8. SARA

I’m beginning to wish I’d dropped my phone in the toilet at the Toad & Turtle last night.

“Time for you to go to work,” Quentin says in the hallway outside the boardroom. “Obviously it would have been better if they’d accepted the offer, but that’s not realistic. You have thirty days to bring me something that will make Chance Talbot back down.”

My head is still spinning, and so is my stomach. Being hungover and meeting up with your high school sweetheart on the same day as being offered the biggest contract of your life can be a little overwhelming.

“What exactly are you looking for?” I ask as Chance emerges from the boardroom.

“That’s exactly what I was wondering,” he says with a sardonic grin. “Great minds think alike, I guess.”

Ouch. I can hear the venom in his voice.

“So you already know Ms. Bishop,” says Quentin. “That’s good. It should make things easier.”

“How do you figure that?”

Quentin smiles. He really shouldn’t – he obviously doesn’t realize how fake it looks.

“Sara is the best investigator in the business,” he says. “She’ll find whatever you’re hiding.”

You told me I was the first one in the phone book, I don’t say.

Chance’s eyes flash. I’ve seen that look before, years ago. It was followed by two other guys ending up in the emergency room.

“What the hell are you talking about?” he snarls.

“Rumors,” Quentin says. “Blackmail. War profiteering. All sorts of nasty talk.”

“You’re full of shit.”

Is he? I may not be the “best investigator in the business,” but I think I can sense when someone is being defensive. Chance is hiding something.

Quentin leans in closer to Chance. I’d warn him not to, but I don’t like him.

“What do you think the Sullivans would say if they found out the truth about their dear old dad?” he whispers.

Chance grins, but those smoky gray eyes are smoldering.

“Anyone who says anything bad about Patrick Sullivan in my presence will regret it,” he says coldly.

“Is that a threat?” Quentin asks.

“No, this is a threat: stay out of my way or I’ll fucking hurt you.”

They glare at each other for a second, ramping up the tension in my belly.

“Excuse me,” I mutter, heading for the room with a stick figure in a skirt on the door.

Inside the bathroom, I run the cold water and splash it on my face with trembling hands. This is too much to take – how did I end up in the middle of a war between the guy who’s offering me a life preserver contract and the man I’ve been dreaming about since I was a teenager?

In the mirror, I’m amazed see a woman who’s still remarkably together. All the stuff roiling around inside me isn’t showing on the surface – for now, at least. My hair is still in place, my face is about as good as it can look without makeup, and the suit I picked out actually matches and isn’t wrinkled.

Take a deep breath. Don’t puke. You can get through this. I mean, it’s only thirty days. How hard could it possibly be?

Yeah, right. All I have to do is spend thirty days digging into the privacy of the man whose heart I shattered years ago, so that he’ll end up losing the company that obviously means everything to him.

But what choice do I have? Like the Sullivans said, money is money, and Bishop & Associates needs money. Chance has to understand that.

Sure. He’ll understand being betrayed again by the girl he fought so many times to protect. The girl who practically owes her sanity to the love he showed her as a teenager.

The girl who slammed the door in his face on the night when he needed her the most.

Would he possibly understand if he knew the truth? Would he even care? It’s been fifteen years.

We’re both completely different people now. Or at least he is – chairman and CEO? Who could have imagined it? Meanwhile, I’m still the same screw-up I’ve always been.

I make one last pass over my face with a paper towel and smooth out my hair in the mirror. You can do this. Just power through. You’ve been doing that all your life, Sara. Just keep powering through.

Then I open the bathroom door and walk directly into Chance.