Ringing in Love Read Online Free PDF

was sending the damn roses.
    She came back to the same thought every time she ran the puzzle around in her mind. It took someone with a lot of spare cash to pull off this stunt.
    Maybe her staff was right—Pete Turner had been awfully attentive when they’d worked with him. And he had called her directly at least three or four times since they’d completed their contract with him to ask what seemed to be minor questions and to chat with her. His start-up firm was doing very well in the high-tech field; he could afford all the flowers. But why would he do something like this? Wouldn’t he come right out and ask her for a date?
    And Jamie Foster. He’d had coffee with her a couple times—always, she’d assumed, for business reasons. He made her laugh, and he flirted with her relentlessly in his cute, redheaded Irish way when he was in the office. Of course, he flirted with anyone who had XX chromosomes, but he dated copywriters from her shop who were a lot closer to his twenty-something age than she was. Besides, she doubted a freelancer would have the money it took for this stunt.
    Which led her back to Dominic. The betting pool among her staff had moved heavily in his direction, Melody said, for two reasons. First, he could afford it, and second, several of them had been in the elevator with their boss and their landlord and swore they could feel the heat the two of them generated just standing next to each other.
    Catherine had to agree Dominic was one of the few people she knew who had the kind of money it took to buy all those expensive flowers. What she didn’t see was why he’d do it. It didn’t make sense. He’d asked her out; she’d turned him down. A man with his ego would ask again. Or go on to the next woman. Wouldn’t he?
    The only other possibility she could think of was someone wanted a job with her firm and was trying to show off their creativity. She’d had all sorts of things delivered to her from potential employees trying to demonstrate their abilities—haiku poems attached to a balloon bouquet, a complete marketing campaign for an imaginary firm, each stage inside a nested box and tied up with red ribbons, banners on posts across the tiny front lawn of her house with the man’s credentials outlined on the banners. (That one had frightened her, driving her to consult an old family friend in the police department.)
    But if it were a job hunter, why wouldn’t he—she—identify him/herself? And if they were looking for a job, would they have the kind of money it would take to pull off this trick? She’d have to remember to go through the file of unsolicited CVs she’d received to see if maybe there was a way to connect the flowers with one of them—someone named Rose? Or Flowers?
    Maybe it was her family belatedly celebrating her new office space and the success of her business. Nah, that was easy to dismiss. No one in her family would ever spend that kind of money on flowers. Dinner at a good restaurant, yes. Flowers, no.
    And who would have a reason to include a card saying “Please?”
    Which brought her back to Dominic. Again. Damn it to hell, if he was behind this, why wouldn’t he just call and put her out of her misery? She was tired of waiting for an end to the campaign but not about to confront him in case she was wrong. How humiliating would that be?
    Obsessed with trying to solve the rose mystery, she hadn’t gotten nearly enough work done over the weekend. Which left so much to accomplish on Monday, she was able to forget about roses for a while. Until she took a quick break for something to eat and realized there had been no more delivered yet. Maybe, she decided, her run of roses was over without any explanation of what it had all been about. She wasn’t sure if she was relieved or disappointed, although she was happy to be able to finally concentrate on work.
    Focusing on her computer, she didn’t hear Melody come into her office later that afternoon until her office