Hot August Nights

Buying herself time, she headed toward her table and tried not to look anxious while she accepted congratulations for a job well done from guests who stopped her on the way. At any moment, she expected the society reporter from the newspaper to pounce, photographer in tow. Her acceptance of the check from the man everyone was now talking about would be a photo op no self-respecting journalist would pass up.

Ashley had to concede that the passing of the check would also be excellent publicity for the charity—and raising funds for the Shelter Project had been the entire evening’s goal.

Her goal now was to prepare herself for the moment she would turn and find Matt behind her. The effort, however, was wasted.

The reporter appeared as predicted to obtain a quote about how delighted Ashley was for the opportunity to actively participate in the building of a Shelter home. Ashley also told the woman that she did, indeed, know the gentleman who had put her up for bid. His name was Matt Callaway, and he was a friend of her brother Cord.

Looking as if that association alone was enough to explain the man’s clearly unpredicted—and unprecedented—actions, the reporter then directed her photographer to get a shot of Ashley and her committee and went off in search of Matt.

Matt, however, had disappeared.

She was one hundred thousand dollars short.

Ashley sat in her modest office with its art prints on the walls, blinds tilted to mask the less than impressive view of a rooftop from the tenth floor of the Kendrick Building, and frowned at the neat columns of figures on the sheet in front of her. Every single item that had been donated for the auction had been purchased and paid for. Season tickets to the opera, to the symphony, to Washington Redskins games. An original oil painting. Baskets of gourmet foods. Cooking lessons. Dinners at some of the areas finest restaurants. Massages. A facial peel. Golf clubs. A spa membership.

The list went on.

The totals added up.

Everything was accounted for. Everything other than the last item of the evening, which one of her committee members had written on the recap sheet as Ashley K.-$100,000!

Ashley would have smiled at the exclamation point had the bid come from anyone but Matt. And had she not dreaded having to go after him to collect it.

She reached for the coffee cooling by her neatly aligned in-box, stapler and mouse pad of Monet’s water lilies. She would send a letter first. If that didn’t work, she would send her no-nonsense, very married assistant Elisa Jenkins to ask for it, since Elisa could sweet-talk her way into or out of just about anything. She just didn’t want to have to talk to him herself. She was too embarrassed, too confused by what she had done, and somewhere between baffled and furious about what he had done in return. Being painfully honest with herself, however, she had to admit she was far more upset with herself than she was with him.

She had spent years going out of her way to avoid any situation that could embarrass herself or her family. For most of her life, she had lived in fear of proving that she would never be as refined as her mother, as capable as her younger sister, or that she would make a mistake that will wind up all over the press the way it so often had with Cord. Like her oldest brother Gabe, a senator now running for governor, she understood her duty to her family and its reputation, and had learned long ago to suppress every rebellious instinct she’d ever had.

Or so she’d thought before last Tuesday night.

She set the blue mug with its bright sunflowers back down, rubbing her forehead as if the motion could somehow erase the memory. It seemed to be one of those annoying paradoxes that the more a person tried to forget something, the more she thought about it. And thinking about her behavior with Matt piled guilt on top of regret and a whole host of other emotions she knew she didn’t deserve to escape. She’d never in her life had a one-night stand. Never even considered it.

Until Matt.

She’d always been afraid she was susceptible to him. She’d just had no idea how susceptible she truly was. It seemed he’d barely touched her and she’d not only thrown caution to the wind, she’d flat-out forgotten caution existed.

A movement across the room rudely interrupted her self-flagellation.

Dropping her hand, she felt her heart jerk against her ribs.

It seemed she wouldn’t have to go after Matt after all. He filled her doorway, a six-foot, two-inch wall of raw male tension civilized by a beautifully tailored navy-blue suit.

His steel-gray eyes skimmed from the neat twist of her hair, down the buttons of her tailored black jacket and moved back up to settle with an invasive jolt of heat on her mouth.

The inhibitions he’d stripped away right along with her clothes returned in spades.

Taking a step into the functional but feminine room, he lifted his bold glance to her eyes. “You didn’t return my call.”

There was a reason for that. “I…didn’t know what to say.”

“How about, ‘I made it home fine.’ Or, ‘I had a good time. Yes, I’d like to go to dinner sometime. Maybe take in a play.’”

He didn’t understand. The woman he’d been with, the one it seemed he’d wanted to see again, hadn’t really been…her. “Please.” She rose, glancing past him, uneasy with fear that her assistant might arrive any moment and overhear. “Would you close the door.”

“No need.” His chiseled features seemed as tight as the deep tones of his voice as he crossed the industrial-gray carpet. “I’m not here about anything but the auction, Ashley. I got your message loud and clear.” He stopped in front of her desk, the overhead lights catching hints of silver in his sun-bleached blond hair. “I just came to bring you this.”

Reaching inside his jacket, he removed a check from its inner pocket and held it out to her. “You don’t need to work on the project. I’ll donate the money, anyway.”

She looked down at the bold writing on his personal check. He’d written it out to the foundation in exactly the amount he’d bid. But it was his hand that held her attention. He clearly didn’t run his business from behind a desk. His hands were a working man’s. Broad, blunt fingered, capable. There were calluses at the base of his fingers. She knew. She’d felt them when he’d cupped her face, skimmed them down her naked back.

The thought brought other memories she’d desperately tried to erase. Taking what he offered, she forced herself not to snatch it in her haste to mentally change the subject.

Her glance barely grazed his chin.

“I appreciate the donation,” she murmured, relieved that he seemed as anxious as she did to forget what had happened. “And I appreciate that you want to let me off the hook. But I do have to do the work.

“The story about you bidding for me was in the society section of yesterday’s paper,” she informed him, politely, because manners were the shield she used to get through just about everything. “Entertainment Tonight and People magazine have already picked it up, and a network called this morning to send a crew to film my progress for a documentary. The money they offered to the foundation for the rights will build a hundred houses. I’m not in a position to back out now.”

That had not been at all what Matt had been prepared to hear. He’d thought he’d walk in, hand over the check, tell her he expected nothing in return and let it go at that. But then, he had to admit that he hadn’t been prepared for anything that had happened with her lately.

He could feel the acid in his stomach churning as his glance moved from her impeccable clothing to the painfully neat and organized space surrounding her. Not so much as a paper clip was out of place in the cool blues and grays of the surprisingly unassuming office. The prints on the walls—a Monet, a Renoir, a Degas—were nicely framed but inexpensive. Her oak desk and blue chair were very much like the one her absent secretary or assistant used in the outer office. He’d been under the impression that Kendricks did everything on a grand scale. The ones he associated with now certainly did, anyway.

The modern thirty-story building was populated mostly by law and accounting firms that rented space from Kendrick Management Company. The upper four floors belonged exclusively to The Kendrick Group, Inc. Located there was an enormous boardroom, her father’s suite of offices, an office Cord saw maybe once a quarter, and the offices of the sizable staff it took to oversee a conglomerate involved in everything from computers and commodities to wineries and world-class sports teams.

Everything upstairs spoke of wealth and power.

By comparison, the offices of the Kendrick Foundation were downright austere. What he saw here was pleasant enough, almost serene, he supposed, but it spoke of an almost obsessive bent toward order.

The rigid control she seemed to surround herself with probably explained a lot about her, he thought. But with her studiously avoiding his eyes, he was far more interested in how her air of untouchable refinement could still provoke defenses in him.

There had been a time when she had made him feel as if he were nowhere near good enough to deserve her attention, wasn’t worthy enough for even a few moments of her time, much less her interest. The way she would turn away when she saw him coming, or hurry past without speaking had only added to the quiet rage of inequity that had simmered inside him for so long he hadn’t even known it was there.

He could have sworn he had grown beyond the buried anger and resentments of his youth. After the other night with her, he’d thought she’d grown up, too, or at least grown beyond the snobbish, pampered-princess stage that had made it nearly impossible for her to go anywhere near him.

It seemed little about her had changed, though. Apparently, her mood and a half a bottle of one of California’s better vintages had only masked her feelings about him. She hadn’t even had the decency to return his call when he’d phoned to make sure she’d made it home all right.

She was clearly back to avoiding him again. Which was fine with him. The less he had to do with her himself, the better off he would be. It felt demoralizing enough to think that she’d had to nearly get drunk to let him touch her. It only added insult to injury that he couldn’t get the feel of her out of his mind.

He was working on it, though. He just wished he hadn’t totally forgotten about the media attention she would attract.

Jamming his hands into his slacks’ pockets to keep from jamming them through his hair, he mentally kicked himself for what he’d done. Watching her the other night, seeing her so cool and poised, he had simply wanted her to acknowledge that he existed. He had no idea now why that had mattered. He wasn’t feeling particularly proud of his actions, either.

Picturing her on a construction site was impossible.

“I suppose you don’t have a lot of choice now,” he conceded, figuring he should probably be grateful all that polished poise was there. Considering what he’d gotten her into, it probably kept her from going for his throat. “When do you plan to go?”

“I haven’t planned anything yet.”

“There are a couple of projects scheduled here in Richmond for the first of September. Those will be the easiest in terms of proximity.”