A Bridge to Love

by Nancy Herkness

  The corners of Kate's mouth twitched. “I don't know whether to be flattered or outraged.”

  “Maybe you should be both.” Randall glanced at the clock. “I'm going to indulge in a little blackmail now. I won't leave until you promise you'll have dinner with me this Saturday. And I want a solemn promise, no crossed fingers, no conditions.”

  Kate shook her head. “I don't want to leave Clay that soon.”

  Randall stretched out on the chaise longue, crossed his long legs at the ankles and pillowed his head on his hands. He looked very comfortable.

  “You wouldn't really stay if I didn't agree,” Kate said.

  “Try me.”

  She made a sound of frustration. She desperately wanted to get out of bed so that she could confront him, but her robe was somewhere on the floor where she couldn't see it. And her closet was across the room. She checked the clock. It was 6:00 a.m. The boys wouldn't wake up for another hour. Still... She decided to beg.

  “Please, Randall, for Clay and Patrick's sake.”

  “Sorry, that won't work.”

  “I guess that appealing to your better nature would be useless, as you don't have one,” she said in a haughty tone.

  Randall closed his eyes.

  “Oh all right! But I'm doing this under protest. You're forcing me to be a bad mother.”

  His only movement was to open his eyes. “I want your promise because I know you won't break it.”

  “Yes, yes, I promise.”

  Immediately, he was off the chair and standing at the door. “I have to get to the office but I'll call you later.” His voice dropped. “Thank you, darlin', for everything.”

  The door clicked closed behind him.

  Kate slid back down into the bed and listened to the front door open and shut, and the sound of his car purring down the street. She lay with her eyes open, trying to make sense of last night's roller-coaster ride. All she could conclude with certainty was that he was a terrific lover and that he seemed like his old self again this morning. In fact, it was difficult to reconcile this morning's Randall with yesterday's Randall. She almost regretted his return to steely CEO. She had liked the glimpse of the person inside.

  As for his now-withdrawn proposal of marriage, she couldn't begin to comprehend that in the light of dawn. He had clearly been temporarily overwhelmed with loneliness and then had come to his senses.

  Kate threw back the covers. She needed to shower and straighten up the bed before anyone else stirred. Routine was a good thing. It had gotten her through David's death, and it would get her through whatever Randall decided to throw at her.

  Randall strode into RJ Enterprises as though he hadn't pulled a disappearing act for the last two days. “Good morning, Gail.”

  “Good morning, sir. I'm glad that you're back safely,” she said. He turned, and her eyebrows shot up at the sight of his black eye, but she refrained from commenting.

  He acknowledged her forbearance with a half-smile. “I need to talk with Julian Howard at Tower Design. And find out who the best real estate agency would be for selling my house.”

  “Eagle's Nest?” Gail gasped.

  “That's the one. It's time to come down off the mountaintop,” Randall said, heading for his office.

  “Have you seen the Wall Street Journal today?” she called after him.

  Randall stopped and turned. “No.”

  “I didn't think so. I put it on your desk, just in case. There's an article on the front page that you're not going to like,” she warned him.

  He went over to his desk and dropped into his chair. Picking up the newspaper, he found the article Gail had referred to. As he read, his eyebrows lowered until they almost met.

  “Well, you're front page news.”

  Randall looked up to see Tom Rogan lounging against the door frame. “Why do they print this crap, Tom?” he asked.

  “Maybe because you won't tell people the truth.” Tom looked at him for a long moment.

  Randall looked back in silence.

  When Randall didn't speak, Tom strolled the rest of the way into the office and sat down. He read out loud from the copy of the paper he had carried in with him. “Let's see…. Your word can't be trusted...you backed out of a deal with Mason Bank for no reason –”

  “I did the man a favor. He's too stupid to figure it out.”

  “The companies you own have terrible safety records.” He looked up at his boss. “They must mean the fire at TexOil.” He continued, “And your judgment has become questionable as demonstrated by grossly overpaying for a share in a small architectural firm.”

  Randall shrugged. “I've decided to become a patron of the arts.”

  “Well, according to Gill Gillespie, president of Mason Bank, you're losing it. And frankly, I'm not sure I disagree with him.”

  For a moment the two men's gazes locked and held. Then Randall shifted in his chair. “I deserved that. And you deserve an apology.”

  “You're damned right I do – and an explanation,” Tom said.

  “I don't think I can do both.”

  “All right, you stiff-necked pain in the ass,” Tom laughed. “I'll take the explanation.”

  “It's all ancient history.” Randall leaned back in his chair. “I slept with Gill Gillespie's wife.”

  Tom sat bolt upright. “No wonder he's pissed.”

  Randall leveled a hard look at his second-in-command. “Before she was his wife. And he doesn't know that. At least, he didn't when I left his house.”

  “Well, it sounds as though he knows it now,” Tom said, leaning back again. “And?”

  Randall took a deep breath and launched into a flatly factual version of the story of Lucinda and Gill. Tom knew him well enough to fill in the emotional blanks. When he stopped talking, Tom let out a long whistle.

  “You do such a fine job of holding a grudge that I may have to make you an honorary Irishman. That explains all those times when you took risks that boggled my mind. I used to wonder what devil was driving you.” He smiled reminiscently. “It made for one wild ride.”

  Randall gave a short laugh. “I scared the hell out of myself sometimes.”

  “I'm thinking that maybe you need to take some of those risks in your life right now,” Tom said. “Maybe you need to work on a different deal.”

  “And which deal would that be?” Randall asked in a dangerous voice.

  “You're a smart man. You figure it out.” Tom waited for the explosion.

  He almost got it as Randall half-rose out of his chair. Then the anger drained from his face, and all that was left was bleakness as he sat down and turned his gaze back to the window.

  “Yeah, I'm real smart.” He stared out at the panorama spread before him for a minute, then turned wearily back to Tom. “I need to get out of this Tower Design deal gracefully. Do you have any good ideas?”

  Tom hadn't expected the change of topic. “I'll see what I can come up with,” he promised, wishing that Randall had asked him to do almost anything else.

  Patrick was at school, and Clay was settled with several videotaped episodes of Star Trek, so Kate was free to check in with the office and catch up on emails and voice mails. Almost all of the construction companies bidding on the bridge had questions about building one structure over another. Some were too complicated to email an answer, so she spent an hour on the phone with various skeptical men. After checking on Clay, she played her personal voice mails.

  “Kate, a promise made under duress isn't binding. So you can say no. But I'm asking you to have dinner with me Saturday because it's very important to me. I hope you'll come.”

  She smiled as he almost choked on the last sentence.

  Randall wasn't used to requesting rather than commanding. She considered turning him down, but given what he had just been through, she couldn't do it. And he had asked this time. Of course, she also wanted to see him. Desperately, foolishly, and passionately. So after checking with Clay and Brigid, she called him back, only
to be told that he was in a meeting. She left a brief message accepting and went on to her emails.

  Friday she took Clay to the local doctor recommended by Dr. Lane. He changed the bandage and said that the hand was healing beautifully. Clay was given permission to return to school on Monday if he wasn't in pain and that elicited a whoop of gratitude. Even Star Trek began to pall when one was an active, healthy boy with merely a hand injury. Kate took him out for a celebratory lunch at their favorite diner. They had just returned to the house when the telephone rang.

  “Hello, Kate. It's Oliver.”

  Kate felt every muscle in her body tense. “Hello, Oliver,” she said in a neutral tone. “How are you?”

  “I know that you don't want to talk with me,” he said, brushing aside her polite question, “but I'm very concerned about a business matter.”

  “Really?” Kate said.

  “I want to fax you a document. When you get it, will you please call me back?”

  “Can't you just tell me what this is about?”

  “After you have the fax.”

  “All right,” she agreed reluctantly. She was relieved to hang up, even temporarily. Oliver's voice brought back unpleasant memories.

  The fax machine rang and beeped upstairs in the office, and she headed up to read it. As far as she could tell, it was nothing more than a copy of an electronic transfer of funds, from a company called Avanta Capital Corporation to Tower Design Corporation. It was dated about three weeks before, and the amount was several hundred thousand dollars.

  Kate dialed Oliver at C/R/G. “I have the fax.”

  “I noticed the name under 'Instructions.' Kate, what does this mean to C/R/G? Are we going to be sold off or become a subsidiary? What are your plans?”

  She was no longer listening. In tiny print under “Instructions,” she read “cc: T. Rogan.”

  She sat down suddenly, her mind racing to put together the chronology of her relationship with Randall. She couldn't remember what she had told him when.

  “Kate?”

  “What? I'm sorry; my mind was elsewhere:”

  Oliver's voice was suddenly gentle. “Why didn't you come to me if you were so worried about money? I would have helped. I wanted to help in any way that I could. You didn't have to sleep with Randall Johnson to solve your financial problems.”

  “You think that I got involved with Randall for money?”

  “I don't know what to think anymore.” Oliver sounded genuinely distressed and bewildered.

  Kate felt her fury draining away. “I know less about this deal than you do.” She sighed. “Although I certainly intend to find out more.” She thought for a moment. “What would it mean to C/R/G if the deal got cancelled?”

  “We'd have less working capital; and you would get less cash from the company. There might be some speculation in the architectural community as to why Tower Design pulled out, but with Paul Desmond coming on board, we'd be fine.”

  “Good,” Kate said. “Because this deal is about to become a really bad idea for the dealmaker.”

  “I know that I have no right to say this, but I'm very, very glad that you didn't know about it,” Oliver said. “I'm sorry I jumped to the wrong conclusion.”

  Kate slumped back into her desk chair and closed her eyes. “I'd appreciate it if people would ask me before making assumptions about what I want or need.”

  Oliver was silent.

  Rubbing her hand over her face, Kate sat up. “I think you should go forward with Paul's buyout at the original number.”

  “Umm, I think the number will be somewhat higher in view of Tower's figures. We may have slightly undervalued your share,” Oliver said, sounding uncomfortable.

  “You tried to lowball me, didn't you, Oliver?” She blurted it out, but once the words were spoken, she knew in her gut they were true. “Your figures always seemed too low.”

  Oliver said nothing.

  Kate broke the silence. “This is unbelievable.”

  “I didn't think it would matter to you because we would be married, and it would all blend together anyway. I wanted to do what was best for you and the business,” Oliver defended himself.

  “I don't want to talk about this anymore. Good-bye.”

  In truth, she didn't even want to think about it, but she knew she had to. More than ever, she understood that money was power for these men. They might convince themselves that they were trying to help her, but in fact they used money as a tool to manipulate her into doing what they wanted. “That's why men don't want us to earn equal wages,” Kate said to Gretchen, who had followed her upstairs at the sound of the fax machine. She picked up the phone again to call Randall, but didn't dial. “No, I'm going to throw this in his face in person. He wants to get together tomorrow, fine, we'll get together. And he can eat his money for dinner.”

  She went downstairs to give Clay a hug. “Try to stay as sweet as you are, even when you're grown up,” she told him.

  He looked up at her with a quizzical smile. “Having man problems, Mom?”

  “What would you know about man problems?”

  “Well, I am one. So if you need any advice, feel free to ask.”

  TwentyThree

  She decided to wear what she remembered as a rather severe black velvet evening suit. The jacket had long straight sleeves; the skirt was slim and had a modest slit at the side for ease of movement. However, the deep plunge where the jacket closed across her chest spoiled the conservative effect. She rooted around in her drawers until she found a dull gold chiffon scarf that she could tuck into the neckline. She started to tame her hair into a neat page boy, then decided that leaving it in waves crackling with static electricity suited her mood better.

  “Wow, Mom, you look pretty but kind of scary,” Patrick said as she came downstairs. “Like a school principal or a judge.”

  She kissed the top of his head. “You just said exactly the right thing.”

  “Mom's having man problems,” Clay said to his brother.

  “Och, don't we all?” Brigid said.

  Patrick clearly had questions to ask but the doorbell rang. Kate walked calmly out of the kitchen, then stopped for a moment to square her shoulders and lift her chin. She relished a flood of cold anger as she pulled open the front door.

  Randall stood squarely in front of her, smiling. “Hello, darlin',” he said as he moved forward.

  She backed up to let him in. As he scanned her from head to feet, his smile faded. She gave him full credit for interpreting visual messages.

  “Hello, Randall,” she said coolly.

  He eyed her speculatively, clearly trying to assess her mood. “May I say hello to the boys?”

  “Of course. They're in the kitchen,” she said smoothly, leading the way.

  “Hi, Mr. Johnson!” Patrick said, bouncing out of his seat to shake hands.

  “Good evening, young man,” Randall said. “Are you taking good care of your brother?”

  “I've let him watch any movie that he wanted,” Patrick said.

  “Well done.” Randall greeted Brigid and then turned to Clay. “How's the hand feeling?”

  “Much better, thank you, sir,” Clay responded.

  Kate saw him glance back and forth between Randall and herself and crossed her fingers that he wouldn't hint about any “problems” she might be having. “The doctor here is very pleased with the way Clay's hand is healing,” she said quickly.

  “I'm glad to hear that. But don't rush things, Clay. Proper healing takes time.”

  “I won't push it, but I'm glad to be going back to school on Monday.”

  Randall smiled. “I don't blame you. It's good to get back in the saddle. Good night, boys,” he said, reaching for Kate's elbow.

  “Good night, sir,” they chorused.

  “Have a nice dinner, Mom,” Clay said.

  Kate kissed them both, and then let Randall steer her out of the house and into his car.

  After he had closed her door, he came a
round to the driver's side and slid in himself. Instead of starting the engine, he leaned back against his door and looked at her. “You're mad as hell about something, and I'd like to know what it is.”

  She took a deep breath and turned her head to look him in the eye.

  “I just found out that Tower Design didn't have a sudden desire to overpay for a share in C/R/G. They had a little help from a company called Avanta Capital, which wanted to make sure that Tom Rogan knew that the deal was in the works.”

  Randall sighed and ran his hand over his face. “How did you find that out?”

  “What difference does it make?”

  He shrugged. “I'd just like to know where we fouled up.”

  “Is that all you care about?” Kate shifted in her seat so that her whole body was facing him. “Where you fouled up? It doesn't matter to you that you – and Oliver – are treating me like some puppet whose strings you can pull? He tried to bankrupt me into marrying him and you've tried to buy me!”

  “Wait a minute. Give me some credit. I was trying to help, and I had to do it in a roundabout way because I knew you wouldn't just take money from me.”

  “You're damn right I wouldn't! I'm not Lucinda, you know. I don't need to be rescued from a life of poverty. Did it ever occur to you that I might want to make it on my own? That maybe I needed to know that I could support myself and my family?” Randall started to speak but Kate interrupted him. “No, of course not. Because you see me as some image of what you want, some adjunct to your vision of your own life. But I'm a person in my own right, and I'm tired of having that ignored!” Kate reached for the door handle. “So take your Tower Design deal and shove it.”

  “Wait a minute! You can't shout at me and then leave,” Randall said, pushing a button which locked the car's doors.

  “Unlock the door.”

  “Not until you've heard me out.”

  Kate straightened in her seat and stared out the windshield.

  Randall took her chin in his hand and turned her face toward him. “You're looking down your nose again, darlin'.”