by Barbara Daly
When did our children see us last?
Hope bolted upright in the back seat of the limousine.
"What?" Sam said.
Embarrassed, Hope mumbled, "Nothing," and snuggled back in. "Just something I forgot to do at the office."
"Must've been important." His mouth grazed her cheekbone, slid down her face.
What she'd forgotten were the names of the children they didn't have. Wonder how that news would grab him.
His mouth found hers in the darkness, took it lightly, briefly because they weren't alone, but it sent the heat flowing through her. The shock of his tongue darting into her mouth traveled down to her core with lightning speed. Her hand tightened on his jacket.
He drew back. She could feel the heat of his face, imagine the flush rising on it, knew he was aroused and wanting her as much as she wanted him.
He settled back with his arm slung across the top of the seat. Hope swallowed hard when she felt his other hand on her knee, whispered his name in a breathless warning as it sneaked up the inside of her thigh and then gasped aloud when his fingertips found their mark.
She opened her eyes wide. He returned her astonished gaze with the most innocent of smiles. "What are you doing?" she hissed at him.
"It's a long drive," he whispered back, sending the words directly into the shell of her ear and increasing the sensations that were taking on a life of their own. "I'm trying to entertain you."
"Couldn't you just sing?" With a little gasp she buried her face in his shoulder. "What will the driver think?"
"Nothing, if you'll stop leaping around like that." The amusement in his voice hummed through her hair as his fingers explored her through her sheer panty hose, through her black silk panties, stroking, teasing, making her feverish with wanting him to touch her directly, to share the heat, feel the moisture.
She sank her teeth into the fabric of his overcoat to muffle the moan rising in her throat.
His hand suddenly went to her waist and gripped the elastic of her panty hose. "If you'll lean back and lift up a little, dear, I'll straighten your coat out underneath you," he said in a loud, clear voice.
"Why, thank you, darling," Hope said, sounding strangled, which was exactly the way she felt. "You noticed I wasn't comfortable. Aren't you swe-e-e-e…"
The panty hose and panties locked her knees together now, but there was still room for Sam's large, strong hand, his smooth fingertips, and when he slipped his index finger inside her she writhed with pleasure.
"Still not comfortable, sweetheart?"
"Not. Quite." She was dying here, letting go, not caring what happened as long as his fingers kept on stroking and plunging, his thumb kept up its light touch on a nub so swollen and sensitive it seemed to have taken over her whole person.
"Here, let's try this," he murmured and slid his hands under her bare buttocks as the spasms began to quake uncontrollably through her body and she buried her face again in his shoulder.
He waited a few minutes, still stroking, as wave after wave of euphoria crashed over her. "There," he said when she stilled. "Better now?"
"Much."
"Good."
"My panty hose are cutting off the circulation below my knees," she muttered a few minutes later, wondering why his inelegant snort of laughter was more exciting than another man's poetry.
She'd almost composed herself when at last they pulled up to her apartment building. "Want to come in for some coffee?" she asked him, sending messages with her eyes that had nothing to do with coffee. "And take a taxi home?" she added for the driver's benefit.
"Great idea," Sam said, hauling himself out after her.
He behaved himself all the way to her apartment, where he backed her up against the door and took her in his arms, hard, demanding.
"The key," she gasped, "the key…"
And then they were inside. The fountain plinked, the wind chimes tinkled, the Christmas tree glowed, and so did the message light on the answering machine. Hope was oblivious to everything but Sam, his hands on her skin, his mouth on her breasts, skimming her out of her dress, leaving it in a heap on the floor and making a trail of silk and lace, bow tie and boxer shorts, a trail that led into the bedroom.
They nestled together on the ivy-patterned sheets, giving, taking, caring for each other and accepting gifts for themselves until their bodies forged into one and began the long, sweet spin, going out of control, flying off into space together and at last, slowly, settling down to the warm, moist arms of a welcoming Earth.
* * *
Hope woke up, reached out an arm to snuggle it around Sam and found he was no longer beside her. She heard noises, though, clanking sounds, and got up to investigate.
She crept across the living-room floor toward the light that shone out of the storage closet. She noticed in passing that Sam had folded their clothes, and also that most of his still seemed to be there, so he hadn't gone far. In fact, he was the most likely person to be in her closet. Why he was in the closet was the question.
She peered in through the door and found him sitting cross-legged on the floor in his tucked shirt and boxer shorts playing with pipe.
"Just couldn't wait for Santa Claus, could you," she said, resting on her knees beside him.
"Is this Number 12867?" he asked, holding up a short, stocky white length of PVC.
"That's my baby."
He held up a ninety-degree angle joint. "Is this what you use to join the pieces together?"
"Yes, straight pieces or various angles. Notice that the joint is a lot thicker than the pipe, twice as thick, actually…" She halted. "Is the middle of the night really the best time to learn about pipe?"
At last he directed a sexy smile at her. "I thought any time was good for you."
"Hush. Why the curiosity?"
He was serious again. "Because somebody's got to figure out what went wrong. Here we have this state-of-the-art pipe, and it's leaking."
"It isn't. Well, I mean it is, but it just can't be." The time she'd spent at Magnolia Heights, the things she'd seen, came back to her in a rush. "The plumbing contractor just didn't screw it in right," she insisted.
"How do you make pipe?"
"Oh, for heaven's sake!"
"I know, sort of, from reading the briefing documents. I just thought you might say something I hadn't heard before."
She futzed around getting her bare feet tucked under her cuddly white robe, grumbling all the while, then said, "They buy these polyvinyl chloride pellets. Then they put the pellets in a vat and melt them down and stir the whole mess up, then they pour it into dies—molds, like Jell-O molds or—"
"I know what dies are."
"—dies they've installed in the machines and when it cools down you've got pipe."
"No need to overdramatize it," Sam said.
"Well, that's all there is to it." She was still grumbling.
"Then what's so special about Number 12867?"
"Some secret components of the pellets. Special dies. This and that."
"So there are a couple of things that could go wrong. The wrong pellets, the wrong temperature, maybe, they used to melt them down, the stirring up process, whatever that is, or a flaw in the dies. Have I got that straight?"
"You haven't sworn me in yet."
"I told you once, I'm telling you again, we're on the same side." He paused and looked her hard in the face. "Do you know something you're not telling?"
That Senior Class play, when she'd gotten the Worst Actor award hands-down, felt as if it had happened only yesterday. "About the pipe?" she said. "Of course not."
"About anything."
In the deathly silence of the small space, Hope felt faint.
If she accused Benton of some sort of collusion that was leaving him open to blackmail, she'd lose her chance at the vice presidency.
If she withheld her suspicions from Sam, he'd find out she lied to him.
If she kept quiet altogether, she couldn't live with herself.
Who should I be loyal to?
Why, to yourself.
What did the vice presidency matter if she couldn't live with herself?
What did anything matter if she couldn't have Sam.
The thought shook her to her very core. She was in love with him. How had that happened?
"Yes," she said. "I'm afraid there is something you ought to know."
* * *
He was in shock, stunned by what she'd told him. True, he'd been waiting for Cap to come out in the open about his special interest in this case, but Hope had just managed to throw the man in the shark tank, directly into Sam's teeth.
"I did a very bad thing myself," Hope was saying to him, her words barely penetrating the fog in his mind, "by reading Benton's e-mail. I'll be in a lot of trouble for that. And I don't really have any proof, but I imagine it wouldn't be too hard to get. If Cap's getting big chunks of cash he has to be depositing it somewhere, so there be must a paper trail."
"It will destroy the firm." Sam's mouth was dry. "Could we get out of this closet?"
She led him into the living room and sat down on the sofa with her feet tucked up under her. Some instinct made him pull on his trousers before he glanced at the spot beside her, where he wanted to be, where he could touch her while they talked, but he took an armchair instead.
The firm would destroy him.
He was so close, so close. He'd paid his debts, he was breaking even, he was about to forge ahead to the comfortable spot he'd worked so hard, sacrificed so much to reach.
He felt like a lump of lead sitting there. What Hope had just told him had immobilized him, frozen his very soul inside his body. Because now he had to make a choice.
If he investigated Cap and found him culpable in the matter of a Palmer cover-up, the embarrassment to the firm would be infinite. And he'd be to blame for it, not Cap, but him. He'd lose everything.
It kept going around and around in his head, and Hope was waiting, waiting, he knew, for him to say, "This is an outrage. I'm blowing the whistle. To hell with the partnership. To hell with my future."
* * *
Hope sat quietly, watching Sam, knowing she'd presented him with a virtually unsolvable problem and waiting for a chance to say, "I've fallen in love with you, Sam. We'll figure this out together, solve it together. It will be all right—as long as we're together."
She couldn't just blurt it out. Love was the furthest thing from his mind right now.
She knew enough about how the world worked to know the choices that faced him. She knew enough about Sam—she thought she knew enough about Sam—to count on him to make the right choice.
Suddenly unable to sit still another second, she went to the kitchen and started a pot of coffee. The answering-machine message light caught her eye again. She went over to it and punched the play button.
"Hi, hon!"
It was much too early in the morning, she felt far too tense, for Maybelle's special type of enthusiasm. She skipped on to the next message.
"Never figured you for a library user."
The voice, Cap's, jolted her. Behind her and across the room, she heard Sam's muttered oath. She wrapped her arms protectively across her chest and listened.
"I would never have noticed if you hadn't been wearing the same coat and scarf as the woman I saw at the housing project." He sounded amused. "My wife has that scarf."
Hope closed her eyes.
"Hey," Cap went on, "this is something we can handle between us. No problem, okay? You don't want to get your boss in trouble. Right? You don't want to cause any problems for—" he paused briefly "—our predatory friend."
Sam. He meant Sam. The Shark.
"He's probably there with you, come to think of it," Cap said, "but that's okay. We're all in this together. So let's meet tomorrow and talk over some alternatives. A little share of the take for each of you, maybe? At the library? Noonish? I'll see you—"
"The hell you will," Hope said, and crashed a finger down on the rewind button. She spun to find Sam standing just behind her. His face was gray.
"You think you're going to ruin him," Sam said. "In fact, he's going to ruin you."
"No, he's not. I won't let him."
"And me." His voice was so soft she could hardly hear him.
"No, he won't." She felt her face flushing hotly. "Nothing can ruin you except not being true to your own beliefs."
"People who announce that their bosses are paying blackmail money for good reason don't get to be vice president of Marketing." She hadn't expected him to be angry. "People who show that their law firms have covered up important evidence don't make partner!"
"So they go to another law firm! Another company! They go into business for themselves!" She was getting angry, too, and struggled for control. "I'm not suggesting we call a press conference here, Sam. I'm simply suggesting we find out the truth, I discuss the situation with Benton and you talk to Phil, and whatever happens we can go on with our lives knowing we did what was right."
We can go on with our lives. Together, because I—
"Right for whom."
"For the people at Magnolia Heights, for one thing." She couldn't hold back the anger any longer. "They're the ones being punished."
He visibly calmed himself down. "Listen to me for a minute, Hope. We don't have to do anything rash. Okay, now, I'm thinking like a lawyer. This is what a good lawyer would do. I'll talk to Cap. Maybe we can manage to 'find new evidence'—work it so it looks like we've just learned whatever it is he already knows—before we try this case. We'll meet him at the library, see what he has to say."
"Absolutely not."
"You're not thinking clearly. You've gotten emotionally involved with the people at Magnolia Heights and you're not looking ahead."
"And you're not thinking about anybody but yourself."
Her words flew through the air like knives. He drew back.
"You don't know what the partnership means to me," he said quietly. "No way you could know."
"I don't even want to. Not anymore."
"If that's the way you want it."
"It is. And don't worry." The tears were threatening to break through and she bit her lip, trying to hold them back. "I won't do anything that will threaten your partnership. But I will do what I think is right for me, with or without you."
There was nothing in his face to show whether he cared or not. Wordlessly he pulled on the rest of his clothes, shouldered his briefcase and left.
She knew she would never see him again, and she could hardly bear it.
* * *
First Hope was dreaming, then she was having one of those half-asleep, half-awake dreams, and then, fully awake, she realized her eyes were hot with unshed tears.
Her subconscious had done the work for her while she slept, conjuring up a dream about Sam, about a life with him, and in those half-awake moments had filtered the dream into her consciousness. She knew she wanted all those things most people want—affection, passion and love, husband, children and a home—and furthermore that she could have them without giving up her career.
She just couldn't have them with Sam.
It would never have worked out anyway. She wouldn't be happy as a housewife and Sam wouldn't be happy as a househusband. They might have remembered the children's names, but their birthdays would be out of the question. Well, no, they would have recorded them in their Palm Pilots.
The tears spilled over. Forget it. The question of possibly working things out was moot. Their relationship had changed the moment she'd realized he cared more about his partnership than about doing what was right.
She wiped her eyes. No matter how depressed she was, she had work to do. She had one day, one single day, to turn her life around. She'd wear her scarlet suit. It might not help, but it couldn't hurt.
* * *
Chapter 12
« ^ »
First Hope did her homework, going back to the Magnolia Heights files, looking up c
ost estimates, reading the final report in which Palmer had decided that submitting the lowest possible bid, meaning they'd make a slender profit on the job, would pay off in good public relations.
Although she didn't have access to their documents, it was clear that Stockwell Plumbing Contractors had made a similar decision along the way. There were communications urging efficient delivery of materials to cut costs, communications about coordination and cooperation between Palmer and Stockwell.
At the last possible minute, Hope gave up on sharpening her brains and went to work on her beauty.
Before she left the apartment in her scarlet suit, looking, she hoped, neither like a human tomato nor Santa Claus with swollen eyes, she watered the plants and left a message for the cleaning service that did its anonymous magic twice a week. Realizing she might not be home for a while, she gazed again at the changes Maybelle had made, the rounded lines of the tables, the fluffy rugs and covers, the terrycloth ottomans she'd put in the bathrooms. She'd even taken the edge off the galley-like kitchen with a charming wallpaper, shelf liners, an antique cookie jar.
Maybelle had done what she'd said she'd do. She'd taken away the sharp edges.
Hope saw that the same thing was happening to her. She was losing her sharp edges.
She needed them for one more day. Because today she was getting straight to the point.
She started in Slidell's cave. Today his hair was yellow—not blond, chrome yellow—and it went straight up on top, then curved over to create an interesting cockscomb effect. He looked like a Polish chicken she'd admired at a small-town State Fair their family had visited long ago.
But Slidell was no chicken. "You gave me access to Mr. Quayle's e-mail on that loaner," she said without preamble.
"I thought you'd never notice," Slidell said.
"Why? Why me?"
"I counted on you accidentally opening a message or two, figuring out something was going on and doing something about it. Everything goes through here," he said abruptly. "We know everybody's secrets. They assume we don't care enough about anything but bytes and RAM to notice what the words actually say. Well, we notice, but we keep our mouths shut."
