Just Between Friends. Julianna Morris

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      Chapter One

      “I’m sorry, you can’t go in.”

      Dylan O’Rourke heard his secretary’s protest a split second before the door opened. He spun his chair around, prepared to deal with an insistent client, and saw Kate Douglas instead.

      “Kate.”

      She smiled. “Hey, Dylan.”

      “What do you want?”

      With Kate it was wise to cut to the chase. When they were kids he’d had an annoying habit of being unable to say “no” to the lady—like the time she’d gotten him to help her run away from home. He still remembered his father’s blistering lecture over that particular stunt. After that Dylan had nicknamed her “Katydid,” to remind himself that he didn’t have to do everything that Kate did.

      “Right now I want to sit down.”

      Kate sank onto the couch and crossed her legs. Her long gold hair matched the earrings and the gold chain around her neck, and she wore a white silk dress, white silk hose and a pair of white leather sandals…an outfit that probably cost more than his first car.

      White, in a construction office.

      Dylan shook his head, yet he couldn’t help grinning at the same time. Common dirt wouldn’t dare stick to someone with Katrina Douglas’s kind of old money—gold dust, maybe, but never just plain dirt.

      “It’s good to see you,” Kate said softly.

      “Same here.” And he meant it. Kate might be a spoiled rich kid, but she was bright and full of fun…and she could wheedle a glass of water from a man lost in the desert.

      Of course, he was older now, and not nearly so susceptible. He usually got stuck with buying tickets to some god-awful charity event when she stopped by to see him, but he’d refused other stuff. Like the time she’d wanted to auction him as a bachelor at one of her fund-raisers. Dylan shuddered at the memory. He was willing to escort her now and then to a party, but get auctioned?

      Not a chance.

      “What is it, Kate?” he asked, determined to get right to the heart of the matter. “Another fund-raiser? I’ll donate, but I’m not coming.”

      “No, it isn’t another fund-raiser. Though it was mean of you not to show up at the last one. You were supposed to be my date.”

      “No, I wasn’t. I told you I couldn’t go to that one, you just didn’t listen.”

      She didn’t look convinced. “There I was, all alone,” she said. “It was terrible—it’s humiliating to be the only woman without an escort.”

      Dylan almost fell into the trap before he caught the sparkle in her green eyes. “Brat,” he muttered.

      “So, why couldn’t you come?”

      “I was busy. And I’m tired of dry sandwiches with the crusts cut off.”

      “They weren’t dry.”

      “They’re always dry. You’ve dragged me to enough of those things for me to know I’ll be poorly fed and miserably uncomfortable. Honest, Katydid, you have the most boring friends. And they have an insatiable curiosity about how you happen to know an immigrant Irish construction worker. I should wear a sign that says My Dad Was One of the Help. Maybe I’d get left in peace.”

      “Strictly speaking, your parents were the immigrants. You were born in the United States.”

      “You know what I mean.”

      “And you own the construction company,” Kate added. “You’re a very successful businessman.”

      “Don’t glamorize me. I’m still a construction worker, and your friends wouldn’t know the difference between the working end of a hammer and a staple gun.”

      “Maybe they’re curious because you’re Kane O’Rourke’s brother,” she said brightly.

      Dylan snorted. His brother had become one of the wealthiest men in the country, but to the Douglases’ small and snobbish social circle, it was new money and not worth their attention. Of course, some of the unattached women he’d met at those fund-raisers had obviously hoped for an introduction to Kane, at least before he’d gotten married.

      Thank God Kane had found a genuinely sweet and loving woman. Beth was terrific—down-to-earth and totally unimpressed with her husband’s money.

      “Or maybe everyone wonders what such a great-looking guy is doing with me,” Kate suggested.

      She did her best to look pathetic, but Dylan wasn’t buying a second of it. If he hadn’t watched her grow up from a skinny little kid, Kate’s golden-haired beauty would probably knock him breathless. Instead he was merely wary.

      “Then when you don’t escort me,” she continued sadly, “I’ll bet they think you found someone prettier.”

      “Give me a break,” Dylan muttered.

      He didn’t usually think about the way Kate had blossomed. He wasn’t even sure when it had happened. One minute she was a bratty kid with a genius for talking him into trouble, the next minute she was dropping male jaws all over Seattle. But she still seemed awfully young—mostly because of the impish mischief lurking in her sea green eyes.

      After a moment Kate looked up, but for once her eyes were very serious. “What you said about the ‘help’…does it bother you that your father used to work for my family?”

      “Not particularly. Your friends, on the other hand?” Dylan lifted a shoulder.

      “We might work on fund-raising projects together, but they’re my mother’s friends,” Kate said slowly. “I don’t fit in that well.”

      “You’re young, give it a couple years.”

      Frustrated, Kate regarded the tips of her toes, then wiggled them inside her sandals. Dylan was only two years older, yet he treated her like a little kid. Nothing she did seemed to make a difference to the way he saw her. She’d long since given up hoping that he’d look into her eyes and discover she was the woman of his dreams, but the least he could do was realize she’d grown up.

      Honestly, it was so irritating.

      She was a leftover piece of his childhood, СКАЧАТЬ