a new magazine title into the Australian marketplace, an important, key part of her five-year plan. Soon, if she played her cards right, the corner office and senior management status she coveted would be hers—it was just a matter of time.
Today was Wednesday; by this time next week, she should have editorial sign-off from her client, and the magazine should be well into production. Another week or so later, and the first edition would be rolling off the printing presses.
A goofy smile still wreathing her lips, Claire clicked the mouse on the e-mail icon on her computer screen and watched as her in-box registered way too many notifications. Sighing, she realized she was going to have to get her assistant to prioritize them for her, alert her to the urgent ones and print the rest off for her to read in bed later that night. Another fascinating evening.
It was just as well there was no man also planning on sharing her bed.
She paused for a moment, annoyed with herself. Where had that thought come from? Parts of her body twitched suggestively, and she shrugged. Okay, it had been a while. And a bit of frustration release was necessary every now and then, but that was what George Clooney movies were for. This was more important. Welcome Home was her baby, and it deserved all her attention.
Besides, it wasn’t as though there was a battle going on here between the magazine and her personal life; apart from her training regime and the actual triathlon meets themselves, she had no personal life. There was work, and there was the road and the pool and her bike. End of story.
And it was a nice, uncomplicated, successful story. She was fulfilled. Really. And hadn’t she made it into the state triathlon semifinals thanks to all that focus?
Okay, maybe she was a little horny. But that could wait. Sex would always be there, but this opportunity wouldn’t.
A recent memory volunteered itself suddenly—last time she’d visited her grandmother she’d been astonished to learn that her gran was telling everyone in the old people’s home that she was a lesbian.
“Just to take the heat off them all wondering when you’re getting married and having children, dear,” her gran had explained.
So Claire wasn’t going to be young forever. But this was important, and sometimes other things had to take a backseat to work. In five years’ time, she’d be ensconced in that corner office, in charge of a handful of quality magazines. The sacrifices and loneliness were worth it. For the time being.
Having talked her nether regions into submission, she called her assistant, Tom, in and asked him to sort through the rest of her e-mails.
She was just about to plunge into her in-tray when a familiar figure propped itself against her door frame.
“We still on for lunch?”
Claire stared at her friend Katherine in dismay.
“You forgot, didn’t you?” Katherine guessed, one hand resting on her slim hip.
“I’m sorry. I’ve got so much on, I think I should just work through lunch,” Claire apologized.
But Katherine wasn’t about to take no for an answer. Swinging around, she called in reinforcements.
“Tom! Get over here and help me convince your boss she needs to eat lunch,” she called imperatively.
Tom shot up from his seat as though he’d been electrocuted, and Claire had to stifle a laugh as he stared at Katherine slavishly. At nearly six feet tall with legs that seemed to go on forever and a bust that would put a 1950s pinup to shame, Katherine was every man’s sexual fantasy. The fact that she was funny, clever and worked as editor of a sports magazine were bonuses that most men didn’t seem to mind, either. At a tender twenty years, Tom was like a bunny in the headlights of her attractiveness.
“I tell her all the time she should have a lunch break, but she thinks a protein shake is enough,” Tom said, sounding for all the world like a worried Jewish mother.
“Are you listening to what Tom is saying, Claire?” Katherine asked, the glint in her eye signaling that she wasn’t unaware of Tom’s adoration.
Shaking her head at her friend, Claire checked her watch.
“Twenty minutes,” she said.
“Done. Thanks for the backup, Tom,” Katherine said, giving him a big smile.
Tom just stood there, apparently stunned by such beneficence.
Claire grabbed her handbag and followed Katherine to the elevator.
“You’re cruel,” Claire admonished.
“How so? I was perfectly nice to him!”
Claire gave Katherine’s close-fitting deep red, short-skirted suit and elegant high heels a once-over.
“You ought to be registered as a deadly weapon. Or given a handicap. How are the rest of us mere mortals supposed to compete?”
“You do okay, from what I’ve seen,” Katherine commented dryly.
“Right. That’s why I watched three George Clooney movies this month.”
The elevator door opened and they exited into the foyer, heading for the coffee shop.
“The opportunities are there, but you choose not to see them.”
Claire rolled her eyes—as if she wouldn’t have noticed an eligible guy interested in her! To prove her point, a young courier walked straight into a potted palm because he was too busy tracking Katherine’s progress across the foyer to look where he was going.
“You see that? Nobody walks into plants for me, I can tell you.”
“You don’t believe me? What about Cameron Johnson in layout? And that cute security guard on the night shift?”
Claire had to rack her brain to get even a vague mental image of the men. Needless to say, they hadn’t walked into a wall, or any other obstacle, the last time she had been in their vicinity—that she would have remembered.
“You’re deluded.”
They settled at their usual table in the far back corner of the coffee shop and picked up a menu each, even though neither of them ever strayed from their normal order—a chicken club sandwich.
“You don’t want to see—that’s your problem. When was the last time you had a date?” Katherine challenged.
Claire studied the menu intently. Why had she even brought this subject up? Hadn’t she just decided that she was happy with her work-oriented world at the moment?
“Forget I said anything. I was only joking, anyway,” she hedged.
Katherine shook her head sympathetically.
“That long, huh?”
Desperate for some way to avoid the conversation Claire suspected was in the offing, she scanned the coffee shop looking for a distraction. She twitched as she noted Jack Brook propped at the lunch bar, one leg resting comfortably on the foot rail as he chatted to a
