Man Trouble

by Melanie Craft

  “Your father is a self-centered blowhard,” he said.

  “What?” She was so surprised that she looked fully at him.

  “It's true. You were kinder to him than he deserved. He should be proud of you, and if he's not, then he's as narrow-minded as the other snobs at Belden College.”

  “You don't know what you're talking about,” Molly said indignantly. “He's famous. He has two Pulitzer Prizes and the Medal of Freedom.”

  “He also has a daughter who has every right to refuse to speak to him again. I hope his prizes keep him company when he gets old.”

  “He is old,” Molly said. “He's not that bad, really. He spent last Wednesday morning trying to talk the administration into taking me back.”

  To whose advantage? Jake wondered. It might make Stanford Shaw feel better to have his daughter securely back in her high-octane professorship, but anyone who knew Molly ought to know—and care—that Belden was the wrong place for her. “What did the administration say?”

  “They said no.” She pressed her lips together for a moment. “He told me that he felt like a beggar, and that I put him in a humiliating position.”

  “That's ridiculous. Did you ask him to go to them?”

  “No. But he wanted to help me.”

  “Sounds to me like he wanted to help himself. And he's upset because they didn't defer to him, so he's trying to blame you for his wounded ego. Not very nice.”

  She didn't say anything, but he saw her staring at him, her eyes luminous in the moonlight.

  He shrugged. “I could be wrong, of course. After all, what do I know? I'm just a shallow, publicity-seeking playboy.”

  “Oh,” Molly said. “I'm sorry about that.”

  “No problem. I've been called worse.”

  “I can't tell him that the engagement is a sham…he wouldn't understand. But he isn't very happy about the prospect of me marrying you, either.”

  Jake feigned shock. “What, I'm not the son he always wanted?”

  Molly's mouth curved reluctantly. “No. But it's looking like I'm not the daughter he wants, either.”

  So we're perfect for each other. She didn't add that, but he could still hear her voice in his mind.

  “You've been playing a lot of roles,” he said. “For your father, for your friend Carter, and now for me. It seems like a lot of trouble. It might even make it hard for you to remember who you really are.”

  “It does,” Molly said. “You should know, Mr. Playboy-Billionaire-turned-Family-Man. You spend more time and money on your image that I thought was possible. Who are you, really?”

  Jake shrugged. “Depends on who you ask. Skye Elliot would tell you that I'm a drug-addicted narcissist with a commitment phobia.”

  “And what would your mother say?”

  “That I'm a nice boy with workaholic tendencies.”

  “You're not a drug-addicted narcissist,” Molly said. “That much I know. But I wouldn't say that you're a nice boy, either.”

  He laughed softly. “No. And what would you say, Molly? If I asked you? Don't tell me I'm a Family Man—save that for the press.”

  She gazed at him for a moment, considering an answer, and Jake saw that she had taken the question seriously. He hadn't intended it that way…or had he? The dim light and the intimacy of the setting gave an edgy intensity to the scene, and ever since he had come into her room, he had been very aware of the shadowed curves of her body under the thin shirt.

  “I would say…” she answered finally, slowly, “that you are the only man…”

  Jake watched her, curiously.

  She paused to think. “Yes,” she said, “definitely the only man who I ever…ever…”

  He waited as she searched for words, and found himself staring at her, caught by the intensity of her eyes.

  “You are the only man,” Molly said finally, “who I ever kissed while wearing a blond wig and a double-D bra.” She grinned at him, looking very pleased with herself.

  “I'm glad to hear that,” Jake said calmly. “And how many men have you kissed while wearing only a pajama top and no underwear?”

  Her grin vanished. “Hey,” she said sharply, and cast a sudden, anxious glance down at her lower half, and then back at the bright moonlight coming through the window behind her. “Wait a minute…you can't—”

  “I couldn't actually tell,” Jake said. “It was just a guess.”

  “Oh, very funny,” she said.

  “So, how many?” he asked.

  “What?”

  “How…many…men?” Jake repeated, stepping forward.

  Molly looked at him, startled. And then her expression changed, and her lips parted slightly, and he knew that she understood.

  “Lots,” she said, her eyes never leaving his. “So if you want to distinguish yourself…”

  “I'd better make it good,” he said, and pulled her into his arms.

  Jake knew from the moment that Molly came to him—her hands sliding up his chest to lock around the back of his neck, her mouth meeting his with the fierce hunger that he remembered—that the night was unlikely to end with a kiss.

  And it didn't. Her pajama top and his own shirt were soon discarded, and when he felt the softness of her naked chest pressed against his, he knew that he was lost.

  Molly clung to him so tightly that his belt buckle left a mark like a brand on her stomach, and she kissed him as if she, too, had been holding on to the memory of that afternoon at Falcon's Point. The rest of Jake's clothes followed his shirt onto the floor, and he and Molly tumbled onto the bed, tangled together, awkward and laughing with the urgent excitement of the moment.

  Jake took certain challenges very seriously, and from Molly's ardent response over the ensuing hour, he thought that he had indeed managed to distinguish himself.

  Later, they lay entwined with the white cotton sheet, enjoying the warm night breeze and the novelty of lying quietly in each other's arms.

  “I wanted to ask you something,” Molly said. Her voice had a warmth that Jake had never heard before, but liked very much. “What did you mean yesterday, when you talked about the scars of others teaching us caution? You were quoting someone.”

  Jake nodded. “Saint Jerome. I stumbled across the line a few years ago, and it always seemed like good advice.”

  “Is it? Whose scars made you cautious?”

  “My father's,” Jake said. It was not his ideal conversation to have after an hour of amazingly good sex, but he had barged in on Molly's own family problems, so he probably owed her a little disclosure in return. “He was a commercial developer in Miami, and one of his partners got caught in a crooked land deal with a state senator. The investigation lasted months, and it was a media circus. The papers printed everything they could find that made Dad look sleazy, including details of an old affair that my mother wasn't very happy to learn about. Dad was basically a good guy, but the stress and the shame just broke him. He had a stroke at the office, and died in the hospital a couple of days later. They cleared him posthumously of all charges.”

  “I'm very sorry,” Molly said seriously. “Your poor mother.”

  Jake nodded. “It was a bad time. Most developers—even big ones—are living on their next loan. The whole house of cards collapsed when Dad died, and we lost everything. I had to quit school, and my girlfriend, who I wanted to marry, decided that the ‘for richer or for poorer’ clause didn't really work for her.”

  Molly chuckled, suddenly. “Oops,” she said.

  He grinned. “Yeah, oops is right.”

  “Did you love her very much?”

  “I thought so. But I was twenty, so what the hell did I know? It was just as well. I started Berenger Corporation a couple of years after that, and then for a long time I was too busy for a wife. She probably would've gotten fed up and left me anyway.”

  “So you held a grudge against the media?”

  “Not a rational one. They're just people trying to sell newspapers, after all. But after
I saw firsthand how they could suddenly go for your throat, I never felt like making personal contact.”

  “Until now.”

  “I still don't feel like it,” Jake said. “But I do what I have to do. The company is my first priority.”

  Molly snuggled against him and yawned.

  “It's late,” he said. “I should go back to my own room.”

  “Should you?”

  “Or I could stay here.” He was warm and comfortable, and didn't feel inclined to move.

  She nodded agreement. “That's a better idea.”

  “I have to leave at dawn, though.”

  “That's fine,” Molly said. “Tiptoe on your way out, have a good trip, and I like my chocolate without almonds.”

  CHAPTER 28

  On Monday morning, shortly before Jake's plane landed in Miami, Atlas Group publicly announced their hostile bid to acquire Berenger Corporation for the price of eighteen dollars and fifty cents per share, roughly two dollars more than the stock's value at the time that the news broke. Ed Thatcher had grown tired of stall tactics.

  Berenger stock jumped a point as the market reacted to the news, but then leveled off, reflecting a general opinion that Atlas's takeover attempt would be successful.

  “Berenger's business is in trouble,” Ed Thatcher announced to the press, who replayed the clip throughout the day. “Time is not on their side.”

  Jake had been expecting it sooner or later, but he had hoped for later. Operation Family Man was starting to show results, and the stock had been creeping slowly upward over the past two weeks. The campaign was working, but not quickly enough.

  He canceled his morning meeting and spent the day doing live and taped interviews for the cable news channels, reacting to Ed's comments and repeating the same message over and over for each network. “Berenger has weathered the economic downturn better than our competitors, and we're poised for a strong comeback as the economy recovers. Atlas Group's offer undervalues the company assets, and we advise shareholders to reject it.”

  He was still at headquarters at ten P.M., finishing up a discussion with the inside directors, and by the time that the group dispersed, his voice was almost gone. His head ached, and he couldn't remember the last time he'd eaten anything. He was due back at the office at six A.M. for a live broadcast on CNBC's Wake Up Call, which was likely to kick off another fifteen-hour workday.

  Somehow, he managed to drive himself home. He did not have live-in staff, preferring to fend for himself after hours. One of the housekeepers had left lasagna in the refrigerator for him, and he cut and ate a square of it cold, too hungry to bother with the microwave. He fast-forwarded through his voice mail, noting that he had messages from Tom, Molly, Susan, and his mother. None of them sounded like emergencies. Tomorrow, if he was lucky, he would have time to deal with personal business, but at that moment, the only thing he cared about was sleep.

  By Wednesday, Molly was disturbed to have heard nothing at all from Jake. It wasn't that she suddenly expected him to start writing ballads for her just because they'd slept together, but she would have appreciated a quick phone call to say hello. She found herself growing more and more anxious that she had misinterpreted the level of passion between them that night—it was a painful possibility that the intensity she'd felt had been one-sided. If that was so, she knew that she would not be the first—or the last—woman to have made a fool of herself over Jake Berenger.

  Cora had been behaving oddly for the past two days. Jake's mother was not psychic, as far as Molly knew, and neither did she have hidden cameras in the villa's guest rooms, so there was no way that Molly could explain why she thought that Cora knew—or at least suspected—what had happened on Sunday night. She also appeared to know that Jake had not returned Molly's Monday afternoon phone call, because she was making a heroic effort to explain Jake's behavior, as if she were an ambassador for a foreign and inscrutable king.

  “The timing of this takeover bid is so frustrating,” she said as they sat together on the terrace, eating breakfast. “The PR campaign was just beginning to have an effect, and a few more weeks of progress would have lifted us out of the danger zone. Atlas does want Berenger, but not at any price. If the stock had just made it to nineteen…”

  Molly was not a regular watcher of television, and she had never developed a newspaper-reading habit, so she had not known about Atlas's hostile bid until Cora told her.

  “It might still get there, though, right?” Molly asked hesitantly. To her embarrassment, she knew very little about business, and investment lingo did not come easily to her tongue. “And then, they'll go away.”

  Cora sighed. “Or raise their bid, but I don't think they'll do that. I'm afraid that it will be more difficult to lift our stock price now that Atlas has gone public with the offer. Jake is going to have to convince the market that Berenger is worth more than Atlas is offering, and he'll have to do it soon. This is a real crisis, my dear. Jake is under terrible pressure right now.”

  It was a pretty legitimate excuse for not calling, Molly had to admit. But it still didn't relieve her fear that her feelings for Jake were unrequited. It also didn't keep her heart from jumping with anxious hope whenever the phone rang.

  On Thursday, Molly confided some of her concerns to Carter. He was a last resort—she would have preferred to talk to Elaine, but Elaine was in a frenzy of planning and preparation for the reunion of Ingrid and Michael. Michael had arrived on the morning helicopter from Antigua, a flight that—contrary to Elaine's prediction—had not delivered Tom Amadeo.

  “Well, I'm glad to be spared his company,” Elaine said loftily. “But I suppose the reprieve won't last. He'll probably be flying in with Jake, like he did last week.”

  “I don't think so,” Molly said. “Jake is coming from Miami this time, not New York.”

  Elaine pursed her lips. “Hmm,” she said, and refused to discuss it any further.

  What Carter lacked in insight, he made up for in attentiveness. He sat eagerly forward in his chair, his eyes barely leaving Molly as she spoke and he listened. Molly was not in the habit of discussing her emotions with Carter or anyone else, but she was feeling needier than usual, as if she had a bad case of PMS. It was a relief to vocalize some of her worries, although it would have taken truth serum to force her to confess to sleeping with Jake. That was too personal to discuss. But she did finally admit to having a crush on him.

  Carter nodded knowingly. “Totally normal,” he assured her. “Nothing to worry about. You've been immersed in a world of dazzling glamour, and you've…uh…been dazzled by it. When this is all over, and you come back to live in Chicago, you'll be fine.”

  “I'm fine now,” Molly said. That wasn't true, but she hoped that saying so would hasten the process.

  “It's not Jake you're attracted to,” Carter explained. “It's the glitter and the gold, the heady aura of excitement, the rush of a thousand starry moments within the rarefied world of the wealthy.”

  “Oh,” Molly said. “I see.” Carter had been talking like that ever since he started working on his article about Jake, which he was billing as an “unprecedented glimpse into the mind and heart of America's most enigmatic magnate.”

  She didn't bother to argue, but privately she thought Carter was off the mark. Her only starry moment so far had been at the Berenger Grand party, and while it had been fascinating from a sociological standpoint, she had found it exhausting and not much fun. Most of her time was still spent with her laptop, just as it had been in Belden. Lately, she had been happiest when she was absorbed in her work…or when she was with Jake.

  “He's not the kind of man that you can allow yourself to get emotionally involved with,” Carter said. “He's a player. He only cares about his business, and he'll never settle down. You have to use him, take what you can from him, and then get out. That's what he's doing to you, isn't it?”

  “I don't know,” Molly said, disturbed. “Maybe.”

  “Definitely. But
here's the question. How much is the ring worth?”

  Molly blinked. “What?”

  “The ring. You still have it, right? It's payment, right?”

  Molly wasn't wearing the “engagement” ring that Jake had given her. The band was slightly too big, and the weight of the stone made it flop around on her finger, which annoyed her when she typed. Plus, she just didn't like it. The sight of it depressed her, for some reason. The diamond seemed as oversized and as emotionless as the role that she was supposed to be playing.

  “It's in Cora's safe,” she said. “I only get to keep it if the Berenger stock hits twenty by April first. It's meant to be a bonus.”

  Carter shook his head. “You really should have talked to me before you negotiated this, Molly, but since you didn't, it's lucky I'm here to help you now. The ring—if you get to keep it, and that's a big if—is probably worth a quarter of a million dollars. Do you know how much you could get from selling your story to the tabloids?”

  “I can't,” Molly said. “I signed a confidentiality agreement.”

  “I told you that those don't always hold up in court,” Carter reminded her. “You'd need to get a lawyer, and there might be a little fight, but you could win. And the publicity would be incredible. I'll work with you on it, of course. I'll make a deal to write the articles myself, under my byline, but we'll split the profits.”

  “Carter, I can't,” Molly repeated, feeling anxious. “It would ruin Jake's life.”

  “Why not? He didn't have any qualms about ruining yours, did he? He should pay for that, one way or another.”

  Molly had an uneasy feeling in her stomach. She wondered if her unwillingness to exact a real revenge meant that she was a wimp. She had returned to Gold Bay intending to pay Jake back, but even at the outset she had known that forcing him to create a museum and a foundation was hardly going to destroy him. Cause him some embarrassment, yes. Cost him more money than he wanted to spend, yes. But it wouldn't come anywhere close to bringing him down. In truth, her plan wasn't really to revenge herself. It was to assert herself, to show Jake that she, too, could be devious and clever, and that he had better think twice before he underestimated her again.