cringed, hesitating before answering him. “I said he looked like Elmer Fudd.”
Ford seemed to be suppressing laughter. “I can’t imagine why that offended him. Everybody loves Elmer Fudd.”
“That’s what I tried to tell him!”
They both chuckled. But then she looked up. For a moment, space seemed to telescope around them, blocking out everything else. The smoke, the crowd, even the blare of the music faded until all she could hear was the steady thump-thump of the bass echoing the thud of her heartbeat.
She felt her nerves prickle in anticipation. Desire, hot and heavy, unspooled through her body. Her very skin felt weighed down. Her thighs flushed with warmth.
Who knew that laughter could be such a turn-on?
Their feet stopped shuffling across the floor. That ridiculous grin seemed frozen on her face for an instant, but then it faded, melted away by the intensity of his gaze. There was a spot just over his ear where his otherwise straight hair curled. Before she could think, her fingers had moved to his temple to tease that wayward lock of hair.
He took her hand in his, stilling her fingers. He cleared his throat, and she expected him to say something, something funny maybe, something to lighten the tension between them, but he said nothing.
Who had ever imagined that she’d feel this needy lust for a stranger? Not just a stranger, but a cowboy. A Texan. When she’d sworn she’d never even set foot in this damn state again. She so hadn’t seen this coming.
That’s when it hit her. Here, tonight, was a night out of time. She would never be here again. She would never see him again.
In this strange place, with this man she didn’t know, she had complete immunity. Freedom from her well-planned life. From her routines and her expectations of herself.
Tonight she could do whatever she wanted with no consequences. She could allow herself to do what she would normally never do. She could be stupid and reckless.
Without giving herself the chance to harbor second thoughts, she rose up on her toes and pressed her lips to his. His mouth moved over hers with a heated intensity. The sensual promise in his kiss made her shiver. She arched against him, letting her body answer the call of his. She slipped her hand into his and walked off the dance floor, tugging him along behind her.
As she wove her way through the crowd, the tempo of her blood picked up. After a lifetime of carefully planning, of controlling her actions and emotions, he could be her one rebellion. Tonight could be a vacation from her life.
And even if this was a mistake, he’d make sure she didn’t regret it.
Two
Two months later
“You’ve got to stop moping around,” Jonathon Bagdon said, then added, “And get your feet off my desk.”
Ford, who’d been sitting with his work boots propped up on the edge of Jonathon’s desk while he scraped the tip of his pocketknife under his nails, looked up for the first time since his business partner walked in the room. “What?”
Jonathon swatted at Ford’s boots with the leather-clad portfolio he’d been carrying. “Keep your feet off my desk. Christ, it’s like you’re ten.”
Ford’s feet, which had been crossed at the ankles, slid off Jonathon’s desk. He lowered them to the floor and ignored the insult.
“The desk is worth twenty thousand dollars. Try not to scuff it.”
Finally Ford looked up at his friend, taking in the scowl. He glanced over at Matt, the third partner in their odd little triumvirate, who sat on the sofa, with one leg propped on the opposite knee and a laptop poised on the knee. “Who shoved a stick up his ass this morning?” Ford asked Matt.
Matt continued typing frenetically while he said, “Ignore him. He’s just trying to bait you. He doesn’t give a damn about the desk.”
Ford looked from one to the other, suddenly feeling slightly off-kilter. Together the three of them formed FMJ, Inc. He’d known these men since they were kids. They’d first gone into business together when they were twelve and Jonathon had talked them into pooling their money to run the snack shack at the community rec center for the summer. One financially lucrative endeavor had led to another until here they were, twenty years later, the CEO, CFO and CTO of FMJ, a company which they’d founded while still in college and which had made them all disgustingly rich.
Jonathon, though always impeccably dressed and by far the most organized of the three, might impress some as overly persnickety. But those were only the people who didn’t know him, the people who were bound to underestimate him. It was a mistake few people made more than once.
In reality, it was unlike Jonathon to care whether or not his desk was scuffed, regardless of how much it was worth.
Still, to mollify Jonathon, Ford abandoned the chair he’d been sitting in and returned to his own desk. Since they worked so closely together, they didn’t have individual offices. Instead, they’d converted the entire top floor of FMJ’s Palo Alto headquarters to a shared office. On one end sat Jonathon’s twenty-thousand-dollar art deco monstrosity. The other end was lined with three worktables, every inch of them covered by computers and gadgets in various stages of dissection. In the middle sat Ford’s desk, a sleek modern job the building’s interior designer had picked out for him.
With a shrug, he asked, “Is Matt right? You just trying to get a rise out of me?”
Jonathon flashed him a cocky grin. “Well, you’re talking now, aren’t you?”
“I wasn’t before?”
“No. You’ve been picking at your nails for an hour now. You haven’t heard a word I’ve said.”
“Not true,” Ford protested. “You’ve been babbling about how you think it’s time we diversify again. You’ve rambled on and on about half a dozen companies that are about to be delisted by the NYSE, but that you think could be retooled to be profitable again. You and Matt voted while I was in China visiting the new plant and you’ve already started to put together the offer. Have I left anything out?”
“And …” Jonathon prodded.
“And what?” Ford asked. When Jonathon gave an exasperated sigh and plopped back in his chair, Ford shot a questioning look at Matt, who was still typing away. “And what?”
Matt, who’d always had the uncanny ability to hold a conversation while solving some engineering problem, gave a few more clicks before shutting his laptop. “He’s waiting for you to voice an opinion. You’re the CEO. You get final vote.”
FMJ specialized in taking over flailing businesses and turning them around, much like the snack shack they’d whipped into prosperity all those years ago. Jonathon used his wizardry to streamline the company’s finances. Matt, with his engineering background, inevitably developed innovations that helped turn the company around. Ford’s own role in their magic act was a little more vague.
Ford had a way with people. Inevitably, when FMJ took over a company, there was resentment from the ownership
