“Excuse me.”

The voice was cool and feminine, threaded with underlying impatience. It sounded like the kind of voice that was frequently impatient, Sara decided without looking up. She hit the refresh button on the web browser again. Still nothing.

Sara sighed loudly.

“Excuse me.” The voice was louder this time, the metallic hint of impatience becoming iron-hard—a pause as the woman obviously spied the nameplate at the front of Sara’s desk. “Sara?”

Ugh. That name.

“Actually,” she said, glancing up at the woman who was as tall and icily blonde, as she’d already guessed, “it’s Saw-rah, not Say-rah. It’s Arabic.”

They’d all decided a long time ago that at least one of her bio parents had to be partially of Arabic origin for her to have the name, but commercial DNA testing to confirm that fact wasn’t really high on her list of priorities. Neither was the woman standing in front of her.

“I see,” the woman said, her lips tightening. “Well, Saw-rah”—she repeated the pronunciation clearly and crisply—“my name is Cynthia Price and I am here to see Mr. Kilbourn. I’m afraid this conversation has already made me late.”

Sara propped her chin up on one hand and tapped her mouse again. On screen, the cursor winked, the webpage refreshed, and the text still said the same thing. Results not yet available.

Damn it.

The sound of the woman clearing her throat brought her back from the virtual world into the real one. They resembled each other fairly closely, those two worlds. Except, instead of referring to her grade in Advanced Creative Writing Seminar 4030, those four infuriating words could have applied to pretty much any aspect of her life.

Results not yet available.

Try again in another few minutes, Sara.

“Do you have an appointment?” Sara asked, not in the least interested in the answer.

The woman made a show of leaning back to stare at Sara’s nameplate once again. “Shouldn’t you know? You’re supposed to be his executive assistant.”

Sara made an effort not to snort. Talk about advanced creative writing… Whoever had crafted her business title must have gotten an A in that course.

“I am,” Sara agreed. “Among other things.”

The woman gave her a startled look. “Oh,” she said blankly. “I suppose that explains it.”

“Explains what?” a deep male voice demanded.

“Cade’s here,” Sara announced, rather unnecessarily at that point. Grabbing her purse from under her desk, she sprang to her feet. “He’ll know whether or not you have an appointment with him. Cade, I’m taking an early lunch, okay?”

It was a few minutes past eleven, but she didn’t wait to see if her foster-brother minded. He never did.

* * * *

Sara walked around the block a few times, window shopping and enjoying the freedom of city sidewalks that weren’t crammed with hundreds of office workers trying to fit lunch, errands and socializing all into the same half-hour.

After her leisurely walk, she bought a coffee and a sandwich at the café on the corner and sat in the square outside city hall, basking in the late spring sunlight.

When she held her face up to the warm rays, it took her a whole minute before the usual thought invaded.

On a day like this, one year ago…

But this time, that was as far as the thought was allowed to go.

Her life was entirely different from how it had been a year before. She had a job, was on the verge of finishing her degree—if her final semester’s grades ever came in—and was contemplating a Master of Fine Arts with mingled fear and excitement.

Brant thought she should go for the second degree, but then Brant always encouraged her to do what she was hesitant about doing.

Cade had been more reserved. He’d wanted to know if she would continue to work at Kaber Development if she embarked on her master’s. When she’d asked him if he would want her to, he’d surprised her by saying yes, of course he did. She’d thought it would have been an easy way for him to tell her that she wasn’t very good at the job and that he paid her far too much to not be very good at it.

But no, Cade had decided a year before to be generous with her, and he never changed his mind once he’d decided on a course of action.

He was determined to keep being generous.

A year ago, he’d been in the same position she’d been in—jilted, jolted and reeling from the blow.

Two aborted weddings in less than two months’ time… A malicious fate had proven it could be generous as well.

On the day after his jilting, six weeks after Sara’s, Cade had asked her to be his executive assistant. His invaluable, infallible Mrs. Fraser had retired, leaving him with a string of temps. Since Sara had often helped out his father around the office during her teenage years, she knew the business backward and forward.

It had made sense at the time to say yes. Not only had she needed the income, she had also wanted the distraction from her own misery.

Only later did it occur to her how generous Cade’s offer had been. She was no Mrs. Fraser. Her typing was quick and accurate, sure, but her organizational skills were not up to par, and while she knew all the long-time employees at the company, she was awkward around new people. And Cade was always meeting new people—architects, planners, city officials… The list went on.

Plus, she daydreamed. In her head, she was already composing the epic young adult novel that she planned to make the focus of her MFA. She was always adding to a main character’s backstory or a particularly complicated scene or plot point. She’d spent so much time thinking about the book that a lot of it was already fixed in her head. The male protagonist, for instance, had Brant Kilbourn’s blue-blue eyes, while the heroine had her own warm hazel ones.

She was convinced the book would be a bestseller…if she ever got around to putting any of it down on paper.

Sara threw the crusts of her sandwich to the pigeons, pausing for a moment to watch them squabble over the bits of bread before she headed back to the office.

It was past noon.

Her grades had to be ready by now.

* * * *

Results not yet available.

Sara cursed beneath her breath then, as she always did, looked around quickly to see if anyone had overheard her.

Then she remembered, no one was alive anymore to care. Mercifully, her foster-mother had died before she had a chance to see her ‘daughter’ get jilted less than a month before her wedding.

Sara could no longer even think to herself ‘one year ago today, I was doing X with Myrna’, because Myrna’s death was now nearly two years old.

Two years without the one person who had loved her.

She’d thought Jacob had cared…

“Cynthia Price thought you were my girlfriend.”

Cade’s voice, taut and well-controlled, nonetheless alerted her to possible danger.

Sara turned her head to stare at him, stunned. “Why would she think that?”

Cade was leaning against his office’s doorframe, his height and besuited breadth of shoulder making the gap appear deceptively small.

“Apparently,” he said, his mouth grim, “because of the way you look and the fact that I have eyes.”

He certainly had eyes—cool gray ones that were often purposely bland and occasionally very, very sharp.

They were bland right now, but it was an expressionlessness that she didn’t trust. He couldn’t possibly be happy someone had linked them together like that.

“How do I look?” she demanded indignantly. She still remembered the smarting insult she’d suffered when Cade had politely suggested her college wardrobe wasn’t adequate for the office environment in which they worked. She’d gone out and bought a half-dozen suits at a chain outlet at the mall, in varying colors, and every day she matched one of them with a sleeveless chemise in a contrasting shade. She’d even gone out and bought little pearl drop earrings to complete her outfit. Those she wore every day.

His strongly sculpted features didn’t change. “’Young and exotically beautiful’,” he said, his tone putting obvious quotation marks around the words.

Young? Sara felt about a hundred years old most days and a thousand on the bad ones.

As for ‘exotically beautiful’? Well, some people were willing to put that label on anyone with skin darker than a strong suntan.

“So, did you tell her the truth?” Sara asked.

Perhaps she sounded a little imperious, because his mouth twitched. The head of Kaber Development wasn’t used to being questioned.

“Yes,” he said gravely. “I told her you were too young and too beautiful for me.”

Sara stared at him. Was he making a joke? Cade rarely made them. Even as a kid, he was earnest and resented seeing anyone being made fun of. But back then she swore she remembered him smiling. Once, he might have even laughed.

“Too young?” she repeated incredulously. “You’re only five years older than I am.”

Cade was thirty-two, but his bearing was that of an older man. It was his gravity and the responsibility that had fallen to him since the death of his father eleven years before that made him seem more mature than he was.

As for beauty…

Everyone knew Cade was far too attractive for ordinary, everyday life. A couple of inches over six foot, his wide-shouldered, lean-hipped figure was compelling, even swathed in concealing layers of designer fabric. His face was the pure perfection found in statues of ancient Roman emperors, the features finely, fiercely strong. His coloring was warm, from his pale-blond hair to his sun-kissed skin to the way his jaw glinted gold when he needed a shave. Only his eyes were cold—a clear, icy gray.

No woman was ‘too beautiful’ for him, and a string of successive girlfriends proved it. Lauren, the woman he’d proposed to and been jilted by in the space of a few months, had been a model.

“You didn’t really tell her that, did you?” Sara asked, dismayed.

The hint of amusement disappeared from his hard lips. “No. I told her it was none of her business what we are to each other. I want her approval on the new Vinton project, not on my personal life.”

Was she a part of his personal life? She’d never thought of it like that before. Yet, with his parents—her foster-parents—gone, she supposed the relationship really was personal between them now. He had no duty to employ her. He could certainly do better.

“I’m sorry,” Sara said, getting up from her desk and walking over to him. “I should have been more polite to her. I don’t have Mrs. Fraser’s knack. I don’t even have your knack.”

“I have a knack?” This appeared to be news to him.

She halted a few feet away from him, close enough to admire his tie. It was a pale gold like his hair, and it matched the silk chemise she was wearing today under her green suit.

“With women, you do,” Sara told him. “With men, I think you rather scare them. You probably scare the women, too, but it’s a thrilling scare, the kind most women enjoy.”

He was frowning. Oh dear, she’d said too much.

“How do I scare people?”

“You rarely ever smile,” Sara said. “I mean, I know it’s because you had those awful crooked teeth when you were younger and had to go through all that orthodontic work, but most people wouldn’t know that, and they just think you’re mean or grew up in a town where smiling was forbidden or something.”

If she hoped to tease a smile from him, she’d miscalculated. If anything, his frown deepened.

“I almost forgot about my bad teeth,” he said, showing off perfectly straight white teeth when he spoke.

“Your subconscious hasn’t,” said Sara. “You still smile like you’re hiding them.”

“And you’re still my executive assistant,” he pointed out, “and also being my foster-sister, or young and beautiful, doesn’t mean you can be rude to or ignore my visitors.”

So, Cynthia Prince, or something like that, had complained about her.

Sara ducked her head. “Yes, Cade. Sorry, Cade.”

Her exaggeratedly meek tone made his mouth twitch. She took it as progress.

“Cynthia told me that she’s managed to secure the last zoning variance we needed to go forward with the Centre Street development,” he said. “But the official amended request letter needs to go before city council at their next meeting or else it will cost us another month of delay. The meeting’s on Monday, and the deadline for the letter is today.”

Sara went back to her desk. “Did you send me the tracked changes from the last version?”

“Yes. Once you’ve tidied it up, could you put it on my desk for signing?” He checked the big steel watch on his right wrist. “Actually, I’m having lunch with the Chief Administrative Officer of the town of Elmhurst right now, then I’m heading up to the Airdale project site. Since I may not be back in the office, use my electronic signature on the letter and just email it through to the city clerk’s department.”

Elmhurst was a bedroom community about an hour away from the city’s downtown core. It was one of several such suburbs due for massive growth in the coming decade, and Kaber was poised to be one of the first developers on the scene.

Sara wondered if the Elmhurst CAO would be accompanying Cade up to Airdale so he could show him exactly what an ambitious residential project looked like. Every house, townhouse and condo in the Airdale plans was already sold by the time a single shovel went into the ground.

Instead of rushing off for his lunch meeting, though, Cade came to stand by her desk.

“Can you double-check the reservation for Tri Colore?”

He was very polite, but Sara nonetheless felt her cheeks flushing.

Last month, she’d neglected to make a dinner reservation for Cade and his guest at a trendy local gastropub, and they’d ended up waiting nearly an hour for a table.

That kind of silly slip could have cost the company a deal worth millions.

Sara quickly logged into the reservation app she used. TableTop confirmed a lunch for two at Tri Colore Italian Kitchen in…

“You’d better run,” she told Cade. “You have three minutes.”

He took off with that effortless speed she remembered from his university track and field days. The app said the restaurant was a five-minute walk away from the head office of Kaber Development, but she knew he would make it there on time. He always did.

It was her who screwed things up.

If he hadn’t had to hire his useless foster-sister, Cade could have had a Mrs. Fraser 2.0—younger, cuter and doubly efficient.

Okay, Mrs. Fraser had been pretty cute, in a plump, pink-cheeked, grandmotherly way.

But Cade was only in his early thirties. He didn’t need to be surrounded by grandmothers—or any more icy blondes, for that matter. Lauren, his ex-fiancée, had been bright, beautiful…and deadly dull.

Cade didn’t need another Lauren in the form of Cynthia Pierce—or whatever her name was.

He needed someone a lot less self-conscious, someone fun who would make him forget to hide his teeth when he smiled.

He needed…

Oh, what did she know about what men needed? She sure as hell didn’t know what they wanted.

“Do you think I enjoy forced celibacy, Sara? Is it some kind of power trip for you? Or just some really unfunny game?”

She’d wanted to tell Jacob it was the way she was raised, but Myrna was gone by then. No one else knew, or would have cared, about the strict morals Myrna had laid down for her foster daughter. Only now did Sara realize how bitterly Myrna had resented the husband she’d married at eighteen and the years she’d slavishly devoted to him and their three sons. From the moment Sara arrived into their family, Myrna had been intent on making sure she didn’t make the same ‘mistakes’.

How could a woman with three handsome, talented, successful sons look on them as mistakes?

Sara had loved Myrna with her whole heart, but she now saw all the complexes her foster-mother had tried to foist on her, an emotional rather than a genetic inheritance.

Myrna had always warned her about strong men. She’d quickly put Jacob Pratt in a different category, a safer one. She’d encouraged the relationship and the idea of an eventual marriage, but she’d also pushed for a long engagement, not willing to lose Sara for several more years. Jacob had agreed, but Sara wondered if any other man would have…

None of Myrna’s sons would have done so.

All three Kilbourns had definite personalities. The eldest, Damon, had rebelled early, declaring his complete lack of interest in taking over the family firm and his desire to forge a different path. He was now a busy surgeon, specializing in cardiology.

Cade was cut more from his father’s cloth, driven to acquire land that was only a promise of future potential and knock down the barriers to build it up to the next urban or suburban community. Other developers were larger and cheaper, but Kaber was known for quality and vision, molding its projects to fit the surrounding environment and existing neighborhood. The townhouse development Cynthia Price had just spoken to Cade about, known as the Greenlands, was a cutting-edge, environmentally sustainable initiative meant to have zero impact from its building materials to its energy sources in the future.

The amended letter! Sara had almost forgotten about it.

Quickly, she made the changes Cade had highlighted, reformatted it and left an original on his desk for him to sign.

Afterward, she checked a few emails then logged back into the university’s course site, expecting to see those same four words.

Nothing. No ominous words.

Hurriedly, she clicked through to her last course, muttering to herself beneath her breath as she scanned the webpage.

Final grade—A.

“Whoo-hoo!” She spun her chair around in a celebratory circle.

Grad school, here she came.