All I Want…

by Isabel Sharpe

  His cell rang. He put the laptop aside, dug the phone out warily from his pocket, then relaxed and smiled at the number on the display. Mary. He’d been dodging board member calls for the last hour, not in the mood for more concerns now that they’d undoubtedly read Marlow’s latest attack on his stepsister. Tedious bunch. Ms. Marlow must be stopped before she ruins the Wellington name, blah, blah, blah.

  Any wonder he’d rather be out experiencing the real world as he was meant to? After he’d graduated from business school, what was supposed to be a month-long traveling vacation had turned into two months, then six, then over a year, until his father’s poor health brought Seth back to the company he’d worked for since he was old enough to alphabetize.

  Family was family, yes. Though at times family life felt more like being incarcerated at Alcatraz.

  “Hi, Mary.”

  “Did you get the link I sent you? I’ve gotten three calls already from board members squawking something fierce.”

  “I got it.” He kept his voice from sounding too weary. “Looks like Ms. Marlow didn’t enjoy the show.”

  “Ya think? If I hear ‘This could have serious consequences’ one more time, I’m going to book a ticket to Jamaica and drink rum until it’s all over. Want to come?”

  He grinned. His affair with Mary had burned hot and briefly; instant attraction had been indulged, waned, and they’d settled into a fairly comfortable friendship. Occasionally they still got together, but they’d been successful keeping their personal lives off the company gossip sheet. She was the kind of woman he liked. Smart, sexy, discreet and, best of all, not clingy. She never took their relationship to be anything but what it was.

  “Sounds like paradise right about now. How often have we reassured them the risk is minimal?”

  “Too many times.”

  He grabbed the back of his neck and tried to massage a dent in the knotted muscles, gazing out at the black expanse of ocean with longing. Jumping for people was the part of this job he hated most. “As much as I don’t want to get involved, with everything else we have to do, maybe it wouldn’t hurt to be seen taking steps, so these fine gentlemen can put a sock in it.”

  And maybe they had the smallest point. He’d just as soon people didn’t keep tabs on the stores only to see if Aimee made an idiot of herself, which, given Aimee, was always a distinct possibility, though he’d decided she was worth the risk. But if people came to associate the stores with someone they didn’t respect, Seth would have to concede the Wellington image could suffer—and the board’s opinion of him would certainly tank. Yes, he wanted out of the CEO job, but he wanted out because his father was well enough to take over the company again, not because he’d run it into the ground.

  “So you’re going to take her on?”

  He sighed. “I’ll think of something. The bare minimum that will satisfy the board.”

  “Ooooh.” Mary laughed, deep and sexy. “Should I scan the headlines tomorrow for news of Ms. Marlow dredged out of the Charles River wearing designer cement shoes?”

  “I don’t think it will come to that.”

  “Mmm, I hope not. I’d hate to lose you to jail time.”

  He chuckled. “No chance of that. Thanks for letting me know about the blog, Mary.”

  “You’re welcome. Call anytime you want to talk.” She used the husky tone that said “talk” wasn’t on her mind.

  “I will. Good night.” He hung up, aware she’d been about to say more, feeling a twinge of guilt. But if he gave her an inch now, she’d grab for…seven. And he wasn’t in the mood for that kind of fun. Every ounce of his energy and concentration was necessary to make sure the revamping of the stores wasn’t going to be a colossal, extremely expensive and humiliating failure.

  He swallowed the last tepid sip of after-dinner coffee and stood, bringing his favorite mug—one his mom bought him when he took her to Graceland, before she’d gotten too sick to travel—into his kitchen. He washed and dried it carefully and put it next to the coffeemaker, already sporting a new filter for the next morning’s brew. A quick wipe-down of the counters, and he filled a big glass with filtered water from his stainless refrigerator’s door dispenser.

  After that, a check of the downstairs rooms to make sure they were tidy and locked up tight, then he went upstairs to his second-floor loft in the condo he’d bought even though he wouldn’t be staying long.

  He strode into his bedroom, undressed and retrieved the top paperback from a neat stack under his night table. The latest Harlan Coben thriller. He needed some distraction, somewhere to go that was under control, precise, unpolluted by the wandering vagaries of real human existence.

  Ten minutes later he gave up the pretense at reading. Even page-turning excitement couldn’t distract him from his growing irritation.

  He turned off his light and drew up the blankets. Lay, hands folded behind his head, staring at the dotted stripes of light on his ceiling from the punched holes and chinks in his blinds. He didn’t have time for worrying about one woman’s opinion.

  And yet something about Krista Marlow’s disrespect toward Aimee bordered on illogical. Something about it was too…personal. Yeah, she was funny as hell, spirited and right-on in a lot of what she said. After her first post about Aimee, he’d started checking in occasionally and had been interested by most of what she had to say.

  Then a couple of months ago, after Aimee’s joke of a self-produced CD came out, around the time she landed the part in Sweatshock, the attacks on Aimee became more frequent and more cutting.

  He frowned and shifted between the sheets. Admittedly he was curious.

  Tomorrow he’d try to find out more about Marlow, something reassuring to report to the board. Maybe tell them he’d ask her to ease up. Worth a try. With Wellington Stores’ grand reopening on the horizon, he needed the board one hundred percent behind him. Even a small glitch was more of a glitch than he wanted.

  Because the sooner he could turn the company around, the sooner he could hand the running of it back to his father, and leave again.

  LUCY MARLOW SLIPPED out of the bed she shared with Link in their beautiful Cambridge condo and tiptoed out of the room. Three in the morning and she hadn’t even managed to close her eyes. Insomnia wasn’t new to her, but lately she’d been bursting into tears for no apparent reason, and she couldn’t stay in bed and cry. Link would waken, he’d want to know what was wrong. And how often could she say “nothing” or “I don’t know” without him rolling his eyes as men had been rolling their eyes at those answers for centuries, maybe millennia?

  She went into their living room, chilly with the heat turned down at night, and curled up on the window seat, looking out at the parked cars on Garden Street. This time of year was always tough, when the calendar said ho ho ho, merry merry, happy happy, and somehow her mood and stress levels never quite made it there. Gifts to buy for Link, for Mom and Dad, for Krista, for Link’s relatives, her relatives, friends, coworkers. She made it harder on herself, she knew that, and Link was always telling her as if he thought she didn’t. Having to find the perfect presents, having to decorate the house, having to make cookies and volunteer and organize the office party…

  An old Volkswagen van putted by, like the relic her parents had when she was very young. That seemed to be enough to trigger the insane tears that were her all-too-regular visitors these days.

  Was this simple unhappiness? She didn’t feel unhappy, necessarily. She had a lovely home in a beautiful city. She was engaged to a man she loved, though he didn’t seem to be in any hurry to get married or buy her a ring.

  They weren’t ready for children, Link said, and what difference did a piece of paper make in how they felt about each other?

  Logically? Intellectually? No difference.

  But emotionally…

  Well, women were the emotional ones, weren’t they. He’d marry her if she insisted, she knew that. But she couldn’t bring herself to insist. She didn’t ever want to be stand
ing up at an altar without being one hundred percent sure the man next to her would rather be there than anywhere else in the world. Marriage should be entered into gladly and with light hearts.

  These days her heart was about as light as a brick.

  The beautiful, sad tears turned to fairly unattractive sobs she fought hard to keep as silent as possible. Link slept like a rock, but you never knew.

  Everything else about her life was going fine. She had a nice job as an administrative assistant in a law firm downtown. She’d chosen the work deliberately, to keep her mind and energies fresh for performing, though these days she’d made friends with her limitations there. Lucy’s natural reserve was her enemy on stage—people like Aimee would always get ahead. While Krista would cheerfully disembowel the poor woman, Lucy understood the casting decision.

  In retrospect, she’d taken the audition more to please Krista than herself anyway. Krista had enough ambition to spare for everyone. Lucy was a creature of habit, of routine. Unlike her sister, she wasn’t comfortable or happy constantly searching for new heights to scale.

  What was really important to her? Family, friends and Link. Not in that order of course. She had a close family, a lot of friends locally. The people in the law firm were wonderful and kind. Her boss, Alexis, was fair and pleasant. One of the lawyers, Josh, had even been flirting with her lately, and that was harmless fun.

  A thrill ran through her and she curled the fingers of her left hand, feeling the missing ring keenly tonight. Josh knew about Link, he knew about their so-called engagement, but he kept coming around, and lately she hadn’t done enough to discourage him. A ring would make her feel more taken, show the world she belonged to Link in a way she wasn’t sure the world knew right now. And maybe not her either.

  Because she was taken. Thoroughly. Just because Josh turned her insides over and around and upside down when he smiled at her…

  She spun suddenly to face the room. So? Plenty of happily married—or involved—people developed crushes which had no significance and faded. She’d had them, too, once or twice in the years she and Link had been together.

  The intensity of this one stemmed from it hitting when she was particularly vulnerable. When she and Link were having a particularly bad time. When she was not at all sure why or how to go about fixing whatever had gone wrong. Relationships inevitably encountered rough patches, but this one seemed…ominous. Lately she’d been wondering how much longer she could go on without listening to the doubting voices in her head, without looking at the discouraging signs along the way.

  Tonight she’d come home from singing at Eddie’s to find the dinner dishes still stacked in the sink, Link sprawled in front of the TV. She’d gone to him, kissed him, he’d mumbled a question about how the show had gone, and had barely noticed her response. Then she’d gone into the kitchen, cleaned up, made her lunch for the next day, hearing the canned laugh track mingle with Link’s occasional laughter, louder than his usual. It was hard not to feel as though he was rubbing it in that he was enjoying himself while she slaved.

  But she couldn’t think that way. Link worked hard, too—most architects did, long hours and often late—and she wanted him to have his wind-down time, his leisure.

  She just wanted him to need her with him enough so that maybe one day he’d turn off the TV and come in and help her. Really talk to her and really listen. The way he used to.

  But those things she had no control over. She wanted him, but she couldn’t make him want her.

  Lucy sighed and pulled her feet up on the window seat, arms around her knees. Big sister Krista would tell her to get therapy or go on antidepressants or kick herself out of it.

  Krista would tell her to leave Link and start a relationship with Josh.

  Krista had never been in love. Though what Lucy called love, Krista called codependency—or had once in a particularly bitter argument in the ongoing series of arguments they’d been having about Lucy’s relationship.

  Everything in Krista’s life was crystal clear, black or white, right or wrong. She knew unswervingly how everyone around her was supposed to behave in every situation she and everyone else found themselves in.

  Sometimes Lucy thought nothing would make her happier than for Krista to fall passionately, inextricably in love in a situation so complicated and hopeless that her world would turn upside down and she’d be reduced to angsting uncertainly over every aspect of her existence for hours at a time.

  But then, that wasn’t particularly sisterly or charitable of her, was it.

  Mom would say she was going through a stage, that love was hard and life had its yin and yang and she needed to buckle down and chin up and get through it.

  Dad would chuck her under the chin and wish fervently that his little girl would be happy, then go back to watching the Celtics.

  Link would look at her like why was she making such a big deal out of everything? With the implied “again” at the end. Life is beautiful, he’d say. You wake up, you do stuff you enjoy, you go to bed.

  Wake up. Do stuff. Go to bed. Every day. Yes, but there used to be more magic, even in that.

  The tears slowed; she sniffed and wiped them away with the back of her hand.

  A slight sound made her jump; she turned to see Link, bed-ruffled, puzzled, half-asleep, swaying in the doorway, his tall, beautifully muscled body illuminated by the white light from the street behind her.

  “Lucy.” He frowned and peered at her across the room. “Why’d you get out of bed?”

  “I couldn’t sleep.”

  He squinted and took a step toward her. “Are you crying?”

  She hesitated. If she said no, she’d be lying. If she said yes, she’d have to explain.

  “Sort of.”

  “What do you mean sort of?” The irritation was starting in his voice already. It seemed to be his regular tone of communication these days. “Are you crying or not?”

  “I was.”

  “Why?”

  “Go back to bed, Link. I’ll be fine.”

  “Why are you crying?”

  “It’s nothing.”

  He made a sound of exasperation. “You’re sitting here crying in the middle of the night in the dark for no reason.”

  “Yes.” She barely got the word out for the hot, miserable weight in her chest.

  He put his hands on his hips, glaring at her. Opened his mouth to say something, then lifted one hand and let it slap on his flannel-covered thigh. “Fine. No reason. Good night.”

  He walked out of the room, stumbled and swore. She heard the headboard bounce against the wall as he flung himself into their bed. He’d sleep badly now and blame it on her. Wake up in a bad mood and they’d eat the breakfast she prepared in a silence that was starting to become horribly familiar.

  Lucy hugged her knees close to her chest, rested her chin on top of them and let the tears flow again.

  She loved Link. Loved him with all her heart and had since they’d first met in college—six years ago at the beginning of their senior year—and begun dating within a week.

  But something wasn’t working. She didn’t know what it was or when it had happened or even how to identify it so she could begin to fix it.

  And she was terribly, deathly afraid it would end up tearing them apart.

  2

  SETH SWAGGERED INTO the offices of the Boston Sentinel, sunglasses on, Red Sox cap pulled firmly onto his head. A tiny gold hoop hung off his left ear, and his knees had felt the December breeze through the holes in his jeans. The hood of his sweatshirt bounced against his upper back as he walked. He had a major ’tude going. And he who had expected to be seething with resentment over this utter waste of his time…was having a ball.

  Not a soul would recognize him as Seth Wellington IV, heir to the vast Wellington fortune, CEO of the very respectable company. He hadn’t done anything like this in almost two years. Not since his traveling days, when he’d experimented with different personalities in different to
wns, tried them on to see how people reacted.

  Er, okay, mostly to see how women reacted.

  He approached the receptionist, a young perky blonde, and leaned his forearms on her desk, wishing he could whip off his sunglasses and make eye contact but not daring to reveal that much of his face. “Hey, how you doing today?”

  “I’m fine, thank you.” She held herself formally, but a tiny smile was trying to curve her lips. “Can I help you?”

  “Sure, yeah. I’m Bobby Darwin, old classmate of Krista. Is she here?”

  “Krista…”

  “Yeah.” He grinned at her. “Marlow.”

  “She was in this morning. You just missed her.”

  “Damn.” He slapped the desk and straightened, hands on his hips, shaking his head. “Missed her at home, now here. You know where she went?”

  “She said she was going to lunch.”

  “Yeah?” He opened his eyes wide, looking appalled. “And she didn’t invite you?”

  The receptionist giggled, blushing peaches and cream. “No.”

  He leaned forward again. What he wouldn’t give to be twenty-two again and free to charm this one into a date. “What’s your name?”

  “Charlisse.”

  “Well, let me ask you this, Charlisse. You know where she was heading? I’d kinda like to surprise her, you know? We’ve known each other, whoa—” he shook his head as if he couldn’t believe how many years had gone by “—long time. I’m in town, thought I’d look her up and surprise her, but I keep just missing her. What’s up with that?”

  Charlisse giggled, clearly warming to him. “I don’t know. Bad karma maybe.”

  “Exactly.” He let the silence go a beat too long. “So Charlisse, can you do something for me?”

  “What?” She tilted her head and looked at him coyly.

  “Well…” He turned right and left, as if checking for eavesdroppers, then leaned on her desk again. “Can you turn that bad karma around and tell me where she went?”