by Lisa Hendrix
Someone buzzed out to Chris, who quickly appeared with two bottles of champagne, chilled, though not on ice, and some plastic cups.
“Congratulations, Mr. Alexander,” she said. She looked a bit confused.
Well, she might be, but the business heads in the room certainly weren’t.
Every man and woman there knew the value of a Wick-Alexander business combine, and Mason could practically hear the cash registers ring as they toted up the numbers.
He frowned, then chided himself.
Why shouldn’t they? He’d done it himself for months. It was a hell of a prospect.
The champagne was guzzled, and the meeting broke up. Caro and he were the picture of the power couple as they accepted a final round of congratulations and said goodbye, before they walked back to Mason’s office.
Caroline stepped away from him as he closed the door, and went to stand behind his desk as though she belonged there in his place. She wore a navy-blue silk suit and a cool smile that said she owned the world. She probably would soon, Mason reflected.
“You haven’t asked me why I came back early,” she said, scanning the items on his desk.
“Not because you missed me?”
“I got a phone call from Daddy yesterday morning—no, this morning. When was it? I’m so jet-lagged I’m not even sure what day it is here. Thursday morning Singapore time, whenever that was.” She leveled her pale gray eyes right at Mason. “He said your attention might be wandering. That you had taken someone to the Wilmott Foundation dance.”
“Did he?”
“I suppose it was my fault, in a way. I was enjoying teasing you about your proposal. Letting you dangle. But I always intended to say yes. Surely you knew that.”
Mason made a neutral, “Mmm.”
“Anyway, I made arrangements to come home right away and clear things up with you.” She reached for her purse. “And then he sent me this fax of the woman you’d been seeing.”
She pulled out a piece of paper, unfolded it, and laid it on the desk. Mason recognized the photo immediately, even in black and white, from ten feet away, and upside down. His stomach clenched at the sight of Raine’s flyaway hair streaming across his caricatured face.
“Am I mistaken,” asked Caro, biting the words, “or is this the little piece of garden trash that ruined my Ferragamos with her fish crap?”
“It’s not fish crap, Caroline. It’s fermented fish by-products. I’d think you’d appreciate the difference, since you were wearing so much of it.”
Caro’s expression went flat. She was not amused.
“Don’t get smart with me, Mason. I’m too tired and pissed to find you funny. You need to understand a few things. I don’t mind if you get your thrills elsewhere, even by slumming, but I won’t have you jerk me around in public. And I won’t have you humiliating me by sleeping with someone who’s crossed me. If you want my money—and we both know you do—you’ll keep all that in mind.”
“Take a look at that picture. Do you think I’m seeing her anymore?”
“Good,” she said, reaching for the top button on her blouse. “And now, in the spirit of celebration, I think it’s time we take this agreement to the table, so to speak.”
She unbuttoned in a quick striptease as she walked toward him, tugging the creamy silk open just as she reached him. With a shrug she slipped her straps down, then took his hand and pulled it to her breast inside the lace cup of her bra. Her nipple was flaccid against his palm, not like— He pulled his hand away.
“This is neither the time nor the place, Caroline. Not to mention the fact that I feel like a fire hydrant you’re marking.”
She started buttoning up with no apparent ill will. “As long as everybody knows you’re mine, darling. Including you.”
“After your announcement, I think my status is extremely clear to all concerned.” He glanced at his watch. “And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a dinner meeting.”
“There’s nothing on your calendar. I looked.”
“It’s last minute. My roommate from Harvard. I would ask you to come along but you really do look exhausted. Get some sleep and I’ll talk to you tomorrow. Good night.”
He pressed a quick kiss to her cheek and made his exit while she still had two buttons to go. As he passed his secretary’s desk at a brisk clip, he said, “Chris, tell Paul to meet me out front, and make sure Miss Wickersham has transportation.”
“Yes, sir.”
By some quirk, the elevator was empty. Mason breathed a sigh of relief.
The ex-roommate was a fiction. He’d just felt a need to escape Caro’s clutches before he got any more disgusted with her, or with himself.
He couldn’t afford to get disgusted. The preliminaries of this quarter’s financial statement were in his top drawer, and they were not pretty. Without money from Wick, AI was going nowhere, and the power cell might just as well be another of his father’s pipe dreams.
Paul pulled up just as he hit the front door. Mason signaled him to stay put and let himself into the car, and they pulled into the rush hour traffic with barely a pause.
“Where to, sir?”
“Someplace quiet. The mountains. Up toward Mt. Rainier.” That would take several hours, especially at this time of evening. Caro wouldn’t be able to track him down. The car phone rang and he hit the power button to turn it off without answering. He’d call Sam later, before bed, to explain, and they’d make it up this weekend. Maybe he’d take her sailing. They could stay out overnight. A tall ship and a star.
Paul took a left when he should have gone right.
“You’re going the wrong way.”
“Traffic, sir. I heard a report earlier. We’ll avoid some trouble by taking another route out of downtown.”
“Fine.”
Tawdry. The word kept going through his head. St. Audry, the old English market where shiny, cheap baubles could be had for a few pennies and which had given its name to worthless trash. He felt tawdry.
“I like driving through downtown, don’t you, sir?”
Paul’s voice startled Mason. It wasn’t like him to chitchat. “I suppose.”
“The buildings are so interesting. Have you ever wondered why one end of downtown is so successful while the other isn’t?”
“I suppose it’s a matter of history.”
“Maybe,” said Paul. “But Seattle started down at the Pioneer Square
end, and yet that part of town always seems to attract the destitute instead of the successful. Even in the old days.”
“People with money have always moved up on the hills. It’s the castle mentality. That and getting away from the swamps and the fever. It’s instinctive.”
“Instinctive. And yet it’s almost as though it’s the area that generates the success.”
“Is there a point to this nonsense, Paul?”
“Just making some observations, sir. There are areas in Hong Kong that seem successful, too. And yet occasionally, that can change. One of the most interesting cases I heard of involved a new bank that came into a district. The other businesses in the area—mostly large companies—had been very successful until this new building went up. Then they started failing, but only those along a specific line. It seems the new building had been designed with a sharp corner and lots of windows, so it was like a sort of shiny knife. Most of the businesses that failed faced the edge of the knife. Isn’t that interesting?”
“That’s crap. I know what you’re doing, Paul, and I don’t appreciate it. And where the hell are we going?”
“North on Aurora Avenue
.”
Toward Raine.
“You’re fired.”
“Yes, sir. I assumed I would be. Please sit back and try to keep an open mind.”
Mason didn’t have much choice, at fifty miles an hour. He sat back and fumed, waiting for the chance to jump out of the car.
To his surprise, when Paul pulled off Aurora Avenue
, he turned away f
rom Raine’s house. Instead, they went down past the Adobe building, under the bridge, and along the waterfront to the Canal Place
site. Curious, Mason forgot his plan to jump out.
Paul’s personal car, a nondescript red hatchback that had seen better days, was sitting in front of the old warehouse. As the Rolls pulled up, Miranda stepped out of the hatchback.
Stubbornly clinging to the last bit of control he had, Mason sat in the car until Paul came around and opened the door. He got out and straightened his tie.
“He’s all yours,” Paul said to Miranda.
“What the hell is going on?” Mason demanded.
“Did you soften him up?” asked Miranda, ignoring him.
“He’s not very receptive,” Paul answered.
She sighed. “Mason, Mason. You need to expand your horizons.” She put her hands on her hips. “Feng shui. That’s where you need to start.”
“I don’t need to start anywhere.”
“Yes, you do. You see, I’m going to the planning commission as a friend of FUSE. I will speak out against Canal Place
as designed, so unless you do some research, you’re not going to be able to debate me. And you know how vocal I can be.”
Mason spluttered.
“It’s all right, darling. I’ve made it easy. Paul?”
Paul walked to the back of his car and opened the hatchback. Miranda joined him and crooked a finger toward her brother. “Come on, Mason. That’s a boy.”
“Quit talking to me like I’m in diapers,” he said. He took his time getting to the car.
Miranda pulled out a fat three-ring binder. “I’ve put together the materials for you. This is a collection of articles I found.”
She pushed it against Mason’s chest, so that he had no choice but to take it. She reached for more. “Here’s an assortment of books. And these are the architectural drawings for the current plan.” She piled it all into Mason’s arms.
He dumped it back into the car. “Thank you very much, but I know all I need to know about this site.”
Miranda shook her head and looked at Paul. “You’re right. Resistive. And pigheaded and narrow-minded, not to mention blind. I love you, Mason, but you need to get a clue.”
She pulled down the hatchback and turned around and dropped the keys into Mason’s jacket pocket.
“Paul and I are going to go now. We’re leaving you his car so you won’t stick out too much—we don’t want you to get car-jacked or anything—but you’ll probably want to pull up onto Thirty-fourth before it gets too late. It’ll give you a better view of the site and the neighborhood anyway.”
“What makes you think I won’t leave as soon as you’re gone?”
“Because, despite being pigheaded, you’re not stupid. Before you decide to drive off, walk around. See what we could destroy with too much arrogance. And then decide whether you’re going to at least read a few pages. You have everything you need to sit here for a while and match up what you read to the plans. I had Cook pack you dinner and a Thermos, and there’s even a flashlight and one of those reading lights in case it gets dark.”
She hugged him, and despite the circumstances Mason found himself chuckling. “All right. I’ll read your silly papers. But don’t expect a lot. This stuff is pretty far out there.”
“All I expect is that you’ll take a look.”
She and Paul walked back to the Rolls. Paul held the door, and they drove away, leaving Mason to be enlightened.
He snorted and got in the car and drove off.
*
Nineteen
« ^ »
“Do you suppose that will actually work?” asked Miranda as they drove north on Greenwood. Traffic was heavy, and it was taking forever to get anywhere.
“Only if he really wants to see Miss Hobart again.”
“If Mother and I didn’t screw that up for him.” She sighed. “I’m sorry he fired you.”
Paul met her eyes in the rearview mirror. “I’m not.”
“I thought you liked working for us. For Mason, I mean.”
“I do. Did. But there are advantages to not working. Or at least to not working for Mr. Alexander.”
“Like what?”
“I can work on my dissertation full-time and do my defense this fall instead of waiting. It will put me in the pool for tenure-track positions next spring when the universities are hiring.”
“I didn’t know you wanted to be a professor.”
“Actually, I had hoped to go to work for Alexander Industries for a few years first, but that doesn’t look like it’s going to pan out.”
Paul slammed on the brakes as a fool on a motorcycle cut in front of the car.
“That was close. I thought I was going to see evolution in action,” said Miranda. “You said advantages. What else?”
“Well.” He slowed the car to a stop at a light. “One of the major ones is that, since I’m not an employee, I can ask you out.”
Miranda sat stunned, until Paul turned around and grinned at her, at which point she realized how stupid she must look with her mouth hanging open.
So she closed it and opened the door to run up to the front passenger door while the light was still red. Paul popped the lock and she slid in next to him.
“Are you serious?” she asked.
He nodded as he accelerated through the intersection. “What do you think, Miranda? Can an Alexander even consider going out with an unemployed graduate student?”
Tears hung just beneath the surface. Miranda nodded. “You know, don’t you, that I’m about half in love with you?”
“Good,” said Paul quietly. “Because I’ve been all the way in love with you for years.”
“Oh.” She had to put her hand over her mouth to catch the sob of relief. “Oh, Paul. Why didn’t you say anything?”
“You weren’t ready to hear it, and I wasn’t in the position to do anything about it. The chauffeur doesn’t ask out the boss’s sister.”
“No. Probably not.” The memory of all the men she’d had in the car since her divorce made her wince. She reached out, almost touching his cheek. “You drove me on dates.”
“I waited outside apartments on a few of them, too,” he reminded her, without accusation. “It was never easy, but after Saturday night I realized that any more would be impossible. If you hadn’t given me an excuse to get myself fired, I would have had to quit. My letter of resignation was in the computer when you got in the car last night.”
“So now what?” she said.
He hit the turn indicator, swung over to the curb, and turned the engine off. “Now we find out if this is going to work.”
He kissed her, and it was what she had known it would be, fiery and sweet and erotic all at once, and more satisfying than any dozen kisses she’d had in her entire life. His broad hands went around her, holding her head and waist while he gently teased her mouth open. With a groan she pressed toward him, exploring the lines of his face with her palms, lacing her fingers into his wonderful, thick hair.
“I think,” murmured Paul, “this indicates definite possibilities.”
They necked like teenagers for a long time, each one pushing things a little further, as though they were in a contest to see who could do the most damage in the shortest time. Finally, it was either stop or make an exhibition of themselves for the neighborhood kids, two of whom were hanging out on a retaining wall trying to act casual while sneaking peeks.
“Oh, my,” said Miranda, straightening her blouse. “We are out of hand, aren’t we? We’d better move on before someone calls the police.”
Paul started the car and pulled back into traffic. They drove a couple of blocks in silence. He occasionally glanced her way, then grinned and shook his head as though he couldn’t believe it.
For her part, Miranda just watched his face, absorbing the wonder of it all. In the six years he’d worked for them, she had never sat next to him like this, where she could really watch him. His hands were
strong and capable on the wheel of the Rolls, like they had been on her body a few minutes ago.
Six years, and she had so much to get to know: where his family lived, if he ate red meat, whether he had hair on his chest, how many children he wanted. All the details, none of which really mattered because she knew what kind of man he was and he loved her and the rest would work out.
“We should go up to Mt. Rainier,” he said.
“What?”
“That’s where your brother wanted me to take him. What do you think? We can stop for take-out along the way.”
“Only if you promise that we’ll find a quiet spot in the woods and crawl in the back to see if we can find some fun ways to eat it.”
Paul laughed and took her hand to kiss it. “And me without my chopsticks.”
*
Raine sat bolt upright in bed, her heart pounding in rhythm to the knocking on her door in the next room. The luminous dial of her clock read one-forty-seven.
No one should be at her door at almost two A.M., which left two possibilities: she was being robbed by a polite burglar, or Mrs. Perlmutter was sick.
She scrambled out of bed and groped around for her robe. She couldn’t find it, and then she remembered where Bugsy had deposited his hairball last night and decided it didn’t really matter. Anyway, if it wasn’t Mrs. P. out there, a robe would just slow her down.
She crept out into the living room cautiously, picking up her baseball bat as she passed the umbrella stand. She peeked out the window. It was pitch black outside, the nearest streetlight having burned out a couple of nights back. She couldn’t make out much more than a dim shadow.
It was a man, not Mrs. P., and whoever he was, he knocked again, more persistently. She checked the chain and raised the bat, then flipped the light switch and opened the door a crack.
Mason. Her pounding heart stopped, then restarted again with a painful squeeze.
He just stood there looking at her through the crack, all solemn and haggard, as though he hadn’t been able to sleep well the past two nights either. His hair was mussed from him raking it back with his fingers, and, while he wore a suit, his tie was completely gone, for once, and his shirt collar was unbuttoned. He actually looked rumpled, which perversely made him even more attractive.
