Chapter One

      It was raining in chilly gray torrents, and Kenna Dean made puddles on the floor beside her desk as she shed her beige raincoat and its matching hat. Even her long, wavy dark hair was soaked, and she pushed it angrily out of her bespectacled eyes. She was already ten minutes late because she’d missed the bus, and now her suede boots were drenched along with the hem of her new blue ruffled frontier skirt. She sighed wearily. What was the use? She had just bought the new frontier skirt and a matching high-necked ruffled blouse on Saturday, and this morning she walked out of her small apartment with confidence. Today she was going to make Denny Cole look at her and see a woman, not just an efficient secretary who made good coffee. But then it rained and she’d missed the bus and had to walk four blocks to the downtown Atlanta law office where she worked. It was starting out to be a typical Monday.

      Denny Cole’s office door opened just as she had known it would, and her tall, boyishly attractive boss walked into the outer office. One fair eyebrow rose expressively as he looked across at her, and she could see that he was struggling not to laugh. She could imagine how she looked: tall, gangly and small-breasted, wearing clothes that suddenly seemed to emphasize all the faults in her figure. To complete the image of disaster, her mascara was running down her cheeks. She looked like an ideal applicant for the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus.

      “Go ahead, say it,” she dared him, pursing her full lips, which were ineffectually painted with thick, pink lipstick. “I’m off to join the clowns.”

      “I’m a gentleman, or I might,” he admitted, letting his white teeth show in a smile as he jammed his hands into his pockets and moved closer. “What’s on the agenda today, Kenna?”

      Just like that. No notice of anything except the job, even when she looked horrible. She should have known better than to try to dress up for him.

      She reached into the top drawer and pulled out the appointment book. “You’ve got Mrs. Baker about the property suite at nine, you’re due in court at ten-thirty on the James case and you’ve got a meeting in chambers with Judge Monroe at two-thirty. Isn’t he sitting on the James case?”

      He nodded.

      “Then if you don’t finish by two-thirty, you can forget the meeting in chambers, I suppose.”

      “Are you kidding?” He chuckled. “Henry will recess until we talk over that continuance. How about the rest of the afternoon?”

      “You’re free.”

      “Thank God.” He sighed. He winked at her. “I’ve got a heavy date with Margo tonight. I don’t know how I live from evening to evening!”

      She tried to smile and look unconcerned, while her heart was being slowly strangled by the thought of the dark-haired, dark-eyed beauty he’d been dating for the past two months. It was beginning to look serious, and she was really scared. How would she live if Denny married someone else? She seemed to have loved him forever—at least for the past year. And all he ever noticed was her typing speed.

      “Has Regan come in yet?” he asked.

      She felt herself tense at the thought of Denny’s older stepbrother. He frightened her with his hard, dark face and his huge physique. He was the most abrasively masculine man she’d ever known, and the six months he’d been in partnership with Denny had been the most trying of her work history. She still couldn’t understand why Regan had left a lucrative law practice in New York to come down to Atlanta and join Denny’s, when Regan already had a national reputation as a trial lawyer and Denny was just out of law school.

      “I don’t think so,” she murmured after a minute. “I just walked in the door, and I haven’t looked.”

      “You won’t, either, unless I insist, will you?” he asked curiously. “It amazes me how nervous you are around my brother. The other day he told me that you seem to go into hiding when he’s here. He has to hunt for you to give dictation.”

      She shifted restlessly. She wasn’t a timid person. She had a temper and on occasion she showed it even to Denny. But Regan made her bristle. She couldn’t be in the same room with him for five minutes without wanting to take his trash can and dump it over his shaggy dark head of hair. And that wouldn’t do at all because Denny worshipped his brother. So she tried to avoid trouble by avoiding Regan Cole. In her mind they were one and the same.

      “I’m busy most of the time,” she reminded him. “There are those files in the storeroom that I’m trying to alphabetize when I’m not typing petitions for you or entertaining nervous clients....”

      “I know, I know.” He sighed. He cocked his head at her, and his fair hair, so unlike Regan’s, glinted gold in the fluorescent light. “You don’t like Regan, do you?” he asked bluntly.

      She shrugged her thin shoulders. “I suppose I’m a little in awe of him,” she said after a minute, searching for a tactful way to admit that she hated his guts and finding none.

      “Because