Who Needs Decaf?. Tanya Michaels

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      REMINDING HIMSELF that he’d dealt with dignitaries, celebrities and the mob, for heaven’s sake, Nathan reached over his cluttered desktop and hit the intercom button on his phone. “Thanks for the heads-up,” he told the receptionist, who’d buzzed him to say Sheryl was coming his way.

      He was not nervous about this meeting. In all actuality, his slightly energized feeling was probably anticipation and not nerves at all. Then again, being this excited about seeing her again didn’t seem like a good idea, either.

      Nathan leaned back in his cheap, creaky chair—he must have unknowingly maligned the office supply manager to be assigned furniture so uniquely unsuited to sitting—recalling too late that the balance was slightly off and that the chair tilted back too far. He was scrambling to an upright position when Sheryl appeared in the open doorway. “Knock knock,” she said in a wry tone.

      Terrific. Not exactly the all-knowing, indomitable image he’d wanted to start off with, but he figured they were even now for her last visit to the office. He’d certainly thrown her for a loop when he’d caught her off guard with his identity.

      He cleared his throat and moved to straighten his tie before recalling he didn’t bother with ties at work. He had when he’d first started out, but soon realized his editors didn’t care about his dress code as much as documented sources and word count.

      “Good morning, Ms. Dayton. Please, have a seat.”

      Eyebrows raised over green eyes glinting with mirth, she considered the chair opposite him, a replica of the piece of unbalanced furniture he occupied. “Are we sure that’s a good idea?” She glanced around the cubby-sized office, filled to capacity by a desk, two chairs and a wastebasket with a miniature basketball hoop suspended over the top. “Although, I suppose there isn’t much standing room in here, is there?”

      “The accommodations not up to your standards?” He tried to imagine her surroundings at HGS.

      She surprised him with a bright laugh. “Are you kidding? This is palatial compared to the last building we were in. My office space was pretty much me working out of a box and sitting hunched over with a laptop literally in my lap. I guess that’s how those things got their names. But Brad promised us we’d be moving on to greener pastures, and he kept his word.”

      At what cost? the insatiable reporter in Nathan wondered.

      From what he’d read, Brad Hammond was driven to succeed. But driven enough to convince himself that “borrowing” a few ideas from an obscure writer in Colorado couldn’t hurt anything?

      Sheryl’s eyes narrowed as though she knew exactly what he was thinking, but he wasn’t going to apologize for doing his job. Then is it fair to hold Sheryl’s job against her? a nagging little voice asked.

      That was different, he assured himself as she settled into the proffered chair. He understood Sheryl’s professional position required her to try to make HGS look good, but if she earned her salary by knowingly defending a thief…

      “What was it that you wanted to talk to me about, exactly?” His tone was more abrupt than he’d intended, but she unsettled him in a way he hated. He preferred things as black-and-white as the newsprint of his column. These unpredictable, mixed reactions to Sheryl fell into a dangerously gray area.

      She smoothed a theoretical wrinkle out of her charcoal-colored slacks, clearly using the gesture to stall for time. Nathan studied her while she silently selected the perfect public-relations words instead of shooting from the hip as she had at the theater when he’d last seen her. He found himself absurdly relieved that she wore a pantsuit now and not tantalizingly soft green velvet.

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