Chapter One

“May I be blunt?”

“Can I stop you?”

“No.”

“Then by all means…”

Julia Cameron’s gaze narrowed thoughtfully as she deigned to engage in eye contact with her father’s protégé. Forty-year-old Samuel Adam was the man her father wanted her to date and, as he’d told her in no uncertain terms, eventually marry. It was just like the old goat to attempt to force someone into her life who was so much like himself.

A rigid, unsmiling, tyrannical, emotionally frigid robot who no doubt bled oil in lieu of blood.

Thanks, Dad, but no thanks.

At thirty-one, Julia was unlikely to change. If she ever settled down—a very tentative if—it would be with a sensitive soul of a male. The sort of guy who didn’t cower away from his feelings, worrying that such a show of vulnerability was emasculating. He would be everything that, God love him, her father had never been.

“I’m waiting,” Samuel murmured, his voice measured.

A feral smile enveloped her face as she chose her words carefully. Everything about the man was even keel and firmly in control. His dark hair was perfectly cropped just above the ears, his suit impeccable wool and cashmere herringbone. He’d probably never raised his voice to anyone in his entire life. He didn’t have to. Those intense green eyes and that stoic face innately commanded respect. The son of a bitch needed to be rattled.

“You are, without a doubt, the biggest jackass I’ve ever had the displeasure of sitting next to on an airplane,” Julia told him.

A lie, perhaps, but better to make him hate her and leave her alone than lead the guy on. Pointing to a bottle of Samuel Adams brand beer that a passenger an aisle over was drinking, she batted her eyelashes.

“Furthermore, your name is one S away from being appalling. Samuel Adam? You sound like a drink for heaven’s sake!” She waved a hand magnanimously in the air between them. “I wouldn’t date you if you were the last man on earth. No offense.”

“None taken.”

Julia frowned at the casual amusement in his tone. That wasn’t the reaction she’d been going for. Men tended to become angry and feel aggrieved in such a situation. She’d been down this road many times before and had thought she knew the terrain.

Apparently robots didn’t possess the same reactions as the average male.

“Well good,” Julia said dumbly, treading down unfamiliar territory. She rustled the newspaper on her lap. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’d like to finish reading this riveting piece on, uh…” She took a quick glance down, having no idea of the contents. Her father published it, but she never read it. “…this riveting piece on the life of slugs.”

More amusement. He didn’t smile, but his eyes glittered. The knowing in those light green orbs reminded her of a stalking jungle cat, an analogy that made her swallow a bit roughly.

Samuel Adam might sound like an alcoholic drink, but his demeanor was sobering. Nothing got to him. No one intimated him.

Ever.

“I wouldn’t dream of keeping you from reading such an engrossing article.”

Her glower would have killed a lesser man.

“In fact,” Samuel said, steepling his fingertips, “I’m impressed.” His eyebrows rose slightly. “I didn’t know Barbie dolls could read. Your father must be very proud.”

A Barbie? Her? Julia didn’t know whether to laugh or take offense. Apparently beer-boy had failed to notice the extra twenty-five pounds on her five-foot six-inch frame. Or her J-Lo bootie. Or her very red and curly, non-blonde hair. Or the doctorate hanging on her office wall.

Her teeth snapped together. He was just trying to get back at her, prod her into making a scene so he’d feel better. Damn, he was good. Almost, but not quite, a worthy adversary.

“He’s very proud,” Julia assured him, feigning inordinate fascination with the article on slugs. Why had her father published this boring shit? It was the daily paper, not a journal for science geeks for crying out loud. “I am, after all, nothing if not amazing.”

“Mmm yes. As remarkable as a talking marionette.”

Her teeth ground together, but she would not take the bait. She would rise above and stay a step ahead. She would—

Why the fuck is beer-boy lifting my arms over my head?

“No strings attached,” Samuel reflected. He looked genuinely intrigued. “Interesting.”

There were many comebacks to be had, many acidic, witty replies to make. Unfortunately, all of them were eluding her at the moment. “You’ve got brass balls,” Julia huffed. “I’ll give you that much. Nobody ever talks to me like that!” She sounded like a defiant little brat, but oh well.

“A pity,” he said firmly, those intense eyes of his finding hers.

“Just what the hell does that mean? That people should talk to me with no respect?”

“It means you should get what you give,” Samuel said calmly, rigidly. “If you belonged to me, I’d put you over my knee and spank your ass soundly.”

She couldn’t believe how outrageous his words were! Or how arousing. Julia twisted in her seat, coughing in her hand to cover up her discomfit.

Had she thought him to be almost, but not quite, a worth adversary? She had been wrong. Samuel Adam was, in fact, the real deal. Such an opponent had to be taken seriously. This wasn’t like the last poor schmuck her father had sent to court her—she doubted this guy would just walk away with his tail between his legs, afraid Julia would get him fired. No, Samuel realized he wouldn’t be issued his walking papers from Cameron Publishing. If he did, he would be immediately snatched up by a rival company. The situation set panic alarms off in her mind.

She opened her mouth to rebut, but was cut off by an alarm of another kind. Julia’s eyes widened as the lights in the airplane’s cabin began rapidly flicking off and on, a shrill sound blaring over the intercom. Two flight attendants servicing the first-class cabin lost their balance, their bodies flung to the ground by the airplane’s jarring motions.

“What’s happening?” she breathed out, heartbeat accelerating. She clutched the arms of her chair with both hands, fingernails digging into the vinyl. What a day! “Are we crashing?”

“I don’t know,” Samuel replied evenly. His large, powerful hand covered hers as he assessed the situation. “But I won’t let anything happen to you.”

For some insane reason, Julia believed him. Her grasp on the seat tightened as a loud, trembling voice sounded over the intercom.

“All flight attendants and passengers prepare for an emergency landing.”

“We’re flying over the damn ocean!” Julia hysterically pointed out. “Where are we going to land? The welcome portal to the underwater kingdom of Atlantis?”

Oxygen masks dropped from the overhead bins before he could reply. She heard children crying from somewhere behind them back in the coach section. Her heart slammed against her chest as she fumbled with the mask, trying to secure it over her face.

A simple, routine flight from San Jose to New York. She had taken this very flight, no doubt on this very plane, dozens of times. Her family held estates in both Manhattan and Costa Rica, though Julia primarily resided in the latter.

Samuel had shown up at her doorstep two days ago under the guise of escorting her back home for the Christmas holiday. Her father-trying-to-set-her-up-with-another-robot radar had immediately flown sky-high. She was, after all, thirty-one, not three. She hadn’t required escorts for years.

There had been something different about Samuel Adam from the first moment he’d entered her tropical refuge, some enigmatic mystique that gave her pause. He radiated an aura of control and power that no one could fake—a man either possessed it or he didn’t. Samuel oozed it.

After two days of playing mouse to his cat, Julia had been more than grateful to take the flight back to the states with her father’s protégée. Anything to eventually ditch him. He was getting under her skin, and that would not do. Nothing got to the man, nothing cowered him. If she hadn’t been so hell-bent on loathing him, she would have admired him.

He wanted her money. He wanted to control Cameron Publishing. All men saw her as a means to an end.

The movie screens in the cabin turned on, snapping Julia back to the moment. An emergency landing instruction video began to play. The two actors smiled serenely as they calmly placed the masks in front of their faces, then lifted the attached rubber bands to position them behind their heads.

Oh right! What a realistic reenactment! As if anyone could be that tranquil when they were about to die. Oscar-potential candidates the actors were not. They should be hyperventilating, screaming, and possibly clawing out their own bulging eyes.

Julia’s head began to swirl, dizziness engulfing her. She hadn’t figured out the mask yet and wasn’t getting enough oxygen.

Two strong hands held up her quickly slumping body. The mask made its way to her face. Oxygen returned. Julia stared up at Samuel with wide, blue eyes...