“Are you ill?” he blurted out without thinking.
“Jesus.” She jerked up so hard the swivel chair beneath her rocked. “You startled me.”
“What’s wrong? You look like hell.”
“I…” She ran her fingers along the edge of the document she was studying. “I haven’t been sleeping much…there’s such a lot to learn…I’ve been trying to read all these reports.”
He walked up to her. “I told you to mingle. Speak to people, let them see you.”
“I have.” She looked up at him, her lips curving into a tired smile. “It was easier than I thought. For the first time in my life, I was grateful for my name. It’s a good conversation opener. One of the girls in accounts has a sister called Ruby. We had a laugh about that. Samantha in IT has two daughters who take ballet lessons, and Hank’s wife makes dolls’ houses, like my mother. Once I got going, I found something to say to most people.”
Nick perched his hip on the edge of the desk, still shocked by seeing anxiety so clearly stamped on her face. He made an effort to keep his voice light. “Speaking of mothers, mine hasn’t been pestering me, like she normally does. You haven’t by any chance done her in?”
“No.” Crimson leaned back in the swivel chair and raked her fingers through the long silvery hair that she wore loose today. “But not for the lack of wanting. She’s still staying with us at Longwood Hall. It’s like having a pair of prison guards watching over me. I swear, at night they take a tour past my bedroom door to make sure I haven’t bolted. I half expect to hear a click as they lock me in.”
He gave her a grin. “You’re their golden goose.”
“I believe it’s a goose that lays golden eggs.”
“Whatever.” He waved aside the thought and moved on to a practical question. “What are you using for transport? My father’s Panther, or something more modest?”
“I…actually…”
Curious, Nick watched as Crimson hesitated. Poor thing, she really looked washed out. Even the blush that fanned up her cheeks lacked its normal brightness.
“I’ve been coming in with Charlie, the morning security guard,” she said after a pause. “And Raymond has been taking me home. While Uncle Stephan was ill, they got into the habit of coming by the house. Charlie brought the morning papers, and Ray delivered the office mail in the evening. Until the end, your father liked to keep up with the business.”
Nick brushed aside the image of his father as a sick, dying man, and instead focused on what Crimson was telling him. He mulled it over. “Charlie starts at six in the morning and Ray finishes at ten in the evening. That means…” He paused to make a quick calculation. “Are you telling me that you’ve been working sixteen hours a day?”
Crimson nodded.
“That’s crazy,” he told her. “You’ll crash and burn.”
She scowled at him. “Do you have any idea of the dedication it takes to be a ballet dancer? Of the hours of practice needed to make your body bend and twist in ways that human bodies were not designed to bend and twist? Of the pain involved, aching muscles and bleeding toes and fractured bones and damaged tendons in the feet? The discipline with diet? The endless task of learning the technique, the music, and infusing each movement with artistry and emotion?” She made an angry, sweeping gesture with one hand. “Sixteen hours sitting behind the desk is nothing in comparison.”
She was getting herself all worked up, Nick could tell. He could see the escalating signs of distress in her. Her nostrils flared, and her brown eyes flashed, and she continued to rant. “My father died when I was nine and my mother worked three jobs to make ends meet. I was a latchkey kid. Then, at fourteen, I got a scholarship to a ballet academy and went off to boarding school. When I graduated, at eighteen, I got a place with a touring company and lived on the road.”
Taking a moment to inhale, she leaned forward across the table. “Everything I’ve done, I’ve done alone. No one has handed me success on a plate. And, by God, I’ll do this thing alone too, if I have to. If you can’t be bothered to be here, don’t feel you need to put in an appearance. I’ve spoken to the lawyer and he’s drawn up a formal letter to confirm your forty percent share, but I can tear up the document just as easily as I can sign it.”
She halted, her lungs heaving, her body quivering like that a racehorse crossing the finishing line. Muttering a string of curses, she pulled open a desk drawer, took out a small plastic object and lifted it to her mouth.
“Asthma,” she snapped before he could ask. “That’s why I had to give up dancing. If my breathing hadn’t gone up the spout, you wouldn’t see me for the dust.” She gave a small, almost hysterical rush of laughter. “See me for the dust…get it? It’s dust that triggered my respiratory problems to start with.”
“Crimson,” he said very softly. “Shut up or I’ll have to slap you.”
She glared at him over the inhaler and made angry sound of protest. He held up a hand in a placating gesture. “You’re cracking up,” he warned her. “You’re not superhuman, and you’re not alone. But I’m not going to be responsible for you ending up in a mental ward if you insist on taking the weight of the whole world on your shoulders.”
For a moment, it appeared to him as if she might crumble. A tremor ran over her slender body. Her lips moved without a sound. Then she rallied. “Fine,” she said. “If I’m not alone in this mess, will you tell me what to do with these?” She picked up the stack of documents in front of her and dropped them back on the desk with a thud.
****
Crimson tried to hide her agitation while Nick helped her scoop up the papers and they moved to sit at the circular conference table by the window. Her entire body was throbbing with the force of her heartbeat. She shouldn’t have let her emotions burst free like that. The pressure had been building up inside her all morning—anger and disappointment, and a deep, cutting hurt at the thought that Nick might not return to help her.
So what, she told herself as she rifled through the work with trembling hands. Why should one more letdown upset her so much? She’d lived through plenty. How many times had her father promised to give up drinking? How many times as a child had she wished that her mother could be more like other mothers, dress in tasteful clothing and curb her rowdy, uncouth comments in PTA meetings?
She’d learned not to put her faith in people, and life had reinforced her caution. At ballet school, and later on at the Pioneer Ballet Company, the fierce competition for limited opportunities had overshadowed friendships, making it hard to trust anyone.
“Let’s start with this.” She pulled out the blueprint for the new fuel injection system. “I’ve been studying the diagram for hours, but I still can’t tell the difference between it and the New York subway map.”
Nick bent over the document. “I thought Hank Rasmussen took this with him when he stormed out of your office on Friday.”
“He did. I went to ask for it back. He bristled with macho resentment and finally shoved it at me so hard the paper got crinkled.”
Nick jerked to attention. “Do you want me to talk to him?”
Crimson considered the question. Her gaze strayed to the glass panels that gave a view of the landscaped grounds. Sunshine gilded the neatly cut lawns. In the sky, two birds were chasing each other. Because of the air conditioning, she couldn’t open the window to hear them sing, couldn’t enjoy the rich, earthy smells of the gardens in full bloom. For a moment, she longed to jump up to her feet, scatter the documents to the floor, run outside and frolic barefoot on the grass, like a carefree child.
“No,” she said with a sigh. “I’ll deal with him.”
Nick tossed the blueprints aside. “You don’t have to understand these.”
Today, he was wearing a pristine white shirt, and the fine cotton stretched taut across his shoulders as he reached for a notepad. He drew three circles on the page. “Hank builds the cars. Jorge sells them. Peter counts up the money.” He inserted an initial in each circle, then dr
ew a square box in the middle of them and connected each circle to the box with a line. “If I had colored pens, I’d paint this box crimson.” He gave her a sideways glance, humor glinting in his eyes. “How did you come by that crazy name, anyway?”
“My mother was a fan of Gone with the Wind. She wanted to name me Scarlett, but the lady next door had just had a baby girl, and she’d called her daughter Scarlett. They expected us to play together, and naming me Scarlett as well would have caused endless confusion. So, in a stroke of inspiration, my mother came up with Crimson.”
“Did you?”
“Did I what?”
“Play with Scarlett.”
“No.” Crimson felt her raw nerves easing. With a rush of gratitude, she understood what Nick was doing—he was using small talk to bring her down from her frenzied agitation. “Scarlett moved away when she was two. Her mother ran off with the washing machine repair man. We’d been wondering why her washing machine kept going wrong. I have no idea what happened to Scarlett.”
“Did you have a nickname as a kid?”
“Puce. Purple.” She grimaced at the memories. “My mother realized her mistake, and she tried, but nothing stuck. Crim sounded too much like Grim, and Son sounded like a boy, and Crimmy sounded too close to Crummy.”
“Crimsy?”
“Hey. I like that.” She sent him a bright smile. “It might make people think I’m clumsy, which is okay. I can be a bit inept at times.” Their eyes met, and held for three long seconds. Something twisted low in her belly. Nick’s eyes were dark brown, almost opaque, and as the air between them grew thick with tension, they narrowed, wary and challenging. If the eyes were a door to a person’s soul, Nick’s were locked and bolted, it occurred to her.
“Crimsy it is then,” he said, keeping his voice light. Too light. She could hear the effort it cost him to appear at ease. He pretended to be busy, shuffling papers that needed no shuffling, until the emotional charge that had flared up between them had died down again.
“Your job is to coordinate,” he told her. “Hank and Peter will estimate how much the improvement will cost. Jorge will tell you if customers will be willing to pay the extra. That’s all there is to it.”
“All right.” She scored a tick on her list of questions.
Nick leaned back in the seat, hands laced behind his head. “What’s next?”
Crimson studied her notes. “Taking the vintage Spur to a trade fair in Detroit.”
“No way,” Nick said flatly.
“Why?” she countered, equally flatly.
“Where’s the damn thing now?
Her brows drew together. “Hanging on a glass shelf in the showroom.”
“And how do you think it got there?” When her frown deepened, Nick abandoned his relaxed pose. “With great difficulty, that’s how.” He gestured to emphasize the point. “That thing is priceless. I can imagine the fuss the insurance company would make to take it down and ship it across the country, and then string it back up again when it returns. And, while it’s here, at the factory, what do people have to do to see it?”
She shrugged. “They have to come here, I guess.”
“There is no I guess about it. They have to come here. And they see, not only the Constantine Spur that took part in the very first Le Mans 24 hour race ever held, but they also see a row of brand new Constantine Panthers that they can drool over, giving us an opportunity to convince them that they simply must have one.”
“Okay.” Crimson scored another tick. “The Spur stays at home.”
Nick resumed his carefree pose. “Next.”
“Funding for an advertising campaign.”
He nodded his chin toward the notepad. “Three circles.”
A ripple of excitement swept over Crimson. She had thought he was talking down to her with those simplistic circles, but he’d been sincere. It was starting to make sense now. She raised her gaze to Nick. His eyes were softer, warmer now as he embraced his love of the company that was his heritage. The dark curls were beginning to look a little disheveled, and one of the buttons on the front of his white shirt was perilously close to popping open as he rocked back in his chair, hands laced behind his head.
She spoke slowly, watching Nick’s face, searching for confirmation in his expression that she was on the right track. “Jorge and Peter need to figure out how much it will cost,” she said. “Then they have to figure out if the advertising campaign will allow us to sell extra cars, or sell the same number of cars but get a higher price for them.”
“And Hank?” Nick said. “What’s Hank’s role in it?”
At a loss for an answer, Crimson chewed the end of her pencil. Nick had been studying her, waiting for her answer. Now, his gaze fell to her mouth. His eyes narrowed. With a crash, he brought the chair back down to four legs. Awareness flooded Crimson at how her lips had pursed around the shaft of the pencil in what might be regarded as a suggestive gesture. A blush rose on her skin.
“I don’t know,” she said, her words muffled as she slid out the pencil.
Nick swallowed, hard. She could tell by the strained movement of his throat. He spoke in a low, almost strangled voice. “Production cost. Can the manufacturing schedule handle more cars, or will there be overtime? Will some externally sourced components need to be ordered as a rush job? Or, will the increased quantity trigger discounts with suppliers? Those are the kind of questions you’ll need to consider.”
“Okay,” she told him, although her brain had stopped working.
He made a small, inviting gesture with one hand. “Next?”
Perspiration beaded between her breasts as she met his gaze. Color burned on her cheeks, but valiantly, Crimson forged on. “Hank wants to produce cars into inventory, so that the factory doesn’t have to go on a four day week.”
“Hmm…” Nick’s mouth flattened. “That’s a tricky one. What do you do if you have inventory of unsold goods you want to sell?” When she failed to respond, he gave her a clue. “Like fashion shops do with unsold clothes at the end of a season.”
Her brows inched up. “You have a sale?”
“Right. You discount the product. And there’s the problem. Constantine Motors never discounts. Never. We only have one product. The Constantine Panther. It comes in two versions. Two seater, Panther Duet. Four seater, Panther Quartet. The color is always the same, dark green and purple, with chrome accents. There’s a long list of options for the client to customize. Seat color. Walnut or maple dash. Heated seats. Music system. Trip computer. Apart from the paintwork and chassis, which are always standard, every Constantine Panther is fully customized. And if you manufacture to inventory, without a customer lined up to make their choices, you can’t customize.”
“So.” Crimson drew a thick line around the square box with her initial. “This time, there’s no input from the three circles. It’s just me. I’ll have to decide if we should take the risk of manufacturing cars that someone might not want to buy at full list price.”
“You’ve got it.”
“Could we make the inventory cars a special offer?”
“Not unless you want to annoy every single person who’s ever bought a Constantine Panther. The no discount policy is considered a courtesy, ensuring that everyone is treated the same.” Nick’s brow furrowed, giving him a troubled look. “In truth, there’s never been any need to discount in the past. This is the first time in fifty years we don’t have a waiting list.”
Crimson flinched. The words summed up the enormity of her task. Not only did she have to keep things level until the end of the year—she had to reverse a declining trend. What could Uncle Stephan have been thinking of when he put her in charge?
Nick cleared his throat, startling her out of her thoughts. “If your mother and mine are making themselves into a nuisance, I have a solution.” When she gave him an uncertain nod, he continued talking. “It’s taking me three hours each way to commute. The only options for short term accommodation in Longwood are a
guesthouse with shared bathrooms or a motel full of long term residents on welfare.”
He paused, appeared to hesitate, and then he spoke slowly, his eyes searching hers. “If I could stay with you and your mother at Longwood Hall, I’d be happy to let your mother use my condo in return. She might enjoy visiting New York for a bit. And, if my mother is her new best friend, she’ll go home too. It would keep both of them out of your hair.”
“Sure,” Crimson said, a little breathless. “Come and stay with us.”
And wondered if she’d just made a huge mistake.
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Chapter Six
Awareness of Crimson beside him in the narrow bucket seats of the Panther prickled on Nick’s skin. Every time he wrapped his hand around the gear stick to shift up or down, the back of his knuckles grazed her thigh. If he pressed a little harder, the motion might make her skirt bunch up, exposing more of those long, long legs.
Enemies, friends, or lovers?
Ever since he’d agreed to help her, the question had burned in his mind. Did she understand what was happening between them? They had already evolved from being adversaries to an uneasy friendship, and were now headed toward an affair, with no more control over their emotions than flotsam drifting in a stream.
Turning off the main road, he steered between two stone pillars, onto a gravel drive that wound its way through a copse of stately old oaks and sycamores. As the three-story mansion in gray granite came into view, a wave of nostalgia rolled over him, echoes of a hundred childhood homecomings.
His eyes fell on the lawns that sloped up gently toward the house. It hit him hard at that exact moment, like falling into a time warp. For a few seconds, he was fifteen again, running down the drive from the gate, where the racing team van had deposited him.
He saw his father, crouching on the lawn, tossing a soccer ball to a small boy with a chubby face and golden curls that glinted in the evening sun. The boy missed the ball, but instead of appearing annoyed, he gave a delighted gurgle of laughter and trundled off after it.
Ballet Shoes and Engine Grease Page 6
