First Impressions

say again. Damn you, let me go.”
    “Not until you stop this and hear what I have to say.”
    “No! I won’t listen to any more lies. I won’t let you make a fool of me again. All this time, all this time when I was giving you everything, you were lying and laughing at me. I was just something to keep the nights from being dull while you were on vacation.”
    He jerked her back, his face rigid with fury. “Damn it, Shane, you know better than that.”
    Her struggles ceased abruptly. As he watched, the tears seemed to turn to ice. Without expression, she stared up at him. Nothing she had said so far had struck him to the core like that one cool look.
    “I don’t know you,” she said quietly.
    “Shane—”
    “Take your hands off me.” The command was devoid of passion. Vance felt his stiff fingers loosen. Freed, Shane stepped back until they were no longer touching. “I want you to go away and leave me alone. Stay away from me,” she added flatly, still looking directly into his eyes. “I don’t want to see you again.”
    Turning, she walked up the steps and to the door. After its final click came absolute silence.
    ***
    Far beneath the window, the streets were packed with traffic. The steady fall of snow increased the confusion. Beneath the overhang of the department store across the street, a red-cheeked Santa rang his bell, ho-hoing when someone dropped a coin into his bucket. The scene below was played in pantomime. The thick glass of the window and well-constructed walls allowed no street sounds to intrude. Vance kept his back to his plush, spacious office and continued to watch.
    He’d made his obligatory appearance at the company Christmas party. It was still going on, with enthusiasm, in a large conference room on the third floor. When it broke up, everyone would go home to spend Christmas Eve with their families or friends. He’d refused more than a dozen invitations for the evening since his return to Washington. It was one thing to do his duty as the head of the company, and another to put himself through hours of small talk and celebrating.
She wouldn’t be there,
he thought, staring down at the snowy sidewalk.
    Two weeks. In two weeks, Vance had managed to straighten out a few annoying contractual tangles, plot out a bid for a new wing to a hospital in Virginia and head a heated board meeting. He’d dealt with paperwork and some minor corporate intrigue he might have found amusing if he’d been sleeping properly. But he wasn’t sleeping properly any more than he was forgetting. Work wasn’t an elixir this time. As she had from the very first moment, Shane haunted him.
    Turning from the window, Vance took his place behind the massive oak desk. It was clear of papers. In a fury of frustrated energy, he’d taken care of every letter, memo and contract, putting his secretary and assistants through an orgy of work over the last two weeks. Now, he had nothing but an empty desk and a clear calendar. He considered the possibility of flying to Des Moines to supervise the progress of a condominium development. That would throw the Iowa branch into a panic, he thought with a quick laugh. Hardly fair to upset their applecart because he was restless. He brooded at the far wall, wondering what Shane was doing.
    He hadn’t left in anger. It would have been easier for Vance if that had been the case. He had left because Shane had wanted it. He didn’t blame her, and that too made it impossibly frustrating. Why should she listen to him or understand? There had been enough truth in what she had flung at him to make the rest difficult to overturn. He had lied, or at the very least, he hadn’t been honest. To Shane, one was the same as the other.
    He’d hurt her. He had put that look of helpless despair on her face. That was unforgivable. Vance pushed away from the desk to pace over the thick stone-colored carpet. But damn it, if she’d just listened to him! If she’d only given him a moment. Going to the window again, he scowled out. Laughed at her? Made fun of her? No, he thought with the first true fury he’d felt in two weeks. No, by God, he’d be damned if he’d stand quietly aside while she turned the most important thing in his life into a joke.
    She’d had her say, Vance told himself as he headed for the door. Now he was going to have his.
    ***
    “Shane, don’t be stubborn.” Donna followed her through the doorway from the museum into the shop.
    “I’m not being stubborn, Donna,