Loved Me Once (Love, Romance and Business)

by Gail Hewitt

  "I knew the instant I saw you at Lake View with Brewster's tongue halfway down your throat," he admitted. "The sight of you, the sight of that, of someone else holding you in that way, hit me like a ton of bricks. That's when I knew I had more of an unresolved issue with you than I'd suspected. Then, when you came to the Lodge and we had that conversation Jameson insisted on, it was all I could do to keep my hands off you. I had a hard-on the whole time."

  "And that was why you offered me the job?"

  "It was the only way I could think of to keep you around long enough to give this a chance to happen. I didn't think it through. I just knew I couldn't let you get away again. You were so damn beautiful. You are so damn beautiful, and your eyes . . . It sounds corny, but your eyes are the only eyes in which I've ever seen a reflection of myself as I want to be."

  "So you never really considered me a part of your TTI team?"

  He shook his head impatiently. "I can hire all the damn experts — world-famous people, household names — to do anything I want with TTI. Why would I waste a second of your time on anything to do with business? You don't know how many times when you kept going on about that damned research that I wanted to tell you to stop the folderol so we could talk about what matters between us."

  "Did the other people at TTI know this? I mean, did you tell them to tolerate me, even if they didn't like what I did, that I probably wasn't going to be around long enough to matter?"

  "Don't be silly," he looked at her sharply. "That would have made both of us look foolish. I did everything I could to make sure they accepted you at face value, and they did. You actually have a fan of sorts in Jameson, which is surprising. Not because you aren't good at what you do —actually you do seem to know what you're talking about in general professional terms, even though you got TTI all wrong — but because Jameson rarely accepts anyone as quickly as he accepted you. Anyway, none of that is of any consequence now. All that matters is that we are back together, as good together as we were before."

  Maggie was so mortified that she couldn't look at him. Miles had been right. The TTI job had been no more than a ploy, and the reason she hadn't been able to get through to Tom professionally was that — from start to finish — he'd had no need or wish for what she could do as a professional. What a fool she'd made of herself. What a fool he'd made of her. She felt like a child who's been called upon to recite and does so — she thinks successfully — only to hear the adults laughing at her as she leaves the room.

  "And how do you see this playing out?" she asked him coolly. "You mentioned children. Aren't we the wrong age to be taking that for granted?"

  "I've spoken to the best fertility specialist in the world," Tom assured her. "She thinks she can ensure a healthy baby if we follow her advice."

  "Interesting," Maggie said, drawing a little further away.

  "Just think of it, Maggs, of how it can be. It'll be the best of both worlds," he pronounced. "The two of us together again, just like before and this time with the resources to do it properly. I've talked to my lawyer about the pre-nup. Vera Wang's top consultant is setting aside several gowns for you to consider — you can go there or they'll bring them to you. They emailed me photographs of the ones they're suggesting. I think I know the one you'll like, but it's up to you. Tiffany's is ready to bring over a selection of rings whenever I give them the word. I've signed you up for the bridal registry at Tiffany's and Wang's, just some classic stuff, but you can add anything you like. I've talked to my person at Jean Patou about coming up with your own scent — I was thinking something light and citrusy, but that's your call. I thought we'd be married in May, in this little chapel in Venice that I'm the patron of — place was a ruin until we restored it, but it's a jewel box now. I've spoken to Branson, and we'll honeymoon at his island in the British Virgins — or, if we've time for the flight, at my place in the Solomons. As for clothes for the honeymoon, go to anyone you like. Oh, and I know how you girls like to freshen yourselves up, so I've got an appointment for you with the best cosmetic surgeon in New York."

  "You think I need 'freshening up?' Is there anything in particular that strikes you as stale?"

  "You're gorgeous," he assured her, "but you're not seventeen anymore. Anyway, it's just in case you think you need it. I'd say you're just fine." He reached over and tweaked her nipple. "They hang a little lower than they used to, but they're still world-class."

  "I'm glad you think so," she said drily.

  "As for where we'll live, I've got my New York agent looking for a place for us here — I'm thinking either a penthouse with terraces or a decently sized townhouse. Also, I heard yesterday that — thanks to the owner shorting the wrong stock — my Italian agent is finally getting his hands on a Palladian villa in the Veneto that I've been eying for years; that can be our special getaway. We'll keep the other places, but we can redecorate them all in whatever way you like, even the yacht and the plane."

  He hesitated, waiting for a response that she was in no mood to give. "We'll put this place on the market, of course." He looked around the tiny bedroom dismissively.

  "I like my condo," she said.

  "You won't need it," he said with assurance. "It's part of your old life. As for your mother, I won't hold what she did against her. I'll pay for her to enter the best extended care facility in any location you name. Or, if you prefer, we can build a guest cottage for her at one of my properties and her nurse can come with her. I'll have you flown to visit her whenever you think it's necessary."

  She was beginning to get seriously irritated. "Out of curiosity, why can't Mother remain in her home?"

  He looked at her curiously. "You can hardly expect me to leave her in a house now owned by your ex-fiancé."

  "My ex-fiancé?" She was shocked. "I didn't know. The buyer used an agent. In fact, I even wondered if you were the one who bought it."

  Tom laughed. "You don't know it was Brewster? Guy is obviously up to something. No, even if it was available, that house doesn't interest me. I don't have any happy memories of it, and it's too large to keep up for one elderly woman and her nurse. It makes no sense financially."

  "So you have it all planned. And all I have to do is to walk through the door into your perfect world," she concluded.

  "You say that as if there's something wrong with it," he said. "I thought you'd be happy that I can do all this for you, give all this to you."

  "It's just so settled," she told him. "So decided without any input from me, as if you're a jeweler creating the perfect setting for a stone which you will drop into place as soon as you own it."

  "You're brighter than any diamond, Maggs, and it's about sharing, not ownership."

  When she said nothing, he gave her a hard look, finally realizing that she wasn't pleased. "Evidently, I've put something wrong because this isn't the reaction I expected. We're not kids anymore, and I didn't see you as the hope-chest type at this stage in your life. I just tried to do for you what I'd want done for me if I were in your shoes." He was obviously disappointed, and she began to feel sorry for him again.

  "It sounds lovely, Tom, but it doesn't sound much like me."

  "Then change any part of it that doesn't suit you," he told her, "except the part about the house on West Paces Ferry. There is no way your mother can stay in that house. Oh, and the pre-nup. I have reciprocal agreements with several of my business associates that no one of us marries without a pre-nup. But it's just a formality. You won't find it ungenerous."

  "No one could accuse you of lack of generosity," Maggie told him.

  "So, how about it, Maggs? I loved you then. I love you now. I promise you I will do everything possible to make you happy. Just say yes." He took her hands in his. She looked down. His hands were large and competent. There was nothing soft about them, and their touch was both exciting and reassuring. She believed she could trust him to hold her safe with those hands. The issue was if that were enough.

  He paused again and gazed at her. "Don't you ha
ve anything to say?"

  "I'm surprised," she told him. "I didn't see this coming. It's a big decision, Tom. I need to think about it."

  His face fell, but in spite of his obvious disappointment, he took her answer in stride. "I'll give you a week. As soon as I leave here, I'm on my way to Ireland for a few days. I've got to be in Washington on the nineteenth for a dinner, but I plan on being in New York by the eighteenth, if not earlier. When I've got an ETA for my return, Alysha will know and she'll call you. We can go back to The River Café to celebrate."

  "I'll think about it," Maggie repeated, withdrawing her hands and getting up. "You'd better get dressed. Don't want to trash the schedule — can't keep your pilots waiting."

  "The schedule is mine," he pointed out. "As for the pilots, they're accustomed to waiting." He laughed, evidently enjoying the fact that he could not miss a plane.

  "I know," she said, "but still . . . "

  He got up reluctantly, but allowed her to collect and hand him his clothes. The two of them dressed in tandem, Maggie avoiding Tom's eyes, he seeking hers.

  "We can make it work, Maggs," Tom assured her.

  "Probably," she conceded, "but why does the word 'work' come into it? You make it sound like an obstacle course."

  He laughed again, taking what she said as a witticism.

  She did not resist when, at the door, he took her in his arms and kissed her, holding her so tightly she could hardly breathe. Then he let go, and she could hear him humming under his breath as she closed the door. Humming was the last thing she felt like doing. She felt as if she were in free fall and needed every bit of her breath just to stay alive.

  Maggie's Choice

  Maggie sat on the sofa, arms around her pulled-up legs, chin propped on her knees, and stared at the crimson tulips and yellow roses that Tom had brought. The flowers were a solid reality she could latch onto, a reality she needed. Just when it had seemed that she was finally getting a handle on her life, it turned out that nothing was as she'd thought. Miles had been right; she'd lost Miles over a lie. Perhaps just as surprising, it wasn't Tom who'd bought the Atlanta house, but — if Tom could be believed — Miles, which made no sense. Now, Tom had proposed, and no one could say his terms hadn't been liberal. She let her mind linger briefly on the shopping list of perks he'd so carefully enumerated. She shook her head. The whole situation was too bewildering to take in all at once. She got up and went into the bedroom, where she changed the sheets and then carefully made up the bed, smoothing the comforter and plumping the pillows. The used sheets smelled of Tom, of her and Tom. She put them in the laundry bag, and stood for a moment thinking how odd it was that Miles had never even seen her condo and Tom had practically commandeered it, and then announced it should be sold as part of his concept of their future together. Her head was numb; she couldn't think about any of this any more. She'd have to process it later, when she felt at least marginally more normal.

  Back in the living room, she reached automatically for a chocolate, then stopped herself. Somehow, the staged escapism had lost its appeal. Going into the kitchen, she toasted a cheese sandwich and made a salad for what had turned into a very late lunch. Carrying the plate of food and a Diet Coke, she returned to the living room, where she turned on the flat-screen TV mounted in the divider wall separating this area from the bedroom. She began to flick through the channels. It was odd, she thought, that she rarely had a chance to watch TV, save for The Weather Channel while she was traveling or about to travel, and yet she seemed to have seen everything that was on.

  She depowered the set and sat in the silence thinking about what had just happened with Tom, about what Tom had said and what Tom could bring to her life. With Tom, there would literally be not just a house for every season, but a house for his every mood. There would be people everywhere he went who understood his needs and catered to them, people whose job it was to make his life easier and more entertaining. People who could make her life easier and more entertaining. The other side of that, of course, was the reality that, if she married him, it would become her primary role to take the first position among those responsible for the care and amusement of Tom. He would expect her to be available to go here and there as his schedule permitted, to do whatever he was in the mood to do, to continue to fulfill whatever image he maintained of her from years before because everything now would be measured against everything then and what should have been, but was not, in the years since. Could she do that? Did she want to? How did she honestly feel about Tom as he was now, not the memory of Tom as he'd been then? Was it even possible to separate the two?

  She had to admit that, in spite of the fact that he was older, he was still in many ways much like the young man who'd had the power to make her pulse race so fast she thought she'd dissolve. Passionate as ever, more experienced, Tom would always produce echoes of the man for whom she'd ached with adolescent desire as she lay in the dark in the canopy bed in her old room with the lilac-flowered walls.

  Then, it was Tom who'd broken her heart, who'd thought she'd broken his. Now, it was Tom who'd showed up to forgive her and who'd believed her when she told him she'd suffered too. And it was Tom who had just proposed, offering his heart and hand, it seemed, with few strings attached, at least as long as she accepted his assumptions of the form and nature of the perfect life. And in that perfect life, his vision for TTI — which she now recognized as unworkable and unlikely to be made so — would be off limits. They would never be able to incorporate TTI into their shared life because they disagreed so completely about what should be done. Could she be married to a man whose principal obsession would be a point of ongoing discord between them, whose business judgment she considered suspect at best, at least in this regard?

  Her instinct was to dismiss his proposal as not only insulting in its form but ludicrous in its timing, coming as it did out of the blue, but she knew that would be very foolish. Men like Tom made their own rules. To him, the proposal — including the shopping list of perks — was probably part of a continuum from the distant past to now and so not at all abrupt. As for the recent blip in that continuum, he had obviously seen nothing discordant in the fact that he'd made a fool of her, then immediately made it clear that she shouldn't mind because he wanted her for herself and found her professional skills irrelevant, ergo they had become irrelevant and the ensuing professional discomfort he'd caused her little more than a frivolous indulgence.

  What was she to make of Tom, who'd gone from being the object of her heart's desire to the symbol of everything hateful, and now to what? A conservator of erotic photographs of which she was the subject? An aggressively bossy man who thought he always knew best? A restorer of Venetian chapels? A disrespecter of her talent and abilities? A power player among power players?

  He could still make her toes curl, that was the one thing she knew. No, that wasn't quite fair. There was something else. She realized that, in spite of everything, she was fond of him, would probably always be fond of him. Was that enough to make a successful marriage: hot sex and warm fondness, kept well-lubricated, of course, by Tom's wealth?

  She got up and walked restlessly around the room, feeling as if she would implode with frustration. She had processed so much this past month and a half; Tom's proposal was one thing too many.

  She poured herself a glass of wine and returned to the sofa. Not in the mood to start another mystery, she tried to read a Vanity Fair article about the role of private equity in the financial meltdown, but set it aside after a few paragraphs. She reached for the iPod, and scrolled to the Vivaldi play list. The music, however, usually so pleasantly distracting, made her even more antsy and she cut it off. She tried to call Julia Clifford's office on the coast, but got her voice mail. She clicked on the TV again and began scrolling channels, stopping only when she ran across an entertainment feature covering a Broadway opening the previous evening. She knew Alison McKay, the announcer, and there was always something morbidly fascinating about seeing people who
m one knew on television. Alison was standing beside the red carpet, getting a few words from celebrities before they went into the theater. Over the shoulders of the couple being interviewed, Maggie could see people lining the walkway and several couples walking between them toward the theater.

  One of the couples seemed to be creating more of a stir than the others. The woman, a rail-thin blonde almost as tall as her escort, wore a bright red floor-length gown, visible because her ankle-length fur was completely open in spite of the obvious coldness of the night. The man, tall and slender in a black tux and overcoat, had a protective arm around his date's shoulders. Maggie sighed. It was Miles. Miles and the French supermodel. She followed her first impulse, which was to turn off the TV, but clicked it on again immediately, unable not to watch.

  Alison practically gushed as they approached. "Now, here's Aimée Girard, internationally famous French supermodel, and her handsome current squeeze, Miles Brewster. Aimée, Alison McKay here for Entertainment at 8, you're looking gorgeous tonight."

  "Thank you, Alison, your gown I love too." The girl's accent was thick, but not so thick she couldn't be easily understood, which must make for easier communication with Miles, Maggie thought glumly.

  "Are you in New York on business?"

  "Yes, for the shows, as you would say. But tonight is time for fun, and Miles has bring me here."

  "Everyone at home, this is Miles Brewster, the Boston businessman who's been seen quite a bit with Aimée in the last month. You two are quite an item, you know."

  Miles smiled vaguely and let Aimée do the talking. "Miles is my very good friend," Aimée said, smiling meaningfully.

  "As in boy friend?" the announcer teased. Miles removed his arm from Aimée's shoulders.

  "Ah, no, unfortunately not. Miles, he has the girl friend already, or so he tell me. It is the only thing I do not like about him. It is just that we are good friends, very good friends, as you say." She smiled provocatively and began to move away, holding tightly to Miles' arm.