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down just to make Fat Thorpe eat crow.”
    “Or—more aptly—Cherokee?” Sam quipped, watching her closely.
    She chuckled and her dark eyes sparkled momentarily before a pensive look overcame them. She nudged a few remaining pieces of lettuce around her salad bowl and folded her knuckles beneath her chin. She braced one elbow on the table, rested her other forearm against the edge of the table, and stroked the damp sides of her cold glass. “You know,” she mused to the ice cubes in the empty tumbler, “there are some things my pride just won’t let me do. Not even for money.”
    “But I thought you said money was why you took the job.”
    “It was. But I earn enough to support myself now. That’s all I need.”
    She saw his eyes drop to the hand toying with the glass. It bore only a large oval turquoise in a sterling silver setting.
    “You’re not married?” he asked.
    His eyes moved higher, met hers, and her fingers stopped stroking the damp glass.
    “No,” she answered tersely, realizing she should qualify the answer, then disregarded her conscience, thinking she owed this man nothing. They were simply sharing a table—two strangers in a lonely city away from home.
    Their main course arrived, and Sam Brown changed the subject. “I take it the Fat is going to hit the fan when he hears you lost the bid, huh?”
    Lee looked up, chuckled appreciatively, and noted, “You do have an irreverent sense of humor, don’t you? He’s always hitting the fan over one thing or another. It’s a way of life with him. If it’s not over losing the bid, it’ll be over me staying overnight on his precious company credit card, which he warned me not to do.”
    “But you’re doing it anyway?” A frown tilted his brows.
    “It was either that or get into Kansas City in the middle of the night after missing the six P.M. flight out of here. After the day I’ve put in, I wasn’t about to spend half the night in a plane.”
    “All because I had your suitcase, right?”
    She met his eyes, but only shrugged and returned to her dinner.
    The waitress brought coffee, interrupting them momentarily. When they were alone again, Lee studied Sam thoughtfully and asked, “If you’ve been around the K.C. area long enough to know about the questionable business practices of my illustrious boss, why haven’t we met before?”
    “Probably because we’ve been primarily involved with plumbing contracting and only recently decided to expand into sewer and water work.”
    “We?” she asked curiously. “Who’s the other Brown in Brown and Brown?”
    “It was my dad. He was the one who knew every contractor’s secrets around town. He was in the contracting business for years.”
    “Was?”
    “He died four years ago,” Sam stated unemotionally, cutting into his prime rib.
    “I . . . I’m sorry.”
    He looked up brightly. “Oh, don’t be. My father had a hell of a good life, did everything he ever wanted to do, died a happy man . . . on a golf course, no less, on the sixth tee.” His brown eyes twinkled. “That sixth tee always did give him trouble.”
    Even though Sam Brown pronounced all this with no apparent sadness, Lee felt awkward sharing his private history this way when she scarcely knew him. But he went on. “He was a hard-drinking, hardworking Norwegian—”
    “A Norwegian named Brown? ”
    “Comes from Brunvedt, somewhere back along the line.”
    “I’m sorry . . . I interrupted.”
    “Well as I said, he was a hard-headed Norwegian, and when I say he did everything he wanted, that included disobeying doctor’s orders. He’d had a small stroke and was given orders to take it easy for a few months, but when a stubborn Norwegian takes it into his head he’s going to go golfing, there’s no stopping him.”
    Lee found she was enjoying Sam Brown’s company immensely by now and surprised even herself by replying, “And when a stubborn Norwegian takes it into his head that he’s going to go to dinner with a