Sam pulled a face and relaxed a notch. There was no way Delaney was going to buy this place. Her apartment was perfect—state-of-the-art kitchen and bathroom, soaring ceilings, great views, all the mod cons. She couldn’t go from such urban perfection to this suburban hell.
Delaney waited till the agent had moved off before she spoke.
“Isn’t it great?”
Sam did a double take and stared at her. “Great? It’s gloomy, it smells funky, and I’m expecting one of the Munsters to pop out of a cupboard any minute now,” he said. “And this carpet? Do you have any idea how many nylons died to make this carpet?”
To prove his point, he rubbed his feet up and down until he’d generated a decent static charge, then touched his finger to Delaney’s arm.
“Ow!” she squealed, jumping from the static shock she’d received. “When are you going to grow up, Sam?”
It was something she’d said to him about a thousand times over the years, but it had never sounded so dark and damning before.
“Just demonstrating,” he said defensively.
“Well, I guess beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” she said, moving away from him.
Feeling her slipping through his fingers, Sam grabbed her arm, desperate to understand.
“Tell me what you see, then,” he asked.
She hesitated, then shrugged. “Okay. It’s got great ceilings. Nice and high, and see the period detail?” she asked, craning her neck and studying the ceiling rose. Sam followed suit and grudgingly admitted to himself that it was a pretty cool Art Deco ceiling molding.
“So…the carpet comes up, the floorboards are polished. I get rid of that junky old 1970s light fitting and find a 1930s replica. Paint the walls a nice clean neutral to bring out the timber trim and the floorboards. It’ll be lovely,” she said.
Sam blinked, for a moment able to see what Delaney saw. And she was right—it would look great. The entry hall was wide and welcoming as it was, and with the few cosmetic improvements she was talking about, it would shine.
Loathe to give the house anything, however, Sam just lifted a shoulder dismissively. Delaney moved toward the first door on the left.
“Come and see the living room,” she said.
They walked into another high-ceilinged space, long and broad, with two diamond-paned windows along the side, and one looking onto the front of the house. It was empty of everything except the hideous carpet, dusty mud-colored drapes, and an Art Deco era fireplace.
His heart sank as he took in the rounded curves and fluted columns of the fireplace surround and mantle. This was a great house—despite his burning desire to find fault with it. It was a bit faded and curled around the edges at present, but Delaney would lick it into shape. She had great taste, and endless enthusiasm, and she would get stuck into it and have it the way it should be in no time.
“Isn’t the fireplace amazing?” she breathed.
Sam could only nod. “Yeah, it’s pretty great,” he said dully.
This was really going to happen. If the owners accepted Delaney’s offer, this would be her new home. Nearly twenty minutes drive from his apartment. Unless he got a taste for suburbia and moved out here, too. And that would be just too pathetic. Once Delaney and her yet-to-be-found husband settled down, he could guess how quickly his presence would become superfluous.
Feeling sick at heart, he followed Delaney as she outlined her plans for the rest of the house. He could see her vision very clearly. He could almost see her living in her newly renovated house, surrounded by beautiful things, building a life for herself that didn’t seem to have a place in it for him anymore. And when he was standing in the smallest bedroom with her, and she explained that she would make it the nursery, he had a painful flash of her standing over a crib, a tiny baby held close to her breast.
“You don’t like it, do you?” Delaney asked as they walked back toward the front hallway.
“It’s got a lot of potential,” he said honestly. “I think you can make it amazing.”
Delaney’s face softened and she put her hand on his arm. Even after a weekend of nonstop sex, his body still reacted favorably to the contact. It was so inappropriate, he didn’t even bother sending his nether regions a reprimand. Little Sam knew when he was pushing the envelope.
“Thanks, Sam. It means a lot that you like it.”
Standing on tip-toes, she pressed a kiss to his cheek, and quickly turned away. He bit his lip and stared at the carpet.
He should say something, he knew, to stop this avalanche. There had to be something he could say that would stop Delaney from moving away from him.
He opened his mouth, willing something to come to him. But before any of his jumbled thoughts and feelings could settle into something remotely coherent, Matt had rejoined them.
“Any thoughts?” he asked, professionally chirpy.
“I want to make an offer,” Delaney said firmly.
That quickly, Sam’s life changed forever.
11
A WEEK AND A DAY LATER, Delaney eyed the woman sitting across from her assessingly. In her late thirties, Karen was slim, intelligent-looking and confident. She had a good sense of humor, a down-to-earth style and she seemed to genuinely love extreme sports. She’d bungee-jumped off a bridge in New Zealand, loved skydiving and had just bought herself a motocross bike. She had an exceptional résumé, having worked for several major Australian publishing giants.
“Why do you want to sell advertising for a one-horse company like Mirk after working for those big-name magazines?” Delaney asked searchingly.
“I’m getting to the age where I’ve got all the stuff I need—house, car, whatever. I want a life now. Don’t get me wrong—I like hard work. But I don’t like working for some faceless fat cat who expects me to have a nervous breakdown to line his pockets. If I’m going to pull my hair out, I want to know who I’m doing it for,” Karen said. “I started out working for a small publishing company. I guess this would feel like going back to my roots, getting more involved in the day-today thrust of things.”
Delaney nodded and made a note on her pad. On paper and in person, Karen was pretty much the perfect advertising sales manager. Delaney could already see her taking their major clients out to lunch, laughing at bawdy jokes and chugging down beers with the boys, bitching about how hard it was to meet a decent man and sipping cosmopolitans with the girls. She ticked every single box.
So why was Delaney feeling so depressed?
“When can you come back to meet Sam, Karen?” she forced herself to say. “He will, of course, be the one making the final decision.”
Karen checked her diary and they made a time for later in the week. Shaking the other woman’s hand, Delaney forced a smile she didn’t feel and escorted her to reception. Debbie kept up her professional facade until Karen’s tall frame had disappeared from view, then her eyes narrowed and she shook her head unhappily.
“Nope. She’s not the one,” she said dismissively.
Delaney rested her elbows on the reception desk and pretended she was doing her best to be patient. Secretly, she was thrilled that Debbie and the other staff members had been so resistant to the idea of Sam hiring a sales manager to replace her. So far, none of the interviewees had won their approval. And that was exactly the way Delaney liked it.
Too perverse, Michaels, she chastised herself. Either you want to go or you don’t. Can’t have it both ways.
“She’s very cool. You guys will love her,” she said enthusiastically, trying to make up for her not-so-enthusiastic thoughts.
“I’ve only been here two months and even I know that you leaving is a disaster,” Debbie said boldly. “You and Sam are the Dream Team. It doesn’t get any better than you guys. This has been the best job I’ve ever had.”
Delaney saw with alarm that Debbie’s eyes were filling with tears. Delaney couldn’t even deal with her own tears, let alone someone else’s. Glancing around a little desperately, she caught Sukie’s
eye. The Vietnamese girl shook her head wryly as Delaney indicated for her to come over and offer Debbie a shoulder to cry on.
“You owe me,” Sukie mouthed silently, but she put down her filing and approached the desk.
“You okay, Debs?” she asked, sliding a sympathetic arm around Debbie’s shoulders. Debbie sniffed noisily, and Sukie reached for the tissue box.
Feeling completely inadequate, Delaney patted the receptionist’s arm awkwardly a couple of times before slinking away.
Truth was, she was probably going to howl like a baby when she left. She didn’t have the capacity to handle anyone else’s misery on top of her own. Plus, as she’d owned to herself earlier, she wasn’t so great with the whole girly tears thing. Although she had a feeling she’d be getting a lot of very personal practice in the near future.
“Yo. How’d the interview go?” Sam asked as he strode back into the office, fresh from an interview with a visiting U.S.-based BMX star.
Immediately Delaney’s stomach tensed. “Really well. I’ve made a time for you to see her on Wednesday. I think you’re going to like her a lot,” she said.
Sam nodded as though he didn’t agree with her but wasn’t about to argue the toss. “Cool.”
Then he simply stood there in her office doorway, not quite looking at her, his gaze focused just beyond her shoulder. She recognized the move because it was one she’d been employing lately whenever she had to deal with him, too. Yet another of the many splendid side effects of their weekend away. They might not be fighting with each other anymore, but the cool constraint between them was driving Delaney mad. She knew she had no right to complain. She was the author of all of this, after all. She was the one who had fallen in love with Sam all those years ago and never been able to get over it. And she was the one with the stupid biological clock counting down inside her like a time bomb. Hell, she’d even suggested the dirty weekend away. All of which had left them where they were now—Awkwardville, with no sign of a reprieve anywhere in sight.
“She’s got everything you’re looking for,” Delaney said after a long, tense silence. “She’s very experienced and qualified.”
“Great,” Sam said stiffly. “That’s great.”
Then he swivelled on his heel and moved next door to his office. Delaney’s shoulders sagged once he was gone, and she rubbed a hand across the back of her neck where yet another tension headache was marshaling its forces.
In the week since Daylesford, she’d averaged three or four hours of decent sleep a night, and had been knocking back aspirin as though there were no tomorrow. As though an over-the-counter painkiller could stop the ache in her heart.
It’ll be over soon, she reminded herself.
But of course, that was exactly what she was afraid of.
TWO DAYS LATER, Sam ushered Karen into his office for her second interview. It took under twenty seconds for Sam to decide he liked her. She was laid-back, switched on and she obviously knew her job. He thought she’d fit in with the rest of the team well, and the fact that she had a natural passion for the subject matter of the magazine was a major bonus.
Her one and only defect was that she wasn’t Delaney—but that wasn’t her fault.
“So, when do you think you’ll be making a decision?” Karen asked as they wound up their interview.
“Already have. If you’d like it, the job is yours,” Sam said.
A part of him was freaking even as the words came out his mouth. It felt wrong to be making such a major call for the business without Delaney beside him. But this was the way it would be from now on. Mirk Publications was essentially now Kirk Publications. He was a one-man show, a mini-media mogul.
“That’s great. I’d love to come on board,” Karen said, grinning broadly.
Sam held out his hand and they shook to seal the deal.
“So, when can you start?” he asked, hoping he looked at least slightly pleased to have a new employee. Privately, he was wondering when he was going to wake up from this nightmare.
“I’ve already given notice at my old job,” Karen said. “Decided I was leaving no matter what. You know how it is when it’s time to go.”
Sam nodded, his mind instantly applying Karen’s words to Delaney’s decision. Was that what had happened for her? Had she just woken up one day and realized that she didn’t want to be at Mirk anymore? Because he still wasn’t buying the whole I-need-space-so-I-can-find-a-husband-and-starta-family excuse.
“Would you say that’s a woman thing?” Sam blurted, desperate for some kind of insight into what was going on with Delaney.
Karen blinked in surprise at the turn the conversation seemed to have taken. “Um, I’m not sure. Maybe. Haven’t you ever felt like that?”
Sam thought about it, and had to admit that while he’d never felt that way about a job, there had been plenty of girlfriends whom he’d had the same experience with. A couple of weeks of casual dating was usually enough for him to see the writing on the wall. With Coco, it had been the baby talk and the poodle-kissing. A no-brainer, really. With other women it had been a variety of things, from odd personal quirks to clashing political ideologies to massively incompatible ideas about where their relationship was headed. The only woman he’d ever been able to spend large, open-ended amounts of time with was Delaney.
“I guess,” he said, realizing that it was borderline inappropriate to be using his newly minted sales manager as a sounding board for his emotional confusion.
The fact that he felt the need to discuss his emotions at all was scary enough.
“So when can we have you?” he said, cycling back to his original question before he asked Karen to explain why Delaney wouldn’t make eye contact with him ever since they’d come home from their weekend-of-a-lifetime at Daylesford.
“How does next week sound?” Karen asked.
Sam tried to look thrilled even as his stomach dropped like a rock. With Karen starting so soon, Delaney could leave whenever she liked.
“Excellent. We’ll see you then. I’ll get you a formal letter of offer tomorrow, okay?” he said.
Karen was all smiles as he saw her to the door. He stood by the reception desk staring blankly at the carpet for a long time before Debbie spoke up.
“You’re not really going to let her go, are you?” she said.
Sam felt a sudden surge of anger rip through him. He wasn’t letting Delaney go anywhere. She was extracting herself from the business, and ripping its heart out while she was at it. He’d done everything he could to stop her, and she’d just held his eye and kept restating her position. And if Debbie thought that the sense of loss she was feeling was anything compared to the gaping hole Delaney’s absence would leave in his life, she had another think coming.
Debbie actually shrank back in her chair as he turned to glare at her.
“Not. My. Idea,” he said through gritted teeth. Then he stalked back to his office. Halfway there, he caught sight of Delaney’s questioning face as she looked up from her paperwork. She was probably wondering what had happened with the interview.
All the fight drained out of Sam and he forced himself to schlep over to her office doorway.
“I offered her the job,” he said simply.
“And?”
“She took it.”
For a moment, he thought he saw a flash of pain and loss in Delaney’s eyes. She swallowed noisily, and blinked her eyes rapidly a number of times.
“Well, that’s that, then,” she said.
Sam eyed her steadily. “Haven’t given her a letter of offer yet. There’s still time for you to change your mind,” he said.
She went very still, and Sam’s heart kicked into overdrive. He’d known she didn’t really want to go! He felt a surge of triumph. At last—finally—he’d called her bluff.
Then she shook her head. “No going back, Sam,” she said very quietly.
He clenched his jaw, his hands curling into fists by his side. There was nothing he could do. He’d alread
y known that. He had no choice but to stand aside and let her walk away.
“Okay,” he said.
Her eyes dropped to the carpet for a long beat, then she straightened as though she was shaking off a bad thought or reminding herself of something good that lay in the near future.
“I’d better get back to this,” she said, indicating her paperwork.
“Sure,” Sam said. But he stood watching her for a few more moments anyway.
I don’t want to lose you, Laney. The thought echoed in his mind. In his heart, he knew he already had.
A WEEK AND A HALF LATER, Delaney packed the last of her personal belongings into a box and stood back to survey her office. Dusty outlines on the bookshelves betrayed where her photo frames and souvenirs had stood, and a couple of coffee rings marred the otherwise empty surface of her desk. In every other way, all signs of her presence had been removed. The following Monday, Karen would move from the open-plan corral where she’d been camping temporarily, and the office would be hers. She’d put her own pictures on the walls, and arrange her own personal mementoes on the bookshelf. It would be as though Delaney had never been there.
Rubbing her hands along her thighs fretfully, Delaney headed for the kitchen to get a cloth and some spray cleaner. She had to keep moving. That was the only way she was going to get through the next few days. Her apartment sale was final this weekend, also, and the movers were coming first thing tomorrow to take all her worldly goods to her new house in Camberwell. And then she would be free—free to stop loving Sam, once the heartbreak had faded.
She figured she’d be ready for action again around the year 2050.
As luck would have it, Sam was at the sink rinsing out his coffee cup when she entered the kitchen, and she hovered indecisively on the threshold, unsure whether to enter into the small space or not.
She knew he was angry with her. He’d been angry with her since she’d let him hire Karen. That had been the moment of no return, and they both knew it. The apartment had been one thing, but dissolving her business partnership with him had been the king hit. And she’d made it, no matter how much it had hurt her to watch another person step into her shoes in a company that she’d helped build from the ground up. She had to get away from Sam. If she didn’t—and soon—she knew she would be selling herself short for the rest of her life. Because she still ached to run her hands up his strong arms. And she still couldn’t stop her eyes from dropping to the telltale bulge in his jeans whenever she thought he wasn’t looking. She still sniffed the air furtively when he left a room, trying to capture a hint of his special, unique fragrance. And when she couldn’t sleep at night, it was still his name that she whispered into her pillow as she pleasured herself.
Anything For You (Harlequin Blaze) Page 18