Not Strictly Business!: Prodigal Son / The Boss and Miss Baxter / The Baby Deal

“Knock, knock.”

He looked up and saw Samantha walking into his office. She looked from him to Arnie.

“Am I early or late?” she asked with a smile.

“Neither,” he said. “Right on time. You’re joining our meeting in progress.”

Now that she had the job, she’d obviously decided there was no need to dress conservatively anymore—at least her definition of it. Gone were the black slacks and black-and-white jacket. In their place she wore a long skirt in a swirl of reds, greens and purples. A dark green sweater hung loosely past her hips. She had a patterned scarf draped over one shoulder, a half-dozen bracelets on each wrist and earrings that tinkled and swayed as she walked.

“This is Arnie,” Jack said, pointing to the man sitting across from him at the conference table. “He’s from IT. He’ll be working with you on the Internet expansion. You tell him what you want and he’ll tell you if it’s possible. Arnie, this is Samantha.”

The other man rose and wiped his palms on his jeans, then held out his hand. His mouth opened, closed, then opened again.

“Ah, hi,” Arnie said, his eyes wide, his cheeks bright with color.

“Good morning.” Samantha beamed at him. “So you’re going to be my new best friend, right? And you won’t ever want to tell me no.”

Arnie stammered, then sank back in his seat. Jack did his best not to smile. Samantha had made another conquest.

He wasn’t surprised. She walked into a room and men were instantly attracted to her. He was no exception. She was a weakness for which he’d found no antidote. Even now he found himself wanting to pull her close and run his hands through her curly hair. He wanted to stare into her eyes and feel her tremble in his embrace.

Not on this planet, he reminded himself. She hadn’t been interested ten years ago and he doubted that had changed.

Okay, she’d been interested once. Apparently once was enough where he was concerned. She’d made it more than clear she didn’t want a repeat performance.

“Don’t let Samantha push you around,” he told Arnie. “She has a tendency to do that.”

Samantha looked at him and raised her eyebrows. “Me? Are you kidding? I’m the picture of complete cooperation.”

“Uh-huh. Right until someone gets in your way. Then you’re a steamroller.”

Samantha sat next to Arnie and patted his hand. “Ignore him. Jack and I went to grad school together and he seems to remember things very differently. I’ve never steamrolled anyone.” She paused, then smiled. “Well, at least not often. I can get tenacious about what I want, though. And I’ve read different reports from your department, Arnie. People have been pushing for this expansion for a while.”

That surprised Jack. “I hadn’t heard that.”

Samantha looked at him. “His boss is the reason why. I also read memos from Roger explaining why it was all a bad idea. Apparently he had some backing on that.”

She didn’t specifically say by who, but Jack could guess. He doubted his father had been a fan of growing technology.

“That was the past,” he said. “Let’s focus on the future. You two need to get together and talk about specifics.”

Samantha jotted down a note on her pad of paper. “I’ll e-mail you, Arnie. You can let me know what works for you. I tend to put in long hours. I hope that’s okay.”

Arnie’s pale eyes practically glowed. “It’s fine. Sure. I’ll be there.” He stood and nodded. “Anytime. Just e-mail me.”

“Thanks for your help,” Jack said.

“Oh, yeah. No problem.”

The other man left. Jack waited until the door closed, then turned to Samantha.

“You’ve made a friend.”

“Arnie? He’s very sweet, or so I’ve been told. I think we’ll do fine together.”

Jack told himself that she would never be interested in the other man and even if she was, it wasn’t his business. He didn’t care who Samantha wanted in her life as long as she did her job. He very nearly believed himself, too.

“What have you got?” he asked.

“Lots and lots of great ideas,” she said with a smile. “I had an extremely productive weekend. I went over the existing Web site. It’s pretty basic. There’s so much room to improve and that’s what I want. I want to start with kids twelve and under as our first target audience and I want to dazzle them.”

She set a folder on the conference table and opened it. “We’ll deal with the teens later, but first, let’s get some buzz going. I want us to be the Web site the kids are dying to go to the second they get home from school. I want to do more than help them with their homework. I want us to be the coolest place on the Web. We can talk about sports and clothes and music. Movies, TV, trends. I was thinking we’d have an ‘Ask Annie’ kind of column.”

He stared at her. “Who’s Annie?”

She laughed. “I mean an advice column. Ask the resident expert. Annie, Mark, the name isn’t important. But here’s the cool part—it will be real-time and interactive. Like a chat room. I have a lot of ideas for developing all this. But our biggest concern is security. We’re going to have to go state-of-the-art so the kids are totally safe on the Web site.”

“I like it.”

“Good.”

Her smile widened and he felt it punch him right in the gut. Ever-present need growled to life.

“You don’t need to run all this by me,” he told her, doing his damnedest to ignore the blood rushing to his groin. “I trust you to run your department.”

“I know, but this is big stuff. I’m talking about huge changes.”

“That would be the reason I hired you.”

She studied him. “You really trust me with all this?”

“Of course.”

“Wow. Great. I guess I’ll get my team to pull it all together and then we’ll have a big presentation.”

“I look forward to it.” He leaned toward her. “That’s how I run things, Samantha,” he told her. “Until someone screws up, he or she has free rein.”

“I would have thought you were more the control type.”

“Because I wear a suit?”

“Sort of. You’re a lawyer. That doesn’t help with the image.”

“What if I went into environmental law?”

She grinned. “Did you?”

“No. Criminal.”