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“Mr. Reed—” she began.

He held up a hand. It wasn’t the manicured, soft-looking hand of an idle businessman, she noted with some fascination. He had calluses on his palm, and new-looking scrapes that skimmed the edge of his blunt fingers. How was it that she’d never noticed his hands before? “Like now,” he said. “I’m not finished telling you why I cut you off about that story.”

Molly frowned. He shook his head. She swore the sparkle was back in his eyes, turning the steel color a softer shade of gray. “I bug the hell out of you,” he said, “don’t I?”

“Yes.”

The flat response made him laugh. The rich laugh surprised her. It came easily and sounded well-used. Where, she wondered, was the Sam Reed she’d been sparring with in editorial meetings? He steepled his hands beneath his chin and gave her a dry look. “So you made me the victim of a personal ad to your friend?”

Molly nodded. “JoAnna called on Friday afternoon. She usually does. It’s a ritual we’ve had since we graduated.” If a person could die from embarrassment, Molly figured, she would become an obituary at any moment. In hindsight, it all seemed extremely juvenile. Even trying to explain it only seemed to make it worse, but her sense of honor demanded that she take the licks. “I was angry. I vented. JoAnna was having a lousy day, too. She reminded me of the game. I wrote the ad and e-mailed it to her. I thought it would make her laugh. I forgot to clear it from my screen before I left for the night.”

“And the stringer found it and diligently put it into copy by the Saturday-morning deadline for today’s personals,” he guessed.

“Yes.” Molly rubbed her palms on the rough fabric of her jeans. “I didn’t know until this morning.”

“Imagine my surprise.”

There it was again, that slight thread of humor in his tone. Molly grimaced. “I was mortified. I’m sure it was worse for you. I—it was childish and irresponsible. There’s nothing I could say that would adequately apologize.”

He picked up the unopened envelope that held her resignation. “So you came in prepared to quit?”

“It seemed like the most honorable thing to do.”

He nodded, his expression thoughtful. With a quick twist of his wrist, he tore the envelope in two and tossed it into his trash can. “Think of something else.”

Molly stared at him. “I beg your pardon?”

“Think of something else. You’re the best journalist this paper has. You should probably be working in a bigger market—”

“I don’t want to work in a bigger market.”

“Let me finish, Molly,” he said, and damned if his lips didn’t twitch into a half smile. “You should probably be working in a larger market, but you decided to stay here. Why?”

“It’s my home.” She shrugged. “My family lives here. I’ve worked for the Sentinel since I was eleven years old.”

“Paper route?”

“Yes.”

He nodded. “First job?”

“If you don’t count weeding Mrs. Ellerby’s vegetable garden.”

“That was seasonal work. It’s different.”

Molly had no response to that, so she simply watched him. The collar of his white shirt lay in stark contrast to the bronzed column of his throat. Was it her imagination, or was his tan deeper this morning than it had been on Friday? She simply couldn’t picture him doing anything as mundane or sedentary as strolling along the beach at Martha’s Vineyard. She thought about the scrape she’d seen on his fingers and could easily imagine him, shirtless, laboring under the afternoon sun. Maybe on a sailboat, though even that seemed too much like recreation. He leaned back in his chair and placed his hands behind his head. “My first job was a paper route. I liked the way the papers smelled when I picked them up.”

The admission surprised her, and yet, it didn’t. Edward Reed’s son probably wouldn’t have needed a paper route for spending money. The renowned media mogul could well afford to give his son a generous allowance. Though few people in the industry were unaware that Sam was Reed’s illegitimate son, Reed had made his acceptance of the child abundantly clear. But, the same thing that told her he didn’t spend weekends at the beach said he hadn’t spent his childhood living on his father’s money. “Did you have to roll and band them for delivery when you picked them up, or did they come that way?”

“I did it,” he said with a slight nod. “Kids today have it easy. They get those plastic bags.”

“Rolling’s half the skill,” she concurred. “If you don’t tuck the edges, you can’t toss the paper right.”

“Comes unwrapped in midair.”

“Plus you get paper cuts when you pull ’em from the bag.”

He smiled. It was dazzling. Molly couldn’t ever recall seeing him smile so naturally. This was a smile straight from a remembered pleasure. Her heart skipped a beat. His eyes crinkled at the corners when he smiled. The observation surprised her. The slight lines suggested that his smile, like his laugh, was something he used often. “The day I finally mastered the doormat toss onto old man Greely’s porch—” he shrugged “—I felt like Nolan Ryan pitching a no hitter.” The faraway look left his eyes as he met her gaze again. “He had shrubs. Boxwoods. They blocked the sidewalk.”

Molly nodded. “I had a house like that. You had to float the paper over the shrubs so it landed on the mat.”

“Um. And Greely had a covered porch. So the paper had to go between the roof of the porch and the boxwoods and land on the mat—”

They said in unison, “Without hitting the door.”

Molly laughed. “I’m impressed. I was pretty good, but not that good.”

“I practiced for weeks.”

“I hope he tipped well.”

“I don’t think I ever got a tip out of the man. But he didn’t yell at me for hitting his door either. And when the paper I worked for threatened to take away my route and consolidate it into truck delivery, he went to the circulation director and saved my job. I never knew what he told that guy, but I kept the route until I graduated from high school.” He shook his head. “The day I graduated, Fred Greely sent me a check for a hundred dollars.”

Molly found her first smile of the morning. “No wonder you love the newspaper business.”

“Just like you?” he asked softly.

She hesitated. “Yes. Just like me.”

“I thought so. So find something else. You can’t quit.”

“I’m not sure what you mean,” she said carefully.

Sam pushed the paper aside and folded his hands on his desk. “May I make a suggestion?”

“Since when do you ask me if you can make a suggestion?” she quipped.

Another slight smile. The dent—dare she call it a dimple—in his left cheek deepened when he smiled. And that dimple, that infuriatingly devilish dimple, did something to his face that made her stop breathing.

Oh, dear Lord, she thought, as she felt the flutter in the pit of her stomach, and recognized the way her lungs constricted. It can’t be. It can’t and must not be. But even as she struggled for breath and pressed a hand to her belly, she knew the signs. They were horrifying and impossible evidence that she found the man attractive. Her sisters had been telling her for weeks that the animosity she felt toward him was one step away from passion. She’d denied it. Vehemently. Too vehemently. With the sun glinting on his dark hair, and his damned dimple making her body temperature notch up, she had to fight the urge to bury her face in her hands.

Not again, she told herself fiercely. And for God’s sake not now. For years, she’d known that she had a chronic habit of falling for unsuitable men. With the same reckless abandon she lived life, she’d tumbled headfirst into relationships. Her sisters had been warning her for years. If they found out she’d fallen for Sam Reed, she’d never hear the end of it. Blissfully, Sam seemed unaware of her momentary lapse into insanity. He chuckled softly at her quip, and the sound made her stomach flip-flop. “Oh, no,” Molly muttered beneath her breath.

“What?”

“Nothing,” she assured him, fiercely demanding that her nerves quiet down. “You were saying?” she asked with a feeling of dread.

He looked at her curiously but continued, “I was saying that I’d like to offer you a way to make reparations for this—indiscretion.”