Which made Sam hate Thomas Cook.
Perhaps hate was a strong word, but the man was responsible for Sam’s father’s death, so hate wasn’t a far stretch from what she felt. But she still did not want to send mixed signals or break hearts, no matter how cold and hardened Thomas’s heart was in its natural state.
Not wishing to drag Thomas through the ringer another day, Sam selected the perfect consolation prize for her final goodbye and good riddance. Nothing said I’m no good for you like a five-foot-tall poisonous oleander shrub.
Poking up from the back seat of her convertible, the plant had lost most of its bright pink flowers to the gushing wind by the time Sam crookedly parallel parked in the first available spot she could find, which was three blocks away from Cook Pharmaceuticals’ downtown building. Lugging the heavy planter the near quarter mile from her parked car to the US Steel Tower entrance, she finally arrived at the foot of the skyscraper, dreading the thirty-minute climb to his office.
The main first-floor lobby was empty and still closed to the public—unless you had enough money to buy early admission—with not a soul in sight. She glanced at the elevators, the blinking numbers of which appeared to be in working order, then kept walking past them and headed straight for the stairwell. There was no way Sam was going to risk being stuck on an elevator alone in a vacant building.
The pot Sam carried up countless floors, for Sam’s claustrophobia simply could not endure the tight space of an elevator, weighed almost as much as Fido, but the oleander bush would be a perfect addition to Thomas Cook’s office, with its sparse flowers and poisonous leaves potent enough to kill a grown man. Only Sam could appreciate the symbolism.
She arrived at the Cook Pharmaceuticals floor panting and winded. When she peeked around the shrub and announced herself to Thomas’s nail-filing receptionist, she was shocked to hear that he had been expecting her. Then the secretary set down her manicure set and ushered Sam into his office, where he stood with a huge grin.
“You finally came!” Thomas declared. “I figured the singing telegram would do the trick.”
“I brought you a thank-you gift,” Sam replied, dropping the pot onto the floor and scattering soil in a rim around the carpet. She nudged the sun-loving plant closer to the wall of windows overlooking the city. From here she could see her own skyscraping building across town.
“What is this?” Thomas asked.
“An oleander shrub. It’s the least I could do after the flowers, chocolates, and balloons you sent. But the singing telegram, well, that was too much.”
“So you bring me a tree—and you don’t think this is a bit… too much as well?”
“It was the best way I could think to thank you.”
Feeling parched, she headed to a drink cart where a sparkling water machine sat, one of the newest must-have household appliances, thanks to the jingle “Get jizzy with the fizzy!” It didn’t hurt that since the 1850s consumers had been duped into believing spring water could remedy everything from sea sickness, fever, and ague, to curing dyspepsia, liver, and kidney complaints. Now homes across America were taking their toxic Cook Pharmaceutical medicines with a gulp of imported Perrier bottled water that could do nothing to save them.
After pouring a glass, she gulped a sip then headed to the window and dumped the remaining water onto the plant.
“It’s been forty-eight days since I’ve seen you,” Thomas commented. “What took you so long to reply?”
Thomas had been counting the days since their first meeting? This was worse than Sam thought.
“Technically it’s been fifty,” Sam corrected, which she only knew because she had a memory for anything to do with numbers.
“Not if you count the day we met and today,” Thomas countered.
“I didn’t realize you were keeping track.”
“You still haven’t told me why you took so long to get back to me. No one has ever made me wait so long, Samantha. It’s a good thing I’m a patient man.”
Sam doubted that.
“If a woman makes you wait fifty—sorry, forty-eight—days for a reply, it usually means she’s not interested.”
Thomas laughed, because never had a woman not been interested. Sure, he knew he wasn’t the finest-looking man, and he could be incorrigible to deal with, but wealth and power went a long way in hiding those flaws.
“Look, I don’t want to lead you on or drag this out. This plant was intended to be a parting gift.”
“A parting gift? Are you saying you don’t want to see me again?”
One date with Thomas Cook was plenty for Sam. She couldn’t imagine enduring his lecherous gaze, or his ego-inflated spoken poetry, or his drunken touches another night. There was no good way to explain that she had only been using him to secure her column. But even if she had found him remotely good-looking, which she didn’t, or enjoyed his conversation and company, which she found repulsive, they still would have been doomed from the start. Because Sam was in love with Raul, and if no handsome conversationalist could change that fact, certainly no mediocre one could.
“I’m not really a dating type of girl,” she replied. Which was a lie wrapped in a truth, because Sam simply hadn’t found a man worth dating… yet.
Men baffled Sam in general, their one-track brains constantly warring between sex, sports, and power. And Thomas Cook—so brilliant in science and yet so dumb in common sense—specifically left her dumbfounded.
“But why not give me a chance? You’d be the envy of every woman in Pittsburgh.” He met her at the window and ran a fingertip down her bare arm. The feel of it sent a row of goosebumps popping along her skin, the kind of goosebumps that shot the hairs up in warning.
“I don’t want to be the envy of anyone.”
“But every woman wants to be the envy of everyone.”
“Not me,” Sam stated. “I prefer anonymity and simplicity.”
Thomas threw his arms up with an anguished moan. “And this is why I must have you, Samantha Stanton! You defy every expectation. You renounce conventionality. You’re stuck in my brain, and I can’t think, I can’t sleep, I can’t eat… and I keep hearing a ringing sound…”
Though to Sam he appeared plenty refreshed and well-fed, no matter how much sleep deprivation and starvation he claimed she was putting him through. Though now that she was looking at him, truly scrutinizing him, Thomas Cook didn’t look well at all. In fact, he was sweating like a woman in the throes of menopausal hot flashes.
“Are you okay, Thomas? Your eyes are dilated… and you’re… swaying.”
“I am?” Thomas asked, vacillating so far to the left that he nearly toppled over.
Sam guided him to a chair and sat him down. Resting her hands on his shoulders, she felt the muscles popping and twitching. “What the—? Thomas, did you ingest something out of the ordinary today?”
He shook his head, but Sam suspected otherwise. When he leaned forward to catch his breath, Sam noticed a damp stain all over the back of his oxford shirt. Lifting up the hem of the shirt over his head, his skin was sticky with residue.
“Thomas, what’s on your back? Is this…” she sniffed it, examining the viscosity, “lidocaine?”