GAMBLING ON LOVE (Travis Series) (11 page)

“If I promote you to
president
, will you take the meeting?”

“Doll, I wouldn’t have your job for the world
.
Now quit stalling
.
It has to be done today because you’re back on assignment in two days
.
At least this one is local so we still get to see your bright shiny face off and on.”

“Sadist,” she mumbled as she headed for the boardroom.

The meeting lasted over an hour and in spite of her grumbling, she enjoyed the genuine camaraderie of her employees
.
Beth was extremely meticulous about picking who she hired
.
She wanted everyone to be happy with their jobs,
one an
other, and with her
.
Too many hours were spent in each other’s company to have people who were difficult to work with
.

Very rarely was she wrong about who
m
she’d chosen and it was usually when she went against Vic’s advice not to take them on
.
After the second time it happened, she started listening and they’d had tremendous luck since then
.
Several times she’d offered to promote him to
vice president
so he could handle the things he was so good at advising her about, but he staunchly refused.
 

“What would you do without me to watch over you
?”
he’d
ask, and Beth knew he was right.
 

She’d be devastated if he left her
.
So she compensated him in other ways
,
like giving him an unlimited gas card,
paying
for his
annual
vacation to the Florida Keys, and
buying
him a new car as a bonus.
 

“You can’t buy my loyalty,” Vic would say haughtily
when she presented him with a gift
.
 

When
she’d volunteer to take them back
,
he accuse
d
her of not appreciating his hard work
.
Beth sincerely loved Vic and hoped he stayed with her until they were both too old to work.

“Any messages
?”
she
asked hopefully when she got out of the meeting.

“Not the one you’re looking for.
”
He handed her the messages he’d taken during the meeting
.
“Don’t look so down, sweetie
.
I’m sure he’ll call
.
If he works like you, he probably hasn’t realized how late in the day it is.”

“I know
.
I just feel like a silly teenager waiting for Sam to call, getting butterflies in my stomach every time the phone rings.”

“Why, Elizabeth Anne Sweeney, you’ve got it real bad for this one, don’t you?”

“Painfully obvious, is it?”

“Well, I just hope this Sam of yours is smart enough to know what he’s got.”

“You know, Vic, for someone who’s such a pain in the ass, sometimes you can say the sweetest things.”

“
It’s
part of my charm,” he quipped.

Beth returned to her office and decided to go over the expenses submitted for approval by her investigators
.
Very rarely did she deny one but it was a necessary evil so she forced herself to review them
.
At five o’clock
,
Vic stuck his head in the door to let her know he was leaving
.
She continued to plow through the expenses until she had them completed
and
then put them in Vic’s basket to enter into the computer
.

Beth glanced at her watch, her heart sinking even lower
.
Six o’clock and still no call
.
She was starting to feel the sharp pangs of anxiety in the pit of her stomach and did her best to ignore them
.
With a heavy sigh, Beth pulled her purse from the drawer, locked the office and headed for home.

 
 
 
 
 
                                                      *
**

Sam had been putting out fires left and right all day
.
He’d reached for the phone around noon to see
whether
Anne could break away for lunch but got a call from
John
Peterson before he could even pull her number from his wallet
.
John
had already hired a new lawyer and wanted Sam
to
come over right away to meet with them
.

He’d left his office almost immediately and had been locked away
in
P & J Industries’ boardroom the entire afternoon negotiating the contract
.
He’d checked his watch around five o’clock and considered excusing himself to call her, but the new lawyer started asking more questions and time got away from him again
.
At seven fifteen, they finally called it a day, agreeing to meet later in the week to finish it up.

As he made his way through the parking lot, Sam pulled his wallet out to get Anne’s phone number so he could call her on the way and was
annoyed
to discover it wasn’t there
.
He climbed into his truck
,
trying to
remember
what he’d done with it and realized he must have left it in the pocket of the jeans he’d worn the day before
.
Frustrated that he’d have to go all the way home, he swore under his breath at how stupid he’d been
.

Anne
was probably
worried sick that
he
hadn’t called yet
.
He tried directory assistance but her home phone was unlisted and so was her cell phone
.
He got the number for her office, hoping she might still be there but only got the answering service
.
His desire to see her made him push his luck
,
speeding most of the way to his house in Beverly Hills.

He raced into the house
,
up the stairs to his room
, his annoyance magnified
to discover the room was spotless.
 

“Damn!”
 

Virginia must have come in and taken his laundry already
.
Hoping she hadn’t thrown them in the wash, he dashed back down the stairs and hurried to the laundry room
.
Sitting on top of the counter were all his clothes, freshly laundered and neatly folded
.
Sam pulled his jeans from the stack, checked the pockets and was even more frustrated when he came up empty.

If
the card
had been washed with his jeans, he would have at least found the shredded paper in the pocket
,
so Virginia must have pulled it out
.
He searched the laundry room and didn’t find it
.
He
proceeded
to his study, hoping she’d stuck it on his desk as she usually did when she found papers still in his pockets
.
To his disappointment, the desk was as neat and clean as he’d left it.

He searched everywhere that he could think of and finally decided the only thing
to
do was call and see
whether
she remembered taking it out of his pocket
.
He pulled Virginia’s number up on his cell phone and dialed, grunting in frustration when there was no answer
.
He waited five minutes and tried again
.
After several attempts with no results, Sam decided to take a shower and change so he
would
be ready to go when he finally did reach her.
 

As he stepped under the hot spray of water
,
he remembered what Anne had said to him
.
You will call me, won’t you Sam
?
Because I don’t want to be waiting by the phone for a call that won’t ever come.

 
 
 
 
 
                                                       *
**

At eight
thirty Beth pulled the leathery steaks from the grill and tossed them in the trash can
.
She went back in the house, biting her lip to keep it from trembling
.
She wouldn’t cry, she told herself
.
Her eyes strayed to the table that she’d taken such care to set, complete with candlesticks and napkin rings
.
Too
damn
ed
depressed to clear the plates away
,
she turned off the lights, grabbed the bottle of wine from the bucket of ice it had been chilling in
,
along with the corkscrew
,
and
carried them outside to the deck
.
Spending the evening
by
herself
on a lounge chair
was nothing new;
it was this
God awful sense of
loneliness
that was alien to her.
 

The
light breeze
made
the air pleasantly cool, and on any other night she would have enjoyed the sound of waves lapping over the shore and the salty smell of the ocean
.
Tonight, all she wanted to do was forget she’d ever met Sam Travis
.

Beth uncorked the wine and took a sip straight from the bottle
.
She wasn’t much of a drinker so she knew it wouldn’t take much to get good and drunk
.
She was hurt and angry that he hadn’t at least had the human decency to call
to
say he’d changed his mind about getting involved with her
.
Even if he didn’t feel anything at all for her, she deserved that much.

Beth took another sip
.
It just didn’t make sense
.
He’d been so upset when she’d acted like it wasn’t bothering her to leave last night
.
She pulled her cell phone out of her shirt
pocket
.
She’d been carrying it around with her all night and felt like heaving it into the ocean for remaining so frustratingly silent
.

Maybe something happened.

He could have been called out of town or been tied up in meetings
.
Still, he couldn’t possibly be working this late and even if he was, surely he could find two minutes to sneak away
to
call
.
She took a few more sips, already feeling a strange tingling sensation in her knees
.
Good, she wanted it to affect her, wanted it to make her forget how much her heart ached right now.

She sat there staring at the phone for a few more minutes
and
then made up her mind to call him
.
If nothing else, she’d let him know how incredibly callous he’d been
.
Beth carried the bottle with her, sipping a few times before
digging
out Sam’s number from her purse
.
It rang seven or eight times before the voicemail picked up
.
When the tone signaled to leave a message, Beth tried unsuccessfully to keep her voice steady.
 

“Sam
…
this is Anne.
”
Now what did she say
?
Tell him the truth
.
She cleared her throat
.
“I, uh, guess maybe I shouldn’t even have called
.
You’ve
made your feelings pretty clear
.
I
…
I just want you to know this weekend meant a lot to me even if it meant nothing to you
.
Take care of yourself, Sam.”
 

Beth hit the disconnect button, paused for just a few seconds,
and
then dialed his house
.
After the first ring
,
she’d half decided to hang up
.
After all, what did she really have to say to him that she hadn’t said in her message
?
But before the second ring ended, the line was picked up.