Boston, Massachusetts

Thirty years later

The waiter for the unhappy vice president of Winston & Reed brought him a second perfectly mixed martini and silently whisked away the empty glass of his first. A thin, gray-haired, punctilious man, Lee Donigan had a low threshold of tolerance for two things: doing someone else’s dirty work and being kept waiting. Rebecca Blackburn had managed to trigger both sources of irritation in one day.

He tried the martini. Excellent. He welcomed its soothing burn. It was his own fault he was stuck with this unpleasant task. He should have investigated the possibility that the award-winning graphic designer his public relations director had hired to revamp Winston & Reed’s corporate look was one of the Blackburns. He had assumed a Boston Blackburn wouldn’t have the gall to take on an assignment with his company. One should never assume.

Particularly, he’d learned the hard way, with a Blackburn.

And especially this one.

A flash of color, a burst of energy-both compelled Lee to look up. Rebecca Blackburn caught his eye from across the busy restaurant and waved, ignoring the maître d’as she made her way to his table. Her electric personality seemed to light up the lunchtime crowd atop the forty-story Winston & Reed Building. In the few times he’d met her, Lee had observed that Rebecca was the kind of woman who never cooled off.