"Dean," Kelly breathed.
Or was it? He looked so odd in that suit, as if he were born to it. His jaw was unexpectedly clean-shaven and the dark curls Kelly had loved to tousle were ruthlessly tamed.
Most peculiar of all, he stared at her in the same manner as the rest of the people in the room. As if he'd never seen her before in his life.
Kelly felt a hard bump in the progress of her quest. He was supposed to shrink back in guilt. He was supposed to crumple in shame and panic. And for heaven's sake, he was supposed to look like Dean. Faded blue jeans, crooked grin, come-get-me eyes.
This man looked like he'd been carved from a slab of Massachusetts granite. His lips were a straight slash of severity and his glacier-blue gaze was steady. Indeed, not a single part of him moved as he stood there, pointer upraised. Strong and cool, he looked like — a king.
He looked like he could be the actual, real-life head of Singleton Industries.
Kelly felt a shiver run down her spine. Her rage slipped. Was this Dean?
But a commotion behind her — security? — propelled her back into action. "Okay," she said, and straightened. "Okay, so you didn't feel anything, the way I did. That's no crime. But — " She drew in a steadying breath against a sudden upwelling of pain. Two days before she'd hoped for so much, been so happy. "But why'd you have to go and make promises?" she whispered.
That's when she caught it, finally, his reaction. He flinched. Five hours flying and maxing out her credit card — for a flinch.
The next instant strong arms seized her from behind. Security. It was almost laughable. He was the dirty rotten crumb, but she was about to be thrown from the premises.
"Let her go."
The words emerged from Dean. Yes, he heard himself say them, but he felt like he was watching the whole drama from the end of a very long hall. Or as if he were in the type of nightmare where one needed to escape dire disaster, but could not move one's arms or legs.
It had happened. The fallout he'd been dreading, the consequences of his 'lost weekend.'
But staring at the woman who'd interrupted his annual meeting of vice-presidents, Dean could not believe the fallout was this bad. In skin-tight blue jeans and a jacket that strained at her breasts, all under a kittenish face framed by a great quantity of blond, upswirled hair, she looked like she'd stepped out of some adolescent boy's wet dream.
Or out of one of his father's. Yes, the woman standing at the door of the conference room looked exactly like one of Dean's father's ridiculous, inappropriate women; a showgirl, an actress, or a lingerie model.
As if that weren't bad enough, Dean had no idea who she was.
Jeff and Frank, the two security guards, stopped to look at Dean, their gazes questioning his odd command.
The woman looked at him, too, her full lips parted.
She might have been his father's type, but she was not his. Desperately, Dean assured himself of this fact. He was a sober man, a responsible one. A throwback to good, old-fashioned New England stock. This woman's presence before him, her knowledge of his name, her — her outrageous assertion he'd made her promises simply could not be.
But a deep abyss opened inside him. He'd also thought it impossible he could have been sitting in the leather chair of his study at home one minute, and wandering a seedy neighborhood he didn't recognize the next — a neighborhood clear across the country, no less.
But it had happened.
He had to believe now that anything was possible.
"Let her go," Dean repeated quietly.
The guards released her. As Dean saw her go free, he realized that any kind of chaos could ensue.
It was a moment that begged the mettle of a man who'd created his own billion-dollar, cutting edge biogenetics company, someone who could make a decision despite a flurry of wild and contradictory stimuli.
So Dean made himself move. Through the heavy fog that surrounded him, he put down his pointer and strode across the room. With a smooth, efficient gesture he took his own hold of the woman.
As he made contact, his arm muscles jumped. To give himself a better grip, Dean told himself.
"We're going to talk," he affirmed, looking down at her. "Alone."
Her brows pulled together.
He didn't want an argument about it, so Dean didn't wait for one. Turning to his vice-presidents, he made a brisk apology, something far too terse to make up for ending this important annual meeting. Then he led the woman from the room.
She did not acquiesce, but neither did she resist. Dean could only hope she didn't realize his hand was trembling where it connected with her fake leather jacket.
He had no idea who she was, no memory of her face, and not an inkling of her name.
But Dean kept a bland expression on his face as he directed the woman down the busy hall to his office. It wouldn't do for any of the employees they passed to guess there were a good forty-eight hours missing from their meticulous chief's memory.