Chapter 1
Logan Stone looked up when his boss—as of three hours ago— approached his office. Logan had been at his desk since five that morning but the time had gone by quickly with no distractions around to interrupt him.
He watched as Jack Sutton, CEO of Sutton Capital, entered the moderately-sized office with a large window on one wall, and sat in the chair across from Logan. He’d known Jack for a few months and respected the man as both the head of the company, and as a person.
Zach Harris, Logan’s best friend and Jack’s brother-in-law, was responsible for introducing the two men. Logan suspected Zach might be responsible for Jack giving him this job. A fact that grated on his nerves on a daily basis, but he needed the job. He wasn’t exactly in a position to turn it down.
“Security told me you’ve been in the building since five,” Jack said. “I gotta tell you, I do like hard workers, but you really don’t need to be here that early.”
Jack’s smile was easy and his posture loose as he crossed one ankle over a knee. Logan wished he felt the same way, but edgy didn’t even begin to describe what he was feeling.
Despite his mood, he grinned and shrugged, throwing a mask over his features. From what he’d heard, there was a time when Jack Sutton would have demanded his employees showed up earlier than the competition, and left later.
Being a husband and father had changed that in the last few years. Sutton Capital had been changing to a family-oriented company that prized relationships and quality of life as much as it valued dollars and cents. It still held a powerful position in the industry, but the environment of the company had changed dramatically in recent years.
“Wanted to get a jump on things.” What the hell else could he say to explain his early arrival? No way would he tell Jack he’d made the twenty-minute drive to work at five in the morning because he wasn’t yet able to drive in traffic. Because he needed the ability to run a red light when the panic set in. Because, most days, he had to roll through a stop sign and hope to avoid a ticket or worse if he was out when there weren’t many people on the road.
Jack nodded as though he accepted the excuse and placed a stack of files on Logan’s desk.
“These are the files I told you about. If you can go over them this morning, I’ll tell Samantha to get with you this afternoon. You can run through your thoughts and get her perspective on things. She’s familiar with all of the companies we’re thinking of acquiring. She can often spot things I can’t, so it’s useful to touch base with her before we make any decisions.”
Samantha Page. The woman had grabbed his attention at Zach’s wedding three months ago. She was good friends with Zach’s new bride, Jesse and with Jack’s wife, Kelly.
Although he didn’t talk to her directly the weekend of the destination wedding, he’d sure as hell noticed her. And damned if she hadn’t been sauntering through his dreams every night since then. In fact, he owed her a debt there.
The one thing that had eased in the last three months since he’d medically retired from the military were his nightmares. He still had to deal with his memories when he was awake, but they didn’t seem to come pounding on his door as often at night anymore. Sam had that distinction now.
Logan shoved aside thoughts of Sam with that long black hair and soft curves that plagued his dreams, and nodded. He pulled the files closer to him and scanned the names of the companies neatly typed on the edge of each one.
Jack had mentioned each of them in their prior talks and Logan already had a list of follow-up questions for Sam. Logan would be teaming up with three men and one woman who, like him, were new to Sutton Capital.
As someone who had been with Sutton Capital for years, Samantha would be his liaison to the rest of Sutton. She was set up to help get him and his team settled into the company and get up to speed on the companies Sutton Capital was interested in backing financially.
Logan’s new team all had medical, science, or technology backgrounds—some earned in the military like him, one in a research firm he’d helped to found, and another as a physician.
He was glad Sam would be teaming up with him to lead the new team. From what he knew of her, she was a computer genius. She could hack just about anything you threw at her and had a deeper than average knowledge base of a hell of a lot of other topics as well. From what he’d heard from Zach, she was the kind of person who read physics textbooks for giggles as a kid, but she was cool enough to have designed a kickass online game that he had to admit, he’d spent many nights playing recently.
Sam’s looks reminded him of one of those woman you might see painted on a plane in World War II. Back when women were real, with curves and full lips and a body a man could lose himself in. Not one of those damned french fry stick figures most women aspired to nowadays. Sam had curves and substance to her. Logan wouldn’t feel like he might break her if he grabbed hold of her or tucked her up under him—
Hell.
“Logan?”
“Yeah?” The look on Jack’s face told Logan his boss had been trying to get his attention without success.
“So, you’re good to get with Sam at two?”
Get with Sam? Crap. Get it together, sailor.
“Sure.” Logan picked up a pencil and jotted the notation on his desk planner. He was still old school in that respect, which some considered odd given his technology background. He liked a paper desk blotter with the calendar printed on it, and he still used the plain old yellow No. 2 pencils he’d learned to write with in elementary school.
Something about the graphite scratching across the paper settled him. People asked him how he could schedule appointments when he was away from his desk, but in reality, he didn’t need to be near it. He could see the entire calendar in his head at any given moment. If he scheduled something while he wasn’t in reach of the blotter, he simply wrote the notation in his head, imagining the feel and sound of the pencil as it left its markings on the page. That action alone was enough to embed the date and time so he could fill it in on the paper later.
Logan stood, needing to stretch his legs and move for a few minutes. “I’ll walk with you,” he said as Jack turned to leave. “I could use another cup of coffee.”
In reality nothing could be further from the truth. His blood pressure was already pounding hot and heavy enough to meet the circulatory needs of a gorilla, but it was one more way to cover what was happening with his broken-ass body. The ache in his left hip and thigh got to be too great if he sat still for too long.
Broken body and broken mind. Two things he didn’t want to share with anyone.
Samantha Page sipped the latte her friend had handed her and then smiled. She and Jennie Thompson stood shoulder to shoulder outside her office on the twenty-sixth floor of Sutton’s office building. Her office was one of the twenty that ringed the outer edge of the room. The inner area of the large room held rows of cubicles and desks that she and Jennie looked out on now.
“No, I’m serious,” she said eyeing Jennie, who was still laughing too hard to talk. “It’s definitely time for a divorce. I’m just going to miss the ice cream.”
Sam probably should have left out the ice cream bit. Jennie only laughed harder at that and it was clear she had more questions. Sam waited patiently while Jennie recovered.