that, did I?” His eyes held hers until Lisa shook her head. “I’ll talk to Derek,” he told her, then added, “not that I think it’ll do any good.”
“You’re probably right,” she was forced to agree. “But you never know, maybe we’ll get lucky. But first,” she emphasized, “you have to give that woman her walking papers.”
There were times when Lisa was like a hungry dog with a bone. She just wouldn’t let go. Which meant he’d get no peace until he gave in. Paul rose again. “Connie Winston’s old office, you said?”
Lisa nodded. “The three of us are supposed to be running this clinic. It’s the Armstrong Fertility Institute, not Derek Armstrong’s Fertility Institute. If anything, it should be Dad’s name, not Derek’s.”
Paul put his hands on his sister’s arms, trying to settle her before she got riled up again.
“Take a deep breath, Lisa—and calm down. There are a hell of a lot worse things going on in the world. Derek playing king is really just small potatoes in comparison.”
“Emperor,” Lisa corrected doggedly.
He closed his eyes for a moment. He was not going to get sidelined with semantics. “Whatever.”
Paul was fully aware that if he even attempted to put off this woman’s termination, Lisa would continue bedeviling him until such time as he would make good on his promise. His sister meant well, he thought, but she tended to get far too worked up. Still, she was right. Derek shouldn’t have just gone off and hired someone without even running the idea past them. This was a completely new post his brother had created.
Did they really need someone to try to restore the institute’s good name? Or rather, their father’s good name even though it wasn’t imprinted on the front of the building?
Dr. Gerald Armstrong had always been a little larger than life when it came to the public eye. Paul was not ashamed to say that he revered his father and the groundbreaking work he had done. He’d gotten away from the boy he had once been. The boy who, when he was growing up, felt his father was accessible to everyone but his own family. He knew his mother felt that. Gerald Armstrong was always far too busy making a name for himself to enjoy the name he had already gotten, almost by accident: Dad.
Still, that was all water under the bridge now. A man was what he was and Gerald Armstrong was an excellent physician, a visionary and the last hope for a great many women who had been told that they would never be able to hold a child of their own in their arms.
The rest of it—the feet of clay, the women, the preoccupation—well, that could all be forgiven, Paul thought, walking down the corridor to the office where, according to his sister, he would find his brother’s latest mistake—and it really was a mistake, in Paul’s opinion. Right now, they needed every last penny to be spent on research, not “spin.” The research team he’d lured away from San Francisco did not come cheaply.
Approaching the until recently evacuated office, Paul knocked on the door, then knocked again when he received no answer. He was about to try again when a melodious voice told him to, “Come in.” Apparently the focus of his sister’s ire was indeed in.
He wasn’t good at firing people. Actually, to his recollection, he never had. He’d always been satisfied with the people he’d selected. There was no need to fire any of them.
Twisting the knob, he opened the door and walked in, not knowing what to expect.
He wasn’t prepared for what he saw.
She was sitting at her desk, a slender blonde whose every movement promised curves that would melt a man’s knees. She looked up at him with the clearest, bluest eyes he’d ever seen. The word beautiful pushed its way through the sudden cobwebs that had taken his brain hostage. It took him a moment to realize that he wasn’t breathing.
She did not look like someone who was hired to do battle with mudslingers. She looked more like a fairytale princess who had sprung up from someone’s smitten fantasy.
The woman seemed to light up as she saw who was walking into her office. Her face became a wreath of smiles.
“Mr. Armstrong, hello.” The young woman half rose in her seat, as if she was eagerly ready to hop to do his bidding at the slightest suggestion. “What can I do for you, sir?”
Bracing himself, Paul said in his kindest voice—because it wasn’t in him to be cruel—“I’m afraid you’re going to have to pack up your things and leave.”
The smile on her perfect face faded, replaced by bewilderment. “Excuse me?”
He hated this, he thought. He tried again, sounding even more gentle than before. “I think there’s been a mistake.” Each word felt more awkward on his tongue than the last. This was definitely not his forte. “I mean, we really don’t need a public relations person.”
The woman was obviously not going to go quietly. “But you just hired me,” she protested with feeling.
She didn’t look angry, he thought, which surprised him. What she looked like was someone who was set to dig in. She still thought she was dealing with his brother, Paul realized. He needed to set her straight before he continued.
“No, I didn’t,” he began, but got no further in his explanation.
“Yes, you did,” she insisted. “Yesterday. We were in your office and you distinctly said you were hiring me.” Her blue eyes seemed intense as she peered at his face. “Is something wrong?” she wanted to know. “I haven’t done anything yet, much less something that would make you want to fire me.”
“I don’t want to fire you,” Paul said and it was true. “I wouldn’t have hired you in the first place—”
“But you did,” she reminded him with feeling.
“No, I didn’t,” Paul told her again. “That was my brother.”
Her eyes narrowed and the frown on her face told him she wasn’t buying it.
“Your evil twin?” she asked with more than a tiny trace of sarcasm in her voice.
Finally, Paul thought. “Actually, I don’t generally think of him in that light, but now that you mention it, yes.”
The young woman stared at him as if he’d lost his mind. “Excuse me?”
Any breakthrough he’d thought had been made faded like dancing dandelion seeds in the warm spring breeze. “Maybe I should explain—”
He could see that she was struggling to remain civil. Looking at it from her point of view, he couldn’t blame her.
“Maybe you should,” she agreed.
Chapter Two
Bravado was second nature to Ramona Tate. It always had been. Her chosen field of investigative reporting had only honed that ability. She could bluff her way through practically everything.
Because she had never gone through an ugly-duckling stage and had been a swan from the moment she came into the world, Ramona
