He walked into the den, knowing that’s where Dayna spent most of her time. She sat on the couch, sipping a drink, staring into space.

“Travis,” she said, rising. “I’m just having a drink. Would you like one?” Her face drawn with fatigue, she gave him a tiny smile.

“What is that?” He eyed the glass in her hand.

“Sherry.”

“Uh, no thanks. Don’t suppose you have a beer?”

The corners of her mouth tipped up. “We might have some.” She opened the small refrigerator behind the bar. “You’re in luck.” She handed him the cold bottle of pale ale. “Would you like a glass?”

He shook his head, popped the cap and drank thirstily. “Thanks.”

“How was your day? How are things at the office?”

“Nuts.” He dropped down onto the leather sofa. “Everyone is totally freaked out. Nobody knows what to do.”

“I’m sure you took charge.”

He met her eyes and gave a small smile. “Yeah. I did.”

She smiled back. “Parker would have approved.”

He sighed. “I’m not so sure.”

Her brows dipped, and the corners of her mouth tipped down. “Travis. Things were better between the two of you recently.”

Travis looked down at the bottle in his hand. “Yeah. He was getting over it.”

She sat down on the sofa beside him. “Was there more to it than...?” She stopped.

Hell. There was no way he could tell Dayna what else had happened. It was bad enough that it had almost cost him Parker’s friendship, their business partnership, and the only family he’d ever really known. “No,” he lied, dropping his eyes. “That was enough.”

For the first time he wondered how he was going to move forward with the company without Parker there. Notwithstanding his firm statements to Samara about his and Parker’s partnership, the truth was they’d each had their own strengths and relied on each other for many facets of the business

He felt a glimmer of the same uncertainty that had gripped many of the people who worked for them. Would the company survive the loss of their charismatic CEO? Would they all lose their jobs? Who was going to take over for Parker?

He knew damn well who he wanted it to be.

“How about your day?” he asked, shifting gears. She was the one planning a damn funeral.

Dayna sighed. “It was hard. So much to think about.”

“How’s Samara?” He couldn’t stop himself from asking.

“Oh. I don’t know.” Dayna rubbed one eyebrow with an index finger. “I appreciated her help today. I felt so...lost. I was glad to have her there. But even though she tries to be so tough and together on the outside, I can see she’s...” She paused. “She’s really hurting.”

Hell. He’d been so pissed off at her earlier. She knew exactly how to push his buttons, and he really should be better able to deal with that. But Dayna was probably right. Samara was hurting as much as the rest of them, despite the tough girl act she put on.

“Dayna?”

“Yes?”

“Did you know why Parker was in Matagalpa?”

A small furrow appeared between her brows. “No. He didn’t really discuss that with me. Why?”

“I’m kind of worried...we haven’t done business in Matagalpa in years.”

She turned her head to one side and gave him a sidelong look. “Worried about...what?”

“You know.”

She gazed back at hm. “Oh, Travis.”

“We don’t know what happened to him! It could’ve been an accident, but I’m worried he was mixed up in something....dangerous.”

She nibbled her bottom lip. “But...”

At that moment, Samara appeared in the French doors. Despite the fatigue bracketing her mouth and the sadness darkening her eyes, she was still so damn beautiful, with her long flame-colored hair behind her shoulders. She wore another sundress, this one lime green with tiny straps and a big bow tied around her narrow waist. She wore lime green flip-flops with yellow and white daisies on them. Silly shoes, but her feet were so pretty in them, her little toenails painted a vivid tangerine. Hell, once again, he’d been checking her out from head to toe. He dragged his gaze away from her.

Parker’s daughter.

How many times in the past had he reminded himself of that? Too many to count, dammit. Who she was and how old she was had been enough to give him the strength to resist her powerful allure. In the past.

He looked at her again as she walked toward them. She was twenty-four years old now. Not a teenager. But she was still Parker’s daughter, and he’d made that promise to Parker, a promise he had to keep even though Parker wasn’t with them anymore. He had to keep his distance. Had to.

“We’re just having a drink before dinner, Samara,” Dayna said. “Would you like something? Sherry? Glass of wine?”

Samara blinked then looked pointedly at the bottle in Travis’s hand. “I’d rather have a beer.”

Travis raised a brow. Funny how he’d known her for ten years and felt he knew her so well, but he didn’t know she liked beer. Who would have thought?

Dayna went to get one for her, and Samara followed her, her silly sandals making soft thwapping noises as she padded across the plush carpet. The sound drew his eyes to her feet again then to her slender ankles and slim, pale-gold calves and...shit. He felt himself getting hard, cursed inwardly, and closed his eyes. Just looking at her feet and calves was fucking turning him on.

When he’d met Samara, she’d been fourteen years old, tall and gangly, with braces, freckles and stringy red hair. He’d barely noticed her the first few times he’d visited Parker’s home. Then one day the braces came off, and he’d been taken aback by her stunning smile. Had she never smiled when she’d had the braces on? Suddenly her body had changed too, with full, bouncing breasts he couldn’t help but notice. Hey, he was a guy. The day she’d brought her first boyfriend home for dinner, he’d been unaccountably irritated, especially when he’d walked in on them necking in the living room after dinner.

Her hair had grown longer and thicker, satiny-smooth and richly colored. One day he’d been completely nonplussed to realize she was a gorgeous woman with a smile that lit up a room and eyes that dazzled him into a stuttering idiot.

When he’d started to fantasize about her, the horror made him actually avoid Parker’s home. He’d felt like some kind of perv, a twenty-five-year-old man hot for a teenage girl. But he couldn’t stay away forever, and he’d steeled himself against the torture of being with her.

He’d thought she was spoiled rotten, indulged by her wealthy parents and given everything she wanted. The contrast between her easy, pampered life and his own miserable, scrabbling youth made him a little nuts if he thought about it, but she made him laugh and entertained him with the way she loved to argue, especially with her father. She was confident and smart, yet never obnoxious or rude to her parents. She just tested them at every turn. Jesus, one time she’d actually had the audacity to challenge her father, and Travis for that matter, on whether fair trade was really the solution to problems in developing countries.

Damned if her arguments hadn’t made sense and had merit. She’d claimed fair trade led producers to increase production, which benefited some producers in the short run, but in the long run would push coffee prices in world markets even lower. Ultimately, it would make things worse for the majority of coffee producers. She’d even outlined her theory that artificially raising the price of coffee to earn farmers better money would actually remove motivation for them to learn new skills and to focus on education for their children, which was really the key to a better future. Reluctantly, he’d been forced to admire her brains as well as her growing beauty.

He focused on her now, taking a seat in a chair far away from him, lifting the glass of beer to her lips and crossing one slim leg over the other.

“So, I guess you didn’t have time to come to the office,” he commented. Even as the words left his lips, he knew he was provoking her. Christ, he might as well have stuck out his tongue and said “Nyah-nyah, I was right, and you were wrong”