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to be, Byron turned up the radio affixed to the tiles until Bonnie Raitt bellowed out the challenge to give them something to talk about.

He was merely concerned about her, he decided. She'd gone so pale, become so quickly and unexpectedly vulnerable. He'd always been a sucker for a damsel in distress.

Of course, she was an idiot for not taking care of herself. Health and fitness weren't an option in Byron's mind but a duty. The woman needed to learn to eat properly, cut back on the caffeine, exercise, build up some flesh, and jettison some of those jangling nerves.

She wasn't half bad when she lost the attitude, he decided, stepping out of the shower with Bonnie still blasting. She'd given him a decent lead on the kind of property he was interested in, and they'd even managed to have a reasonable conversation over a shared plate.

And she had looked... interesting in that excuse for a dress she'd been wearing. Not that he was interested, Byron assured himself as he lathered up to shave. But she had a certain gamine appeal when she wasn't scowling. Almost Audrey Hepburn-ish.

He swore when he nicked his chin with the razor, put the blame for his inattention directly on Kate's head. He didn't have time to analyze some bony, unfriendly numbers cruncher with a chip on her shoulder. He had hotels to run.

Chapter Four

Kate knew it was a mistake even when she set up the appointment. It was, she admitted, like picking at a scab, ensuring that a wound would never heal cleanly. Her father's friend, Steven Tydings, was more than willing to meet her for lunch. She was, after all, his new CPA, and he'd told her he was a man who liked to keep his finger on the pulse of his finances.

She was sure she could work with him, do her job. Yet every time Kate had opened his file, she'd fought off a sick feeling in her stomach, flashback memories of her father. Bitter complaints about bills, about just missing that big break.

She had forgotten all of that, forged her memories of her parents more out of need, she realized now, than reality. Hers had not been a happy home, nor had it been a stable one. Though she had woven it as such in her dreams.

Now that it was impossible to pretend otherwise, she realized it was equally impossible not to probe, not to poke. Not to know.

She had nearly balked when Tydings insisted on meeting at Templeton Monterey. The dining room there was the best in the area, the view of the bay superb. None of the excuses that she came up with had changed his mind. So at twelve-thirty sharp, she sat across from him at a window seat with a chef's salad in front of her.

It didn't matter where she was, Kate told herself as she picked at her meal. Laura was working at Pretenses. If anyone recognized her and mentioned it, it would be a simple matter to tell Laura she'd been lunching with a client. It was, after all, true.

For the first half hour, Kate guided the conversation to business. Strictly business. Whatever the circumstances, his account was entitled to and would receive her best. And he was pleased, telling her so often as she constantly eased her dry throat by sipping Templeton mineral water.

"Your dad had a way with numbers too," Tydings told her. He was a toughly built, compact man in his middle fifties who beamed at her out of dark-brown eyes. Success sat as stylishly on him as his suit.

"Did he?" Kate murmured, staring down at Tydings's hands. Well-manicured, businessman's hands. No flash, but a simple gold band on his finger. Her father had liked flash - heavy gold watches, the small diamond ring he wore on his pinky. Why should she remember that now? "I don't remember."

"Well, you were just a little thing. But I'll tell you, Linc had a gift for numbers. He could run figures in his head. You'd have thought he had a calculator in there."

It was her opening, and she had to take it. "I don't understand how someone that good with numbers could make such an enormous mistake."

"He just wanted bigger things, Katie." Tydings sighed, eased back in his chair. "He had a run of bad luck."

"Bad luck?"

"Bad luck, and bad judgment," Tydings qualified. "The ball got away from him."

"Mr. Tydings, he embezzled funds. He was going to prison." She took a deep breath, braced