Almost A Honeymoon. Susan Crosby
day, kid. Relax, okay? Pretend you’re on vacation.”
“Did you and Warner conspire? That’s exactly what he said. But as you’ll both recall, it was my vacation that started this mess.”
“We all make mistakes.”
“Yeah, well, mine was a doozy.”
“It’ll turn out, kid. Keep the faith.”
She cradled the receiver softly. “This is the worst possible time for me to be away.”
“Why?” Rye finished the sentence he was writing, then looked up.
“We’ve got a big deal cooking, a potential merger. My father tends to take risks with the company he has no business taking. If I’m not there to intervene, I’m afraid of what will happen.”
“Your father built that company on risks.”
“But it’s stable now. A lot of people depend on him for work. He has to be more careful.” She stood and refilled her coffee cup before moving to stand by the mantel to stare at the fire. “It doesn’t matter. He’ll do what he wants anyway and tell me about it later.”
“Don’t you ever get messed up?”
She turned around. He had assumed a casual pose—one ankle crossed over his knee, his arm stretched along the back of the couch, a pencil dangling lightly from his fingers. She didn’t like the way he studied her.
“What do you mean?”
He gestured with a quick hand. “I mean nothing on you wrinkles or clings or droops. Not a strand of hair out of place. Would any dare?”
Rye watched her pat her hair, was interested in the way she touched an item on the mantel and examined the details before inspecting the next curio. His nose twitched at the unnamed scent that trailed her as she moved around the room. He suddenly wished her hair wasn’t so flawless, wanted to brush a loose strand behind her ear. Any excuse to touch her, to feel that little jolt between them that he chose to acknowledge and she probably chose to deny.
“Would you tell me about Falcon?” he asked.
“To what purpose?”
Rye grinned. “You must be dynamite in negotiations. Are you always so circumspect?”
“I can keep my own counsel, if that’s what you mean. I don’t let emotion interfere with the business at hand.”
“Until Falcon,” Rye said pointedly.
“Joey wasn’t business.”
He bowed his head. “Touché.”
Paige lifted her coffee cup then set it back down. “Joey Falcon is terminally cute.”
“Terminally cute.” Rye tried not to choke on the words.
“And doggedly devoted.”
“You liked that?”
“I don’t psychoanalyze myself. I guess I thought it was what I wanted, at least briefly. I don’t know. I don’t really even care anymore. I just want him out of my life for good.”
“That’s a real possibility, depending on who catches up with him first.”
Paige winced. “I don’t want him harmed. I just want him to stop being an albatross around my neck.”
She watched Rye fix a plate of food for himself and shook her head at his offer to get her something. The silence between them stretched uncomfortably.
“I was surprised when I found out your age,” he said at last. “Patrick is forty-six, right? That means he was eighteen when you were born.”
She embraced the sudden change of subject. “My mother was seventeen.”
He approached the hearth to stand beside her. “That’s what you meant when you said you grew up together. Sorry, I didn’t mean to eavesdrop...”
“My mother died when I was four. Her family had never accepted their marriage, so my parents had moved in with my dad’s father, supposedly just until Dad could finish high school. Grandad was the one who started O’Halloran Shipping. When he passed away—I was six, I think—the business was almost bankrupt. My father turned it around.”
“More than that. What kind of price did you pay?”
“Me?” Paige was startled. No one had ever questioned what she had given up through the years.
“A young father, a growing business demanding every minute of his time. Did you pass from one baby-sitter to another, one housekeeper to another?”
“I grew up at my father’s feet. The first few years, whenever I wasn’t in school, I was at the office, or following him to the docks, or traveling with him to sign deals. We made an apartment out of some office space, then as the business boomed we bought a house. I worked for the firm in various capacities until I went off to college. He came home for a few hours’ sleep each night.”
“Sounds like he didn’t have a social life.”
“He didn’t. He loved my mother beyond belief. Beyond sensibility, even. He still worships her memory.” One I will never live up to.
“Are you like your mother?” he asked.
“I don’t know. I have little memory of her, mostly things my father told me. I don’t think I look like her, not from what Dad says, anyway.”
“Don’t you know what she looked like?”
“No. In a fit of rage shortly after her death he destroyed her pictures.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“Didn’t you ask?”
She shook her head briefly, sharply. She was tired and on edge, uncomfortable with the emotions surfacing. If she looked at Rye right now, she’d see sympathy. She didn’t want sympathy.
“Tell me how you met my father,” she said, lifting her coffee again.
His hesitation was brief and considering. “Patrick and I met when he and a few competitors discovered consistently short shipments on certain routes. I was hired to find the source.”
“But how did my father know to call you?”
He lifted a shoulder in a brief shrug. “There is a labyrinth of information that filters among industrialists. They guard their contacts, yet they also share, especially regarding security. What affects one company often affects another.”
“Keeping a lid on the information flow also keeps your identity a secret,” Paige said. “Without anonymity you couldn’t function as well.”
Rye nodded. A jolt of awareness struck him, fascination with the way her mind worked. She cut through layers with knife-edged logic, and the revelation staggered him physically—a twist he could live without.
More in his favor, though, she wasn’t a vulnerable woman. She was strong and in control, probably not as much in need of his protection as Patrick believed. It was important that she stay strong. If she showed one bit of weakness, his own vulnerability could surface. And that he needed to avoid at all costs.
“Listen, if you want to do some work, I’ve got calls to make,” he said.
She drained her coffee cup and returned it to the lace-covered table. “How soon can Lloyd pick up a printer for me?”
“He’ll call when he wakes up. Whatever you need, just tell him.”
She picked up her computer pack and set it on the table beside the remnants of their breakfast. “What’s the story on Lloyd? Is he an employee or what?”
“Or what.”
She