was a woman who planned everything, and she'd already made her plan, one that didn't include Tremaine's.
White wine, an almost full bottle in the door. Would she sit with him after they ate, a glass of wine in her hand? Unlikely, he decided as he pulled a package of chicken breasts out of the fridge, then turned on the electric grill beside the coffeepot.
Potatoes in the pantry. He scrubbed them, pricked holes in through the skins with a fork, set the microwave for six minutes to give them a head start. Then he pulled some spices out of the rack on the windowsill and shook a variety of herbs onto the chicken before he put two breasts on the grill. Both Cal and his sister had learned to cook by the time they were ten, and he went about making dinner without much thought.
For years, his sister had been laying traps for him, invitations to dinners where he'd find himself sitting across from a variety of her friends and acquaintances. Adrienne had been persistent, tossing a variety of women in his path. He'd dated a few, but there'd never been enough spark, enough fire to stop him canceling a date and saying goodbye when the latest project heated up.
And despite Adrienne's matchmaking urges—strange in a woman who declared she'd probably never marry—and his mother's campaign for a grandchild, he'd never considered marriage with any of those women.
He found a can of asparagus tips in the pantry, slipped them into a bowl ready for the microwave when the potatoes finished. A week ago, he would have said that he couldn't imagine proposing to any woman. But neither had he imagined Sam would announce she was leaving.
Whatever it took, he needed to keep her at Tremaine's .
It was ninety percent business. If any one of those women he'd dated had been as talented as Sam, he might have thought about marriage.
Pull the other one, Calin Tremaine. You've been fighting fantasies of tangling up the sheets with her for eighteen months. Now she's leaving, and if it were just business, you'd give her the consulting contract, get her to find her own replacement, and get on with business.
He didn't want a replacement. He trusted her, and damn it, he wanted to know that when he felt discouraged or worried, he could walk into her office, interrupt her with some unnecessary question, and soak up whatever it was about her that always made him feel no mountain was too high, no challenge too great.
With Sam at his side, he could do anything.
The microwave dinged and he pulled the potatoes out, slipped them into the oven. He heard a footstep outside on the veranda and hurried to open the door for her. Samantha Jones might not know it yet, but she wasn't going anywhere.
"Come in," he said softly, and for just a second he saw awareness flash in her eyes, and he fought the urge to yank her into his arms. Then, suddenly, she was the cool, contained Sam he'd come to expect.
He closed the door behind her, kept his voice low so as not to disturb the baby whose head was nestled against her breast. "She's sleeping. Where's her bed?"
"In the back." She pointed with a gesture of her head, avoiding his eyes. "I can—"
"I'll get the bedroom door," he murmured, his own heart hammering so loudly that he was amazed she couldn't hear it as he walked with her through the arch and down the hall into the back of the house.
In the bedroom, he pulled back the small blanket in the crib. She bent and gently placed the baby on the mattress. Cal lowered the blanket over the baby, and Sam's hand adjusted the edge over the infant's small shoulder, her face open and so tender he had to fight an overwhelming urge to take her into his arms and show her another kind of tenderness.
"She's out for the count," he murmured.
"She hardly slept at all last night."
He took Sam's hand, felt a jolt of something pass through her body, but she didn't pull away until he'd led her back to the kitchen.
"Dinner will be ready in ten minutes," he said.
When she pulled her hand
Mary Crockett, Madelyn Rosenberg