by Robin Kaye
Kendall did her best to ignore Jack’s letter sitting on top of the TV as she and Addie chatted. She thought that if she just kept busy she wouldn’t have time to obsess about Jack. So far, she’d been wrong.
“I’ve been worried. How are you?”
“I’m okay. Keeping busy—the more I do, the less time I have to mope, so that’s good.”
“Jaime told me Jax went back to Chicago.”
“Yeah, he left. He’s gone. It’s over. He even had Dad to deliver his Dear Kendall letter.”
“What did it say?”
Kendall picked up a framed picture of her and David. She took the picture out of the frame and tossed it in a pile before wrapping the frame. “I don’t know. I haven’t opened it yet.”
“Kendall, what are you waiting for?”
Courage, the pain to subside a little, maybe another bottle of wine? “Is it so hard to believe that I’m just not chomping at the bit to have my heart stomped on again? I’ll read it. Eventually. Just not now. I’ve hit my pain quota for the day—maybe the month.”
“Oh, Kendall. I’m sorry.”
The tears started again. “Addie, he left without so much as a good-bye.”
“See, I knew you’d take it that way.”
“You knew he was leaving and you didn’t tell me?”
“I found out this morning. Jaime said he had an eight o’clock flight, so he would have already been at the airport when I found out. It’s not as if I had the flight number.”
“What were you and Jaime doing before eight o’clock this morning?”
“We had breakfast—that’s all.”
Oh, really? That definitely wasn’t all there was to it.
Addie cleared her throat. “Kendall, let’s look at this logically—just the facts, no emotion. You walked out on Jax first. You wouldn’t let him explain.”
“He lied to me. I didn’t even know who he was. It’s like our whole relationship, everything about it, was a lie. I was hurt.” But hurt didn’t do the pain justice. Her whole body ached like she had the flu. It was all she could do to keep moving and not curl up in a ball and cry.
“From what Jaime said, Jax was really sick. He couldn’t even drive. Besides, he had to go home eventually. He has a company to run.”
“He has a huge company, and I thought he was a handyman. I’m such a fool.” She brushed away a tear. “Look, Addie, I just can’t go there now.” No, she was going home. She took a stack of books off the shelf and piled them in a box.
“Do you want me to come down tomorrow? I can help you pack, and that way you’re not alone when you read it.”
“No.” The last thing she needed were more witnesses to her meltdown. The last time Jack was with her, and she knew how well that worked out. “Addie, I know you want to help, and I love you for it. But this is something I’m going to do alone. I’m going through everything, getting rid of what I don’t like, and packing the rest. I just want to move on. The sooner I get out of here, the better.”
“Do you want to come and stay with me until you find a place? I have plenty of room.”
“Thanks for the offer, Addie, but I think I’d rather be alone and figure out what I’m going to do with my life. I might go back to the cabin until I find a job and a place to live.”
“Oh, okay. Let me know if you need help, groceries, whatever. Oh, and Kendall. Read Jax’s letter. You’re not going to be able to move forward until you do.”
“I will—I just don’t know when. I’ll let you know when I hit town.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Jax waited for the elevator door to open, nervousness licking his insides and tension crawling up his neck, promising another killer headache. He rubbed the back of his neck and thought about Kendall. She gave the best back rubs in the world.
The elevator doors slid open, and Anne Pivens, in her usual work attire—long wool coat, skirt, silk blouse, jacket, and sensible heels—appeared. She had her pocketbook thrown over one shoulder and her briefcase over the other, and she pushed a silver cart in front of her.
She stopped in front of him and blinked. He supposed he should have at least put a pair of dress slacks on, but something about seeing his suits and dress pants hanging in his closet in order of color made his head ache. He’d thrown on a pair of jeans and a cashmere sweater instead. It was a good thing he decided to put a pair of loafers on rather than just going barefoot or wearing his boots. Her eyes widened. “Am I early?”
“No, I’m sure you’re right on time.” She’d never been anything but punctual in all the time he’d known her. He waved her toward the dining room. “Come on in. And thank you for meeting me here. May I take your coat?”
She dropped her briefcase, set her purse on the center table under the crystal chandelier, and then shrugged out of her coat and handed it to him.
“I thought we’d eat in the dining room and then head to the office. Is that okay with you?” He hung up her coat, and when he turned around, she already had her purse and briefcase in hand and was pushing the cart toward the dining room.
She hadn’t answered him. She just set the table with stilted efficiency. He never remembered seeing her anxious, but, then, he might not have noticed. He had a feeling he’d missed a lot. Anne Pivens was an amazing assistant. She kept him on schedule, had whatever he needed at her fingertips or in that brilliant mind of hers, screened his calls, guarded his privacy, and handled everything he’d ever thrown at her with the utmost professionalism.
She poured coffee into china cups, doctored hers, and set his black coffee beside his plate.
He held the chair for her, and she looked shocked, then pleased, as she sat. “Do you have that confidentiality agreement?”
“Yes.” She flipped open her briefcase, pulled a folder from it, and handed it to him.
“Thanks. Go on and dig in. I just want to look this over quickly before we get started.”
She took a sip of coffee and watched him as he read the contract. The food sat untouched in the middle of the table, hidden by the silver warming covers. She rolled her napkin in her lap, spread it out, then rolled it again.
The confidentiality agreement seemed to be airtight—as airtight as it could be. When it came down to it, all it would take was one word to the right person to send an entire division of the company into a downward spiral. Jax was heavily invested personally, as was typical for a fund manager. His having skin in the game built client confidence, but it also put him in a really vulnerable position. He was the figurehead, and how much confidence would an impaired funds manager inspire? If word got out, it could ruin him and the company.
He’d been working with Anne Pivens for almost ten years, and he’d never seen her falter, he’d never heard a bad word about her, and he’d never seen her gossip. She was security conscious—even when she left for the day, her workspace was pristine, not a paper out of place, and she shredded every piece of paper except tissues. Every night, all the files they’d worked on were locked up tight. There were only two keys: his and hers. Anne Pivens was meticulous, and in all the time they’d worked together, he’d never seen her leave anything to chance.
Jax tossed the contract back on the folder and mulled it over. When it came down to it, he either trusted Anne implicitly or not; it was a judgment call. He had to go with his gut, because there were no guarantees. No matter what the confidentiality agreement said, corporate espionage was alive and well—there was always someone out there with enough bribe money to make talking worth her while. Still, Jax trusted her.
“Okay, come on. Let’s eat.” He reached across and removed the warming covers. Eggs Benedict, hash browns, and fruit salad. He dug in—he hadn’t eaten since he grabbed something at the airport yesterday morning. When he looked up, Anne sat there as still as a statue. “Something wrong?”
“Yes, there is. Mr. Sullivan, you left on a vacation in early December, and a week later I receive a call from legal, informing me that you were taking a three-month leave
of absence. I worked for two months without a word from you, only to receive a cryptic phone call yesterday, requesting my presence and a copy of my confidentiality agreement at a breakfast meeting in your home. I would like to know what’s going on. Am I in some kind of trouble? Has our security been breached? Has something happened?”
“Yes, something happened, but it has nothing to do with you. I’m sorry if I upset you. I need to talk to you about something very sensitive, and I needed to see where we stand legally, for your protection as well as my own. I don’t want to put you in a compromising position.”
“And?”
“And I think you’ll be fine—these agreements are for your protection as well as the corporation’s. As for me? I have to ask you to keep everything said today in the strictest confidence. I don’t want anything written down, no mention of this in the office or anywhere but here. Is that understood?”
“Of course, sir.”
“Look, Mrs. Pivens, what I’m going to tell you is personal. We’ve been working together for almost ten years; I would hope we know each other well enough to be on a first-name basis. So can we drop the sir and Mrs.? Just call me Jax or Jackson. Heck, I’ll even answer to Jack.”
“All right. And as for me, Anne is fine, but forgive me if I forget. I’ll do my best, but old habits and all that.”
He scrubbed his hand over his face. “Tell me about it. Now would you please eat?”
“One question.”
He took a bite of his potatoes. “Sure.”
“You don’t have a terminal illness, do you?” Her voice cracked.
He looked up, startled, and saw she was actually blinking back tears. “No, I’m fine.”
She let out a relieved breath and sank back in her chair. “Oh, thank God. I just couldn’t imagine. . . . I’ve always been so careful about security. I know I didn’t leak anything, but with corporate espionage and computer security breaches . . . well, you never really know. But if it wasn’t that, the only other thing I could come up with was a Steve Jobs scenario.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know how to discuss this, and I really did need to look at this.” He tapped the confidentiality agreement. “I was in a skiing accident. I’m told I caught an edge and went headfirst into a tree, but I don’t remember anything that happened that day. I was in a drug-induced coma for a few days. They had to drill into my skull to relieve pressure from the swelling. I woke up in the ICU.”
“But you’re okay.”
“For the most part I am, but have been some aftereffects. I don’t know if it’s permanent. I’m supposed to have another MRI in the next few weeks and see if how it’s healing.”
“Aftereffects?”
“Yeah, that’s what I have to talk to you about. Right now, I’m incapable of doing my job. I need to reevaluate our succession plan—we might have to make some changes. I’ve been thinking a lot about it, and I’m not comfortable with the way it stands now.”
“What kind of changes?”
“I have lost all ability to deal with numbers. Counting, telling the time—hell, I have a pocket full of money and I don’t know how much I have.” His face split into a grin. For the first time, it was actually kind of funny. “Nothing else seems to be affected. Right after the accident, I had a hard time coming up with the right word, the order of things, but that’s gone away. I have no trouble reading and understanding the words. I’m told I’m making progress with numbers. I have a better handle on the passage of time, and I’m able to recognize numbers and put a name to them. I don’t know if it’s something that came back to me or if it was relearned.”
“And who is privy to this information?”
“Teddy Watkins; his daughter, Kendall; my best friend, Jaime Rouchard; and now you.”
“I know Jaime and Teddy, but Kendall is new to me. Is she trustworthy?”
“Yes.”
“And how are you?”
“I just told you.”
“Mr.—I mean Jackson—it must have been quite a shock. You went from being a veritable mathematical genius to not even recognizing a number. You spent the past ten years of your life living, breathing, and sleeping the markets. You’re an analytical guru. You’ve done nothing but keep your finger on the pulse of the world’s economic trends, and you know most financial news before the Wall Street Journal and Reuters get wind of it. I can’t imagine how someone deals with that kind of loss.”
“They go and hide out in a cabin in the woods and reroof the place.”
She blinked a few times, then laughed. A robust, hearty laugh.
He shook his head. “I’m serious. That’s what I did.”
She smiled and cut into her eggs Benedict. “How did you measure?”
“I drew a lot of lines and made a lot of cuts. It kept me busy. It kept me mostly sane. And then someone came crashing into my life and showed me everything I missed when I was living, eating, breathing, and sleeping work.”
“And that would be Kendall?”
“Yes.”
She looked around the apartment. “Is she here with you?”
He shook his head. “No, last I heard, she was in Boston. When we reconnected, she didn’t recognize me. We hadn’t seen each other since my parents’ funeral. Because of my situation, I didn’t tell her who I was. I said I was renting the place, since I didn’t know if I could trust her, and she had no problem talking to a total stranger and letting him know she didn’t have the highest opinion of Jax Sullivan.”
Anne let out another bark of laughter and then covered her mouth, clearly shocked at her outburst. “I’m sorry, but that’s just . . . well, hysterical, really. Talking to you about you. What did she say?”
“She called me the Grand Pooh-Bah of Harmony and accused me of being Harmony’s answer to Scrooge McDuck. I found out her ex left a bad taste in her mouth when it came to anyone in the financial industry. She said he was a Jackson Sullivan wannabe.”
“Ouch.”
“Yeah, exactly. I spent Christmas with my sister, and trying to pretend that I was the same old Jax was exhausting. It was really nice not to have to pretend and watch everything I said. I figured as long as she didn’t know who I was, telling her about the accident wasn’t a big deal.”
“And I take it she found out who you were?”
“The day before yesterday. I tried to explain, but she wouldn’t listen, and she left me.”
“You didn’t go after her?”
“No, I haven’t been cleared to drive—not that I had a car. And her father wasn’t too happy when he found out about us.”
“That’s right—Kendall is Teddy’s daughter.”
“Yeah, talk about an awkward situation. In order to keep my condition under wraps, I had to leave. I wrote Kendall a letter and explained everything. Teddy said he’d give it to her.”
“Even after he found out you lied to his daughter?”
“Once I explained why, he understood. He wasn’t happy with me, and, believe me, I haven’t been called on the carpet like that since the day he found out I took my parents’ car out for a joyride when I was thirteen.”
“The two of you have a complicated and unusual relationship. You’re his boss, and he’s like a father to you. It looks like you survived it.”
“Yes, I think Teddy and I will be fine. As for Kendall and me, I haven’t a clue. She’s just getting out of a long relationship, and she needs to figure out what she wants. I need to do the same. I don’t want to be the rebound guy, and I don’t want to wonder if we’re together because we found each other right when both our worlds imploded. We both need time to deal with the fallout and then see what each of us wants.”
Anne tilted her head as if in contemplation. “You love her.”
“Yeah, I do.”
“Does she love you?”
“I don’t know. She was really angry and hurt and, well, you can imagine. I don’t know if it’s something she can get past. I hope so, but at this point, I don’t know if she’ll eve
n read the letter I sent. She has a wicked nasty temper, so for all I know, she’s ripped it up or tossed it in the fire.”
“Sounds like she’s a keeper.”
“I think she is, but why do you?”
Anne sat back and smiled. “She didn’t just fall at your feet when she found out who you were. It sounds as if she was more upset that you lied than she was impressed with your bank balance.”
“She doesn’t have the highest opinion of wealthy people. It’s probably not an asset as far as Kendall’s concerned.”
“And that tells me she knows what’s important in life. Money is nice, but it doesn’t buy happiness. You’re living proof. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you truly happy, and, no, I don’t mean a flash of happiness—I mean the content-with-your-life kind of happiness.” She finished off her breakfast and set her plate aside. “So, other than revamping the succession plan, what do you need from me?”
He rose. “Let’s go in the office and I’ll show you.”
He walked in and held up the math primers Kendall had bought. “I got started on these last night. I thought if you wouldn’t mind finding me a collection of math textbooks, I could go through them. I don’t want to question if I’m missing something.”
“So you’re going to go through every math book between first grade and graduate statistics and applied business calc?”
“If that’s what it takes, that’s exactly what I’ll do.”
Anne sat down at his desk and brought up a Web site for an Internet bookstore. “I’ll order them today and have them overnighted. I’ll print out the succession plan so you can look that over while I’m on the Great Math Book Hunt, and then we’ll talk about that.” She looked at her watch. “I can stay here for another couple of hours; then I need to go to the office.”
“Okay. Would you mind working from here half days?”
“No, that would be fine. I can have the phones transferred. I’ll just push the managers’ meetings to two o’clock, and start BCCing you the reports, so you can get back up to speed.”
