Think About Love (30 page)

"I need you to go to Paris next week," said Tim Mirimar.

Samantha looked up from her computer. "I'm still working on the Brooks file."

Tim dropped his lanky body into the client's chair on the far side of her desk. "I've got a midsize software company just outside Paris about to make the jump. Staffing problems, facilities problems, and fulfillment problems. The company president wants
you.
He's heard about your work with Tremaine's."

Her fingers jerked at the word
Tremaine's.
 

Where was Cal now? She'd heard Tim's secretary mention last week that Cal couldn't make a meeting because he'd had to fly to San Francisco. Had he returned? Was he at his house on the lake, or still at Tremaine's, working late?

"Sam? About Paris? Next week?"

"Sorry." She shook herself and dragged her mind away from Cal. "I'm spending the long weekend up in Canada with my niece. I could fly out Wednesday."

"Why not fly out of Vancouver? Spend a few extra hours with your family?"

"I'll think about it. I'll call the agent tomorrow to book my flight." Tim was at the door before she asked, "Have you found someone to fill my old job yet?"

He turned and leaned against the door, considering her.

"Cal has picked faults with every candidate. I don't think it matters who I give him, he'll find reasons to turn it down."

"But he needs—there were problems with the developer, and the accountant was off for a leave of absence. Have you—"

"You said you didn't want to talk about Tremaine's unless I needed specific information."

Forbidding the subject hadn't stopped her thinking about Cal, hadn't stopped her searching for his name in industry news reports or missing him constantly. If he would hire someone to take her place, maybe that would help.

"What about Trace Olsen?" she asked.

"I can't headhunt a key man from one of my clients to look after another client."

She flushed. "No, of course not. I shouldn't—It's hard for me to keep my hands off it after being there so long." Hard to forget Cal, to go back to being Samantha Jones, consultant and free agent.

"You could go back. He doesn't want anyone else. He wants you."

Her hand froze on the keyboard. "He didn't say that?"

"Not in so many words."

If he had, would it change anything?
I'd better leave Tremaine's,
she'd said.

He hadn't tried to stop her.

"I'm thrilled to have you back, Sam, but from where I sit, your leaving Tremaine's doesn't make a lot of sense. I've seen your contract. Six months and you'd have had a major block of stock, a seat on the board."

She closed down her computer and stood. "You're a good friend, Tim. Don't ask."

"Hmm. You're driving to Canada tonight?"

"In the morning. I'm too late to make the ferry connections tonight. I'll call the travel agent from my cell phone." She slipped on her jacket and reached for her purse.

"There's a rumor at Tremaine's that you and Cal were getting married."

She shook her head. "Leave it alone, Tim."

"Over the weekend, why don't you ask yourself why you left Cal Tremaine's?"

Because he told me he'd had enough. Because he looked at me as if he hated me.

Samantha's apartment on Magnolia Bluff overlooked the harbor, and after she'd let herself in, she stood on the balcony staring out over the ocean.

Why wouldn't Cal hire someone else? She'd arranged for Tim to consult, had drafted a job description and a list of possible people Tim might try headhunting for the position. Cal couldn't sit there without anyone at the administrative helm for long, not with Tremaine's rate of expansion. Last week, she'd heard that he'd closed a new ASP deal with a major telecommunications company in California. The administrative fallout would be massive. She'd have to—

It wasn't hers any more. Cal wasn't hers any more. She felt the too-familiar wave of tears rising and let them come. Fighting the tears didn't help. They only waited for her, sabotaging her when she felt weakest.

She drew the chain she now wore around her neck from under her blouse, found her wedding ring, and held it as the tears flowed. If only she'd been different, able to love easily, to be what Cal wanted. If she hadn't been so militant, so damned determined to keep control of everything including her own feelings for him, she might have kept his love, might have earned the right to keep it.

If she had a chance to do it all again....

She wiped her tears with the sleeve of her jacket. She was such a wimp, standing on the balcony,
pining
for a man who'd told her he'd had enough.

She thought of the men her mother had left. Samantha had managed to witness a wide variety of men dealing with Jeanette's abandonment. Most of them had been angry. Pete had gotten drunk for a week. Wayne had locked himself in his room for three days, emerging hollow-eyed and grim. They'd all managed to look pretty normal after a couple of weeks.

Maybe that's why she'd thought she'd be over the pain of Cal in a matter of weeks, but it wasn't going to be that easy. Two months now and she had her life working, but without Cal everything seemed flat, empty.

Maybe Paris would help. It was too easy to pick up gossip and news about Cal in Seattle. If Paris helped, she should consider a move. She'd move to Vancouver, where she'd be only a fifteen-minute seaplane ride from Gabriola. She'd spend all her weekends with Kippy and Dorothy, fill her life with her niece and her grandmother, and look up some of her old school friends.

Leaving wouldn't be fair to Tim, but he seemed to know she wasn't content and he'd been urging her to go back to Tremaine's, so he must be prepared to lose her. It had been a mistake staying this close to Cal, but she'd underestimated the power, the endurance of her feelings for him.

She turned and stared through the open patio doors into her apartment. She'd have no trouble subleasing, and with her dual citizenship there'd be no work-permit problems. Vancouver had a booming software industry where she could put her consulting talents to good use. She had contacts up there, had done a couple of jobs for Tim that took her into Canada.

Maybe she'd start her own firm in Vancouver. The challenge might wake her up again, make her stop spending every night yearning for Cal's arms, every morning devastated that she hadn't woken beside him.

This is bad, Jones. You can't live this way.

She jerked when the telephone rang. Dorothy. Of course it would be Dorothy, calling to confirm that she'd decided to stay the night in Seattle.

She grabbed the remote from an end table and pushed the TALK button.

"Moonbeam? Darling, I've been calling all day! You're finally home!"

"Mother?" Jeanette sounded close, as if she were next door. "Where are you?"

Jeanette laughed the heated, overexcited laugh Samantha had heard so often. "Moonbeam, darling, I'm at the airport. In transit, would you believe, and I'm with the most wonderful man. Darling, wait until you meet your new father!"

Samantha sighed. "Mother, when your daughter is thirty-one, marrying a man doesn't make him her father. You told me Frank was your forever man. You said you loved him as you'd never loved another man."

"Oh, Moonbeam! Frank was such hard work. All that self-analysis, and he made such a scene when I quit therapy. He said I had a
borderline personality!
Can you believe it! A man who spends his life listening to crazy people!"

"Oh, Mom—" What was the point of saying anything to Jeanette? She'd always been this way, wouldn't change. "I hope you'll be happy," she said, and it was true, although the odds were against this husband lasting any longer than the others.

"You'll love him, Moonbeam! We're flying to Spain to visit his family—he has the sweetest granddaughter."

"You have a granddaughter, too. Kippy's eight months now, and you've never seen her."

"In good time, darling. We'll come to you after Spain. We'll discuss it all then. Good-bye, Moonbeam darling!"

"Mother, I'm—" Samantha heard a click and the line went dead. "I'm going to Paris," she muttered. "I'm probably moving to Vancouver, and where the devil are you?" No phone number, no address. How typically Jeanette. Another marriage, because Frank had become such hard work. Jeanette never lasted past the honeymoon in any relationship.

...When it comes to the crux, you're gone. Just like your damned mother. You don't walk out, but you leave just the same. You leave your body and your eyes behind, and you hide....

Samantha dropped the phone on the chair and backed away from it.

It hadn't been like that. She'd woken up intending to tell him she loved him. He was the one who didn't want her any more. He was the one who'd given up.

You didn't tell him you loved him, didn't have the courage because he looked up and frowned at you.

Just a frown, and she'd wimped out. She'd made a promise to Cal; she'd exchanged vows. Not in a church, but civil vows. She'd signed the contract, too, promising him eighteen years, but she'd only given him five days.

The night before the wedding, she'd had doubts, and Wayne had assured her that she could do it by pointing out her promise to be there for Kippy.
If the going gets tough, if that promise means you have to rearrange your own life, it doesn't change the promise, does it?

For Jeanette, it did:
Frank was such hard work.

Cal had been hard work. He'd stirred her every time he touched her, made her nervous each time he tried to do something for her. He'd accused her of wearing a mask, shoving business between them when she felt control slipping, and he was right. She'd done that, deliberately.

He'd sat across the table from her at the resort and told her he loved her, and she'd said
no,
she didn't want it. He hadn't given up
then
, but in the end he'd lost faith in her. And he'd told her it was over.

Once she got to Paris, it would be easier.

Running, always running.
Paris. Vancouver. God help her, she was playing some backward version of her mother's craziness. She couldn't forget Cal, so she was running. How far would she have to go?
 

You're a coward, Sam, a twenty-four carat, gold-plated coward.

She hadn't even tried to change his mind. She'd gone to court to fight for Kippy, to get her out of foster care and back to her family, but she hadn't said one word to stop Cal leaving her. She pulled in a jagged breath and pushed back a strand of hair that had escaped the fastener. Next week, she'd contact him. She'd drop him a note, ask him to lunch. Then she'd....

She'd be in Paris next week.

A note wasn't exactly the height of courage.

Tonight. She'd call him tonight and ask....

She stared at the phone.
 

Ask what? If she could see him? Wasn't she enough of a businesswoman to know better than to make it easy for the other party to say
no?
The phone wouldn't do, and forget e-mail and texting. This had to be face to face, without giving him time to decide he'd rather not have to deal with her again.

She'd drive over to Tremaine's. She'd go up the elevator and face him across his desk in his office. She'd tell him—

It was after hours. What if he wasn't there?

What if he was there, and wouldn't let her in?

She'd go to Tremaine's first, find out. If Cal was in the building, she was pretty sure she could talk the security guard into letting her in. He'd recognize her, and she didn't think Cal would have given orders to forbid her entrance.

If he wasn't at work, she'd drive out to Washington Lake and pound on his door. Surely he'd let her in, and if he wouldn't—

He would. She'd treated him badly during the few days of their marriage—at least, during some of the daylight hours, she'd treated him badly, but he'd been unfailingly patient until the last day, in the courthouse.

She'd better wash her face, put on some lipstick.

In the bathroom, she stared at her face. Lipstick wasn't enough. She ran cold water and soaked her swollen eyes with a cold cloth. What if Cal wasn't in Seattle at all? What if—

So she'd waste an hour driving out to Washington Lake and back? What else was she going to do with the evening?

With the cool cloth and a bit of makeup, she looked fairly normal, pretty much as she did every day in the office. The first time Cal had seen her with her hair down, he'd stared at it as if he'd never seen long hair before. Afterward, he'd touched it. She closed her eyes and she could feel his hands in her hair. So gentle. He'd been so careful with her.

Next time, if there was a next time, she'd drive him beyond gentleness. She'd show him exactly how much she ached for him.

She reached up and tugged the clasp out, then she brushed her hair to dark glistening smoothness.
He might remember
.

A business suit wasn't exactly the best choice to tempt a man. She stumbled into the bedroom and impatiently rummaged through her closet. She didn't have anything that seemed right. Business suits. Summer shorts and brief tops for hot summer evenings when she escaped to the lake for a swim after work. Jeans... she'd worn jeans all through their honeymoon weekend. Would he remember?