“There’s nothing to forgive.” She gave him a radiant smile. “Mr. Portman...Al? Would you mind if I take the rest of the day off?”
“Going to retrieve your ring?” he asked innocently, glancing at her hand. “I noticed you’d misplaced it.”
She touched the bare spot on her finger. “Don’t worry. I think I remember where I left it.”
He opened the door on the first knock and found Tess standing on his doorstep. He didn’t dare react, just in case she turned out to be another dream. “Hello, Shayde,” she finally said.
“It’s Dick Smith.” Okay, that was one way to break the news to her. Probably not the best way, but par for the course, all things considered. “My real name is Dick Smith.”
She took the news with amazing equanimity. “Then why do you call yourself Shayde?”
“If you had a handle like Dick Smith, you’d use your middle name, too.”
“Tom, Dick and Harry have middle names like Shayde?”
“Shadoe, Shayde and Spirit, to be precise.”
He had to hand it to her, unlike most people she didn’t so much as snicker. “And Adelaide is your mother.” Tess lifted an eyebrow. “A sixties sort of woman, I assume?”
“She really does love us. She’s just—”
“Unique. Yes, I think we’ve established that.” She gestured awkwardly in the direction of his foyer. “Do you think we could talk? Inside, I mean.”
Muttering an apology, he stepped out of the way. Oh, yeah. He was batting a thousand now. Give him another few minutes and he’d have the noose wrapped and tied around his own neck. All she’d have to do is slap the horse out from under him. “Can I get you a drink?” he asked, as he led the way to the living room. “Coffee, soda, arsenic?”
She smiled, much to his relief. “No, thanks. I dropped by because I thought you might appreciate an update on the job front.”
Uh-oh. Unless he was very much mistaken, that sounded remarkably like a hard slap to a horse’s hindquarters. Yes, now that he listened close, he could hear the horse’s panicked snort in response. And here it came... A final view of the south end of a fast moving nag while a rope snapped taut around his neck.
He yanked at the tie constricting his throat. “Listen, Tess. You haven’t a clue how frustrating it was, knowing that I could ensure your promotion simply by writing a check and not being able to.”
“Funny. I believe you did just that.”
“Only after you’d ended our relationship,” he protested. “Offering a donation to Altruistics was completely fair and aboveboard at that point.”
“And only because I wasn’t supposed to know Dick Smith was also the mysterious Shayde.” She fixed him with an unwavering gaze. “You knew I’d refuse the promotion if I discovered you and Dick were one and the same person, didn’t you?”
He cleared his throat. “The thought did occur to me.”
“So you sacrificed everything in order to make sure I got that promotion.”
“You earned that promotion honestly, Tess. If you’d approached me as a representative of Altruistics, you’d have turned me the second I listened to you talk about your company and about all the people that company helps. I told you before, sweetheart. You have heart. And people feel that. They respond to it.” He eyed her uncertainly. “You didn’t turn down the promotion, did you?”
“I started to.”
His breathing eased ever so slightly. “What stopped you?”
“A check from Walt Moore.”
“A check from—” Shayde gave a shout of triumph and swept her off her feet, twirling her in a dizzying circle. “You did it. You turned the old reprobate.”
“He’s not an old reprobate,” she protested, holding on for dear life. “He’s a sweet, lonely old man who misses his wife.”
“If it means you got the promotion, I’ll nominate him for sainthood.” He set her on her feet and rubbed his hands together. “This calls for a celebration. How about champagne?”
“Not just yet.” She brushed a lock of tousled hair from her face. “I didn’t come just to tell you about my job. There was another reason.”
Aw, hell. “What reason?”
“I came to ask for your help.”
Help? Was she kidding? He grinned. “Damn, honey. I do that for a living. Sure. Anything. How can I help? I’m usually good at it, too, despite current proof to the contrary.” She took a deep breath, lacing her fingers together in a white-knuckle grip and Shayde frowned. This couldn’t be good. “Talk to me, sweetheart. What’s wrong?”
“Somewhere along the way, I lost my fiance,” she confessed. “I thought maybe you could help me find him.”
It took an instant for her words to sink in. When they did he closed his eyes, his jaw working for a moment. “You didn’t lose him,” he finally replied, his voice gruffer than ever before. “You just didn’t know who he was.”
“Actually, I did.”
That caught his attention. “You knew I was Dick Smith? When? How?”
“I figured it out the night of the cancer benefit.” She tilted her head to one side and reconsidered. “Actually, it was the next morning. Very early the next morning. I woke up in the wee hours and just knew.”
“Wait a minute. You were madder than hell when you discovered I was the Instigator, but when you realized I was Dick Smith, you shrugged it off?”
“Somehow one was easier to accept than the other.”
He couldn’t resist any longer. He gathered her in his arms. To his profound relief, she accepted his touch. She more than accepted it. She melded with him, locking against him like a long-lost piece of himself. “And why is that?”
“Because I loved Dick Smith.” She stroked the lopsided knot in his tie with trembling fingers. “But I was afraid of the Instigator.”
Her explanation didn’t make any sense. “It’s my job to make sure that fate collides with perfection. What’s so frightening about that?”
“It’s frightening to me because I wanted what the Committee had to offer.” The confession came in a low, halting tone. “I wanted it more than you can possibly imagine and yet I wasn’t willing to risk the consequences of loving someone again...of possibly losing that perfect person. That’s why I decided to give it to Raine and Emma, instead. If I couldn’t have a happily-ever-after romance, maybe they could. Don’t you understand?” She looked up at him, fighting back tears. “You said it was your job to make sure that fate collided with perfection. You’re my perfection.”
“No, sweetheart.” He swept a thumb along the curve of her cheek, wiping away the dampness. “That’s your role in my life. When I first met you it was my intention to throw Gray in your path in order to see what you did.”
“And if I didn’t do anything? If I stepped right over him and kept going?”
“I’d have thrown him a little harder until I was convinced that you really weren’t right for each other. But something happened before I could do that.”
“What happened?’
“I fell in love with you.” He forked his hands deep into her hair. “Or maybe at that stage it was plain lust. I don’t know. All I can tell you is that I started to care. I cared about you as a person. I cared about what happened with your job. Everything about you mattered to me.”
“I fell in love with you, too.”
“And that love scared the hell out of you.”
“Yes.”
“And now?”
She released her breath in a long sigh. “I can continue to be afraid. Or I can grab hold of what I want with both hands.”
He smiled tenderly. “Is it my imagination, or are you grabbing me?”
“It’s not your imagination. I love you as Shayde. I love you as Dick. And I even love you as the Instigator.”
“What if I decide to help out the Committee again?” “I won’t object, so long as you keep making sure fate collides with perfection.”
He kissed her then, a kiss of ultimate pr
omise. And she returned that promise with every breath and heartbeat and whispered word. Reaching into his pocket, he removed his grandmother’s engagement ring. He’d carried it with him ever since they’d parted, keeping it close as an expression of ultimate hope. Taking her hand in his, he slipped it back onto her finger where it belonged. This time she wore it for the right reason. The only reason.
This time it was for love.
EPILOGUE
SHADOE poured champagne into a pair of crystal flutes and carried them to the sofa. “Congratulations, old girl. You pulled off another one.”
“I think I prefer boss lady, if you don’t mind,” she grumbled.
“Hmm.” He handed her one of the glasses and dropped a kiss on her cheek. “Personally, I prefer mother.”
Adelaide grinned. “Do you think we should tell your brother the truth?”
Shadoe settled onto the couch and leaned back against the cushions. “Eventually.” He took an appreciative sip of his wine. “After the honeymoon, perhaps.”
“Or maybe we should wait until he asks for his job back. Playing with all of his investments can get so boring after a while.”
“Sounds like hell to me,” Shadoe concurred cheerfully.
“And we have Tess’s two friends to match. Let’s not forget about them. I’m sure your brother will want to help instigate those relationships.”
“If only to keep his new bride happy.” Shadoe swirled the champagne in the glass, watching as the explosion of bubbles shot a fine mist of wine toward the top of the flute. “So, who’s next on the list? Raine or Emma?”
“Oh, Emma, definitely. We can’t keep Gray waiting forever, now can we? He was such a wonderful help instigating the romance between Dick and Tess.”
Shadoe lifted his glass in a salute. “You’re absolutely right. To Emma and Gray.”
“Two of our trickier matches,” Adelaide murmured, clinking her glass against her son’s.
“Trickier?” He frowned. “Don’t tell me getting those two together could be any worse than Shayde and Tess.”
“Far worse, my dear. But I have an idea.” She offered her son a mysterious smile. “I see a whirlwind wedding in their future.”
Day Leclaire - The Provocative Proposal Page 16