Enchanted by Patti Berg Page A

forward.
    “I was wondering how you’re doing on your magazine. My spies haven’t been able to tell me a thing.”
    “I don’t see any need for spies. I’d be happy to tell you anything you want to know.”
    “Okay.” He smiled. “Did the woman executive change from beautiful to frumpy?”
    It took a moment for her to realize he meant the woman in the advertisement “Not frumpy. Just more businesslike.”
    “And what is your definition of businesslike?”
    She stared at her watch. “I’m sorry, Mr. O’Brien. I have a date tonight and unless you have some important business to discuss, I really must hurry.”
    “It’s important to me. But it’s not the magazine I want to discuss,” he said, picking up a pencil and drumming it on the desk.
    “No?” She frowned.
    “No. It was a comment you made at our last meeting.”
    Kathleen looked at him, puzzled. What comment had she made?
    “I see you don’t remember,” he said.
    “Can you refresh my memory?”
    “Gladly. It was about us being friends once upon a time, and what happened.”
    “We were friends,” Kathleen said. She looked across the desk into his eyes, but she saw only a trace of their former warmth. She turned her focus to the window, but saw nothing, only a blur, and the memory of she and Mac the way they had been so many years ago, locking horns during one of their sparring matches. Back then, not unlike today, they both believed they were right, no matter what the topic, and neither wanted to give in. But in those sparring matches they laughed over their disagreements. The laughter stopped when he went to Europe, and when he came back, everything had changed. He no longer wanted to talk, in fact, he refused to talk, and eventually she gave up trying. She had retreated into her work and her daughter, and he disappeared from her life, except on those rare occasions when they met at work. Maybe now he was ready to talk, and she was ready to listen.
    Once again she looked at the man she had never stopped admiring, in spite of everything. Did she see a trace of regret in his face for all those lost years? “I’ve waited a long time to find out what went wrong. Do you want to talk about it now?”
    “There’s not much to talk about, Kath. You changed. I changed. We can’t go back, so why don’t we forget what happened back then, and just go on from today?”
    “If that’s what you want.” Those weren’t the words she wanted to hear, but she’d ignore the past for now. However, she had every intention of bringing the subject up again. “Did you ask me here just to say that, or was there something else you wanted to discuss?”
    “How about the friendship you had with my dad?” The words rushed from his mouth. “I understand you kept him company while I was in Europe.”
    “We saw each other occasionally.” What on earth could she possibly tell Mac about his father that he didn’t already know? Could she tell him that Patrick O’Brien had worshipped his son and was devastated when he left the country with Ashley Tate? “Did you want to know something specific?”
    Mac shook his head. “I missed out on the last year of his life. You didn’t.” He left his desk and went to the bookcases. There was a sculpted bronze Remington horse and rider on one of the shelves, one of his father’s favorite possessions. He touched it as though contact would bring his father closer. “I guess I just wanted to know what he did, if he was happy.”
    “He missed you terribly.”
    “Is that why you became friends?”
    What a strange question. Kathleen tried to remember their first meeting, the first time they were alone, and not together at a meeting or company function. “Somebody told him I grew up in Montana. It really surprised me when he came to my office one day, just to talk about life in the West.”
    Kathleen joined Mac at the bookcases, scanning the titles of bound leather classics, some obviously first editions, and an array of