The Glass Shoe by Kay Hooper Page A

to be angry at her own reaction or absolutely appalled.
    "That's in the nature of a friendly warning," he explained gravely.
    "And I'm supposed to agree to befriends with you after hearing it?" she asked dryly.
    "Of course. You can always say no when we get to the next step. But—another warning—I don't give up easily."
    She shook her head slightly. "I'm not in the market for a fling, thank you very much."
    "Did I say anything about a fling?"
    "I don't hear you singing 'O Promise me.' "
    Ryder chuckled softly. "No. That would be a little premature. We might not hit it off."
    "Exactly what I've been trying to tell you," she said with forced patience.
    "Yes, but you aren't willing to give us a chance." He leaned toward her slightly, one powerful arm stretched along the back of the couch between them. "Amanda, I'm a businessman. I've learned never to turn away from an opportunity without exploring all the possibilities."
    "And I'm an opportunity?"
    "I think we could be. But we'll never find out unless we explore the possibility."
    "Did anybody ever tell you that you have the peculiar effect of water dropping on stone?"
    "Constantly." He smiled at her.
    That smile, she reflected somewhat helplessly, was lethal. The moonlight hadn't done it justice. She found herself shrugging in what she knew was a ridiculously weak way. "All right, dammit. Friends. But even though you may be on vacation, I'm working here, don't forget that."
    Having won the battle, Ryder didn't press his advantage. Casually he said, "As a matter of fact, this isn't exactly a vacation for me."
    "No?" Amanda relaxed just a bit, but continued to eye him warily.
    "No. I was invited here to meet a man to talk about a possible business deal. Cyrus Fortune."
    She remembered the name from the guest list. "He's due to arrive on Friday. What kind of business deal? Or is it a state secret?"
    "It isn't secret—except in Boston. I wouldn't want my competitors to know about the deal before I have a chance to nail it down. Somebody could try to sneak in and outbid me, and I don't have a lot of capital to play with."
    Amanda felt an odd jolt as she realized that she could be Ryder's competition. But, no, she thought, that couldn't be. Wilderman Electronics and Foxfire, Ryder's company, were on different levels of the business; they'd never been competitive. She forced herself to concentrate on what he was saying.
    "I'm in the electronics business. So far, it's been mostly toys and games, and heaven knows that's been lucrative. But I want to expand the business, and for that I need an edge."
    "An edge?"
    "Something to put me well ahead of the competition. There's an independent computer hacker in the Northeast who's been working on a new invention. He's hardly more than a kid, but then, the visionaries in electronics tend to be very young. Anyway, he's come up with a patented new system that's pretty sure to revolutionize the computer industry. I want the rights to that system."
    "And he's offering them to you?"
    "No, he sold the rights to someone else. Cyrus Fortune. I couldn't find out much about the man, but he seems to be a kind of entrepreneur willing to gamble on a smaller company like mine over some of the bigger ones."
    "It sounds like an important deal," Amanda said slowly.
    "For my company it's vital," he said. "I don't have the capital to form a research and development team, or the patience to wait years for some kind of breakthrough. Everyone's into games and toys, and there isn't much potential for growth or a bigger slice of the market. Personal computers are the thing now, and the next logical step is a system that runs everything in a house from security to the environment with high efficiency and low cost."
    Dunbar's system.
    She knew about it—all too well. Though she'd never taken much interest in the day-to-day running of the Wilderman business empire, she did keep a close eye on one relatively small part of it.
    Wilderman Electronics had been her