by Megan Mulry
“Perfect!” Bronte crowed. “That idiot brother of yours is going to get what’s coming to him.”
“I know he’s an idiot, but you don’t need to sound quite so pleased about his imminent torture.”
“Oh, okay. But something’s got to jar him out of his funk, and this is just the thing.”
“And what might ‘this’ be?”
“One strapping American hunk named Eliot Cranbrook. He is a great old friend of Sarah’s and apparently he’s coming to Dunlear this weekend.” Bronte practically squealed under her breath. “I think I’ll put the two of them in the big yellow suite.”
“You are cruel. Even Devon asked to put Narinda in a separate room.”
“Look.” Bronte turned to Max, all business. “If Devon is too much of a fool to step up and declare his own feelings, then it’s up to the rest of us to give him a little shove in the right direction. Let’s make him a little jealous. Make him see what he’s missing.”
“I’m not sure Devon does very well in the jealous department. Does this Cranbrook fellow own a bulletproof vest?”
Bronte smiled with a wicked gleam in her eye. “Oh, this is going to be delicious.”
Max felt like a bit of a rat when he met up with Devon for lunch a few days later. Even though he hated to withhold the information about the pending arrival of Devon’s supposed rival, Max was beginning to see the logic. Devon was acting like a fool.
“So are you all set with Narinda coming down to Dunlear this weekend?” Max asked casually.
Devon’s head snapped up. “Yeah. Why? Did Bronte say something about it to Sarah?”
Poor, stupid git, Max thought. “She might have said something. What’s up with you and Sarah anyway? Was it nothing or was it something?”
Devon stayed quiet.
Max persisted. “This weekend is supposed to be—no!—is going to be a happy celebration of the birth of my firstborn child, you idiot. I don’t want it devolving into some weepy episode of Downton Abbey. Get it together, Dev.”
“Thanks for the sympathy, Max.”
“You know what I mean. Bronte’s a bit emotional.” Max rolled his eyes to convey that that was an understatement of gargantuan proportions. “She’s got a five-week-old baby and, while she’s a rock in almost every way, she was never very sturdy in the unexpected emotions department to begin with, so I am not going to tolerate any unforeseen… hiccups. Maybe you should give Sarah a call or stop by to talk to her in the next day or two, so we don’t have to have any histrionics over the weekend.”
“Histrionics? How multisyllabic of you. I’ll give her a ring. But it’s all a whole lot of nothing. We’re all grown-ups.”
“Are we?” Max cocked up an eyebrow, then looked out toward the busy sidewalk.
Devon’s face turned stormy.
“Devon.” Max put down his sandwich and slowly wiped his hands with the too-small brown paper napkin, choosing his words with purpose. “Remember that time we were meeting with the farm labor negotiators last year… when I was so keyed up about Bronte, and you punched me in the face?”
Devon smiled. “Yeah, I remember.”
“I’m not going to punch you right here in this chrome and glass café, but I might take you into a nearby alley if you don’t pull yourself together. One way or the other, you have to figure out what this bird is to you.”
“What do you mean? She’s nothing. She wants nothing to do with me.” The bitterness of his denial only served to further reveal the depth of his feeling.
“Devon, it’s me, Max. I am not going to pry. I don’t want to know any gory or illicit details. She’s my wife’s best friend; you are my brother. We have to move on. Please try to reach some sort of rapprochement and we can all look back on this and smile. It was a brief encounter at my wedding for chrissake. Let it go.”
Devon’s hair was hanging in front of one eye and he made no move to push it out of the way.
Max continued carefully,“If, on the other hand, you have strong feelings for her, why aren’t you pursuing her? I can tell you from gruesome firsthand experience, it’s worth it.”
“I don’t mean to be evasive, Max, but I just can’t have this conversation. Especially not in the middle of a busy lunch hour at Pret.” Devon finally swiped the strands of stubborn hair out of his face. “I’ll try to be the mature adult and call her and we can, as you say, move on.”
“So pursuit is out of the question?”
“Max, I don’t think she’d have me if I crawled on a bed of hot coals and begged… and if she did, then I’d just resent her for making me willing, wanting, to beg. It’s a mess. I’ll deal with it. Let’s drop it. Tell me more about the wolf cub.” Devon forced his tone to lighten. “Is he reciting Gibbon yet?”
The two brothers finished their sandwiches amid a genuinely amusing discussion about the sheer indignities of caring for a newborn. “I don’t know how Bron can deal with all that excrement as if it were nothing more than a bit of crumb on the kitchen counter. She actually turned to me last night, before passing out cold, of course, and told me that she found it so amazing that Wolf’s diapers didn’t even smell!”
Devon burst out laughing along with his brother.
Max went on, hoping to amuse his younger brother out of his funk and enjoying any opportunity to talk about his wife and child. “Talk about The Selfish Gene! Can you imagine a more spectacular genetic adaptation? She honestly believes his shit doesn’t stink!”
By this time, they were laughing so hard that people were starting to glance their way. They settled down a bit, then cleared the remnants of their lunch and walked back to Max’s office.
“Thanks again for crossing the river to have a quick lunch with your boring brother, Dev. Sorry I couldn’t get away for longer. See you Friday night at Dunlear.” Max gave Devon a brief, supportive pat on his upper arm, then added, “Call her.”
“I will,” Devon conceded. No matter how miserable he was, he wouldn’t do anything to mess up Bronte and Max’s weekend. Devon pivoted back down toward Pall Mall, through Trafalgar Square, and then down toward the river. Maybe he should call her right now, walking down Craven Street. He smiled at the wordplay and put it off for a few more minutes.
He was happily distracted by the sounds and bustle of the bright spring day, one of those May days in London that made you forgive every last gray, drizzly, suicide-inducing, dark-at-four day of the past few months. The sun was almost too bright, throwing all of the new spring buds into sharp relief against the sooty limestone of a Victorian pediment or Georgian sill. Window boxes were replanted. The grass in the city parks was an intense, vivid shade that his younger sister Abby used to call “super green” when spring came to Dunlear Castle in their youth.
Now is the time to call Sarah, Devon admitted to himself. He kept his pace as he took his cell phone out of his pocket and approached the Millennium Bridge that spanned the river. He always appreciated the feeling of South Bank, his London, rising to meet him when he crossed the bridge on foot. He felt the weight and power of places like the Ministry of Defence and Buckingham Palace fall away as the southern part of the metropolis took him in. His mother’s world of Mayfair and the ton, his brother’s world of commerce and accomplishment: they were behind him. The art and music and creativity of the southern half of the city lay ahead of him. He stopped in the middle of the bridge, not immune to the irony. He dialed the number he had memorized the first time he had punched it into his phone at Heathrow last October, before his flight to Chicago. It was her U.S. phone number, but he knew she had an international phone and used the same number when she was abroad.
The line crackled then started ringing with the familiar British beeep-beeep. She picked up after the first ring.
“This is Sarah James.”
Speechless.
He probably should have prepared a little bit more.
“Hello?” she tried again. “Anyone there?”
“Sarah. It’s me—it’s De—”
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br /> “I know who ‘me’ is,” she interrupted quickly.
“Um.” He looked down at the river and thought a swim, a permanent, dark, arctic swim, sounded like a great idea right about then. She wasn’t going to give him an inch.
Silence.
“Are you still there?” he asked.
“Yes.”
Silence.
This had to be one of the most bizarre phone conversations he had ever had. “All right, well, I promised Max I’d call you before the weekend, to avoid any awkwardness, so that’s what this call is.”
Silence.
“Are you there?”
“Yes,” she said, but softer this time. He heard a door close on her end of the line. “I’m at work and there are construction workers everywhere and it’s distracting. I wasn’t expecting…” Her voice trailed off.
“Sarah.” As much as he had thought about her and pined, he supposed was the word for it, he had not realized the power of simply uttering her name aloud. He remembered he needed to apologize. “I don’t really know where to begin, or end, or whatever, but I think Bronte and Max just want everyone to get along and make it about Wolf this weekend. I’m sorry if my inviting someone was immature or upset you. I just thought it would help to have a buffer or whatever.”
What am I talking about? he wondered to himself. “Sarah?” he asked again into the void.
“I’m still here. I don’t know what to say…”
A torrent of possibilities she might choose flew through his brain: I’ve missed you horribly. I want to give it a go. I want you in my bed. I hate that you’ve invited someone when you knew I would be there. Or even, I don’t care what you do one way or the other. At least that last option would put an end to the limbo in which he had suffered and clung, holding on to some insane thread of hope that she might still be interested in seeing him. If he just left her alone. That made sense. Right?
Silence.
“Well,” he tried again. “I don’t either, Sarah.” He was going to say her name every chance he got. “I still want to apologize for—”
“No!” she barked at him.
Had he really hurt her so much in such a short time that she couldn’t even bear to discuss it? Or was her vehemence a perverse sign that she still had salvageable feelings for him? Or, more likely, that she was terrified he would attack her and not in a good way? He was about to speak again when she continued.
“Devon.” His name sounded so good in her gentle voice. “I don’t really know exactly, I mean, I think I know what happened that night, but at the time, I was so confused… in any case, you don’t need to apologize anymore—”
“It was totally my fault, Sarah. Please. I won’t talk about it if that’s what you want, but I just don’t want you thinking that I would ever behave like that again.”
A short pause, then she continued, “It’s not like I want to bury it or dredge it up… I just needed a little clarity. And time. And then weeks went by, and now months, and… oh, I don’t know…” Now she was the one fumbling for words.
“Well, at least we are talking now. Why don’t we go for a walk when we get out to Dunlear? Saturday morning?”
“I don’t know, Dev—”
“Or not. Whatever you want. Probably not a good idea.” And he meant it. He would probably want to devour her all over again if they were alone in the spring forest. Best to avoid the occasion of sin.
She laughed a little. “It’s not like that. You don’t need to be so abject about everything. Let’s just try to be regular… whatever…” She trailed off again, then added, “I’m glad you called.”
He breathed. He looked down at the river and thought it looked muddy and uninviting. Living might be tolerable after all. The sun was shining. Sarah James was on the line. He might not be beyond redemption.
“Me too. It’s really good to hear your voice.” That might have been a bit much… that “really” was a tad emphatic. He tried to recover. “Do you want me to come solo this weekend? It’s no big deal for me to change plans.” Please say yes, he thought desperately.
“Well…” She hesitated, then said, “No need to be rude to your… friend… you might as well stick to your plan. I’ll see you Friday, okay?”
He was actually smiling. “Okay.”
“Thanks for calling… Devon.”
“Bye, Sarah.”
The line cleared and he breathed again. He tapped Max’s number into his phone and hit TALK.
“Hey, Dev, what’s up?” his brother answered without preamble.
“Just wanted to let you know you were right as usual. I spoke to Sarah a few minutes ago and everything is totally copacetic.”
“Thanks for that, Dev. It will be a beautiful weekend. Let’s do a little shooting on Saturday. We can head over to Carlton Towers and get a few birds. No reason for you and Sarah to be on top of each other if there’s any awkwardness. Gotta run.”
Devon laughed at the abrupt end to the conversation, then settled into willfully misconstruing the idea of he and Sarah on top of each other. He finished crossing the bridge with more optimism than he’d felt in ages and returned to his office at a brisk clip.
Narinda gave him a quick smile while she finished her phone conversation, then hung up and swiveled her chair to face him.
“So what time are we leaving on Friday, anyway?”
“Yeah, about that—”
“Listen, Dev, it’s bad enough you are asking me to pose as your girlfriend—I don’t know why I ever agreed—but I told you I am not going to share a room with you. It’s just too ridiculous.”
Devon laughed at her crystal clear understanding. She was so perfectly honest. “Kind of the opposite. I finally called Sarah James and cleared the air a bit. So you don’t need to pretend at all. It should be a fun weekend regardless. I still want you to come, but your duplicity in the fake girlfriend department probably won’t be part of the plan.”
“Even better. Maybe there will be some other friend or foe I can lure into my clutches.” She steepled her fingers and clicked her perfectly manicured nails together in a theatrical display of greed. “Your brother’s already taken, I gather. Who else? Cousin? Long lost villainous heir?”
“I cannot believe you would abandon me so easily. You are such a traitor,” Devon joked as he returned his attention to the project he had been working on before lunch.
Narinda gave up talking, since she knew Devon’s mental energy would be elsewhere for hours to come. She watched as the incomprehensible code started scrolling up his screen. Devon’s matrix, she thought, and swiveled back to deal with her own assignments.
In reality, Devon was working on a pet project that had nothing whatsoever to do with the architectural firm of Russell + Partners.
While he had been pacing around Sarah’s apartment that unfortunate night in Chicago, all of her board reports and financial statements had been sitting on the kitchen counter, for all the world to see, more or less. He certainly didn’t think it was an invasion of privacy—a little snoopy maybe—since it was all going to be available information for shareholders within a few days, and theoretically, he could be considering an investment, so he had taken his time going over the documents.
After his disastrous show of insane jealousy, he’d forgotten about the discrepancies he had suspected after reading over the projected sales figures several times. A few weeks later, unable to sleep and finding himself with a nasty urge to get inside Sarah’s world without actually contacting her, he did breach the firewall of her company’s website.
He could tell that Sarah was a terrific businesswoman—adept at building her brand, visually creative, financially savvy—but she was clearly an ingenue when it came to corporate security. A clever teenager could have burrowed in as far as he had in about an hour of trying some of the different security and code-cracking tricks he had picked up over the years.
Not that she was guarding state secrets or the recipes for making dirty bombs in her basement,
it was just shoes after all (not that he would ever say it quite like that to her), but he started spending some time each evening tracking the activity on the supposedly password-protected areas of her company’s site. Servers in Chicago and New York were frequently accessing varying levels of secure information on a constant basis throughout the workday, which was to be expected.
Then, after about a month, he started noticing the occasional late-night log in. Because he was painfully aware of Sarah’s whereabouts—not really stalking exactly, but he always seemed to know if she was in England, for example—he knew there was no way she was the one accessing the site at three in the morning from a server in Chicago. At that point, he had to be honest with himself: tracking IP addresses was one thing; going deeper into her company files was something else entirely.
The Internet Protocol addresses were practically public information, he argued with himself, like sitting across the street (maybe in an unmarked car, but still) and watching who went in and out of someone’s house. Delving any further into the actual corporate documents was tantamount to sneaking around someone’s bedroom and checking the contents of their dresser drawers while they were asleep in their bed. He resisted, with difficulty, the idea of investigating the inconsistencies beyond this (already morally questionable) level.
Even so, he kept a thorough log file of all the activity on the site and stored it for future reference. Something about those three-in-the-morning site visits never seemed right.
He finished a final round of converting the data he had tracked over the past months—he’d tried regression analysis, dot plots, cryptanalysis—in a vain attempt to draw some conclusions from the seemingly meaningless compilation of data. He knew there was a pattern in there somewhere. He just needed to find it. But it looked like it was not going to present itself tonight. He logged off and shut down his computer.
Devon looked up and stretched his neck, feeling like he had returned from lunch about half an hour before. Apparently, five hours had passed. Narinda was gone for the day; the office was sparsely populated with other architects and designers who chose to work unpredictable hours or were working on deadline.