Bringing Up Baby New Year & Frisky Business

by Vicki Lewis Thompson

  “So based on the gossip of some guy pissing in the woods, you raced right over here?”

  Laura nodded miserably. Kyle made his face blank.

  Harris smiled ruefully, then sank down on the edge of the bed. “I had a feeling it was too good to be true.”

  “What do you mean?” Laura asked.

  “New Horizon has been trying to bust our butts in the health care market forever. They’ve built their whole company on not being us. So I should have looked harder when they suddenly did want to be us.”

  Laura looked surprised. “You believe us?”

  “I believe you heard what you heard. I can’t say if it’s true, though, can you?”

  Laura was the only one still standing. She leaned against the wall, her arms still folded over her chest. “Why don’t you just ask them today?”

  Kyle started shaking his head even before Harris did. “I can’t do it that way,” Harris told her. “We got all the business stuff squared away the first few hours of this trip.”

  “You don’t want getting cheated to interfere with your golf game?” she asked.

  “That’s not what he meant,” Kyle said, quickly forestalling an eruption from Harris. “He hasn’t signed anything yet, and isn’t going to, this trip. Am I right?” Harris nodded. “That’s going to happen back in Atlanta. What one of us needs to do is find out whether and why Walt and Bill are lying about how their business is going.”

  “Whether I’m about to buy a pig in a poke,” Harris told her. She nodded, although Kyle guessed it took her a second to translate that to “whether I’m purchasing an overvalued commercial enterprise.” What a contradiction of smarts and naivety she was.

  Harris seemed back in fighting spirits, which Kyle recognized as a good thing, but also as a thing which would compromise how he wanted to spend the day, crawling back into bed with Laura. But that seemed highly unlikely now that she was back in her MBA-robot mode, nodding as Harris said, “We’ll worry about getting that pest’s car back to him later. I already told him he could take Laura’s.”

  Harris stood up. “Laura, I’m going to bring you my planner. I’ve got a list of New Horizon’s clients in there. You stay at the hotel and gather all the hard facts you can about New Horizon—make phone calls, go downstairs and use the Internet. Kyle and I will go golfing.”

  Translation: Laura will do all the hard work and we’ll go golfing. No wonder she thought he was a slacker. It was going to take more than hitting the links to earn her respect.

  “I’m the one with the sprained ankle,” Kyle said. “Shouldn’t I be doing this and Laura going out with you?”

  “Play to your strengths,” Harris said.

  And his strength was BS-ing on the golf course, huh? “I can’t golf.”

  Laura let out an exasperated sigh. “So today you can ride around on the cart looking cute,” she said. “Give Walt and Bill tips on their hitting.”

  “It’s called a swing.”

  “Whatever.”

  He wasn’t going to convince Harris or Laura that he’d become a research genius overnight. He tried a different approach. “I should stay here with Laura,” he said. “I know it seems like it’s just a sprained ankle, but I read this news story about a girl who scraped her knee on the pavement, and bam, the next day, she was dead from a blood clot to the brain.”

  Harris looked impressed, until Laura ruined it by saying, “That’s an old made-for-TV movie they showed on late-night when we were kids. I’ve seen it at least fifteen times.”

  “I never dreamed you watched this much TV,” Kyle said. On another woman, it might not be an attractive trait, but with Laura, it brought up visions of seducing her on the couch while movie marathons played.

  “There’s a lot no one knows about me.” She went into the bathroom and came back with a hair band, pulling her loose hair tight again.

  But I know a lot more than I did yesterday, Kyle thought. And I like what I see. But this latest development complicated things. “Harris, if you can’t acquire New Horizon, does your offer still stand? The twin vice presidencies?”

  To his credit, Harris looked miserable. “If we acquired them, I could reorganize into two divisions. But staying the way we are, well, you know the old saying about too many chiefs.”

  “That sounds like a big no,” Laura said brightly. Kyle looked at her, but her expression was blank. “I’ve got a ton of work to do, so why don’t you guys scoot?”

  Harris walked toward the door, but Kyle stayed seated. “Are you coming?” Harris asked.

  “This is my room,” Kyle said.

  Laura’s face turned bright-red. “Oh, right,” she said, fleeing. Harris followed, telling Kyle to meet him in twenty minutes in the lobby. After Harris had gone, Kyle used his good leg to slide his shorts toward him. He picked them up and took out a room key.

  Thirty seconds later, there was a knock on the door and Kyle hopped up to answer it. Laura stood there, still blushing, her hand outstretched.

  He grinned at her, hiding the ache he felt from not holding her. “Missed me already?”

  She smoothed back her hair. “I, uh, I don’t—”

  He handed her the key. Gone was the confident siren from last night. She stuttered her thanks, backing away from him before making a break down the hallway.

  “Laura?” he called.

  She turned back to him, rolling the key over and over in her hand. “Yeah?”

  “You’re in room 119.”

  “Thanks.” She dove into the elevator.

  He knew that it made sense for him to be the one to distract Walt and Bill with his company on the golf course. Face it, he had leisurely patter down to a science. Dividing labor among business colleagues was one thing, but their romance had changed things. He wanted to take care of her, provide for her. And although she would deny it, he’d bet that buried deep in her subconscious was a judgment about him: not good breadwinner material.

  Kyle knew that he had an advantage over other guys not necessarily because he was more handsome or athletic or charming, but because he made it his business to understand women. Women loved guys who understood them, so long as you didn’t understand them so much that you were nibbling chocolate with them or whirling daiquiris in the blender or crying at black-and-white movies.

  One of the things he understood about women was that they were biologically programmed to look beyond a nice body and a line of talk to what really mattered—could the guy bring dinner home?

  A freshly slaughtered bison beat a cute butt any day. Of course, Neanderthal Guy didn’t have to worry that his mate might bring home a carcass that was bigger than his, or that she might beat him out for the vice presidency. Or maybe worse, not beat him out for the vice presidency and hate him the rest of her life for it.

  Neanderthal Guy didn’t know how good he had it, Kyle thought, limping down to the lobby to meet the other men, the New Horizon duo dressed once again in bright golf clothes. Both of them easily accepted Harris’s explanation that Laura wanted to relax on the beach.

  “Sorry about your ankle,” Bill said, giving Kyle a hearty slap on the back. Apparently stomping on someone made you friends for life.

  Before he could accept Bill’s apology, Harris had waved it away. “For a jock, Kyle can be clumsy. He’s always tripping over Laura.”

  Kyle frowned. “I didn’t think you noticed.”

  Harris shook his head. “How could I not notice? She’s always squawking about it.”

  If Harris noticed everything, how was it that he had never noticed how unappreciated Laura was at his firm? And anyway, he had realized this morning that bumping into Laura had nothing to do with being a klutz. Now that he had actually held her in his arms and felt her body next to his, he didn’t feel any of the hyperactive jumpiness he once felt around her. All that jolting and jostling was misdirected attraction. Of course, if she decided for some reason that she wasn’t going to see him again, he guessed that he’d be right back to kicking her i
n the leg.

  The Bellamy’s golf course was a manicured dream, one that drew aficionados from as far away as Scotland and Japan. Normally he’d go crazy watching someone else play on it when he couldn’t. Today, though, he was okay with offering tips and coaching from his shotgun position on the golf cart, his mind mostly on Laura. At one point, when Walt and Bill had their backs turned to him, Kyle grabbed Harris’s cell phone and tried to call Laura’s room. No answer.

  “Beer and oysters at the Sea Spray on me?” Bill, the clear winner of the day, was in an ebullient mood as they walked into the hotel lobby. “Harris, why don’t you call Laura? And Kyle, don’t even try to tell her that you could have played better than I did.”

  With my eyes closed, Kyle thought. Good grief. All he had to do was be in the same building with Laura and his normally laid-back self went right into thoughts of “My club is bigger than your club.” Testosterone poisoning, his sister Melanie would have called it. At least Kyle knew that Laura wasn’t going to be impressed by anyone’s golf score. What would impress Laura? Hard work. The kind she could do just fine by herself.

  “I’ll call,” Kyle said, maneuvering to the desk. Maybe if he talked to her before she came down he could emphasize how much he would have rather stayed at the hotel with her.

  To his annoyance, Harris followed him to the desk. Loitering around the counter, flirting with the pretty desk clerk, was Nick, the valet parking guy who doubled as the bellboy who had delivered certain…personals to the room last night.

  “Hey, Nick, can I use the guest access phone?”

  “Be our guest,” he said. He snickered. “Oh, you are our guest.”

  That didn’t earn him much of a real smile from his target. Kyle would have to give him some of his joke-delivery pointers for the hard cases. Kyle accepted the phone, conscious of Harris behind him, but before he could dial out, Nick said, “If you’re calling Ms. Everett, she’s gone.” He reached below the counter and brought out an oversize manila envelope. “She left this for you guys. She was down here for a couple of hours on our computer typing it.” He shook his head. “That’s one long goodbye.”

  “It’s the report,” Harris said, taking it from him. Kyle saw him look around for Walt and Bill, who had apparently made another one of their co-trips to the bathroom.

  “What do you mean she left?” Kyle asked Nick.

  “Took the purple car and drove away.”

  “She doesn’t have any money,” Kyle said, conscious that he was raising his voice. “She doesn’t have any money,” he repeated more softly.

  “She borrowed forty bucks from me.” Nick turned to Harris. “Are you her boss? She said you’d pay me back.”

  Harris pulled a few bills from his pocket and handed them to Nick. “Appreciate your loaning her the money,” Harris said.

  “Why are you thanking him?” Kyle asked. “He let her go.”

  “What do you mean ‘Let her go’?” Harris asked. “You all weren’t even supposed to be here, so I can’t really say anything if she wants to cut her trip short, can I? She finished the report. What’s the big deal?”

  Nick blushed a little, presumably on Kyle’s behalf, knowing exactly what the big deal was. Until Laura gave him permission, Kyle didn’t want to tell Harris exactly how his and Laura’s relationship had changed. Or even give him the condensed, sanitized version.

  Not knowing what else to say, Kyle blurted out, “The big deal is that she doesn’t even have her driver’s license with her.” That alone would have kept the Office Laura safely in the hotel, but the woman who had been revealed to him on this trip was a woman of risks, of freedom. He felt the blood rush to his face as he remembered exactly how wild she’d been last night. “She’s a loose cannon.”

  “That’s sounds like a case of pot and kettle,” Harris said. He looked over at Kyle, as though he had—or was about to—put two and two together, but then Walt and Bill returned.

  “Problem?” Walt asked. Kyle thought Walt looked like a man who was always looking for problems, waiting for bad news. If they had tried to deceive Harris, Kyle thought, they must have been pretty desperate.

  “Laura had a family emergency, had to get back right away,” Harris said smoothly, as the men walked into the Sea Spray.

  Kyle made an effort to appear carefree and relaxed, but he wasn’t sure how well he succeeded. Not well at all, apparently, since Bill soon asked, “What are you moping about, Kyle?”

  I miss Laura, he wanted to say. His ankle would have given him a reasonable excuse, if it hadn’t been Bill’s fault, and if it hadn’t been as deliberate as sending them to that camp so that he and Walt could schmooze Harris without his right-hand man and woman around. He wanted to know what Laura had found out about these guys. Oh hell, that wasn’t it. He wanted to know if she was running from him, from what they’d had.

  “Too much sun,” Kyle said finally.

  He wished there were some way he could get hold of her, hear her voice, sweet-talk her with his. It was too early for her to have gotten back to Serene Dynamics to get her cell phone. The idea of her on that mountain in the dark concerned him. What could have put her out on the highway, if not regret?

  He let out a sharp sigh, and looked up to see the other men staring at him. He realized that his fists were balled on the table.

  “You know, the doc said for you to take it easy,” Harris said. “Well, you weren’t awake when he said it, but he did. Maybe you should go rest for a while.”

  Kyle assumed Harris was giving him a graceful exit, but when he caught the expression on Harris’ face, it said, Get with the program or get out. Fine. He would get with the program.

  He stretched his leg out. “Nah, I’m fine. Nothing a little listening to Bill’s bragging won’t cure,” a remark that drew chuckles from Harris and Bill and a wan smile from Walt.

  Nothing that a phone call from Laura right now wouldn’t cure.

  “Mr. Sanders? It’s Ms. Everett.” Kyle looked up to see Nick handing him a cordless phone. What was this place, Fantasy Island? He grabbed the phone.

  “Where are you?” Kyle asked.

  “Um, that’s complicated,” Laura said. Just the sound of her voice enticed him. He had it bad for her. “Did you and Harris read my report?”

  “I don’t care about that,” Kyle said. “Tell me where you are.”

  “Oh, so you haven’t read it. Well, I came to some decisions,” Laura said, “And I decided I would get back to Atlanta before I changed my mind about them, but it didn’t exactly work out that way.”

  Kyle had thought she was calling him from a pay phone, but the background noise didn’t sound like a restaurant or gas station. He heard the clank of metal, a man’s raucous laughter, and the ding of a computer starting up.

  She continued. “You see, I’m…”

  “You’re where?”

  She cleared her throat. “I seem to be in jail.”

  7

  LAURA HAD NEVER had a speeding ticket. Laura had never had a parking ticket. Laura had never even had a library fine. What happened was this. She’d been about a third of the way home when she decided to go back and grab the report before Harris and Kyle had a chance to see it. Or rather not the report—they could see the report—just not the letter that she had left with it. She pulled a U-turn on the two-lane highway, feeling the screech of Rand’s tires beneath her. About a mile later, she realized it was a completely stupid move. She’d made her decision—why not live with it? She turned around again, heading back to Atlanta.

  But then she thought how cowardly it was not to have said goodbye to Kyle, even though she wasn’t sure of the relationship between them. Just because it was the most incredible romance of her life didn’t mean it was the same for him. It was unrealistic to think that she was anything more than a fling to him. Still, that was no call for her to lose her own manners, was it? She pulled Rand’s car into a grassy median and headed again for the coast.

  That last U-turn was the one the
cop spotted. Laura had always assumed that if she were ever to encounter a real-live policeman accusing her of something, she would be a model detainee. Instead, she’d found herself arguing with him that were no signs forbidding what she’d done. Things had been further complicated by her not having her license, registration and insurance. When the cop had figured out that the owner of the car hadn’t exactly given his permission for her to take it, she’d gone straight into the squad car.

  The policeman, a man about her dad’s age, hadn’t said anything else on the way to the station. The silent type, like her dad. As if to prove that old adage about girls marrying their fathers, Laura’s sister Kate had found her own man of few words, a sweet engineer who couldn’t get two sentences out without effort. Laura would have said she liked that kind of guy, too, had she not recently proved herself wrong by falling for a charming, smooth type.

  Fallen she had. So much so that her feelings for Kyle had resolved the internal war she’d been having for so long, the war between safety and security and the desire to try her talents somewhere else. Kyle wanted the vice presidency with Harris Associates. And in her heart, she didn’t. She wanted it because her father had drilled into her the need for security, security, security. Kyle wanted it because he liked being there.

  She’d spent most of the morning talking to clients and tracking down figures for New Horizon Consulting, finding out that Walt and Bill had been up to a lot of talk and very little action. They still had a large client base, but they’d been careless with their clients’ time and resources. Definitely a pig in the poke, as Harris put it. Which left her and Kyle right where they started: vying for the same position within Harris Associates.

  Except that she had decided to quit. The last item in the package she’d left for Harris was her resignation letter. She imagined that Harris would be mildly sorry that she was leaving, but it would also solve a lot of his problems. It was Kyle she worried about. She had no idea what his reaction would be, or if he would even share it with her. Would he miss her? Would he be sorry to see her go? Would he take this—wrongly—as a sign that she regretted their time together? Would he take this—rightly—as a sign that she was scared of the intensity of what had happened between them, scared that he would regret it? His wild weekend with the office drudge. Except that she wasn’t part of his office anymore. And whether he knew it or not, she wasn’t a drudge anymore, either. She guessed she had him to thank for that.