An Executive Decision (Executive Decisions Trilogy)

by Grace Marshall

  He grabbed her arm and righted her before she could topple over the edge. ‘That’s ridiculous.’

  ‘Right.’ She shook her head and looked down at him like he was a naughty child. ‘Now are you going to call her and make things right, or shall I?’ She pulled her iPhone out of the pocket of her dress.

  ‘You have her number?’ Ellis felt panic rise in his chest. He grabbed for her phone, but she jerked her hand out of reach.

  ‘Of course I have her number. It wasn’t that hard to get, not when I was surrounded by the Trouvères reps at Marston’s party and they all worship her.’ She began to punch the keypad.

  ‘Stacie, don’t. Stacie, I’m warning you …’ He grabbed for her wrist but, she when she pulled away, the iPhone flew from her hand and went skittering along the tiles of the pool. Stacie lunged to retrieve it, caught her foot in the hem of her dress, and toppled over the edge. With a wild splash and a yelp of surprise, she landed in Ellis’s arms.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Fixing Stacie’s afternoon flub-up in Ellis’s office hadn’t been in Garrett’s plans for the evening, but it was something to keep him busy, and keep his mind off Amy. And maybe with him and Stacie scheming together, at least one of the Thorne brothers could have a nice, romantic weekend.

  He had Ellis’s limo driver take him to the Pneuma Building when he’d gotten Stacie’s call. He was in the neighbourhood anyway. He was Ellis’s brother, and technically he worked for Pneuma, Inc. Though it was just a part of his ne’er-do-well cover-up, it would still get him into the building and into an empty office that Ellis had reserved for him, not without lots of complaining and nagging at him to stop the masquerade and come clean. But Garrett wasn’t ready to do that just yet. Having nothing expected of him made for interesting observations of people who did have things expected of them, and it was their lives that inspired most of what he wrote. In the back of his mind, he was already imagining how he could turn Dee and Ellis’s story into fiction without his brother recognising either of them as characters and promptly committing siblicide. But if Ellis hadn’t murdered him by now, he figured he was pretty safe. Besides, he was a good writer. Neither Dee nor Ellis would recognise themselves when he finished with them.

  Garrett wasn’t sure how long he stood at the open door of Dee’s office, but it was long enough for him to observe her unnoticed, long enough for him to be convinced that she was definitely the perfect heroine for his next novel. Her face was sculpted in concentration and haloed in the incandescent lighting that staved off the night rapidly encroaching through the window behind her desk. She sat head and shoulders above heaped open files and three-ring binders, chewing on the end of a pen and twisting a strand of hair around her finger.

  No doubt she was every bit the professional his brother bragged about, but after spending time with her at the bar in New York, he was certain those skills, no matter how savvy, were only the surface of a deep wellspring. There was an unpretentiousness about her that finally urged him across the threshold, as he knocked on the jamb of the open door to announce his presence.

  The smile she offered was transparent, playful, and though for a moment he desperately wished it might be otherwise, clearly not intended for him. She realised her mistake with a startled intake of breath and a subtle shifting of boundaries in the expressive angles of her face, a distancing he felt as physically as if she had pushed him away with her hand. ‘Garrett! For a second I thought you were Ellis.’ She came from behind her desk and gave him an enthusiastic hug. He was relieved Dee’s boundaries were semi-permeable, and warmth won out over reserve. Even if she were only being kind to him because he was Ellis’s brother, these days he’d take what he could get.

  He returned her embrace with his own enthusiasm, born more out of need than politeness. Before he could make too big a fool of himself, he stepped back, straightened his denim jacket, and lied. ‘Sorry to bother you, Dee, but I’m looking for Ellis.’

  ‘He’s gone for the day.’ Her mouth softened with concern, and he could tell by the darkening of her eyes she wouldn’t be fooled into thinking all was rosy in paradise. Ellis was the one who kept his feelings hidden away. Garrett, for the most part, never really tried. ‘Is there anything I can do for you?’

  He dragged up a sigh from the gaping abyss he felt beneath his sternum and leaned against the wall, feeling suddenly as if he hadn’t enough energy to stand. ‘I should have known better than to come without calling.’ Oh, he was good, he thought, really good. Maybe he should have been an actor rather than a writer. Then again, he wasn’t really acting, was he? ‘Did he say where he’d be?’

  ‘I think he’s meeting someone at the Hilton.’

  Just then his iPhone chimed a text. It was from Stacie.

  Ellis is at hoooooo , it said. He knew Stacie wasn’t the best with technology, but it wasn’t hard to figure what it meant. It was exactly what they expected, and that being the case, he knew what he had to do.

  He quickly recalculated the situation, and bluffed. ‘Stacie said she was meeting him. I thought she was kidding.’

  Her relaxed smile didn’t change at the mention of Stacie’s name. She motioned him to the chair in front of her desk. ‘I take it you know her too.’

  ‘Oh, I know her all right.’ He flashed a wicked smile. ‘Stacie’s always kind of capricious. You never know what to expect from her. But she’s great fun at a party.’

  ‘So I gathered.’

  Garrett was glad he didn’t have to face Dee across the negotiating table. Still, a little probing might be fun, though he was already dead sure what it would reveal.

  ‘She and Ellis and I, we go way back. I’m talking junior high way back. We used to be close friends, the three of us.’

  ‘Oh really?’

  He offered her his best confidential smile. ‘Of course as the younger brother, half the time Ellis and Stacie viewed me as a pest. Things got a little better when I got older.’ He held her in a weighty gaze. ‘Then they got a whole lot worse.’

  ‘Should I be hearing this?’ God, she reminded him for a minute of Ellis, always the stickler for private lives remaining private.

  ‘Oh, it’s no big secret. We all went off to university together, and while Ellis wasn’t looking, I married her.’

  ‘You married Stacie?’

  It did him good to see the surprise on her face. She was no more immune to surprises of the heart than his brother. ‘You probably guessed by now it wasn’t exactly happy ever after. It was a very short marriage, and certainly not good for any of us.’

  ‘For any of you?’

  ‘Stacie would be the first to tell you she never could decide which of the Thorne brothers to choose. When she was engaged to Ellis, she wanted me. When she was married to me, she wanted Ellis. Me, I’m a pushover. Me, she could have whenever she wanted. Ellis, however … Well, Ellis wasn’t quite so easy.’

  ‘Apparently they must have worked that out.’ She said it like she had just told him the weather forecast – maybe a little too much like the weather forecast.

  He leaned forward in his chair. ‘Does that bother you?’

  She leaned forward, mirroring his posture. ‘Should it?’

  With a keen-edged stab of memory, he recalled why he was in Portland in the first place. His effort at a laugh felt bruising. ‘Well, don’t worry. Now that she knows Amy’s not seeing me any more, Stacie’ll be sure to make plenty of time for me in her busy schedule.’

  ‘God, Garrett, you broke up with Amy?’ Her gaze turned stormy, and the voice that had been so neutral up until now was weighted with tenderness.

  ‘Seems I’m not a good career move for her. She’s got the opportunity to dance as a principal dancer, and doesn’t have time for a love life.’

  ‘Garrett, I’m so sorry.’

  The lump in his throat surprised him. Dee didn’t play by his brother’s rules. His brother would have listened to his sad story and, not knowing what else to do, would have been embarrassed by Gar
rett’s display of pain. But Dee didn’t seem the least bit uncomfortable. He hadn’t expected someone who was so skilled at negotiating deals to be equally skilled in the fine art of empathy. He stood and paced the floor in front of her desk. ‘I knew it was coming; in fact, I was in New York hoping we could make everything right again. I thought we were going to make it, Dee. I really did.’

  ‘She seemed like such a nice person.’

  He stopped pacing and plopped back into the chair. ‘Oh, she is. She’s a wonderful person, but she dances. That’s her passion. She says she’s got a few good years at best. It’s now or never. There’ll never be another chance.’

  Dee closed the file in front of her and, with a few deft movements, prevented the threatening landslide of the rest. Then she stood and came to sit in the chair by his side. ‘I’m sorry, Garrett, but I understand how she feels.’

  ‘I understand too. That makes it harder. I can’t even claim she’s a jerk and let it go at that. I respect the woman and her choices too much.’

  She touched his hand. ‘It’s hard these days. It’s hard for all of us. I’m sorry you missed Ellis.’

  ‘I’m not. He’s not nearly as nice to talk to as you are.’ He closed his hand around the warmth of her palm and ran his index finger over her knuckles. ‘Not very nice of my dear brother to leave you chained to the desk on a Friday night. I’ll have to talk to him about that.’

  She extricated her hand and sat back. ‘Well, actually, I just lost track of time. If you’d like to talk to Ellis, I can give you his cell phone number.’

  ‘I have it, but I wouldn’t dream of interrupting.’

  She made no response to his hints at what might be going on between his brother and Stacie. She definitely was good. He could almost believe she really didn’t care. But he was the romantic in the family, and something in his gut told him that wasn’t the case.

  ‘I’ll see him soon enough anyway. I’ve decided to stay at Ellis’s a while. He doesn’t know it yet, but I dropped my things off there before I came back into town. Great guest suite.’ He raked her with a suggestive grin. ‘One thing I can say about my brother, he’s got good taste.’

  She met his gaze with a hint of a smile and not a trace of a blush. ‘Yes, your brother does have good taste.’

  It was then he remembered the reason Stacie had sent him there. The best way he knew to get Dee to Ellis’s house was to ask her to join him for a meteor shower. She didn’t have to know where he was taking her. ‘What could be more fun on a Friday night than a little morose brooding under a cascade of meteors?’ he asked.

  ‘Sounds intriguing. You’re in luck. I have an opening in my social calendar.’ She gathered her belongings and the two of them left the now deserted building and headed for the parking garage.

  ‘I hope you don’t mind driving,’ Garrett said. ‘I had Ellis’s limo driver drop me off thinking I’d just ride back with him.’ Jeffries was actually on stand-by, but a discreet text while Dee gathered her things had sorted that. Garrett buckled himself into the passenger side of her Audi and sat back against the sigh of leather seats. ‘Nice car. Payments must be a bitch, though.’

  ‘It’s paid for.’

  ‘Graduation gift? Inheritance? Don’t tell me you won the lottery?’

  ‘I bought it for myself with the bonus money from my last year at Jasper and McDowell.’

  He let out a low whistle. ‘You do all right for yourself, Ms Henning.’

  ‘Yes, I do, Mr Thorne.’

  In the darkness he could just make out the sparkle in the corner of her eyes. The rest of her face was bathed in shadow, but the woman didn’t have to be seen to be appreciated, and Garrett was a man who lived through his senses. He sensed the brush of expensive clothing pressed between the leather of the seat and the pliant curve of soft flesh. At the end of the day, deodorant and soap had acquiesced to female scent that was just barely a scent, almost a taste at the back of his throat, a hint of something rich and fine and sensual that made him understand completely why his brother was so enthralled.

  He fiddled with the radio until he found a jazz station where a suggestive saxophone purred music that was positively copulatory. ‘Tell me, Dee, just how much of your leisure time do you spend at Pneuma Inc. anyway?’

  ‘Not enough, probably.’

  ‘Wow, Ellis wasn’t kidding when he said the two of you had a lot in common.’

  She shot him a quick glance as they merged on to the freeway. ‘He said that?’

  ‘I have my doubts if the man knows the difference between leisure time and work, and it doesn’t look like you do either.’

  ‘That’s how you get things done in this world. You can’t let yourself be distracted.’

  ‘You sound just like Amy.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Garrett, I didn’t mean to bring up bad memories.’ Compassion melted the edges of neutrality, and he would be the first to admit he was enjoying the warming trend.

  ‘It’s OK. Stacie always said that I was in love with being in love, and Ellis …’ He shot her a surreptitious glance, now that his eyes were beginning to adjust to the darkness. ‘She said Ellis was incapable of love.’

  Her face remained unreadable in the slow pulse of headlights on the freeway, and when she spoke, her voice had once again cooled to neutral. ‘Sounds like the three of you have quite a mottled history.’

  ‘You could say that.’ He waited, giving her every opportunity to ask any of a plethora of questions he knew she must be dying to ask. And he – unlike his brother – would be more than willing to answer in detail. The saxophone made seductive suggestions in the darkness. Garrett sat poised to shock and titillate with the lurid tale of two brothers, but Dee simply didn’t ask.

  When she finally did speak, it was not to question. ‘As far as Amy’s concerned, Garrett, I can’t imagine any job demanding more of a person’s time and energy than being a ballerina.’

  ‘Except maybe yours?’

  ‘Except maybe mine.’

  ‘If you were in Amy’s shoes, would you do what she did? Would you give up love for your career, or would you throw caution to the wind and go for it?’

  In the soft glow of the dashboard he could see her mouth soften into a cautious smile. ‘I can’t really answer that question, Garrett. It’s been a long time since I’ve had anything even remotely resembling a relationship.’

  ‘Get off at this next exit.’ He switched off the radio, leaving the car awash in silence. ‘What about Ellis?’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘The two of you certainly seemed to be doting on each other last week at the hotel, and I haven’t seen my brother dance in years.’

  ‘It was probably temporary insanity on both our parts.’

  ‘That simple?’

  ‘That simple. Where are we heading anyway?’

  ‘To Ellis’s place.’

  Though her recovery was quick, it wasn’t quite quick enough. Garrett didn’t miss the flash of alarm in her eyes at the revelation of their destination. He was certain of it now. The lady was smitten. Just how smitten remained to be seen. But he hoped, for his brother’s sake, very.

  He motioned her down a narrow gravel drive flanked by woodland on either side. At the end of it was a huge house with simple lines that fit the landscape as though it were a giant bird settled into just the perfect nest. ‘Ellis didn’t buy this place because it was fabulous and opulent, and green,’ he said. ‘Of course, it is all those things, but my brother’s so single-minded he’d have happily lived in a cardboard box if Beverly hadn’t intervened. Beverly picked this place out for him, actually. The two things Ellis wanted, it had. He wanted a pool because he swims, and he especially liked this place because there’s almost no light pollution on the back bit of the property. Perfect for sky watching. He bought up all of the acreage behind to make sure it stayed that way. I guess you could say Ellis has his own private wildlife reserve, which doubles as an observatory at night.’

  Within min
utes they were lying on a stretch of open countryside left to grow up wild behind Ellis’s house. The night smelled of ripening grasses, summer heat, and newly mown hay from the fields nearby. The dome of the sky coalesced with a light show of meteors. Garrett had polished off one turkey sandwich the cook had provided for an impromptu picnic and had started on a second, but Dee only lay next to him and watched the sky.

  ‘I’ve never seen anything like this. It’s amazing.’ Dee nodded to the domed housing of a telescope not far from where they were lying. ‘The telescope. Was it here when Ellis bought the house?’

  Garrett followed her gaze. ‘That, he built himself – well, at least the telescope part. The housing he hired someone to build, but Wade told me that he actually took time off from Pneuma Inc. to supervise and make sure it was just right.

  ‘You seem to know a lot about astronomy,’ Dee said.

  ‘Just a fan of the night sky. Have been for years. I studied astronomy briefly at Caltech, but then I got a good contract with my publisher and had too much on my mind to stick with it. Ellis, on the other hand, he was passionate about it. He probably doesn’t have much time for it any more. His loss.’

  ‘I never would have imagined Ellis as a stargazer. He always seems so firmly rooted on the ground.’

  ‘My brother’s actually a very interesting person despite his capitalist ways.’

  They lay quietly for a few minutes, watching nature’s pyrotechnics. ‘Ellis is the one who got me interested in astronomy, actually; me and Stacie. He even discovered his own asteroid. Bet you didn’t know that, did you?’

  ‘Wow! Astronomy’s a far cry from running a cutting-edge company. What made him decide on business?’

  When Dee finally did ask a real question, it happened to be the most devastating one, the answer to which had shredded all their lives 17 years ago. Garrett’s heart hammered his ribs, as though it were still trying to escape the truth. But he wasn’t one to keep secrets, not any more. He took a deep breath and tried to sound matter-of-fact. ‘I eloped with his fiancée and he got expelled from the astrophysics program at Caltech for cheating.’