For a geeky-looking guy like him, it might have been a standard reaction, but Cole had spent his life around beautiful women. Nicky had won a swimsuit modeling contract right out of high school. Beautiful women gravitated to him for support when their boyfriends or lovers behaved in ways that were insensitive, that hurt them. Looking to him for male insight. And a way to help make situations better.

  Lucky for both him and them, he generally could.

  “Is something wrong?” Her voice was like a melody, and Cole stood.

  Felt his body towering over her, his slight paunch visible above the leather belt keeping his dress pants in place. He adjusted his tie, using it to cover the distention. And sat back down.

  “Lindsay?” he asked, stupidly as it turned out, since she’d already been announced.

  “Yes, I’m sorry I’m early—I just... I really want this job.” She was nervous.

  Immensely so.

  Which brought Cole back from whatever weird universe her arrival had plopped him in. “No worries,” he told her. “I was just going over your file. It’s more than impressive.” He knew how to put people at ease.

  With complete sincerity. Nothing he’d have to walk back later.

  The combination served him well. At work. And in life.

  Just noticing the portfolio she’d carried in with her as she pulled it up to open it on the back of an armchair, he invited her to have a seat. To use his desk. Smiled at her. “I’m eager to see your work,” he told her, leaning forward to help her balance the portfolio as she unzipped it. “Even virtually I can tell it pops.”

  So much so, he’d wanted to meet her. Even knowing that he probably wasn’t going to be able to hire her. The open position had come available with no warning right before delivery dates for holiday material. Meaning he had to fill it immediately. He had no time for relocation to happen, even if she agreed to the position once she knew the details.

  He’d been most intrigued by her landscapes entirely “painted” with dried florals, but knew there’d be no reason for her to have loaded those up in that leather binding for him to see. Were he a museum curator, and art show arranger, then certainly, but...

  “Oh, these are fantastic,” he blurted, breaking into his own thoughts as he picked up the two greeting cards she’d laid down first. Both depicting Christmas trees—made completely out of dried florals. He asked if he could take a photo of them, to show Brent Wilson, the owner of Elite Paper Company.

  “I know that Elite doesn’t have the capacity to use this medium, but you could get the same effect with the resins you already use. I know Elite uses plant-based, not synthetic,” she added, after giving him permission to photograph her work. And then, sitting in the chair across from his desk—on the edge of the chair—she chewed on her bottom lip, glancing from the total of ten cards, in various paint and pen mediums, she’d laid out before him. Then looking up at his face, and back down.

  Working for a man committed to quality first, Cole knew the best when he saw it. Was trying to wrangle a plan that would allow him to overwork a few people until she could come on board.

  Which went totally against his personal, as well as company, policies. People came first.

  Always.

  But the nervous woman sitting across from him obviously fit that designation, too.

  “The position is full-time, and requires you to work from our offices here, in the design studio located on the opposite wing of this floor.”

  He had to put an end to the interview before he led her on. Or made an offer he couldn’t keep.

  “That’s fine. I’ve already rented a place temporarily. In case I get the job.”

  Was this woman for real?

  “Is there any possibility you could start right away?”

  “As in now? This afternoon?” She hadn’t balked. At all.

  The stars were aligned, as Nicky would say.

  He grinned. “Tomorrow would be soon enough,” he half joked at the audacity of his request. “We’d start with me taking you to tour the production plant in Phoenix in the morning, so you could get a feel for how your designs will be implemented. Then you could familiarize yourself with the art studio here. Every artist has their own space off of a central area that houses the larger design tables, cutters and walls of supply cabinets filled with glues and embellishments, for the card design part of it all. Your office comes equipped with your own smaller drawing board.”

  He was rambling like a schoolboy. Or felt like one.

  Talking as though he’d hired her. When he’d practically given the job to someone else.

  “Starting tomorrow would be great,” she said then, standing as she started collecting her cards and placing them carefully back into her portfolio. “That gives me the afternoon to get moved into my apartment.”

  While he stood there grinning and nodding big, even for him, she named her new address. About a mile away from where they stood.

  One of the town’s most modest apartment complexes. Its only big complex. Filled mostly with college seniors and graduate students who no longer had dorms on campus.

  “We haven’t discussed terms,” he told her, confused as to why she didn’t seem to care about money or benefits at all. In his five years in his current position, he’d never met anyone even a little bit like this woman.

  She seemed to ooze emotion, but didn’t appear to care about the things that generally mattered most to the people he served. Many starving artists had found permanent, affluent homes at Elite Paper Company.

  “Oh, right.” Stopping with her hand on the zipper of her portfolio, she bit her bottom lip again. Clearly uncomfortable.

  Which put Cole right back on track. Easing the discomfort. He named the top end of the generous salary range that had been posted for the position. Rattled off the list of benefits that came with the money. And then, having been faced before with talented people who hadn’t yet been paid for their craft, he said, “If you need a retainer, we can head down to HR right now, get your paperwork done and I’ll approve whatever you need, up to a two-week pay period.”

  “Oh!” Gathering her things quickly, she practically ran for the door. “That’s okay. I’m good. I just...this was so...easy. I got the job?”

  Yeah, he was definitely off his mark with her. Way off. “You got the job.”

  She blinked. Frowned. Then her expression flattened into blankness. “Well, good then. If you tell me how to get to HR, I’ll go ahead and get that part done.”

  He walked her down, instead. Something he always did with new hires. But then he hung around, making excuses to do so, keeping an eye on her process at the desk in the far corner. Staying present until everything was signed and finalized.

  Which was something he’d never done before.

  Chapter Two

  Lindsay wasn’t in the car with Cole Bennet for five minutes the next morning before she was jittery again. Guilt, she figured.

  Fooled agitatedly with one of the three pairs of earrings hanging from her lobe. Worried that her colorfully tie-died spaghetti-strap dress and flip-flops, typical Lindsay Warren apparel, were wrong for a production plant tour.

  More guilt?

  And yet, working with Mary in HR the day before—and getting an impromptu tour of the studio space when she bumped into another artist on her way out of the building who offered to take her back and show her their area—she’d been fine. A bit excited even.

  In an apprehensive sort of way.

  But with Cole—as he’d told her to call him—there was more. She’d accepted a job from him under false pretenses. Was so much more than she’d said she was.

  She hadn’t lied to him. But she kept looking at his hands on the steering wheel and wondering what they’d feel like threading through her hair.

  Reason enough to feel remorse.

  It had to be a distraction. Her way of not thinking about the fact that she’d just accepted a job with her father’s company. That the man she was with knew Brent Wilson. But she pretended it was the guy’s aura. The essence that he seemed to carry with him into the space he occupied. At least any space with her in it.

  The guy was huge—a good nine inches taller than her. Like the bodyguard she’d initially suspected when Savannah had described him. Not someone she’d want to do wrong.

  Funny how the little bit of extra weight around his waist tempered any sense of fear she might otherwise have had around him. Alone with him.

  It didn’t make him appear any less strong.

  But his being not quite “perfect” by some women’s standards made him more accessible. Endeared her to him a bit.

  And, dammit, attracted her.

  Because appearances aside, she wasn’t perfect, either.

  She’d grown up with a piece of her soul missing. One she’d yet to find. Had resigned herself to the fact that she would never find it, until she’d met Savannah. And had witnessed, firsthand, some of the miracles Sierra’s Web had brought about.

  As they waited at the light that would let them access the ramp to enter the highway into Phoenix, Lindsay cringed as Cole turned and caught her looking at him.

  “Yes,” he said, grinning. “The red is real. The curls are as tight as they look. And I don’t change either because I kind of like both.”

  She might have thought he was self-conscious about both if not for the mastery of confidence he’d shown as he’d spoken.

  “I like them, too,” she told him. Deciding on the spot. The red hair, the curls, even the hint of freckles across the bridge of his nose, the rounded shape of his head—they reached out to her. Perfection in being different than the world’s norms where beauty was concerned. “I’d like to draw you.”

  But only if she could get the sense of happiness that walked into a room with the man. Maybe not happiness, her artist’s heart amended. More than happiness.

  Way more than contentment. Like she was bonding with him, which was ridiculous.

  The man seemed to genuinely like himself and the world he inhabited.

  Which was far more than she could say about herself.

  But what credibility did she have where he was concerned, really? She’d known the guy a total of an hour, adding up all the minutes they’d been in the same space together.

  “Well, that’s a first,” he said on a chuckle as he pulled onto the freeway.

  “What?”

  “I’ve been working around artists for years. Never before had one express a desire to get my likeness down.”

  Her estimation of Elite Paper artists went down a notch. Still, she’d expected the day touring her father’s production plant to be nothing more than disappointment.

  The thought brought her to the list of questions she’d committed to memory the night before, sitting alone in a sterile, cheaply furnished living area—one in which she could see the kitchen and the bedroom from the living room couch.

  She had an hour’s drive to and from the city in which to find out about her father. And determine Step Three.

  Step One had been finding the man.

  Two had been the plan that would let her meet him, figure him out, without him knowing who she was.

  Three was to either out herself to him, or get the hell out of Dodge before anyone figured out who she was.

  Either way, Step Three meant getting the hell out of Dodge. She’d only taken a month’s leave of absence, though she’d worked three years straight without more than a few days off at a time.

  Her grandparents thought she was currently on a cruise. Releasing tension built up during an intense three years.

  “Have you ever been on a cruise?” she asked her intriguing driver—and current boss—when she was supposed to be focused on obtaining daddy news.

  “No.”

  “Yeah, me neither.”

  Strange. All her life she’d craved answers almost as much as she’d wished her mother back to life and free from addiction. And there she was, with access to parts of the truth from the first person she’d met who actually knew her father, and she couldn’t seem to make herself ask for it.

  Afraid to find out that Brent Wilson was as much of a schmuck as she’d grown up thinking him to be? Albeit one who ran a business with quality and people more important than profit.

  Or, maybe worse, to find out he was a great husband, father, employer, and she and her mother were the only ones Brent Wilson had trashed?

  “You ever climb a mountain?” Cole’s question, said with a twinkle of interest in the glance he sent her way, pulled her away from darker thoughts.

  “No.” She looked around at the towering natural majesty on all sides of them—some just haze in the distance. “Have you?”

  “Yep. I’ve climbed to the top of one of the tallest ranges in Phoenix,” he told her. “Made it by clawing my way straight up weather-smoothed rock at some points, feeling like I was all that. And then looked down.” His gaze on the three lanes filled with traffic heading into Phoenix from Tucson, the next biggest town a couple of hours southeast, Cole still had a grin on his face.

  She couldn’t seem to get enough of looking at him. Finding his smile contagious. And she didn’t even know what she was smiling about.

  “I’m guessing the view was fantastic. Not to mention the high of, you know, having what it took to actually climb the mountain. A lot of us tend to think of life’s hurdles as having to climb mountains.” She liked the metaphor a lot. To know that you actually had the inner strength, as well as the physical endurance, to climb mountains...would mean that you’d have an awareness of your capabilities when it came to facing hard challenges.

  Such as meeting the father who’d found you worthless?

  “The view was great,” Cole said, still wearing a bit of a grin. “Phenomenal, actually. Being on top of the world like that. It was the same view you get from an airplane, only I got up there under my own steam, not some turbofan engine...”

  Right. Exactly. That.

  She needed to climb a mountain.

  “But that’s not what I was referring to,” Cole said then, getting them into the far-left carpool lane and bypassing a lot of the traffic. “I figured the tough part was climbing the mountain, right?”

  She nodded.

  “Yeah, then I stood up and looked down at steep, solid sheet rock and wondered how in the hell I was going to get back down. A guy my size...lots of weight to propel you downward. Too big to ride on the back of one more experienced. And too late to rethink my choice to go up.”

  She was smiling full out at that point—mostly because of the humor in his voice. And because she knew, since she was sitting there with him, he’d made it back just fine.

  “What did you do?” She had to know.

  “The only thing a big guy with brains could do. I sat on my butt, rubber-soled boots in front of me, and slid down.”

  Her completely unladylike guffaw of laughter, chortling up out of her depths, embarrassed her.

  Until he laughed as loudly, joining her in joy.

  And then, maybe for the first time in her adult life, she didn’t care how she looked. Or sounded. Or how others saw her.

  She just wanted to keep laughing.

  * * *

  Cole couldn’t believe his good luck. Brent had been thrilled to hear the news of their most recent artist hire when Cole had stopped in to have dinner with him and Emily and the kids after work the night before. Not only was Lindsay Warren a gifted artist—and willing to work for their paper company—she was nice, too.

  Really nice. She listened as people spoke to her. Not just him, but even the janitor in the hall the day before. And the other employees he’d seen her meet. That morning, when he’d stopped by her apartment to pick her up, she was outside chatting with an older woman who’d been out walking her dog. The woman had been smiling. And the dog wagging his tail when Lindsay bent down to tell him goodbye.

  Gorgeous. And nice. The type of woman who’d gravitated to him since high school.

  As opposed to those who had the looks, but turned up their noses at guys like Cole. Unless they knew the size of his bank account.

  Chatting with Lindsay, he’d been surprised to find the morning rush hour drive to Phoenix pass in a blip. He couldn’t say he really knew anything more about her life, other than the tidbits on her website that gave glimpses into her artist soul, but he felt as though he knew her.

  That she was genuine. Truly kind.

  Could be kidding himself.

  He didn’t think so.

  He handed her off for her tour of the plant because he’d had to. He hadn’t wanted to. But he’d made appointments to see a couple of employees who’d had matters to discuss with him. His people came before personal wishes.

  Most particularly when there was no solid basis for wishing.

  Not only was the woman a new hire, an employee, she was way out of his league. Enjoying her company—that he could do. Seeing that she was comfortable, making her laugh—ditto. All areas in which he excelled.

  But feeling compelled to be with her?

  Big fat nada.

  Been there. Done that.

  Life was too short for any more false promises to himself.

  Only a stupid man refused to learn from past events and set himself up for heartbreak over and over. Cole might not be the handsomest guy on the block, but he was a very wise one.

  Which was why he chose not to suggest to Lindsay that they hang around for a nice lunch in the city before heading back to Shelter Valley after they’d conducted their separate business at the plant. He didn’t need any temptation to encourage a friendship between him and his new hire.

  Other than to keep her happy in the job, and do what he could to introduce her to Shelter Valley life so she’d hang around. At least long enough to work up her own line of Christmas cards. Per Brent, the night before.