Elisabeth Naughton - Wait for Me

Shit. Now he felt like an ass. But dammit, his personal life was just that—personal.

The knock on the door had them both looking over as Mitch peeked into the room. “You planning on sleeping here tonight or what? Hey, Hannah.”

“Hey, Mitch.” A weak smile tugged at her mouth as she finished gathering her things.

One glance at the clock told Ryan it was already after seven. He tossed his reading glasses onto the papers littered across his desk and scrubbed both hands over his face. “I didn’t realize it was so late. We were just finishing up.” He dropped his hands. “What are you doing here?”

“I thought I’d come rescue you.” Mitch tipped up his blue Mariner’s baseball cap. Unruly curls peeked out from beneath the hat. He dropped into a leather chair opposite Ryan’s massive mahogany desk and propped his dirty sneakers on its sleek surface, then smiled Hannah’s way.

Ryan’s brows drew together. “You’re gonna get crap all over my work.”

“Your work is crap.” Mitch grinned. “Wanna get a beer?”

A cold beer in a noisy bar where he couldn’t think sounded like heaven right about now.

“Sure, just let me get my stuff together.” He glanced toward Hannah, hoping to ease some of the tension still lingering in the air. “Hannah, you want to join us?”

“Tempting, but no. I have a date.”

“With who?” Mitch asked.

“Kevin Moreland.”

Ryan shot her an amused look. Kevin Moreland was doing a promo spot for one of their drugs. “Now who’s handling the models?”

“ I am not the CEO of this company. No one notices what I do.”

Ryan slipped on his jacket, relieved her playful tone had returned.

“Besides,” she added, “Mitch has never gotten around to asking me out, so I have to settle for the young, hot models to fill my time.”

Mitch’s brows snapped together. “Hannah, sweetheart, I would ask you out, but you scare me. A woman in a suit intimidates me.”

She leaned close and ran a coral-tipped fingernail down the stubble on his cheek. “Power is a very sexy thing. You just never know what it’s going to do next.” She headed for the door. “I’ll call you next week, Ryan.”

“Hannah,” Ryan called. She looked back. “What type of car should I buy?”

A wide smile spread across her face. “How about a Jag?”

He thought about it a minute, then nodded. “Tell Christy to get me some brochures tomorrow.”

“I will.” The door snapped shut behind her.

“A Jag?” Mitch asked. “Dude, if you’re buying Jags, I’ll take one.”

“You’d take it into the mountains and coat it with mud. No way.”

Mitch chuckled as he pushed to his feet. “Chicks dig dirty guys.”

“In your dreams, mountain man.” Ryan reached for his jacket. “Where’s Julia? I thought she was with you this afternoon.”

“Mom and Dad took her to get ice cream. I wanted beer. I was outvoted.” He shoved his hands into the front pockets of his jeans while Ryan moved around the room, gathering his things. “They’re leaving tomorrow morning and wanted to take her out for a little fun before they head back to Seattle.”

Ryan was all too aware they were leaving. He loved seeing his in-laws, but this week had been too emotional with the recent crash. He was looking forward to getting his house back to normal. “I thought you were going to Chicago, some geologist’s conference?”

“I was. Opted out. Not really feeling like traveling right now. I have a ton of work sitting on my desk. We’ve identified a new site off the coast of British Columbia. It’s pulling in all kinds of controversy.” He rolled his eyes. “This one chick, this editor for the Geologic Times , wrote this article totally bashing our oil company and any sort of exploration off Queen Charlotte Sound. Made some smart-ass comments about our drilling possibly causing massive earthquakes and tsunamis in the area. It’s such bull, and she had basically no scientific evidence. So now I’m stuck running interference, trying to convince the investors it isn’t a big issue. Like we’re not monitoring the fault lines seismically and testing radioactive gas emissions day and night as it is anyway.”

Mitch could drone on and on about geology and not care if anyone was listening. In that respect, he was just like Annie. In fact, this was one of those controversies Annie would have loved to argue with him about. She’d always goaded him about his career choice as an engineering geologist working for an oil-and-gas conglomerate. While she’d claimed her work as a seismologist was important to the world of science, she’d teased him that his was only important to the world of profit.

“I bet she doesn’t even have a degree in geology,” Mitch went on. “She’s just some nut-job editor who’s read one too many papers and now thinks she’s an expert. I ran a search on her. No credentials listed at all. I bet she’s some environmental hippie chick. Probably a tree hugger.”

“Who?” Ryan was barely listening. He grabbed his cell phone and dropped it in his briefcase.

“That editor who wrote the article.” Mitch followed him out into the lobby. “I think her name was Kate Alexander, something like that.”

They rode the elevator to the parking garage while Mitch mumbled on and on about some article Ryan could care less about and the idiot who’d written it. Ryan pinched his forehead as they climbed into Mitch’s mud-coated Land Rover.

“She’s here in San Francisco. I think I’ll go over to her office tomorrow and give her a piece of my mind.” Mitch pulled out into traffic.

“You do that,” Ryan said.

“Oh, hey, forgot to tell you. You got a call this evening, some lawyer here in town. Um, Simone Conners. Sounded pretty sexy.”

Ryan recognized the name. “She’s an old friend of Annie’s.” He knew Simone lived in the area, had seen her at several charity functions, but preferred to ignore her. He generally ignored anyone who had known his wife. Making polite chitchat about the good old days wasn’t his idea of fun. “What’d she want?”

“Don’t know, wouldn’t say. If she was a friend of Annie’s, she was probably calling about the crash the other day, though.”

“Yeah, probably.” Ryan looked out the window at the city lights.

“You gonna call her?”

“What?” He glanced over. “I doubt it. She was more Annie’s friend than mine. I didn’t know her that well.”

“Sounded pretty hot on the phone.”

“You can tell that just from hearing her voice, huh?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“She was married the last time I talked to her, at Annie’s funeral.”

“So maybe she’s not married anymore.”

“She was Annie’s friend, moron. I’m not interested.”

“Why? Was she fat? Ugly? What’s the story?”

“God, you’re a piece of work. No, she was attractive, at least she was the last time I saw her. Petite, brunette, big eyes. You’d like her.”

A grin tugged at Mitch’s mouth. “Maybe I should pop over to her office tomorrow, scope her out.”

“I thought you were gonna scope out the tree hugger at the publishing house.”

“I can do both.” Mitch’s eyes flashed in the dashboard lights. “Now there’s a thought.”

“You’re a sick and twisted man.”

“You have no idea.”

Ryan raked a hand through his hair. “I think I’m gonna need at least two beers tonight. Preferably big ones.”

Kate stared at the computer screen. Photos of the Stromboli Volcano in Italy stared back at her, an article half done that needed a lot of work. She heaved out a sigh and pressed the heel of her hand against her forehead. There was no possible way she was going to be able to focus on editing today. The article would just have to wait until tomorrow.