Jacey rode the bus to the biggest gym in the city where, by some miracle after five years of following her husband on the racing circuit, she remained on the Maddox family gym membership. It was a lucky break, because she needed the locker space to change clothes. There was no way she was wearing her silk blouse, designer pumps, and blood red lipstick to the far side of town where her studio apartment was located. It was neither prime real estate nor the most secure community, but it was all she could afford on the last few dollars sitting in her bank account.

It was hard to believe how quickly her trust fund had dwindled. Easton's first race car had set them back over a hundred grand, and that didn't count the four hundred dollar tire changes — per tire — or the sixty thousand dollar engine replacement he'd needed halfway through his first season. Or the tens of thousands of other fees incidental to professional racing. And they would have more than made up the difference with his winnings if it wasn't for the fatal pileup that had stolen his rookie lead in the Southern 500 two months ago. He was minutes away from achieving his dreams, only to be cheated by the grim reaper himself. It was if the Fates had been against them from the start.

The tears she’d forced herself to swallow during her interview started to flow. She was half numb, emotionally raw, and completely exhausted; so they were tired tears mixed with tears of relief. She knew she was a very lucky young woman to have survived her encounter with the Calcagnis and even more lucky to have secured a job offer.

She emerged from the gym, free of makeup in a pair of gray yoga pants and a faded navy pullover with her hair crammed beneath a baseball cap. Wide sunglasses provided another layer of anonymity and hid her red-rimmed eyes. With one arm clamped firmly over her cross body duffle, she returned to the bus and waved her pass at the driver. It was so crowded she rode standing the rest of the way home with one hand on the grab bar above her, making eye contact with no one.

Bouncing in place to keep warm in the frigid autumn breezes, she waited in line at her favorite Turkish sandwich vendor on the street corner. Their döner wraps were enormous and filling. Cut into thirds, it would provide dinner tonight as well as lunch and dinner tomorrow.

She jogged up the external black metal stairwell to her third story room and bolted herself in for the night. None of the loitering teens outside had ever given her trouble, but she liked to think it was because she minded her own business and never went out after dark.

The interior of her small studio apartment was like an icicle. The first thing she did after stepping inside was flip the switch to her space heater. It was plugged in next to the black card table and folding chairs that served as her dining room furniture. Warm air swirled around her ankles as she ate. Her eyelids were drooping before she polished off her carefully divided sandwich. Next, she rolled the space heater across the room to her hand-me-down double bed, compliments of her older sister. She tugged back the covers and rolled them around her like a cocoon. If she bundled up enough at night, she could probably hold off another few weeks before turning on the furnace.

For the first time in a month, her exhaustion was greater than her grief. She nearly overslept. By the time the trill of her alarm invaded her consciousness, it had been sounding off for ten full minutes. With a small shriek of self-recrimination, she hopped out of bed, showered to freshen up, and rode the bus back to the gym to don her black pantsuit and power red heels. Fortunately, she still fit in her pre-marriage wardrobe, because they were by far the most appropriate outfits she owned for wearing to work. She didn’t have the funds at the moment to purchase new clothes.

She arrived at Genesis & Sons a half hour early and mounted the stairs. Waverly presided over the reception desk again.

She lowered her glasses. "You're early, Ms. Maddox."

“Please call me Jacey. And, yes, I'm a few minutes early. I am happy to wait if Mr. Calcagni isn't ready for me."

"Oh, he's ready." She punched a few buttons on her keyboard. "Allow me a moment to forward the phones, and I'll take you up myself."

She spoke not a word during their elevator ride, keeping her wide elegant mouth pursed and her hands clasped tightly in front of her.

"I know this is difficult for you," Jacey ventured softly. "Me being here."

The woman's glacial blue gaze clashed with hers.

"It's difficult for me, too." She briefly closed her eyes against the pain radiating from the older woman.

"Coming here won't make it any easier, you know.” The same pain she felt was echoed in Waverly’s voice.

"No, it won’t, but I didn't come here to forget." She opened her eyes and fought to steady her voice. "I came here to remember." She blinked hard as the elevator doors opened.

Waverly stepped ahead of her into Luca's office. "I doubt you'll find much time for reflection at Genesis,” she announced tartly, waving her hand at Luca's empty desk. "My grandson maintains an inhuman pace with his schedule. You're about to become a very busy young woman."

She threw open the door to a tiny adjoining room. Jacey was surprised to glimpse a desk filling most of the space. The entire room couldn't be more than a five by five square. It was a closet, for crying out loud. They’d probably had to move storage supplies to make room in it for her.

"This is where you'll be working."

Nice. She wanted to laugh. So they were placing her in an itty bitty room of shame designed to humiliate her. They clearly had no idea the minuscule size of her current living quarters.

"It's perfect." She offered what she hoped was a brilliant smile. "So close to Mr. Calcagni, too. No doubt it was difficult trying to figure out where to place another new employee in such an antiquated building." She rapped the wall smartly with her palm on her way to her desk as if testing the soundness of its structure.

The woman's sharp intake of air was proof the insult had sunk home.

Jacey flipped on the desk lamp and squeezed behind it, dropping her lunch inside one of her new desk drawers. "Lots of companies are pressed for space. DRAW Corporation was, too, before they relocated to their newer, much bigger facility in the Hill district."

Waverly stomped over to Luca’s desk, yanked up a thick piles of folders, and stomped back to slam them on her desk. "Your new boss has an important meeting at 9:00. He needs these notes compiled in a slide show presentation."

"Nine o'clock as in an hour and a half from now?"

"Yes, and he'll need it fifteen minutes earlier to review his speaking points."

Nothing like a short suspense project to begin her latest venture. Then again, she'd been expecting a curve ball on the first pitch. She flipped open the first file folder and scanned its contents. It appeared to be a standard bid for a general marketing campaign. High-end women's footwear. Her personal specialty — at least from a consumer standpoint. "What audio visual equipment will he be using?"

"His laptop and the big screen in the conference room. If you were paying any attention, you would have noticed it yesterday."

They hadn’t kept her in the conference room long enough to notice anything of the sort, but she was familiar enough with most standard equipment to get by sight unseen.

"If you'll excuse me, ma'am." She didn't bother tempering the dismissal from her tone as she booted up her dated-looking desktop computer. The woman had earned herself a swift verbal parry. "I'd best get to work."

With a huff of disapproval, Waverly lingered for several moments as if daring Jacey to say another word. When Jacey started typing without looking up, she finally spun away and slapped at the elevator button.

Jacey would have never been able to compile the presentation in less than an hour without such an exhaustive personal knowledge of ladies shoes. Luca would be making his presentation to a regional fashion boutique that offered an extensive collection of both women's clothing and footwear lines. Display racks and shelves, signage, and lighting. She absorbed the details of his proposal. It was a quickie one-month ad blitz to introduce an all-new summer sandal for next year.

The Fleur-de-Lis. The name of the shoe evoked a myriad of pictures and emotions. She studied the word collage Luca had sketched in royal blue ink on a piece of notepad paper. The name was French. Delicate. Light. She couldn’t agree more when she viewed a photo of the shoe. It was a strappy piece of confection in a champagne-glaze light, beaten leather with a three-inch heel.

With Luca’s creative brainstorm of words swirling in her mind, she combed through the charts displaying each media channel and their respective budgets. His calculations were immaculate, his projected profit margins lofty but attainable, but the name of the product felt too long and a little off. Maybe because of the over usage of the flower in art throughout the years, the term fleur-de-lis made her think of carved filigrees and stone tablets. The new line of shoes called for something less cumbersome. Something shorter. Like Fleur.

With a chuckle, she deleted the remaining segment of the phrase, leaving Fleur to stand on its own merit. It looked right now, stylish and upscale, something a shoe hoarder like herself would purchase.

"Does your new job amuse you, Ms. Maddox?" Luca's voice jolted her from her creative cloud.

"Good morning." She scanned his impassive features. "Your presentation is nearly complete. Would you care to take a peek?"

He swooped down on her desk like a hawk toying with its prey. Too bad the two of them couldn't fit behind her workstation together. He could blame his own lack of generosity in her accommodations for that. She swiveled her monitor around for him to view.

He bent closer, and the woodsy scent of his aftershave slammed into her more potent and powerful than the day before. Odd how every scent today seemed so pronounced. Come to think of it, everything felt a little more today. The lights seemed brighter, everyday sounds more defined, the fall temperatures more biting, and Luca's presence more unsettling if the increase of her heartbeat was any indication.

Her mouth turned dry as he reached out. But all he did was scoot the flat computer screen a little closer to him. "Take it from the top," he commanded.

Something about his nearness made it harder to breathe. She was going to have to learn how to get by on less air when he was around. She used her mouse to click through the screens.

"Faster, Ms. Maddox. Our guests arrive in twenty minutes."

She clicked faster.

"That's enough." He cut her off before she reached the end of the slide show, straightened, and moved to his desk. "Make the headings bigger. Mr. Sandstone is nearsighted, though he refuses to wear spectacles. And change the slide background. It's too busy."

She glared at his retreating shoulders. She'd checked the other files saved to the common drive and used the same size headings and identical background of his last two presentations. He was asking her to snap her fingers and update more than fifty slides in the space of five minutes. He was being petty, a fact that didn't seem to bother him.

He threw a few folders inside a briefcase and headed for the elevator. "Meet me in the conference room with the presentation on a zip drive. I’ll also need a printed copy of the speaker's notes. There's a package of spare drives in your desk."

Since Jacey had nothing pleasant to say in return, she didn't bother responding. Her mind was already working the angles of his ridiculous request. She flipped through the screens one more time to be sure she'd left enough white space in the margins to give the only idea that popped in her mind a shot at actually working. Check. Plan B it was. She changed the slide size from Standard to Wide Screen and selected an option to avoid distorting the photos and graphs. Voila! The headings were bigger although no longer a hundred percent uniform. If Mr. Sandstone could read them, though, her mission was accomplished. If Luca Calcagni preferred uniformity and polish, on the other hand, he could hold off on his frivolous last-minute requests next time.

She changed the background to a wall of white marble with three minutes to spare. It left her just enough time to save and print the presentation. It wasn't perfect, but it was the best she could do in such a short period. The best anyone could do.

She scooped up the presentation and dashed for the elevator, mashing the down button. Come on. Come on. Come on. She tapped her toe of her shoe. And continued to tap her toe. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other and tapped her other toe. Frowning at the flashing panel, she mashed the button a second time. The elevator appeared stuck on the main floor, which was strange since it was Luca's private elevator.

Precious seconds ticked past.

"Oh!" she groaned, whirling to examine the details of her surroundings more closely. Surely, this ancient building had a stairwell or fire exit or some other way down to the first floor. She yanked open doors, furious to discover two more closets twice the size of the hole the Calcagnis had stuck her in. Figures. The last door opened to a stairwell. Only twenty flights to the main floor. In heels. Three and a half inch ones, no less. Fortunately, she was young and in top physical shape.

She was also tardy to her first Genesis meeting, arriving a full seven minutes past nine, panting quietly while inwardly groaning over her aching arches. A fine sheen of sweat prickled her hairline and temples.

"You're late." Luca prowled the far end of the boardroom, irritation radiating from his broad, pinstripe-clad shoulders.

"Oh, dear." Waverly's gracious drawl rang out. "The elevator service man arrived a few minutes ago. It totally slipped my mind we were stranding your new assistant on the top floor.”

Save it, lady. A gnat wouldn't drown in such a small drop of remorse. Jacey took the seat Luca pointed to, trying to hide her wince of relief with her best professional smile. "It's alright, ma'am."

"What can I say?" The elder woman shrugged, a twinkle thawing her gaze a few degrees. "Old buildings. They’re like old people and their old memories."

Well played. Jacey nodded to acknowledge the hit. She'd done far worse to those who'd crossed her in the past.

Knox breezed through the doorway, a steaming mug in hand. "Mr. Sandstone and his entourage are in the parking lot. Rhys is bringing them in." He sauntered over to claim the chair next to Jacey. While stooping to take his seat, he tipped his mug and spilled his coffee on her knee.

It was scalding. Her lips parted in shock as she absorbed the blinding slice of pain and the pulsing sting that followed.

"The zip drive, Ms. Maddox?" Luca's question seized her from the brink of passing out and brought her back to the boardroom.

Unable to focus just yet, she slid the thin, black external drive in the direction of his voice.

Behind her chair, a hubbub of voices announced the entrance of their guest boutique owner and his staff. She fought to focus on the voices instead of her misery. Her hazy vision cleared, and their guests took shape. There were three men and one woman in addition to Rhys talking animatedly when they stepped in the room. Luca's voice joined in the greetings and preliminary round of small talk. The group gradually dispersed and took their places around the conference table. At the far end of the room, the big screen flashed on.

Someone pressed a cold pack in her hand. Waverly's voice sounded low in her ear. "Old eyes don't quite miss everything."

Not yet trusting her voice, Jacey drew a deep breath and nodded her thanks, trying to force another smile. At least she was wearing black. The coffee spill wouldn't show too much, but her knee was smarting so badly she wanted to scream. She pressed the ice pack to it. A gasp of appreciation escaped her.

Luca, now seated on her other side, speared her with a questioning glance. She gave him what she hoped was a nod of confidence. He studied her a moment longer before returning his attention to his notes. His jaw tightened as he read. He produced an executive pen and scrawled a note in the margin, his movements jerky with suppressed anger.

When he moved his hand, she saw what he'd written. Fleur-de-Lis. Apparently, he didn't like her shortened version of the proposed shoe line. He shifted in his seat to speak directly in her ear. "We will discuss your attention to detail later, Ms. Maddox."

She didn't doubt it any more than she doubted her grasp of women's shoes. Maybe she should have discussed it with him first before making the change, but she doubted he would have listened to the thoughts of an apprentice. Or an assistant on a two-week trial. Certainly not a Maddox. She shifted away from him, willing the snarling pain in her leg to stand down.

He swiftly rose from his seat, a remote control in hand, and took command of the room. "The fleur-de-lis, as many of you know, is widely considered to be a stylized version of the species of flowers knows as the Iris Florentina." With the click of a button, he started the slide show, and a graphic depicting the iris's elegant petals flashed on the big screen. A faint, iridescent white flower that slowly transitioned to a gauzy metallic shade of champagne, the same as the shoe. She hoped he liked the animated meme she’d created, but his expression gave nothing away.

She had to admit he was good. He hadn't paused for lengthy introductions or nauseating preliminaries. He'd jumped right to the heart of the presentation in a compelling manner that grabbed and held the attention of his listeners. He clicked to the second slide, a photo of the shoe with the word Fleur emblazoned across the heading in cursive, all lowercase letters. The font she'd chosen was a new one, according to the site she'd downloaded it from. It exuded casual elegance, bringing to mind half-filled glasses of wine and garden parties in full swing.

"Fleur." Mr. Sandstone spread his hands. "It's genius. With a single word, you captured the essence of our product. Lush. Feminine. Upscale."

"You asked for branding, sir. It's what we do." Luca's dark gaze moved briskly over Jacey and returned to his prospective client.

"I like it. I like it well enough to skip ahead to the terms of the contract and get an early start to the golf course. I promised Edric lunch and a game if you sold me a marketing plan this morning. Where is that old codger, anyway?" The deal was done. The rest was just details, simply a formality.

The meeting didn't last more than ten minutes. Rhys escorted their satisfied customer and his staffers from the room.

"Nailed it." Knox raised his mug, grinning, while Jacey edged as far away from him as possible until he set it down.

"Old codger indeed," Waverly chuckled. "Wait until Mr. Sandstone discovers Edric's been warming up the greens since dawn."

Luca flipped off the big screen. "If you'll excuse us a few minutes, I need to speak with Ms. Maddox about the presentation. Alone."

From his tone of voice, his displeasure had to be clear to everyone listening. Knox smirked at her and took his leave. To her credit, Waverly cast a doubtful look at Jacey’s leg, which was still hurting like crazy. Jacey waved her on, heartbeat thudding in anticipation at facing Luca alone. She should have known a successful contract wouldn't be enough to appease him for the audacity of altering his proposal.

The moment the door clicked shut behind Waverly, he rounded on her. "Why did you do it?"

She shook her head. "Do what, Mr Calcagni?"

"Pretending to misunderstand is pointless. You changed my presentation without my authorization."

"We landed the contract."

"I would have landed it without your interference. Just so you know, I've fired people for less."

"Oh?"

"Why did you do it?" he asked again.

"I read every inch of your notes." She paused, seeking the right words. "Fleur was right there in the middle of your word collage on page five, flashing neon lights up at me. It was the right name for the product. The right branding."

"Was it now, Ms. Maddox?" His voice was dangerously low. He stepped closer, looking angry enough to strangle her.

Her chin came up. "I know shoes, Mr. Calcagni."

"As well as you know the ones torturing your feet right now, I suppose?"

"They were never meant for hiking down twenty flights of stairs. I’ll keep a more practical pair on hand in case of future elevator malfunctions."

He blinked. "You truly expect to continue working for me after altering a key presentation without my permission?"

"Yes." She folded her copy of his speaker notes and started to stuff them in her purse.

His hand closed around the other end of the papers, halting her movement. Her breath caught at the sight of his long, bronzed fingers resting so closely to her much lighter ones, so close his fingertips brushed the edge of her hand. For a moment, Easton was in the room again, holding her hand, making one of his ridiculous statements that made her laugh.

"I don't believe you understand the magnitude of what you did. Had you been wrong, you could have cost Genesis & Sons up to seven figures in long-term revenue."

His deeper voice snapped her out of her daydream. Definitely not Easton's. It resonated through her in ways his never had. "I wasn't wrong."

She held his gaze, knowing she'd correctly named the new shoe line, and wished her heart wouldn't thud so crazily around in her chest each time they crossed verbal swords. She couldn't recall ever being this jumpy around another person before. It was a terribly inconvenient reaction to Luca Calcagni, considering how closely they would be working together.

"Not this time, Ms. Maddox, but I can't afford the risk of a repeat performance. Sabotage is a serious crime."

"Sabotage!" Thanks to her, they'd just landed a major contract. She yanked her hand away, leaving him holding the folded papers. The rapid movement made her wince at the pain shooting through her arches as well as her burnt knee. The ice pack slipped from her hand and thunked to the floor. "In case you've forgotten, I work for you now, Mr. Calcagni. I’m on your team.”

"Are we, Ms. Maddox? Or do you have an ulterior motive for wanting to work at Genesis & Sons?"

Her chest heaved at the implication. Now I'm a corporate spy, eh? She'd anticipated the Calcagnis presuming the worst about her intentions but couldn't fathom how helping them land such a profitable contract contributed to the problem. "Fine!” she snapped. “I won't make any further changes to your precious notes without first discussing them with you." I’m sorry I tried to help you, you low-down rat of a…

"Good. Otherwise, there won't be a next time." Luca bent over the table to return the Sandstone file to his briefcase along with her folded copy of his notes. "The next project awaits us upstairs." He cocked his head at the door, indicating she should walk ahead of him.

She took a few hobbling steps and gave up the fight, knowing she wouldn't make it to the elevators in her current state, much less up twenty flights of stairs. Kicking off her heels, she bent to retrieve them and stormed ahead of him from the room with them dangling from two fingers. Or would have if her knee hadn't hurt so badly. The coffee-dampened fabric chaffed her scalded patch of skin so much that her barefoot limping was hardly much improvement over her high-heeled hobble.

"Are you injured, Ms. Maddox?"

"I'm fine." She laid a hand on the wall for support, feeling lightheaded.

With a sound of irritation, he reached for her. "Put your arms around my neck," he commanded harshly. “I’m going to carry you.”

"No thank you. I prefer to walk." Jacey limped a few steps farther down the hallway, her hand never straying from the wall. They were still a healthy distance from the elevator.

"We have more work to do, Ms. Maddox, and it won't get done at that pace."

“Oh, for Pete’s sake!” she rounded on him with a furious hissing sound, which he chose to accept as an agreement to his offer. When he reached for her, she didn’t protest, so he scooped her up in his arms. He was wholly unprepared for the course of sheer male pleasure her nearness infused in him.

She was taller than average, even without her signature heels, with curves in all the right places. He'd not expected a woman of her height and shape to feel so light, her bone structure so delicate.

Looks could be so deceiving.

He was well acquainted with the female physique, well enough to deem her underweight. Apparently, she was one of those women who starved herself down to centerfold size. His upper lip curled. She'd certainly posed for enough of them in the past few years. Because of her family name, the gossip columns had their heyday with the photos, but he doubted she cared. She'd never concerned herself with anything more than living in the moment. Unfortunately, her penchant for thrill-seeking had set his youngest brother on a course that had cost him his life.

A fresh burst of anger coursed through his veins, heating his blood to inferno levels. When he was through with his newest employee, she certainly wouldn't look back on her short stint at Genesis as one of her many larks.

His arms tightened in an unconscious reflection of his thoughts. At her quick gasp of surprise, he forced them to relax, which had the unfortunate effect of returning his attentions to her delectable self.

Jacey was turning out to be one big mixed signal. For one thing, she was real. Every attribute he'd suspected was fake during their interview wasn't. Up close, her hair was shiny and supple, not fried from hair straighteners and other chemicals. And every inch of her felt warm and soft against his arms and chest. No implants. Every detail of her physique was authentic.

Including her heartbeat.

Though her expression was bland, it was anything but. It raced erratically against the fabric of his shirt. That both surprised him and totally stoked his male ego. She was skilled at hiding her inner emotions from her facial expressions, better than most people of his acquaintance, but she was undeniably nervous around him. Excellent. For some reason, the discovery gave him more satisfaction that the ink drying on the Sandstone contract. He’d be sure to remember that glorious fact the next time she raised her saucy chin at him or bit down on one of those pouty lips.

They made it to the elevator without running into any other employees. But by the time the elevator door slid shut behind them, he was suffering in other ways. The small enclosed area felt too intimate and his clothing too confining.

When her fingers brushed the back of his neck, a jolt of pleasure shot straight from her fingertips to his heart. He glared at her, wondering what sort of game she was up to this time, but she was looking away from him. Tight-lipped and furious, as far as he could tell. Good. But that simple touch had branded itself against his skin. He ached to have her touch him again, which could only mean one thing. He was completely out of his mind.

It seemed like an hour before the elevator door opened. He stepped inside his office, furious with both of them. Her for presenting so much temptation. Him for finding her so difficult to resist.

Day one on the job and already she’d gotten under his skin. Grimacing, he carefully set her on her feet once more and hated himself a little for missing the feel of her in his arms. To his enormous satisfaction, he was rewarded with a faint whimper before she landed on her tiptoes and hobbled back to her desk. He'd waited a long time to teach Jacey Maddox a lesson. It was way too bad the opportunity had come too late to save Easton from her wiles.

He'd best remember how dangerous she was every time he looked at her and wanted what he saw. Being in her presence was as addictive as…

Stop. Just stop. He forced his thoughts back to work.

"Check your inbox." His voice was louder than necessary, but it helped to pull his brain out of the quicksand where it had sunk. "Our next presentation is 11:30 at the Four Seasons. We'll be needing slides, speaker's notes, twelve copies of the handouts, table favors, and all the necessary audiovisual equipment."

He should have enjoyed the way his orders made Jacey’s shoulders stiffen. Instead it was all he could do to keep from offering to massage the kinks out of them.

Oh, yeah. He was in trouble working this close to Jacey Maddox. Deep trouble.