Are you saying you were home last night?”
“No, but—”
“You’re not wriggling out of this.” Lucky tightened his grip on the tie.
“I’m not trying to wriggle out of anything, dammit.” Although he didn’t seem sufficiently contrite, if Peterson’s grayish complexion was any indication, he was beginning to get scared. Which was, Lucky decided, a start. “I was in Boston on business. Kate knew that. I called her three times.”
“Three times?”
“Once at six, again at eight, before I went out to dinner with clients, then at eleven when I got back to the hotel. It was the first time we’ve been apart since Dillon was born. I missed her.”
Lucky felt his high horse beginning to slip out from under him. If Peterson was telling the truth, and it seemed real strange he wouldn’t be, since the story would be easy to check out, the first two calls would have come before he’d called Kate back. This wasn’t making any damn sense.
“Kate called me,” he insisted darkly, “in tears. Because you’d walked out on her.”
“There’s no way I’d do that. It’d be easier for me to stop breathing.”
Damn. Again, the answer was too quick not to be believed. Which only meant one thing. Kate had obviously lied to him. But why?
“Does she know you’re home?”
“No, I just got in.”
“Good.” Lucky released him. “Let’s go.”
Peterson straightened his tie. “To her office?”
“Yeah.” Lucky stepped over the pretty little boxes on his way back to the door. “I’d say my baby sister has herself some explaining to do.”
Lucky ground his teeth on the elevator ride to the lobby, realizing there was no way he was going to escape having to apologize to his brother-in-law. Just one more thing Kate was going to have to answer for, he thought grimly.
“I’m sorry I punched you.”
Peterson shrugged shoulders clad in a pinstriped navy suit jacket that Lucky figured cost nearly as much as his best bull.
“I don’t have any sisters. But if I did, I would have done the same thing if I’d been in your place.”
Until his baby sister had gotten pregnant by this man, Lucky had never been one to hold a grudge. It was, he was realizing now, a tiring way to go through life.
“I think I liked it better when you were a low-down snake of a sister seducer.”
“And I was more comfortable thinking of you as some hick cowboy with manure on your boots and a plug of Redman stuck in your cheek.”
“Never chewed tobacco. It’s nasty stuff.”
The two men observed each other in the close confines of the elevator.
“We’re never going to be friends,” Lucky warned, just in case Peterson might be thinking otherwise. “We don’t have hardly anything in common.” Now that was the understatement of the millennium.
“True.” Jack rubbed his chin, where a purple bruise was beginning to bloom. “But we do have two very important things in common.”
“Kate and Dillon,” Lucky said.
“Exactly.”
They exchanged another look. And although neither one said the words out loud, the two men from such disparate backgrounds each knew that a tentative peace accord had just been struck.
Fifteen minutes later, they signed in with the guard in the marble-floored lobby, then took the elevator up to the sixty-eighth floor where the executive offices of Hunk of the Month magazine were located. When his ears popped, Lucky decided that high-rise buildings were like everything else in this city: about as user friendly as convertible submarines.
The steel doors opened onto a lobby where white slate floors flowed like an arctic ice field and the molded furniture—none of which looked the slightest bit comfortable—was covered in shades of gray, white and black.
“Hi, Megan,” Jack greeted the receptionist, who appeared to have dressed to match the room in a sleeveless black linen dress. “We’re here to see my wife.”
“I’ll buzz her and tell her that you’re here.” As she reached for the phone, her interested gaze shifted to Lucky.
“Don’t bother,” Jack said. “We’d prefer to surprise her.”
“Fine.” From her distant tone, as she continued to stare at him, Lucky decided that his brother-in-law could have informed her that they were mad-dog serial killers come to murder everyone in the building, and she wouldn’t have uttered a single word of complaint.
Since she was looking at him as if he were Bigfoot, or some green alien just arrived from Mars, he decided to give the lady what she so obviously expected.
“Howdy, ma’am.” The drawl was rich and thick, unlike the way anyone talked in Wyoming. For an added bonus, he touched the brim of his hat.
“Hi.” Her voice was a bit breathless. As if she’d just finished climbing those sixty-eight flights of stairs. “Are you a friend of Kate’s?”
“I’m her big brother.”
She regained her city girl composure quickly. A seductive glint came into gold eyes that took a slow, leisurely tour of him from the brim of the Stetson, down to the pointed toes of his polished Saturday night boots.
“Well, you’re certainly that. I can see why Jude decided not to jump out the window after all.”
“Jude?”
“Hunk of the Month’s managing editor. She was so horribly upset when Harper ran off and got married, leaving her in the lurch. And when Kate came up with her idea, everyone thought it was a long shot, of course, but—”
Internal alarms started blaring inside Lucky with the urgency of a bull-riding whistle. “What idea was that?”
Her eyes narrowed. “Are you saying you don’t know?”
“Know what?”
Lucky was getting more and more frustrated. And confused. He also wasn’t at all wild about appearing ignorant in front of this sleek woman who now was observing him with a combination of misgiving and humor.
“I believe I’d better let Kate fill you in,” she decided, “when you surprise her.” Her gaze slid to Jack. “You remember the way?”
“Yeah.” He exchanged a pointed look with his brother-in-law, then headed off down the hall, Lucky right beside him.
The walls of the hallway were lined with enormous framed photos of men in various stages of undress. Although none of them showed full frontal nudity, they sure didn’t leave much to the imagination.
Lucky paused in front of a photograph of a fireman posed in front of a shiny red ladder truck, dressed in black rubber boots, helmet and a skimpy pair of dotted briefs that just barely covered the essentials. The guy had his arm around a Dalmatian and wouldn’t you just know it, the dog’s coat matched the underwear.
“Doesn’t it get to you?” he asked.
“What?” Jack paused beside him.
“Having your wife work at a place where she’s looking at nearly naked men all day?” Lucky was sure having trouble thinking of his sister working here. Then again, he still hadn’t quite gotten used to the idea of her having sex on a regular basis. Which she undoubtedly did, now that she was married and a mother.
“Nah. The way I figure it, it’s not so bad if hunks like this turn her on. So long as I reap the benefits at the end of the day.”
Lucky cringed and rubbed his jaw. “You know, the idea of you getting lucky with my sister is one of those roads I really don’t want to go down.”
“Sorry. But you did ask.”
“Yeah.” Lucky had overheard two of the hired ranch hands talking much the same way about taking their girlfriends to see Alan Jackson perform at the state fair. Jackson was a surefire way of getting lucky that night, they’d agreed, trading winks and leers.
“I still don’t think I’d like it,” he decided.
“Of course you wouldn’t. Because you’re a throwback to another century.” Jack began walking again. “No offense, O’Neill, but you’re definitely out of sync with the thinking of modern women.”
Lucky figured that was probably the case. He caught a quick glance of a blowup of one of the magazine covers, featuring a buffed-up guy working on the engine of a classic Corvette clad only in a black leather G-string, and decided that if modern men really needed another guy to warm up their women, then the world was in an even sorrier state than he’d thought.
He saw Kate, seated at a small black desk. She had her back to them and was talking on the phone; if he hadn’t known it was his baby sister, he wasn’t certain he’d recognize the young woman with the tied-back bright red hair and severely cut tobacco brown suit.
“I know it’s going to be a problem, Zach,” she said, obviously trying to soothe the man on the other end of the phone. “But Jude says that if we all work together...
“Yes, I understand you aren’t used to working with amateur models and I realize it might take a lot longer to get some usable shots, however...”
When Jack cleared his throat, she swiveled the chair around. Then paled and dropped the receiver onto the desk with a clatter.
The way the color had drained from her face assured Lucky that Kate was guilty. Of what, he still didn’t know. But the proof of her falsehood was written across her expressive face in bold script.
Lucky picked up the receiver and held it out to her. “Say goodbye, Katie.” It was an order—softly couched, but etched in granite.
Her eyes were as huge and white as a horse’s who’d just gotten a whiff of smoke; her hand, as she took the receiver from his, was trembling.
“I’m afraid something’s come up,” she murmured into the phone. “I’ll have to get back to you. I promise, ten minutes.” She eyed her brother with obvious trepidation. “On second thought, better make it twenty.” She exhaled a long, weary breath. “Believe me, Zach, I understand exactly how you feel. It’s a difficult situation for all of us.”
That said, she hung up. Apparently deciding that Jack was the safer person to deal with at this moment, she turned toward her husband.
“Hi, honey. I hadn’t realized you were coming home this morning.” The little tremor in her voice matched the one Lucky had noticed in her hands.
“I caught an earlier flight than planned. I missed you,” he said simply. “Lucky showed up at the apartment while I was still unpacking.”
When he rubbed his visibly swollen chin with chagrin, Kate’s attention narrowed in on the dark blue-and-purple bruise.
“Oh, no! He didn’t...he couldn’t...” She shot her brother an imploring look. “Lucky, please tell me that you wouldn’t—”
“I slugged him.” Lucky’s glower dared her to criticize what, at the time, had seemed appropriate behavior. He rubbed his skinned knuckles and reminded himself that it was, after all, her damn fault for having lied to him in the first place. “For running out on you.”
“Oh, God.” She buried her distressed face in her hands.
Neither Lucky nor Jack said a word. They just waited. And waited. Then, waited some more.
Finally, as if unable to take the suspense any longer, Kate peeked out from between her fingers. “I suppose I owe you both an explanation.”
“That’d be a start,” Jack agreed mildly.
“Damn right you do,” Lucky said at the same time.
Kate sighed. And lowered her hands. “It seemed like such a good idea, when I first thought of it.”
“What?”
Another sigh. She rubbed her temples with her fingers and didn’t answer right away. “Perhaps,” she suggested cautiously, “it might be best if Jude explained things.”
Along with being the woman the receptionist had told him had decided not to jump out the window, Lucky now remembered that Jude Lancaster was also Kate’s immediate supervisor at the magazine.
“If someone doesn’t explain something in the next five minutes, I’m out of here.”
“Oh, you can’t do that!” Although he never would have guessed it possible, Kate went even paler. She was now the same white shade as the papers scattered all over her desk. She looked so much like a ghost that Lucky wouldn’t have been at all surprised to be able to put his hand through her face. “Let me just let Jude know you’re here....”
She picked up the receiver again.
Again, Lucky plucked it out of her hand. “I had more of an ambush in mind.”
“Oh, God,” Kate murmured again.
She looked, Lucky thought, as if she were contemplating jumping out a window. He considered assuring her everything would be all right, but decided that after dragging him all the way across the country on what was turning out to be a wild-goose chase, his baby sister deserved to sweat for a while.
She stood up, walked the few feet to a black-lacquered door and knocked.
“Come on in,” the female voice, edged with obvious aggravation called out.
Kate entered, flanked on both sides by her husband and brother. “Jude, this is my brother, Lucky. Lucky, this is Jude Lancaster. My boss.”
The first thought that flashed through Jude’s mind was that Kate definitely hadn’t been exaggerating. Her second was that with Lucky O’Neill on the cover, she’d no longer have to worry about making Tycoon Mary’s new sales goals.
The candid photograph on Kate’s desk hadn’t begun to do him justice. It was as though the Marlboro Man had suddenly stepped down from that old billboard in Times Square. But impossibly, this cowboy was even better looking, in an unassuming, naturally sexy way.
“Hello, Lucky. I’ve heard a lot about you.” She kept her voice calm when what she wanted to do was sing hosannas.
“Ma’am.” His voice was deep and rough.
Jude stood up, came around her desk and slowly circled Lucky, appraising his potential with an expert eye. He was tall—six foot two, she’d guess—putting his weight around 205 pounds and from what she could see, he was all lean sinew and muscle without an ounce of superfluous fat.
He was wearing ebony boots polished to a sheen a drill sergeant would have admired, stacked jeans, a wide hand-tooled leather belt with a huge gaudy silver-and-gold embossed buckle, a white snap-front shirt, and a low-crowned silver-gray cowboy hat.
Even though she spent her day looking at pictures of near-naked hunks and should be immune to their masculine appeal, Jude suddenly felt in imminent danger of estrogen poisoning.
“Why don’t you take off that shirt?” she suggested, forcing her mind back to the business at hand. They were, after all, running out of time. “So I can see what you’ve got.”
Not that she couldn’t already. The twill shirt was a trim cut that displayed his body to mouthwatering advantage. Even with his clothes on, he was definitely in the running for the magazine’s annual Hunk of the Year award.
“What?”
His brows went crashing toward a nose that looked as if it had been broken. Rather than detract from his looks, it only made him even more sexy.
“As delicious as you admittedly look in that cowboy outfit, I need to check out your credentials, so to speak.”
Heaven help her, try as she might, Jude couldn’t keep her rebellious eyes from taking a quick, naughty tour downward from his face to where his masculine credentials were enticingly cupped in soft blue denim. If Lucky O’Neill was any indication, it was definitely true what they said about everything being bigger out west.
“It’s important to make certain you don’t have any scars or tattoos anywhere on your body,” she explained as she returned her assessing gaze back up to his strangely stony one.
He was looking at her in the same way an old-time movie sheriff might look at the desperados who’d just ridden into town with bank robbing on their minds. With a great deal of distrust and more than a little dislike.
“Not that any you might have couldn’t be concealed with a little computer magic,” she assured him quickly, “but—”
“Are you saying you expect me to get naked?”
His still mild tone had taken on a dangerous edge. He shot a lethal, questioning glance at Kate, who had wisely moved out of range and was now standing in front of the floor-to-ceiling corner window.
“Well, not exactly naked,” Jude replied, deciding the obvious misunderstanding must be the cause for his glower. “Our editorial policy has always been to leave certain things to our readers’ imaginations. However, since you’re going to be our Hunk of the Month—”
“I’m going to be what?”
It was a roar. During a long-ago trip to the Serengeti Plain with her father, Jude had heard a lion sound much the same way.
“I haven’t had a chance to tell him yet,” Kate said in a quiet, miserable little voice.
“Uh-oh.” Jude looked at the granite face with the clefted chin that was a larger, rougher version of his sister’s and worried that perhaps this simple cowboy might not be as easily handled as she’d originally believed.
“Well, then, in that case, I suppose it’s up to me to explain things.” She flashed him a bright, professional smile that had always succeeded with everyone but Tycoon Mary. And, apparently, Lucky O’Neill.
His expression didn’t change. Ignoring a glower as hot as a branding iron, Jude glanced down at her watch.
“It’s nearly lunchtime. Why don’t I have Kate book us a table at the Four Seasons, or Lutece, and—”
“No offense intended, ma’am...” Lucky cut her off with a wave of a dark, banged-up hand roughened from years of hard physical work. Despite this latest little glitch in her plans, despite the fact that valuable time was slipping away, Jude found herself wondering if he’d submit to a manicure. “But I’m not real hungry right now. I just want to know what kind of trouble you and Kate have been cooking up.”
“Oh, I promise you, Lucky, it’s no trouble.” She paused, momentarily distracted by the sound of a fire-engine siren coming from the street below. “In fact, if you’d only listen—”
“I’d appreciate it if you could make it short, ma’am.” Squint lines fanned out from eyes that were as brown as Bambi’s but far more dangerous as he looked at Jude as if sighting down a rifle scope. “Because I have an afternoon flight booked on American Airlines back to Wyoming.”
All Jude’s pretense at professional calm fled at hearing his plans. She pressed a suddenly ice-cold hand against the front zipper of her suit jacket, trying to forestall the heart attack that was imminent. Down on the street another fire truck raced by, causing her anxiety level to spike even higher.
“Oh, you can’t leave!”
“Please, Lucky,” Kate said at the same time. “If you’ll just sit down and listen to Jude, you’ll see that I didn’t have any choice.”
His eyes softened briefly as they turned toward his sister. But Jude didn’t witness any softening of spirit. “There’s never any good reason for lying.”
“Dammit, that’s always been the problem with you, Lucky O’Neill.” Kate flared in an uncharacteristic display of temper that had Jude thinking that they’d all become stressed out since Tycoon Mary had blown onto the scene.
“You see everything in terms of black and white,” Kate accused hotly. “You’ve never, in your entire life, been able to see any gray.”
“Now there’s where you’re wrong,” he shot back, his own temper firing. “That’s all I’ve been seeing since I got off the elevator. Along with black and white. All except for this office.”
The fury in his eyes turned uncharacteristically arctic as his gaze skimmed disdainfully around the room that had cost a fortune to redecorate. “I don’t know how anyone could work in here without going snow-blind in the first week.”
“White is soothing.” Jude defended her color scheme with a toss of her blond head. Although flames were burning behind her rib cage, she was damned if she’d reach for her Tums and give this man—this common cowboy!—the satisfaction of knowing how badly he was upsetting her.
She folded her arms across the front of her dark gray suit and dug her fingernails into palms that practically itched to smack that accusing look off his handsome face.
“I suppose you’d prefer denim? Perhaps Kate could run out to Ralph Lauren—”
“I don’t know who this guy Ralph Lauren is, but even a dumb country cowboy can realize when he’s just been insulted,” Lucky practically growled, once again reminding Jude of a lion. A mountain lion. Like that huge western cougar she’d seen on the Discovery Channel who’d hide behind a big red boulder and pounce on you, just when you least expected it.
She held her ground even as she envisioned her career going down the drain. “I have to point out, Mr. O’Neill, that you threw the first stone, so to speak, when you cast aspersions on my office.”
“The name’s Lucky,” he reminded her. “We’re not real comfortable with formality in Cremation Creek. And I wasn’t exactly casting aspersions. I only pointed out that your office is white. Real white. But I do apologize if I offended you.”
“Thank you.” The fire behind the wall of her chest went from a three-alarm blaze to a two. “And I apologize for suggesting that there’s anything wrong with denim.”
He nodded. “Apology accepted.”
“Would you care to sit down?” She gestured toward the alabaster-hued leather Italian sofa. “If you’re not ready for lunch, I could have some coffee brought in. Perhaps a few sweet rolls? The deli on the first floor makes the best bagels in town.”
“That’s real considerate of you, ma’am, but I’m not hungry. And, if you don’t mind, after sitting all night on the plane, I’d just as soon stand.”
“Whatever you like.” Jude felt herself beginning to relax. Lucky O’Neill’s temper might have a very short fuse, but at least it seemed to be fast burning. Now that it appeared to have flamed out, she could get back to convincing him to see the light.
“And you’re right, after coming all this way to Manhattan, you’re definitely entitled to an explanation.” Her smile was back—smooth, friendly, and persuasive. “You see, we’d planned this very special issue...”