He decided not to bother mincing words with her. “You’re right,” he said. “We have to cancel our contract with you, Rebecca.”

“Whose idea?”

“That’s irrelevant.”

He motioned for the waiter and nodded to Rebecca to order, not caring that he was rushing her. She was the one who’d shown up late. She ordered the broiled scrod and a salad, and he made it two. The two martinis had curbed his appetite.

“I’ll have mine to go,” Rebecca said as the waiter started to leave.

The poor fellow looked dumbfounded. “To go?”

She graced him with one of her most dazzling smiles. “Please.”

Lee silently cursed Quentin Reed for being such a pusillanimous jerk he couldn’t tell a woman he’d known since childhood to quit playing games with him and get the hell out of his company.

“I gather you don’t even want to see the proofs,” Rebecca said.

“I don’t see what purpose that would serve.”

But Lee would have loved Rebecca Blackburn to spread her portfolio on the linen-covered table and to give him a good, long look at the work she’d done for his company. As a designer, Rebecca was top-notch. Her preliminary sketches for Winston & Reed had blended the company’s disparate elements, its old Boston traditionalism with its modern boldness and direction. Lee knew she wouldn’t be easily replaced, if at all.

“Are you going to give me any advice?” she asked suddenly.

Her question caught Lee off guard. “I beg your pardon?”

“I’ve never been fired without getting unsolicited advice on how to conduct myself in the future. My favorite was from the president of the Dallas-based oil company where I worked a couple of months about two years ago. He told me I ought to get my pretty little self married and start having babies, but then he changed his mind and said he wouldn’t wish a smart-mouthed nutcase like me on any red-blooded male.”