Do-Over

by Dorien Kelly

Ah, familiar territory. Cara relaxed as the world began to right itself. “Is nine o’clock okay?”

  “Yeah…wait, no. Could we make it around eleven?” He looked almost embarrassed.

  “What, do you have a date?”

  He laughed. “Actually, I kind of do.”

  That twinge in the region of her heart had to be stress, because no way was she willing to admit to jealousy. “That was fast.”

  His smile was slow, as though he savored a secret. “Trust me, it was years in the making.”

  She wasn’t jealous. Really.

  “Bring me the notes tonight and I’ll start without you.”

  UPON OLYMPUS, Zeus, who had settled next to Hera at her favorite Mortals Viewing Point, elbowed her, and then laughed. “Did you see that? I’ll say she started without him.”

  Hera rolled her eyes and smiled her secret smile, the one that said, men….

  6

  Cara’s Rule for Success 6:

  There is no substitute for hard work…

  other than getting

  someone else to do it for you.

  A NEW DEAL…

  Later Friday evening, Cara had accepted that her excitement was inevitable, tempered though it was by the source of the work. A new deal was like a new lover. You had the edgy thrill of discovery, the bloom of excitement as interest grew.

  And even better than a new lover, a new deal didn’t mean you had to really shave your legs, instead of giving them a zippy once-over in the shower. New deals didn’t come with difficult but necessary questions about sexual histories. They did not join the priesthood, and they didn’t dump you just because you got wrapped up in something and forgot to get home in time for a date.

  An hour or two earlier, Morgan had handed Cara a copy of the deal terms for Newby Holdings. Actually, he’d dropped the papers on her desk, as though he shared her reluctance to try that physical contact thing again. Cara found that a great relief. Any man who could jump-start her hormones with a handshake was one to be avoided.

  He’d said something about having errands to run, but he’d be back in the office later. As if she wanted to see him when no one else was around. Not hardly.

  And Saperstein, Underwood was well and truly empty. Even Howard had departed. Cara half wondered whether he’d bolted the firm’s valuables to the walls before leaving her alone with them. She was also more than a little surprised that she hadn’t once again been required to cough up her access card for the weekend.

  Morgan had probably had something to do with that. She supposed she should feel gratitude, but that was as dangerous an emotion as her simmering sexual attraction.

  She had tried her best not to look at him today. Not to notice the ease with which he carried himself, or how fit she was willing to bet the body beneath that expensive suit was. She had tried and she had failed.

  The good news was that with the exception of one final task, she had done all she’d planned to for the evening. She’d be gone long before the source of all her troubles returned.

  Cara pulled open the bottom file drawer of her desk. There rested a secret she shared only with the cleaning crew—her costumes for the bust of Saul Saperstein. She’d been preoccupied at the beginning of the month, and had missed the annual May Day dressing. With the office deserted, now was as good a time as any to make up for that unfortunate oversight. Cara grabbed the May garb and crept down the hallway and around the corner to Saul’s niche.

  Proud and prominent nose, cranky-unto-death narrowed eyes, Saul Saperstein was captured in marble for all eternity. S.U.’s founding father had passed away at the age of eighty-six, several months after Cara had joined the firm.

  Her encounters with him had been limited to several imperious calls for her to fetch from the library books so old and permeated with dust and mildew that after every delivery, she’d needed to pop an antihistamine to calm her nose. In some odd way, she missed him. Her visits had been like watching the Dodo bird, the last of a species. And now here he was, memorialized as surely as that stuffed Dodo.

  Cara patted Saul’s cold and shiny head. “This should perk you up, buddy.” She dropped a wreath of plastic daisies on his dome. “They’re not quite laurel leaves, but hey, it’s not like you’re in any position to argue.”

  “Who isn’t?”

  Cara’s heart shot to her throat, then hammered its way back into her chest. She swung around. Morgan, the man who would not go away, watched her. His smile was sexy, conspiratorial, so hot that it was verging on incendiary.

  “Nice,” he said, motioning toward Saul. “Do you have any other hobbies besides dress-up?”

  She stepped away from the bust and tucked her hands behind her back, as though that could hide the evidence of her guilt. “And do you have any, other than sneaking up on me?”

  “I didn’t sneak.”

  “You didn’t exactly let me know you were there.”

  “I didn’t want to interrupt your conversation.”

  “Funny.” She started back down the hall to her office. Morgan fell in step with her.

  “I thought you’d taken off,” she said.

  “Did what I needed to. Dinner awaits.”

  “Dinner?”

  “I told you we were having dinner tonight. Remember…on Monday before I left town?”

  “I guess I tried to forget.” She had done a damn fine job of it, too.

  Cara hesitated in her office doorway. On her desk sat a tall bottle of Japanese beer, two glasses and two bento boxes, those black lacquered containers of all things delicious.

  “Sushi?” she asked.

  “Among other things,” he said, ushering her in. “Like it?”

  “Yes.” Couldn’t he have picked something she hated, like peanut butter or pickled beets? He was making it difficult to maintain the requisite level of crankiness—especially since she hadn’t eaten very much at lunch with Suzy Harbedian. They’d been too busy talking about good stuff like whether black or gold granite would work better for the counters of Cara’s future kitchen.

  “A friend of mine from undergrad owns a couple of Japanese restaurants,” Mark said. “I picked it up at her spot just north of here. She says she’s the best, but she’s always—” He paused, then pointed to the sheets of paper Cara had taped low on the walls, around the perimeter of her office. “What’s all this?”

  “Those? Signs for every state where Newby has a mall. I need a system to start breaking down properties for when the leases, title work and surveys get here. If I don’t, I’m going to be buried in paper. I couldn’t decide between an alphabetical or regional arrangement. I finally went with alpha within each—”

  Cara stopped. Morgan was looking at her as though she should be a museum piece right next to Saul Saperstein. “What’s your problem?”

  “Do you like music?”

  “Yes,” she said with great caution. She knew from hard experience that Mark Morgan always had a purpose to his questions.

  “You have lots of CDs, I’ll bet,” he said while dragging one of her guest chairs so that it sat at the side of her desk.

  “I have enough.”

  He moved the other chair on an angle to the first and settled a bento box in front of each spot. He looked so comfortable, so at home. She wondered how many other women he’d done this for. Legions, probably.

  He waited for her to choose a chair and sit, then asked, “So is your music filed alpha according to artist, or broken down according to music category, or both, plus subcategorized by album release date?”

  “There’s nothing wrong with being orderly.” God, she sounded like a dried-up 1800s schoolmarm.

  “Orderly? No.”

  He sat and then opened the beer. Cara glared at him as he poured two glasses.

  “Why are you grinning like that?” she asked.

  “I think you need to play more dress-up.”

  She had a sudden flash of herself wearing the cut-to-the-navel Las Vegas Bad Girl dress in Bri’s shop. He had a
point, though she’d die before conceding it.

  “What are your hobbies, Morgan? Feeding orphans to alligators and plucking butterfly wings?”

  He laughed. “Actually, I run and swim…and bike.”

  “You’re a triathlete?”

  “On a very amateur basis, yeah.”

  If she hadn’t already hated him, this would have done the trick.

  “Ambitious,” she commented while trying to tighten her spongy abs. At least she was sitting taller with the attempt.

  Cara removed the top to her box and took a peek at the tidy compartments inside. The man was no slouch when it came to selecting Japanese cuisine, either. She tore open the paper packet containing her chopsticks, then separated them. They gave with a firm snap.

  “So why the sushi, Morgan? Why the attempts at niceness?”

  “Maybe I’m actually a nice guy?” he suggested, then neatly tucked a piece of California Roll into his mouth.

  Damn. He even ate sushi as if he were channeling Cary Grant. She refused to be daunted. Cara nipped away at some pickled vegetables like an old pro, all the while thanking heaven that he hadn’t ordered noodles.

  “You never were particularly nice to me in law school,” she said while toying with a small piece of roasted river eel.

  “I wasn’t not nice, either.”

  “That kind of depends on your vantage point. From my spot on the food chain, it felt like the rest of us were just so much fodder for you.”

  “You were top of the class, just like me.”

  “Almost.”

  He balanced his chopsticks on the edge of his bento box and then focused his attention on her. “Cara, I play to win. I did back then and I still do.”

  “I noticed.”

  “But—and this is a big one—I’ve come to see that it’s just business. Nothing is personal, no one has to die. There’s no reason we can’t be friends.”

  “No reason except I don’t like you.” The words—an unsettling mix of fiction and truth—had just seemed to shoot out.

  There were parts of him she liked, and parts of him that parts of her would like to know better, not that she planned to give them the chance.

  He shook his head, a motion of regret and maybe bemusement. “You come out swinging, don’t you?”

  She tightened her wimpy abs once again. “I’ve learned how to play to win, too.”

  They ate in silence for a while. All the time, she could sense that Morgan was mounting his attack, finding another way to chip at her defenses.

  “Here’s my question,” he finally said. “Why can’t we both win? I know I’ve upset the natural progression by showing up when I did, but there’s no rule that says we can’t make partner at the same time.”

  She took a sip of her beer, swallowing the bitterness that was becoming part of her daily existence. “Actually, there is.”

  He looked like he thought she was teasing. “Oh, come on…”

  “No, really. Didn’t they give you that whole spiel on controlled growth?”

  “No.”

  She supposed not. In Morgan’s case, the partners were probably too busy kissing butt to get down to details. “Underwood and the senior partners are convinced that the firm has survived so well because they control growth. It’s more a policy than a rule, but each practice group brings on no more than one new partner in a year.”

  They watched each other while her, and this was supposed to be my year went unspoken.

  “Policies can be changed,” he offered.

  “This isn’t the kind of place that accepts change very well,” she said. Then it hit her. She had just tacitly admitted defeat. “And why should the policy have to be changed, anyway? It’s not written in stone that you’ll get the next slot.”

  “No, it’s not,” he replied in a perfectly equitable tone.

  He was too damned agreeable, as if she wasn’t even a worthy opponent. “Is it tiring being you? Don’t you ever get ticked off? Haven’t you done something you regret?”

  He smiled. “I regret not telling you how incredible you looked in that sparkly dress the other night.”

  Cara’s stomach lurched, and she knew it wasn’t from the food. “What—what sparkly dress?”

  “The black one. You know, the shop window in Royal Oak when you were dancing to Aretha Franklin? Hot, very hot.”

  She jammed the lid onto her bento box. “What are you, some kind of stalker?”

  “Just a very lucky bypasser. One of many, I might add.” He pushed back his chair and stood. “If you’re done eating, let me clean up.”

  Cara retreated into silence. Game to Morgan, but the match had just begun.

  CURIOSITY WAS A GOOD thing, the foundation of all knowledge. And right now, at almost one in the morning, Mark wanted to know what the hell Cara’s car was still doing in S.U.’s lot. Granted, Bloomfield Hills was about as far from a rough neighborhood as it was from the excitement of Manhattan. She was in no danger, except maybe of overwork.

  All the same, as long as he had to slip back inside to pick up the personal digital assistant he’d left behind when he’d gone to return the bento boxes to Tomoko, then ended up hanging around for some warm sake and a few laughs, there was no reason not to check on Cara.

  Mark slid his security card through the scanner at the back door. The interior hall was lit, but the only noise he could hear was the hum of the ventilation system. He made his way to his office and flipped on the light switch. His PDA sat next to the phone where he’d left it. Next to it waited a new addition.

  Frowning, Mark picked up the document. It was a commitment for the Newby deal, neatly stamped “Draft” at the top. He paged through the letter; it appeared to have all the bells and whistles of a binding agreement to lend. The sight of it pissed him off, and for too many reasons for him to unscramble and make disappear.

  He should have expected this, he thought, dropping the letter back to the desk. The only thing he didn’t know was whether she’d gone ahead and done the work without him as an effort to grandstand, or because she really couldn’t tolerate the sight of him.

  You’d think when a guy reached a certain age, rash statements would no longer have the power to wound. Not so. When Cara had said she didn’t like him, he could tell by the shadows in her blue eyes that she hadn’t fully meant it.

  Still, her verbal dart had nailed him, and he’d fired back with equal force about seeing her in that store window. Idiot. He’d intended to keep that incredible sight a private memory, something he could focus on when she was bitching at him or otherwise making his work life uncomfortable. Now, his secret had lost its power. It ground at him, relinquishing control in that way.

  He looked in her office.

  “Lights are on, but nobody’s home,” Mark muttered while acknowledging that this was not a state one could generally link with Cara Adams.

  Where was she?

  He checked the small galley kitchen and dining area, the library and the reception area. He stood in front of the door to the ladies’ room, debating the degree to which he cared about what had become of her. Enough to case the bathroom?

  A big yes to that one. He pushed the door open a fraction.

  “You in there, Cara? Are you okay?”

  Thankfully, there was no answer.

  He walked past the smaller of the firm’s two conference rooms. It was then he heard it, a sighing sound.

  Mark turned back.

  The room was lit by the glow of a lamp someone had left on. The table, big enough for eight in the center of the space, was empty, except for papers scattered across its dark wood surface.

  They were checklists, each titled “$37,000,000 Recapitalization of Newby Holdings by Merchant Financial.” He shook his head. The deal wasn’t even fully hammered-out and already she was giving it a final shine. If Cara didn’t watch it, in a few years she’d be running a tight second to Howard Blenham when it came to obsessive behavior.

  Over on the couch, Ms. Tail-in-a-
Knot stirred and sighed. She was dead to the world.

  Mark felt a smile creep across his face as he watched her stretch, then fling one arm above her head. Her light blue blouse, a nicely formfitting, tailored thing, had come untucked from the waistband of her skirt. A patch of her skin showed. Not frog-belly white, but pale ivory, untouched by the sun.

  Without even intending to, he walked closer. This impulse, this need to touch, powered his steps, made his fingers twitch.

  Silk. She’d feel like sun-warmed silk.

  He came down onto his haunches next to the couch, thinking how beautiful she was when the stress and suspicion were gone from her face.

  Thinking again how he wished they had met under different circumstances.

  Thinking how at this moment he was acting like the stalker she’d accused him of being.

  Disgusted with himself, Mark was about to stand and slip out of the room when her eyes slowly opened.

  He knew that she was lingering in that hazy world somewhere between wakefulness and dream, because she smiled at him. It was a welcoming smile, instead of the “setting you up for the kill” variety she most frequently sent his way.

  “Hey,” she said, her voice husky with sleep.

  “Hey.”

  Bracing his left hand on the arm of the couch, he let his right hand brush a stray lock of hair away from her cheek. Her blue eyes widened, not with alarm, as though she was about the bolt from the couch and run screaming into the street, but with curiosity.

  Ah, his old friend, curiosity. How would her mouth feel against his? Just then, he couldn’t think of a more compelling question.

  Cara wanted to know, too. He could tell from the way her lips were beginning to part, readying for him.

  All you have to do is say no.

  Mark tried to focus, to figure out if he’d just said that aloud to her. He’d meant to, but wasn’t sure he’d found the willpower to do it.

  Aloud, telepathy, it didn’t matter. She gave him his answer by drawing his mouth to hers. Her fingertips brushed the side of his face while he learned once again the rich curve of her lower lip, the firm give of her mouth.

  She made a soft sound, a low and sexy hum that started his blood pounding. Six years ago, they’d both had too much to drink. The memory of her, other than the salty taste of margaritas, was blurred with time and imprecise perception.