Ringing in Love Read online

  No, if it had been business, he would have said something like, “I have a business proposition I’d like to talk about with you,” wouldn’t he? She wasn’t that much out of practice with men that she’d miss a business opportunity. It was personal, all right. But why would he ask her out? If the rumors Melody kept telling her about were true, he could have any woman—had probably had most of the women—in Philly. Why her?

  Then the most likely reason occurred. Suppose the “why” was neither a personal invitation nor a chance to work with him. Suppose flattering her with his attention and a bit of lunch was his way of pumping her for information about her business? Maybe she was getting a little too successful for his comfort and he wanted a chance to evaluate how much of a threat she was to his business. That day in her office, he’d said he’d been watching how successful she’d become in the industry.

  Damn. Damn. Damn. How could she figure out why he’d asked?

  She was still mulling it all over when she heard Melody say, “Catherine? Are you okay?” after which the door to the elevator began to close. She’d been so caught up with worrying about what she might have done, she hadn’t felt the elevator stop or seen the door open. Before she could hit the button to stop the door from closing, the car returned to the lobby. This time when the door opened, Dominic got in. Why is he still here, and where are the other elevators when you need them?

  He smiled as if unsurprised to see her, and she felt herself flush what was, she was sure, a bright shade of pink. Leaning in front of her to press the button for his floor, he raised his eyebrows. “Lost?”

  “Not exactly. I must have pushed the wrong button. Sometimes it happens when my hands are full.” She indicated the two cups she was carrying. She knew that wouldn’t explain why she’d gone up and come back down, but it was the best she could do.

  “Let me.” He punched the button for the tenth floor. “Wouldn’t want you to waste your afternoon wandering around in the elevator shaft.”

  “Thanks.” She was sure she’d now moved from bright pink to deep red. The tenth floor couldn’t come soon enough.

  Chapter 3

  A ruby red rose bud, with no thorns, in a clear glass bud vase arrived at the Bennett and Associates office early Monday morning. There was no card with it—only a routing slip saying it was for Catherine. Melody rang the florist named on the paperwork, but the woman who answered said it was from someone who wished to remain anonymous.

  For a few seconds after Mel conveyed the message, Catherine wondered if Dominic Russo was the someone. But she dismissed the idea. Why would he send her flowers—ah, a flower? She’d turned him down for lunch, not gone out with him. More likely it was an apology from her sister for picking a fight with her at the family birthday party on Friday. Nothing so simple as a phone call and an “I’m sorry” from Mary Ellen. Well, she deserved to fume for a day or two before Catherine acknowledged the peace offering.

  A second vase was delivered on Tuesday morning with two yellow roses in it. Again, there was no card. Melody once again called the florist and once again was told they couldn’t reveal the name of the person sending the flowers. Odd, Catherine thought, that her sister would choose to apologize like this.

  Four peach-colored, sweetly scented roses showed up on Wednesday. This time there was a card, which said only “Please?” Before she could stop it, Dominic’s name rose to the surface of her mind. Could he be doing this to try and get her to have lunch? No, too absurd. No one wanted lunch with her that badly. It would be nice to think someone like him wanted to spend time with her badly enough to mount a campaign of flowers, but it was unlikely.

  It had to be her sister being clever. But when she broke down and called Mary Ellen, Catherine got an apology for the fight they’d had and a snorty laugh when she suggested her sister had sent three vases of roses.

  By the time eight white roses with red-edged petals were delivered on Thursday, Melody had Googled the meaning of roses and discovered a single rose with no thorns meant “I hope.” Yellow roses represented “a new beginning,” peach roses, “let’s get together.” And white roses edged in red, “togetherness.” Catherine told her to stop wasting her time. But when she was alone, she remembered the card with the peach roses, the ones meaning “let’s get together,” had said “please.”

  Her staff was enjoying the mystery. A pool had been started laying odds on who was sending the flowers and how long it would take for him—they were sure it was a man—to reveal himself. The bettors were split three ways on who Catherine’s secret admirer could be. The first candidate was Jamie Foster, who freelanced for them as a copy editor and always seemed to be flirting with Catherine. The second was Pete Turner, a client who had been very attentive to her when they’d been working on his firm’s branding and social media campaign. The last was Dominic. Catherine dismissed with a wave of her hand the idea any of those three men would be interested in her. Two of them she hadn’t had any contact with in weeks. The third had stopped showing up in the mornings for their daily ride in the elevator, annoyed, she imagined, that she’d turned him down for lunch.

  She did suggest, if her employees had enough money to waste on frivolous bets, she was paying them too much.

  The sixteen coral roses (“desire,” Melody informed Catherine) that arrived on Friday afternoon were cardless again, leaving Catherine the weekend to wonder who in the world was doing this. She hoped she could stop obsessing about it by burying herself in work as she usually did when Noah was with his father, which was the case this weekend.

  On the Saturdays she worked, Catherine walked from her home in University City to the office. On this particular Saturday, it felt good to be out, even though the air was already warm and predicted to be warmer still by the afternoon.

  Waiting for the light to change so she could cross the street to her building, she saw Dominic striding toward the front door. She watched from a safe distance, dawdling on the corner, pretending to glance at the offerings in the newspaper kiosk instead of what she was really doing—gawking at Dominic.

  After waiting for what she thought was enough time for him to get to his floor, she made her way to the building. But she’d miscalculated. He was coming away from the coffee counter as she walked through the door.

  “Morning, Catherine,” he said as he punched the “up” button.

  “Good morning.” She didn’t meet his eyes, for the first time nervous about being in the elevator with him alone. Although she didn’t know why.

  Before she could sort it out, the man at the security desk interrupted. “I have a delivery for you, Ms. Bennett,” he said as he handed her a large box with green florist paper stapled around what she knew would be more roses. She took the package, wondering how the hell the person sending the flowers knew she worked on Saturdays.

  Dominic held the elevator door for her to enter. “An admirer?” he asked.

  “Something like that,” she muttered, not wanting to answer any questions about the package in her arms. The ten-floor ride to her office was shaping up to be as long as a covered wagon journey to the uncharted west. She was saved at the last minute when Dominic’s creative director, Edie Martin, joined them, barely avoiding being hit by the closing doors. She smiled warmly at Dominic and gave a perfunctory “hello” to Catherine. On the ride to the tenth floor, Edie kept Dominic occupied with mundane office chatter, much to Catherine’s relief.

  Exiting the elevator on her floor felt like she was escaping from an atmosphere overly charged with—with something. She wasn’t sure what.

  Once inside her office, she placed the box on her desk. She didn’t have to rip off the paper to know what was inside. The only thing she didn’t know was what color the thirty-two roses would be.

  They were blush pink, stunningly beautiful, gently perfumed, and without a card. Once more she felt either treasured or stalked. She wasn’t sure which.

  She didn’t get much work accomplished. Silently watching her from most of the l
evel surfaces in her office were different sized containers holding a total of sixty-three roses—she’d counted several times—in a variety of colors and various stages of bloom. They seemed to be asking her a question she couldn’t answer.

  Catherine holed up in her house on Sunday and stayed in her robe until after lunch. But not one of the books she tried to read held her attention for more than a few pages. Even the comics in the newspaper were too hard to follow.

  If only she could figure out who was sending the damn roses.

  She came back to the same thought every time she ran the puzzle around in her mind. It took someone with a lot of spare cash to pull off this stunt.

  Maybe her staff was right—Pete Turner had been awfully attentive when they’d worked with him. And he had called her directly at least three or four times since they’d completed their contract with him to ask what seemed to be minor questions and to chat with her. His start-up firm was doing very well in the high-tech field; he could afford all the flowers. But why would he do something like this? Wouldn’t he come right out and ask her for a date?

  And Jamie Foster. He’d had coffee with her a couple times—always, she’d assumed, for business reasons. He made her laugh, and he flirted with her relentlessly in his cute, redheaded Irish way when he was in the office. Of course, he flirted with anyone who had XX chromosomes, but he dated copywriters from her shop who were a lot closer to his twenty-something age than she was. Besides, she doubted a freelancer would have the money it took for this stunt.

  Which led her back to Dominic. The betting pool among her staff had moved heavily in his direction, Melody said, for two reasons. First, he could afford it, and second, several of them had been in the elevator with their boss and their landlord and swore they could feel the heat the two of them generated just standing next to each other.

  Catherine had to agree Dominic was one of the few people she knew who had the kind of money it took to buy all those expensive flowers. What she didn’t see was why he’d do it. It didn’t make sense. He’d asked her out; she’d turned him down. A man with his ego would ask again. Or go on to the next woman. Wouldn’t he?

  The only other possibility she could think of was someone wanted a job with her firm and was trying to show off their creativity. She’d had all sorts of things delivered to her from potential employees trying to demonstrate their abilities—haiku poems attached to a balloon bouquet, a complete marketing campaign for an imaginary firm, each stage inside a nested box and tied up with red ribbons, banners on posts across the tiny front lawn of her house with the man’s credentials outlined on the banners. (That one had frightened her, driving her to consult an old family friend in the police department.)

  But if it were a job hunter, why wouldn’t he—she—identify him/herself? And if they were looking for a job, would they have the kind of money it would take to pull off this trick? She’d have to remember to go through the file of unsolicited CVs she’d received to see if maybe there was a way to connect the flowers with one of them—someone named Rose? Or Flowers?

  Maybe it was her family belatedly celebrating her new office space and the success of her business. Nah, that was easy to dismiss. No one in her family would ever spend that kind of money on flowers. Dinner at a good restaurant, yes. Flowers, no.

  And who would have a reason to include a card saying “Please?”

  Which brought her back to Dominic. Again. Damn it to hell, if he was behind this, why wouldn’t he just call and put her out of her misery? She was tired of waiting for an end to the campaign but not about to confront him in case she was wrong. How humiliating would that be?

  Obsessed with trying to solve the rose mystery, she hadn’t gotten nearly enough work done over the weekend. Which left so much to accomplish on Monday, she was able to forget about roses for a while. Until she took a quick break for something to eat and realized there had been no more delivered yet. Maybe, she decided, her run of roses was over without any explanation of what it had all been about. She wasn’t sure if she was relieved or disappointed, although she was happy to be able to finally concentrate on work.

  Focusing on her computer, she didn’t hear Melody come into her office later that afternoon until her office administrator cleared her throat. When she looked up, Catherine’s heart sank. Or maybe sang.

  “Your daily delivery of roses has arrived,” Melody said. “It’s late this time. I’d almost given up.” She had a huge package on a cart. “You better figure out what the hell’s going on. This thing weighs a ton, and if your mysterious admirer keeps it up, doubling today’s haul means …”

  “I know, I know. Tomorrow one hundred and twenty eight roses.” She motioned toward the small conference table in her office. “Put them over there.”

  Melody rolled the cart to the table. As she went out the door she said, “Oh, there’s a card this time. Maybe it’ll help.”

  A card. Catherine whacked her leg on the corner of her desk in her eagerness to get to the flowers. As she unpinned the envelope from the paper around the flowers, her hand trembled slightly. Before she opened it, she ripped off the tissue paper revealing a vase holding roses of every color in the rose world. Then she opened the envelope and removed the card.

  There was still no name. But the note said, “It’s only lunch.”

  It had been Dominic. He wanted to have lunch with her, and it certainly didn’t seem to be about business.

  She yelped, “That’s it!”

  “What’s wrong? What happened?” Melody asked as she burst into the room a moment later.

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to frighten you. Look.” Catherine passed the card to Melody.

  Mel read the card then handed it back to her, a puzzled look on her face. “Is this supposed to mean something?”

  “I turned Dominic Russo down for lunch a week or so ago. I think he’s been sending the roses to get me to change my mind.”

  Melody whistled softly. “Holy crap. First of all, why the hell would you turn him down? Second, the man must really want to have lunch with you to spend this much money on flowers. Third, wow. Just wow.”

  “I turned him down because … well, for lots of reasons. I was flattered, of course, but I was puzzled and I ...”

  “You were scared,” Melody said.

  “Not scared. Reluctant. I had no idea why he asked me to have lunch. If it was personal, I wasn’t sure after all these years of no social life that I wanted to start up again by jumping into the deep end of the big-boy dating pool. Not to mention set myself up for a bruised ego when he dumped me, which he was bound to do. And if it wasn’t personal, I knew I didn’t want him to be all charming over a sandwich while he pumped me for information about my business.” She tapped the card on the table as she spoke. “I still don’t know what he’s up to, but I have to do something about this. It’s distracting everyone in the office.”

  “Distracting you, don’t you mean?” Melody said. “We’re all having a good time and getting our work done. You’re the one who’s been sidetracked by the attack of the killer roses.”

  Ignoring her friend, Catherine went on, “Are any of those big boxes left from our move? I have an idea how to make this stop.”

  “Stop? Why? This is no plot to pick your brain. Not with all the money he spent on flowers. The man wants to have lunch with you. So go to lunch. Are you sure you want to chase him away?”

  “I’m positive. I can’t risk it.”

  “Okay, but I think you’re nuts.” Melody sighed and shrugged. “There are a couple boxes left. Want me to get one?”

  “Better make it two.”

  Chapter 4

  Ten minutes later, Catherine pushed a cart crammed with vases of roses into the reception area of The Russo Group offices. An attractive fifty-something woman with white hair and a warm smile asked, “Can I help you?”

  “I’m Catherine Bennett. I’m here to see Dominic.”

  “Do you have an appointment?”

  “No, I don’
t. It’s not business. It’s personal. Would you tell me where his office is, please?”

  The warmth in her smile began to wane. “Why don’t you put your cart over here while I see if he’s in. I think he might be in a meeting.”

  “Thanks, that’s okay. I’ll deliver these myself.”

  The woman picked up a telephone, probably to warn her boss there was a crazy lady at the reception desk with a cart full of flowers, which could very possibly be more dangerous than it looked. But Catherine was determined. She started toward the hall, intending to knock on every door until she found Dominic. Then she heard his voice and, ignoring the frantic waving of the woman on the phone, went toward the sound.

  He was outside a corner office, talking to his creative director. When he saw Catherine wheeling the cart toward him, he smiled. “Ms. Bennett. How nice to see you.” He dismissed Edie, saying, “Send the copy to me. I’ll take a look at it and let you know what I think.” Edie left after glaring at Catherine in a very unfriendly manner.

  “Come in. My office is just here.” He stepped aside so she could enter a large room with two walls of floor-to-ceiling windows. One window looked out on the street the building fronted. The other framed the Parkway, leading to the best view of the Art Museum Catherine had seen outside a guidebook or a Rocky movie. Posters featuring some of The Russo Group’s award-winning campaigns covered the other two walls. A large leather couch and low table were in front of the glass wall overlooking the street. In the center of the room, slanted to take advantage of the museum view, was an oversized desk shaped like a boomerang—no corners, only soft, sensuous curves in a wood so dark chocolate in color it looked good enough to eat.

  Only Dominic Russo, Catherine thought, would have a desk that made an observer think of sex and chocolate.

  “What can I do for you, Catherine?” Dominic asked, a smile flickering across his mouth as if he were trying hard not to let it take over his face.