Saying Yes to the Boss

by Jackie Braun

  “Aud.” He grabbed his sister’s left hand and tapped meaningfully on her diamond ring with the tip of his index finger. “She’s a married woman. There’s nothing going on between us.”

  “You just said she was separated.”

  Dane cursed in frustration, not so much at Audra’s meddling as at the damnable situation. “That’s a divorce decree away from being single.”

  “Try not to judge her too harshly,” Audra said, her expression sobering.

  “I’m not.” Was he?

  His sister waved off his denial. “I’ve been in that situation. Ending a marriage is painful and unpleasant even when the reasons for being in it have long since run out. Divorce represents failure, Dane. No one likes to fail. Believe me, I know, having done it more times than I care to remember.”

  He needed to change the subject, so he reached over and gave her bulging belly a pat. “You’re happy now, kiddo. That’s what counts.”

  “More than happy,” Audra agreed. “And I want that for you, too.”

  When she walked him to his Trailblazer later that evening, she left him with another piece of advice.

  “I meant what I said earlier about not judging Regina too harshly.”

  “Aud—”

  She placed a finger over his mouth. “Let me finish, please. Don’t judge yourself too harshly, either.”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” he said.

  Audra’s smile was all-knowing. “You can’t help whom you fall for, Dane. Or when. Just look at Seth and me.”

  Now, as Dane stood in Loraine’s Art Gallery only half listening to the chatter of some acquaintances he knew through Saybrook’s, he mulled Audra’s words. His sister was probably right about the painfulness of Ree’s situation. No one liked to fail. For Ree it had to be especially difficult. Reading between the lines it was clear that her parents’ marital status had put pressure on her to make her own marriage work. Also clear was the fact that she loved her grandparents dearly and had wanted their approval. Even now, though both of them were gone, she tried to honor their memory.

  When Ree arrived half an hour later, the gallery was even more packed with what seemed like half the population of the island sampling hors d’oeuvres, drinking champagne and admiring Seth’s handiwork. Despite the milling crowd, Dane spotted her right away. She was a hard woman to miss even wearing an understated black pullover and a pair of wide-legged tan trousers.

  It was that hair, he decided, and let out slowly the air that had backed up in his lungs.

  She was glancing around, looking uncomfortable, when he walked over carrying two flutes of champagne.

  He handed her one. “Have you had a chance to meet Seth yet?” he asked.

  Dane knew perfectly well that she hadn’t, but he didn’t want her to know that he’d spent the past half hour eyeing the door and waiting for her to walk through it.

  “Hello, Dane. No, I haven’t met him. I only just arrived a moment ago.” She glanced around again. “I was looking for Audra. I figured once I spotted her I’d be able to figure out the identity of the guest of honor.”

  “Why don’t you let me take the guesswork out of it for you?”

  Within short order the introduction was accomplished. In addition to meeting Seth, Ree chatted easily with Dane’s sisters and greeted Luke as well. She fit in well with them, he couldn’t help but notice, and they made her feel welcome.

  As more people came up to congratulate Audra’s husband on his artistry with a camera, Dane suggested to Ree that they walk through the exhibit.

  The gallery was small, but its space was put to good use. Seth’s photographs had been framed and matted. Some were grouped by subject matter—trees, flowers, animals, insects. Others hung alone for a more potent effect. Most were in full color, but there were a few striking black-and-whites.

  “He’s very talented,” Ree said. “He has a real knack for capturing a single moment in nature.”

  They were standing before a photograph of a large black and yellow spider. Its dewy orb-shaped web was suspended between the twin trunks of a white birch tree and glinted seductively in the morning sun.

  “It’s funny how the things we should avoid can sometimes be so…irresistible,” Dane murmured. A waiter walked by and Dane snagged two fresh flutes of champagne from the tray. He held one out to Ree.

  She took it and sipped, the fizzy wine giving her the courage to say, “Isn’t it?”

  A look passed between them and she thought Dane would say something more. He didn’t, though, moving on to the next photograph instead. They circled the room without speaking again, not that words were necessary when every glance seemed to hold meaning.

  They ended up near the door, which someone had cracked open. It relieved Ree to know she wasn’t the only person who’d grown intolerably warm.

  “The air feels good,” she said and laughed nervously as she fanned her heated face.

  Dane had removed his sports coat and loosened his tie earlier, but he didn’t look any cooler than she. In fact, he pulled the tie free now and stuffed it into the back pocket of his trousers before undoing another button on his shirt.

  “Want to step outside?” he asked.

  She should say no, but what came out was, “Maybe just for a moment.”

  They walked down the street, past a row of quaint little gift shops that had long since closed, some for the day and some for the season. But the little Irish pub on the corner was open and doing a brisk business judging from the number of cars turning into its lot and the raucous laughter spilling from its open doors.

  “Want to get a drink?” Dane asked.

  “Better not. I think that champagne went to my head,” Ree confessed. “I ate a light dinner.”

  “We could grab a bite?”

  Because that sounded entirely too wonderful, she said, “Nah, I’m not really that hungry. Maybe we could just walk a little more.”

  The waterfront was a block ahead. Dane steered her in that direction. Just to the north of where the ferries berthed, a wooden walkway flanked the water’s edge, winding all the way to a state park’s public beach and picnic area. Benches were sprinkled along it, as were lights. It seemed to Ree that she and Dane had the island to themselves as they walked, cocooned in twilight and serenaded by the gentle swell and break of the waves.

  When they stopped at one of the benches, Dane offered her his jacket, which she gratefully accepted. She was no longer warm. The air held the bite of fall and the breeze had picked up, carrying the scents of cedar and woodsmoke from the fire pit outside a nearby weekender’s cottage.

  From their vantage point they could see the lights of Petoskey as well as the lights of the car ferry making its run from the mainland.

  “The last scheduled ferry leaves at eleven,” he said conversationally. “Summer hours ended with Labor Day.”

  “I’d better make sure I’m on it. That’s a long swim and I’m not particularly fond of the water,” she joked.

  Dane was serious when he asked, “Does it bother you, living by the water, when your mother drowned?” He retracted the question instantly. “I’m sorry, Ree. That’s probably not something you want to talk about.”

  “Actually I never have talked about it,” she admitted, just having realized that was true. “My grandparents were so devastated by my mother’s death, they didn’t speak of it. Other than putting up the memorial, they never referred to it again. At least not in front of me.”

  “That’s understandable. They say there’s nothing worse than losing a child.”

  “Especially to suicide,” she murmured, not even aware she’d said the words aloud until Dane replied, “God, Ree, I had no idea.”

  “It’s okay. How would you? It’s not something I mention often. In fact, I’ve never told anyone.”

  “Not even your husband?” he asked quietly.

  “No. Not even Paul.”

  She had laid a reassuring hand on his arm as she spoke. When she drew it away
now, he reached for it, held on. The simple contact gave her strength to remember, to reexamine.

  “I used to wonder if I was the reason she walked into the lake.”

  “No.” He squeezed her fingers for emphasis. “I’m sure you weren’t. People who take their lives are depressed, confused. You can’t blame yourself, especially when you were just a kid.”

  Ree nodded. She believed that…most of the time. But sometimes doubts still niggled. She listened to the waves now. They were much calmer than they had been that day so long ago.

  “You want to talk about it?” Dane asked.

  She didn’t, no. What would be the point? Yet, she heard herself say, “I remember that she smiled at me. She was already in the water, walking out, and she turned at the waist and smiled. ‘Stay on the shore,’ she told me. Then she was swimming away. I watched and I watched until I couldn’t see her anymore. Then I waited. I waited in that spot just up the dune every night, hoping that somehow she would come back.”

  “The gazebo,” Dane said.

  Even on the dimly lit boardwalk she knew her surprise had to be obvious. “How did you guess?”

  “You said your grandparents built it when you were just a girl. And that day we came to see the property you mentioned that you liked to play there, pretending you were the keeper of a lighthouse beacon.”

  “I wanted her to be able to see our home and swim toward it,” Ree admitted. “It was…silly.”

  “Not so silly. I saw your light. I swam toward it. I was saved.”

  She was silent for a moment, but then she faced him. “What about you? Does the water bother you now?”

  “I thought it would, but no. I credit you for that.” He brushed his knuckles across her cheek. God, she needed him to touch her. “That was the most unforgettable night of my life…and not because of my accident or the storm.”

  When he kissed her, it was like celebrating a homecoming. It felt so right.

  “I still want you, Ree.”

  Her heart skipped a beat at the words, but then he pulled back. Back, but not away. He remained so close that Ree could feel his breath, ragged and hot, as it disturbed her hair, but he didn’t kiss her again. His mouth hovered mere inches from her face and so she took matters into her own hands, closing the last bit of space so she could settle her lips over his.

  She heard him groan, felt his fingers snake into her hair, fist there. Need had simmered for so long that it boiled over now, engulfing them both.

  “Please,” she whispered, begging for what exactly she wasn’t sure.

  He angled his head, deepened the kiss.

  “I know,” he murmured against her lips.

  They had been here before. Exactly here, except that instead of being pressed up against the unforgiving edge of her kitchen cupboards, it was the wooden slats of a public bench that bit into her spine now. She didn’t care.

  But then the ferry’s horn blasted rudely as the boat neared the dock several dozen yards down the shoreline. Ree and Dane shot apart guiltily.

  Ree said nothing. Dane was not silent. Cursing, he got to his feet and paced several yards away.

  “I don’t know what I’m thinking. We can’t do this. It’s wrong. A mistake.”

  “Don’t call it that,” she begged hoarsely. The old hurt warring with this new one. “Not a mistake.”

  Dane sighed heavily. “I’m sorry.”

  He hadn’t meant to wound her with that ill-chosen word, but he couldn’t think straight. All he knew was that if he didn’t have her, he’d go insane. Yet, if he crossed that line, breached his own moral code, he wouldn’t be able to live with himself.

  “I’m trying to do the right thing here, Ree.”

  “I think you just did.”

  When Regina stood and reached out to him, he backed farther away. He had to keep his distance.

  “No. It’s not right. You’re married.”

  “Paul and I are sep—”

  “You’re married,” he finished for her. He scrubbed a hand over his face. “I think we both need to remember that.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  BY THE end of October, Dane and Ree had settled into a fairly predictable work routine. On Mondays, they touched base mainly by telephone if something had come up over the weekend. Otherwise, Ree used the time for research and Dane went about his business at the resort.

  He had insisted on setting her up with a laptop computer, Internet access, a cell phone and a personal digital assistant, telling her they were necessary tools for her work with Saybrook’s. She had pointed out that as an independent contractor, it should be up to her to supply such items. He overruled her arguments, though, and she finally gave up. Dane Conlan, she realized, could be incredibly pigheaded.

  On Fridays, Ree took the ferry over to the island to meet with Dane, his sisters and Luke and bring them up to speed on the project. It only took an hour, more or less, and Dane had suggested they could easily do it by conference call since he knew Ree wasn’t fond of the water, but she’d been the pigheaded one on that issue. She preferred seeing them all face-to-face. Besides, it got her out of the house. With the weather turning colder and the days growing shorter, she’d begun to feel too isolated. And, with the first anniversary of her grandmother’s death approaching, she also felt even more alone. So, on Fridays she headed to the resort.

  It was the other three days of the week, though, that Ree really looked forward to. On Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays, Dane came over to the mainland and they pored over plans. He arrived at her home by nine, usually bearing bagels or the occasional calorie-laden pastry he’d picked up at the bakery on Trillium. Ree supplied the coffee and they sat in her kitchen, heads together, various notes and blueprints spread over the table.

  They rarely strayed to personal topics. He didn’t bring up her marital status again and so she didn’t inform him when she called her lawyer to move ahead with divorce proceedings in spite of her absentee husband’s lack of consent. It would take a couple of months at least to obtain a default judgment. In the meantime, Ree decided it was for the best that she and Dane had returned to more neutral footing.

  What bothered her, though, was how easily he’d managed that transition. He appeared completely immune to the simmering sexual tension that had Ree wanting to crack the windows and let in the crisp autumn air.

  Immune except for when, at the start of that first meeting one week after the fiasco on the boardwalk, he’d made an unusual request. As they’d glanced through some photographs Dane had pulled from the Internet, she’d gathered up her hair and pulled it to the side so she could lean closer. The weather was damp though, and her hair a rioting mess. Finally she’d plucked up the rubber band that had been wound around a sheaf of blueprints and used it to secure her ponytail.

  A moment later, Ree had held her breath while Dane gently removed it.

  “Leave your hair down,” he’d said. Nothing more.

  He’d given her no reason for his preference and Ree had been too startled, too damned turned on by the smoldering look in his eyes, to ask for one. Since then, even though she sometimes itched to pull it back and out of the way, she never did on the days he came.

  They had hired a contractor whose specialty was renovating historic properties. His name was Case Portman and he was well-regarded for his accuracy and attention to detail. He’d honed his skills in southern cities, notably restoring some of Charleston’s most storied homes, before moving to the Midwest. His wife hailed from the region and her ill health had prompted their return so she could be closer to family.

  These days, he had plenty of work refurbishing the grand ladies found along Lake Michigan’s shore. From her research, Ree knew that before the turn of the twentieth century, the huge homes had been built by industrialists and other affluent families, who’d used them to escape the heat and congestion of the city in the summer. Now, many of them had been changed into bed-and-breakfasts.

  Case was finishing up another project nearby in
Petoskey and wouldn’t be coming on board for another month. Even so, work had already begun on the home’s exterior. Dane had determined that the roof repairs couldn’t wait and so Ree’s first official task had been to select new fish-scale shingles to replace the existing ones.

  Some mornings, when Case had an hour or two of downtime from his other obligations, he dropped in while Dane was at Peril Pointe. More often than not, though, it was just Ree and Dane in the sprawling and now sparsely furnished Victorian.

  With the exception of Ree’s bedroom suite and the kitchen table, her grandmother’s other furnishings, including area rugs and wall hangings, had been moved to storage. It made sense, of course, since new furniture and accessories would be purchased for the bed-and-breakfast. Dane was leaving that task to Ree as well. Even so, the big house seemed much less cheery now that it had so little to absorb the echoes from her footsteps as she paced the hardwood floors.

  She supposed that was why she looked forward to Dane’s thrice-weekly arrival. Each time the bell chimed, a kick of adrenaline revved through her system. And when he pushed back from the table, the scrape of chair legs signaling the conclusion of their discussion, she felt the first prick of loneliness.

  He was gone by noon, and though she supposed it was foolish, Ree always saw him out, walking with him to the front door and then standing in the big bay window. Her grandmother’s hand-tatted lace curtains were gone, leaving nothing to obstruct Ree’s view as she watched the Trailblazer idle down the long driveway and pull out onto the main road. Afterward, she returned to the kitchen and occupied her time going over architectural research or on the telephone to various suppliers trying to track down vintage fixtures.

  That was her plan on this day, but as she watched, the Trailblazer stopped halfway down the driveway, shifted into Reverse and sped back to the house.

  Ree walked onto the porch and, as Dane got out of his vehicle, she called, “Forget something?”

  “Sort of.” He jiggled the keys in his hand. “I was wondering if you might have a suggestion for a gift for Audra and Seth’s baby. She’ll be born any day now and I still haven’t gotten anything. Ali suggested a keepsake locket or other jewelry since the kid already has just about everything else. But I don’t know.”