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with her. More often than she liked, he was right.
    “Then perhaps it’s because I don’t trust him.”
    “He would let you down? He would not help you if you needed it and he had promised?”
    Lindsay shook her head. She didn’t know from direct experience but she knew anyway that Luke would not break his word once it was given. Call it gut instinct. She had never heard anyone at the office say he had let them down, either. Certainly, she had never heard a client or potential client claim he had failed to meet his promises to them.
    “It’s not trust, then,” he concluded.
    They cleaned up the basement in silence.
    As Edward reached to turn off the lights, he glanced at her. “It seems to me you just don’t know him well enough.”
    “Perhaps.”
    “Your mother would always say, ‘Know your enemy.’ Usually when she was taking an associate out for dinner.”
    “I work with him eight hours a day, every weekday. That should be enough to know someone.”
    Edward shrugged but she saw his doubt. He switched off the lights and they climbed the stairs in the dim light spilling from the kitchen.
    Know your enemy.
    Her mother would by now have known everything about Luke Pierse right down to his shoe size and what side of the bed he preferred. She was slipping.
    Lindsay glanced at the calendar hanging on the fridge as she passed it. October. Three months to go until her birthday and she hadn’t made general manager yet. She grimaced. Pulling in this medical association account might be just what she needed to push her into the GM position.
    She had to make it by January. She had to. Or her mother would be proved right.
    But first she had to beat Lucifer Furey Pierse to do it.

Chapter Three
     

    She was freezing her butt off.
    Lindsay stamped her feet, the heavy snow boots dumping the layer of snow that had accumulated on the toes. She jumped up and down, her hands under her arms. It was a vain attempt to gain a little warmth.
    It seemed like she was the only one who was feeling the cold. There were a few people sitting on the brushed-off benches and tables scattered across the deck but everyone else seemed to be heading out onto the ski slopes, their skis and poles over their shoulders. Or else they were competently pushing themselves around the snow, gearing up for the down slope. Everyone seemed to be having a perfectly wonderful time doing it, too.
    Lindsay was standing on the observation deck attached to the café and cable car terminal at the top of the private ski runs for the Gardner Country Club. She was waiting for Dr. Martin Arquette, president of the state medical association, who was here for recreation and to scout out locations and facilities for the national symposium the association would be hosting, as well as their annual general meeting.
    Her father’s tip had panned out. Arquette was a member of the exclusive country club and after three days of haggling and bribes and a hefty membership fee, so was Lindsay.
    By keeping her ears open, she had learned that Arquette would be on the slopes today and she had made her way up here as soon as the cable car had opened, to wait for Arquette to turn up.
    She wasn’t sure how she was going to work the rest of it. Somehow she would have to introduce herself and she was fairly sure that everything else would fall into place after that. She hoped.
    But meanwhile, she was freezing her butt off. And the sun kept dazzling her and making her eyes water.
    She kept overhearing people talking about what a knockout day it was. How beautiful the snow looked. How fresh and clean and majestic the mountains were.
    All Lindsay knew was that her snow suit, which was guaranteed for temperatures down to thirty below, was anything but warm and her ears were aching with the cold. And she wished she’d had the foresight to bring sunglasses.
    Another load of skiers were stepping off the cable car. Lindsay scanned them hopefully. She had several photographs and pictures of