She looked up at him. He was watching her, clearly waiting for an answer. She sighed, and started to shake her head. "I don't know," she said, "they all look—" Then an idea struck her. "None of these are electric."
He nodded. "That's part of it. What else?"
She studied the trains. "None of them have tracks." She turned to look at him. "They all appear to run on the floor."
"Exactly. Which means?"
She visualized Nathaniel's elaborate train. "Which means that they don't have stations, and bridges, and all the other fancy things."
"If you were a child, which train would you rather play with?" he asked as he headed for the stairs.
"Wait," she called, quickening her steps to catch up with him as possibilities began to take shape in her mind. "The other day when Michael and Percy were with you, I saw those pieces of track all over the floor," she said. "Michael said those pieces of tin were sections that fit together."
"Um-hmm," he confirmed. "Why do you suppose I designed it that way?"
"So that children could put the track together any way they wanted it." The full potential of the concept suddenly hit her, and she came to an abrupt halt on the bottom step. "So that children could create their own miniature railways!"
"Yes!" He stopped at the foot of the stairs and turned, spanning her waist with his hands and lifting her off the bottom step with a shout of laughter. He whirled her around in the air. "Yes, yes, yes!"
She gripped his wide shoulders to steady herself, and her answering laughter rang out as he spun her around. Bolts of fabric on display passed her in a blur of color, making her dizzy. She focused her gaze on his face, and everything else receded. In that moment, something stirred within her, a feeling she thought she'd lost a long time ago. Hope.
The room slowly stopped spinning. She felt herself sliding down the length of his body until her feet hit the floor. An awareness emerged in her as she could feel the muscles of his shoulders beneath her fingers, his strong hands on her waist, the rise and fall of his chest beneath her forearms. It rushed through her, then ebbed away, leaving her with nothing but the chill of her own fear.
Everything came into focus again, making her realize they were practically embracing in the dress materials department of Harrod's. She took a hasty step back and turned away, only to find three stout matrons and several sales clerks staring at them in horror.
Heat suffused her cheeks, and she stepped around Nathaniel, heading for the exit doors. He followed and fell in step beside her, but she could not look at him. She walked outside and started for the waiting cab, but Nathaniel's hand on her arm stopped her.
"Mara, now that you understand what I'm trying to do—"
"I want to go back," she said stiffly and pulled her arm from his grasp. "I still have work to finish."
He expelled his breath with a sigh. "All right."
Neither of them said much on the way back. Nathaniel made several attempts at conversation, but she kept her gaze fixed on the window and replied in unencouraging monosyllables. She didn't even look at him.
She was embarrassed, he knew, but there was more to it than that. She was afraid. He could see fear in the thin line of her lips, the hands clasped so tightly together in her lap, the rigid set of her shoulders.
For a moment, she'd been excited about the idea of making trains. But the instant she'd realized it, doubt had taken over and she'd withdrawn again. Mara Elliot was a woman who could switch from cool logic to deep insecurity and back again all in the space of two heartbeats, and there were times when Nathaniel had no idea how to deal with her. This was one of those times.
Let her retreat back into her shell if she wanted to, he finally decided. But he had no intention of allowing her to stay there.
Chapter Nine
Mara had a routine that never varied. Sunday morning, she did what she always did on Sunday mornings. She went to the baths, taking a fresh towel, a change of clothes, and the one luxury she allowed herself—lilac-scented soap. She also took her bundle of laundry with her to do while she was there.
Afterward, she took her clean laundry home and hung it to dry on a line she stretched across her room, then she went to early Sunday service. She was in her office by ten o'clock.
The neat stacks of ledgers and papers on her desk today depressed her. Because of her trip to Harrod's with Nathaniel Friday afternoon, she had been forced to spend most of Saturday doing payroll, which had put her an entire day behind schedule. One look at the desk told her how far behind she was. She hated that.
With a sigh, she sat down behind her desk and reached for the first item on the stack of papers to her left. She scanned it and frowned in bewilderment as her gaze ran down the list. Thirty brass wheels, one-inch diameter, with flanges. Four of same, one-and-one-half-inch diameter. Four sheets tin...
The parts list for the trains. She flipped through the thick stack of papers, finally coming to the design specifications. Michael had been busy. She looked closer. No, the nearly unreadable notes beside the diagrams were not in the same handwriting. Only Mr. Chase could have such horrible penmanship, she thought, remembering the sloppy signature she'd seen on their partnership agreement.
Thoughts of that document caused her frown to deepen, and Mara shoved the list aside. His trains could wait. The budget for September was a higher priority.
A tiny prick of conscience told her Nathaniel expected the trains to be included in her budget, but she pushed it aside. The increased costs would mean approaching the bank for a loan, a possibility she refused to contemplate.
Just the thought of borrowing money alarmed her. She'd seen James borrow money so many times, then run off when the money was due. She was still amazed at how skilled her husband had been with the glib talk that somehow convinced businessmen to invest in him. But glib talk didn't pay the bills, a fact Mara knew only too well. From the time she married him, Mara had been the one forced to deal with the creditors every time James left town. She would not go through that again. Not for Nathaniel Chase. Not for anyone.
Several hours later, when the budget was finally finished, trains were not on it. Mara set the ledger aside, and reached for the sales reports.
"I thought I might find you here."
Startled, she jumped in her chair, looking up at the tall figure standing in the doorway. "What are you doing here?"
Nathaniel leaned one shoulder against the doorjamb. "Looking for you."
Dismayed, she stared at him. Could the man give her no peace? "Why?"
"Mara, it's a gorgeous day. It isn't raining, for once, and the weather is fine. Why have you locked yourself away in this stuffy little room that doesn't even have a window?"
She gestured to the ledgers piled on her desk. "It's your fault. If you hadn't dragged me off to Harrod's, I wouldn't be so far behind."
He shook his head. "Don't blame this on me. I know for a fact you work on Sundays anyway. Although why you do is beyond my ken."
"The work has to be done somehow. And Sundays are always quiet and peaceful." She frowned at him. "At least, they have been until now."
He laughed. "'Gather ye rosebuds while ye may. Old time is still a-flying.'" He crossed the room and moved around her desk until he stood behind her chair. Then he reached over her shoulder and took the pencil away from her. "And that same flower that smiles today, tomorrow may be dying."
"What are you doing?"
"Robert Herrick," he added and pulled her to her feet. "C'mon."
"I can't take another afternoon off," she protested, unmoved by poetic encouragement.
She tried to remove her elbow from his grasp, but he refused to relinquish his hold. "Why not?" he countered. "You finished the payroll yesterday, didn't you?"
"Yes, but—"
"Good. Then there's nothing that can't wait until Monday. Come along."
"Where are you taking me?" she asked as he guided her toward the door.
"To have some fun." And he refused to say more.
<
br /> Thirty minutes later, she found herself in Hyde Park, standing by the Serpentine and staring doubtfully at the rowboat that bobbed gently on the water of the lake. "You want to go boating?"
"Can you think of anything better to do on a Sunday afternoon in midsummer?" he asked, handing money over to the boat handler.
Her expression grew frantic. She could think of many better things to do. "Nathaniel, I don't want to get in that boat."
"Why?"
"I can't swim."
He smiled down at her. "We won’t be swimming." He studied her panicked expression and added gently, "It's all right, Mara. I wouldn't let you drown."
"Somehow, that thought doesn't comfort me!"
"It should. I happen to be an excellent swimmer." He took her elbow and guided her into the boat.
"I don't think I like this," she murmured, gripping the sides of the boat as she carefully sat down.
He sat in the rower's seat and gripped the oars, then gave the man on the dock a nod to untie the moorings. "You've traveled all over the world, yet you're afraid to punt around the Serpentine?"
"That was different," she answered. "Those were big, safe steamships."
The man on the dock sent the boat away with a shove of his boot and within moments, the boat was gliding across the lake.
Nathaniel waited until they were well into the center of the lake before he broached the subject on his mind. "Tell me something," he said, lifting the oars out of the water, "Why are you so opposed to making trains?"
"What?" She stared at him, startled by the abrupt question. "You want to talk about your trains now?"
"Yes."
A tiny frown appeared between her brows. He could tell that she thought him out of his mind. "Here?"
"Yes, here. I think this is the perfect place to discuss the matter." He nodded to the water around them. "Out here, you can't avoid the subject or run away."
He studied her face, watching the mask steal over her features, wiping away all expression. It angered him, that ability to freeze to an unresponsive chunk of ice and shut him out when she didn't like the conversation. He yanked the oars out of their locks and placed them across the boat.
She cast an almost desperate glance at the water surrounding them. "I want to go back," she declared, squirming on the seat and rocking the boat.
"No. We shall talk about this. Right here, right now."
"There's nothing to talk about."
"Oh, yes, there is." He gave her a level stare. "Why don't you want to make trains?"
"I want to go back," she repeated, refusing to answer his question.
"Not until we settle this business once and for all. Tell me why."
"I already did. It's too risky."
"And I told you, some risks are worth taking." He watched her jaw set. "Damn it, you are the most stubborn woman I've ever met. You're so worried about not failing, you never think about succeeding. Haven't you ever taken a risk, Mara? Haven't you ever wanted anything so badly, you were willing to gamble all you had to make it happen?"
"No." She swallowed hard. "That would be foolish."
"So you hide in your little office on Sunday afternoons and save your pennies in a little tin can and worry about all the things that might happen, but that never do. Don't you want more from life than that?"
"Maybe I expect less from life than you do."
"Not enough from life and too much from yourself."
"I don't know what you mean."
"You've made it clear you hate having a partner, and I thought it was because of me." Nathaniel leaned forward, resting his forearms on the oars between them. "But that's not it, is it? You hate the idea of a partner because you want to control everything, do everything. All by yourself."
"As usual, I don't know what you're talking about."
"Don't you? If you rely only on yourself, you'll never be disappointed. If you don't trust anyone, you don't have to worry that they might fail you. You can always have things your way. You don't have to make concessions."
"Don't talk to me about concessions, sir!" Anger flared in her eyes as her icy composure splintered apart. "I spent eight years making concessions. Giving in, yielding to whatever whim happened to take my husband's fancy, allowing him to drag us all over the world."
"Us?"
Mara drew a deep, steadying breath. "We had a daughter, Helen. I knew picking up and moving every other year wasn't good for her. She needed stability. Four years ago, when she was seven, I decided I'd had enough. We were living here in London and James had started Elliot's, but we'd been here less than a year before he was packing to leave again."
Her words came out in a rush, pouring out the anger and pain as if she could no longer contain them. "I asked him to stay for Helen's sake, but he said that's why he was leaving, to make a future for her. I asked him to stay for my sake, but he patted me on the shoulder and said I'd be well enough until he could send for us. I asked, I pleaded." Her voice broke. "I begged."
She glared at Nathaniel, her face twisted with pain. "I begged him, do you understand?" she cried. "I begged him not to leave. Do you know what his reaction was?"
She didn't wait for an answer. She took a deep breath, and went on, "He took out a loan of five thousand pounds, putting up Elliot's as collateral, and sailed off for America anyway. He gave me half the money before he left. Wasn't that generous of him? I used it to pay all the other debts he left behind. The money was gone in less than a month."
She wrapped her arms around her ribs, fighting to regain her precious control. "It didn't matter much. A few days after James left, Helen died."
"How?"
Her expression hardened once again to an unreadable mask, but he saw the pain in her crystal gray eyes.
"How did she die, Mara?"
Her lower lip trembled. She caught it between her teeth and didn't answer.
"Fire?" he asked gently.
"Yes." She turned her head away with the stiffness of a marionette. "And I had nothing," she added, staring across the water, "nothing but a business that was nearly bankrupt and a wastrel husband who didn't even bother to send a letter until six months after her funeral."
Nathaniel heard the raw, ragged edge in her voice, and he knew he had touched the core of her wounded and bitter heart. He'd known the moment he'd met James that the man was brilliant and irresponsible, charming and deceitful. But that hadn't mattered to him at the time. All that had mattered was that James had given him his chance, one more chance to achieve what he'd always wanted.
Yet, it seemed that James had also been a man with a callous disregard for the needs of his family. A selfish man who fed on a dream until he became bored, who had left his wife to grieve alone for the loss of their daughter. "What did you do?"
"What could I do? I took over the business."
"Hmm." Thoughtfully, he studied her. "That seems a bit risky to me."
"It would only have been a risk if there had been something to lose."
"But there was, Mara," he said softly. "You risked failure."
"Only because I had no other choice."
"Of course you had a choice. Plenty of choices, in fact. You could have sold the business, and possibly gained a small profit from it. You could have gone to work in a shop. You could have scraped together the money to return to South Africa. Yet, you did none of those things. Why?"
She kept her face turned away from him and didn't answer.
"Could it be that you had your own dream?" As he spoke the words aloud, he began to realize how true they were. "That's it, isn't it? Your dream was to be independent and run your own business. You wanted it so badly, you—"
"Yes, yes, all right!" she cried, turning her head to face him again. Her chin lifted defiantly. "Yes, I wanted it. Yes, I took a risk. I admit it. Does that satisfy you?"
"Not by half."
"What do you want from me?"
"I already told you. Acceptance, a bit of trust. Compromise."
"An
d what about what I want?" she fired back. "Why is it that when you and I talk about partnership and compromise, I'm always the one giving up something? What about you?"
"Name one thing I haven't been willing to compromise on."
"This business with the toys comes to mind."
He shook his head. "You don't want compromise. You're afraid to take the risks, and you want me to give in to your fear. I won't do that."
She turned her face away again, and he reached out. Grasping her chin, he forced her to look at him. "Like it or not, Mara, the fact is that I invested five thousand pounds in this company—and saved your bacon, I might add—for one reason. I want to make toys. But I'm willing to minimize the risks you fear by making the transition gradually. That's compromise."
"And what about the loan?" she countered, jerking her chin out of his grip. "You insist on borrowing money, despite my opposition to the idea."
"It's true I want to take out a loan to finance the venture, but I'm willing to discuss other options with you, if you have any."
"There aren't any other options. You call that compromising?"
"All right! Let's settle this once and for all. Forget compromise, since that obviously isn't working. I propose a wager."
"A wager?" She eyed him with suspicion.
"Exactly. Do that cost analysis. If you can prove to me that there is no profit in the trains, we won't do it. We'll
continue to do just what Elliot's has always done. But if it proves to have profit potential, then you'll stop fighting me, and we'll work together to make it happen."
"I don't make wagers."
"Why doesn't that surprise me? But think about this for a minute, don't reject it out of hand. To quote your own words, there's only a risk if there's something to lose. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain."
She said nothing as she weighed all the pros and cons carefully. Finally she nodded. "All right."
"I expect you to be fair," he warned, lifting one oar and locking it into place. "I expect you to make every effort to find good prices on parts and reasonable bids. I'll talk to toy retailers and determine a price for the trains. Then we'll sit down and compare notes and see where we are." He looked at her as he replaced the other oar in the lock and seized the grips. "Agreed?"
To Dream Again Page 11
