We’ll see about that, Christina thought.
“Derek’s going to make sure of it, too,” Twyla added.
Unable to move, to even function, Christina merely stood in place, holding on to the door for support.
“You’re too stubborn to ask,” Twyla said, “so I’ll spell it out.”
“I don’t want to hear your vitriol—”
“This is how Derek works.” Twyla finally stood, coming face-to-face with Christina. The smaller woman’s spiky pumps gave her some height, some power. “Everyone knows he eats women for breakfast. Think about it, Christina. Why not take advantage of that weakness?”
It was like seeing a car lose control and screech off a highway, slowly flying through the air, then crashing into a building. Christina couldn’t stop watching, listening, waiting for the explosion.
“Business is not a battleground, Twyla.” Right. Hadn’t she spent years disproving that theory?
Her employee was staring at her, knowing Christina was grasping at straws, trying to stay afloat in her own world of self-delusion.
She couldn’t admit that Derek was one of them. As much of an enemy as William Dugan.
“Now, I haven’t been with Derek myself,” Twyla said. “At least, not yet. But it’s only a matter of time. Playboys get around.”
Crash! There it was. All the doubts Christina had harbored about him. All the disappointment she’d forced on herself because she’d brought sex into the office when she knew better.
“Get out.” Christina stood at her door, her face a study in cool composure.
But judging by the grin on Twyla’s mouth, she’d done her job.
“I’ll get back on the team,” she said as she walked past, “with or without your help. I’ll do it my way.”
Christina wanted to tell the girl that females like Twyla gave businesswomen a bad name.
And Derek a bad reputation.
Still, her suspicions returned full force. Playboy. Womanizer.
Just because he’d held her hand this morning, did that mean he wouldn’t drop her like a hot stone by the end of the week?
She’d done it again, hadn’t she? Let down her defenses and made yet another work situation impossible to handle.
When would she learn?
Shutting her door, Christina leaned against it, suddenly exhausted. But after a moment, she straightened up, realizing something.
She had learned.
Gradually, she’d realized that this bitterness about Dugan was holding her back. That she needed to let go of it in order to move on. And move on she would.
Should she go to a place where no one knew her before the situation became unbearable? Leave Fortune-Rockwell, which seemed to get uglier by the week, to start over?
But, dammit, she’d run away before, and it’d just brought her back to square one.
Yet it didn’t have to be that way, not anymore. If Christina could clear her slate now, she could make her life better, never repeating the past again.
It was the best solution.
Resolute, Christina returned to the conference room, where the team building leader was ready to begin another bonding exercise: a simple pyramid.
She took care to stay away from Derek, although she could feel the heat of his gaze upon her, asking her to glance back at him.
To connect, just as they had this weekend.
But she wouldn’t. She’d stay self-contained and safe.
“As in business,” said the leader, a peppy little man in a company polo shirt, “we need a strong foundation on the bottom. Who would you all choose as your floor level?”
“Don’t mind if I sit this one out,” Jack said, ambling over to a chair, where he grinned and watched the action.
While the guys on the team chose Derek, Seth and Ben to be the foundation, Jack winked at Christina.
Dios. Why a wink?
The team shuffled, getting ready for the building process, but Derek took a detour, brushing past Christina.
“Can we talk?” he asked.
“What about?”
“Christina, look at me, dammit.”
She couldn’t. Just couldn’t. She’d lose her common sense, her determination to move on if she…did.
He was watching her with such tenderness that Christina almost nestled against his chest, seeking reassurance.
Fighting the temptation, she finally won, knowing that she couldn’t stay on this hamster wheel, running in place forever.
Besides, it didn’t matter if Derek Rockwell couldn’t love her back. She’d spent her whole life knowing love was for other people. That all she’d have was man temptation and that’s it.
“Mr. Rockwell?” said the leader.
With a gentle smile, Derek asked Christina, “Later?”
She didn’t answer, just tried to focus as Jonathan and Adam were chosen for the pyramid’s second level. She’d be the pinnacle.
As the two guys took their places, a prone Derek took the brunt of their weight, since he was in the center of the base.
“Aren’t you going to tell them to get off your back, Derek?” Jack asked. “I hear it every day from you.”
Her boss laughed, music to Christina’s ears. In a perfect world, she could hear that sound for the rest of her life and never get tired of it.
But, suddenly, seeing him having a good time saddened her. How could she just stand here, pretending everything was okay?
Making believe that they were nothing more than boss and employee and that there was nothing going on between them was killing her.
“Christina?” asked the leader, inviting her to join them.
Simmering with pent-up emotions, she struggled to get to the top, wobbling, balancing so she wouldn’t fall.
Even though she already had. For Derek. And hard.
She was sick of keeping everything back, of hiding what she felt, of running behind her books when the going got tough.
Remaining silent gave your power to other people, she thought. She couldn’t do that anymore.
No more. Twyla’s words weren’t going to ruin her. And neither were office secrets.
No more bitterness.
“Derek?” she said.
“Yeah.” He was so strong that she didn’t hear any strain in his voice.
“I need a word with you.”
“Now?”
“Now.”
“Wait.” The team builder stood in front of them, hands pushed out. “See how long you can hold each other up.”
“I’m so tired of all these games,” she said.
The team builder looked crushed.
“No, not yours,” Christina said, swaying and recovering with the force of what she needed to do. “Office hide-and-seek. Gossip. Never being able to be a real person because you’re too afraid of saying the wrong thing and being reprimanded for it. Cowering from people with more influence.”
“Christina?”
It was both a warning and a question from Derek, but she was beyond holding anything back.
“We give people the power to undermine us,” she added, too far gone to stop now. Speaking out felt good. “And I’m taking that power back.”
Jonathan tried to glance up at her, but he faltered, making the entire pyramid tilt.
“Derek,” she said, “I’ve gone and fallen in love with you.”
Someone—her boss?—cursed, and their structure wavered. Then, with a burst of grunts and yells, they all came tumbling down.
For a second, they all sat on the carpet, gaping at each other.
Derek, himself, looked as if he’d been KO’d by the world heavyweight champion.
He didn’t have to say anything for Christina to know she’d overstepped her bounds.
“I’m sorry,” she said, rising to her feet, already on her way to the door. “But it’s out, and I feel better than I have in years.”
“Christina…” Derek’s voice was choked.
She passed Jack, wanting so badly to leave, to escape Derek
’s oncoming rejection while she had the chance.
“I’ll fax my resignation letter by the end of the day,” she said.
And, with that, she shut the conference room door, knowing from experience that, just because you’d spoken out, it didn’t mean you were going to be the better for it.
But, this time, unlike with William Dugan, she knew she would be.
Chapter Thirteen
She was in love with him?
Her declaration sent his world flip-flopping. Turning right side up, where it should’ve been in the first place.
Suddenly, everything—his refusal to settle down, his constant running from commitment—whirled away, leaving images in its wake.
Sitting at home on Saturday nights, eating popcorn and watching movies with Christina.
Spiriting her away to a quiet countryside cottage, where he could have her all to himself with no interference.
Laughing at the dinner table with their child, just as easily as they had with his little neighbor, Richie.
Uh-huh, Derek Rockwell had been taken down.
Even though the other team members, plus Jack, were all ogling him like guppies gasping for oxygen, Derek couldn’t get to his feet.
He doubted his legs would hold him up even if he tried.
“You’re just sitting here after what she said?” Seth asked, rubbing his knees from the crash.
“Man,” added Adam, “that’s cold.”
Cold. Stone damned cold. Just like Sir.
But, as Derek had been trying to tell himself for all of his life, he wasn’t his father.
Well, it was damned time to really prove it.
He struggled to a stand, stomach silly with butterflies.
Winged creatures tickling his gut. This was new to him, but he kind of liked it.
Actually, he liked it a lot.
Jack had come to stand in front of him, looking so smug that Derek wanted to rearrange his face.
“You going to take care of this?” Jack asked, voice rushed and anxious. “Not only is she a hell of an analyst, Derek, she’s a hell of a woman. Talk her out of quitting. And while you’re at it—”
“I know exactly what I’m going to do.”
All the guys who’d fallen when Derek’s arms had given out at the “I love you” declaration yelled at him.
“Get out of here, man.”
“Go get her!”
“As I was saying,” Derek said, backing toward the door, “I’m on my way.”
Jack thumped him on the back, and off he went. Even though some joker said, “Does this mean a long lunch?” as he left, Derek let it go.
For now.
Christina couldn’t quit. He wouldn’t be able to stand a day without seeing her, without being privy to her intelligence and kindhearted smiles. Wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he didn’t take this risk.
Sure, she was a crackerjack analyst, but that was secondary to the woman inside.
He jogged down the halls, dodging employees, trying to catch the woman he loved—good God, loved—before she left the building.
Stopping by her office on the way to the elevators, he took the chance on seeing that she was there.
Bingo.
With haste, she was dumping personal items into a box, her back to the lobby windows.
As Derek caught his breath, his heart exploded in his chest, a crescendo of emotion to the dance they’d been performing together.
The dance of a strange but ultimately wonderful courtship.
She must have heard him quietly walk up behind her, because she froze, her hair curtaining the side of her face.
Derek reached out, pushed the strands back.
Still, she didn’t look at him. “I’m making this easy on you since it’ll be impossible to work with each other now.”
“It will?”
She glanced at him, questions in her hazel eyes. “I put it all out there, Derek. And I meant what I said. I lost my professional judgment and fell in love with my boss. But I wouldn’t take back what I said. Not if you paid me. I don’t care who knows about how I feel for you. I don’t care what they think.”
“Good, because I think the word’s bound to spread like wildfire.” He stroked her hair again, changing her look to one of hopeful confusion. “Wait until someone calls Patrick to tell him the news. He’ll be overjoyed.”
“What news?” she said cautiously. “That I fired myself in a spectacular blaze of glory?”
“No.” Cupping her face in both of his hands, Derek stroked his thumbs over the hollows of her cheekbones. “That I’m far gone for you, too.”
She stared at him as if trying to decipher what he’d said. He remembered her sad ex-boyfriend stories, how her past had built a glass wall of low self-esteem around her year after year. So he hurried to reassure her.
Not that he was very good at it.
“The thing is,” he said, “I’m having trouble getting the right phrase out. You know I’ve never said it before. But it’s there, believe me.”
So why was it so hard to say I love you, Christina?
Time to try again. “All my life, I’ve been making my best effort to be the opposite of my father. I over-compensated by dating Lite women, ones who didn’t expect me to commit to them. Then you came along.”
Her lips were parted, her brows knitted, as if she were wondering what exactly he was doing in her office, chattering away in the aftermath of her emotional doomsday in the conference room.
“What’s a Lite woman?” she asked.
“The anti-you.” He traced her jawline with his thumb. “Someone who cared as little as I did. See, my father—he made me call him Sir since he was a sergeant in the Army—well, he taught me that rules and regulations were the only way to survive in life. When I rebelled, he punished me, and that just made me more ornery. I decided I’d never walk in his polished-shoe steps, then started on what I believed was a different path.”
Tentatively, Christina folded her hands around his, drawing them away from her face, pressing them near her collarbone, where she could rest her chin on them. She glanced up at him from beneath lowered eyelashes, stealing his heart yet again. Encouraging him to continue.
“When he was home, I had to make my bed for Sir. He’d try to bounce a quarter off of it. Usually, I failed to meet his standards, so I’d start the day with five hundred push-ups. And it just went from there.”
“I could tell there was something going on with you,” she said. “The loneliness in your eyes when you’d talk about family. The way you didn’t want to acknowledge them at all.”
No one else, besides Patrick, had ever bothered to read between Derek’s perfect lines. It was a miracle that he’d found someone who could.
“Odd,” she added. “You tried to be so different from your dad, but on the outside, you aren’t, really. The authoritative boss. The conservative demeanor.”
She flicked his button-down shirt’s opened collar. When he pulled the material away from his neck, he realized that it’d curled upward yet again.
“But then,” she said, “there was always a part of you that wanted to be set free, I think.”
“You’re one of the only people who seems to understand that I was a slave to Sir’s memory.”
She smiled, no doubt still waiting for that phrase. The one that meant commitment, the one that had always been so hard for him to say.
But for this woman, he’d lay his soul on the line.
“Translated from Ultimate Bachelorspeak, all my blithering means I love you, Christina.”
Whoosh…
It felt as if the world had fallen off his shoulders, stripping a facade away from him, revealing the heart he’d forgotten he had.
She’d closed her eyes, kissing one of his wrists. When she opened her gaze again, tears glimmered, spilling down her face.
“Did I say it wrong?” he asked.
“No. I like your translation just fine.”
He became aware o
f employees lingering outside her office window, but he couldn’t have cared less.
“There’s Twyla,” she said, her voice stronger as she glanced out the window, too. Even though she’d overcome the need to hide what was between her and Derek, she didn’t want his own reputation to suffer for it.
But when she tried to pull away from him, restoring a professional distance, he wouldn’t let her go.
Ecstatic, she settled right back into his arms.
Her ex-team member, who was in the midst of a gathering group in the lobby, glanced away, attempting to seem busy by scribbling on a notepad, nodding to her cohorts as if deep in the thrall of business.
The sight of Twyla only made Christina realize that her bitterness about the past was really gone. Kaput.
Once Derek had chased her down and confessed his own love, Christina’s slate had been wiped clean, ready for new memories. Like the man she loved, she, too, could let go of her old hurts, making room in her heart for a much brighter future.
“Twyla?” Derek asked. “What about her?”
When she glanced back at him, he was grinning, teasing.
“Maybe your next business analyst will tell you all about Twyla and how she needs to be fired,” she said, pushing at his chest as he laughed.
His mirth trailed away, and he tightened his grip around her. “There won’t be a next analyst. I’m going to talk the one we have into staying. She’s much too valuable to let go. In a lot of ways.”
She couldn’t believe he was returning her affection.
She’d fantasized about this moment for so long that the real thing almost seemed like a dream, too.
“As much as I appreciate your compliments, Derek, we can’t carry on as we were. Team dynamics would be uncomfortable. People would start to gossip again and that would be a distraction—it’d take away from employee efficiency.”
He shook his head. “Carrying on? As I said, now that I have you, I’m not letting you go anywhere, Christina.” He took a deep breath, then exhaled. “I’m going to marry you.”
Fireworks exploded inside her chest, a celebration, a grand surprise she’d always hoped for, but never expected.
She wanted to hear it again, so she pretended she hadn’t understood in the first place. “You…what?”
Bringing her hands to rest over his heart, he repeated himself.
Fortune's Heirs: Reunion Page 33