Immersed: Book 6 in The Ripple Effect Romance Series (A Ripple Effect Romance Novella)

by Jennifer Griffith

  Lisette’s face burned with embarrassment. “I never told her anything but your name, I promise.”

  Erik slid an arm around her shoulders. “Oh, Leece. You don’t have to lie. My ego can handle a little praise without getting out of control.”

  The weight and warmth of his arm sent a buzzing through her that made her simultaneously want to bolt away from it and meld right into it forever and ever. This was so unprofessional, and she couldn’t care less. Under its influence, she let Erik steer her toward her front doorstep. But he didn’t come inside. She stood on the stoop, leaning against her door while he set both hands on her shoulders and spoke to her, more earnest than she’d ever seen him.

  “Thursday, I need to head to Aspen to see a facility.”

  “Facility?” Suddenly her English vocabulary didn’t keep up with his.

  “The new building we’re putting up. It’s progressing, according to the foreman’s reports, but I’d like to see things for myself before I head back home on Sunday.”

  Her heart sank. She wouldn’t see him tomorrow, and now Thursday’s session canceled. Really, she should be rejoicing that she could get caught up on a little laundry or get her hair highlighted. However, the prospect of two full days without Erik sounded empty. And he was leaving Sunday.

  “You look disappointed.” He frowned and dropped one of his arms, stepping closer to her—so close she could feel his breath on her cheek. “You don’t like Aspen?”

  “Oh!” She’d go along with him. To Aspen. “You mean I’d go with you?”

  “I know it’s a long drive. We’ll have to leave early in the morning. The lifts are still open, and I want to take a few runs before the meeting. You own your own ski clothes, right?”

  Aspen. Skiing. With Erik!

  Then she panicked. So many things could go wrong.

  The waiter set their plates in front of them. Mom had ordered the prime rib, and Lisette had a BLT. It was nice to be here in a restaurant looking like herself for once, in jeans and a spring t-shirt and cardigan. Or, it would have been if her mom hadn’t been such a weirdo today. To counterbalance the weird, all of Lisette’s thoughts whirled on skiing. Her mom’s words mostly bounced off her ears. Until this.

  “Mr. Bartholomew. He’s being more insistent.”

  “Uh, what do you mean?” Lisette dropped her potato chip.

  “He’s tweaking things.”

  “He can’t. There’s a contract.”

  “That’s what I said. And he said there were ‘clauses.’”

  “What clauses?”

  “Clauses that let him insist you come and work for him in the final stages of the three year period at his convenience.”

  “Are you serious?” Lisette’s throat went tight. “He can’t do that. I’m so close. Just this last job, and I’ll have the full amount. Including the interest. I promise. It’s so close we can almost reach out and pick it like a peach off the tree.”

  Mom’s face had gone blank, as though nothing Lisette said had sunk in or mattered. “So I told Mr. Bartholomew you were nearly finished up with this personal project, this Immerse thing, and that yes, I was sure he could count on you to come in and work starting in two weeks. I hope that’s going to be convenient.”

  Lisette grabbed both sides of the table, bobbling her water.

  “You told him what?” She had clients lined up. Well, she would, she was sure, after she was done with Erik Gunnarson. “Sorry, Mom. That’s not going to be possible.”

  “But I told him.”

  “You’ll just have to untell him.” It was like Bartholomew expected failure all along and had just been lying in wait, like some crocodile on the sandbank, for Lisette to falter, and then, snap!

  “Well, I can’t really do that now, can I? Not after all he’s done for our family since your father died. He’s been such a rock for us.”

  A rock. Pshaw. What was Mom smoking?

  “I’m not going to work for Pannebaker yet, Mom. You’ll have to believe I’m going to come through with the full payment in time.”

  “Be candid with me, Lisette. How much do you make a year?” Her mom’s voice should’ve sounded confident with this line of questioning, but fear tinged it.

  Lisette didn’t answer. She just frowned. “Enough.”

  “Haw. Have you bought your office yet? How about a car? Do you even own a car? And those loans you refused to let me pay for. It can’t be enough.”

  “I own my Corolla. You know that.” Why was her mother suddenly turning on her? All these past three years, nothing like this had come up. Mom had seemed so supportive, so enthusiastic even.

  “And you’ve been taking that filthy bus, I’m sure.” Her mother stabbed a forkful of prime rib into her pot of horseradish sauce and stuffed it in her mouth, an action she followed with a shudder.

  “I’m not taking the bus.” Then Lisette recognized it: desperation infused these accusations. Lisette knew it wasn’t really her mom saying this. These were Bartholomew’s words through and through. He’d infected her.

  “Mom, we’re so close. Don’t give up now.”

  Her mom’s face hardened. It scared Lisette. She’d given up.

  “As it is, I expect you to at least show up on the first day and explain to Mr. Bartholomew why you can’t work for him.”

  “It’s a few days. Let’s just hang on for a few more days.” The pleading in Lisette’s voice didn’t even soften her.

  “Then at least call him and explain.” She held out her phone, hitting the buttons with her thumb as she did so. It connected audibly. “Hi, Mort? Here’s Lisette to tell you why she’s so excited to come in to work for you next week.”

  “Next week? I thought you said two weeks, Mom.” Lisette waved her hand, refusing to take the phone.

  “Right, Mort. Next week, correct?”

  A tinny, muffled, “Yep,” came through the speaker. Lisette crossed her arms over her chest. Not. Happening. She shook her head.

  “Oh, sorry, Mort. Here, I’ll put you on speaker so we can all discuss it.”

  Lisette’s shoulders sagged—almost into the hunch she practiced daily in her make-under disguise. Mom was not letting this go. He had her under his thumb so securely, it was terrifying.

  “Mort? Hi? Can you hear us? Lisette might have a conflict, she says. Something about rent being due. Lah-di-dah. But you’ll fix that, won’t you? Give her a signing bonus so she can afford to make the career switch all slick as oil?”

  Lisette wanted to melt into an oil slick right here. “Mr. Bartholomew, I’m sorry, but—”

  “No apologies, Lisette,” he boomed. The whole restaurant could hear this ridiculous negotiation. Humiliation burned her cheeks. “Your father, bless his dear departed soul, was a great man. I swore I’d do everything I could to make his widow and daughter comfortable, up to and including signing bonuses. Generous ones.” A guffaw crackled through the phone. Up to and including signing bonuses and blackmailing his widow into marrying him. Lisette longed to snatch up the phone and shut it off.

  “No, um, listen. What I’m trying to say is I can’t possibly—”

  “Don’t be silly, dear.” Mom rested her hand on Lisette’s, which squeezed slowly into a tighter and tighter fist. “Let Mort help. We don’t want to insult his generosity.”

  “Don’t think of it as generosity, Amanda. It’s a debt owed.” More guffawing. He dared speak about owed debts? Lisette couldn’t take much more.

  “I’ve got commitments, Mr. Bartholomew. I won’t be able to—”

  “Ever repay me, I know. But it’s not like that, little missy. Not at all. In fact, you’ll be doing all of us here at the company a big favor, I’m sure. We’re in desperate need of a secretary who can answer the phone on our China hotline. Ni hau ma, and all that.” And again, with the har-dee-har-har. It was almost sinister now.

  Mort Bartholomew clicked off, still in mid chortle, and Lisette’s mom gazed across the table, a glazed look on her face, like she’d been bra
inwashed. “It’s all going to work out. I promise.”

  “You promise? This is awful, Mom. What’s wrong with you?”

  Her mom snapped to attention for a second. “You’re going to work there. The clause lets you. And it lets you out of repayment.”

  “But it doesn’t let you out of your version of the repayment, does it.” Lisette gulped.

  “Let’s not think of it that way. It’s a debt of honor now. And I owe him. So much. He’s giving us everything.”

  “No, he’s taking away everything we have.” Including their pride and self-respect. Lisette wanted to wring Bartholomew’s neck. “If it meant he’d let you out of the contract, I’d work for him in a heartbeat, but he’s not going to let that happen.”

  “No.”

  A long moment passed. Lisette could feel her stomach churn. Her mom spoke at last.

  “You’ll have a steady job. You can find a nice, successful man to marry there. There are a lot of them in the company, Mort has assured me. He promised to put you in the secretary pool of the best bachelors on staff. It’s all going to be okay, I promise.” Mom looked over at her, all satisfied and beatific and Stepford Wifey, as though she’d done Lisette the hugest favor in the universe, one so large Lisette hadn’t dared ask for it herself.

  At o-dark-thirty, Lisette peeled herself out of bed. All night she’d woken in fits and starts. She kept dreaming the phone rang, and she’d picked it up to hear the words “Shanghai calling,” shouting to the tune of “London Calling.” Although sometimes it was “Beijing calling,” or “Guangzhou calling.”

  No. She’d put this whole, freaky thing out of her mind for the entire Aspen day. She was in the homestretch now, and she refused to let Mortifying Mort knock her off her game.

  In front of the mirror she began her makeup regimen: scrub face until red. Apply dark circles under eyes and around nose and lines near mouth. Shade area near chin. Remove natural glow from cheek with sallow foundation. Darken eyebrows, adding skiff of fake unibrow between them. Although, could she just leave that off today? Pretend she’d plucked them? And what about the wart? It could just disappear, right? After such a bad night’s rest, her energy for uglification flagged.

  No. The wart had to be there. Wait. She could put a little round Band-Aid on instead. Pretend she’d gone to the dermatologist and had it removed. Yeah. That would work.

  But she had no little round Band-Aids in the first aid kit—another detail of life she’d let slide while building this business. No food in the fridge, no clean camisoles. And her fingernails were atrocious. Of course, bad fingernails fit the character she was trying to achieve.

  So the wart went back on. As did the extra eyebrow. She shouldn’t let up now, not with only a couple of days left until payday. It would serve no purpose. Erik Gunnarson had passed into her life a few days ago and would pass out of it in a few more. After that, she would somehow line up a whole cadre of potential language trainees. That dry spell that hit just as Erik signed on persisted. The thought sent a tremor of Chinese phone call panic through her throat and chest.

  In a little fit of rebellion, she applied normal eye makeup. Shadow, liner, mascara. They’d be behind ski goggles anyway.

  Ski goggles. They accessorized ski parkas and pants. And hers were a problem.

  When she pulled them from the closet, she remembered just why she’d bought the outfit in the first place—it looked fantastic on her. White with red stripes down the sides, white faux fur at the cuffs. They matched her red and white skis perfectly, fit her curves in all the right ways. Er, wrong ways, for her purposes.

  Dang it. No ski outfitters sold frumpy mustard and brown colored fat suits for skiing at this hour. And she’d already told Erik she had her own clothes and skis.

  Great. Just great. Maybe she should call and cancel, say moths or mice had eaten her ski clothes and there were no stores open this early in the morning to shop and replace them. She knew resourceful Erik would come up with a solution—mall her again, watch her try on outfits. No, her only consolation lay in the fact he’d surely remember the girl beneath the snow bunny outfit and pay her no heed.

  The drive to Aspen from Boulder took several hours, despite Erik’s driving at breakneck speeds on the canyon turns. Lisette dozed a bit—which under non-Chinese-worry-nights would have been impossible due to the hair-raising driving conditions. But Erik didn’t chide her, even if she was basically on the clock as his English instructor during the trip.

  “Oh, look at the mountain.” Lisette lifted her hand to shield her eyes. Remnants of winter’s glory reflected the spring sunlight, a million ice crystals all glinting their cut facets at once. “I’m a terrible skier, but I love the mountain.” Lame as it was to be a bad skier with great ski clothes, she’d bought them a couple of seasons ago in hopes that looking good would deflect attention from her lack of skills. Women did it all the time.

  Erik parked next to an even nicer sports car. Lisette had forgotten how much money skied Aspen.

  She got out and stood with her hand on her hip, looking up at the elevation of the slopes. Breathtaking. She glanced over. Erik was staring not at the mountain but at her.

  “That ski outfit. It looks really good on you.” He raised an eyebrow like he knew a secret. Fire blazed at her neck and face. “Which lift should we start with?” Erik slid his hands into Gore-Tex gloves. He’d pulled a lime green ski parka from the trunk and put it on. “Do you dare try the black diamond run?”

  Lisette dared. Sort of. “I don’t guarantee I’ll come out in one piece.”

  Sitting beside Erik on the ski lift as it rose a hundred feet above the pines, Lisette felt warmth from his leg seeping through to hers. He pointed out moguls, places where a good skier could catch air, places where to avoid the powder in the trees. Lisette just basked in the filtered light coming through the soft grey clouds that had floated into the morning’s sunny sky.

  “You’ve skied all your life?”

  “I was raised in Iceland.” So it was a given. “And I like the speed.” His eyes had that glint again, against their dark brown depths. She got lost in them for a second then snapped out of it. “But I never really skied much until graduate school. Couldn’t afford it. We didn’t grow up with much.”

  Funny, she’d assumed he’d had an upbringing similar to hers. And that he hadn’t attended grad school. There was that whole “started my company out of high school” thing, which had made her assume he had no post-high school education up to now. She should never assume.

  She shouldn’t ask him about his family life—not a professional topic. Oh, well. “I know you have a mother and a sister. You’re close, I take it?”

  “Have you ever heard of the bird ‘stormy petrel?’” Erik swung his legs, and it made the cable bounce. She had to grab him to steady herself. “Well, it’s a little like my mother.”

  “My own mother is stormy herself.” Lisette heaved a sigh at thoughts of Mom’s flip-out.

  “Is that so?” The ski lift bumped again, jarring their seat, and Erik threw an arm over Lisette to steady her. It felt secure. Oh, blast him. He was too good to be true. “Tell me about her.”

  Lisette knew she shouldn’t say anything about her personal life to a client. It was unprofessional. “She has sacrificed everything for me. I’d do anything to help her out. But sometimes I think her view of the universe and mine will never come into alignment.”

  “What does she want for you? And why is it so different from what you want for yourself?”

  Lisette had to think about that one. Before she could answer, the lift lurched and deposited them at the end of the ascent. She had to scramble to get out of the way of the chair before another one came along and tumbled her into the snow bank. Erik slipped his goggles down over his eyes and tugged to cover the space between his parka’s sleeves and the lining of his gloves. Lisette did the same.

  They clomp-walked and slid to the top of the run. For the first time, Lisette glanced toward the descent. He
r heart jumped into her throat, partially blocking her airway. Holy steepness, Batman. She coughed to dislodge her heart, but it stubbornly remained near her esophagus. If Erik Gunnarson could see beneath her goggles to how wide her eyes were right now, he’d think she’d turned into a bulbous-eyed carp.

  “You ready?”

  She was definitely not ready. “Let’s go!” she said, her voice shaky. She clapped her hands together and grabbed the poles. The tips of her skis balanced over the top of the run’s edge.

  She might croak.

  Erik flashed her a dazzling smile, more blinding than the sun off the snow. The sparkle of it pushed her that last teetering inch, and she shot down the precipitous slope.

  “I’m going to break my neck,” she screamed, but they were going too fast, with the wind in their ears. The spray of the snow hit her face as they sliced into it with their skis. She could not slow down. Terror filled her chest—she’d never gone this fast before in her life, not even with Erik driving. It was a lot steeper than it looked. And there was no way to slow herself down—none. Gravity? Not her friend.

  And then she fell. Wiped out. Which rolled her about fifty feet farther down the slope, dragging her on her shoulder, her stomach, her back, her face, the snow crystals stinging like gravel—gravel that melted, that is. Why, oh why did I agree to this insanity?

  Ouch. Her bumps had bruises. Her goggles had gone askew.

  At least the fall put her closer to the bottom of the hill. At least she didn’t lose any equipment. Or her breakfast. Erik slashed his way across the slopes farther ahead. She couldn’t stay sitting here until a rescue helicopter came, although the thought sounded more and more appealing as the moments ticked by. Skiing. Why had she agreed to ski?

  Erik got smaller and smaller. Eventually, she struggled to get back up. She had to make progress. Maybe sliding on her behind would be the best tactic. It wasn’t. She made about five feet of progress before standing—which sent her plowing earthward once again. Who needed a make-under? She could’ve just put a video of her skiing glamour on her website to destroy any attraction a potential client might have entertained toward her. So. Much. Grace.