by Karen Booth
“So you know. The timetable.” Adam blew out a deep breath and set down his fork.
Her heart went out to him. She could only imagine what he was going through, about to ascend to the immensely powerful job he’d likely dreamed of since he was a boy, all because his father’s cancer was terminal. “Yes. He told me in confidence. I think he needed me to understand just how urgent this is. It’s crucial that the board of directors see you in a better light so they’ll approve your appointment to CEO. The scandal needs to be a distant memory by the time the succession is formally announced at the company gala. That’s only a few weeks away.”
“The board of directors. Good luck with that.” He shook his head, just as his phone rang. “I’m sorry. I have to take this.”
“Of course.”
Adam got up from his seat and walked into the living room. Melanie was thankful for a break from persuading him that she could do this. Even if he cooperated, the pressure of turning around public perception in a month was monumental. She wasn’t entirely sure she could pull it off. She only knew that she had to.
“I’m so sorry,” he said, when he got off the phone. “Problems with the launch of a new app next week.”
“Please don’t apologize. I understand.” Melanie got up and took her dish to the sink. She rinsed it and put it in the dishwasher. “You should finish your dinner. I’m going to grab my suitcase and get some rest. If you could point me in the direction of the guest room.”
“Call me old-fashioned, but no woman should have to go out in the rain for a suitcase. I’ll do it.” He held up a finger, just as she was about to protest. “I insist.”
She watched from the doorway as he braved the rain and wind without a jacket. His hair and shirt were soaked by the time he was back inside. He stomped on the entryway rug and combed his fingers through his dripping-wet hair. Her mind flashed to their night together—stepping out of the shower with him, sinking into the softest bathmat she’d ever felt beneath her feet. He’d raked his hand through his soaked locks, a sultry look in his eyes that said he was ready to claim her again. He’d coiled his arms around her naked waist, pressed his hands into her back, and kissed her neck so delicately that she’d trembled beneath his touch.
She might faint if she ever saw him toy with his wet hair again.
“Your room is upstairs. Second door on the right.”
Adam trailed behind her as she climbed the grand staircase.
“This one?” she asked, poking her head inside, still a bit light-headed from the memory of the shower.
Adam reached past her and flipped on the light, illuminating a bedroom outfitted with a beautifully dressed king bed, a stacked stone fireplace and its own seating area. “I hope this will work.” He followed her into the room, placing her suitcase on a luggage stand next to a gorgeous Craftsman-style bureau.
“It’s perfect.” Melanie turned to face him, his physical presence exercising undue influence on her as he rubbed the closely cropped stubble dotting his jawline. Her brain wasn’t sure how to react to his kindness, but her body knew exactly what it thought. The flutter in her chest returned. Heat flooded her, the memory of his fingers tracing the length of her spine while he had her in a bed much like the one she was standing next to. “Thank you for everything. The room. Fetching my suitcase.”
“I hate to disappoint you, but I’m not the cad the world thinks I am.” He strode past her, stopping in the doorway.
She wasn’t sure what Adam was, where exactly the truth lay. Maybe she’d find out this weekend. And maybe she’d never know. “That’s good. That will make it a lot easier to show the world the best side of Adam Langford.”
A clever smirk crossed his face. “You’ve seen me naked, so I’d say you’re definitely qualified to say which is my best side.”
Melanie’s brain sputtered. Her cheeks flamed with heat.
“Good night,” he said, turning and walking away.
Three
Melanie sat up in bed, half-awake, tugging the butter-soft duvet to her chest. Last night hadn’t gone according to plan, but in many ways, it was a relief to have the whole, stupid, ridiculously hot thing out in the open.
It’d taken hours to fall asleep. Adam’s reminder that she’d seen him naked had only set her on the course of determining which side was indeed his best. After revisiting their night together...kissing in the limo, unzipping her dress in his living room, peeling the paint off the walls in the shower...she’d decided the front. Definitely the front.
Too bad she could never see him like that again.
She threw back the covers and glanced outside at the open vista of the grounds surrounding the house. A creek rushed along the edge of manicured gardens, threatening to breach its rocky banks. Towering pines framed the view of the Blue Ridge Mountains beyond. It was a new day, storms a distant memory. Time to start fresh.
She retrieved her makeup bag, beelining to the beautifully appointed guest bath—gray granite countertops and silvery glass tile, a soaking tub for two. After a quick shower, she dabbed on foundation and undereye concealer to hide her lack of sleep. A sweep of blush, some eyeliner and a coat of mascara came next. Polished was appropriate, not done-up.
Finishing with a sheer layer of pale peach lip gloss, Melanie rubbed her lips together and popped them to the mirror. She could hear her mother’s syrupy Virginia drawl. You catch more flies with honey than vinegar. She remembered first hearing that when she was a little girl, only six years old. It was the strongest memory she had of her mother, which also made it the most bittersweet. She and her sisters lost her to a car accident months later.
Melanie ruffled her pixie-cut hair and swept it to the side. Lopping off and dying her hair to exorcise the memory of her lying, cheating ex might have been drastic, but she’d had this crazy idea about renewal. It hadn’t really worked. She still hadn’t gotten past the fact that she’d thought Josh would propose. She hadn’t forgotten that he’d packed up and left with another woman, leaving her to fend for herself. No, she might’ve looked a little different on the outside, but she was the same Melanie on the inside—hurt some of the time, lonely most of the time, determined not to quit all of the time.
Back in her room, she slipped on a white scoop-neck tee, black cardigan and slim-fitting pair of jeans. She stepped into ballet flats and hurried downstairs, the smell of coffee wafting in from the kitchen. She was invigorated, undaunted, ready to go. And then she saw Adam.
You’ve got to be kidding me. She’d come downstairs prepared to work, but she hadn’t bargained on Adam’s bare chest. Or his bare stomach. Or an extra eight hours of scruff along his jaw and the narrow trail of hair below his belly button. More than that, she hadn’t bargained on any part of him glistening with sweat.
“Morning.” He stood in the kitchen, consulting his phone. “I made coffee. Let me get you a mug.” He turned, opened the cabinet and reached for a coffee cup. Gentlemanly behavior, all while showing off the sculpted contours of his shoulders and defined ripples of his back.
Her eyes drifted south, calling into question whether the front really was the best. The way he filled out the rear view of his basketball shorts made a compelling case for the back. Then she remembered what that view looked like without clothes. She was all kinds of conflicted over the best-side verdict.
“Cream? Sugar?” he asked, filling her mug.
“Both, please.” She shook her head in an attempt to think straight. “I’ll do it.”
“Help yourself.” He gestured to a small white pitcher and sugar bowl. “Sleep well?”
She spooned the sugar into the mug, gluing her focus to the steaming coffee. “I did, thank you. I’m ready to get started whenever you are. We have a lot of ground to cover today.”
“Already got in my workout.”
“So I see.” She turned, but even
a fraction of a second was too long to look at Adam right now. Her eyes darted all over the room, desperate for something undesirable to look at.
“Is something wrong?”
“No. It’s just...” Her voice trailed off, betraying her. “You can’t put on a shirt?”
“Why? Does it bother you? I can’t help the fact that I’m hot.” He grabbed her attention with his blazing smile, smoothing his hand over the flat plane of his stomach.
“Excuse me?”
“Hot, as in temperature hot.”
Damn him. “It’s a little difficult for us to keep things professional when you’re traipsing around the house half-dressed.”
“I assure you, I have never once traipsed.”
“Regardless, isn’t it polite to wear a shirt to breakfast?”
“It is. My mother always made me wear one when I was a kid. She also told me to floss every day and wear clean underwear. So I’ll be two-for-three today. Nobody’s perfect.”
He knows what he’s doing. He’s making me crazy because he can. “Look, we have a ton of work to do. I suggest you grab a shower so we can start.”
“It’ll go faster if I have someone to scrub my back.”
“Adam, please. The contract I signed? No fraternization or interpersonal relations? I take those things very seriously, and I know your dad does, too.”
“We both know the only way to enforce that is the honor system.” His eyebrows bounced.
“Yeah, well, you need to keep your honor system in your pants.”
“Hey, you’re the one suggesting showers. Not me.”
Melanie exhaled in exasperation. “Things will go smoother today if you cooperate. Why do you have to joke around about everything?”
“Because it’s Saturday and I work my ass off all week and I’d much rather read a book or catch a game on TV than practice answers to interview questions and talk about whether or not you think Oprah will like me.”
“First off, Oprah said no. Secondly, I know you hate this, but we have to put the scandal to an end.” Her phone buzzed. “Excuse me. I should check this.” She reached into her pocket. The push notification on her phone did not bring good news. “There’s something new in the papers this morning. A reporter got your ex-fiancée to comment on the scandal.” She shook her head, feeling a little sorry for Adam. “This is why you need to let me do my job. This can’t be what you want.”
Adam buried his face in his hand. Jack wandered over and nudged Adam’s hip. “Hey, buddy.” Adam’s voice was tinged in sadness, which seemed odd considering his fondness for his dog. He crouched down and looked Jack in the face, ruffling his ears. “No, that’s not what I want.”
* * *
Adam parked himself on the long leather bench in his walk-in closet and untied his sneakers, cradling his cell phone between his ear and shoulder. His mother answered after a few rings.
“Mom, hi. Is Dad around?”
“Well, hello to you, too. You don’t want to talk to me?”
“Of course I want to talk to you, but I was hoping to talk to Dad and see how he’s doing.” He peeled off his socks and tossed them across the room, connecting with the hamper.
“Your father’s fine. I’m screening his calls. Otherwise, he takes work calls all weekend and never gets any rest. He needs his rest.”
Dad. Once a workaholic, always a workaholic. “Has he been tired since he got home last night?”
“Yes. Fridays are the worst. I don’t know why he continues with this charade of going into LangTel every day.”
“I don’t know why he does it either.”
LangTel was the telecom corporation Adam’s father started from the ground up in the seventies. Adam had grown up heir apparent, but once he went to Harvard Business School, he realized that—just like his father and every Langford man before him—he would never be content taking over someone else’s empire. He wanted to build his own, which was precisely why he started his first company while he was still in school. It made him his first fortune before the age of twenty-four.
Even so, when his parents had asked him to help run LangTel from behind the scenes after his father first fell ill, he had done his familial duty. At the time, Roger Langford’s prognosis was uncertain and they didn’t want him to appear “weak” for fear of the company stock plummeting.
It was meant to be a dry run and Adam passed with flying colors, but it was the worst year of his life—preparing to launch his current company while running interference at LangTel. The timing couldn’t have been any worse—right on the heels of his fiancée ending their two-year relationship. LangTel had worn a hole in his psyche.
“At some point,” Adam continued, “we’re going to have to tell the world that his cancer is far worse than anyone realizes. I’m tired of the song and dance.”
“I agree, but your father doesn’t want to say a word until things have been cleared up for you with, you know, the newspapers.”
His mother couldn’t bring herself to utter the word scandal, and he was thankful for it. At least it had been only photographs that had been leaked and not something worse, like a sex tape. Adam glanced at his Tag Heuer watch, which sat atop the mahogany bureau in the center of the closet. It was nearly nine thirty and Melanie had been clear that she was ready to get to work. “Hey, Mom. Can I put you on speaker?”
“You know I hate that.”
“I’m sorry. I just have to get into the shower in a minute.” He pressed the speaker icon on his iPhone. He shucked his basketball shorts and boxer briefs and tossed them over his head, but missed the hamper this time. “I’ll talk to Dad about it when I’m back in the city. Maybe I can come by on Sunday afternoon after I fly in.”
“Be sure you call first. There are still photographers camped outside our building. You might have to sneak in through the service entrance.”
Such a pain. It was one thing for him to have to deal with the photographers, quite another for his mother and father to have to do it. “Okay.” He grabbed his robe from the end of the bench and slipped it on.
“If you want to stay for dinner, we could invite your sister, too. Your father and I would love that.”
“That sounds great. Anna and I can work on Dad, see if we can talk to him some more about working Anna into the succession plan for LangTel. We both know she’ll do an incredible job.” He no longer talked to his parents about the fact that he didn’t want to run LangTel. It was always dismissed as ludicrous. Now his focus was getting his dad to give his sister, Anna, the chance she wanted and deserved.
“Your father would never dream of letting your sister run the company. He wants Anna shopping for a husband, not sitting in a boardroom.”
“Why can’t she do both?”
“I’m about to lose your father, and now you don’t want me to have any grandchildren? You won’t have any until you find the right woman, and Lord knows when that will happen.”
There she goes. “Look, Mom. I have to go. I have a houseguest and I need to shower.” He strode into the bathroom, across the slate tile floor.
“Houseguest?”
He reached into the shower, cranking the faucet handle. “Yes. Melanie Costello, the woman Dad hired to do this futile PR campaign.”
“It’s not futile. We need to preserve your father’s legacy. When he’s gone, you’ll be the head of this family. It’s important that you’re seen for your talents, not for the women you run around with.”
He sighed. He didn’t like that his mom saw him this way, but he also didn’t like feeling as if he couldn’t make his own damn decisions, bad or not. He’d be thirty-one soon, for God’s sake.
“So tell me. Is she pretty?” she asked.
He couldn’t help but laugh. “Mom, this isn’t a date. It’s work. Nothing else.” He couldn’t tell his mot
her that he wouldn’t mind if this was a date or that he and Melanie had a past. He certainly couldn’t tell her how much he loved being around Melanie, even when she got mad. It made her already vibrant blue eyes blaze, which was particularly intoxicating when packaged with gentle curves and those unforgettable lips.
The mirrors in the bathroom began to fog up. “I need to go, Mom. Tell Dad to call me if he has a chance. I’m worried about him.”
“I’m worried, too, darling.”
Adam said his goodbyes and slid his phone onto the marble vanity. He dropped the robe to the floor and stepped into the spray, willing the hot water to wash away his worry about his father, if only for a moment. His mother wasn’t doing well either. He could hear the stress in every word she said.
He lathered shampoo and rinsed it away. However heartbreaking his father’s illness, he could do nothing about it except to make his father’s final months happy ones. That was much of the reason Adam had agreed to the PR campaign. The final deciding factor he’d kept to himself—the instant he looked up the Costello Public Relations website and saw Melanie’s picture, he had to say yes. After a year of wondering who she was, he not only knew the identity of his Cinderella, he’d be working with her.
Adam shut off the water and toweled himself dry before heading back into his walk-in closet, bypassing the custom-made suit he’d worn on the corporate jet into Asheville. Those clothes were made for the city, and he relished a respite from Manhattan and the media microscope. He certainly preferred the uniform of his freer existence in North Carolina—jeans, plaid shirts and work boots. Choosing to dress in exactly that, he headed downstairs to find Melanie, curious how she planned to air his dirty laundry in public.
Four
The inside of Melanie’s purse might have resembled a yard sale, but she never forgot where she put something.
“Have you seen my binders? The ones with the interview schedule?” she asked, peeking behind the cushions of the massive sectional in Adam’s living room. Nothing.
