“Tamara? So good to see you!” Bill turned to her, an odd combination of welcoming smile and bewildered frown warring on his face.
“As you know, Bill, I’m here to study operations on all levels and find ways for Owens Investments to show a higher profit by running more efficiently,” she said, holding out her hand to shake his.
Luckily she had her professional spiel down pat. Normally, though, the words weren’t accompanied by a pounding heart. Or the sudden flash of heat that had surfaced as she’d looked from Bill to his conversation mate and met the brown-eyed gaze of the compelling blond man she’d been predisposed to dislike on sight.
* * *
At first Flint had absolutely no idea who the beautiful, auburn-haired woman with the gold-rimmed green eyes was as she interrupted the meeting upon which his future security could very well rest.
Bill quickly filled him in as he introduced the efficiency expert Howard Owens had hired. Apparently a memo had been sent to Flint and all Owens employees in the past hour. He, of course, had been busy burying his mother and becoming a guardian/father/brother and hadn’t gotten to the morning’s email yet.
Thinking of the baby girl he’d left sleeping in his office, he reached for the monitor in his pocket, thumb moving along the side to check that the volume was all the way up. He’d been gone almost five minutes. Didn’t feel good about that.
“It seems to me, Bill, that if we have a broker on staff who’s willing to sign a noncompete clause, then we should give him that opportunity. If he doesn’t produce, we can still let him go. If he does, our bottom line has more security. We don’t lose either way. Efficient. I like it.”
Flint wasn’t sure he liked her. But he liked what she was saying, since it meant Diamond Rose would have security.
“Unless you know of some reason we shouldn’t keep him on?” she asked. “Other than what I just overheard, that he’d been thinking about opening his own firm?”
She looked at him. He didn’t deny the charge. But he wasn’t going to elaborate. Other than Bill, Howard Owens was the only one to whom Flint would report.
It seemed odd that this outside expert happened to be in the hall just as he’d been speaking with Bill. As though some kind of fate had put her there.
Or a mother in heaven looking out for her children?
The idea was so fanciful, Flint had a second’s very serious concern regarding his state of mind. But another completely real concern cut that one short. His pocket made a tiny coughing sound.
All three adults in the room froze. Staring at each other.
And Flint’s brand-new little girl made another, half-crying sound. In a pitch without weight. Or strength.
The woman—Tamara Frost, as Bill had introduced her—stared at his pocket. For a second there she looked...horrified. Or maybe sick.
“Not that it’s any of my business but...do you have a newborn baby cry as your ringtone?” Her voice, as she looked up at him, sounded professionally nonjudgmental—although definitely taken aback.
Probably didn’t happen often... Guys with the sound of crying babies in their pockets during business meetings.
Diamond Rose released another small outburst. Twenty minutes ahead of schedule. He had to get back to her. His first real duty and he was already letting her down. He’d had no time to prepare the bottle, as he’d expected to.
“I’m sorry,” he said, looking from Bill to their expert and then heading to the door. “I have to get this.”
Let them think it was his phone. And that the call was more important at that moment than they were.
Just until he had things under control.
She was coming down with something. Wouldn’t you know it? First day of the most important job of her life to date—because it was for her father, her family—and she was experiencing hot flashes followed by cold shivers.
That could only mean the flu.
Crap.
“So...you’re good with keeping him on?” She looked at Bill and then back to the doorway they’d both been staring at. She’d been listening for Mr. Collins’s “hello” as he took the call that was important enough for him to leave a meeting during which he’d been begging for his job. She’d wanted to hear his tone of his voice as he addressed such an important caller.
Business or pleasure?
“Your father said you’re the boss.” Bill’s words didn’t seem to have any edge to them.
“Well, he’s wrong, of course.” She was smiling, glad to know she didn’t have to worry about stepping on at least one director’s toes. “But it makes sense, from an efficiency standpoint, to keep on a broker who’s willing to sign a noncompete clause. Unless you know of some reason he should go? I heard him say he makes the company money. Is that true?”
“He’s one of our top producers.”
She knew that already, but there was no reason, as an efficiency expert who hadn’t yet seen her first file, that she should.
“You have some hesitation about him?”
She’d asked Bill twice if there was a reason Flint Collins shouldn’t stay on. Bill hadn’t replied.
He gave a half shrug as he looked at her and crossed to his desk, straightening his tie. “None tops the offer he made a few minutes ago. Still, I don’t like having guys around that I can’t trust.”
He had her total focus. “He’s given you reason to mistrust him?”
Bill shook his head. “Just the whole ‘opening his own shop’ thing.”
“It’s what my dad did—left a firm to start Owens Investments. And you helped him do it.”
“We did it the right way,” Bill said. “The first person your father told, before taking any action, was his boss. None of this finding out from a friend in the recorder’s office. Makes me wonder what else he isn’t telling us...”
Made her wonder, too.
“I’m going over all the company files. He’ll know that as soon as he reads his email. Seems like if he’s untrustworthy, he’ll have a problem with that.”
“If he’s got anything to hide, you aren’t going to find it.”
Maybe not.
Ostensibly her job was to come up with ways for Owens to make more money. “He’s a top producer and wants to sign a noncompete agreement.”
“Right when he was getting ready to go into business for himself,” Bill said, frowning. “Like I
