Page 4 of Until You

Chapter Two

Lanie Rogers left Mr. Tall, Dark, and Handsome in the garage and headed to the backyard in search of her cousin. The heat hit her as she walked out the back door, and beads of perspiration instantly popped out on her forehead. She might have been born and raised in the Midwest, but fourteen years away had made the summer humidity unbearable—reason number two for hiding in the garage.

She was overdressed, but her conference call with the West Coast office had run long, which meant she hadn’t had time to change. She should have taken comfort that the sexy guy in the garage was even more overdressed than she was, but it only made her think of running her fingertips down his tie…and lower.

Good Lord. What had she been thinking? Even the two beers she’d downed in thirty minutes didn’t explain it. She could chalk it up to stress. And going nearly a year without a relationship.

And the fact that he was so sexy.

She shook her head. No. She couldn’t go there. She had enough trouble at work. She didn’t need the complication of a man. Especially when she was moving on to Phoenix in a month.

“Does that head-shake mean you won’t go to lunch with me this week?” a voice asked to her right.

Lanie blinked and realized Brittany was studying her. Her long hair was pulled up in a ponytail, and she was wearing a yellow sleeveless dress that looked great with her tan skin and dark brown hair. “Sorry. I was thinking about…work.”

Brittany gave her a smirk. “You promised no work tonight. Your secret store isn’t going anywhere.”

Lanie’s eyes widened, and she glanced around to see if anyone had heard her. “Britt, you can’t talk about it. It’s classified.” As soon as the word left her mouth, she regretted it.

That damn beer.

“Classified,” Brittany scoffed. “You make it sound like you’re working with the nuclear warhead codes.”

After her conference call two hours ago, Lanie would have preferred the detonation codes. She made sure no one was nearby, then lowered her voice. “Okay, wrong word choice, but you get the point. Joke all you want, but if this leaks, I’m as good as fired.”

Her cousin looked dubious. “You’re kidding.”

“And why do you think we make all the people in the know sign NDAs?”

“Surely word’s leaked out before the opening of one of those stores.” When she saw Lanie’s warning look, she rolled her eyes. “Calm down. I never even said the name.”

Margo Benson Boutique.

Margo Benson designs were sophisticated yet affordable, and there were only fifteen stores in the entire world. Before one opened, secrecy was the absolute name of the game, and Lanie’s job depended on it.

“You can’t even hint at it.” Lanie’s stomach knotted with anxiety. Britt didn’t need to name the store. The term secret opening was clue enough to cause speculation. Up until today, Lanie had been sure her ruse was working. It had taken a few strings to get everything lined up, but the community seemed to have accepted that the retail space in the nearly century-old outdoor shopping plaza where the boutique was opening was undergoing a structural update.

But during her earlier conference call from her new West Coast VP, Lanie had found out rumors were floating around that a Margo Benson was going into the Country Club Plaza. A Kansas City Star reporter had called corporate in LA asking for confirmation, but the public relations manager had given her the brush-off, saying there were larger metropolitan areas higher on the potential location list.

The crisis seemed temporarily averted, but the VP had made her displeasure clear and placed the blame on Lanie. Not that Lanie was surprised. Eve Gaines had made it clear from day one that she planned to come in and put her mark on everything. Which included fixing things that didn’t need to be fixed. It was nothing new. Lanie had been through it several times before, but it didn’t make it any less annoying now.

“Eve,” Lanie had said, trying to keep her cool, “I realize this is your first Margo Benson opening, but this is my twelfth. The secret openings were easy to pull off the first four or five times, but people are watching now. It’s next to impossible to keep them under wraps.”

“Are you saying you can’t do the job?” her boss had asked in a sharp tone.

“I’m saying that I’m having to become more creative. We paid the management of the Plaza a handsome fee to support our cover story.”

“Well, someone knows that Montgomery Enterprises is opening a store in Kansas City,” Eve countered.

“They don’t know,” Lanie countered. “They only speculated. For all we know, it was a cold call hoping to strike gold. The same thing happened in Seattle. But I’ll talk to the handful of people who do know tomorrow and remind them of the importance of minding their NDAs.”

“And remind them that negating those NDAs comes at a steep price.”

Literally.

The first two Margo Benson locations had surprise grand openings, and since the brand was so popular, corporate discovered that each new opening was met with greater fanfare than the last. Every city wanted a Margo Benson Boutique, so when the tarps covering the storefront were pulled away on opening day, it was a media phenomenon. The store received publicity they couldn’t buy even if they tried. But keeping the press off the scent and the openings secret had been a nightmare at the last two stores.

What if she couldn’t pull this one off?

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