CHAPTER 1

	Hannah Banks brushed a sticky strand of hair from her forehead and threaded
her way through the crowded lobby. It was a hot day in the middle of July and Hannah
couldn’t wait to get to her office on the tenth floor of the McKinley Holdings Building.  Her
little apartment was hot and stuffy, and lately she looked forward to going to work in the
morning just to be able to sit in the air conditioned office.  She just wished she had a
cooler place to sleep at night!
	“Mornin’ Hannah!”  a friendly voice called to her, and she turned her head to find
where it was coming from.  A perky red head was racing through the lobby in the other
direction, waving animatedly at her, and made a detour her way. 
	“Hi Julie.”  Hannah smiled and, although less energetically than the other girl,
waved to her.  Julie was an acquaintance, but hardly a friend.  Still, Hannah made it a
point to always be polite.
	“Got anything special planned for the weekend?”  Julie asked her, and Hannah
shook her head with a slight frown.  
	“Not this weekend,” she said , trying to look as if she liked it that way. “I’m
planning to curl up in bed with a good book.”
	Julie laughed.  “Well, I’d rather curl up in bed with a good man!” she said, and
glanced at Hannah.  “And don’t tell me I’m wrong!”
	Hannah just smiled. “I’ll never tell,”  she said, trying to sound light, and the other
girl lifted her hand to wave.
	“You betcha,” Julie said with a wink, then moved on.  “See you later!” she called,
as she disappeared into the crowd.  Hannah made her way across the lobby towards the
coffee kiosk that she had become accustomed to stopping at every morning on her way
to work.
	“Good Morning, Miss Banks,”  said Thomas,  as she walked up to his counter. 
Thomas was a college student working his way through school by serving coffee at this
little kiosk in the lobby of the McKinley Holdings Building.  He was cute, and polite, and
absolutely smitten with his young girlfriend, Melissa, whom he talked about all the time. 
He often shared his plans with Hannah as he served her, and today was no exception.
	“Got tickets for the open air concert tonight down at the park,” he said, grinning
from ear to ear as he poured coffee into a cup for her. “Melissa is going to love it.  Are
you going?”
	Hannah shook her head as she reached for the cup of coffee he handed her.
She never had to order, she simply handed him her money and he fixed her coffee
exactly the way she wanted it, every morning. “No, we’re going to stay home tonight.
This heat is killing me,” she rolled her eyes and patted her stomach, then took a sip of
the coffee and moaned in delight. “Thank you Thomas, I needed this.” She held up the
cup in a salute and smiled at him.
	“Well, I’ll tell you on Monday how it was. It’s gonna be great!” his grin widened,
and he lifted his hand to wave at her as she began to move on. “Have a great
weekend!”
	“Enjoy your concert, and say hi to Melissa for me.”  Hannah waved, adjusted her
purse on her shoulder, and moved on.
	“Sure thing!”  Thomas’ voice rang behind her as she picked up her pace,
heading across the lobby towards the elevator.  She glanced at her watch.  She was
running late.  If she wasn’t careful she would arrive at the elevator just as...
	“Good morning,” said a deep, pleasant voice coming up beside her.  She
glanced up quickly, and offered a nervous grin.
	“Good Morning, Mr. McKinley,” she said, then turned back to the elevator door in
a panic.  There was no way she could get into that elevator with him.  She glanced at her
watch, then up at the numbers above the elevator that were steadily counting their way
down.  Her fingers tapped frantically on her purse, and she felt herself gripping at her
coffee cup tighter than she should.  She glanced up again at the owner of the voice and
saw him smiling down at her politely, the way he smiled at everyone else he met in this
lobby.  She felt her knees go weak, and she spun around on her heel and headed away
from the elevator as fast as she could.
	“Forget something, Miss Banks?” Thomas asked, looking at her with a worried
expression as she headed toward him on a collision course with the kiosk.
	“I think I’ll have a muffin this morning too, Thomas,” she said, forcing a smile as
she approached.  “I missed breakfast and I feel absolutely famished!”
	“Sure thing, Miss Banks.” Thomas grinned back at her.  “I have carrot, blueberry,
or bran today.”
	Hannah wasn’t listening.  She was staring at the group of people waiting for the
elevator and tapping her fingers against her hand bag.
	“Miss Banks? What kind of muffin would you like. You don’t want to miss the
elevator.”
	Hannah watched as the numbers hit bottom and the familiar bell rang to
announce the opening of the doors.
	“That’s exactly what I want to do,” she murmured under her breath, as she
watched the group of people stepping onto the elevator. Then she turned a confident
smile towards Thomas and sighed.
	“I’m sorry Thomas. I’ll take a carrot muffin, please.” 
	Thomas handed her the muffin just as the elevator bell signalled the doors were
closing.  “Looks like you missed it,” he said, jerking his head toward the elevator.
	“Yes, it does doesn’t it,” she said, but she didn’t look at all upset about it. “Oh
well, I’ll get the next one. Thank you very much, Thomas.”  She waved at him again and
retraced her steps back to the elevator, and stood where she had before, waiting, and
watching the numbers slowly climb to the top.  So she would be a little late.  Anything
was better than having to ride up in the elevator so close to Cole McKinley knowing he
didn’t even have a clue who she was.
	It was seven months since that disastrous Christmas party, and Hannah was
thankful that there hadn’t been too many episodes like this during that time.  She had
gotten used to timing her arrival so that she didn’t usually run into him in the lobby, and if
she did, he was usually passing through the crowd and didn’t even notice her.  Only
once before had she had to endure the long painful ride up in the elevator with him. He
had spent the entire ride reading over some magazine or something, and other than the
initial good morning he always said to everyone without thinking, he had not even
acknowledged her presence.  She had been extremely thankful when her floor had
arrived and she had been able to flee.  She had vowed that she would never make that
same mistake again, as long as she had enough warning to avoid it. She had already
made the biggest mistake of her life with Cole McKinley, she didn’t need to make any
more.
	
	The morning after the Christmas party she had awoken with a headache in a
strange bed with a strange man beside her, his arm draped across her with a casual
familiarity.  She had spent the first few moments staring up at the ceiling in a panic,
trying to remember the events of the evening before. Nothing was offering itself to her
memory.  Slowly she had turned her head to the man laying asleep beside her and she
had barely managed to suppress a gasp of shock as she had realised it was none other
than Cole McKinley himself.  Her head had begun to spin as bits and pieces of the night
before had started to surface.  She remembered him pulling some obnoxious guy off of
her and sitting down at her table, and something about him offering to take her home.
Everything else was a blur.  Somewhere in the recesses of her mind she had an image
of her and Cole McKinley making love, but it was very foggy and she couldn’t recall any
details.  She could almost have convinced herself it had just been a dream, except for
the fact that the proof was pretty hard to refute.  She was, afterall,  laying there under his
arm and both of them were completely naked!
	She had managed to extract herself from his arm without waking him, and held in
a groan as she gathered her clothes.  She had only managed to get into her bra and
panties by the time the nausea had hit her, and she had rushed to the bathroom to
throw up.  After splashing her face with cold water and raking her fingers through her
hair, she had pulled on her dress and tiptoed to the door.  She hadn’t even known where
she was, but the elevator was easy to find, and once open it had been extremely
familiar.  Too familiar, she had thought, as she had finally stepped out of it into the lobby
of the McKinley Holdings Building.  Obviously he had an apartment in the building, and
she hadn’t made it anywhere near home!
	She had caught a cab back to her apartment and there she had tripped her way
through the maze of boxes piled up in her living room, found her bed, and collapsed. 
She hadn’t moved for the rest of the day.  Though she wasn’t a drinker, she knew this
must be what a hangover felt like, and a doozey of a hangover at that!  She could
remember specifically drinking the punch instead of alcohol, and groaned. Obviously
someone had spiked the punch!
	Jennifer had found her there much later that afternoon, when the incessant
pounding on Hannah’s head turned out to be her friend knocking on the door instead.
Somehow she had managed to make it to open the door, and felt like throwing up at the
cheerful look on her friend’s face. With a moan she had shuffled back to her bed and
crumpled onto it again.
	“Did you have a good time last night?” Jennifer beamed, as she sat down on the
bed beside her, momentarily oblivious to what her friend looked like.  Then she had
taken a good look at her friend.  “Gee, you don’t look too good!”
	“I don’t feel too good either,” Hannah had groaned. 
	Jennifer had peered at her closer. “What happened?”
	Hannah had covered her eyes with her arm.  “I think I must have got drunk last
night.”
	“Drunk? You?” Jennifer had looked at her in disbelief. “What happened to
Hannah Banks does not drink?”
	“Hannah Banks still does not drink — but somebody must have put something in
the punch,”  she had groaned.
	“Well, thank goodness you got home safely,” Jennifer had said, then she had
grinned. “I’m sorry I left you like I did.  I know it was my idea for you to go to the party in
the first place, and I know it wasn’t very nice of me to leave you all alone like that, but...”
she grinned and giggled.  “...Matthew is so dreamy!”
	“Matthew?” Hannah had almost shook her head, but it hurt so she had stopped. 
“Who’s Matthew?”
	Jennifer had giggled again, leaning in a little closer as if she had a secret to tell,
which had annoyed Hannah because there was no one else in the entire apartment but
the two of them, and it had only served to bring Jennifer’s voice even closer to her
pounding head.
	“I met Matthew at the party.  He works on the twelfth floor.  He’s an accountant.”
Jennifer had giggled some more, raised her hands up and looked up towards the ceiling.
“He’s — like — wow!”
	“Oh,” Hannah had groaned, as an image of Jennifer at the party threatened to
surface in her mind. “You mean Mr. Purple Shirt.”
	“Yeah, that’s him,” Jennifer’s giggling had become much too annoying, and
Hannah had reached for a pillow and covered her head with it. Through it she had been
just barely able to hear her friend’s voice as she continued to talk.  “Well anyway, I heard
that you made the big catch of the night. Sabrina tells me that you left the party with Cole
McKinley himself!  Tell me all about it!”
	The bed had bounced as Jennifer had made herself more comfortable, and
Hannah remembered wishing at that very moment that the bed would just open up and
swallow her.  Who else had seen her leave with him?  What rumours were already flying
around the building?  Sabrina Carmichael wasn’t exactly the most devout secret keeper
in the building. What would she hear on Monday morning when she went back to work? 
The most annoying thing about it all was that she couldn’t even tell herself what had
really happened, let alone anyone else!
	“There’s nothing to tell,” she had groaned to her friend, all the while picturing in
her mind the image of herself and McKinley naked in bed together as the sun had
started poking through the curtains that morning. 
	“Nothing to tell?” Jennifer had retorted in disbelief. “C’mon, Hannah, I’m your
friend!  You can tell me.”  Hannah had pulled the pillow away from her face and glared at
her friend, and Jennifer had actually given up pursuing the issue, much to her surprise,
and gone back to her account of her evening with Matthew Purple Shirt. 
	That Monday Hannah had dreaded the possibility of meeting Cole McKinley in
the building.  Afterall, he owned the place, and he could often be seen there, especially
in the winter time when his contracting business was slow.  She had counted her
blessings when he hadn’t been anywhere in sight that day — or the next. Then on the
Wednesday, however, she had met him face to face in the lobby.  She had blushed and
faltered in her step, feeling like she wanted to turn and run.  He had smiled politely,
wished her good morning, and walked right past her, just like he had done every other
time he had met her in the lobby for the past three years since she had started working
in the building. 
	My God, Hannah had realized, he doesn’t even know who I am!  Maybe he
doesn’t remember anything about that night either, or am I just another girl, just another
one night stand without a face?
	After that, it had become easier each time she had seen him, and before long
she had been able to walk through the lobby with him in relative ease.  His greetings to
her had never changed.  She avoided him whenever possible, but he certainly wasn’t
hard to avoid.  She began to notice, painfully, just how often he was actually at the office
building, compared to how often he wasn’t there.  And he wasn’t exactly chasing her
down to compliment her on a great night in the sack, after all.  He treated her just the
same as he always had, the same as he treated every other person who walked past
him in a given day.  Like a total stranger who just happened to share his space on the
planet!
	And that was the way she was going to keep it, she told herself, six weeks later
when she had dumped her home pregnancy test into the garbage.  There was no need
at all for Cole McKinley to know she was pregnant with his child.  That would just
complicate things more than they needed to be, and she needed her life to stay as
uncomplicated as possible from that point onward, because it wasn’t going to be easy!
	The option of terminating her pregnancy was, to her, a non-option, and so she
had swallowed her pride and taken the first step into the rest of her life.  As time passed,
she had managed to get used to the idea of having a baby.  She had already moved out
of her expensive two bedroom apartment. She had once shared that with a room mate,
until that girl had flown off to Europe and left Hannah with the full rent.   She had started
looking for a smaller, cheaper place almost immediately, more suitable for one person. 
Although her new place was a homey little one bedroom apartment she figured she
would still be able to manage staying there after the baby was born.  
	She started noticing all kinds of baby stuff she had never seen before, and it
seemed like every woman she passed on the street was carrying a baby these days! 
Doctor’s visits became common place, and she got used to living with things the way
they were.
	Now, seven months later, she was proud of the way she had managed so far. 
Her pregnancy was obvious, and had been already for several months now, but no one
knew who the father of the baby was, and she was just as happy keeping it that way. 
No one, that is, except for Jennifer.  Jennifer knew her too well, she scolded herself.  Far
too well!  It was pretty bad when your best friend knew you had no love life at all!  It
hadn’t been very hard for her to put two and two together and come up with the right
answer.
	But Hannah knew.  She knew Cole was the father, without any question.  Even
though their night together remained a major blur in her memory, she knew they had
made love, and she also knew there had never been anyone else.  But there was no
way she was going to tell him about it!  She would have this baby, and raise it, and love
it, but she wasn’t about to go running after Mr. Cole McKinley to tell him this was his
child.  What was she supposed to do, casually walk into his office and smile at his
secretary and ask for an appointment?  Sit across the desk from him once she got
inside and tell him  “The weather looks like it might be starting to clear up out there, it will
be nice when spring gets here — I like what you had done to the lobby, adding a coffee
kiosk was just the perfect touch — and, oh, and by the way, you probably don’t
remember me but  I’m having your baby.”
	Sure thing!
	No, she would just go about her life exactly as she had been before the night of
that fateful Christmas party — without a McKinley in it.  She could handle things just fine,
and since she and Jennifer were the only two who knew the truth, it would be easy to
keep things under wraps.  No one had to know, she could just tell everyone that the
father was some long distance lover they had never met; that he had broken things off
when he had found out she was pregnant.  It would be easy!
	Easy, as long as she didn’t have to be in close proximity to Cole McKinley that is! 
She didn’t know why, but the bigger her belly got and the more obviously pregnant she
became, the more uneasy she felt in his company.  Luckily it was summer, which meant
he spent more time on construction sites and less time in the office, and that meant less
chances of running into him.  
	Less chances, but not no chances. Today, seeing him waiting for the elevator
next to her had been too much for her to handle.  She had felt as if he would have been
able to see right through her once they had been side by side in closed quarters. As if all
he would have had to do was look down at her belly and he would have seen this is a
McKinley baby written all over her.  This is YOUR baby!  No, she couldn’t let that
happen!
	“You’re late,” her boss called to her as she walked into the office, then she smiled
at her. “Is everything OK?”
	“Everything is just fine,” Hannah smiled back. “It just takes me longer and longer
to get ready in the morning that’s all, and I’m so tired all the time!”
	“Tell me about it!”  The woman smiled across the room in her direction. “Wait til
you have a little one hanging onto your leg while you’re that big with the next one. It
seems as if everything you do takes twice as long to get accomplished.”
	“Well, I imagine it will be awhile before I get around to having another one,” 
Hanna chuckled, trying to keep the conversation on a light tone.  Then hoping to change
the subject, she continued,  “But really, Clarice, I’m sorry I’m late.  I’ll try harder to be on
time after this.”
	Clarice Bradshaw frowned at her and shook her head. “You just take as long as
you need in the mornings.  This place can survive if you’re not here for a few minutes. 
Now don’t mention it again.”
	Hannah smiled at the woman.  She considered herself lucky to work for Clarice,
and loved her job.  Just think, you could be so unlucky as to work for McKinley himself 
she found herself thinking, and groaned to herself.  Quickly she glanced around the
room to see if anyone had heard her, then slipped into her chair behind her desk.  
	Clarice and her partner, Mitchell Rosen, ran a successful advertising company
on the tenth floor of the McKinley Holdings Building.  They employed three juniors, and
Hannah, who ran the reception and answered the phones, and generally kept things
organised.  It wasn’t exactly the career she had gone to school for, but it was a good job. 
After four years as a business major at university, she had run out of funds and decided
to work for a while to pay for the rest of her education, rather than burden herself on her
family.  Not that there was much family to burden anyway.  Her mother had died of
cancer while still a young woman, and Hannah had never really gotten along with her
father very well.  She tried, after her mother died, but he had distanced himself
more and more, even from his children.  Three years later, when things had started
getting stranger and stranger, Hannah’s older brother Frank  had taken their father to
the doctor where he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. The disease had
progressed rapidly, and the once confident man was now reduced to a shuffling resident
of a nursing home.  Frank and his wife Laura visited him as often as they could, but
Hannah found living several hundred miles away a good excuse not to visit.  Afterall, he
had never liked her, and when she did visit, he didn’t even know who she was anymore. 
He just stared out the window as if she weren’t even there.  
	Frank and Laura had four kids of  their own and busy lives, and Hannah had
known she couldn’t ask them for help with her education.   They had enough worries of
their own, so when she had decided to look for work, she hadn’t even entertained the
idea of going back home.  The job at Bradshaw and Rosen had almost dropped into her
lap, when a University friend had told her about an acquaintance who was getting
married and moving away, leaving a job opening.  Hannah had applied immediately, and
obviously Clarice had been impressed, for she had been working there now for three
years, and thoughts of going back to school were far back in her mind.  She liked her
job, and she liked the people she worked with.  She had always liked working in the
McKinley building as well, until lately!  Now, she considered it a good day if she didn’t run
into Cole McKinley in the lobby.