Winning Sara's Heart

“Yes, I do. I talked to Mrs. Holden and she thought it sounded like a great plan.”

“Oh, Mary, that…would be…it would be great,” she managed to say around a lump in her throat.

“Sara!” Hughes came barreling out of the kitchen, striding in her direction like a man on a mission.

She stood quickly, picking up her teacup. “I need to get back to work.”

“Tell you what, come in tomorrow right after you finish here, and we can all sit down and iron out the details and get you familiarized with the work involved.”

“Thank you,” she breathed just before Hughes got to them.

“Mrs. Garner, forgive me for the interruption,” he said, then looked at Sara. “We just received a reservation for twenty in half an hour. We need to get things set up.”

“Yes, sir,” she said, and gathering her teacup, smiled at Mary. “Thanks, and I’ll come by tomorrow,” she said, then headed back to the kitchen.

“Sara?” Leo called to her.

She stopped by the bar. “What?”

“That guy, the one who left the huge tip?”

“What about him?”

“He left this, too,” he said, and held up a single key.

She went closer and looked at the key, about three inches long, gold, with what looked like leather molded to the top of it and a monogrammed E on both sides. “What is it, a house key or a car key?”

“I don’t know, but the guy is either locked out of his house, or his car’s not going anywhere.” He dropped the key in his tip glass, and said, “If he comes in again, and I’m not here, let him know?”

Apologize and get his key back to him if she ever saw him again. “Sure thing.” But hopefully her mysterious defender wouldn’t return. Otherwise she might lose this very necessary job for good.

Chapter Three

One week later

In the master suite of his ranch house just south of Dallas, E. J. threw clothes into a leather overnight case lying open on his massive poster bed. The house, a sprawling adobe structure that had once belonged to the biggest oil baron in the area, was surrounded by rolling acres of grazing land. He’d bought it because it let him be alone whenever he wanted. He had the money to do it, so why not. Although security was breached from time to time, in general he felt safe here.

At the moment, safety wasn’t on his mind. His father was. As he tossed in the last of his clothes, he said, “Run that by me again, Dad?”

He glanced over his shoulder at Ray Dan Sommers, who stood, arms folded, feet braced, without a bit of apology in his expression. Ray was sixty-five years old and looked every day of it, with weathered skin and a sinewy body that came from years of working the oil fields. And he’d just dropped a bomb on E. J. “You heard me, Sonny,” his father said.

His father was sure he knew what was best for his only child, a thirty-nine-year-old whom he persisted in calling “Sonny” when he was trying to get something past him. E. J., dressed only in his jeans and boots, his dark brown hair still damp from the shower and slicked back from his now clean-shaven face, snapped his case shut. As he reached for a white T-shirt, he said, “Don’t call me Sonny, and you heard me, too.”

He tugged the shirt over his head, then pulled it down as he looked at Ray again. “Explain,” he said tightly as he tucked the shirt into the waistband of his Levi’s.

Ray backed up a bit as they met gazes, but he didn’t back down. “It seemed like a real good idea. You know, it’s PR, it’s image-shaping, like the big boys say.” Ray was in his usual jeans, plaid shirt and worn boots. He frowned, drawing his gray eyebrows together over hazel eyes, and stroked the beard stubble on his chin. “With you back in negotiations with LynTech, it couldn’t hurt for you to show your magnanimous side. Charity’s good and it shows there’s no hard feelings about that mess last week. Besides, it’ll give you a big tax write-off to use your place in Houston for LynTech’s charity ball.” He shrugged. “It all works out.”

“Why didn’t you check with me first?” E. J. asked, his exasperation showing in his tone.

The son faced the father, each the echo of the other, but with twenty-six years of aging separating them. Ray almost matched his son’s six-foot height, and they were both lean. Both had brown hair, with Ray’s laced with a good dose of gray.

“You’re right, E. J., dead right,” Ray conceded, catching E. J. a bit by surprise. His dad seldom backed down on anything. “You were busy with…” He shrugged. “Well, you were with Heather, and you seemed busy.” A sly smile touched his lips. “I’d never interrupt that.”

“When was this?”

“A few days back. I came out, saw the two of you at the pool and figured you didn’t need to talk business then.”

Ray made it sound as if they’d been having an orgy. Heather McCain had come out to see him before she left for New York. What Ray didn’t know, and what was none of his business, was that they’d decided it was time to move on, that their relationship had run its course. He had a feeling she’d been waiting for some declaration of love, but it never came, so she’d cut her losses. “So you just agreed for me?”

“They were asking, and I didn’t want to interrupt you about something like that, so I said it would be okay.”

“Just let LynTech use my place in Houston for a charity ball for some day-care-center thing?” he asked, still annoyed but starting to think that it might not be a totally rotten idea. He didn’t have much to do with kids, and probably never would, but it couldn’t hurt to help out that way. He just hated being volunteered.

“They’re doing stuff for a pediatric wing at the hospital, sort of sharing the donations or something, and the only place they had to hold it in was an old auditorium. That wasn’t right.”

“They use the place, and that’s it?”

“Sure, mostly.”

“Mostly?” E. J. shook his head with a sigh. “What else?”

“Nothing big. They just asked if you could be there for the ball. I said, sure you would.”

“Dad, why in the hell—”

“Why not? You can be there in a blink of an eye on that fancy helicopter you got waiting for you now. And you’re going to be heading to Houston off and on during the year, now that the deal with LynTech is going through, and you agreed to stay involved for the first year. I just didn’t know you’d be going up there before the ball and staying at the house.”

“You were wrong,” he muttered.

“Yeah, sure, I know. I thought you’d fly in, just zip there and zip back. Even so, the place in Houston is the size of a small country. You can have all the privacy you need, and you can do whatever you want. Have Heather there if you want, and no one’s the wiser.”

He was right about the size of the sprawling estate in Houston. “Heather’s in New York.”

“Well, women always seem to find you irresistible,” Ray said with a sly smile.

“They find my money irresistible,” he muttered.

“Hey, you’re my son, and the women find the Sommers men irresistible.”

“Sure, Dad, sure,” he said. But he knew one woman who didn’t. The blond waitress with those aquamarine eyes. He remembered all too well her anger at him for trying to help, a memory that had sneaked back into his mind at the strangest times this past week. “I’m going for business,” he said firmly as he turned and reached for his suitcase.

“And if Heather shows up there?”

“She’s in New York and we aren’t seeing each other anymore.” He wished he hadn’t said that last part when Ray came closer.

“Sonny? What did you do now? She was nice, real pretty, and you would have had great kids.”

“Oh, Dad, I’ve told you, we just had fun. No marriage, no kids, nothing. And it’s over.”