Flash

respect for her aunt's instincts when it came to this sort of situation. Rose had commanded her desk for nearly a decade. She was fifty-three years old and attractive in the typical Chantry manner, with red-brown hair and smoky-green eyes.
    There was a comfortable, maternal roundness about Rose. Olivia knew it often misled strangers. They tended to overlook her razor-sharp instinct for the rumors, gossip, and other forms of unofficial information that flowed through Glow. Rollie had called her his weathervane.
She could have made a fortune working for one of the tabloids
, he'd said.
    He had explained to Olivia that he relied on Rose to give him early warning of everything from impending births, divorces, and office romances to low-level grumbling among the staff.
    Never, ever underestimate the value of information
, Rollie had added.
You can never have too much of it
.
    Rose sighed. "It's true that poor Melwood hasn't been himself lately. That brush with cancer, you know. He's going to be all right, but it gave him a terrible scare."
    Olivia hesitated. "What kind of cancer was it?"
    "Basal cell carcinoma. A type of skin cancer." Rose rattled off the diagnosis with the smooth precision of a dermatologist. "Rarely fatal if caught early. But Melwood was badly shaken."
    "The word
cancer
has that effect on people."
    "True. And Melwood is something of a hypochondriac." Rose eyed the closed door again with a foreboding look. "I'm afraid his problems may be only the beginning around here."
    "What do you mean?"
    "There's change in the wind," Rose muttered ominously. "I can feel it."
    "Don't panic," Olivia said crisply. "I'm still here, remember? And I own darn near half the company. I can handle Jasper Sloan."
    "I hope so," Rose said.
    "I've got to run."
    Rose's gaze sharpened. "By the way, I assume you've heard about your cousin Nina? Beth says it looks as if she and Sean Dane are getting very serious."
    Olivia was proud of herself. Her smile did not flicker by so much as a millimeter. "I heard."
    "Life is strange, isn't it?" Rose mused. "Who would have thought that Nina would have fallen in love with Logan Dane's brother?"
    "Go figure. See you later, Aunt Rose." Olivia fled past her and escaped into the relative safety of the hallway.
    What in the world was the matter with her? she wondered as she walked swiftly toward the elevators. It certainly wasn't the gossip concerning her cousin Nina's growing relationship with Sean Dane that had produced this funny hot-cold feeling. She had heard the rumors days ago.
    It was Jasper's invitation to dinner that shook her. She was acting as if he had suggested an affair instead of a working dinner.
    An affair
. Now there was a concept.
    If social dinners with interesting men were rare events in her life, the number of affairs she'd had fell into the vanishingly small category. There had been no serious relationships at all since Logan had died.
    She refused to count those brief months with Crawford Lee Wilder a year and a half ago. That had been a mistake, she thought, but not an affair, thank God. Some sense of intuition had made her resist his slick, polished attempts to get her into bed.
    She was aware that some of her relatives, Aunt Rose, for example, feared that she was secretly carrying a torch for Logan Dane. Olivia knew that was not the case, but she also knew that she did not want to look too closely at the real truth.
    The harsh reality, she thought, was that she had lost her nerve when it came to love. Give her a good, convoluted, complicated business crisis any day. Business she could handle.
    Which was why it was imperative that the problem of Jasper Sloan stay under the heading of business.
    It would be a
working
dinner, she thought Just keep repeating that over and over. A working dinner.
    She came to a halt in front of the elevators and stabbed the button.
    "Hi, Olivia," a cheerful voice called. "How's it hanging?"
    "Hey, Olivia," another voice said a little too loudly. "Come to save Glow from the big bad wolf?"
    Olivia stifled a groan. She turned her head to see her cousins Quincy and Percy ambling toward her down the hall. The twins were attired in their usual jeans, short-sleeved, nerd-pack-equipped sport shirts, and running shoes. They both wore thick-framed glasses. As usual, they had soft drinks and candy bars in their hands. The geek look, they frequently assured her, was trendy.
    "Hi, guys." She glanced at the soda and snacks. "Break time?"
    "You got it."