10

He waited, and she stared ahead. Still, he waited. Finally, she gave in and turned to look at him.

“I completely and utterly messed this up. I freely admit it. I expected to have time to discuss this with you before we ran into my family.”

She struggled to control her temper. He obviously wanted a reasonable discussion when she was feeling anything but reasonable. What she really wanted was to crack his skull on the coffee table and leave, but then she’d be without a room, and if anyone was sleeping in the hallway, it wasn’t going to be her.

“First, this has nothing—and I mean nothing—to do with you landing my account. You’re going to have to do that on your business and advertising savvy. I’m not putting my entire company in the hands of a woman based on her looks or anything else.

Can we at least be clear on that?”

She swallowed. “That’s not how it looks to me, Evan. It looks to me like I got played for the fool and that you led me here on the premise of listening to my pitch when