Intimate Read Free Page A

which probably made him look disreputable as hell, so he tried to shove it back down, which only messed it up worse. He took a deep breath, fully aware he was acting way out of character. Not his usual manner at all.
    â€œYou’ve got my cell phone number. Tell her that if she’s at all interested in the job, she has to call today.”
    â€œLook.” The woman studied him like he was a bug on the wall. “I can’t give you Kaz’s personal number. I’ll give her your card, have her call you, but you’d better be who you say you are.”
    Score! “Who else would I be?” He chuckled and glanced toward the closed office door behind her desk. “I’m no general, that’s for sure.”
    She laughed, then glanced at the door. “Thank God,” she said.
    The phone rang. Jake didn’t hesitate. As she reached for it, he was flying out the door, searching for Kaz. Even as tall as he was, tall enough to see over just about everyone, it was the lunch hour, and the sidewalk was packed. He had no idea where to look, which way she’d gone.
    With those long, long legs she could be blocks away by now.
    â€œCrap.” Still watching for the model, Jake headed toward the next block where he’d parked. He’d take a run down Nineteenth, see if he could spot her. If he didn’t, he’d have to hope like hell she called him.
    Tires squealed. Jake spun to look, but the unmistakable scream of tires on asphalt had him leaping out of the path of a sliding car. The older sedan rammed a parked car just ahead of him. A policeman giving someone a ticket at the stoplight raced across the street, halted traffic with one arm raised, then reached for the car door where a guy was slumped over the steering wheel.
    Jake kept walking, but his head was once again filled with images from long ago. The rain falling, his brother’s face, the horror of death. The guilt. No matter how far or fast he walked, the reboot of bad memories stayed with him.

 
    CHAPTER 2
    Kaz had just parked her butt at the kitchen table with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and the end of a bottle of really cheap red wine when Lola called. “Slow down, Lola. Who?”
    â€œThe man who was standing at my desk when you stomped out. Do you remember him?”
    â€œYeah, I got a good look at him. Very tall, very hot-looking guy, needs a haircut. Why? He looked sort of familiar. Has he hired from Top End before?” Kaz poured a little more wine into her glass and took a swallow, wishing she had something stronger. Better.
    Who needed to worry about weight or red eyes? Models did, but she’d obviously screwed that gig. “He what? Wants to hire me? For what?”
    She set the glass down. Listened to Lola, and jotted down the Web site and phone number.
    Twenty minutes later, she felt like she knew the guy inside and out. R. Jacob Lowell, age thirty-five, single, successful—if she could believe all the credits on his Web site and his social networking pages—and well educated. Computer science, business and accounting, film studies. Was there anything the guy hadn’t gotten a degree in?
    She stared at the photo on his Facebook page and laughed. He was wearing the same shirt in the profile shot that he’d had on today, a San Francisco Giants shirt, black with orange logo. Then she checked out the pages he’d “liked” and decided the guy was a geek at heart. A geek who liked baseball.
    Sort of like her.
    She took another swallow of wine and picked up her phone. Thought about the rent, about the odds of landing a decent job—without references—with a different agency, and tapped in his number. Calling him was a no-brainer. It wasn’t like she had all that many modeling options out there, and the thought of actually using her business degree gave her the cold shivers. Working in an office wasn’t at all what she wanted out of life.
    At least she