She lunched with Flint twice that week. Spoke on the phone with him several times. Getting to know the boy he’d been, who’d grown to become the man he was. Sharing more of herself than she had in a long while. She talked about how—although she now loved her job—when she’d been younger, she’d really wanted to be a stay-at-home wife and mother. Old-fashioned though that might be, she’d thought that, having grown up with a wonderfully successful career mother and an equally successful businessman father, the ideal would be a home with someone always there. Protecting everything they all worked for. She wanted to add the personal touches to her own home that her parents’ place had gained at the hands of hired help. But then, she worked a job that could largely be done from home, if she wanted it to be, so maybe that’s why staying home seemed doable. All of the records scouring, the line by line accounts she studied, she could do that while the baby slept...
And she told him about her job, too. How she’d entered the efficiency field due to years of learning to live a focused life. How the career fit her, fulfilled her. How great she felt when she found bottom-line savings for her clients.
He’d asked, once, if she’d ever thought about trying one more time to have a family of her own. Her answer had been an unequivocal no.
She didn’t see that changing.
Her heart had closed up at his question.
As the days passed, her father was getting more worried. He’d talked about calling Flint in, confronting him. But he knew that could be professional suicide. If the meeting backfired and Flint set out to prove he was innocent before Howard could prove he wasn’t, any actions her father might take would expose the fraud at Owens.
He’d risk having everyone in the company finding out they had a thief among them. He’d not only tip the thief’s hand, but he’d jeopardize the company’s overall security. Once word reached the investment world that Owens had an unsolved fraudulent situation in-house, it could be the end of everything her father had spent a lifetime working toward.
Howard needed the matter solved quietly. And quickly.
Tamara went to Flint’s for dinner the following Saturday night, more intent than ever on learning whatever she could to help her father. But she got so distracted worrying about the baby waking up—and then, when she did, Tamara made herself sit out by the pool for the twenty minutes it took Flint to change and feed her—that she was of little use to Owens Investments that night.
Flint had been pleased for her, though, saying she’d done well, staying put instead of running out. She’d wanted so badly to be in there with him. Changing that baby. Watching him feed her.
And that unexpected desire had scared her to death.
She’d warmed under his emotionally intimate look.
And run out. Sort of. She’d had one more glass of wine—her second—and left before anything truly intimate could happen between them.
She dreamed about him that night. It was a change from her usual dreams about crowds of people holding babies, with only her arms empty. Or the vacant house she’d walk into to find every room a nursery that had been abandoned. Or the one where she’d gotten to hold Ryan for a few minutes and then he’d had to leave.
Dreaming about Flint was a welcome reprieve. And yet a problem, too.
One she figured she knew how to solve.
Calling Mallory Harris, she arranged to meet her friend for dinner the Monday night before Thanksgiving. They had a favorite spot not far from the Bouncing Ball—one that Mallory’s ex-husband, who owned and worked in the office complex that housed the Bouncing Ball, didn’t like. The food was all organic and salad-based. According to Mallory, Braden preferred full plates of food that stuck to his ribs.
Tamara had never met him. She was part of the life Mallory didn’t share with her ex-husband.
“What’s up?” Mallory asked as soon as they had glasses of Chardonnay in front of them.
“It’s been a while since we hung out and—”
Mallory was shaking her head. With her dark hair trimmed to fall stylishly around her face and over her shoulders, Mallory was softly beautiful, even in clothes as plain as the Bouncing Ball jacket and jeans she’d worn to work that day. “I could tell when you called that something was up. Now, out with it. Did you run into Steve?”
“No.” Mallory knew about Howard Owens’s suspicions regarding Flint. Tamara had told her when she’d asked her friend to take on Diamond Rose. But there was so much more her friend didn’t know, that she needed to know.
Mallory was just right for Flint. And he was right for her, too. Tamara really needed them to get together.
She’d almost kissed him the other night. Had been thinking about him sexually more and more over the past several days.
In spite of the baby who was part of his life.
He was making it too easy for her to be involved with him. The way he’d taken on full responsibility for Diamond impressed her. Plus the fact that he expected nothing from Tamara but distance where the baby was concerned.
She was getting in too deep. And, because of her father, she couldn’t get out. Or not yet, anyway.
She was even starting to think she might not want to get out at all. Which wasn’t fair to anyone. That baby girl of his deserved—and needed—a full-time mother. Not one who stayed in other parts of the house or in doorways when Diamond was around.
She had to admit that Flint hadn’t, in any way, intimated that he saw Tamara as anything more than a friend. Perhaps one with momentary fringe benefits.
He wanted her, too.