Loved Me Once (Love, Romance and Business)

by Gail Hewitt

  It was Jameson Halbrooks who answered. "I think perhaps we might have more privacy for our conversation if you could come to the Executive Lodge, say at 4:30? It's just up the path at this end of the lake, then bear to the left at the sign. The groundskeepers seem to be keeping the pathway clear, so you should be able to get through."

  "4:30 then," Maggie confirmed. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got a seminar to prepare for."

  "Sure looked like it," Tom said sardonically, and they left.

  "What a bunch of creeps," Miles said, once they were alone. "Do you really want to make that meeting? I can have someone from the office call and cover for you."

  "How? Tell them I was unexpectedly called away? We're snowed in."

  "True," Miles conceded. "Then just call and say you've decided not to come."

  "No," she said. "I know this guy. He's very rich and very powerful. He's also persistent. He'll just keep trying until I meet with him and his people. He's someone I knew from Atlanta."

  "Doesn't seem like a BellSouth kind of guy," Miles commented.

  Kimberly Maddeson came breathlessly through the door. "Maggie! I'm so sorry I'm late. I was looking at some materials the girls in the wedding-planning seminar were showing me. What do you want me to do? Oh hi, Mr. Brewster. I didn't know you were here. It's some day, isn't it? They say we're likely to be snowed in for two or three days, not that it matters since we're going to be here that long anyway, but it's still kind of strange, don't you think?" Kimberly paused for breath, and Miles used the opportunity to excuse himself.

  "Well, I'll leave you two to do whatever it is that you do before these things. Call me when you're done with the crowd at the Executive Lodge, Maggie." He turned to go.

  "Do you know who I just saw?" Kimberly, obviously excited, said to Maggie. "Merriman Scott is in the hotel. One of the staff pointed him out to me."

  Miles stopped at the door and turned around. "Merriman Scott? That was Merriman Scott?"

  Maggie shrugged. Miles, now looking suspicious, started to say something else, then shook his head and continued on his way.

  "Merriman Scott was here?" Kimberly was so excited that she was almost jumping up and down. "How do you know Merriman Scott?"

  "From Atlanta, a long time ago," Maggie told her. "He's from Georgia too. Now, we need to settle down and make sure the projector is working for these PowerPoints."

  Tom Scott — or perhaps it was Jameson Halbrooks, as Maggie wasn't sure who was calling the shots on the afternoon's meeting — left nothing to chance. At 4 p.m., even as Maggie was giving the seminar participants their assignment for the next day, an earnest young man in a business suit appeared at the door and settled himself, obviously prepared to wait for however long it took her to finish.

  At last the room was clear, and Maggie turned questioningly to the new arrival.

  "I'm Raoul Manuelo, from Merriman Scott's Security team. Mr. Halbrooks asked me to walk with you to the Executive Lodge for your 4:30 meeting. He was afraid the path might be icy."

  Or that I wouldn't show, Maggie thought to herself. Still, might as well give Raoul the benefit of the doubt. He, at any rate, seemed sincere enough. She buttoned the jacket of her pant suit.

  "It's pretty cold outside," he said doubtfully. "Is that the coat you're going to wear?"

  "Thanks for reminding me," she grinned. "I was about to forget, although I think I would have remembered once that wind hit me. I'll have to go upstairs for my cape. Do you want to tag along or would you rather wait at the reception desk? I'm afraid I'm responsible for locking up here when I leave."

  "Whatever you want me to do," he told her, obviously unsure of the correct procedure. She guessed that he was relatively new to this job.

  "Just wait at the reception desk. It'll take me about five minutes."

  In her room, she put on the down cape she always wore to northern locations at this time of year. She was about to pull on gloves — would they even fit over this huge ring? – when she noticed that the message light was blinking on the phone. It was Miles.

  He didn't sound happy. "Give me a call if you get this before you go to the Executive Lodge."

  When she called his room, however, all she got was the hotel messaging service, so she told him that she'd called and would call again as soon as she returned from the meeting. She realized that she was sorry she'd missed him — she'd like to have heard his voice. He had a nice voice, a light baritone that had caught her attention the first time she'd heard him speak. Now, however surprised she'd been the evening before at his proposal, she was beginning to think that it would be more than acceptable to have that voice around to listen to on a regular basis. She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. She looked positively fatuous, definitely like a schoolgirl with a really wicked crush. And maybe that wasn't a bad analogy, she thought. She found herself wondering if they could just eat in Miles' suite tonight and skip all the dressing-for-dinner bit. She hoped so. It would be nice to be there, alone with Miles, not having to go through a lot of pretense. Suddenly she was tired of pretense.

  But first she had to get through this meeting with Tom Scott and his people. Merriman Scott, she reminded herself. To them, he was Merriman. She should remember to call him the same thing. Given what had happened between them, she didn't think she could manage "Mr. Scott," but surely "Merriman" wouldn't be too great a stretch. Oddly, other than wondering once or twice what on earth Tom and his crowd were up to, she had barely thought of the meeting throughout the afternoon. The seminar participants had been difficult to get involved, and working with a new topic was always intense. When she wasn't totally engaged with the seminar, her thoughts drifted automatically to Miles and a contemplation of the ring so firmly installed on her third finger, left hand.

  Now, however, she began to think about the strangeness of the situation. She and Tom Scott hadn't seen each other in a long time. They'd been just kids when it ended. Well, she'd been a kid anyway (more of one than he realized), but he wasn't much older. She had not heard one word from him in all that time. Why, now, had he suddenly turned up? But — having long ago deliberately desensitized herself where Tom was concerned — she really didn't care, which was probably why she was already thinking about Miles again when she reconnected with Raoul Manuelo downstairs.

  He took her to the door nearest the path that led around the lake. Her ankle boots were more of the stylish than the usable variety, and the going was tough. Ice and snow dominated the landscape – clumped thickly on the evergreens, forming an even covering on the roofs of several of the Lodgettes they passed, and coating the railing that separated the walk from the lakeside path. The ground in places was no more than a slick.

  She found she was glad for Raoul's supporting arm, even though he almost slid off the path a couple of times. "I hadn't realized how slippery it is," she told him. Evidently, someone didn't think it was too bad. From up the way, there was laughter, the sound of several people out enjoying themselves in this unlikely gray day with snow still falling steadily and continuing to accumulate. The group was female, she thought, probably some of the wedding-planning crowd, except that now there was a male voice, a familiar voice. Miles was out with several women? That didn't surprise her — he made instant friends wherever he went. But was it coincidence that he found himself here, within yelling distance of where she was going? Was he trying to watch over her or make her jealous?

  Architectural Digestsort. Raoul hung her cape in a closet off this short hall, then led her into a large room furnished with deep leather sofas, tables of hand-shaped wood, and lots of vaguely Native American textiles.

  "It'll just take me a minute to tell Mr. Halbrooks that you're here," Raoul said. He pulled out his BlackBerry and began to text.

  As she waited, Maggie looked around. A massive stone fireplace was on one wall; centered on another, the wall through which she'd entered, was a large door that probably led to the hall off which the personal accommodations were reached. On the thi
rd wall she could see a series of glassed-in rooms, evidently support facilities. In the largest, engaged in a heated discussion around a conference table, sat Tom Scott, Jameson Halbrooks, and Miss Broad, together with two anxious-looking men whose identities were unknown but whose postures marked them as not fully at ease in the surroundings. In the next glassed-in room, an extremely efficient-looking woman in a business suit was making notes as she spoke on the phone. The third of the glassed-in support facilities was empty. Jack Holt, Tom's Security Chief, was sitting in a chair positioned to overlook all the glassed-in areas, but she noticed that it was Tom in whose direction he tended to focus.

  Maggie looked past Holt, to the fourth wall, which was almost totally windowed, revealing a spectacular scene. As she waited, she wandered over to this wall of windows. The Executive Lodge was uphill from the main hotel building, and from this angle faced the end that looked most like an Austrian castle rich in turrets and arched windows. Between here and the hotel lay part of the gardens, now blanketed with snow. In spite of the flatness of the light, it was a fairytale landscape. She wondered if Miles had seen this view. She'd have to ask him when they met tonight.

  There was a tap on her shoulder, and she turned around to find Jameson Halbrooks behind her.

  "Sorry I startled you," he apologized. "Merriman wanted to come himself, but I told him I thought he should let me speak to you first."

  "You must be very persuasive," she grinned. "I didn't know Tom, Merriman that is, would listen to anyone."

  "Yes, well, it's a complicated issue," Halbrooks continued. "Perhaps it would be better if we went into one of the offices and I'll explain." He led her toward the empty glassed-in space. Maggie glanced at the conference table from which he'd just come to see that Tom was making no pretense of paying attention to the ongoing discussion but was staring squarely at her and Halbrooks.

  Once Halbrooks had closed the wood-framed glass door, he got right to the point. "As you may have read, Merriman Scott has sold his firm."

  "There's a lot of that going around," Maggie murmured. "The times being what they are."

  "Yes, well, fortunately, the sale was finalized before the recent difficulties, and Merriman remains a conservative investor. In any event, Merriman anticipated that he would not wish to remain with the organization post-sale and it was not a requirement, so he has begun to implement a plan that he's had in mind for some time. I won't address that — he'll probably wish to explain it to you himself, should there be any need. Let's just say that it's a very ambitious undertaking that will require a total shifting of gears on his part, a complete refocusing of his mental and physical energy."

  "And you're part of this 'ambitious undertaking,' whatever it is," Maggie interrupted. "What's your function?"

  Halbrooks looked surprised, as if he were unaccustomed to being questioned while he was in the middle of saying whatever it was that he wanted to say.

  "I'm an executive coach. I'm helping Merriman with some of the transition adjustments he's making."

  "Okay," Maggie said. "I thought it was something like that. Why are you telling me all this?"

  "Merriman has been having difficulty remaining forward-focused on the new undertaking. He finds himself dwelling to an unproductive extent on the past, specifically on that part of it prior to his coming to California. It's been my experience that this kind of thinking often relates to regret. I'm not sure how much you know of Merriman's early background, but it was not particularly supportive and was even unhappy, particularly the loss of his older brother."

  "I remember," Maggie said gravely.

  "All of his family are now dead of course, save for one aunt, his mother's younger sister."

  "His father wasn't a nice man," Maggie said suddenly as things began to come back to her, "and his mother was afraid of him. The brother died in Vietnam."

  "That's right. It was all very unhappy, but I'm reasonably confident that we have talked through his feelings about his brother and his parents. The only part of that period that we haven't resolved appears to be his relationship with you."

  Maggie's surprise showed. "But surely, that was so long ago . . . "

  "It seems to be his only happy memory of that time, and I gather it didn't end well," Halbrooks interjected.

  "That is definitely an accurate assessment," Maggie said drily. "Still, long ago and far away . . . "

  "That isn't how regret and the ensuing frustration, and even hostility, operate on the psyche, Miss McLaurin. Time and distance don't necessarily alleviate the associated negativity, which acts as a drain on the kind of positive energy required to take us forward."

  "I suppose not," Maggie agreed. "But I still don't see what . . . "

  "My training is in psychology," Halbrooks continued relentlessly. "I have developed an approach over time to help powerful men deal with issues that are particularly difficult for them to contemplate because they must let go temporarily of some of that power. My approach is based on a series of steps — acknowledging the problem and the response, determining what might have been different given alternative outcomes, and, finally, admitting true feelings to others, resolving issues, and thereby relieving oneself of any lingering doubts and regrets, thus enabling one to get on with the business of living unencumbered by the distraction that the regret represents."

  Maggie shook her head, still not seeing what was expected of her.

  "Merriman wants to say something to you about the end of your relationship," Halbrooks continued. "What I ask is that you hear him out before reacting and that you keep in mind the sincerity of his desire to set things right and to get on with all the good that his resources and position will allow him to do."

  Maggie shrugged. "Sure, if it'll help. Let's do it."

  Halbrooks lifted an eyebrow as he rose, evidently disapproving of her flippancy. "I'll see where Merriman would like to hold the meeting."

  Maggie watched as Halbrooks strode toward the conference cubicle in which Tom was sitting. He got up at once and came straight to her.

  "I see by the look on your face that Jameson has attempted to explain what this is all about and perhaps failed to some extent." Tom was smiling, inviting her to join with him in some light fun at Halbrooks' expense.

  Maggie shrugged. "I'm sure he means well. I gather there's something he feels we need to discuss."

  "Let's go over by the fireplace. Might as well have some warmth on such a cold day." He led her to a couple of armchairs divided by a small table on which a coffee service was already laid out. As soon as they were seated, a steward appeared to pour a cup for each of them, which neither touched.

  Maggie looked at Tom from the corner of her eye. She'd have recognized him anywhere. There were, however, changes that definitely spoke to the passage of time. He was as trim as he'd been, but it was now the trimness of the gym, the carefully watched diet, and the personal trainer, not the natural hardness of a young man who'd gone through military training and stayed in shape playing athletics. She guessed the athletics nowadays were squash, tennis and golf, not the football of his youth. As for his face, the magazine cover had been truthful. There was some gray in the fashionably spiky haircut and even more in the faint stubble, as well as a slight loosening of the firm jaw line, not to mention more crinkling around the eyes and deeper creases on either side of his mouth. The change was, however, more than physical. Tom was both more alert and more cautious. Not so much the daredevil, much more the man of the world. No longer the ambitious seeker, now the one who had arrived. He had lost some of that youthful exuberance that had been so appealing, but he'd gained presence. She could say truthfully as they sat down before the fire, "You look good."

  "As do you," he said, openly assessing her as if to be sure he spoke the truth. "You look very good. Of course, you began gorgeous, so there's no reason you wouldn't remain gorgeous."

  "Somehow I don't think this is what you're here to say to me," she told him. "I don't need the small talk. Just say whatever
it is that Halbrooks says you want to say."

  Tom studied his hands for a moment, then gazed steadily at her until she looked away into the fire, unwilling to get into a staring match.

  "It's pretty simple, really," he told her. "I just need to tell you that I've forgiven you, Maggie. I don't hold any of it against you."

  Maggie didn't know what she'd expected to hear from him, but this wasn't it. She turned to him, amazed. "What?"

  "I've forgiven you," he repeated. "For what you did to me."

  "What I did to you?"

  "I know you remember. You must. You realized you didn't want to take a risk with me, so you went back to your own world. Whether you knew it or not, it just about tore me apart." He stared at her intently as if wanting to be sure that she understood how grievous a wrong she'd done him. "I hated you for years for abandoning me. I couldn't even think about you most of the time without becoming angry."

  "I think you must have me confused with someone else. I' m not the one who abandoned you. In fact, you ditched me."

  They looked at each other, surprise in both sets of eyes. "You think I ditched you," Tom said thoughtfully, leaning back, tapping his fingertips together. "I wonder why you think that."

  "I think that because you did. I was in the room when you brought that . . . that girl back to your apartment the night we were supposed to be meeting there. There had been some kind of power failure and it was dark and I'd fallen asleep on that old sofa in the living room while I was waiting for you. Something woke me up, and I heard noises in the bedroom and you and she were having a grand old time. That was quite a technique you had there. I gather you used it on all the girls as effectively as you used it on me."

  "What the fuck . . . " he began.

  "So I ran out and drove back to that carriage house in Ansley I was sharing with Carolyn Ward and waited on you to call and explain, but you didn't. I waited several days. When you didn't call, I tried to call you, but you didn't answer the phone. I left you a note in the post office box we used, but you never answered. Sounds like a ditching to me."