Excerpt of Risky Business by Carol Rose

Katie Flanagan couldn't let Josh Morgan take her grandfather's photography studio. Grandpa may have been dead these past seven years, but in her heart he remained the one stalwart figure of her childhood. Surely Josh couldn't be serious about foreclosing. While he'd always been stuffy, she had never thought him mean-spirited.

Her heart shifted into overdrive as Katie nervously crossed the threshold into Josh's office.

He stood behind a large desk, his hair as dark as she remembered, his eyes the same impossible blue. Two years ago, he'd been a young executive on the rise, a sexy, arrogant force to be reckoned with.

At a first glance, it didn't look as if that had changed. Even his office with its impressive desk and the deferential secretary sitting outside proclaimed his status as a major player in the business world.

Assistant vice president.

The power suit he wore did nothing to hide his broad shoulders, either. Funny how she remembered some things so vividly. When he'd been briefly engaged to her older sister, Erin, Katie had found Josh Morgan both amusing and irritating. His black-and-white conservatism had often set the spark to her too-ready temper.

But his current classy surroundings and big job title didn't surprise her. Josh had been on the way up when she'd first met him three years ago. He'd always been driven to succeed.

She'd come here this morning optimistically hoping that he'd put the events of the past behind him and gone on with his life.

"Josh!" A tumble of joy coursing through her, Katie strode forward, fully intending to give him a hug. To her surprise, she realized she'd missed sparring with him.

"Katie Flanagan?" Josh blurted out, looking thunderstruck as he stood behind his desk.

"Yes! It's me." She gave him a congratulatory smile as she skidded to a halt in front of the desk, deciding to forego the hug for now.

"You got the foreclosure notice," he concluded grimly, nothing close to enthusiasm on his face.

She supposed that was to be expected since they'd had no contact for the last couple of years. Not since Erin ran off with his brother, not even bothering to inform Josh of the fact. It was the most thoughtless thing she'd ever known her sister to do, especially considering how Josh had stepped in and offered to marry Erin when she'd found herself pregnant by a previous lover.

As loyal to her sister as she was, Katie didn't think calling in to a radio talk show and spilling the whole story actually constituted as "informing" a man when his fiancée was eloping with his own brother.

Josh had a right to be angry about the whole situation, but Katie wasn't letting him punish her and the studio for something Erin and Josh's brother had done. Though she understood Josh had to have been crushed by their betrayal. Who wouldn't have been? And then there was the money he'd loaned to Erin to resurrect Grandpa's studio. When Erin defaulted on the payments six months ago, it must've felt like insult added to injury.

But Katie had responsibility for neither of those offenses and she couldn't let him foreclose on the studio.

"I got some kind of legal-looking letter," she told him cheerfully, “Aren't you going to invite me to sit down?"

"There's no point," he said abruptly, his expression less than welcoming. "We have nothing to discuss."

"Yes, of course, we do." Katie sat down in a chair facing his desk. "This whole studio loan problem.”

He remained standing. "You haven't bothered yourself about the loan for the last six months when no payments were being made."

"I only found out about Erin dropping the payments three months ago." She leaned forward eagerly. "But now I have this great idea."

"Good for you. It can't have anything to do with me."

"Just listen," she insisted. "This is the best plan. It solves all our problems."

With every appearance of reluctance, Josh lowered himself into the leather chair behind his desk. "Our problems?"

"When Erin left town two years ago, she closed down the studio and dropped the keys off with me, just like that, and I didn't think anything more about it."

"Very Flanagan-like," Josh sneered, his fingers drumming against the arm of the chair.

He wasn't being the least bit friendly, Katie reflected, wisely choosing not to confront him about it. She might be a tad impulsive at times, but she had to convince him to change his mind about the loan. There was no sense in getting him riled up by pointing out his negative attitude.

"Anyway," Katie forged ahead "Your letter got me to thinking. I've decided to run the studio myself. I think it might be my niche. I took a photography class in high school and won an award! The studio needs some work, though. The building is rundown, some of the equipment needs replacing, but I don't think it'll take me long to whip it into shape."

She sent her most optimistic smile across the desk. "So I was hoping you could help me."

"Help you?" he snorted. ""You want me to do what exactly?"

"Well, it's not like you'll be out any more money," Katie said quickly, her hope of that exact thing dying a swift death. "Just give me time to get the studio together and going before I start paying off the money we owe you."

A smile curled the corners of Josh's mouth as he leaned his head back against his chair and started laughing. The full, rich sound filled the room, eventually diminishing into masculine chuckles. "You have a lot of nerve, Katie Flanagan. You've never been short on nerve."

"I kind of hoped you'd moved beyond all the stuff that happened with Erin," she murmured, not sure whether or not she should be encouraged by his laughter.

"I'm sure you did," he agreed, a decidedly unfriendly grin on his face.

"After all, it's not like you guys were really engaged," she pointed out.

"Regardless of what prompted our relationship, I was stupid enough to genuinely offer to marry Erin," Josh corrected her grimly.

"Then she miscarried and met your brother ... "

"And the rest is history," he finished with a sarcastic smile.

"Yes, but all that has nothing to do with the studio, and my taking it over is a great idea. I don't know why I didn't think of it before." She edged forward in her chair.

"If you want to start a photography studio, go get a loan," Josh said with brutal indifference.

She made a face at him. "I talked to one loan officer at a bank, but he kept getting hung up on my lack of experience. It's like all my weekends of helping Grandpa don't count for anything."

"And you have no collateral." Josh laughed.

"Nothing but the studio and you hold a loan against that," she agreed reluctantly, her temper starting to simmer. After all, she wasn't the one who dumped him!

"You're a bad risk," he concluded with apparent satisfaction.

"That's what he said," she admitted, pushing her annoyance aside with an eye on the main goal. "So I thought maybe you and I could come to some kind of terms."

He chuckled again. "You must be kidding. Your sister runs off with my brother after I offered to marry her to give her child a name. She doesn't even bother to tell me face-to-face-and you think I'm going to give you, her flighty younger sister, the opportunity to screw me over again?"

"It was a long time ago," Katie said desperately. "And it really had nothing to do with me. I wasn't the one who dumped you."

"No, you were a bystander. A typical Flanagan who didn't have the moral courage to tell me when your sister started cheating on me," he retorted.

Katie bit back a defensive retort, aware of being on shaky ground. Maybe it hadn't been her business to report her sister's deceit, but she knew she hadn't kept quiet out of loyalty alone. If she were honest with herself, she had to admit she couldn't stand the idea of Josh married to Erin. They were wrong for each other, as subsequent circumstances had proved.

Was he married now? she wondered.

Glancing over, Katie scanned his ringless hand. Of course, some married men didn't wear rings.

"But it's not just the past." Josh leaned forward. "Even if I didn't have reason to hate the entire Flanagan family, I still choose my financial risks more carefully these days. And you don't have a particularly commendable history yourself."

"What do you mean by that?" Katie said hotly.

"From what I've heard, you've been busy the last few years, living the same sort of irresponsible, self-centered life your mother and sister live."

"I don't know what you're talking about!"

"Let's see. From what I’ve heard you're twenty-four and working as what? A waitress. At a different restaurant every three months. You've taken junior college classes with at least five different majors that I know of and you've been engaged twice. You dumped both guys, and left the last one actually standing at the altar."

"There's nothing wrong with being a waitress! And it wasn't my fault that I got hives when I thought about marrying Doug. You don't know anything about it! And I didn't deliberately leave Rick standing at the altar. I tried to call him before the ceremony, but his voice mail wasn't working," she declared, her temper rising.

The way Josh put it, she sounded like a flake, but it wasn't true at all.

Here it was--Josh's ugly stuffed shirt tendency.

"And how do you know all this anyway? You're just listening to gossip," Katie declared righteously.

"You forget," he said with sarcasm. "Your sister is still living with my brother, on and off. He keeps in touch with my aunt and she's not likely to spread unfounded rumors."

"Still, there were many extenuating circumstances that you know nothing about." Katie sat back in the chair, raising her chin.

"What I know is that avoidance is your family motto. No Flanagan ever lives up to her commitments. Your father only showed up half a dozen times in your life and your mother has been married and divorced six times. If it hadn't been for your grandfather, the state probably would have taken you and Erin away from your mother."

“My mother did the best she could," Katie defended. "And that's all ancient history."

"Maybe so," he concluded, "but I have put the insanity of my association with your family behind me. Far, far behind me."

Josh leaned forward, his eyes flinty and his voice grim. "I don't even want anyone to know that I was ever foolish enough to be involved with a Flanagan. This is my deep, dark secret. I am a sane, rational, fairly intelligent man. My Flanagan period could do nothing but besmirch the reputation I've worked to build."

"You're just being vindictive," she retorted, as disappointed in him as she was angry. "It's the radio talk show thing, isn't it? You're mad about Erin calling that disc jockey and talking about dumping you in front of thousands of people. You still haven't gotten over the embarrassment, even though you were never specifically identified."

He snorted, pushing away from his desk to stand. "We don't have anything else to discuss."

"Maybe I should call that radio station now and give them the rest of the story. Tell them how you were the guy Erin talked about leaving and now you're foreclosing on me out of spite," Katie challenged, her impulsive tongue taking on a life of its own.

"Don't be ridiculous," he said, annoyed.

"Don't you be ridiculous. You can't foreclose on the studio. It's my heritage and I'll do whatever I have to do to keep it."

"Are you threatening me?" His eyes narrowed.

Katie jumped to her feet, her heart pounding. "If I have to. I've just got to get the studio going and I don't think it's too much to ask you to give me some time."

"You want me to continue to hold the note on this harebrained scheme and then pull your butt out of the fire when it fails," he said in grim conclusion.

"I'm not going to fail!" she yelled. "I've never been more serious about anything in my life."

The door behind her opened suddenly and Katie swiveled around glaring at the intruder.

"Josh, we need to go over ..." A thirty-something guy in a suit came to a halt just inside the door.

The man's gaze immediately strayed in Katie's direction, an appreciative expression slipping onto his face as his scrutiny dropped to her short, tight skirt.

"I'm sorry, I didn't know you were busy," he said to Josh, a smirk spreading across his face.

"I'm not, Rick," Josh said, walking out from behind his desk. "Ms. Flanagan was just leaving."