Tall, Dark & Reckless

by Heather MacAllister

  “Absolutely.” Mark barely avoided slamming the phone back into the cradle. Hang ups on a landline could be so much more dramatic than when using a cell phone.

  Mark stared at the computer screen for several long minutes before closing the file with the list of contacts. He’d only humiliate himself by calling anyone else.

  He owed Wally. He hadn’t liked what the guy had said, but appreciated the guts it took to say it. Mark also knew it was absolutely the truth. He was untouchable. More than anything Wally said, it was what he hadn’t that convinced Mark. Not once during their entire conversation had Wally asked about the story. That was because no story was worth hiring Mark Banning.

  How had this happened? He’d messed up one time…okay, more than once, but getting captured was by far the worst. Or had he just been unaware of the reputation he was earning?

  Not entirely, but he hadn’t cared because OMG hadn’t cared, either. Until now.

  If he wanted an assignment, it looked as though he was going to have to put up with a handler. Always assuming OMG would take him back and that was by no means a sure thing.

  Fine. He’d go find a “producer,” but it would be on his terms. Mark opened and closed drawers, looking for a piece of paper and a marker. He ended up ripping a page out of a student exam booklet and writing Job Opportunity in block letters across the top. He thought for a minute and ripped out another piece of paper to write Journalism Internship. That would make it clear who was in charge.

  “‘Mark Banning has agreed,’” he spoke as he wrote, “‘to take an intern with him on his next assignment. If you’re interested, leave your résumé along with 250 words explaining why he should select you for this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity—’” he underlined that part “‘—in the box outside room 10B.’”

  Now all he had to do was make some copies and find a box.

  5

  Step five: Arrange a “chance” encounter with your perfect man. It should be brief and unexpected—at least for him.

  PIPER STOPPED OUTSIDE Dancie’s office and listened. No weeping and wailing and stomping around the room. In fact, Piper walked in to find Dancie industriously typing on her computer.

  She looked absolutely fine, therefore something must be terribly wrong. Piper braced herself. “Hey, how was lunch with your mom?”

  Dancie kept typing. “It was great.”

  Great? Lunch with her mother had been great? Truly great and not sarcastic great?

  It seemed so. Piper was not certain how to proceed, since the meeting with BT followed by lunch with her mother should have meant Dancie was having a Very Bad, Horrible, Awful Day.

  Maybe she was in shock.

  Piper dragged a chair next to Dancie’s desk and set the box of croissants within reach.

  Dancie hit Save and looked up. “Ooh. I’ll pass. I’m still full from lunch. Hey, did you know there’s this hair thing they can do that’ll keep your hair straight for weeks? It takes hours and is superexpensive, but your hair will look really great. I’ve got an appointment next Wednesday.”

  Piper stared at her longtime friend. Then she opened the box of croissants, took one and stuffed half of it into her mouth.

  “Piper! What are you doing?”

  Piper pointed to her mouth.

  “Well, yeah, I see that. I meant why?”

  Piper swallowed. “I missed lunch?”

  “What have you been doing?” Dancie’s eyes widened and she answered her own question. “You’ve been with Mark Banning all this time?”

  Piper nodded. Shouldn’t they be talking about Dancie? Piper was supposed to be sympathizing and propping up Dancie’s self-confidence. That was the way it always worked.

  “Spill it,” Dancie demanded.

  Well, okay. Piper told her, even about the mutual connection thing.

  Dancie didn’t like the mutual connection thing. She started shaking her head before Piper finished. “Don’t fall for him.”

  “I don’t intend to.” Piper gazed at the other half of the croissant in her hand. Tempting. Bumping into Mark, Mark at the meeting, helping a Mark in pain, staring him down in front of his class—and winning, hearing him lecture…she’d packed a whole lot of Mark into a few hours.

  “But he intrigues me,” she admitted before eating the other half of the croissant.

  “You’re kidding.” Dancie’s eyes grew round and her mouth dropped open. “You’re not kidding! Oh, come on!”

  “What?”

  “He is completely wrong for you and you know it.”

  She did. “I said intrigued, not infatuated.”

  “He’s getting to you,” Dancie insisted. “I can’t believe it. You know every male move in the book. Hell—heck… Oh, wait. I can say hell now. Hell, you wrote the book!”

  Piper almost choked over a laugh before she could swallow. “Well, you know, there is the chemistry factor.”

  Dancie’s gaze narrowed. “How do you even know you’ve got chemistry?”

  “I…just do,” she mumbled.

  “This is what you warn your clients about!” Dancie leaned back in her chair and threw her hands up. “Falling for the wrong guy and thinking love will magically turn him into the right guy never works out.”

  “But what if he is the right guy?”

  Dancie gasped.

  “Calm down. I was speaking hypothetically. You’re the one who made the leap from ‘intrigued’ to ‘unhappily ever after.’”

  Dancie eyed her for a moment and Piper responded with her bland professional mask. “It’s not like I’m going to see him again unless he miraculously changes his mind about taking on a partner and hires me to consult.” It was true, and yet she still felt a heavy disappointment. This was not like her.

  “Well, good.” Dancie didn’t sound entirely convinced, because Dancie was her smart, insightful friend. “You were beginning to sound like your mother.”

  Bringing up her mother was low. “I may have been a little harsh on my mother,” Piper said.

  Instead of arguing, Dancie looked chagrined. “There’s a lot of that going around.”

  “Really? Tell me.” Piper didn’t want to talk about Mark Banning anymore. She needed a break from Mark Banning. “You’ve never had a great lunch with your mother.”

  “She liked my hair. I told her it was too much trouble and I’d be tempted to cut it all off if it wouldn’t look like a fright wig and she told me about the straightening thing.” Dancie examined with the ends of her hair. “I can’t wait to get this cut.”

  Piper blinked. “I’m sensing that you’re now a pod person.”

  “No.” Dancie dropped her hair. “I unloaded on Mom about this morning. I am so sorry for the way Dad treated you.”

  Naturally, Piper then thought of Mark. She wished she could get him out of her head. “I wasn’t the only one.”

  “Oh, I know. I’m surprised Mark took it for as long as he did. Travis has freaked out. He’s spent the last couple of hours downstairs in the cave throwing a ball against the wall. He won’t speak. But never mind about him.” Dancie leaned forward, her eyes bright. “Mom told me to quit trying to be a partner in OMG and start my own online business.”

  “Good for her.”

  “She said—let me see if I can remember this right—‘the way to deal with your father is to go around him, not through him.’”

  “I have always liked your mother.” Piper brushed at some stray pastry flakes so she wouldn’t have to meet Dancie’s eyes. She was not proud of feeling sorry for herself because she’d never get useful advice like that from her own mother.

  “Well, guess what?” Dancie asked. “She likes you, too, because she offered to invest in the Piper Plan site so we can get started on it right now. I said okay.”

  Piper’s head snapped up. “You want to make The Piper Plan your online business?”

  “Well…yeah.” Uncertainty crept into Dancie’s expression. “It’s a great idea and you’ve done all that research. I mean, I
know we’ll get way less traffic than if it was a part of OMG, but that will only be for a little while. I’ve still got my contacts and I’ve planned some heavy-duty promotion. It’s bound to take off.” Some of the light went out of her eyes. “I know you could partner with someone else for major bucks, but…I guess I just assumed you’d stick with me.”

  “Of course!” Piper hastened to reassure her. The software program had been Dancie’s idea all along, anyway. “I was just trying to wrap my head around everything.”

  “So you’re okay with it?”

  When Piper nodded, Dancie beamed. “Great! Here’s what I’m thinking.”

  Piper helped herself to another croissant. This time, she dipped the end in the mocha cream before taking a bite.

  “We spin the dating coach part of your business off on its own site and launch The Piper Plan as part of it.” Dancie flipped the laptop around so Piper could see the screen with the website mock-up. “I’ve talked to the web designer and told him what’s up.” She pointed to the header incorporating the OMG logo. “This will change. We’ll have to reimburse the designer for the work he’s already done when I thought the site was going to be part of OMG, but the content will still be usable and he’s willing to freelance for us.”

  Piper let Dancie talk. She was truly happy to see Dancie so enthusiastic, but…Piper felt restless and…trapped. She’d originally hoped that with OMG managing The Piper Plan, she’d become less involved, which Dancie didn’t know. Piper couldn’t tell her because Dancie would never want to hold Piper back from whatever it was Piper wanted to do with the rest of her life—which was what she’d planned to figure out after today’s meeting. “This sounds like a lot of work,” she said.

  “It is,” Dancie agreed. “But I’ll be handling the advertising and technical parts so you can concentrate on writing blog posts and being available for phone appointments.”

  Piper saw the doors of freedom slowly close. “Phone appointments?”

  “Oh, I haven’t worked out the details, but I figured we would offer a package that included one-on-one time with you.” She grinned. “For a price.”

  And Piper would be paying it. The trapped feeling grew. She was going to spend the rest of her life fixing other people’s romantic problems without ever having any of her own.

  Mark Banning.

  Wasn’t it interesting how she thought of romantic problems and he popped into her head? Wishful thinking.

  Piper reached for the croissants, but Dancie pulled the box across the desk, closed it and set it aside.

  “How are you going to find time to do all this?” Piper eyed the box. “What about OMG?”

  “Oh, didn’t I say? I quit.”

  “Quit what?”

  “OMG. Travis can run the Women’s Guide to Living Fabulous.” Dancie tossed that off pretty casually for someone who had spent the last two years of college and her entire working career devoted to developing the site. “He wants to be in charge of everything anyway.”

  Piper felt light-headed. “Give me the croissant box.”

  “No.” Dancie held it away.

  Piper lunged.

  Dancie was caught off guard and gave up the box. Piper had never eaten three chocolate croissants with mocha cream in a row before. Her teeth sank into flaky, chocolaty goodness. There was a first time for everything.

  Dancie watched her. “Is that what I looked like when I stuffed my face?”

  Piper mimed crying.

  “Worse?”

  Piper nodded and took another bite.

  “You’ll make yourself sick,” Dancie told her. “Trust me on this.”

  She swallowed. “But you quit!”

  “I know you think I made a mistake,” Dancie said.

  Piper knew she’d made a mistake. “I think you were a tad impulsive.”

  “You overanalyze everything,” Dancie told her. “You can’t be afraid of making a mistake or you’ll never do anything. At least I’m taking action now instead of waiting for a perfect opportunity that might never come.”

  Is that what Piper did?

  Ding ding ding, she imagined she heard as she experienced one of those moments of self-awareness that made her look at her past, present and future in a new way. Child Piper watched her mother make mistakes with men, so adult Piper had actually written a book to show women how to identify and maintain a relationship with their perfect man. And then she made her living fixing other people’s relationship mistakes. She, herself, had no mistakes to fix because she had no relationships. Romantic ones, at least. Was Dancie right? Maybe Piper wasn’t trapped because she felt obligated to Dancie; maybe she was just afraid of making a mistake.

  If so, her future looked exactly the same as her present.

  Dancie continued to talk, completely unaware that Piper was in the middle of an epiphany.

  “The mistake is thinking that Travis and Dad will ever make me a partner, so why waste any more time? This way I’ll be able to focus on getting the Piper Plan website up and running. Oh.”

  “What?” Piper asked, grappling with the fact that Dancie had apparently had an epiphany of her own. Epiphanies must energize Dancie. They just gave Piper a headache.

  “Since I quit, I’ll have to pack up my stuff pretty quick here.” She swiveled the laptop to face her and tapped on the keyboard. “But first, I’ve got to download my files before they block my password.”

  “They’d do that?”

  “Travis would. It’s really lucky that he’s nearly comatose right now. Hey—have you got an extra room at your office where I can set up?”

  And it just kept getting worse. “No,” Piper said firmly.

  “That’s okay.” Dancie wasn’t fazed. “I’ll squeeze in a corner somewhere until we rent a bigger space. It’ll be fun!”

  “And cozy.” Piper felt a little sick.

  “Maybe you could find some boxes somewhere and start packing,” Dancie suggested.

  Piper rolled her eyes and tossed the half-eaten pastry back into the box. Apparently she could not eat three croissants in a row.

  Her fingers were greasy. Piper had shoved the wad of napkins she got from the cafe into her purse. As she pulled at one, something flew out with it and clinked onto the desktop.

  Mark’s locker key.

  A sign. She was meant to see him again. Would that be a mistake? Sure! But she was in the mood for a little mistake. She reached for the key.

  Naturally, Dancie pounced on it. “‘Austin Physical Therapy Center,’” she read from the bright blue plastic ring attached to the end of the key. “And you have this why?”

  Piper kept her tone casual. “It’s Mark’s. I forgot to give it back to him.” She held out her hand.

  Dancie clutched the key to her chest.

  “Hey!”

  “Piper, I’m saving you from yourself.” She shook her head. “Honestly? I’m disappointed. That’s an old trick.”

  “Really, I just forgot. Remember I told you about getting his pain pills? Come on. Give it back.”

  Dancie refused. “I think I’ll just pop this into the mail.”

  “That’ll take too long.” Piper gestured impatiently.

  Dancie put the key into the pocket of the khaki blazer she still wore. “I’ll let you have it tomorrow.”

  What happened to taking action and making mistakes? “Why?”

  “So your hormones will have time to settle down.”

  “My hormones are just fine!”

  “Obviously,” Dancie said. “That’s why I’m keeping the key.”

  She would not be talked out of it, especially when a call to the PT center revealed that Mark’s next session wasn’t until Friday. Piper figured that if Mark needed his locker key before then, he’d get in touch.

  As the hours passed, she was considerably miffed when he didn’t. Okay, so maybe Dancie was right to “save her from herself.” In her current frame of mind, who knew what she’d do?

  Meanwhile, she spent the rest
of the day helping Dancie lug her stuff downstairs and pack it into their cars. The whole time, they never saw Travis, and as far as Piper knew, Dancie hadn’t heard from her father.

  “Dancie, did you actually tell anyone that you quit?” Piper asked after they’d carried down the last load.

  Dancie closed her car trunk. “I emailed everyone who needed to know and shoved a letter under the man-cave door in case Travis isn’t reading his email.”

  “And your dad?”

  Dancie shrugged. “Nothing yet.”

  But the next morning, a giant arrangement of yellow roses arrived at Piper’s counseling office. She surveyed the wreck Dancie had made of the tiny reception area. “There’s no place to put these.”

  “Yellow roses. Gotta be from Dad.” Dancie plucked out the card and read it as Piper tried to find a flat surface to set the vase on.

  “They’re for you,” Dancie said in a strange voice.

  Mark! Mark had sent her roses. How extravagant! Piper buried her nose in one perfect, yellow bloom.

  Dancie easily read her. “No, not from Mark.”

  How embarrassing. “Of course not.” Piper tried to bluff her way out. “Why would Mark send me flowers? Besides, exotic flowers would be more his style.” She ended up setting the vase on the floor. Dancie handed her the card and turned away.

  Thank you. Now find my Dancie a man. B. T. Pollard

  Jerk. “Dancie…”

  Still with her back to Piper, Dancie held up a hand. Piper’s receptionist walked through the door then and Piper had to explain why Dancie’s stuff was everywhere. Right after that, her morning clients began arriving, so she didn’t get a chance to say anything to Dancie. Not that anything needed to be said. Her father was her father.

  The morning was a disaster, at least from Piper’s point of view.

  As Dancie arranged furniture and chatted with Anna, Piper’s receptionist, every sound carried into Piper’s consulting room. At least once during each appointment, she had to apologize to her client and get up, open the door and ask Dancie and Anna to keep their voices down.

  But then Dancie began making phone calls and she might as well have been right there in the room with Piper.