Mending Fences Read Free Page A

nothing to go on, but he would find her, somehow, to finish what she’d started the moment her lips touched his.
    * * * *
    She knew he wouldn’t follow her. He was her fantasy, not the other way around. Still, Victoria Linden didn’t wait around Brindle’s to find out.
    She drove carefully out of Park City, heading west down the interstate to the Salt Lake valley, focusing hard on the road before her and trying to keep herself from mentally replaying the evening. To keep herself from going back to him.
    When she finally turned the beat-up SUV off in her parking spot, she ran her hands through her hair and slumped in the seat. The adrenaline overload had ebbed, leaving her drained.
    That was probably—no, it was absolutely, hands down—the brashest, most ballsy thing she’d ever done in her life.
    She’d kissed Curran Shaw. Curran multi-millionaire, owner-of-a-huge-corporation, dated-every-supermodel/starlet Shaw. What a rush!
    His voice had given him away tonight, the sonorous tones and Down Under inflections revealing his identity under the black hood and half-mask. She’d always liked hearing him speak, liked the way the natural rumble in his voice vibrated in her chest.
    She locked the car and hurried up the stairs to her apartment door, shivering in the cold. He hadn’t recognized her, of course. She’d attended a couple of his press conferences, and interviewed him—along with over a hundred other journalists—at a massive press junket four years ago, on a freelance assignment from Business Wired magazine. In his memory, she’d be a blonde with wire-rimmed glasses, probably blurred together with all the other interviewers who spoke with him that weekend. If he remembered much from that weekend at all, given the partying that had reportedly gone on.
    Inside the apartment, she threw the deadbolt, dropping her purse and coat on the chair near the door. She glanced at Sassy’s cage and maze, covering a table along the far wall. The rat scampered through a tunnel and into the feeding area, climbing in and out of her empty food dish. Victoria kicked off her shoes. “I know, Sassafras, hold your horses.”
    Moving the rat’s home next month would be a pain. She’d have to tape numbers to each section in order to put the tunnels back together in the new apartment. Assuming, of course, that she could find a new apartment. She barely afforded this little hole in the wall, and soon her building would be torn down and rebuilt as luxury condos.
    She grabbed a handful of kibble and opened the wire roof of the cage, pouring the food into Sassy’s dish. The rat turned happy circles, paused to wash her cream and white pinto face, and pounced on the food. “Relax, it’s not like you haven’t eaten today.”
    Victoria stripped out of the costume, grabbed a carton of chocolate-cherry ice cream and a spoon, then sat cross-legged on the rug beside Sassy’s cage. She couldn’t begin to guess how much money an interview with Curran Shaw would bring now, nearly a year after his sudden retirement. He’d dropped off the face of the planet after stepping down as CEO of DCS GlobalTech. Simply disappeared from the public eye.
    She looked over and found Sassy staring at her intently. “Are you done eating already?”
    Sassy blinked at her and pawed at the clear acrylic cage wall.
    “Fine, I’ll let you out.” She reached into the cage and picked up the pudgy rat, setting Sassy on her shoulder. “So, Miss Sass, what on earth is he doing in Utah?”
    Sassy tugged on a lock of her hair and squeaked. “Go easy on the hair, girl. I wonder if he’s shopping for a ski condo or something.”
    Victoria briefly reconsidered returning to Brindle’s. If she could somehow convince him to give her an interview…no, wait, back up. He wouldn’t give her the time of day if he knew she was a freelance writer. He’d barely masked his dislike of the press when he led a highly visible life. After his vanishing act, he’d like a