Jaimie Wilde wished to heaven she were home instead of here, in New York City, trapped in a taxi halfway between Lexington and Park Avenues.

"Come on," she said under her breath, "come on. Move!"

G.o.d! She was talking to the traffic.

Totally illogical to talk to traffic, but nothing about today was logical, and that was the real problem. Well, that and the fact that her taxi hadn't moved more than a couple of feet in the last five minutes.

She was going to be late. For a meeting. Or maybe not. Maybe there wasn't going to be a meeting. She'd left two messages on Zacharias Castelianos's voice mail over the last week and he hadn't returned either one. But since her boss had a.s.sured her that Castelianos wanted the meeting ASAP, it was only logical to proceed as if there was a meeting.

At least, she kept telling herself it was logical.

Otherwise, Roger's client-his almost client-would surely have called back and said there'd be no meeting.

Roger insisted that was just the way some clients were, that they had sort of a pa.s.sive-aggressive att.i.tude toward selling a house or a co-op or, in this case a condo, and who was she to argue with him? She was new to the game; she'd joined Stafford and Bengs only a few months ago.

More to the point, Roger Bengs was her boss. Her mentor. Taking his advice was logical, and Jaimie was nothing if not logical.

Always.

She'd learned the importance of logic in childhood. Be consistent. Be practical. Rely on common sense, not emotion, and avoid disappointment. It was her sisters who used to get upset when their father promised to make it home for Christmas or Thanksgiving or birthdays and didn't. Not her. By the time Jaimie was six or seven, she knew better.

Logic had become her guiding philosophy.

Not lately, a cool voice inside her whispered, or you wouldn't still be trying to deal with Steven.

Jaimie blanked out the thought. Forget Steven. Forget everything but now.

Now was more than enough to worry about.

She was in New York for a meeting. An appointment. Jeez, she thought, rolling her eyes, what did it matter what she called it? She was here to meet with someone and she was still blocks away from where she was supposed to be in less than half an hour.

And she could not, must not, would not be late. This was too big a chance to blow.

Make this meeting, convince the owner of a sickeningly expensive condo that only Stafford and Bengs were capable of marketing it properly, and everything would change. She'd go from being just another newbie agent to being the one who'd landed a huge catch.

Sure, she'd land it for Roger Bengs, her boss, not for herself, but that would still be huge.

Better still, she'd pocket a neat sum.

Roger had promised her .01 % of his commission if she landed the listing and he sold the condo.

Jaimie was good at math. She'd majored in accounting, had been an accountant until very recently, but you didn't need an accountant to tell you that 1/100th percent of Roger's commission would be a very tidy sum. Technically and legally, she'd probably be ent.i.tled to more than that, but she was willing to trade the financial benefit for the experience and for getting into Roger's good graces.

a.s.suming any of this happened at all.

Jaimie took a deep breath.

She had to think positively. Forget the gaps in what he'd told her. Forget how he'd danced away from all her questions, starting with the big one.

Had the mega-rich, mega-mysterious Zacharias Castelianos actually made a commitment to list his condo with Stafford and Bengs?

Roger had given her the kind of smile a school princ.i.p.al might give a child who'd asked why being quiet in the hall was a good thing.

"Excellent question, Jaimie. The answer is that it's never a commitment until a client signs on the dotted line."

And why would Castelianos want to deal with an agent from the firm's D.C. office when it had branches in Manhattan?

"I have explained that," Bengs had said, impatiently. "We met at a function here in Washington. We had a chat about New York real estate and he said he'd thought about selling, but finding the right Realtor was never easy."

"But-"

"But what?" her boss had said, his tone sharpening. "Should I have said, 'Listen, Mr. Castelianos, you want to sell your condo, I'll have someone in our New York office contact you?'" He'd looked at her, his expression going from irritated to avuncular. "You're new to this business, young woman, but surely you know how it works. A client needs to feel comfortable with the person handling the sale of a valuable a.s.set. This man feels comfortable with me. Is that so hard to understand?"

No. It wasn't. She did understand that. Things always went more smoothly if client and agent got along, which led to the inevitable question about why she was taking this meeting instead of her boss.

So she'd asked.

"If Mr. Castelianos is comfortable with you, why ask me to do this instead of doing it yourself?

That had rated a one-beat pause.

"I don't know Manhattan as well as you. I've lived in the D.C. area most of my life."

And Jaimie had lived most of hers in Texas.

She'd visited New York a few times. And for a year or so now, her sister Emily had lived there, but that didn't const.i.tute "knowing" a place.

When she'd pressed Bengs, he'd grown annoyed.

"The Castelianos place will market at fifty, sixty mill, easy. Maybe rich girls can turn their noses up at the possibility of making a commission of twenty, twenty-five thousand bucks, but you can bet your bottom dollar that there are agents in this office who'd jump at this kind of opportunity."

That, of course, had done it.

Jaimie wasn't rich. Her family was, but that wasn't the same thing at all. She had moved east in part to get away from the rich kid thing that had followed her all her life. Her sisters had left Texas for similar reasons. They all wanted to make it on their own. She loved her family, loved El Sueno, the enormous ranch that had come down to the Wildes through endless generations, but she wanted to make her own mark on the world, just as her brothers had done and her sisters were now doing.

Her boss had handed her the chance.

Which was why this meeting absolutely had to go well.

Jaimie sighed and smoothed down the skirt of her white silk suit.

She'd dressed carefully. A cla.s.sic suit. A simple blouse. Medium-height black pumps that she'd exchanged at the last minute for stilettos. She was going to New York, not to Chevy Chase. She wanted the look of urban success, not suburban wealth. Her hair would be the problem. It was long and it had a will of its own, never quite straight, never quite curly, just ma.s.ses of blond waves that refused to be tamed when the weather was hot and humid.

This morning she'd eyed it with grim purpose, then wound it around her hand and secured it in a businesslike topknot with a dozen bobby pins.

It wasn't quite so businesslike now. She could feel wispy curls at her temples and neck. Her suit wasn't holding up too well, either. Silk wrinkled when exposed to damp. How come she hadn't thought of that?

She looked down, took a couple of useless swipes at the creases in her skirt, tried to tug it down because the slick fabric had ridden up her thighs; the phony leather seat felt clammy straight through her pantyhose.

Dammit.

This had to go well, but she could feel it shaping up to be a disaster. Not just how she looked or that she was running late. The entire thing. There was a bad feel to it.

She should have told Roger what he could do with his offer.

Except, that wouldn't have been logical. Not when she needed the boost her burgeoning career would get if Zacharias Castelianos signed.

Her new career was exciting but so far, it hadn't taken her very far.

She had a degree in finance and an MBA in accounting. Numbers, with their intricate simplicity, had always intrigued her. The accounting firm she'd worked for had sent her to do audits for a few realty firms. Gradually, she'd found herself seeing that real estate, especially if she eventually got a broker's license and worked for an elite firm, could be a challenging and lucrative career.

She'd spent weeks trying to make a decision. A logical decision. Her sisters had teased her. Emily had said she'd make the choice based on statistics and spreadsheets; Lissa had added sequential a.n.a.lysis to the list.

Well, how else to make such a big change in her life?

So, yes, she'd created spreadsheets. She'd ama.s.sed statistics. She'd run data backwards and forwards. Then she'd approached one of the Realtors she'd met through work.

Two lunches later, she'd handed in her notice and joined Stafford and Bengs, Realtors. Since then, she'd taken her licensing exam and pa.s.sed it, pa.s.sed an ethics exam, and become a Realtor.

Only one problem.

She'd been a terrific accountant, but so far, she was a washout as a Realtor.

It turned out that her love of all things logical worked against her.

She'd show up at a prospective client's to take a listing and when that client said his place was worth, say, four million, Jaimie would point out why it wasn't. Another client would say he needed four bedrooms and she'd hear herself saying that actually, three would probably be preferable.

"You're dealing with people," Roger Bengs would tell her, "not numbers. Numbers have to add up. People never do."

She knew he was right.

How else to explain why she'd ever gone out with Steven?

He was handsome. Smart. Polite. Attentive.

At first, she'd been flattered by his attention. That hadn't lasted long. A few dates and he'd begun talking about their future together, planning it in what had become increasingly frightening detail.

She'd tried laughing, as if his plans were jokes. When that hadn't worked, she'd told him, politely, that she wanted to be his friend, nothing more.

He'd only become more determined. More insistent.

More frightening.

No. Certainly not. Steven was an annoyance. An irritation. He wasn't frightening.

It had to be the heat that was making her think such strange thoughts.

Jaimie frowned, took her iPad from her oversized purse and brought up the file she'd created on Zacharias Castelianos.

There wasn't much in it.

She'd tried Googling him, but she hadn't come up with anything.

She was pretty sure that his name was Greek. That made sense. It was increasingly common for foreigners to invest in expensive Manhattan real estate. And it was increasingly common for the very wealthy ones to be secretive. They had the means and the money to stay out of the public eye.

It had been easy to form a mental image of the man.

He was a billionaire. A twenty-first-century Aristotle Ona.s.sis. Short. Stocky. White-haired. A doughy face. In his sixties. Or more.

Roger Bengs had confirmed it.

"Exactly," he'd said when she'd described the man she imagined. "Couldn't have put it better myself."

So she'd googled Ona.s.sis.

Homes everywhere. Yachts. Private islands. Planes. Yada yada yada. And he'd been very fond of women.

Was that the reason Roger had involved her? The feminist part of her rebelled at the possibility, but logic prevailed. It was wrong, but it was still the way of the world. Some men would always smile at a woman and bark at a man. If that was the case with Zacharias Castelianos, so be it.

She could smile and get him as a client. Well, as Roger's client, but she'd get a tiny bit of credit and a big chunk of change.

a.s.suming the cab ever moved again.

a.s.suming, too, that she didn't melt away by the time it did.

Jaimie put away the iPad, scooted forward, and rapped on the translucent part.i.tion.

"Driver?"

The cabbie's eyes met hers in his mirror.

"Could you please turn up the air conditioning?"

He nodded, jiggled a couple of doohickeys on the dashboard. She waited a few seconds, but nothing happened. Sighing, she unb.u.t.toned her jacket, hooked her index finger into the neckline of her blouse, and eased it away from her skin.

She was sweating.

Ladies didn't sweat, the teacher who'd given her and her sisters deportment lessons when they were eight, nine, and ten would have said. Jaimie knew better. Ladies did sweat, all right, but successful Realtors didn't.

She crossed her legs, swung one foot back and forth.

This was not good.

She was stuck in traffic, her hair falling down, her suit turning into something resembling a tangled bed-sheet, her makeup undoubtedly sliding off her face while the possibility of making her meeting on time grew more and more doubtful.

Zacharias Castelianos would be irritated, Roger would be p.i.s.sed, and she didn't even want to think about Steven, undoubtedly brooding over the fact that she hadn't gone to a concert with him but had, instead, gone to New York.

Steven. Back to him again.