Corner-Office Courtship. Victoria Pade

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СКАЧАТЬ think so. That’s what she’s coming over to look at tonight. Then I suppose she’ll give me a price.”

      “A million dollars?” Jani joked.

      Cade laughed. “I guess we’ll see. That would be a way to get even with us.”

      “Well, you better not keep her waiting,” Jani advised. Then she held up the papers she had in her hand. “This is the material for the next board meeting—that’s why I came in here in the first place. To find you lost in thought with a smile on your face—I’d forgotten about that smile….” Light seemed to dawn in Jani. “Is that what you’re thinking about today? And smiling about? Natalie Morrison?”

      “Nati. She doesn’t like to be called Natalie.” He had no idea why he was correcting his sister.

      “You’ve been sitting around here daydreaming—and smiling—about Nati Morrison?”

      “Nah! I told you, it’s just been a long week and my brain has been checking out today.”

      “Mentally checking out Nati Morrison,” Jani goaded.

      “Just give me the papers and get out of here so I can go home,” Cade countered, snatching the sheets from his sister’s hand.

      “Home to Nati Morrison,” Jani teased like the incorrigible younger sister she could be.

      “Home to see what I can do to make up for the sins of our fathers. Don’t get cocky, your turn will come.”

      “I can only hope that my turn turns me on as much as yours seems to be turning you on.”

      Cade laughed wryly and shook his head. “I’m not turned on by anything about this chore GiGi has me doing.”

      “If you say so…” Jani teased again as she headed for his office door.

      “I say so,” he insisted just as she went out, shaking his head again at the idea that anything about the situation with Nati Morrison was turning him on in any way.

      Sure she was a pleasure to look at. She’d also been a pleasure to banter with yesterday before she’d learned who he was—and not so bad even afterward. But that was nothing.

      As the first of the Camden heirs to be doing this making-amends thing, he was flying by the seat of his pants, writing the rules as he went along. And the biggest rule so far was to be careful.

      Which, coincidentally, had become his biggest rule when it came to women in general these days.

      But in terms of Nati Morrison specifically, he had no way of knowing what old issues might be brought back to life merely by a Camden showing up, so he had to be extremely cautious. There was already an ugly history between the Camdens and the Morrisons, and he didn’t want anything in the present to make things uglier—that would defeat the whole purpose of this endeavor.

      For that reason alone, Nati Morrison was not someone he could ever risk getting personally involved with.

      But that wasn’t his only reason.

      Cade finished clearing his desk for the weekend and left his office, telling his secretary to take off early and have a nice weekend.

      He headed home with Nati Morrison still on his mind. He tried to think about her in a way that sobered him rather than made him smile.

      Yes, the history between their families was a huge concern, no question about it. But on a more personal level, long before he’d met Nati Morrison yesterday, he’d arrived at a firm sticking point in regard to who he would and wouldn’t have a relationship with.

      It had to be someone who wasn’t in a position to see him as her golden goose. Or her winning lottery ticket. Someone who didn’t need a golden goose or a winning lottery ticket.

      And not because he was a snob—GiGi grew up with modest means and had raised him and all the rest of her grandchildren to be anything but snobs. She’d be the first to cut him down to size if she thought he was.

      But dating exclusively within his own social circle or the very near ripples around it had just become a safety issue for him. An issue of protection. Of self-preservation.

      Any woman he opened the door to had to be a woman who was only interested in him for the person he was, regardless of his last name or the size of his bank account.

      So he wasn’t taking any chances when it came to Nati Morrison. He would do what GiGi wanted him to do, but that was it. He wasn’t getting personally involved. He wasn’t putting himself at risk.

      He’d made that mistake twice before.

      No, he told himself as he drove home, as he pulled into his driveway then into his garage, Nati Morrison might be funny and spunky and kind to old women; she might have great hair, great skin, lush lips, beautiful eyes, even a dimple, but it wasn’t enough for him to let down his guard.

      So get on with this, get it over with, then get out, he told himself.

      And that was exactly what he intended to do.

      He just wished that his grandmother would have sent him on a mission that didn’t include someone whom he’d now spent an entire night and day thinking about.

      And apparently smiling like an idiot over when he did….

      Nati was five minutes early on Friday evening when she arrived at the Cherry Creek address that Cade Camden had given her the day before.

      About a mile east of the Denver Country Club, the house was in a neighborhood comprised of older, upscale homes. Cade Camden’s house was a stately redbrick, two-story Georgian with decorative black shutters on either side of the black door and all of the white-paned windows. While it was hardly modest, it wasn’t the mansion she’d thought it might be.

      For the sake of privacy, the front yard was bordered by redbrick columns and wrought-iron fencing. Two larger columns bracketed a double-car driveway. Nati drove her aging sedan around the block while she tried to decide whether she should pull into the driveway or park in front of the house on the narrow city street.

      Nearing the house for the second time, she decided it might be presumptuous to park in the driveway, so she pulled up to the curb and turned off her engine.

      Why am I so nervous about this whole thing? she asked herself as she unbuckled her seat belt and gathered the notebook with samples of her work and the pamphlets and fliers about wall textures and colors.

      She’d arrived at any number of houses in the last six months to bid on jobs.

      But none of those other bids had involved a Camden, she reminded herself.

      Cade Camden.

      The man she hadn’t been able to stop thinking about since she’d first looked up from behind her counter into those amazing blue eyes.

      But if ever there was a guy for her to stop thinking about, it was him.

      She’d spent a full year under legal siege from her now ex-husband and his family. СКАЧАТЬ