Saved by the Salsa

by Barbara Barrett

  Marcia Dalton clutched her chest, shock written across her face. “Jack has resigned?”

  Lacey’s stomach dropped. If his mother was unaware he was no longer at Mackenzie and Associates, she probably didn’t know where he was either. Time was running out. If necessary, Lacey could put together the new design concept on her own, but she much preferred getting her partner back. She needed his flair, his ability to plow through the research data and imagine a finished product. “Do you know where he is? He won’t return my calls. I thought maybe he’d talk to you.”

  “He called a few days ago, saying he was taking off on a business trip. He didn’t say anything about quitting his job.”

  “Who’s quitting his job?” Gordon Dalton entered carrying a stack of file folders. “Oh, hello, Lacey. I didn’t know you were here.”

  “Hello, Gordon. I stopped by to see if you knew where Jack was. I didn’t know you were unaware he’d left the firm.”

  “What?” He set the folders on a nearby end table and collapsed onto a divan. “When? It wasn’t because he didn’t get the marketing job, was it? He told us it didn’t appeal to him in very clear terms.”

  “No, no.” She repeated her story about losing Bonneville’s business.

  “Jack’s lost clients before, hasn’t he? Why would he give up now?” Jack’s mother tilted her head, and a strand of jet black hair fell forward until she pushed it back behind her ear with her fingers.

  So reminiscent of Jack, it was like a dagger filleting Lacey’s insides. She wanted to peel through the door, leaving all these reminders behind, but she couldn’t be rude to these people when it was obvious how much they cared for him. She gulped air. She didn’t want to reveal too much, but it was time they knew a few things about their son. “Jack’s been under a lot of pressure lately. He’s been anxious to be named principal, partly to please you, but also because it’s overdue, given his track record.”

  Both sets of eyes gazed back at her. “Jack is an incredible architect. I only hope my designs mature to his caliber someday. He’s also been great with the clients, coaxing their deepest wants from them and convincing them that’s the way to go. But when the title of principal didn’t come as soon as he hoped, he started questioning his abilities. Second-guessing yourself can be like a cancer—once it starts, it’s difficult to stop it from spreading.”

  “I had no idea he was struggling so,” his mother replied.

  “Nor I,” his father added. “What can we do to help?”

  “He needs reassurance,” Lacey said. “I need to help him through this period, but he’s staying away from me because he doesn’t want to taint me with his so-called slide. I was hoping you could maybe talk to him, encourage him to go back to his job, perhaps even tell him how much you believe in him.”

  Jack’s mother rose and retrieved her purse from a nearby table. “I’ll call him right now. “

  “Get him to come over here, Marcia,” Gordon Dalton said. To Lacey, “Please stay. He doesn’t always care about our opinion.”

  Lacey backed away. “Oh, no. He’ll be very unhappy to learn I’ve involved you. I wouldn’t have done so, except I didn’t know how else to get in touch with him.”

  “He’s not our biggest fan when it comes to career advice,” Marcia Dalton said as she pulled her phone from her purse. “But he will come over, if we ask him.”

  Lacey considered their offer. Jack needed to get back to work, more for his own sake than hers. If it meant appearing to ally with his parents, so be it. She would take the risk,

  Within minutes, Marcia Dalton had her son on the line and was arranging for him to come to their home. Returning to Lacey, she said, “I know you said you need Jack’s help with your project, but I sense there’s something more behind your actions. Are you and Jack, uh—”

  “We’re getting there.” Lacey tried not to promise too much. “Neither of us has been very much into commitments in the past. But I care for him. A lot.”

  “I can see that,” his mother replied. “His father and I are probably partly responsible for his disinterest in commitments. We’ve pushed too hard for him to settle down.”

  Interesting. These two were much savvier about their son than Jack realized.

  “Right now, I’m just here to get Jack back to work.”

  Gordon Dalton said, “Understood. Right, Marcia?”

  Jack’s mother gave them both a nod of resignation. “Yes. But once you convince him to return to your project, we really do have to have lunch.”

  Despite her qualms about dealing with Jack in the next few minutes, Lacey had to chuckle. If this woman became a part of her life, she really had to be on alert. “Sure.”

  Gordon showed her to a small office at the back of the house, where she could wait until Jack arrived. Two desks, each equipped with top-of-the-line personal computers, faced each other. Along the walls, pictures of Jack at various ages provided the main ornamentation.

  By the time Jack arrived thirty minutes later, Lacey had developed new insights about his parents. Somewhere along the way, Jack had decided he didn’t amount to much in their estimation. If the pictures displayed throughout their house were any evidence, he was very mistaken. At some future point, maybe she could share what she’d learned about his parents with him but not today. Her immediate task was getting him back on the job.

  She heard low voices in the great room, but she couldn’t make out what they were saying. After a minute or so, Gordon entered.

  “He’s all yours. We haven’t said you were here, so he’ll be surprised when you walk in. We’ll fade away as soon as you appear.”

  As she approached, she heard Jack saying, “I still don’t understand why I had to drop everything and dash over here.”

  Summoning her courage, she entered the room. “Because I asked them to call you.”

  Jack jerked her direction. “Lacey? What are you doing here?”

  “You haven’t been returning her calls. Lacey needs to talk to you, so give her your attention.” Marcia backed out of the room. “Your father and I are taking our leave, so you can discuss things in private.”

  Lacey watched her go, smiling a silent thanks as the woman passed. Then she turned all her attention to Jack. “I got your email. I know you didn’t leave because of me, but I wish you would have talked to me first before you made such a rash decision.”

  Jack stared at something over her shoulder. “Coward’s way out. I agree. But I didn’t want you or anyone else trying to change my mind, which is why you’re here now, I’m guessing.”

  “I—we, need you back. To finish Project Veronica.”

  He widened his eyes in surprise. “That’s still on?”

  “I’ve told you so in the many messages I’ve left you.”

  He shifted his attention to several magazines arranged on the table before them, ran his fingers over the covers. “Thought they were a ruse.”

  “Jack! I’d never do such a thing.”

  When he lifted an eyebrow, she quickly added, “Okay, yes, I engineered Celia’s fake romance with you. We already established that. Let’s get past it.”

  “You got my parents to lure me here.”

  “You wouldn’t return my calls. I get that you need time to figure out what’s going on with your career and you don’t want to blemish my professional reputation by association, but I need your help. Cam’s put me in charge of the revised design concept.”

  He started to say something but held back. “Congratulations. What you’ve been waiting for.”

  “It’s a hollow victory without you.”

  “You don’t need me weighing you down. Just like my parents can do fine without me.”

  “Have you ever looked around this house? It’s almost a shrine to their one and only child.”

  He had the grace to take in the room. “Props, for their friends. A false front.”

  “Oh, really? What about the façade you put up? You don’t tell them what you want, what you believe i
n, what makes you smile, what makes you cringe. You just humor them and keep a low profile. Yes, they interfere in your life. They have time on their hands. But you shut them out. Interfering, as you call it, may be the only way they can get you to open up.”

  “Enough, Lacey. I’m their trophy, the footnote on their list of accomplishments. But do you think they even realize how good I am at what I do or believe in my talents? They bought my job for me!”

  His words so shocked her, she dropped his hand. Utter misery and defeat filled his eyes.

  “Wherever did you get such an idea?” Gordon stood just inside the doorway, his arm around his wife. Both appeared to have been struck in the face.

  Surprised, Jack took a step back. Then he resumed his previous position, chin tilted upward. “You invested in the firm in return for Cam hiring me.”

  Holding each other’s hands, his parents advanced toward him. “Cam told you this?” Gordon asked.

  “No. I’ve never discussed this with him. About a year after I joined the firm, I overheard the two of you talking. You were congratulating yourselves on your investment and how it had worked out so well for my career.”

  “I don’t know what you think you heard us saying, Jack,” Marcia said in a soft, strained tone, “but we never bought your way into the firm.”

  Still holding his wife’s hand, Gordon gazed at his son with troubled eyes. “Don’t you know how proud we are of you? Not just your accomplishments as an architect. You’re a terrific person.”

  Jack stared at them, eyes glazed over. He attempted to say something but couldn’t.

  His mother added, “We couldn’t help overhearing what you told Lacey. You have to know you’re the most important thing in our lives. We love you more than anything else.”

  Lacey became increasingly more uncomfortable with this turn of events. She hadn’t meant to bring his parents into this encounter. “Maybe I should go?” she said.

  “No, Lacey, please stay,” Marcia said. “We didn’t intend to interrupt until we heard you refer to us. Jack seems to be under several misconceptions about us. This discussion has apparently been a long time coming.” She eyed her son. “We need to know what has been troubling you all this time, Jack.”

  Gordon offered Lacey a misty-eyed look of thanks. “We’ve suspected things were not as they should be between our son and us. But we’ve never faced it head on, as you’ve made us do.”

  Lacey checked Jack’s reaction. His lips formed a tight line around his mouth, but his eyes seemed to have softened somewhat. “Let me get this straight. You never made a deal with Cam to invest in the firm if he hired me in return?”

  His father put his fingertips to his temple, apparently trying to recall anything he might have said which Jack could have misconstrued. “We did invest with Cam about the time you started there. But he’d already offered you the job.”

  “You were so set on doing everything yourself, you wouldn’t let us call in any favors or do anything to help you,” his mother continued. “When you decided to take a job here in town, we wanted to do whatever we could to protect the firm, keep it running.”

  Jack turned to his father. “I heard you say to Mom, ‘Jack should do well there, after all the money we’ve put into it.’”

  His father winced as if he’d been sucker-punched. He shot his wife a glance. “We never said anything of the kind, did we?”

  Marcia Dalton narrowed her eyes, as if trying to remember some far-off moment in the past. To Jack, she said, “If your father said those words, they weren’t meant the way you think.”

  “What else could they have meant, Mother?” Jack wasn’t being argumentative. He was simply attempting to make sense of a buried memory.

  His parents exchanged glances once again. His father said, “About six months after you joined the firm, after Cam hired you completely on your own merits, we learned through the grapevine he was about to go under.”

  “You were working on your first major project,” Marcia added. “You were so excited about it. We didn’t see much of you, but when we did get together, you talked of nothing else.”

  “I didn’t think you paid attention.” Jack’s voice had grown quiet.

  Surprise took over both parents’ expressions. “Of course, we did!” his father said, his own voice rising. “We wanted so much for you to succeed, on your terms, we thought we could help behind the scenes. So we invested enough in the firm for Cam to get his head above water.”

  “He paid us back within a year,” his mother filled in. “No conditions, no expectations. A simple business deal. If we purchased anything for you, it was enough time for Cam to get his affairs in order while you proved yourself.”

  Jack drew a long breath. He wasn’t thrilled to have been shanghaied into this discussion, especially by Lacey, but painful though it was proving to be, his parents were shedding new light on the hurt he’d carried for years. “What you said to Mom kept running through my head all this time. I didn’t think you believed in my ability to make it on my own.”

  His mother cut the distance between them, grabbing his hands. “You didn’t think we… You think we believe you’re a failure?” She buried her head in his chest.

  His father joined them, placing an arm around his son’s shoulders. “How could you think such a thing, Son? Have we been so uncaring, unsupportive all these years?”

  His throat constricted and his tongue felt as if it had tripled in size.

  The three of them huddled, crying quietly, holding each other.

  Finally, his father broke away. “Why, why didn’t you ask us about this years ago, when you first overheard me?”

  Jack hesitated. “I didn’t think you were up to a heated discussion.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the last time I came clean with you, back in college, I caused your heart attack.” Jack’s voice broke.

  “You? Caused my heart attack? Where did you get such an idea?”

  “I was there when you started having chest pains.”

  “Jack, Jack,” Gordon cried, “I’d been having chest pains for days and I ignored them. They finally caught up with me. Coincidentally, you and I just happened to be having a discussion. Okay, argument.”

  “But…but—” Jack said.

  His mother took his arm, tears streaming down her face. “I know I overreacted trying to protect your father from further episodes. I hope I didn’t give you the impression I blamed you.”

  He hadn’t planned to tell his parents any of this. Damn Lacey! She may have meant well, but she couldn’t leave well enough alone.

  He’d never run from a challenge, until this project came along and he’d begun to work with Lacey Rogers. His life hadn’t been the same since. Now she’d set this scene in motion. Maybe tomorrow or the next day he’d be able to understand everything said between himself and his parents, but for now, his insides were so tangled and raw, he could barely remain standing.

  “This is too much too grasp at once,” he said, his voice raspy. To Lacey, he mumbled, “Thanks for believing in me, us. But I can’t deal with the job or us right now.”

  He backed a few steps and then ran out. Lacey raced after him. “Jack! Please don’t go. Your parents need you. The firm needs you. I need you.” The last three words were barely audible.

  Halfway down the walk leading to the curb and his car, he swung around, letting the emotion flash in his eyes. “I need more time.”

  He turned to go, but she caught hold of his shirtsleeve. “There’s something you don’t know. It’s important.”

  She gazed at him, her eyes red and teary. He ached to comfort her, to hold her in his arms and whisper everything would be all right. But he held back. He loved her, dammit. Must’ve snuck in under the radar. This was all too much to deal with.

  He glanced down at her hand resting on his sleeve and gave her an expectant look. She pulled back. He pivoted and headed again to his car. He kept walking, but he heard her soft footfalls behind him.
Before he opened the driver’s door, she threw herself in front of him, blocking his entrance. “Jake Bonneville is really Ned Collier, Janice Collier’s son.”

  He lifted a brow. “What?”

  She took a deep breath, as if collecting her thoughts. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you the last few days. And not in a voicemail.”

  “How? When?” Her statement was so ludicrous, he couldn’t form a full question.

  She told him how the overage hippie had come to comfort her the morning he’d walked out and, when she learned the identity of their client, revealed their client was her son.

  “She didn’t know anything about his project?”

  Lacey shook her head. “Remember what Bonneville, uh, Collier, said in Cam’s office? This project was supposed to be a surprise gift to his mother.”

  Information overload. His head hurt, but through the blurry maze, a tiny thought increased in size. “Does that mean…”

  She nodded. “Janice wants our design concept, not a high-rise. Now, how long do you need to get your head together before we can get this project back on track?”

  “What about Cam?”

  “You mean his yelling at you for going after Bonneville on your own?”

  “Uh, yeah.”

  “You know our boss better than I, but haven’t we both learned he blows hot then turns into a puppy dog? You know he didn’t mean it when he threatened your future with the company.”

  He glanced over his shoulder toward his parents’ house. They were standing in the front door, watching, waiting. First things first. “It’s time I talked with them before I do anything else.”

  “Take whatever time you need. Call me tonight? We need to move on this tomorrow.”

  Since when had she assumed the upper hand? Since she’d realized he needed her as much as she needed him. She truly had become his partner in every way.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  “It’s barely three o’clock,” Lacey said to Jack from her side of his car. “I thought you needed time to decompress as well as talk further with your parents.”