Out of Hours...Office Affairs: Can't Get Enough / Wild Nights with her Wicked Boss / Bound to the Greek

He grunted a goodbye, deliberately pulling his attention back to his pile of mail.

Stop thinking about Claire, he ordered himself. He’d already laid her ghost to rest last night, when he’d decided not to call her. So why did she keep rising to the surface of his mind?

Here he was again, reverting to thinking about her as soon as all other distractions were gone! He’d already walked down this road, and it was a dead end. Time to move on. With a real force of will, he focused on his mail, sorting through more than half of it until he came to an internal mail envelope. Like most internal mail envelopes, the previous recipient had crossed their name out before reusing the envelope for another message. He stared at Claire’s crossed-out name for a second, then squeezed the bag, frowning. It felt bulky, not like paperwork. Mystified, he broke the sticky-tape seal and pulled out a small shopping bag. The cool slither of silk on his hands clued him into the bag’s contents before he’d pulled the tie out. It was striped, with some sort of lion and crown etched into it. The sort of tie his grandfather had always been fond of. He stared at it, genuinely dumbstruck for a moment.

She was a real piece of work. Not content to have the last word, she’d gone out and bought him the perfect response to his claim not to own a tie.

Well, she could whistle Dixie as far as he was concerned—there was no way he was wearing a stupid tie. Especially not this particular stupid tie.

Thank God he hadn’t called her last night. He’d regretted it earlier today, even after their fight he’d found it in himself to regret it, because there was something about her that drew him…But after this? No way. He and she were chalk and cheese. She’d drive him crazy. He tossed the tie negligently to one side.

He actually snorted his exasperation and disbelief out loud as he reached for the folder Linda had filled with his personal mail from his post office box. There were a handful of bills, but one envelope caught his attention. That was his Mom’s handwriting scrawled across the front of the pale lavender rectangle. A dead, dull weight settled on his chest as he lifted the flap on the envelope, knowing full well what was inside: a birthday card.

Just like his Mom. She never forgot birthdays, even though he’d made his feelings clear on the subject. He almost laughed out loud. He’d been mostly successful in ignoring the march of time this year. He’d figured that if he was very careful and skimmed along through November, he could skip over his and Robbie’s birthday.

But he’d still known that it was coming up, just the same—otherwise he wouldn’t have felt that instant weight upon seeing his mother’s card. Otherwise he wouldn’t have this well of grief opening up inside him so readily and easily.

Liquid heat threatened at the back of his eyes, and he pushed himself to his feet, dropping the card onto his desk, ignoring all that needed to be signed for tomorrow. He had to get out of there, right now.

THERE WAS A CALL waiting on her answering machine when Claire got home from work that evening, and she despised herself for the little thrill of anticipation she felt as she noted the flashing message light. Maybe Jack had called after all. Maybe he’d felt as angry and frustrated and disappointed as she had after their argument.

Then she gave herself a mental slap. There was no way Jack would have called after the fight they’d had in his office. Or, if he called her at all, it would only be to give her hell for having foisted a tie on him, despite his insistence that he wouldn’t wear one.

But it was her father’s voice on the answering machine. She stared at the small black appliance as he told her that he was in town unexpectedly. Would she like to catch up for dinner?

She hadn’t spoken to her father in months. She sent him e-mails on a regular basis, mostly because she was determined to do all that she could to have some kind of relationship with him. Occasionally he replied, but he rarely commented on her news. Instead he concentrated on his latest expedition or project, his letters reading more like press releases than missives from a father to his only child.

Warily pleased, she called the hotel number Harry had left. His voice sounded unfamiliar and distant when he answered the phone.

“Dad, it’s me, Claire,” she said.

“Oh, hello, Claire. I take it you got my message?”

As usual, the cool matter-of-factness of his manner stopped her from saying any of the things she instinctively wanted to say—that it had been a long time, that she’d been thinking about him. That she was hoping he could make it to her triathlon final.

They quickly arranged for her to meet him at his hotel for dinner—he was disinclined to let her take him out to any of her favorite Melbourne restaurants. In a city that was well-known for its food and wine culture, Harry preferred to chance the hotel dining room, and she felt unequal to the task of convincing him otherwise.

She settled for a scaled-down version of her training session for the evening, and it was only as she was discarding the third top she’d tried on in ten minutes that she acknowledged she was nervous.

Ridiculous, really—but he was her father, and their relationship was uneasy at best. Still, he’d made the effort to get in contact while he was in town. That was something, a change. She allowed herself to hope that maybe all her hard work in maintaining contact had perhaps gotten through to him on some level.

She was surprised at how old he looked when they met up in the foyer of his hotel. At sixty, he was very active and still organized expeditions, even if he didn’t lead them himself anymore. But his hair had thinned, and was now completely white, and his eyes seemed faded somehow. She had to fight a surge of emotion as she realized that time was running out for them to reconcile.

“Claire. Good to see you,” he said, leaning forward stiffly to kiss her cheek.

Ignoring his formality, she hugged him, pressing her cheek close to his.

“How are you?” she asked warmly.

“Good, good. A little annoyed at having to make this extraneous trip to Melbourne when we’re so close to heading off, but these things happen.”

Unsure of what he was talking about, Claire followed him into the dining room and waited till they had been seated before venturing further.

“You’re organizing another expedition, I take it?” she asked.

Obviously her father was unaware that he hadn’t communicated with her for some time.

“Yes. It’s a joint Australian-Swiss assault on Everest. We were supposed to leave next month…but I don’t want to bore you with the details. How is work? And your marathon thingy?”

She blinked with surprise. Her father never tired of talking about his work, and he never enquired after her life. She struggled to pull her thoughts together. “Work is good. Busy, but good. We’re very close to launching our first edition of the magazine. And my triathlon training is coming along well. Just two weeks to go now.”

He made the appropriate noises as he studied the wine list, while she studied his face. Was this truly the breakthrough she’d been hoping for all her life? Or, if not that, exactly, perhaps the beginning of a thaw?

“This is the magazine that you devised, the hardware thing?”

Another surprise—he’d read her e-mails, actually remembered their content.

“Yes. It’s more home renovation and decoration than hardware, really. But you’ve got the basic idea.”

He shot her an assessing look, then indicated her menu. “Better hurry up and decide—I can’t stand waiting around for my meal,” he said, already signaling for the waiter to come over.

There was a momentary hiatus in their conversation as Claire hurriedly decided on a salad as entrée and fish for her main, and the wine waiter poured some wine into her glass—a red, her father’s choice.

“So, I guess this Beck character who runs all those magazines of yours must be pretty pleased with you, then.”

“Well, he’s certainly happy to have landed a new client.”

She took a mouthful of her wine, wondering that her father even remembered what company she worked for.

“But you know him, yes? You’ve spoken with him?”

For the first time she registered that this was more than just polite interest from Harry. What was going on here?

“I’ve had several meetings with him, of course. Have you met him somewhere?”

Her father shook his head vigorously, tearing his dinner roll apart. “No, but I will tomorrow. Just trying to get a bit of a feel for the man. What do you know of him? Is he a sports man?”

Claire sat back in her chair, baffled and bemused. Why would her father care what she thought of her boss, or what he thought of her? And why on earth would her father, renowned explorer, be having a meeting with Morgan Beck, millionaire publisher?

And then she got it.

“Is he thinking of funding one of your expeditions?” she asked flatly. She watched her father’s face closely, feeling that this moment was pivotal somehow. It was possible she was wrong, that her father truly had found some smidgen of sentiment in himself as the years rolled by and was genuinely interested in his daughter’s life.

“As a matter of fact, yes. It’s a bit of a difficult situation, actually. This Beck character was interested in getting involved right from the get-go, but then we had a better offer from the Swiss side of things. Now our Swiss guy has dropped his bundle, and I’m hoping to talk Beck into renewing his offer.”

Harry was animated and enthusiastic as he explained his situation to her, describing the details of the assault, the makeup of the team, the differing experience levels, the problems he’d had and overcome.

And she sat there, watching his face light up with passion for his subject, for the only thing he’d every really loved, the bitter taste of disappointment in her mouth.