“What did you want to do?” he asked, answering her question with another question.

She bit her lip. “I wanted what you and Mom had, to be really in love, to know it and to have it forever.”

His expression tightened and, even after all these years, she could see a touch of pain in his eyes. “We were lucky, very lucky,” he said in a low voice. “The thing is, what are you going to do now? Another repeat of what just happened?”

“No, I’m no good at finding love. I know when to admit defeat.”

“Maybe that’s your problem. You’re looking for it. Maybe it has to find you.”

“Semantics,” she muttered.

“So what direction is your life going to take now that you’ve sworn off love?”

“Direction?” She had never thought about directions for life, just living it. “What do you mean?”

He raked his fingers through his thick hair. “Well, as you pointed out, you’re twenty-seven years old. Sane, at least in most things. Intelligent, or you should be after all your forays into higher education. Talented, if you applied yourself, and you’re my daughter. The genes have to be there somewhere.”

“Dad, I—”

“Shhh, just listen to me for a minute.” He stood and came closer to her. “I’ve made a decision. You either have to get direction for your life or I’m out of it. I probably should have done this before, but…” He sighed. “Better late than never, I guess.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Being an indulgent father, as if I could make up for your mother not being here for you. Giving you what you wanted, when you wanted it. Going along with everything you did or wanted. That’s over. I knew this thing with Sean wasn’t going to work. I could tell. So, I made some plans. You can take them or leave them. But know if you leave them, you’re going to have to make it on your own.”

“This is crazy. I’m just breaking an engagement, not doing drugs or embezzling from the company.”

“No, you’re just drifting. You’ve got a smattering of knowledge about a lot of things, but you don’t have any knowledge about accomplishment or challenges.”

She pulled out the high-backed leather chair at the desk and dropped down into it. She tugged her legs up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them, then rested her chin on her knees and looked up at her father. “Where’s this all going? You want me to get a degree in something? How about art? I could get a degree in that if you want. I can go to the university in the city, get into D’Angelo’s classes, take private lessons. I’ve got all the time in the world. How about three or four years? Is that what you want?”

“No.” He pressed his hands flat on the desk and leaned toward her. “Just six months, Brittany, six months to try it my way, and if it doesn’t work, you can take classes in art for years if you want.”

“Six months, to do what?”

“I’ve had a few phone conversations with Matthew Terrel at LynTech in Houston.”

They’d both accepted the fact ages ago that she was hopeless at business and wouldn’t step in to take over when he retired from the company he’d founded. That had been a great disappointment for him, but a truth. She didn’t have a business head. She didn’t care about business at all, but she cared about him, and LynTech had been very important to him ever since she’d been old enough to remember. “Terrel’s the guy that’s working with the other one, the one who was going to split up LynTech, then decided to stay on and develop the company?”

“Zane Holden and Matthew Terrel. Terrel is operating it at the moment, so he’s the one I contacted.”

“Why were you talking to him? Is there trouble at the company?”

“No, it’s transitional, but it’s doing fairly well,” he said. “I was talking to him about clearing it for you to go back to Houston.”

“What does this Terrel person have to do with me going back to Houston?”

“He’s going to set you up at LynTech to work. You are going to show up at nine and go home at five for six months. You’re going to make a difference. You are going to finally have more of a challenge than trying to figure out which art discipline is superior.”

She lowered her feet to the stone floor and looked right at her father. “Me, at LynTech?”

“Yes. You’re not going to run away this time. You’re going to work.”

“Dad, I know you’re upset, and I don’t blame you, but that’s crazy. I’ll destroy the company in a week.”

“You’re not that good,” he said with the shadow of a smile as he stood back. “And I’ve got a feeling that Mr. Terrel won’t let that happen.”

“So, you want me to head to Houston, and let this man, Terrel, babysit me?”

The smile was getting a bit larger. “I wouldn’t put it that way.”

“Dad, you’re in shock. I am, too. I mean, I know I’ve upset things. But to think that I should go and work at LynTech, well…” She almost shuddered. “That is not a good idea.”

“All I’m asking from you is six months of work and no engagements.”

She had always felt so independent, but she knew that she would never be independent of this man, of his good opinion of her, or the fact that she felt as if she’d failed him in so many ways. She knew she owed him so much. “Just go to LynTech?”

“And give yourself a break. Stay away from men, from situations. Give yourself a breather so you can really think about things. If you find out there isn’t a place for you there, then we’ll call it even, and you can go to any university you want and study anything you want to study.”

A break? Time to breathe and think? Even if this Terrel person was looking over her shoulder she could do six months. And for some reason she wanted to see Houston again. To see the house there. She hadn’t been back for over two years. “Okay, I’ll do it.”

She didn’t know what she expected. Him to smile, hug her, say he was happy? No matter what she thought, she didn’t expect him to hold out his hand to her. “We’ve got an agreement. Work, no complications. Agreed?”

She took his hand, and felt as if she was sealing her fate. “Agreed,” she whispered.

“Terrel is expecting you at two in the afternoon, Houston time, day after tomorrow.” He tapped her chin. “Don’t look so bothered. Just do your best. That’s all I ask.” He hugged her, and, as he stood back, he said, “We’ll talk in the morning and get things straight,” then he was gone.

Brittany slowly sank back in the chair again. Evening was coming, shadows creeping into the room, and in that moment, she felt very, very alone.

Houston, Texas, December 11

MATTHEW TERREL trusted very few people in his world. And he wasn’t going to start by trusting the man he had hung up on in his offices at LynTech. Welsh thought he was going to buy into the company on borrowed money, but that wasn’t going to happen. “Trust me,” the man had said three minutes ago. “I can make this work.” Matt had told him to rethink his offer, hung up and walked out of the office.

He went down the empty corridor on the executive level, went through his partner Zane Holden’s darkened office and right to the executive elevator. He relished the silence all around him, thankful for the lack of voices and no ringing of the telephone. Since Zane had taken off on his honeymoon right in the middle of the transition with the company, there had been no peace at LynTech, not for him, that was for sure.

Matt hit the button, stepped into the small elevator car, then pressed the button for the parking garage and leaned back against the wall. He closed his eyes, shutting out his own image in the reflective doors in front of him. He shut out a large man dressed all in black, from the collarless shirt to the trim slacks, leather boots and black briefcase in one hand. He knew that his sandy-blond hair needed a trim, that the beginning of a new beard was starting to shadow his strong jaw, and that by all rights, his dark-blue eyes should be bloodshot from lack of sleep.