“You have no right at all because you knew how much I loved her. You knew how important she was to me. She was nothing to you at that point. You weren’t attached to her yet. But I was. And I lost. You made sure I’d lose, too.”

Chapter Three

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Whitney walked blindly out of the tower office building, dashing away tears as she stepped outside, shivering at the bite in the air. It was a crisp, bright November morning and she pulled her coat closer, fastening buttons. The temperature had been dropping steadily these past few days, turning the leaves russet and gold. She shivered again as she walked. She didn’t know where she was going, she just knew she had to move…escape.

Escape him, Cormac Sheenan.

Whitney had first heard the name, Sheenan, nine years ago when she was working at Colorado Living as an assistant editor. One afternoon the magazine’s president and publisher, John Vey, called a staff meeting and announced that he’d just sold the magazine to Sheenan Media and that the new owner and publisher had promised to keep most of the staff on, although there would probably be a few changes.

John had been wrong. There weren’t a few changes. Virtually the entire editorial and marketing and sales team was replaced overnight with Sheenan Media employees, and Whitney was one of those let go.

She was lucky, though, and found a new position at Colorado Bridal. It was another junior position, but it was a job, and she quickly worked her way up once her new boss realized Whitney wasn’t just a good editor, but a great designer, and she was promoted to Art Assistant, assisting the magazine’s Deputy Art Director.

One year later she became the Deputy Art Director and another year later she interviewed for the Creative Director job—not at all confident she would get it as she was just twenty-four—but Colorado Bridal’s president loved Whitney’s vision and made her the youngest Creative Director in the history of the magazine. However six months later, the magazine was bankrupt and threatening to fold, but before the magazine ceased operations, Media Communications, Inc. out of Seattle, bought the ailing bridal magazine, adding it to its bridal market.

Nine months after the averted crisis, Media Communications, Inc. was acquired by Sheenan Media and the nine full-time employees at Colorado Bridal were transitioned over to Sheenan Media’s Denver office.

Suddenly Whitney was back working in her old office, and through a series of lateral and vertical shifts, found herself contributing to all the lifestyle magazines, overseeing visual design and branding.

And still she’d never met the CEO himself. She wouldn’t meet him for another year, and then it was by fluke, having drinks and appetizers at Steuben’s on East 17th Avenue with her best friend, April, who’d recently moved to Denver from their hometown of Bozeman. They were munching on ribs, making a mess but thoroughly enjoying themselves, when Whitney glanced up, and made eye contact with a very hot guy sitting across from them at the bar.

He was dark blonde, tan, tall, and drop dead handsome, but not in that pretty boy kind of way. No, he was rugged, even a little weathered, like the guys that spent all their free time on the slopes or in the water. And then he smiled at her, a very slow smile that curled his lips and warmed his eyes, and even though he was sitting across the room at the bar, her heart did this wild drop, plunging to her feet and then back up again. Whitney didn’t believe in love at first sight but she felt a rush of something (lust?) and could barely focus on anything.

April had spotted him, and saw the way he’d looked at Whitney and so the two friends spent a good five minutes discussing his dark blonde and tanned hotness, speculating on who he was and what he did for a living to look like that, before finally moving on to other topics, like their lame love lives, and how warm it had been lately, teasing them with the promise of spring, when they both knew spring was still months away.

And then suddenly April was sitting up taller and whispering, “Mr. Seriously Sexy is coming this way.”

Whitney wiped her lips with her cocktail napkin, praying she’d erased all signs of barbecue sauce and then he was there, at their side, even taller than she’d thought, and far hunkier, too. He was built, and he was beautiful and introduced himself as Cormac.

April invited Cormac to join them and he ordered another round of drinks and they drank and talked. It turned out he was a surfer and a snowboarder. He lived in Southern California near the beach and when he wasn’t surfing or snowboarding he was traveling, and working, and his ideal situation was when he could combine the two, which had happened recently when he’d gone to Brazil for a conference in Rio de Janeiro, and had been able to get some surfing in, hitting a couple of different breaks and his favorite was one Pecado.

Whitney asked if he’d grown up surfing. He hadn’t. He learned in college when on vacation in Hawaii with some friends, and he loved it so much he went to graduate school in Southern California so he could surf every day.

Nowhere in the conversation did Montana come up, or where they all worked, and at the end of the evening when Cormac asked Whitney for her number, she gave it to him. She wasn’t sure he’d ever call, but he did, the next day.