HEY GUYS PLEASE DON'T KILL ME I'M NOT GOING TO LIE TO YOU ON WHY I HAVEN'T UPDATE. THE REAL REASON IS BECAUSE WELL SCHOOL. MY PARENTS ARE PRESSURING ME TO BE THE BEST. TO GET GOOD GRADES AND EVERYTHING. PLUS I'M TAKING EXTRA CLASSES ON SATURDAYS SO THAT DOESN'T HELP BUT FROM NOW ON I'M GOING TO TRY AND UPDATE ON TIME, ALL MY STORIES! SO YEAH ENJOY!

AND I WANT TO THANK EVERYONE WHO REVIEWED AND ADDED MY TO THEIR FAV STORIES/AUTHORS OR ADDED ME ON THEIR STORY/AUTHOR ALERT! THANKS AGAIN STICK WITH ME GUYS!

RECAP

"Hah," she said, tipping her head back to smile at Zach. "Talk about good timing."

"This is your award?"

"Yep. I'm Actuary of the Year. I have to give a speech. Kiss me for luck?"

He did, and the tingle on her lips was just the fuel she needed to make the long walk to the podium.

All the dark-clad men and women at the tables in ballrooms A and B were clapping.

They were clapping for her. The tiny voice had ruled her, sleeping and waking, for so many years, was throwing some kind of hissy fit, but she couldn't hear it over the sound of polite applause.

She walked up to the microphone and there was the president of her organization, Joe Solomon, staring at her as though he couldn't believe his eyes.

Mr. Solomon had been a friend of her father's and ran the only insurance company in Chaska larger than the one where she worked.

"Thank you very much." She reached forward and kissed him, Hollywood-style, and he pushed the award forward, Actuary Association-style. The sharp point of the trophy, a sharpened pencil, poked her right above her heart. Somehow, that seemed significant.

She stated out at all those dark suits and dresses, all those white-moon faces staring at her.

"Ladies and gentlemen, guest, colleagues." Pause. Breathe. "Trust is the cornerstone of our business."

Trust. The word seemed to shimmer in her mind so each letter sizzled neon.

"Trust." She repeated the word, hearing it echo around the still, waiting room.

Three hundred ghostly faces stared at her. Josh sat about three tables from the front. Through some trick of the overhead lighting, or maybe the fluorescent bounce of his pale brown hair, he stood out.

If she scanned her gaze to the left, to the entrance and exit to the ballroom, there was Zach, standing with his back against the wall, watching her.

In that moment, everything inside her went still.

The silence lengthened to become a palpable thing—something you could feel in the air, like humidity. She heard some shuffling, and a couple of cleared throats. Somewhere, somebody started chatting in a low voice.

She felt dizzy, and realized inside her she'd sailed blindly into the perfect emotional storm.

She glanced at the Sharpened Pencil Award she'd placed on the podium. So straight that pencil was, so sharp. And she started to speak.

"I'm honored that you could choose me for this prestigious award, but I can't accept it."

Actuaries weren't the most emotive of souls, and there was not as much as a gasp from the audience. She noticed that the chatting stopped, though, and the silence felt keener.

She smiled. "I know these speeches are usually pretty boring. Let's face it, our jobs are pretty boring, but what we do is important. Without us and our calculations, retirees could run out of money before running out of life. Insurance companies would go bankrupt if we didn't calculate risk. What we do matters."

She took a sip from the glass of water that had been provided.

"I talked about trust, but there's more than just trust involved in being a good actuary. We also need to act with integrity and judgment."

She looked straight at Josh. "I've always prided myself on my judgment, but somewhere I went badly wrong. I became engaged to a man who has been carrying on with another woman under my nose. We three are colleagues in the same office, and I was clueless.

She shook her head, appalled. She has everyone's attention now.

"I think a person who is so blind to the kind of deceit and drama going on in her own life might not be sharp enough to catch discrepancies in her work."

She paused to sip more water. He hands were surprisingly steady.

"Trust, integrity, and good judgment are three cornerstones." And what kind of judgment are you showing now? an inner voice railed.

"But a building has to have four corners or it will topple. Honesty is I think the final piece. I have lived dishonestly for the last four months, through no fault of my own except blindness. My colleague and fiancée informed me earlier this evening that he's in love with someone else. I've been blind, foolish. I've been living a lie. So, you see, I am the wrong person to accept this award although I hope one day to be worthy of it. Thank you." And she turned and walked slowly away, leaving the sharpened pencil pointing in the air like a rude middle finger.

ZACH

Zach watched his date of the evening with a combination of shock and admiration.

Okay, so he'd already pretty much figured out that Jonas hadn't sent her and she wasn't like any actress he'd ever met. But her speech still shook him to the toes. She'd been dumped by a cheating fiancée if he understood her speech correctly, and was refusing an award that probably meant a lot to her—on ethical grounds.

Wow.

He'd pretty much written off the evening as a nightmare before it even started. How had he ended up having such an amazing time.

There was something about this woman with her quiet sexiness, her clear intelligence and her obvious integrity, that got to him.

He wondered why the evening had been so different than he'd imagined and then it hit him. He hadn't been bored.

Boredom had been part of his life so often recently that it was like an allergy—he'd become so used to it that when the symptoms cleared up he felt incredible relief.

Of course, not a soul in the world knew about this problem of his. Only a loser would whine when he had everything he's ever wanted.

And he wouldn't do that. He'd flipped the bird to his family, his predestined future and pretty much the world a lot of years ago and set out to prove himself.

Here he was, with everything he'd ever wanted. And if sometimes it all got to be too much of the same old, same old then he's suck it up and shut up. Faking being on top of the world was pretty easy when everybody already accepted that that's where you were sitting.

But when had he last laughed from that ticklish place deep in his gut that had been so accessible as a kid and so unreachable now? He couldn't remember. Until tonight when his supposed party girl had announced she wasn't an actress at all, but an actuary.

No wonder Cammie had kept him the opposite of bored. Between grabbing him back from Macey, slapping down his ex-wife's dirty old daddy and now standing up there and pretty much blowing off her career because of her principals, she not only amused him she won his admirations.

When she came off that stage, the applause was tepid; the glances sent her way were everything from confused to disbelieving.

She appeared more shocked by her behavior than anybody. She looked like a rookie after a first major race. She was pale and shaky and looked as if she might puke.

What she needed was somebody to take her mind off the ordeal. "Hey" he said. "Great speech."

"Thanks"

"Would it hurt your career any if I kissed you?"

"I think I just threw away my career," she said in a voice of sunned shock.

"Then I guess this can't hurt." And he leaned in and kissed her. What was it about this mouth of hers that he found so irresistible? It talked smart and kissed sexy. He was barely aware of the hundreds of people in the room except that he wanted them all gone and to have Cammie alone. He raised he head and she said

"Let's get out of here"

He grinned at her. "You must have read my mind."

"Cammie," a man said in a furious tone. He and Cammie bother looked back at the guy he recognized from the elevator. The nervous-looking blonde clinging to his arm must be the one he'd been kissing. "How could you have been so small-minded and…and vindictive? You made a fool out of me!"

Zach's date looked at the guy for a long moment and said, "No. I didn't. You did that all by yourself."

Zach scooped her hand into his and they left without a backward glance.

"What do you want to do now?" he asked her as they crossed the mostly deserted lobby.

"I'm thinking of locking myself in a bathroom somewhere, then throwing up and doing a lot of moaning."

He chuckled. "No, you're no. You totally impressed me. Probably a lot of other people too."

"I did?" Her eyes were serious but with an edge of dreaminess he liked.

"Yeah. You told off a whole roomful of suits and you never raised your voice once. If I was president of that association I'd be getting your ex's ass fired and making you CEO of the company."

The line between her brows disappeared. "You would?"

"Yep. You're the one with guts and integrity."

"Thanks." They walked a little farther. "You're right. We have to celebrate. I did something I've never done before. I stood up for myself and told somebody off."

"You've never done that before?"

"Not really. Well—" she glanced at him "—Macey, earlier tonight but that was acting."

"I have to say, you're doing great for a beginner."

"Thanks." She sighed and gazed up at him. "You know what I want to do now?"

"What?"

"I want to do something else I've never done before. Do you have any idea how many things I've never even tried?"

He was curious as to what she'd say. "No."

She started listing things off on fingers of one hand. "I've never scuba dived, even though I love the ocean."

"Well, we're kind of far from it here. And they don't let you do out if you've had a drink or two."

She gasped. "And that's another thing. You know I've never been drunk?"

"Didn't you ever turn twenty-one?"

"Of course I did. A few months ago. But I was studying for a final exam I had to take. I couldn't waste a whole study night to go drinking."

"Now that's just plain tragic."

"Where are we going?" They'd walked outside the hotel. The air was warm and dry. Even though it was dark, he slipped his sponsor's shades on, hoping the suit and sunglasses would make him less recognizable. There were so many race fans in town for Sunday that he was liable to be mobbed if he was recognized.

"I figured out the perfect thing for you."

"Something I've never tired before?"

"That's right. I'm guessing you've never raced a stock car before."

"No-o-o-o." She licked her lips and gazed up at him, that little line appearing between her brows. "I thought I'd more my way up through my list. Staring with easy things. I'm not sure I should be racing quite yet."

"Trust me. You'll love it."

"OH MY GOSH, I clipped him. Aaaaggh! I'm going too fast. I can't hold on! I'm going to crash. I'm going to kill us both!"

Zach was getting as much of a kick watching Cammie play the new NASCAR video game as she was playing. (Really thought he was going to let her drive a real car huh ) He finders welded to the controlled and her eyes wide as she stared at the moving images on the screen.

She'd never be a beauty, but there was something very appealing about the way she gave her whole focus to what she was doing, weather it was playing a video game, telling off her ex or kissing him.

When she'd played four games in a row, she'd finally threw up her arms and gave up.

There were six of them at the table—his crew chief, a few guys from the team and Nick Patterson, a little younger than Zach but he'd become a good friend. They'd both been featured in People's 50 Hottest Bachelors issue, and what had started out as good-natured ribbing about which of them was really the hottest has turned into a friendship.

Since Nick was a lot better at video NASCAR, he'd taught Cammie. By the time she'd mastered the basics they were fat friends, and he was toasting her success. "Cammie, you're a natural." He glanced at Zach with a grin that melted a lot of female hearts and signaled to Zach that trouble was on its way "We should get her a ride, Zach. She'd be a great driver."

"Are you kidding? I crashed three times, lost control once and I'm pretty sure I made a yellow car blow up."

"Sounds like a good day on the track to me," Nick said with a toothy grin a lot of women seemed to go for.

Cammie laughed as though Nick was the funniest guy in NASCAR. He has to be a few years younger than she was. Nick didn't seem to mind, though. In fact, Zach might have to remind his fellow driver to find his own woman before the night got much older...

SO THAT'S IT I'LL TRY AND UPDATE AS SOON AS I CAN BUT I HAVE MID-TERN TEST FOR MY ONE OF MY SATURDAY CLASSES SO I NEED TO STUDY BUT REVIEW AND I'LL TRY MY HARDEST I LOVE YOU ALL FOR SUPPORTING ME!

~KRISTINA~