He leveled a look straight into her eyes. “I have a feeling a woman as determined and remarkable as you are could do a lot besides trade sex for money,” he said quietly. “How did you survive?”
Apparently his tone calmed her down. She shrugged. “As a matter of fact there were days when I thought it was going to come to…what we were talking about, but I had Sammy to think about. I didn’t want him growing up with a twisted view of what it took to get ahead.”
“Is this the same Sammy who stole your savings?” he said wryly.
She nodded, her expression pained at the implied failure. “I’ve tried so hard with him. He’s just going through a rough time right now, like all teenagers,” she said with more hope than conviction. “He’ll be okay.”
“How old was Sammy when all this first happened?”
“Nine.”
Jason was appalled. And impressed. This hellion with the fierce pride and the fiery temper had gumption. He’d give her that. It made his own complaints seem petty. Obviously Dana had never been daunted by the task she’d set out to accomplish. Nor did she seem the least bit resentful of the circumstances which had heaped such a burden on her slender young shoulders. She had simply coped. Would any of the women he’d known before have done as well? For all of their strengths and charm, he suspected many of them would have floundered without wealthy daddies to turn to, without deep pockets to finance their fancy colleges and designer wardrobes or to provide seed money for their first businesses. His respect for Dana grew enormously.
“Why didn’t you ask for help?” he said. “There are social programs, legal aid, food stamps.”
“Sure. And the minute they discovered that we had no adult supervision, they would have split Sammy and me up. I couldn’t let that happen. We may not have much of an example, but family counts,” she said fiercely. “I wanted Sammy to know that.”
“Where did you live? How did you make ends meet?”
“At first I found a rooming house that would take us. This friend of my mom’s got us in. Nobody paid much attention to who lived there. I worked two jobs most of the time. I had to lie about my age, which wasn’t all that difficult since I was always tall for my age. At the kind of places I worked, no one looked that closely, anyway. They were more interested in whether you’d steal from the cash register. I never touched a dime, I showed up on time and I didn’t spill coffee on the customers. Those were the only credentials they seemed to care about.”
As if she’d just realized how revealing the conversation was becoming, she began to withdraw. Jason could see the mask shift into place, the struggle to regain the distance she normally kept between herself and the outside world. She took a deliberate drink of her coffee, then another spoonful of soup. Jason waited, wondering whether she’d say more about herself or hide behind a wall of defensiveness.
Again, Jason was struck by the combination of childlike enthusiasm and innocence counterpointed by the tough exterior. He noticed for the first time that the fingers clutching the spoon were short, the nails blunt and unpolished. There were scratches on her knuckles, testimony to her attack on him, perhaps. They were a girl’s hands. Yet earlier, as she’d caressed his cashmere topcoat, the gesture had been all woman.
How many other new things could he bring into Dana’s life to inspire that same balance of innocent wonder and womanly sensuality? Something told him that sharing those experiences with her would banish his jaded mood. He needed desperately to recapture the sense of awe, the sense of unlimited possibilities that remained unshaken in Dana despite her struggles. Perhaps she could show him the way.
Wide blue eyes, filled with uncertainty, met his gaze at last. “I’m sorry. You didn’t come here to listen to my life story.”
“No, it’s okay. I think I can see now why you jumped all over me on Saturday. If I had been the man who tried to get your brother involved in selling stolen property, I would have deserved it. Have you found out who was responsible?”
“Not yet,” she said with a glint of determination in her eyes. “But I haven’t given up. Sooner or later, I’ll find him.”
“Why not just turn what you know over to the police?” He guessed the answer even before she could speak. “Never mind. You don’t want to involve your brother, right? Maybe you should. Maybe he should get a taste of the kind of tough questions they ask criminals, the kind of future in store for him if he gets in any deeper with this guy.”
“I will not turn my brother in to the police,” she said with fierce protectiveness. “We seem to have gotten off the track here. Can you forgive me for what happened on Saturday? Can we try to work together?”
For an instant he actually considered saying yes. Then he saw a future filled with conflict. They were too different. Opposites, in fact. They would clash over everything. And, despite what his grandfather thought, she was all wrong for Halloran Industries and for him.
“Have you ever planned a marketing campaign?” he asked mildly.
“No, but…”
“Do you know anything about advertising?”
“Not exactly, but…”
“Can you buy TV time, magazine space, newspaper ads?”
“That isn’t…”
“Tell me, what demographics should Halloran Industries be appealing to?”
Her face was flushed by now and the sparks in her eyes could have started a blaze. He had a hunch she was about to tell him off in no uncertain terms, but he forestalled all of her arguments by saying, “Sorry. I think it’s pretty obvious that it just wouldn’t work.”
She blinked furiously against
