“Wait! Wait!” Melody Ann Farrell sprinted for the elevator and nearly cried with relief when a hand appeared in the opening to stop the darn thing from closing and leaving her to wait for the next ride. “Oh, thank you! Hold the elevator, please?”

The doors whooshed back open, and Melody slipped through the opening. The thing smelled faintly of old cheese. Why did elevators always smell like that? Or there were the ones in fancy hotels and stuff that reeked of cologne. That was worse. At least Melody thought so. She hated old cheese. She hated cologne. She pretty much hated everything right now. Of course, that was why she was in the elevator.

“Excuse me. Ma’am?”

Melody’s eyes opened, and she leaped away from the wall. She had been leaning against the cool metal of the elevator with her back pressed against it and her hands trapped behind her butt. It was a totally undignified position, but then she’d sort of forgotten that she wasn’t alone.

“What floor?”

“Uh, seven?”

Oh, of course. The guy in the elevator with her looked like a millionaire playboy. It was just the two of them. When did that ever happen in a potentially crowded office building at three in the afternoon? How uncomfortable. He was wearing a suit that had to be custom tailored because it fit him like a glove. The black pinstriped fabric of his jacket emphasized the width of his broad shoulders and the trimness of his waist. His legs were long and lean. Somehow, she expected him to be wearing cowboy boots, but he wasn’t.

This was Denver. Easily half of the businessmen in this town dressed in cowboy boots or some kind of Western suit. It was sort of odd, but she got the feeling that this individual was trying very hard to be the exact opposite of the typical Western businessman. There was a black laptop bag slung over one of his shoulders that seemed wildly out of place. She was just trying to decide if he had applied a generous amount of product to his hair just to suppress the obvious curl in the short black style when she realized that he was staring at her.

His eyes were the most intense shade of blue that she had ever seen. “Everything all right?” The question in their blue depths made her knees feel strange and watery.

“Sure. Yeah. Why would you ask?” The words just tumbled off her tongue without any thought behind them. There were probably a hundred reasons he’d ask. First and foremost, the fact that she was staring at him as though she’d never seen a man before.

The corners of his mouth turned up in a smile. “You seem a little lost.”

“Lost?” That wasn’t very flattering. “I know where I’m going.”

“Geographical location often has nothing to do with the concept of lost.” Melody could have listened to his smooth low voice all day long. Nothing had ever been more soothing or more—well, the word sexy came immediately to mind.

Oh my God! Get a grip!

This guy probably dated models. He obviously had money. He was even more obviously successful. They were in a building full of attorney’s offices. He was probably headed in to talk about his billion dollar investments and how to avoid paying taxes on them.

Melody’s only experience with a tax write-off was when she tried to find all of her health insurance information so she could avoid paying at the end of the year because of her tips at the coffee shop where she worked. She could not even imagine what it would be like to have millions of dollars and pay someone to help you figure out how to keep it all. A dollar would be welcome, much less a million.

“I think,” Melody told him slowly, “that right now the best I can hope for is to know my geographical location and be happy that I’ve got that much of a head start.”

His elegant eyebrows lifted, and he adjusted the bag on his shoulder. The movement caused his scent to waft across the elevator. Melody sucked in a quick breath of surprise. It was spicy and so very male. Hints of sandalwood, spice, and fresh mountain air mingled together in her nose to create the most wonderful bouquet of man that Melody had ever experienced.

She tried to memorize his scent and the way he looked. This guy would be at the top of her fantasy lineup. Each and every time she tried to go to sleep in her one-room apartment with its sagging sofa bed, she would pull out this memory and imagine nights on the town with this guy.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” he told her quietly. “When a person is pushed to the point in their life where they are only existing from moment to moment, then some of the joy is lost in life. Don’t you think?”

“Easy for you to say.” Damn. Did she really say that out loud? It was so combative! She wasn’t trying to be a total shrew. Sometimes her life just made her feel like one.

“Why is it easy?” He cocked his head to one side. “You think my life is easy or something? Is that it?”

“Isn’t it?” Come on. Was this guy for real? Melody glanced up at the display on the elevator. They were passing the fourth floor. Could this thing move any slower?

“No. I don’t think my life is easy.” He narrowed that blue gaze and frowned at her. “I have a crazy family. I have expectations to fulfill and problems to manage and bullshit to deal with just like everybody else.”

“But having money makes that easy.” Did he not know this? How could he not know this? “Money changes everything. Money makes things possible. It opens doors and closes the windows that we want to jump out of—figuratively speaking of course.”

“Wow.” His shoulders moved as he snorted. “You’re really adept at snap judgments against people. Aren’t you now?”

It was funny, but in that one moment, he didn’t seem quite as polished as he looked. The cadence of his speech changed. There was almost the hint of an accent in his words. A drawl perhaps. Whatever it was, it was not the speech of a polished blue-blooded trust fund baby. Interesting, but totally not her problem.

The elevator dinged. There were only ten floors in the building. Presumably he was going to the top, because that’s where the most expensive law firm in the city resided. But Melody was getting off on seven, and that’s where they were.

“I don’t make snap judgments,” Melody felt compelled to say as she exited the elevator. “I use the information in front of me and draw conclusions based on patterns of behavior and the way people dress, act, and speak.” Why Melody felt vindicated by this little speech, she could not say.

Marching down the hallway and away from the elevator, Melody did not turn to look when it dinged closed behind her. She refused to see if the guy had gotten off on this floor, or had continued on. It didn’t matter anyway. She would never see him again. Besides, she had more important things to do.

Pausing in front of the estate lawyer’s office, Melody pushed her way into his office and found the elderly gentleman bent over his copy machine. He was very generous in shape and wore a suit as ancient as the guy in the elevator’s had been new. The gentleman had a few scraps of white hair on top of his head, and there were fleshy rolls at the base of his neck.

Melody had to put her hand over her mouth to prevent a yelp of surprise from slipping out. Perhaps she was just overwrought about everything, but for some reason, the level of hilarity at the sight of the man’s rather large backside in his ancient trousers was almost too funny for words.

“Ahem.” Melody cleared her throat and just barely managed not to choke on her laugh. “Mr. Watson?”

The booty bent over in front of her jiggled as Mr. Watson realized he was not alone. Putting his hands on the tops of his thighs, he ponderously gained an upright position and looked behind him. His face was jowly, and those scraps of white hair were pretty much all at the back of his poor head.

“Oh, hello there!” He sounded like a cartoon professor.

Melody forced herself to exhale. Laughing at him was not in her best interest right now. She could do that in the elevator on the way back down. “Hello, Mr. Watson. I’m Melody Ann Farrell. We spoke on the phone. Remember?”

“Of course! Young lady, come in, come in!” There was a very strange inflection in his words, as though he were trying very hard to parody a certain Southern fried chicken mascot. “I have those papers for you to sign right now.”

“Papers. Right.” Watson had been the estate lawyer for Melody’s grandparents. She wasn’t prepared to sign papers. That seemed to indicate that something had happened. “Can I ask what the papers are for?”

“Your grandparents left you a sizeable little piece of property on the front range.” He acted as though she should have known exactly what he was talking about. He was now standing before her with his fingers laced together over his round belly. “I’ve managed to find a buyer for the property, and the sale will cover the taxes.” He swept his hands out in a very overdone gesture. “Problem solved!”

Melody felt her mouth drop open. “Excuse me? Why is that problem solved? Will there be any money left?”

Melody felt as though the bottom were dropping out of her stomach altogether. She’d imagined a little tiny nest egg remaining after the death taxes and the sale of her grandparents’ land. Something along the lines of enough money to pay off the credit card that was choking her to death and to maybe fix her car so she’d actually have something to drive. Now this man was telling her that wasn’t going to happen? It seemed wrong.

“Well now.” Mr. Watson’s belly jiggled as he laughed. Why was he laughing? There was nothing funny about this! “You see, Ms. Farrell, there are a lot of death taxes and inheritance taxes and such due on the land.”

“But you found a buyer almost immediately,” Melody pointed out. “So, obviously, someone wants the land.”

“The Flying W buys up pretty much anything bordering their ranch land.” Watson gave a dismissive wave of his hand. “But they don’t particularly need the land. They don’t have to have it. And essentially, they’re doing you a favor by buying it.”

“Who is the Flying W?” Melody asked weakly. “Were they friends of my grandparents or something? Who are they?”

Watson smashed the print button a few more times on the infernal machine he’d been arguing with when she’d walked in. It suddenly started spitting out papers. Melody felt the fingers of cold dread sliding down her spine as she realized that he was printing some kind of real estate sale contract.

“Ah!” Watson said with glee. “Here we go, young lady. You just sign here and this will all be over.”

“No!” Melody sliced her hand through the air. “You cannot possibly expect me to just sign over my grandparents’ land without even exploring other possibilities!”

The smile slid right off Watson’s jowly face. His beady dark eyes turned hard as little shards of glass. “Young lady, when Paul Weatherby wants to buy your land, you sell it to him.”

“Well, I never said my land was for sale,” Melody said stubbornly. “You said he didn’t need it anyway. Why would he care if I sell it or keep it?”

“Young lady, you’re not understanding how things are done.” Watson’s tone seemed to indicate a warning of some kind. It set off the warning bells in Melody’s head and made her feel almost panicky. “We’ve made Mr. Weatherby an offer. We need to follow through.”

“No!” Melody snapped. “You made Weatherby an offer on my behalf! I’ve never met you before. You don’t even represent me. I know how that works at least. You’re not my agent. You’re not authorized to make offers for me. I want to think about it.”

Watson’s face began to turn red. It was a slow escalation of color that gave him the look of a balloon about to explode. “Young lady, you told me you would sell!”

“No. I told you I would like to explore options,” she shot back.

Melody was done being pushed around by rich people. She was done being pushed around. Period. It was enough that she got yelled at by spoiled rich assholes who ordered one kind of coffee, changed their minds, and then got pissed because they couldn’t just trade it in.

“Ms. Farrell, I have to advise you against going back on this offer to Mr. Weatherby. He is not a man to be messed with.” Mr. Watson’s face was gradually getting redder and redder until Melody felt herself taking mincing steps backwards away from the potential explosion.

“I want my file, Mr. Watson.” Melody forced herself to be calm and very, very clear. “I want my file. And I expect you to withdraw any offers or proposals that you made on my behalf. I am not hiring you to represent me. I intend to”—shit, what was she going to do—“seek other representation.”

Watson threw back his head and laughed. He stomped over to the desk on the opposite side of the room and snatched up a little manila folder. Then he waddled back in her direction and shoved it unceremoniously into her hands.

“Here!” he snapped. “Here’s your folder. And since I knew your grandparents for a good number of years, I won’t charge you for today. They were good people. I can’t imagine how disgusted they would be with the way you’ve turned out.”

It stung. Even though Melody believed in her heart that Watson was a self-serving old fat bastard, it hurt to have someone who had known her grandparents say that she was a disappointment. But she took a big breath and forced herself not to react to the mean words. “And I’m sure that my grandparents would be equally horrified that a man they trusted would try to so obviously and so shamelessly take advantage of their only living relative.”

He was still sputtering when Melody gathered up the file and turned on her heel. She marched out of that office and headed back toward the elevator at the end of the hallway. She managed to hold the tears back until she had safely returned to the elevator. It was empty this time. She was glad. Except that she could not help but wonder if the rich stranger in the custom suit might not have been able to offer some helpful advice.

Not that he would have. But it never hurt to wish for a happy alternative to a very scary situation.