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Considering the amount of money involved in some of the deals made in the city, Mariah could understand how men might use their adult children as pawns.
    So was Rory involved in his father’s machinations or was he ignorant of “favors” as he claimed? Could a man fake the emotion she’d seen in him on his father’s terrace and again last night? His declaration that he’d been trapped in remembrance was the most disturbing, for she, too, had thought of little else since they’d been reunited. At the most inopportune moments flashes of memory kept surfacing; fantasies of the two of them in a secret hideaway, a country inn where no one knew or cared that Grant was with Campbell.
    Mariah trashed her empty foam cup, put on her charcoal wool suit jacket, and left her office. Down the hall, she entered the nerve center of the company, with teak paneling and table, the latest teleconferencing equipment, and big screen projection TV.
    The first arrival, Arnold Benton, had already taken a seat in a leather swivel chair. The colorless man in his early thirties gave her a disapproving glare that suggested she take the next shuttle back to L.A. Then he bent deliberately to study a page full of notes, revealing the bald spot in his thinning pale brown hair.
    “Morning,” Mariah said to the top of his head. She hoped that in time working for her father’s company would become less awkward.
    “Hey, you,” Grant’s second-in-command Tom Barrett greeted her from the doorway. The big shaggy man with a recalcitrant shirttail and unruly reddish hair no barber could tame reminded Mariah of a well-loved teddy bear. He winked, his blue eyes as bright as his son Charley’s. “I’d have taken a bet you’d beat me here.”
    Arnold made a small sound that might have been a snort of disgust.
    In the next few minutes the conference table filled with Grant Development’s heads of engineering, law, public relations, human resources, and construction. Though over a hundred employees worked on the lower floors, it was up to the management team to coordinate, and they did so each Monday morning.
    Mariah’s father entered last, a weekend of rest having softened the lines around his eyes. Once he sat at the head of the table, the meeting began.
    As Grant’s financial officer, Arnold Benton droned at length about the status of two hundred million in construction loans with First California Bank. The gist was that he had everything under such wonderful control that it bored him. Mariah had seen the technique in L.A., the young executive in need of the further challenge of promotion.
    When it was her turn, she thought of her blank sheet of notes and reported, “The Bayview Townhomes project is on budget and schedule.” She hoped to get by with that, but Arnold inquired as to some numbers that necessitated a trip to her office for them.
    On her return to the conference room, she was shocked to hear him saying, “ … Mariah and Campbell at the Marriott …”
    As he apparently saw Tom’s eyes shift to her in the doorway, Arnold broke off.
    Her face warmed as every eye turned to her.
    John’s usually equable expression had been replaced by an edgy look. Throughout the rest of the meeting, she chafed at the fact that the subtext of every encounter here was that she was her father’s daughter.
    Before John adjourned the gathering, he turned to Mariah. “Could I see you privately?” His voice was soft, but she felt sure everyone heard.
    It seemed to take a long time for everyone to file out. Tom threw her a sympathetic look while Arnold appeared barely able to contain his glee. As soon as the door closed, her father rose, slid a hip onto the table, and looked down at her. “What’s this about you and Rory Campbell?”
    “What about him?” The heat was back in her cheeks.
    “You heard Arnold.”
    “I did. Is this the seventh grade?” She hated that the Campbells still had the power to drive a wedge between her and her father.
    “It’s