then. A football star. Popular and smart and good-looking.
She’d still been struggling with what her mother kindly referred to as baby fat. Baby fat? At thirteen? Well, whatever it was, she’d looked like an aspiring hippo, lumbering along with her friends. The glasses hadn’t helped—their thick lenses giving her an owl-like appearance.
Of course she hadn’t looked like that in years. By the time she’d gone to college she’d slimmed down and gotten used to contact lenses, but those early years left a definite mark on a person’s psyche. There were times when it didn’t matter what she saw in the mirror. She felt overweight and ugly.
The dress was supposed to give her self-confidence. Instead, she was afraid its brash exposure might end up giving her hives.
She heard the scrape of a chair and casually glanced around.
Dan was getting up! Oh, no. Not yet. She hadn’t made her move yet. Then she noticed that he wasn’t headed toward the door. Instead, he ambled over to the bar and spoke to the bartender, who glanced her way and laughed, then proceeded down the hallway toward the rest rooms.
Shannon released the air she’d been hoarding in her lungs with a thankful sigh. She still had time to approach him.
It was a wonder she’d had any air left once she’d gotten a good look at him. She didn’t know what he’d looked like before coming here, but the island had certainly burnished him with a sexy bronze finish.
He wore a sleeveless T-shirt with something written on it and a pair of cutoff jeans that lovingly clung to his taut derriere and showed off strong, muscular thighs. He barely met the minimum dress code by wearing flip-flops for shoes.
Not the usual attire for the head of most companies.
She had to agree with Mandy. Something needed to be done.
Shannon was determined not to flunk out on her newest mission—saving Dan Crenshaw from himself.
* * *
When Dan returned from the rest room, Laramie had another drink waiting for him at the bar. He snagged the glass between his thumb and middle finger before strolling back to his chair.
The woman was still sipping on her first drink. Wine. That figured.
He sat down and leaned the chair back on two legs, resting against the wall. He was in a particularly foul mood tonight and all because he’d made the mistake of picking up the damned phone when it rang earlier.
“What!” he’d yelled into the receiver after listening to the phone ring off and on most of the afternoon.
“Is that any way to answer a phone?” Mandy asked.
“What do you want?”
“You don’t have to be rude.”
“And you don’t have to spend every waking moment of every stinking day calling to make sure I haven’t thrown myself off the balcony.”
There was a silence. Finally, Mandy said, “That’s not funny, Dan...and it just so happens that I haven’t called you in three days.”
“No kidding. Hell, you’ve set a new record. I’ll send you a medal.”
The silence was longer this time. Much longer. Finally, he heard a sigh. “We need to talk,” Mandy said.
“We are talking.”
“About DSC.”
“I told you. I don’t want to talk about the company.”
“Oh, you’ve made yourself quite clear about that, big brother. It was so easy for you to shrug your shoulders, walk away and say, ‘I quit.’ But the world continues on, Dan, even if you decided to step off. You still have contracts to fill, quotas to meet, and there’s no one capable of running the place with both you and James gone. You hired Rafe as head of security. He doesn’t know a blasted thing about running your stupid company for you.”
“Nobody asked him to.”
“Well, somebody has to! A national employment agency has been calling with resumes. They said you’d contacted them and now they want to make appointments for applicants. Nobody knows what to tell them. Rafe isn’t qualified to interview people. Forget the fact that the business is losing potential sales because you aren’t there, but someone needs to be in the plant making certain that the contracts already signed are being met. If they aren’t, you’re going to find yourself inundated with lawsuits. For some reason I can’t see you enjoying being back in court again.”
“Low blow, Mandy.”
“Everything is a low blow to you these days, Dan, and I, for one, am getting sick and tired of tiptoeing around you. Rafe will never tell you this, but somebody needs to. You’ve got to stop thinking about your pain and your agony and your loss and start thinking about somebody else for a change. Do you have any idea the hours that Rafe is putting into that company, trying to save your butt? I hardly see him anymore. He rarely gets home before eleven and he’s gone by seven every morning. That’s no way for anyone to live. I know James hurt you—”
“Hurt me? Hell, Mandy, this isn’t about my hurt feelings. He did his damnedest to pin everything he’d done on me! If it hadn’t been for Rafe finding the evidence to prove his involvement rather than mine, it would be me sitting in the pen these days and not James.”
“Exactly my point! Yes, James was your friend. And, yes, he betrayed you. Cost you money. Almost bankrupted the company. But he wasn’t your only friend. Rafe’s been there for you every step of the way. And you don’t seem to care that we’ve all done everything we could think of to make this easier for you. Someone has to deal with the life you decided to toss aside. None of this is just going to fix itself without you.”
“Why didn’t Rafe call me and tell me this?”
“When would he have the time?”
Dan couldn’t think of a really smart retort to that one. He knew what kind of hours the company demanded. He’d been keeping them for years. And he’d had help back then—from his old college buddy...partner...friend—James Williams. Good ol’ James. The lousy, stinking, lying thief.
He didn’t want the reminders. He didn’t want to be having this conversation. “I’ll talk to Rafe,” he finally muttered.
“When?”
“Soon.”
“How soon?”
“Damn it, Mandy, quit pushing. I said I’d talk to him. Now back off.”
“Sometimes you can be such a jerk, Dan.”
“I love you, too. Give Angie a hug and a kiss from her Uncle Dan.”
“Do it yourself!” she said, slamming down the phone.
He focused on the noisy conversation and music around him, trying to erase the confrontation with Mandy. He couldn’t remember her ever being that angry with him before, not even when they were growing up together on the ranch. He lifted his
