Holding the Dream (3 page)

“It's so shiny.” Kayla touched it reverently. “Can I pick some flowers for Seraphina?”

“Sure.” Leaning over, Laura kissed the top of her head. “But don't go near the edge to throw them over without me.”

“I won't. We always do it together.”

“I guess I'll help her.” Ali handed Margo the coin. But when she stood up, her pretty mouth went thin. “Seraphina was stupid to jump. Just because she wasn't going to be able to marry Felipe. Marriage is no good anyway.” Then she remembered Margo and blushed.

“Sometimes,” Laura said quietly, “marriage is wonderful and kind and strong. And other times it isn't wonderful enough, or kind enough or strong enough. But you're right, Ali, Seraphina shouldn't have jumped. When she did that, she ended everything she could have become, threw away all those possibilities. It makes me feel very sorry for her.” She watched her daughter, head drooping, shoulders hunched, walk away. “She's so hurt. She's so angry.”

“She'll get through this.” Kate gave Laura's hand a bracing squeeze. “You're doing everything right.”

“It's been three months since they've seen Peter. He hasn't even bothered to call them.”

“You're doing everything right,” Kate repeated. “You're not responsible for the asshole. She knows you're not to blame—inside she knows that.”

“I hope so.” Laura shrugged and picked at a piece of chicken. “Kayla just bounces and Ali broods. Well, I guess we're a textbook example that kids can grow up in the same house and be raised by the same people and turn out differently.”

Kate's stomach wrenched.

“True.” Margo had a low-grade urge for a cigarette, quashed it. “But we're all so fabulous. Well . . .” She smiled sweetly at Kate. “Most of us.”

“Just for that, I'm eating the last piece of chicken.” Kate popped a couple of Tums first. Medication helped her to eat when she had no desire for food. Nervous heartburn, she thought of the low burn just under her breastbone. Insisted on thinking of it that way. “I was telling Margo that I'd be able to pitch in at the shop on Saturdays.”

“We could use the help.” Laura shifted so she could continue the conversation and keep an eye on her daughters. “Last Saturday was a madhouse, and I could only give Margo four hours.”

“I can put in a full day.”

“Wonderful.” Margo plucked some glossy grapes from a
bunch. “You'll be hunkered over the computer the whole time, trying to find mistakes.”

“If you didn't make them, I wouldn't have to find them. But . . .” She held up a hand, not so much to avoid the argument as to make a point. “I'll stay at the counter, and I have twenty bucks that says I make more sales than you by the time we close.”

“In your dreams, Powell.”
 

On Monday morning, Kate wasn't thinking about dreams or treasure hunts. At nine sharp, with her third cup of coffee at her elbow, her computer booted, she was behind her desk in her office at Bittle and Associates. Following her daily routine, she had already removed her navy pin-striped jacket, draped it behind her chair, and rolled up the sleeves of her starched white shirt.

The sleeves would be rolled back down and the jacket neatly buttoned into place for her eleven o'clock meeting with a client, but for now it was just Kate and numbers.

And that was how she liked it best.

The challenge of making numbers dance and shuffle and fall neatly into place had always fascinated her. There was a beauty in the ebb and flow of interest rates, T-bills, mutual funds. And a power, she could privately admit, in understanding, even admiring, the caprice of finance, and confidently advising clients how best to protect their hard-earned money.

Not that it was always hard-earned, she thought with a snort as she studied the account on her screen. A good many of her clients had earned their money the old-fashioned way.

They'd inherited it.

Even as the thought crossed her mind, she cringed. Was that her father in her, sneering at those who had inherited wealth? Taking a deep breath, she rubbed a hand over the tense spot in the back of her neck. She had to stop this, seeing ghosts around every thought in her head.

It was her job to advise and protect and to ensure that any account she handled through Bittle was served well. Not only
was she not envious of her clients' portfolios, she worked hand in glove with lawyers, bookkeepers, brokers, agents, and estate planners to provide each and every one of them the very best in short- and long-term financial advice.

That, she reminded herself, was who she was.

What she reveled in was the numbers, their stoic and dependable consistency. For Kate two and two always and forever equaled four.

To realign herself, she skimmed through a spreadsheet for Ever Spring Nursery and Gardens. In the eighteen months since she had taken over that account, she'd watched it slowly, cautiously expand. She believed strongly in the slow and the cautious, and this client had taken her direction well. True, the payroll had swelled, but the business justified it. Outlay for the health plan and employee benefits was high and nipped at the profit margin, but as a woman raised by the Templetons, she also firmly believed in sharing success with the people who helped you earn it.

“A good year for bougainvillea,” she muttered, and made a note to suggest that her client ease some of the last quarter's profits into tax-free bonds.

Render unto Caesar, sure, she thought, but not one damn penny more than necessary.

“You look beautiful when you're plotting.”

Kate glanced up, her fingers automatically hitting the keys to store her data and bring up her screen saver. “Hello, Roger.”

He leaned against the doorjamb. Posed, was Kate's unflattering thought. Roger Thornhill was tall, dark, and handsome, with classic features reminiscent of Cary Grant in his prime. Broad shoulders fit beautifully under a tailored gray suit jacket. He had a quick, brilliant smile, dark-blue eyes that zeroed in flatteringly on a woman's face, and a smooth baritone that flowed like melted honey.

Perhaps it was for all of those reasons that Kate couldn't abide him. It was only coincidence that they were on the same
fast track for partnership. That, she assured herself often, had nothing to do with why he annoyed her.

Or just a very little to do with it.

“Your door was open,” he pointed out and strolled in without invitation. “I figured you weren't very busy.”

“I like my door open.”

He flashed that wide, toothy smile and eased a hip onto the corner of her desk. “I just got back from Nevis. A couple of weeks in the West Indies sure clears out the system after the tax crunch.” His gaze roamed over her face. “You should have come with me.”

“Roger, when I won't even have dinner with you, why would you think I'd spend two weeks frolicking with you in the sand and surf?”

“Hope springs eternal?” He took one of the pencils, sharpened like swords, from her Lucite holder, slid it idly through his fingers. Her pencils were always sharpened and always kept in the same place. There was nothing in her office that didn't have a proper slot. He knew all of them. An ambitious man, Roger made use of what he knew.

He also made use of charm, keeping his eyes on hers, smiling. “I'd just like us to get to know each other again, outside the office. Hell, Kate, it's been almost two years.”

Deliberately, she raised an eyebrow. “Since?”

“Okay, since I messed things up.” He put the pencil down. “I'm sorry. I don't know how else to say it.”

“Sorry?” Voice mild, she rose to refill her coffee, though the third cup wasn't sitting well. She sat again, watching him as she sipped. “Sorry that you were sleeping with me and one of my clients at the same time? Or that you were sleeping with me in order to get to my client? Or that you seduced said client into moving her account from my hands to yours? Which of those are you apologizing for, Roger?”

“All of them.” Because it invariably worked with females, he tried the smile again. “Look, I've already apologized countless times, but I'm willing to do it again. I had no business seeing Bess, ah, Mrs. Turner, much less sleeping with
her, while you and I were involved. There's no excuse for it.”

“We agree. Good-bye.”

“Kate.” His eyes stayed on hers, his voice flowing, just the way she remembered it had when she had moved under him, climbing toward climax. “I want to make things right with you. At least make peace with you.”

She cocked her head, considered. There was right and there was wrong. There were ethics and there was the lack of them. “No.”

“Damn it.” With his first sign of temper, he stood up from the desk, the movement jerky and abrupt. “I was a son of a bitch. I let sex and ambition get in the way of what was a good, satisfying relationship.”

“You're absolutely right,” she agreed. “And you didn't know me well the first time around if you have any hope that I'd let you repeat the performance.”

“I stopped seeing Bess months ago, on a personal level.”

“Oh, well, then.” Leaning back in her chair, Kate enjoyed a good, rolling laugh. “Jesus Christ, you're a case, Roger. You think because you've cleared the field, I'm going to suit up and jump into the game? We're associates,” she told him, “and that's all. I'm never going to make the mistake of getting involved with someone at work again, and I'm never—repeat, never—going to give you another shot.”

His mouth thinned. “You're afraid to see me outside the office. Afraid because you'd remember how good we were together.”

She had to sigh. “Roger, we weren't that good. My appraisal would put us at adequate. Let's just close the books on this one.” In the interest of sanity, she rose, held out her hand. “You want to put it behind us, let's. No hard feelings.”

Intrigued, he studied her hand, then her face. “No hard feelings?”

No feelings at all, she thought, but decided not to say it. “Fresh sheet,” she said. “We're colleagues, marginally friendly. And you'll stop pestering me about having dinner or taking trips to the West Indies.”

He took her hand. “I've missed you, Kate. Missed touching you. All right,” he said quickly when he saw her eyes narrow, “if that's the best I can do, I'll take it. I appreciate your accepting my apology.”

“Fine.” Struggling to be patient, she tugged her hand away. “Now I've got work to do.”

“I'm glad we worked this out.” He was smiling again as he walked to the door.

“Yeah, right,” she muttered. She didn't slam the door behind him. That would have indicated too much emotion. She didn't want Roger the slime Thornhill, to get the idea there was any emotion inside her where he was concerned.

But she did close the door, quietly, purposefully, before sitting back down at her desk. She took out a bottle of Mylanta, sighed a little, and chugged.

He had hurt her. It was demoralizing to remember just how much he had hurt her. She hadn't been in love with him, but with a little more time, a little more effort, she could have been. They had had the common ground of their work, which she believed could have served as a strong foundation for more.

She had cared for him, and trusted him, and enjoyed him.

And he had used her ruthlessly to steal one of her biggest clients. That was almost worse than discovering he'd been jumping from her bed to her client's bed and back again.

Kate took another swig from the bottle before recapping it. She had, at the time, considered going to Larry Bittle with a formal complaint. But her pride had outweighed whatever satisfaction she might have gleaned from that.

The client was satisfied, and that was the bottom line at Bittle. Roger would have lost some ground, certainly, if she'd filed a complaint. Others in the office would have distrusted him, pulled back from him.

And she would have looked like the whining, betrayed female, sniveling because she had mixed sex and business and had lost.

Better that she'd kept it to herself, Kate decided and put the
Mylanta back in her drawer. Better that she'd been able to say, straight to his face, that she had put the whole incident behind her.

Even if it was a lie, even if she would detest him for the rest of her life.

With a shrug, she recalled her data. Better by far to avoid slick, smart, gorgeous men with more ambition than heart. Better, much better, to stay in the fast lane on the career track and avoid any and all distractions. Partnership was waiting, with all the success it entailed.

When she had that partnership, had climbed to that next rung, she would have earned it. And maybe, she thought, just maybe, when she reached that level of success, she would be able to prove to herself that she was not her father's daughter.

She smiled a little as she began to run figures. Stick with numbers, pal, she reminded herself. They never lie.

The minute Kate walked into Pretenses, Margo scowled. “You look like death.”

“Thanks. I want coffee.” And a moment alone. She headed up the curving stairs to the second floor, found the pot already brewing.

She knew she hadn't slept more than three hours, not after poring over every detail in the report from the detective back east. And every detail had confirmed that she was the daughter of a thief.

It was all there—the evidence, the charges, the statements. And reading through those papers had killed the faint hope she'd hidden even from herself that it had all been some sort of mistake.

Instead, she had learned that her father had been out on bail at the time of the accident and had instructed his lawyer to accept the plea bargain he'd been offered. If he hadn't been killed that night on that icy stretch of road, he would have been in prison within the week.

Telling herself to accept it, to get on with her life, she drank her coffee hot and black. She needed to go back down, get to work. And face a friend who knew her too well to miss signs of stress.

Well, she thought, carrying her cup with her, she had other excuses for a poor night's sleep. And there was nothing to be gained by obsessing over facts that couldn't be changed. From this moment, Kate promised herself, she would cease to think about it.

“What's going on?” Margo demanded when Kate wound her way down the stairs. “I want an answer this time. You've been jumpy and out of sorts for weeks. And I swear you're losing weight with every breath. This has just gone on long enough, Kate.”

“I'm fine. Tired.” She shrugged. “A couple of accounts are giving me some problems. On top of that it's been a weird week.” Kate opened the cash register, counted out the bills and coins for morning change. “Monday, that scum Thornhill came slinking into my office.”

Margo turned from setting up the teapot. “I hope you kicked his ass right out again.”

“I let him think we've made up. It was easier,” she said before Margo could comment. “He's more likely to leave me alone now.”

“You're not going to tell me that's what's keeping you up at night.”

“It gave me some bad moments, okay?”

“Okay.” Margo smiled in sympathy. “Men are pigs, and that one is a blue ribbon hog. Don't waste your beauty sleep on him, honey.”

“Thanks. Anyway, that was only the first weird thing.”

“The wacky life of a CPA.”

“Wednesday, I got tossed this new account. Freeland. It's a petting zoo, kiddie park, museum. Very strange. I'm learning all about how much it costs to feed a baby llama.”

Margo paused. “You lead such a fascinating life.”

“You're telling me. Then yesterday, the partners all
huddled together for most of the afternoon. Even the secretaries were barred. Nobody has a clue, but the rumor is somebody's about to be canned or promoted.” Kate shrugged and closed the cash register. “I've never seen them powwow like that. They had to make their own coffee.”

“Stop the presses.”

“Look, my little world has just as much intrigue and drama as anyone else's.” She stepped back as Margo advanced on her. “What?”

“Just hold still.” Grabbing Kate's lapel, Margo pinned on a crescent-shaped brooch dangling with drops of amber. “Advertise the merchandise.”

“It's got dead bugs in it.”

Margo didn't bother to sigh. “Put some lipstick on, for God's sake. We open in ten minutes.”

“I don't have any with me. And I'll tell you right now, I'm not going to work with you all day if you're going to be picking on me. I can sell, ring up, and box just fine without painting my face.”

“Fine.” Before Kate could evade her, Margo picked up an atomizer and spritzed her with perfume. “Advertise the merchandise,” she repeated. “If anyone asks what you're wearing, it's Bella Donna's Savage.”

Kate had just worked up a snarl when Laura burst in. “I thought I was going to be late. Ali had a hair emergency. I was afraid one of us would kill the other before it was over.”

“She's getting more like Margo every day.” Wishing it were coffee, Kate strolled over to pour herself tea and used it to wash down a palm full of pills she didn't want either of her friends to see. “I meant that in the worst possible way,” she added.

“A young girl becoming interested in appearance and grooming is natural,” Margo shot back. “You were the changeling in the family. Still are, as you constantly prove, by going around like a scarecrow dressed in navy blue serge.”

Unoffended, Kate sipped at her tea. “Navy serge is classic because it's serviceable. There is only a very small percentage
of the population who feel honor bound to fart through silk.”

“Jesus, you're crude,” Margo managed over a laugh. “I don't even want to argue with you.”

“That's a relief.” Hoping to keep it that way, Laura hurried over to turn the Open sign around. “I'm still cross-eyed from arguing with Allison. If Annie hadn't intervened, it would have been hairbrushes at ten paces.”

“Mum always could defuse a good fight,” Margo commented. “Okay, ladies, remember, we're pushing Mother's Day. And in case it slipped both of your minds, expectant mothers also warrant gifts.”

Kate braced for the onslaught and struggled to ignore the viselike clamp on her temples that was usually the sign of a migraine on the boil.

Within an hour Pretenses was busy enough to keep all three of them occupied. Kate boxed up a Herme`s bag of dark-green leather, wondering what anyone needed with a green leather purse. But the slick slide of the credit card machine kept her cheerful. She was, by her calculations, neck and neck with Margo on sales.

It was a fine feeling, she thought as she wrapped the gold and silver box in elegant floral paper, watching the business progress. And the combo of competition and medication had eased the headache that had been threatening.

She had to give Margo full credit for it. Pretenses had been a dream rising like smoke from the ashes of Margo's life.

Just over a year ago, Margo's career as a popular model in Europe, her exposure and financial rewards as the Bella Donna Woman, had been rudely cut off. Not that Margo was blameless, Kate thought, smiling as she handed the purchase to her customer. She'd been reckless, foolish, headstrong. But she hadn't deserved to lose everything.

She'd come back from Milan broken and nearly bankrupt, but in a matter of months, through her own grit, she had turned her life around.

Opening a shop and selling her possessions in it had been Josh Templeton's idea originally. His idea, Kate mused, to
keep Margo from sinking, since he was blindly in love with her. But Margo had expanded the idea, nurtured it, polished it.

Then Laura, reeling from her husband's deceit, betrayal, and greed, had taken the bulk of what he'd left of her money and helped Margo buy the building for Pretenses.

When Kate had insisted on acquiring a one-third interest, thus making herself a partner, it had been because she believed in the investment, because she believed in Margo. And because she didn't want to be left out of the fun.

Of all of them, she understood the risks best. Nearly forty percent of new businesses failed within a year, and almost eighty percent went under within five.

And Kate worried over it, gnawed on it at night when she couldn't sleep. But Pretenses, Margo's conception of an elegant, exclusive, and unique secondhand shop that offered everything from designer gowns to teaspoons, was holding its own.

Kate's part in it might have been small, and her reasons for getting involved certainly straddled the practical and the emotional, but she was enjoying herself. When she wasn't obsessing.

Here was proof, after all, that life could be what you made of it. She badly needed to hang on to that idea.

“Is there something I can show you?” The man she smiled at was thirtyish, attractive in a rugged, lived-in manner. She appreciated the worn jeans, the faded shirt, the dashing reddish moustache.

“Ah, well, maybe. This necklace here.”

She looked down into the display, zeroed in on his choice. “It's pretty, isn't it? Pearls are so classic.”

Not regular pearls, she thought as she lifted the necklace out. What the hell were they called? She continued to search through her mind as she draped the necklace over a velvet form.

“Seed pearls,” she remembered and beamed at him. He really was awfully cute. “It's called a lariat,” she added.
She'd gotten that off the tag. “Three strands, and the clasp, or the slide thing has a . . .” Give me a minute. “A mabe pearl set in gold. Tradition with a flair,” she added, enjoying the ad lib.

“I wondered how much . . .” Hesitating, he flipped the tiny, discreet price tag over. To his credit, he winced only slightly. “Well,” he smiled a little, “it hits the top of my price range.”

“It's something she'll wear for years. Is it for Mother's Day?”

“Yeah.” He shifted his feet, running a calloused finger over the strands. “She'd go nuts over it.”

She melted toward him. Any man who would take such time and trouble for a gift for his mother earned top points from Kate Powell. Especially when he looked just a little bit like Kevin Costner. “We have several other really nice pieces that aren't quite so expensive.”

“No, I think . . . maybe . . . Could you put it on so I could get a better picture?”

“Sure.” Happy to oblige, she fastened it around her neck. “What do you think? Is it great?” She angled the counter mirror so that she could judge for herself and added, laughing, “If you don't buy it, I might have to snap it up myself.”

“It looks awfully pretty on you,” he said with a shy, quiet smile that made her want to scoop him up and bundle him into the back room. “She's got dark hair like you. Wears it longer, but the pearls look good with dark hair. I guess I'll have to take it. Along with that box over there, the silver one with all the fancy scrolling.”

Still wearing the necklace, Kate scooted out from behind the counter to get the trinket box he'd pointed to. “Two presents.” She reached up to undo the necklace clasp. “Your mother must be a very special woman.”

“Oh, she's great. She's going to like this box. She sort of collects them. The necklace is for my wife, though,” he added. “I'm getting all my Mother's Day shopping done at one time.”

“Your wife.” Kate forced herself to keep her lips cheerily
curved at the corners. “I guarantee she'll love it. But if she or your mother prefers something else, we have a thirty-day exchange and return policy.” With what she considered admirable restraint, Kate laid the necklace down. “Now, will that be cash or charge?”

Ten minutes later she watched him saunter out. “The cute ones,” she muttered to Laura, “the nice ones, the ones who love their mothers are all married.”

“There, there.” Laura patted Kate's arm before reaching under the counter to select the proper box. “It looked like a very good sale.”

“Puts me at least two hundred up on Margo. And the day's young.”

“That's the spirit. But I should warn you, she's got one back in the wardrobe room now, and she's definitely leaning toward Versace.”

“Shit.” Kate turned to scan the main showroom for prey. “I'm going for the blue-haired lady with the Gucci bag. She's mine.”

“Reel her in, tiger.”

Kate didn't break for lunch and told herself it was because she wanted to keep up her momentum, not because her stomach was acting up again. She had tremendous success in the second-floor ladies' boudoir and racked up two peignoirs, a stained-glass accent lamp, and a tasseled footstool.

Maybe she did sneak into the back room a couple of times to boot up the computer and check Margo's bookkeeping. But only when her lead was comfortable. She corrected the expected mistakes, rolled her eyes over a few unexpected ones, and tidied up the files.

She was forced to admit, in the end, that accountant's lapse was what cost her the victory. When she came back, smug, already preparing the lecture she intended to deliver to Margo on the cost of careless accounting, her rival was closing a sale.

A whopper.

Kate knew antiques. A child didn't grow up at Templeton House and not learn to recognize and appreciate them. Her
heart sank even as dollar signs revolved in her head when she recognized the piece Margo was cooing over.

Louis XVI, Kate recited in her head. A
secrétaire-a`-abattant
, probably near 1775. The marquetry panels, typical of that era, included vases and garlands of flowers, musical instruments and drapery.

Oh, it was a stunner, Kate thought, and one of the remaining pieces from Margo's original stock.

“I'm sorry to lose it,” Margo was telling the dapper white-haired gentleman who leaned on a gold-headed cane and studied the
secretaire
and the woman who described it with equal admiration. “I bought it in Paris several years ago.”

“You have a wonderful eye. In fact, you have two wonderful eyes.”

“Oh, Mr. Stiener, that's so sweet of you.” In her shameless style, Margo trailed a finger down his arm. “I do hope you'll think of me, now and again, when you're enjoying this.”

“I can promise you I will. Now, as to shipping?”

“Just come over to the counter and I'll take all the necessary information.” Margo crossed the room, hips swinging, and shot Kate a triumphant look.

“I think that crushes you for the day, ace,” she said when her customer strolled out.

“The day's not over,” Kate insisted. “We still have two hours until closing. So until the fat lady sings—which will be you in a few months—don't count your chickens.”

“Such a sore loser.” Margo clucked her tongue and was ready to pounce when the door jangled. It wasn't a customer, but she pounced anyway. “Josh!”