“Tell me, Molly. Tell me what you’re feeling.”

She shivered. “Much,” she answered. “It’s too much.” She pushed him slightly away from her. “I didn’t think…” Her words trailed off and she dropped her head to his shoulder. “I can’t think.”

Sam understood. He’d had weeks to consider his attraction to Molly, what he wanted and how he wanted to pursue her. Unless he missed his guess, she hadn’t even realized what she was feeling until earlier today. He wrapped both arms around her and pulled her close so she could feel the warmth and hardness of his body.

Molly shivered again and leaned against him. Her lips met his, kissing and probing, tasting and experimenting.

“It’s okay,” he assured her. “I’m not trying to rush you into anything. I just want you to know how much I want you.”

“Whatever I’m feeling,” she whispered, “it’s not rushed.”

Want Ad Wedding

Neesa Hart

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Neesa Hart is the multipublished, award-winning author of more than twenty books. Her other titles for Harlequin American Romance include Who Gets To Marry Max and Her Passionate Pirate. She lives in central Virginia, where she is hard at work writing her next novel and her second children’s choir musical. You can reach Neesa at neesa@infoline.net.

Dear Reader,

People are always asking writers, “Where do you get your ideas?” and to be perfectly honest, I don’t always have an answer. Usually the real answer is something like, “Oh, well, I was at the beauty shop reading a magazine when I saw an article that reminded me of a person I knew in high school who now works for a major corporation and I remembered that she had the same color hair as the woman in the picture, which made me wonder if that particular color would look good as paint on someone’s wall, and if so, what kind of decorator would apply it and how would her client react?” Um, yeah.

But in the case of Want Ad Wedding, I actually have an answer I can share with you! I have a very good friend who got me hooked on the intrigue and pleasure of reading personal ads. The tiny little biographies are fascinating. I was reading the ads in our local paper one day and saw an odd one that essentially said, “I hope I never see you again,” which naturally made me wonder what had inspired a person to pay money to print something like that. Was it a rash act, like an e-mail fired off without forethought? Did the advertiser now regret putting the words in print? And if he or she did, could the situation be salvaged?

So Want Ad Wedding was born. And what kind of hero could I pair with a headstrong, impulsive, act-without-thinking heroine? A master of self-control and decorum, of course—just to keep things interesting. Throw in some hometown fun, a few ducks and a host of eccentric family members and Bam! Fireworks.

Enjoy!

Neesa Hart

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Epilogue

Chapter One

WANTED: self-assured, confident woman to mend ways of arrogant confirmed bachelor. Sam Reed, Operating Partner and CFO of Reed Enterprises, seeks a candidate of marriageable age who is looking for a serious commitment. The ideal woman must be able to tolerate arbitrary decisions, poor communication skills, lack of responsiveness, ice-cold glares, periodic tantrums and smugness. Mr. Reed also possesses a vengeful nature that makes indefatigable patience a necessity. Candidates must be willing to accept years of frustration and irritation in exchange for sharing Reed family fortune and domiciles. Due to Mr. Reed’s lengthy business trips and frequent travel, benefits of this position include long periods of solitude, separation, and down-time. Interested candidates may apply directly to Mr. Reed, c/o the Payne Sentinel, Payne Massachusetts.

Aunt Ida always said, “Wear your best on your worst day. Because days come and go—but looking good is what counts.”

Molly Flynn always made a point of taking her aunt Ida’s advice. So on Monday morning, she’d ironed her best pair of jeans, pulled on a new University of Delaware sweatshirt, and put new laces in her sneakers before heading off to work. Today, she figured, was quite possibly going to be the worst day of her life. After berating herself for the carelessness, impulsivity and outright idiocy that had gotten her into this mess, she’d managed to pull herself together after a stern lecture to her reflection in the mirror. As Aunt Ida always said, Flynns were not quitters. Flynns did not hide from their mistakes. Flynns had pluck.

Actually, Aunt Ida had referred to Flynn tenacity as an unmentionable part of the male anatomy. But ever since her mother had washed Molly’s mouth out with soap for repeating the phrase at dinner one night, Molly had called it pluck.

But that morning, she’d given her reflection a knowing look that said she meant exactly what Aunt Ida had said.

Then she’d splashed enough cold water on her face to diminish the bluish circles under eyes, whipped through her usual ten-minute routine of light makeup and strong coffee; wrestled with her lamentably curly red hair until it became apparent that even her hair was going to get the better of her today; and made her way to the Payne Sentinel offices in historic downtown Payne, Massachusetts, where she was going to get fired as soon as Sam Reed got to the office.

She’d felt vaguely like a condemned prisoner making her way to the guillotine. Her fate was inevitable. The only thing she could control was how she reacted to it.

And Flynns never cowered.

So Molly leaned back in her battered chair in the Payne Sentinel copy office and stole a glance at the clock. 8:58. Two minutes and counting.

“All right, Molly—” Cindy Freesdon entered the copy office, dropped her purse to the floor and pulled a chair up to the edge of Molly’s desk. She pinned her with an avidly curious look. “Give, babe. When were you planning to tell us you and Reed were, you know, friendly?”

Molly stifled a groan. Humiliation was bad enough, but public humiliation was far worse. She wished Sam Reed would hurry up and drag his predictable, irascible, temperamental, bullheaded self to work and be done with this so she could clean out her desk and go home.

She gritted her teeth and met the probing look in Cindy’s blue eyes. “It’s not like that,” she assured her friend. “You don’t understand.”

Cindy dangled the Personals section between her thumb and forefinger. “I read the morning edition while I was getting dressed.” She indicated the copy room where the activity level had already reached light speed. “You’re the one who placed this ad for Reed. It’s got your sense of humor all over it.”

Molly forced herself not to flinch. “Not on purpose.”

That sent Cindy’s eyebrows into her bleached blond bangs. “Oh, this is too wicked.”

“Do you think everyone else knows?”

“My phone started ringing ten minutes after the paper landed on my doorstep. I tried to squelch the gossip, but even I don’t have that much power.”

That won a halfhearted laugh from Molly. Cindy Freesdon was the Sentinel’s resident busybody. She didn’t doubt that all interested parties would have turned to Cindy for information when the inflammatory personal ad showed up in the Sentinel’s Monday edition. “Thanks,” she told Cindy. “I’m already going to get fired. I’d rather not be humiliated on top of it.”

Cindy pursed her lips. “I hate to break it to you, but it’s kind of a lost cause. If it makes you feel any better, I did make them feel guilty as sin about it.” She shrugged slightly. “There’s not a person in this room you haven’t bailed out at one time or another.”

“This is my family,” Molly said simply. “I’ve always thought of it that way.”

“That’s obvious.” Cindy tapped a long fingernail on Molly’s overladen desk. “So that’s why everyone’s pretty much drawn the same conclusion—there’s no way you would have risked what you’ve got here by running that ad simply because you were miffed about the argument you and Reed had on Friday.”

“You don’t think so?”

Cindy gave her a pointed look. “I may not be the investigative reporter you are, Molly, but I know a lover’s tiff when I see one.”

Molly exhaled a weary breath. “I don’t suppose it would do me any good to deny that.”

“Probably not.”

“It’s a long story. It was a joke—my friend, JoAnna—” She shook her head. “I don’t have time to explain it right now. He’ll be here soon.”

Cindy stole a glance at the clock. “Forty seconds, if he’s on time.”

“He’s always on time.”

“Good point.” Cindy dropped the copy of the paper on Molly’s desk. “Lunch today? You can fill me in then.”

“Sure. I’ll be fired by then, anyway. At least I won’t have to clock out,” she said bitterly, the hated time clock—one of the many unwelcome changes Sam Reed had brought to the Payne Sentinel.

The antique clock that had kept vigil over the newsroom for nearly a century chimed nine. Precisely on schedule, the wide glass doors swung open, admitting a gust of chilly October air and forever suspending the rest of Cindy’s comment. The usual busy hum of activity in the newsroom ground to a halt. Fingers stopped typing, and chairs stopped creaking. Chatter ceased and pencils stilled. Only the lonely hum of a printer punctuated the eerie calm as one hundred eyes turned simultaneously to watch the drama unfolding at Molly’s desk.

Pluck, Molly reminded herself, as she met the steel-colored gaze of Sam Reed. He had a right to be furious. Since she’d seen the morning paper, she’d known this was going to turn ugly. She’d seen Sam angry only once. A member of the editorial staff had deliberately fabricated a source—forcing the Sentinel to issue a public apology. The look Sam had given the man could have melted glass.

Molly fully expected to find that same look in his eyes when she met his gaze. What she found, instead, stole her breath. Yes, his normal cool, implacable calm was gone, but she couldn’t quite pin a name to the expression in its place. A banked fire made his eyes look darker than usual—like storm-laden skies on a hot summer day. But what threw her the most was the slight sparkle that made him look as though he was enjoying himself.

This was going to be worse than she’d imagined, she thought with a sinking sense of dread.

Sam held her gaze for several long seconds, then announced a breezy “Good morning” to the staff. In the six weeks he had been running the paper, he’d arrived every morning at precisely nine o’clock. And every morning, he’d breezed through the newsroom without acknowledging the existence of the fifty or so employees who warily watched his daily trek to the elevator. No wonder then, Molly mused, that his butter-soft voice had the impact of a class-four tornado. She was surprised when the collective intake of breath didn’t rustle the piles of papers on her desk.

Damn him, she thought as she studied his normally implacable features. Dark hair framed a face made of angles and planes. There wasn’t a soft edge on the man. And he was definitely enjoying this. Like a cat, she mused, moving in on a helpless mouse and savoring the poor thing’s moment of doom.

Sam crossed the two steps to her desk and subtly shifted his briefcase so Cindy had to ease to the side. He planted the Italian leather case amid the clutter and leaned in with the smooth confidence of a predator.

At least, Molly thought wryly, her colleagues would have something to remember when she was gone. The spectacle he was causing was the stuff newsroom lore was made of. Despite herself, she had to suppress a small bubble of amusement. She didn’t think Sam would appreciate knowing that his legacy at the Sentinel was going to be reduced to newsroom gossip.

Something in her expression must have flickered, tipping him that he’d momentarily lost the upper hand. Swiftly, he produced a daisy from his left coat pocket with enough flourish to ensure he had her complete attention. He dropped it in her pencil cup, then leaned so close that Molly had to force herself not to retreat. While her colleagues raptly watched, Sam cupped Molly’s face in his large hand and pressed his mouth to her ear. “In my office in ten minutes.”

An unmistakable thread of steel undergirded the soft command. “Okay.”

He stood, trailing his fingers along the line of her jaw as he stepped away from her desk. Flashing Cindy Freesdon his million-dollar smile, he brushed past her and made his way to the elevator.

The doors slid smoothly shut before anyone breathed. In the vacuum that followed, a small crowd formed around Molly’s desk.

“My God, Molly.” David Ward straightened his wire-frame glasses. “You really did run that ad, didn’t you?”

Priscilla Lyons threw Cindy an accusing glance. “I told you.” Priscilla pinned Molly with a hard look. “Come on, Molly—we’re dying here. How long have you been involved with him?”

Molly reached for her patience. “This isn’t what you think.”

Priscilla’s eyes twinkled. “No? Sparks have been flying between you two since he got here a few weeks ago.”

David laughed. “A daisy, Molly?” He glanced at the pencil cup. “The man brought you a daisy.”

Cindy laughed. “If it had been a rose, that might have been suspicious, but daisies? In October?”

“He’s annoyed,” Molly assured them.

“Mm-hmm.” Priscilla looked unconvinced. “I wish someone would get annoyed with me that way.” She rolled her eyes. “I can’t believe I didn’t see this coming.”

That made Cindy chuckle. “It was the look in his eyes that practically did me in. Lord, did you feel the electricity popping in here?”

“My monitor dimmed,” supplied one of the copy editors.

David planted his hands on Molly’s desk. “We’re your friends.”

“We’ve been watching you and Reed go at each other for weeks,” Priscilla added. “I should have known something was up.”

“Nothing,” Molly said through clenched teeth, “is going on.”

Cindy tapped her fingernail on Molly’s desk. “You can’t leave us in suspense like this. It’s not fair.”

Molly stifled a weary sigh. As much as she enjoyed the family-type atmosphere at the Sentinel, today it was making her feel claustrophobic. She’d already ducked two calls from her sisters this morning before she’d left her apartment, and was certain the rest of the Flynn clan would be calling for answers before the day was out. Her family was nothing if not persistent. She reached for the envelope on the corner of her desk, sliding it into her pocket as she stood up. “Look. I have to get upstairs. He’s expecting me.”

“I’ll bet,” Priscilla drawled.

Molly ignored her. “I’ll tell you all what happened as soon as I get back.”

“We’ll be waiting,” David assured her.

THREE MINUTES LATER, she walked into the outer office of the upstairs suite where Sam Reed controlled the Payne Sentinel. Had it only been six weeks? It felt like a lifetime. “Morning, Karen,” she greeted the young woman behind the reception desk. “He’s expecting me.”

Karen gave her a sympathetic look. “So he said.” She shot a quick glance at his closed door, then dropped her gaze to the classified section on her desk. “Er, Molly—”

“It’s a long story,” Molly assured her.

“I can imagine.”

Molly paused, deliberately stalling for time. “Do you think he’s going to kill me when I go in there?”

Karen’s eyebrows knitted together in confusion. “Nooooo,” she said thoughtfully. “He didn’t seem mad or anything.”

Molly didn’t think that was a particularly good sign. “No?”

“Uh-uh. He was, you know, like he usually is. Intense, only—” Karen seemed to search for a word.

“Darker?” Molly supplied.

Karen shook her head. “No, more like ‘alive’ or something. Actually, I’d say he’s in a pretty good mood.” She glanced at the paper again. “Considering.”

“Great.”

Karen leaned closer. “Frankly, I thought the two of you were actually going to come to blows in that meeting on Friday.”

“Me, too.”

“So it really didn’t surprise me—” The buzzer on her phone interrupted her. Karen gave a guilty start and punched the button. “Yes?”

“Is Miss Flynn here yet, Karen?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good.” The soft click of his phone seemed to reverberate off the glass walls of the reception area.

Karen gave Molly a knowing look. “I guess you should go in.”

Molly nodded, forcing a bright smile, and headed for the door to the lion’s den. Sam pulled it open the instant she reached for the doorknob. Startled, she raised her gaze to his and saw a flinty look that quickly dissolved as he flashed an unusually warm smile. Was it her imagination, or was there a hint of steel in it? “Morning,” he said quietly, then looked at Karen. “Hold my calls, will you, Karen?” He placed his hand at the small of Molly’s back.

“Sure.” Karen leaned back in her chair, her expression speculative.

Sam was already applying a subtle pressure to her back, leading her through the door. “This could take awhile.”

The instant the door shut behind her, he dropped his hand, and walked to his desk in silence. When he had rounded it, he sat in the high leather chair and simply watched her with an enigmatic look in his eyes. Molly felt her sneakers sinking into the plush carpet. Like quicksand, she mused. She had to fight the urge to shuffle her feet. She’d seen a survival documentary once where the expert had explained that the surest way to die in quicksand was to fight the inevitable by thrashing around.

She pulled an envelope from her back pocket and headed for his desk. “Before you fire me,” she said, “I can save you the trouble.” She dropped the envelope. “That’s my letter of resignation.”

He said nothing. She tried not to squirm. This was beginning to feel like the time in kindergarten when she’d been called to the principal’s office for slugging Carolyn Lockhardt on the playground. The man hadn’t understood that Carolyn—with her perfect hair, perfect clothes and constant boasting about how she always colored inside the lines and moved her crayon in the same direction—had simply been begging for the punch. Every kindergarten kid had been on Molly’s side. She’d become the hero of the bad colorers. The principal had given her a lecture on ladylike behavior and suspended her for two days.

Something told her that Sam Reed wouldn’t let her off that easily. She forged ahead. “I—you don’t have to accept it. You have the right to terminate me. You probably should terminate me.” A voice inside her head was screaming at her to shut up, but his inscrutable expression wouldn’t let her heed the voice. Once, just one time, she wanted to see him crack—even if it meant watching his temper explode. The day he’d fired Lawson Peters for faking a source, he’d been noticeably angry but completely controlled. Molly had watched the exchange, fascinated by the raw current of power that seemed to ripple just beneath the surface of Sam’s facade. She had a feeling that if he ever released it, it would have the effect of a volcano. “It was a stupid thing to do,” she continued. “And for what it’s worth, I never intended it to actually run in the paper. I was angry at you on Friday.”

She paused, hoping he’d at least acknowledge her with a tilt of his head or a slight compression of his firm mouth. Anything. He sat statue-still. Molly waded out a little deeper. “When you wouldn’t listen to me about the transportation hub story, I lost my temper.” An understatement, she knew. She’d lost her cool in the editorial meeting when he’d refused to explore the validity of the story in favor of a community action piece he’d assigned to another writer. The depth of her reaction had surprised Molly herself, but not when she weighed it against the pressure of dealing with his heavy-handed management for the past six weeks. By Friday afternoon, she’d had all she could take. She’d exploded in a fit of temper that had left no doubt about the extent of her frustration. Sam had waited out her tirade in silence, then infuriated her by simply ignoring the outburst and continuing with his elaboration on the article he’d assigned.

Furious, Molly had left the meeting with a pounding headache and a hammering pulse. She couldn’t decide whether she was angrier with him for his condescending attitude, or with herself for letting him get to her.

Molly shook her head and shoved her hands into the back pockets of her jeans. Sam still said nothing. He wasn’t going to make this easy for her. He had no reason to, she thought grimly. She’d brought this on herself. “Regardless,” she said wearily, “running the ad was irresponsible and unprofessional. I’m sure it made you uncomfortable, and if you want to fire me for it, then I understand. I can have my desk cleaned out by the end of the day.”

An uncomfortable silence began to spin its web in the stillness of his office. Molly fought the urge to fill the void. Finally, when her nerves were practically screaming for relief, he blinked. “Finished?” he asked softly.

She nodded. “Um, yes.”

“Good. Sit down.”

She didn’t have the energy to decide whether or not the proprietary command annoyed her. She dropped gratefully into the leather chair. He reached for his briefcase. The sound of the locks snapping open seemed unnaturally loud in the stillness of his office. Sam pulled the classified section from the briefcase and flipped it onto his desk.

Molly closed her eyes and waited for humiliation.

“I had no idea you were quite this—eloquent.”

He couldn’t possibly be teasing her. Could he? Her eyes popped open. “I minored in creative writing in college.”

“It shows.” He glanced at the newspaper. “Arbitrary decisions,” he read. He captured her gaze. “They aren’t arbitrary.”

Dear God. He was teasing her. “Er—”

“Periodic tantrums?” he continued, looking at the ad once more. “Smugness? I am never smug.”

The audacity of the statement made her mouth drop. “You have got to be kidding.”

She had been prepared for a blistering lecture and a dismissal. The hint of humor in his tone had her so off-guard that she found herself uncharacteristically speechless. Sam pushed the paper aside and regarded her with his frank, disarming stare. “What the hell were you thinking, Molly?”

The question was soft, and strangely curious. There was no demand in it. That had to be the reason why the explanation came so readily to her lips. “I—it’s silly,” she admitted. “Actually, it’s worse than silly. It’s humiliating and stupid.” She paused while her sense of justice convinced her pride that she owed Sam this explanation. “It was just a diversion that my friend JoAnna and I used in college—to de-stress and vent our frustrations. The two of us ran the university paper. One end-of-the-week challenge was to fill all the little spaces where the stories ran short.”

“Stringing,” he stated.

“Sort of. Stringers use actual material. We just made up ads. You know—stuff like, ‘for the secrets of the ancients, send one dollar to the following P.O. Box.”’

Sam nodded. “Most college papers have those.”

“And when people particularly annoyed us, we wrote ads about them.”

“Personal ads,” he guessed.

“Yes. It helped blow off steam.” She frowned as she recalled her mood from Friday afternoon. “After the editorial meeting—I was so angry at you.”

“You thought I shot down your article concept.”

“You did—”

“I didn’t. I just wasn’t finished with the piece we were already discussing. You have a habit of not letting me finish.”

Molly’s head started to ache. The conversation seemed almost surreal. For six weeks, she had wanted to strangle this man. He’d walked into the Payne Sentinel and taken over with the high-handedness of an Eastern potentate. While everyone knew the Sentinel was struggling financially, no one had suspected the extent of the trouble until Carl Morgan, the Sentinel’s owner, brought in Sam Reed to bail them out. He was part of Reed Enterprises’ vast publishing machine, and he had a reputation for taking small-market publications and folding them into large distribution conglomerates.

Unpredictable by reputation, Sam was the illegitimate son of publishing legend Edward Reed. Before his death, the old man had controlled a staggering fifteen percent of the daily periodicals in the United States. Sam had entered the Reed empire at age nine when, in a spectacularly publicized incident, his mother had announced to a press hungry for Edward Reed’s humiliation, that Sam was his child. Her emotional statement had laid out details of a month-long affair. She’d never told Edward of the child, she’d claimed, because she feared his retribution. Economic hardship and a guilty conscience had finally driven her to reveal the truth.

With his notorious élan, Edward had called her bluff. He’d acknowledged Sam as his son and taken him to live in the Reed household. The press, deprived of a longed-for spectacle, had quickly lost interest. Sam, and Edward’s legitimate son, Ben Reed, had inherited Reed Publishing when Edward died fifteen years later. Together, the two men had built the company from a feared bully into an admired success. Ben Reed, sources said, was the methodical one on the team. He did the planning while his brother was the maverick who took the risks and turned would-be failures into success stories.

And Molly didn’t like his vision for the Sentinel.

They’d clashed immediately. He was slowly doing away with the paper’s more serious content and expanding its community focus. Soon, she feared, the Sentinel would be nothing more than a coupon clipper.

She’d worked at the Sentinel since she’d been old enough for her first paper route. Nobody knew the paper, or its subscribers, she figured, as well as she did. But Sam had turned down every suggestion she’d made. He’d locked himself away in this office, making it clear to the staff that they could do his bidding or quit. Editorial meetings had turned into sparring matches, where Molly stood up to him and he shot her down.

In the six weeks since Carl had introduced him as the man who was going to save the Sentinel, Molly had yet to see him show a human side. Until now. When he should be furious. When she’d finally given him the right to be furious. She couldn’t wait to find out what her sisters would say about this.

“Mr. Reed—” she began.

He held up a hand. It wasn’t the manicured, soft-looking hand of an idle businessman, she noted with some fascination. He had calluses on his palm, and new-looking scrapes that skimmed the edge of his blunt fingers. How was it that she’d never noticed his hands before? “Like now,” he said. “I’m not finished telling you why I cut you off about that story.”

Molly frowned. He shook his head. She swore the sparkle was back in his eyes, turning the steel color a softer shade of gray. “I bug the hell out of you,” he said, “don’t I?”

“Yes.”

The flat response made him laugh. The rich laugh surprised her. It came easily and sounded well-used. Where, she wondered, was the Sam Reed she’d been sparring with in editorial meetings? He steepled his hands beneath his chin and gave her a dry look. “So you made me the victim of a personal ad to your friend?”

Molly nodded. “JoAnna called on Friday afternoon. She usually does. It’s a ritual we’ve had since we graduated.” If a person could die from embarrassment, Molly figured, she would become an obituary at any moment. In hindsight, it all seemed extremely juvenile. Even trying to explain it only seemed to make it worse, but her sense of honor demanded that she take the licks. “I was angry. I vented. JoAnna was having a lousy day, too. She reminded me of the game. I wrote the ad and e-mailed it to her. I thought it would make her laugh. I forgot to clear it from my screen before I left for the night.”

“And the stringer found it and diligently put it into copy by the Saturday-morning deadline for today’s personals,” he guessed.

“Yes.” Molly rubbed her palms on the rough fabric of her jeans. “I didn’t know until this morning.”

“Imagine my surprise.”

There it was again, that slight thread of humor in his tone. Molly grimaced. “I was mortified. I’m sure it was worse for you. I—it was childish and irresponsible. There’s nothing I could say that would adequately apologize.”

He picked up the unopened envelope that held her resignation. “So you came in prepared to quit?”

“It seemed like the most honorable thing to do.”

He nodded, his expression thoughtful. With a quick twist of his wrist, he tore the envelope in two and tossed it into his trash can. “Think of something else.”

Molly stared at him. “I beg your pardon?”

“Think of something else. You’re the best journalist this paper has. You should probably be working in a bigger market—”

“I don’t want to work in a bigger market.”

“Let me finish, Molly,” he said, and damned if his lips didn’t twitch into a half smile. “You should probably be working in a larger market, but you decided to stay here. Why?”

“It’s my home.” She shrugged. “My family lives here. I’ve worked for the Sentinel since I was eleven years old.”

“Paper route?”

“Yes.”

He nodded. “First job?”

“If you don’t count weeding Mrs. Ellerby’s vegetable garden.”

“That was seasonal work. It’s different.”

Molly had no response to that, so she simply watched him. The collar of his white shirt lay in stark contrast to the bronzed column of his throat. Was it her imagination, or was his tan deeper this morning than it had been on Friday? She simply couldn’t picture him doing anything as mundane or sedentary as strolling along the beach at Martha’s Vineyard. She thought about the scrape she’d seen on his fingers and could easily imagine him, shirtless, laboring under the afternoon sun. Maybe on a sailboat, though even that seemed too much like recreation. He leaned back in his chair and placed his hands behind his head. “My first job was a paper route. I liked the way the papers smelled when I picked them up.”

The admission surprised her, and yet, it didn’t. Edward Reed’s son probably wouldn’t have needed a paper route for spending money. The renowned media mogul could well afford to give his son a generous allowance. Though few people in the industry were unaware that Sam was Reed’s illegitimate son, Reed had made his acceptance of the child abundantly clear. But, the same thing that told her he didn’t spend weekends at the beach said he hadn’t spent his childhood living on his father’s money. “Did you have to roll and band them for delivery when you picked them up, or did they come that way?”

“I did it,” he said with a slight nod. “Kids today have it easy. They get those plastic bags.”

“Rolling’s half the skill,” she concurred. “If you don’t tuck the edges, you can’t toss the paper right.”

“Comes unwrapped in midair.”

“Plus you get paper cuts when you pull ’em from the bag.”

He smiled. It was dazzling. Molly couldn’t ever recall seeing him smile so naturally. This was a smile straight from a remembered pleasure. Her heart skipped a beat. His eyes crinkled at the corners when he smiled. The observation surprised her. The slight lines suggested that his smile, like his laugh, was something he used often. “The day I finally mastered the doormat toss onto old man Greely’s porch—” he shrugged “—I felt like Nolan Ryan pitching a no hitter.” The faraway look left his eyes as he met her gaze again. “He had shrubs. Boxwoods. They blocked the sidewalk.”

Molly nodded. “I had a house like that. You had to float the paper over the shrubs so it landed on the mat.”

“Um. And Greely had a covered porch. So the paper had to go between the roof of the porch and the boxwoods and land on the mat—”

They said in unison, “Without hitting the door.”

Molly laughed. “I’m impressed. I was pretty good, but not that good.”

“I practiced for weeks.”

“I hope he tipped well.”

“I don’t think I ever got a tip out of the man. But he didn’t yell at me for hitting his door either. And when the paper I worked for threatened to take away my route and consolidate it into truck delivery, he went to the circulation director and saved my job. I never knew what he told that guy, but I kept the route until I graduated from high school.” He shook his head. “The day I graduated, Fred Greely sent me a check for a hundred dollars.”

Molly found her first smile of the morning. “No wonder you love the newspaper business.”

“Just like you?” he asked softly.

She hesitated. “Yes. Just like me.”

“I thought so. So find something else. You can’t quit.”

“I’m not sure what you mean,” she said carefully.

Sam pushed the paper aside and folded his hands on his desk. “May I make a suggestion?”

“Since when do you ask me if you can make a suggestion?” she quipped.

Another slight smile. The dent—dare she call it a dimple—in his left cheek deepened when he smiled. And that dimple, that infuriatingly devilish dimple, did something to his face that made her stop breathing.

Oh, dear Lord, she thought, as she felt the flutter in the pit of her stomach, and recognized the way her lungs constricted. It can’t be. It can’t and must not be. But even as she struggled for breath and pressed a hand to her belly, she knew the signs. They were horrifying and impossible evidence that she found the man attractive. Her sisters had been telling her for weeks that the animosity she felt toward him was one step away from passion. She’d denied it. Vehemently. Too vehemently. With the sun glinting on his dark hair, and his damned dimple making her body temperature notch up, she had to fight the urge to bury her face in her hands.

Not again, she told herself fiercely. And for God’s sake not now. For years, she’d known that she had a chronic habit of falling for unsuitable men. With the same reckless abandon she lived life, she’d tumbled headfirst into relationships. Her sisters had been warning her for years. If they found out she’d fallen for Sam Reed, she’d never hear the end of it. Blissfully, Sam seemed unaware of her momentary lapse into insanity. He chuckled softly at her quip, and the sound made her stomach flip-flop. “Oh, no,” Molly muttered beneath her breath.

“What?”

“Nothing,” she assured him, fiercely demanding that her nerves quiet down. “You were saying?” she asked with a feeling of dread.

He looked at her curiously but continued, “I was saying that I’d like to offer you a way to make reparations for this—indiscretion.”

“What do you want?” she asked warily. She had a sinking feeling that whatever it was, it would be far worse than losing her job.

“I want you to have dinner with me.”

Chapter Two

She was sputtering. There wasn’t any other way to describe it, he thought, fascinated. Sam Reed was fairly certain he’d never seen a woman sputter. He watched her closely as she struggled for breath. “Dinner? With you? You mean, like a date?”

He was screwing this up, he thought wearily. No big surprise there. How he managed to succeed in business and fail so spectacularly at anything requiring tact, he hadn’t a clue. He’d obviously inherited the trait from his father. “Like a date,” he affirmed carefully, wondering why the word seemed so old-fashioned and quaint. He frequently took women to social events. He’d had his share of lovers. But he hadn’t “dated” since high school. “Don’t you have them?” She drew her eyebrows together in a sharp frown. Was baffled or just annoyed.

“Excuse me?”

He didn’t think he was imagining the way the spray of freckles on her nose had blended with the heightening color in her face. From the day he’d met her, he’d found Molly Flynn’s freckles fascinating. They formed a steady trail, which disappeared beneath the collar of her sweatshirt. The thought of following that line of freckles to its end made his mouth water—that and her maple-leaf–red hair and her eyes the color of summer clover. Nothing about Molly Flynn was bland. She had vibrancy and life—something Sam had begun to fear he himself was missing.

Perhaps that explained why he’d caught himself imagining her lingerie. Sam had never found speculating on women’s lingerie to be particularly time worthy, but this was different. He had an unshakeable feeling that underneath her ubiquitous jeans and sweatshirts were laces and satins in a range of colors and styles that would knock his socks off.

He forced himself to concentrate on getting her to agree to a date. Plenty of time later to contemplate her lingerie. He wasn’t used to explaining himself, and he didn’t do it well. If the look of absolute confusion on her face was any indication, he was definitely screwing this up. “Maybe I should elaborate,” he suggested, more for his own benefit than hers.

“Maybe.” She fidgeted a little in the chair. He noted that about her, too. She never sat still. He, on the other hand, could sit absolutely still for hours. But Molly was perpetual motion. It should have annoyed him. He still hadn’t figured out why it didn’t. The only thing he knew for sure was that he wanted her. He’d started wanting her when she’d challenged him in their first editorial meeting. He had kept on wanting her right through their near shouting match on Friday afternoon. When he’d awakened to his sister’s phone call about the personal ad in the morning’s Payne Sentinel, his mind had immediately recognized the opportunity. If Molly would only cooperate.

“When Carl hired me to put the Sentinel back in the black, I almost turned him down. Reed Enterprises is negotiating several other ventures right now, and my brother, Ben, had asked me to manage a project in London.”

Molly nodded. “Reed Enterprises is working a merger with the Daily. I read about it in the trades.”

One of the sexiest things about Molly Flynn, he thought with satisfaction, was her brain. Sam had always preferred sharp-witted lovers, and Molly’s brain was razor-sharp. “But Carl’s an old friend. He helped me through college. I owe him.”

“He respects you. He trusts you.”

“He loves this paper,” Sam assured her. “And he loves the people who work here.”

Molly studied him for a moment. “You’re trying to change it. Carl never wanted the Sentinel to become a community newsletter. He always wanted a serious journalistic paper geared for a small-town readership.”

“And he can have that. But without a few changes, the Sentinel can’t turn a profit. The market has changed. Carl hasn’t changed with it.”

“I still think the transportation hub piece is a good idea,” she said. “It’s relevant. It’s local. And it’s got bite.”

“Would it surprise you to learn that I think it’s a good idea, too?”

She frowned. “But you said—”

He shook his head with a slight laugh. “Because you didn’t let me finish.” At her sharp glare, he suppressed a grin. He was seriously pissing her off, he suspected, but she was still too embarrassed to storm out on him. At least he had that in his favor. “We’re going to have to work on that.”

“Before or after dinner?” she asked dryly.

“Before.” He had other plans for after. Sam leaned back in his chair and felt himself relax. She was still listening. That had to be a good sign. “Here’s the thing,” he began. In business and in life, he’d always found it best to lay these matters out in a methodical fashion. Some women couldn’t handle that, but Molly was brilliant and capable. Though she had a reckless streak that made her act impulsively, he was fairly certain she’d respond to logic. “This ad—it has raised questions in my family.”

“I’ll bet.”

Her expression told him nothing. He sensed Molly was deeply embarrassed, but she was masking it well, facing the consequences with a courage he admired. “My brother, Ben, got married last year. His wife is—unconventional.”

He detected a slight smile at the corners of her mouth. “So I’ve heard.”

He didn’t doubt it. His brother’s engagement and marriage had been widely publicized. Sam shrugged. “I like Amy. A lot, actually. And now that my family knows her, they adore her as well. But the relationship has been a little tumultuous.”

“And now that your brother has tied the knot, everyone is looking for a new target.”

He thought of his aunt’s phone call that morning and grimaced. She was the latest to join the campaign with his stepmother and half sister. “You could say that.”

“And you’re it.”

He nodded. “Both my stepmother and sister have been scheming for years to get me down the aisle. My sister’s hobby is planning weddings—hers, and other people’s. Now she’s got my aunt and my sister-in-law involved. At least Ben is smart enough to leave me alone, but the women are making me feel like George Custer at the Battle of Little Big Horn.”

Molly chuckled, and it heightened the gold flecks in her green eyes. Sam had always liked Molly’s eyes. They were expressive and revealing. He saw passion and intelligence in them—a combination he found irresistibly sexy. “I know the feeling,” she assured him. “I’ve got four older sisters.”

“My last relationship came to a spectacular end.” Though her gaze had turned curious, he forged ahead. Time enough to explain Pamela later. “I was actually looking forward to going to London for Ben.”

“And then the Payne Sentinel got in your way.”

“Hmm,” he concurred. “And in case you haven’t noticed, I’m having difficulty getting people here to trust me.”

“I think it’s your car,” she said, her tone serious.

“My car?”

“You drive a sports car. The only people in Payne who drive sports cars are insurance salesmen and morticians. You figure it out.”

He stifled a laugh. He couldn’t remember the last time a woman beyond his immediate family had made him feel like laughing. “Minivans and SUVs?”

“Or four-door sedans. Payne is that kind of place.”

“You drive a ’72 Beetle.” It was sunset orange and had a hell of an exhaust problem. He’d have to convince her to let him take a look at that.

“I’m the town rebel.” She drummed her fingers on the arm of the chair. “There’s only room for one, you know.”

“If I can get the staff of the Sentinel to follow my lead, I can save this paper,” he said more seriously. “But frankly, you’ve got everyone thinking they have to choose sides between you and me. Right now, they’re walking the fence because they’re afraid for their jobs.” He shook his head. “But if you force them to choose, they’ll follow you.” He leveled a hard look at her. “Even if it’s right off a cliff. If you want the Sentinel to survive, you will have to accept some changes.”

“Just because I don’t agree with every decision you make doesn’t mean I’m not willing to accept change.”

“Then prove it to me.” He leaned forward and planted his hands on the desk. “Convince me.”

“Meaning date you?”

What, Sam wondered, slightly annoyed, was so damned unbelievable about the concept of having dinner with him. He had it on relatively good authority that he was considered highly eligible.

Ben would’ve reminded him that wooing women was nothing like negotiating contracts. It was five times harder, took ten times longer, and required twenty times the effort. Sam carefully chose his next words. “I’m talking about a business arrangement,” he said softly. “A contract. Everyone in this town trusts you. If they perceive that you trust me, they will as well. This ad—” He thumped the paper with his knuckles. “People are asking questions. I want to give them answers that satisfy their curiosity without appearing to look like I have lost control.”

“But I didn’t mean—”

He headed off her argument. He’d learned in the last six weeks that letting Molly reach full steam was never a good idea. “And the people in Payne aren’t the only issue. You can imagine how my sister reacted. The fact that a woman finally got the best of me has her positively ecstatic.”

Molly winced. “Sorry.”

“And it’s going to be embarrassing if I have to explain this by saying that you blew up at me at a meeting.” He looked at her narrowly. “I would think you’d find it pretty humiliating yourself.”

“I do,” she insisted.

“But if people believe we are romantically involved, they’ll brush this off as a lover’s quarrel. We’ll take a couple of jabs about it. Then the whole thing’ll just blow over. You’ll be lauded for having gotten the better of me. And if my family believes that I’ve finally found a woman who will put up with me, they’ll—” He stopped. He wasn’t ready to elaborate yet. It was more information than he wanted Molly to have. “There will be no embarrassing explanations nor apologies.”

“No one is going to believe that you and I are romantically involved. Not after what they’ve seen for the last six weeks.”

He shrugged. “People see what they want to see. A few public appearances, a couple of social engagements, and everyone will be saying they knew it all along.”

“So you want me to pretend I’m involved with you?”

“No,” he said carefully. “There’s no pretense about it. I don’t play games.”

She frowned at him. “You’ve lost me.”

Sam took a deep breath. The crucial part of any negotiation was where both parties tipped their hands. He was about to show Molly his cards, and he was gambling she’d do the same. “I don’t want you to pretend to be involved, Molly,” he said quietly. “I want you to get involved.”

Her eyes widened. She stared at him for a full fifteen seconds. Sam was fairly certain he heard his watch ticking. He’d negotiated billion-dollar deals where he’d been far less tense. Somewhere in the back of his mind was the thought that it shouldn’t be so damned hard to ask the woman for a date. But then, he’d never known a woman quite like Molly. Her lips pursed slightly as she stared at him. Finally, she muttered, “Oh.”

Not the most enthusiastic response he’d ever received, but manageable. She hadn’t said no. That’s what counted. “I’ll get to know you,” he explained slowly. “You’ll get to know me. And I’d like exclusive rights to your social life for a while. In exchange, I’ll give you exclusive rights to mine.” He was vaguely aware of how stuffy he sounded. Smooth, Reed. Why didn’t he just go ahead and hand her a contract to sign.

“That’s got to be the most romantic offer I’ve ever had,” Molly quipped.

At least she hadn’t stormed out. He considered that a good sign. Just as he’d thought, Molly Flynn was different from other women he’d known. “What have you got to lose?” he prompted.

She was drumming her fingers on her leg again, a quick, agitated rhythm that mirrored the pace of the thoughts he saw moving across her expressive face. “How long is this arrangement going to last?”

Sam realized that he’d been holding his breath when her question tipped him that she was seriously considering his offer. Years of business negotiations told him he was a few well-chosen words from closing the deal. “As long as we can stand each other,” he assured her.

She hitched up the corners of her mouth. “We won’t make it out the door on the first night.”

He could only hope that the energy between them could be harnessed into something more satisfying than animosity. He’d felt considerably better when he’d finally admitted to himself that he was attracted to her. It explained why she got under his skin. “Actually, I have it on excellent authority that I can be very charming.”

“I’d like to see that.”

He leaned closer. “Then how about right now?”

“Right now?”

He nodded. “I’ve got a meeting with the mayor and the head of the transportation commission in thirty minutes. I thought you might like to go with me.”

He could practically see the wheels turning in her head. After arguing with him for weeks about the importance of the Sentinel’s covering the Payne Board of Supervisors’ approval of a major transportation hub development contract, she’d be unable to resist the opportunity to sit in on the meeting with two of the key players. “Won’t the mayor think it’s odd if I tag along?”

Sam shrugged. “You’re our top reporter. Why should he think it’s odd?”

She studied him warily. “Because he has no reason to suspect you’re planning an in-depth story about the hub.”

“Of course he has,” Sam stated flatly. “It’s the biggest piece of local news on the horizon.”

“You’ve been telling me for weeks you didn’t think it was newsworthy.”

“I didn’t think the time was right,” he told her flatly. “I thought I had made that clear.”

Molly’s eyebrows rose. “I don’t think anyone else in Friday’s meeting got that impression.”

“Sorry to hear that. I have every intention of covering this story, and I have every intention of putting you on it.” She was watching him with keen interest, he noted, as if she weren’t quite sure she could trust him. He’d obviously misstepped there, if he’d made her doubt his intentions.

“You’re serious,” Molly said slowly. “Aren’t you?”

Sam nodded. “Completely. I think the time is now right, and I’d planned to ask you to this meeting anyway. The ad,” he said, indicating the paper with an absent wave of his hand, “was just an added incentive.”

Molly collapsed back in her chair with a long sigh. “Good grief.”

He smiled. “If it makes you feel better, I admit I should have dealt with this differently. I apologize for not talking to you about it sooner.”

“We both could have avoided a lot of embarrassment,” she said.

“Probably. But now, I’m interested in damage control. Do we have a deal, Molly?”

She tapped one finger in absent agitation on her knee. “What if people don’t buy it?”

“Leave that to me,” he assured her. “I’m not worried.”

“And all I have to do is be seen in public with you—every now and then?”

“You’re not currently involved with anyone, are you?” he probed.

She shook her head. “No.”

“Then it won’t be a problem. I’ll try not to bore you.”

Molly looked stunned, then burst into laughter. “Are you kidding? Geez, Sam, you irritate me, you annoy me, you frustrate me, and you challenge me. But you never bore me!”

“I talk too much about my business.”

“In case you haven’t noticed, so do I. And since your business and my business are the same business, I doubt that’s a concern.”

Sam felt better than he had in weeks. Satisfaction settled firmly into his bones as he contemplated the future. “Then go to the meeting with me,” he urged. “We’ll have lunch afterwards, and then come back to the office around three. You can explain things in the newsroom, and tonight, we’ll have dinner. Everyone will assume that since the cat’s finally out of the bag, we have decided to go public with our relationship.” He shrugged slightly. “If you want, I’ll even take responsibility for keeping our relationship secret until now. People will simply believe that you got angry at me for insisting on privacy, and that you ran the ad to force my hand.”

“It’s so ridiculous,” she conceded, “it might work.”

“It’ll work. Have you read the tabloids lately? People like ridiculous stories. It’s human nature.”

She frowned slightly as she thought it over. Sam liked the way Molly looked when she concentrated. The harder she concentrated on something, the more she worried the tip of her tongue between her teeth. He found it unexpectedly sexy. “What if we find out we really can’t get along—that all we do after hours is fight like we do now? Then what?”

Sam recognized a wary concession in the question. “We’ll end it,” he stated flatly. “The only thing I ask is that we end it quietly.” His gaze dropped to the classified section of the paper on his desk. “I don’t like spectacles.”

Molly winced. “After seeing that ad this morning, I don’t either.”

“Then we have a deal?”

She visibly wavered. “What about my family? What do I tell them?”

Sam began to relax. He might not know much about romancing women—women, Sam found, usually chased him—but he knew a lot about making deals. Anticipating questions that might arise was key to a successful negotiation. And he’d anticipated this one from Molly. Nobody who lived in Payne more than a few days could help noticing the closeness of the large Flynn clan. Molly’s father owned a popular downtown restaurant where two of his sons-in-law worked with him. And all five of the Flynn daughters still lived in town. One was a teacher. Another was a lawyer. Two were stay-at-home moms. And then there was Molly. The only one of the five not yet married, she was widely known as the family rebel. Molly was the youngest of the girls. She was tight with her sisters and wouldn’t be comfortable deceiving them.

Sam met her gaze across the desk. “Tell them the truth,” he said. “Tell them that we met here. That sparks flew. That we determined we had some mutual interests, and that we’ve decided to explore them to see where they lead us.”

Molly gave him a blank look, then burst into laughter. “They’re not going to believe that.”

Irritated by her casual dismissal, Sam frowned. “Why not?”

“Because, in a million years I wouldn’t say something like ‘we decided to explore our mutual interests.’ Geez, Sam, I’ve never decided to get involved in a relationship in my life.” She shook her head. “I’m more the jerk-open-the-door-and-run-on-in type. I hurtle into relationships. I don’t decide myself into them.”

He understood her point. Yet, one of the things that fascinated him about Molly was that he didn’t find her impulsiveness annoying. He’d known women he would have called impulsive, and for the most part, he’d found them flaky and irritating. But Molly seemed to have an energy, a certain vim—that made everything she did seem engaging and enticing. “What would you like to tell them?” Sam asked carefully.

Molly worried her lower lip between her teeth for a few seconds. “I don’t want to lie.”

“I can understand that.”

“But you also have to understand—I don’t know—I guess I’ll make it up as I go along.”

“May I assume, then, that you agree?” he asked quietly.

Molly hesitated a moment longer, then nodded. Standing, she extended her hand. “We have a deal, Mr. Reed.”

He folded her hand in his and took the opportunity to skim his thumb over the pulse in her wrist. “I think you’d better start calling me Sam.” He glanced at his watch. “And we’d better get moving. I don’t want to be late for this meeting.”

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