Leah looked up at Danny. He held her stare evenly with a gaze that told her he was there for her if she needed a friend. She did, but for the first time in years Danny Anderson wasn’t going to cut it.
She covered her eyes. “Oh, Danny Boy. What the hell am I going to do?”
He stood up and reached over to ruffle her hair, back in its tight ponytail where it belonged. “I don’t know, sweetie. Only you can figure that out. I’ll email you some pictures for inspiration. Though I think the photo that will inspire you most is in your top drawer under your files.”
With that, he left her office. Leah looked around her, feeling like a thief in her own space. She hadn’t realized Danny knew her little secret.
She opened her drawer and reached under the files. What she produced was a four by six picture frame with a photo of Sean staring out at her. She set it on her desk and examined at it for a long time. He was different now than when she’d taken this snapshot at a University of Pennsylvania football game so many years before. His face had grown more angled, his body more muscular and tanned. He had matured and grown more refined as he honed his business skills.
But his smile was the same. And the love in his eyes hadn’t changed either.
Despite all that, if he didn’t want her as a full partner in his life, she couldn’t give him less. Or settle for less herself, no matter how tempting the prospect was.
“Sean,” she whispered as she leaned her head forward until it clunked against the flat screen monitor. She let it rest like that for a while, just thinking about everything that had happened and wondering what would happen next. Only she couldn’t control that. The ball was in Sean’s court. She could only wait and see how he chose to play it.
***
Sean straightened his tie and tried to look like he belonged. He didn’t. Roger Prescott had made that clear more than once, but it wasn’t going to stop him. Leah was in this building and he was going to find her. Even if he had to bulldoze through Prescott and twenty of his bodyguards to do it.
“May I help you?”
Sean looked at the receptionist with a start and forced the bouquet of island flowers behind his back on instinct.
“Sir?” She looked at him with a blank, yet friendly expression. It didn’t seem like she’d been put on guard for him. At least, not yet. If he played his cards right, he could be upstairs with Leah before someone alerted the Pennsylvania National Guard to his intrusion.
“I’m here to see Leah Prescott. Can you tell me which office is hers?” He hated the slight squeak to his voice. He needed to be tough on Roger Prescott’s turf if he was going to pull this off under his very nose.
The secretary blinked and adjusted her trendy glasses to examine him closer. “Is Miss Prescott expecting you?”
He thought briefly about their parting the day before. Expecting him? Hell, he didn’t know if she’d throw something at him.
“Uh, not exactly.” He winced when the woman’s friendliness began to fade.
“I’ll have to call up to let her know you’re coming, sir.” She picked up the phone. “Your name?”
Sean flinched. He didn’t want to set an appointment with Leah’s secretary. He didn’t want to give her the chance to turn down a meeting request via email. He wanted to waltz into her office like he was in a Cary Grant movie and tell her everything he’d rehearsed on the plane ride to Philadelphia. He had notes. He had a plan. Now he just needed the love of his life.
“Look, I just want to surprise the woman. I’m in a suit, I have flowers, can’t you tell that-”
The secretary’s face finished its transformation from blank and friendly to hard and cautious in the blink of an eye. “Sir, I can’t tell anything about you except that you don’t have an appointment. This is a business, a publishing company with deadlines to meet and articles to be written. We can’t just have anyone off the street dropping by uninvited. Miss Prescott has a lot of fans of her editorials and reviews. I’m sure she’d be very happy to hear from you, as all our columnists are. We simply ask that you go through the proper channels. You can write to her at traveleditor at-”
Sean flinched. “You’re trying to give me her public email address?”
She pursed her lips, a sure sign of a woman who knew the receptionist had all the power. “Sir, I really have to insist-”
The woman’s hand hung over the phone. Sean knew what was coming next. She’d buzz security and he’d be removed, no probably banned from the building. Leah would get wind of it, as would her father. He might never get his chance to tell her what he’d come all the way here to say.
“Maddie, it’s okay. I know this guy.”
Sean looked over to the elevators to see Danny Anderson coming across the marble floor toward him. His face was unreadable, but at that moment, Sean would have called him his best friend.
“Mr. Anderson?” The woman still regarded Sean with unmasked suspicion.
“This is the owner of the resort Leah and I just came back from,” Danny explained without taking his eyes off Sean. “I’m sure Leah will be more than happy to see him without an appointment. In fact, I’d be glad to escort him upstairs to her office personally.”
The woman’s face shifted back to the open friendship she’d first offered. “Oh, I’m so sorry, sir. You should have mentioned who you were. We certainly always welcome industry professionals at
Get-Aways
.”
“Not a problem. My mistake.” Sean followed Danny to the elevators.
The second the elevator door shut, Danny turned on Sean with a frown that told him he wasn’t getting anywhere unless Leah’s best friend approved of his motives.
“I don’t know what happened on the island after I left.” Danny leaned against the elevator wall with folded arms. “Leah won’t tell me much, but she’s been pretty upset since I got on the plane in Jamaica. If you’re coming here to mess with her head, you’re going to have to deal with me.”
Sean couldn’t help but smile. Leah had loyal friends. People who loved and took care of her. Even her parents, misguided as they were, only wanted their own twisted version of the best for her. She just brought that out in people. All people. Most of all, him.
“Danny, I love her,” he said softly. He was willing to declare that from the rooftops if it gave him just five minutes with Leah, the person he needed to tell most. “I don’t know if coming here is going to hurt her, but I know if I stay back on the island it’s going to hurt her more. And it just might kill me. If you have to beat the hell out of me in order for me to get to her, I suggest you start now. Because the second this elevator stops, I’m going to find her. With you or through you is your choice.”
Danny stared at him for a long moment and Sean began to wonder if he really was going to get to Leah with a busted jaw. Then the other man smiled.
“She’s in office 350. Go left when you exit the elevator and right at the end of the hall. Whatever you do, don’t go left at the end of the hall.”
“Why?” Sean asked as the elevator doors opened and he stepped out.
“That’s where her father’s office is located.” Danny laughed as the elevator doors slipped shut again and left Sean alone on the busy magazine floor.
People hurried past him, hardly seeing him and certainly not trying to stop him as he made his way toward Leah’s office. His breath came shorter with each step and his heartbeat got so loud he almost couldn’t hear the din of talk in the cubes or the whiz of printers in the background.
The only thing that filled his mind and his senses was Leah. Would she be happy to see him or angry? Would she call security like the secretary downstairs had wanted to do? Or worse yet, her Dad?
No, he didn’t think she’d do that. When she’d boarded her plane the day before, she’d told him he knew where to find her if he ever pulled his head out of his ass. She might not be expecting him, but he was sure she’d at least hear him out.
There was no telling how she’d react after that.
Sean turned right at the end of the hall and found himself staring at a door marked 350. It was cracked open, inviting him to peek in before he went inside to face his destiny. He crept forward and leaned into the opening. He found Leah sitting at her desk facing the door with her head leaned against her computer screen.
Sean smiled. If she was that upset, he had a chance. One he had to take.
He pushed the door open quietly and leaned against the doorjamb. “I love you.”
***
Leah’s eyes flashed open at the sound of Sean’s voice, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to lift her head. He couldn’t really be there. Hearing him had to be a terrible joke her sleep-deprived mind was playing on her. If she dared to look at her door, he wouldn’t be there. It would be Danny or the copy clerk, or… she shivered… her father.
“Leah?”
There was Sean’s imaginary voice again. She slowly titled her head and let her gaze move over to the door. When she saw him actually standing there, she gasped. It was really him. Not some dream, not a fantasy. Him.
She lifted her head with as much dignity as she could muster and smiled weakly. “Hello.”
That was it? She’d spent a night alternately crying her eyes out and dreaming of Sean’s body moving inside of hers and when she saw him all she could manage to say was hello?
He produced a bouquet of flowers from behind his back. Stepping forward, he set his peace offering on the edge of her desk, then retreated back to give her space.
“These are from your island,” she whispered as she gathered the bouquet to her chest and took in a deep breath of their heady fragrance. It put her to mind of the first night she’d spent on Sean’s island, when he’d seduced her senses of smell and taste. When he’d begun the process of winning her heart again.
“Yes.” His hand trailed up to his collar and he adjusted his tie uncomfortably. She smiled. He looked like a page out of GQ Magazine, but she knew deep down he was wishing he was wearing a pair of swim trunks, no shirt and walking on the beach.
The question was, did he want her there beside him? Her heart thudded as she looked into his eyes. There was only one way to find out.
“Sean,” she said past parched lips. “Why are you here? I’m sure it isn’t just to bring me flowers.”
“Leah.” He sighed. “You-you were right about me shutting you out all those years ago. I was so focused on making it on my own that I lost sight of the promise I’d made to you when I asked you to be my wife.”
“The promise?” she said softly as her heart rate increased to what she knew had to be a dangerous level. She only hoped she wouldn’t pass out from emotional overload before Sean said his piece.
“Marriage is an agreement to be partners in pain as well as pleasure. In hardship as well as success.” He stepped closer to her desk and for the first time she saw the lines of worry around his eyes. The slight glint of fear inside the gray. He was vulnerable to her. Only her. “Until you reminded me yesterday morning, I’d forgotten that. I let it color our relationship, both in the distant past and this past week. I came here to tell you that I’m sorry.”
Leah felt herself rise from the desk even though she didn’t remember making an order to her legs to move. “But what can we do about that, Sean?” she whispered as she took a few tentative steps toward him. “I need a partner, a man who wants me to support and be involved in his life.”
“Do you want that man to be me?” He seemed to hold his breath as he waited for her answer.
Leah’s face softened. Sean didn’t know how many times she’d tried to forget him over the years. No amount of spying and information gathering could tell him that she’d compared each and every man she’d dated to him, that they’d all come up short by far.
“I told you before I left the island that I love you,” she said as she finally reached his side. With trembling fingers she touched his arm, felt his heat beneath the suit, felt his muscles contract. His eyes held hers, waiting for her to finish with intense anticipation. “And I meant it. I do love you and I want you to be the man I love for the rest of my life. But only if we can be on some kind of even ground.”
Sean let out his breath in one burst, then dug into his pocket. He produced her list of backers, the one she’d given him before she left the island. With trembling hands, he held it out.
She stared at it in confusion. Was he trying to tell her he couldn’t accept her help? With a frown, she slid her gaze to his.
“Open it,” he said softly.
She did so with hands that shook so hard she nearly ripped the pages in half. On her typed list were handwritten notes, mostly in Sean’s scrawling handwriting. Beside some names were checkmarks and dollar amounts. Others were crossed off. But the total he’d written at the bottom of the sheets made her eyes go wide.
“With some finesse by Will, we’ve gotten backing for even more money than we had with the investors we lost. The press releases go out today,” Sean explained with a grin that was infectious. “And we owe it all to you.”
Tears pricked Leah’s eyes as she stared from the list to Sean. “You used my tips?”
“I did.” He nodded. “And while I can’t promise you I’ll always turn to you for business advice, I do promise that I won’t shut you out again. I can tell you making it with your help felt a whole hell of a lot better than making it all alone.”