“I’m fine. I’m fine, Gap. I’m calling from some islands over near the Bahamas.”
“The Bahamas? Oh, my, Cathy—”
“I hope you haven’t been worried, I haven’t been able to get to a phone until now, but everything’s okay.”
“No, no, I wasn’t worried, dear. I knew in my bones that you were all right. I figured you were out having that adventure we talked about—”
“I was, Gap. I mean, I am; it’s not over.” Oh, please don’t let it be over.
“That’s wonderful,” her grandmother said. She paused, and then filled in the empty space. “So … is that all the news I’m going to get from the Bahamas for now?”
“For now.” Cathy laughed. “But I’ll report back with an update, don’t worry.”
She heard her grandmother’s affectionate chuckle. “I’ll stay tuned!”
“Okay. Hugs to Aunt Tisha. I love you.”
“Love you too, girl.”
There. She was still Cathy Stephenson. Still the same whole, capable woman. Michael still loved her. Everything was fine. Right?
A knock at the door sent her leaping across the room. She yanked the door open, then stepped back in surprise. It was the accountant.
“Mr. Winters asked me to deliver these,” he said, holding out a huge stack of boxes. “There is a note on top.”
“Thanks.” Cathy took the packages in her arms. “Thanks a lot.”
She shut the door with one foot, then tumbled the pile across the bed as she searched for the note.
Dearest Cathy,
I love you. It’s mayhem up here, and I don’t know when I can get away. If you’re starving, go on to dinner without me. But if you can wait, I’ll call the minute I can get away. I love you. Oh, told you that, but I guess twice can’t hurt.
Michael
The last line had been scrawled in a careless hand, and she could almost hear his husky laughter, see the grin lifting to his blue eyes. She knew the shade, the exact shade his eyes were when he laughed. She always would.
When the phone did ring hours later, it woke her out of a troubled sleep.
“Michael?” she murmured, forgetting to be cautious.
“Yes,” he said softly. “Did I wake you?”
“I guess so. Yes, I—I was waiting, but …” Her words were lost in a yawn.
He gave a low chuckle, sounding tired himself. “It’s after midnight. I’m sorry. I couldn’t get away till now. Are you up for a late dinner? Or maybe you’d rather go back to sleep—”
“No! I’m wide awake, honest. And starving. Do you want to meet downstairs or—”
“I’ll come knock on your door. Ten minutes?”
“Less!”
She was ready, dressed in white linen slacks and a silk blouse—bra, panties, shoes, bag, the whole works—when he knocked.
She pulled the odor open, and felt a thrill of joy run through her. “Hi, Michael!”
Michael stepped inside, pushed the door closed, and took her in his arms. “Oh, Cathy, how I’ve missed you.”
“I know,” she whispered, wrapping her arms around his waist and lifting her cheek to his. “Oh”—she laughed, her eyes shining—“you feel strange without your beard. And dressed in a pinstriped shirt”—she pulled back to see him more fully—“and a suit, oh, my!”
“Back to the old Michael Winters.” He grinned, and pulled her back close to him. The old Michael Winters, Cathy repeated to herself. She could feel the tension in his arms, across his back under the expensive jacket. Even as he held her he felt coiled like a spring—tight and tense.
“Culture shock,” she whispered to him, her eyes carefully watching his face.
“You bet. It’s back to the real world with a vengeance.” His mouth settled into a straight, hard line. Then he released her and rubbed at the back of his neck, rolling his shoulders. He smiled down at her. “Well, I certainly kept you waiting for dinner. Shall we go?”
“Why don’t we stay?” Cathy slid her hand down his arm until she held his hand. She took a step toward the bed.
Something close to pain flashed behind Michael’s eyes. “I’ve got to put a call in to L.A. at two A.M. And a six-o’clock wake-up call for a seven o’clock meeting. It wouldn’t work, Cathy.”
“Sure it would. I don’t want to sleep now anyway, and I can leave a wake-up call here too—”
“And who would answer in my room?”
“You could be in the shower—”
“You’ll be exhausted.”
“I don’t care!”
“It doesn’t make any sense, Cathy.”
“Since when have we had to make sense?”
“I’ve always had to make sense.” He cut her off with the sharpness of his words. And then he turned away, shoving his hands into his pockets. His back looked like a wide, hard wall.
His eyes would be that slate gray, dark as thunderstorms. And that frown line would be there again, between his dark brows. And the corner of his mouth would be turned down, pulling at the left side of his face in that harsh look of impatience. She didn’t even have to see it, she knew it. She knew him. Dammit, she knew him and she loved him!
“Michael, I vote for bed.”
He turned and grinned at her. “You can take your hands off your hips, Indiana. Tonight you’re overruled. Hey—” He stepped close and rested his chin on the top of her head. “I’m really beat. I need some dinner, and a glass of wine, and just a friend for company tonight, okay?”
She shook her head, her lower lip caught between her teeth. “I don’t think you know what you really need, Michael, but if that’s what you want—”
“Thanks, Cathy.”
“You’re welcome.” She sighed and followed him out the door.
They sat down for dinner in a little corner of the nearly empty restaurant.
“We kept the kitchen open for you, Mr. Winters,” the waiter said.
“Thank you. And thank the manager for me. Tell her I really appreciate it.”
“No problem, sir.”
Cathy shook her head, her brows lifting into her curly bangs. “I forgot what it was like to be with you when you’re Michael Winters, Wheeler-Dealer.”
“So did I,” he said softly. “By the way, how did you like the clothes?”
“Oh, the clothes, they were wonderful. Are wonderful,” she corrected herself, running her hands over the silk of her blouse. “But you didn’t have to do that, Michael.”
“I wanted to. I thought it was the least I could do, considering you started out fully dressed somewhere at the beginning of all this.”
Their eyes met, and he gave her a lopsided grin, then looked down at his menu.
“So, what would you like, Cathy?”
“You.”
“Cathy—” he warned.
“You asked.” She shrugged, tipped her head, and offered a smile. “You want me to play nice, Michael? You want me to just be polite? Okay, I’ll have a shrimp cocktail and a salad. That’s what I’d like.”
“I just want to keep everything under control, everything easy—”
“Oh, Michael!” She gave a startled little laugh. “I don’t think that should be what we want. We can want more than that. Easy or not, I’d vote for a little chaos if there’s love involved.”
“What you don’t understand is that there’s a lot involved here in this other world I live in. There are things you don’t know anything about. An empire. A whole world!”
“You’re my whole world, Michael, that’s all I know.”
Instead of the smile, the touch she expected, her words evoked a stiff silence. She stared at him a moment, then dropped her eyes, feeling absolutely naked in all her new clothes.
• • •
When they met downstairs the next day at noon by accident, she actually felt awkward.
“Morning, Michael.” She smiled, not sure whether to hug him, touch him, or turn tail and flee. “So, how’s everything?”
“Wild. The
merger on the West Coast really shook up the market. I’ve got a stack of Faxes this high—” He measured with his palms and she saw how rough his hands still were, weatherbeaten, sunburned, the fingertips callused and blunt—
“Cathy?”
“Oh, I’m sorry, I wasn’t listening.”
“What were you thinking about?”
She looked up at him. “Lobsters. Fishing. Mussels on the beach.”
“Cathy—” He shook his head, his eyes gone slate dark.
“So, do you need some help with the correspondence?” she asked, chin tipped up, her eyes holding his. “Is there anything I can do, Michael?”
“I don’t think so,” he said softly.
She nodded.
Although she hated herself, she had to drop her eyes so he wouldn’t see her tears. She set her mouth, gave a sharp little sigh. “Well, I guess I’ll go roam around for a while.”
“Cathy?” He stopped her with a word. “Meet me for dinner? About eight? Would you?”
She turned back to him. “Maybe. I’ll try. But I really do think I’ve got a touch of some kind of fever. Nothing to worry about,” she added quickly, “but I may need to just sleep it off.” She turned and hurried back upstairs.
• • •
But she could not resist him. Walking into the bar at seven, she spotted Michael immediately. He was talking to the accountant and another man in a dark business suit, his whole body tight with strain, punctuating his words with sharp, incisive gestures. When the accountant spoke, Michael reached up and rubbed the back of his neck. She could feel his weariness.
And somehow he could feel her presence.
In mid-sentence he turned, searched the room for her, and waved her over.
“Hi, Cathy, how are you?” he asked, slipping an arm around her waist.
“I’m fine, Michael. But you look exhausted.”
“It’s been one of those days.” He laughed. Then he drew a deep breath. “Well, why don’t we call it caput for today, gentlemen? Roger, let me know if you hear anything from London, otherwise I’m done for tonight. See you both tomorrow. And thanks.”
“Night, Michael.”
“Good night, Mr. Winters.”
And then they were alone.
“Whew …” He rolled his head around, trying to loosen the muscles knotted across his shoulders. “One helluva day.”
“Does it have to be, Michael? Can’t you just … I don’t know, just do less?”
“I don’t know how to do that, Cathy,” he answered honestly, looking deep into her eyes. Then he smiled. “Maybe you’ll have to fall into the sea again, so I can rescue you, and we can start all over.”
She touched his cheek. “Sounds a bit drastic to me, Mr. Winters.”
He laughed, rubbing his forehead with one hand. “Guess so, Indiana. But it sure sounds tempting.”
She caught his hand in hers, then the other, pushing her fingers between his until they were connected, hands, arms, bodies, and she could feel his blood pulsing. “Let’s try it, Michael. Some midway point that will work, a compromise, something halfway between fairy tales and this. Some way to be both Michael Winters—”
He tightened his fingers around hers. “How? Tell me how to do it, Cathy. I want to—oh, God, I want to! But I don’t think it would work.”
“Give it a shot!”
He laughed. “You know me, I take only calculated risks.”
“No, you don’t! You dive for lobsters! You climb coconut trees! You sail over reefs, Papa!”
“That’s in fantasies.”
“No, it isn’t. It’s just a different reality. We can mix the two. I know we can!”
“You think so, huh?” He grinned down at her.
“Yes!” she answered with all her Indiana certainty.
“Oh, Mr. Winters, excuse me—”
It was the accountant, back again and red-faced. “It’s London. There was a fax waiting when I got upstairs. They’re ready to sign, and they’ve got our contact in Lucerne committed as well. They want a meeting, tomorrow. Four P.M. I’ve got the jet fueling and we’ll need to leave in the morning.”
“In the morning?” Michael and Cathy spoke at once, their words colliding in midair.
Cathy looked down, blinking madly to keep the tears from spilling. Do something, Michael. Say something. Don’t let this happen, she thought wildly.
“Then you’ll have to book Ms. Stephenson on an early flight to Orlando. Take care of that now, would you please, Roger?”
It hurt to draw breath. Cathy had to hunch her shoulders together, waiting for the pain to ease.
“Cathy, maybe it’ll work out best this way. There’s just no time to deal with anything now. You can get back to Orlando and I’ll tie this all up in Europe, and then I’ll come back and we’ll get together—”
“Are you crazy?” She pressed her hand to her mouth as if to catch the words. But it was too late.
“I’m sorry,” she said quickly. “I guess you’re right. I … I …” she stuttered, shrugged in despair, having no idea of the right way to do this impossible thing. “You must be right. I do have so much to do. I need to look for a job. And you’re so busy—”
“But I’ll be back soon. I’ll call the minute I get back to the States. I can fly you up and we’ll have time to talk, and think about the future and—”
“—what? Evaluate our options?” She shook her head, numbed with grief. But high in her chest the pain began to flutter. Another minute, and she didn’t know if she could stand it. “Michael, I love you. But right now you have to excuse me. I’m going upstairs, right now—”
“Wait, Cathy!” Michael grabbed her arm, and for one fleeting second she thought he might say the right words, make it all better, close the horrible widening gulf between them … and keep her world from falling apart. She looked up at him, her love shining in her eyes, holding her breath.
But he squared his jaw and shoved both hands into his pockets as if he had some reason to be angry. “I’ve got to get everything under control, Cathy. This is the real world, not some damn fairy tale!”
Left with nothing but a little pride, she did not answer.
Fifteen
How could a fairy tale hurt so much? How could it cause such sadness and pain? Especially when she’d known it was a dream all along.
And if all those days had been just some fantasy, then why was she sitting here on Delta 161 to Orlando crying real tears into a crumpled tissue?
Oh, take off already! Cathy cried silently. She couldn’t stand the sight of the palm trees, the curve of blue water, the smooth pink sand that reached almost to the runway. Almost. Almost did not count for anything, that was one thing she knew for sure.
There was the word almost spoken. There was the touch almost shared. There was the dream that almost came true. And then there was nothing.
Nothing but pain. And the sharpest pain of all was the sight of him standing back at the gate, one hand raised in farewell. How could he say good-bye to her? She couldn’t say it to him. She had run aboard without looking back at him, and she couldn’t bear to look at him now. She ducked her head into her shredded tissue and wept.
Michael had tried to follow her silhouette on board, had tried to count the windows back and guess where she’d be sitting. But he couldn’t see her from where he was. He’d lost sight of her. He felt it like a wound, like the loss of an arm or a leg, like some gaping hole where his heart had been. The sweat was running down under his arms, across his chest. When the engines raced to life, he felt the pain rise to his throat, threatening to choke him.
Cathy! The sound roared through his head. He wanted to yell, hit something, break down the damn gate and run after her. So why didn’t he?
There was the meeting in London. The jet already fueled. Millions on the line.
Cathy’s plane began to roll down the runway.
He started moving along the fence, keeping his eyes on the window that might be hers, waving, not know
ing he was running until he ran into a man who reeled back with a sharp, angry look. “Watch where you goin’, mon!”
“Sorry!” Michael hardly felt the jolt. He just ran on, his eyes locked on the plane as if the strength of his gaze would bind it, stop it on the runway. He hit the end of the fence. There was no place to go.
Cathy!
The plane rose, taking her with it. Cathy. Everything he wanted, everything he needed, everything he loved in this world.
The minute she was out of reach, he knew she was the center of his life. Everything else would have to fit around her. Because without her, none of it was worth a damn. Without her, there was nothing.
He ran back up to the gate area, arms pumping in his suit jacket.
His accountant and his chief mechanic had been watching his unexpected behavior from a distance, and now they stood there openmouthed, waiting to see what was going to happen next.
“Plane ready?” Michael shouted as he neared them.
“Yes, sir!”
“Great. Put a fax through to the sheikh—here, take this down, Roger, word for word. And hurry. And then wire London—the meeting’s on hold till I get back.”
“Till you get back, sir? From where? When?”
“Tell you the truth, I don’t know when,” he said, breathing hard. And then he grinned. “As soon as I marry that girl.”
Fifteen minutes later his private jet took off, climbed to 27,000 feet, and raced off after Delta 161.
If Cathy had known to look out the window, she would have seen the small gleaming plane tucked beneath her big white one there in the clear, bright Caribbean skies. But she was too busy crying. And after a while the small jet pulled ahead, determined to beat her to Orlando.
When Cathy landed, she followed the crowd in its still-on-vacation mood, one sad little island in a rush of noise and merrymaking. The others had piles of suitcases, cases of liquor, shopping bags full of perfume and watches, gold jewelry, and fine crystal. Cathy had empty hands and a heart that matched.
“Nothing to declare, miss?” the customs agent asked, eyeing her suspiciously.
“No,” she whispered, head down and sniffing.
“Are you sure? Haven’t you brought anything back with you?”
The Great American Bachelor Page 14