They peeled off their clothes and Brooke reached for him, wanting him inside her. Instead, Cade took his time, exploring nearly every inch of her body. He trailed his lips down her stomach, then gripped her thighs and held her open as he lowered his mouth between her legs.

He was relentless. He brought her to the peak, and then pulled back, and then brought her right there again, until she felt stripped bare with need. “Cade,” she begged.

He hovered between her spread legs, rolling a condom on, then moved over her. Bracing himself on his elbows, he cupped her face and looked right into her eyes as he entered her.

“Brooke,” he said, nearly a whisper.

It was the tender way he said her name, his face momentarily so open and unguarded that it literally took her breath away. He began to move inside her, lowering his head to kiss her as he continued his achingly smooth rhythm. She wrapped her arms around his neck, and her legs around his waist, holding on tight as she arched her hips to meet him. They shattered together, and afterward lay intertwined for several moments before she drifted off to sleep with her head on his chest.

* * *

IN THE MORNING, she woke up and saw the sun filtering in through the shades on her windows. Cade was sitting next to her on the bed, dressed in the suit he’d worn the night before.

He reached over and tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “I need to get going,” he said huskily. “I have to go home and change before heading into work.”

“Okay.” Brooke tucked her arm under her head and smiled softly at him, not quite sure what to say about last night. The sex had always been great between them, but that had been incredible. The way he’d said her name, the way he’d looked at her—she’d never felt that intimately connected with anyone before.

That is, until Cade leaned forward and kissed her on the forehead.

“Knock ’em dead in Charlotte, Brooke.”

Then he stood up and walked out of her apartment.

Thirty

IT TOOK BROOKE almost two weeks to rework her schedule so she could fly out to Spectrum’s headquarters. Granted, she was doing this on the sly, merely telling her secretary that she would be out of the office to attend to “personal matters.” Since she’d only taken three other vacation days in the two years she’d been with Sterling, she figured she was due for the time off.

She did, nevertheless, feel guilty. She hated going behind Ian’s back—although, obviously, she had no choice under the circumstances. She believed in loyalty, and she didn’t relish the thought of having to tell Ian that she was leaving. But at the end of the day, it was her career. She worked hard, she was good at what she did, and she owed it to herself to explore this opportunity with Spectrum.

Thus, on a Friday morning Brooke found herself on a seven A.M. flight to Charlotte, North Carolina. After takeoff, she reviewed the questions she wanted to ask Palmer and the other members of the executive team, and ran through her vision for retaining market share and growing Spectrum’s sports and entertainment division. She’d just begun perusing some articles she’d printed out about the city of Charlotte, when the first-class flight attendant came by to offer her breakfast.

“We have a choice this morning: blueberry pancakes or a Denver omelette,” she said.

Brooke’s mouth fell open. Get out of here. “A Denver omelette? Seriously?”

The flight attendant sighed, as if steeling herself for a two-hour ride with yet another fussy first-class passenger. “Yes, a Denver omelette. They’re one of our most popular breakfast entrees.”

“Oh, no—I wasn’t criticizing,” Brooke said quickly, trying to explain. “It’s just this inside-joke thing. I mean, not with you, since obviously we’ve never met before, but with this other person who . . . you don’t know and who isn’t here and, actually, he isn’t even really speaking to me right now, but if he had been here, trust me—he would’ve found this really funny.”

The flight attendant gave her a no-more-coffee-for-you look. “Omelette or pancakes, ma’am?”

Right. “Omelette.”

The flight attendant set the breakfast onto her tray and made a fast getaway. Brooke looked down at the omelette, knowing exactly what she would’ve done if circumstances had been different. She would’ve taken a photo of the omelette with her phone, and then texted Cade as soon as the plane landed with some sort of quip like, Didn’t realize you were moonlighting as a chef for United, or—even better—And I didn’t even have to put out this time.

Yep, that would’ve been a good one, all right.

A real good one.

Brooke looked out the window, trying very hard, as she had been for the last two weeks, not to wonder what Cade was up to. They hadn’t spoken, texted, or e-mailed since that last night together, when they’d agreed that it was better not to see each other anymore.

That part had been harder than she’d anticipated.

She turned back to the Denver omelette, trying not to hear Cade’s low, teasing voice in her head.

Nine o’clock it is. I’ll pick you up at your place.

I’ll have a Denver omelette waiting.

That’s cute.

She should’ve just gone with the damn pancakes.

* * *

IT WAS A whirlwind day from the moment Brooke touched down in Charlotte.

A car met her at the airport and took her to the Ritz-Carlton for a quick pit stop to drop off her bags. From there, she was whisked away to Spectrum’s corporate headquarters. She met first with Palmer, who then introduced her to several other company officers—she couldn’t say how many; she lost count after ten. She learned all about Spectrum’s mission to “transform the food hospitality industry,” and there was no denying that they were indeed the Goliath to Sterling Restaurants’ David: they were in hospitals, senior living facilities, schools, colleges and universities, corporate buildings, and, of course, sports and entertainment venues.

It was clear what Palmer was looking for in an EVP of sales and business development; in fact, he came right out and told her: someone aggressive and ambitious, someone who would do more than trot out the same old tired ideas and “corporate-speak.” He spoke about the fairly extensive travel that would be involved, and made a comment about that not being a good “fit” for the former EVP of sales.

“Family man, really good guy,” Palmer said. “We just needed someone who could step it up to the next level.”

Brooke had lunch with two of the executive officers she’d been introduced to earlier, neither of whom she’d describe as the most vivacious person on Earth, but then again, there were a lot of stiffs in the corporate world. Luckily, she clicked better with the general counsel, whom she met after lunch.

About two minutes into her meeting with the general counsel, his assistant stuck her head into the office. “Sorry for the interruption. Randy Kemp wants to meet with you today. He says it’ll only take five minutes.”

The general counsel rolled his eyes. “Randy Kemp wants to talk about his deposition in the Kentucky FLSA case, and that is definitely more than a five-minute conversation. Tell him he can have twenty minutes at four thirty.” He turned to Brooke after his assistant left. “How much are you not going to miss all this when you’re EVP of sales?” he asked jokingly.

“You mean, having at least two conversations a day that start with ‘So, um, how bad would it be, legally speaking, if I told you that . . .’”

The general counsel chuckled. “Exactly.”

Brooke smiled. Weirdly . . . she thought she kind of would miss that.

At the end of the day, she met up with Palmer again, and he led her down yet another hallway to a corner office.

“Thought you might want to try it on for size,” he said, with a wink.

“This would be mine?” she asked.

He nodded. “All you have to do is say ‘yes,’ Brooke.”

She stepped into the large office, modernly furnished with cream marble and ebony wood furnishings. The view from her office at Sterling was better, but it wasn’t the view that mattered—it was what the office represented. The money. The title. The fact that she’d be running the entire sales division of such a large corporation.

One simple word, and it was all hers for the taking.

All she had to do was say yes.

* * *

BY THE TIME Brooke finally made it back to the hotel around ten o’clock that night, she was exhausted. She’d been awake since five A.M., she’d had to be “on” for nearly twelve hours straight, and she was feeling somewhat . . . out of sorts.

Palmer and two of the VPs—luckily, not the two stiffs from lunch again—had taken her to dinner at a French-Italian “seasonal cuisine” restaurant located in the city’s historic Elizabeth district. The conversation was good, and the food and wine were excellent, and all in all, she’d had an enjoyable evening. But something was off.

Never once had Palmer pressured her to accept the offer, but she knew, understandably, that he was eager for her response. And several times during dinner, she’d been tempted to say that one word, yes, because of course she should accept the offer. It was an excellent opportunity, and by and large she’d liked the people she’d met at Spectrum. The pragmatic businesswoman in her had been shouting, What are you waiting for? all through the dessert course—but something kept holding her back.

She didn’t know what, exactly, that something was. But she’d first noticed it that afternoon, when Palmer had shown her the office that would be hers at Spectrum. He’d needed to step out to take a phone call, and while he was gone she’d taken a seat behind the sophisticated ebony wood desk. To “try it on for size,” so to speak.

It hadn’t felt quite . . . right.

She’d ignored the sentiment, thinking it was nothing, that it was merely akin to buying a new house but not feeling like it was actually hers until she moved in. But that same nagging feeling had popped up again throughout dinner, whenever she’d been about to accept Palmer’s offer, so in the end, she’d just stayed quiet.

Brooke decided to sleep on it, wondering if perhaps she was simply feeling off because she was tired. The next morning, she woke up refreshed, reinvigorated, and ready to check out Charlotte with an open mind. The driver was waiting for her when she got downstairs, and he came armed with a list Palmer’s secretary had put together of places Brooke should visit while in town.

Charlotte was a big city, but she noticed that it had something of a small-town feel—which appealed to the midwesterner in her. After touring around all morning and early afternoon, she asked the driver to drop her off at an outdoor café by her hotel, one that the concierge had recommended. She ordered a Margherita pizza and a glass of wine, and then she settled in and waited for that moment to come when she knew that accepting the offer was the right way to go.

Then she waited some more.

The moment sure seemed to be taking its sweet old time.

When the waiter brought over the pizza she’d ordered and she was still waiting, she thanked him and happened to catch sight of the people at the table across from her: a little girl, about eight years old, eating lunch quietly while her mother typed away on her BlackBerry.

“Almost finished, I promise,” the mother was saying. “I just need to get this e-mail out before my client drives me completely nuts.”

Brooke watched them, able to identify with the woman’s feeling all too well. In a minute or two, she would put down the phone, smile at her daughter, and say, “Sorry. Just had to finish that.” Except it wouldn’t be finished, because, really, no work problem urgent enough to require the immediate attention of a woman simply trying to enjoy lunch with her daughter, or, say, a barbeque with her best friend, or a book club meeting with some girlfriends, could ever be fixed with one e-mail. The work would still be there when the woman got home, or maybe another issue would pop up that required the woman’s attention, because work was always there. And it wasn’t that the woman was complaining—she actually liked her job, in fact—but lately she’d been wondering if her life had gotten a little . . . off balance.