“Hell, yes.”
“Good to know.” He saluted her with the wineglass. “What’s for dinner?”
“Tofu satay and seaweed salad.” She leaned back in her chair, stretched out her legs and closed her eyes. “I’ll bet you’re excited about the menu, aren’t you?”
“My favorites,” he assured her.
She opened her eyes, amused. “I did warn you.”
“I don’t have any problem with the menu. But what with one thing and another, I don’t believe you ever got around to answering my question this afternoon.”
He waited to see if she would pretend to have forgotten. But this was Grace, who was probably too honest for her own good.
“Do you really need a date for tomorrow night?” she asked.
He moved one hand slightly. “I can handle it on my own. Wouldn’t be the first time. But I’d rather have you sitting at my side at the head table. I hate making conversation at those kinds of events. No one ever has anything interesting to say, including me. Not that you could have a meaningful conversation with ten people sitting at a table under those circumstances. And then there is the entertainment for the evening, courtesy of yours truly, who will deliver what is known far and wide as the Speech from Hell.”
Grace erupted in laughter. The wine sloshed precariously in her glass.
“Are you certain it will be that bad?” she asked when she got the laughter under control.
“My after-dinner talk? I know it will be bad.”
She searched his face. “How can you be so sure?”
“Because I am not without experience.”
Grace watched him thoughtfully now. “This is a talk you’ve given before?”
“I’ve given variations of it so many times during the past few years, I’ve lost count. I get asked to speak to investor groups, business associations and the occasional MBA class. I have no idea why anyone invites me back a second time. Public speaking is not my forte, believe me.”
She put down her glass and folded her arms on the table. “Let’s hear it.”
“What?”
“Your speech. Give me the talk that you plan to deliver tomorrow evening.”
He realized she was serious.
“Forget it,” he said. “Delivering the Speech from Hell is the very last thing I want to do tonight.”
“Here’s the deal I’m willing to make, Arkwright. If you want me to attend that business and charity affair with you tomorrow night, I insist that you preview your after-dinner talk for me now.”
He watched her closely, trying to decide whether or not she was joking. But there was no amusement in her eyes.
“Why do you want to hear the SFH?” he asked.
“Plain old curiosity, I guess.”
He thought about it. “I’ll let you read it, will that do? I’ve got twenty bucks says you won’t be able to make it more than halfway through.”
“Twenty bucks?” She grinned. “And here I thought you were a big-time player.”
“Twenty bucks—twenty thousand bucks.” He shrugged. “What difference does it make?”
“You really are bored with the subject of money, aren’t you? But you’re right. A wager is a wager. And since I can’t put up twenty grand, I’ll go with the twenty bucks. Where’s the SFH?”
“I store it online. If you really want to do this, I can pull it up on your computer.”
“I really want to do this,” she said.
He groaned. “Fine. It won’t take long for your eyes to glaze over. Fire up your laptop. And get ready to pay me twenty dollars. No IOUs, by the way. Cash only.”
“Understood.”
She got up from the table and disappeared into the front room. When she returned she had her laptop as well as a notepad and a pen. She set the computer down on the table in front of him.
Reluctantly he went online and downloaded the Speech from Hell. Without a word he turned the computer around so that she could see the document.
She whistled. “Lot of data here.”
“It’s a business talk, remember?”
She started reading with an alarming degree of concentration.
“It’s not the Great American Novel,” he warned.
“There is no Great American Novel,” she said absently. “This nation is too big and too diverse to produce only one great book. We’ve got lots of them and there will be more written in the future. Art doesn’t stand still.”
He decided there was no good response to that so he poured himself another glass of wine and sat back to await the settling of the wager.
At some point in the process Grace reached for her notepad and pen. A sense of doom settled on him. Just how bad was the Speech from Hell? On the bright side, she would be going to the reception with him. Cheered at the thought, he lounged deeper in the chair. He entertained himself with a pleasant little fantasy that involved Grace spending the night with him in his Seattle condo. After all, the event would not be over until quite late and it would be an hour’s drive back to Cloud Lake. It only made sense to stay the night at his place and drive back the following morning.
The more Grace read of the SFH, the more he immersed himself in his daydream. He was strategizing ways to broach the subject to her when she finally looked up from the screen. She reached for her glass of wine.
“Okay,” she said. “Somewhere in this speech there’s a very good after-dinner talk.”
He raised his brows. “Think so?”
“It’s too long and loaded with way too many facts and figures. That might work for a formal business presentation but you said this was an after-dinner talk.”
“So?”
“You told me that business decisions are usually made on the basis of emotion. Well, after-dinner talks are all about emotion. Heck, every speech is about emotion.”
He went blank. “Emotion.”
“Right. But I do see a thread in here that will work. If we refocus on the emotional takeaway buried below all the details, you’ll be brilliant tomorrow night.”
“I know my limitations. I’m brilliant at making money. I am not brilliant at giving after-dinner talks.” He glanced at her notepad. “What the hell do you mean about an emotional takeaway?”
“Studies show that audiences never remember the facts and figures of a talk—they remember the emotions the speech generated,” she said. “You can’t infuse too many emotions into an after-dinner talk about the current business climate so we will concentrate on one.”
He narrowed his eyes. “I double-dare you to find a single emotional element in that talk.”
She gave him a smug smile and aimed the tip of her pen at one of her notes. “It’s right here, the reference to your mentor.”
“What mentor?” He stopped. “You mean the guy who gave me my first job after I left the Marines?”
“You said that individual gave you a break and taught you how to read a spreadsheet and a profit-and-loss statement.”
Julius smiled slowly, amused for the first time since the discussion had turned to the topic of the Speech from Hell.
“My first employer was a Marine,” he said. “He knew that it wasn’t easy starting a new life in a civilian career, especially if, like me, you had a very limited skill set. He hired me as his driver. I learned a lot listening to him talk business in the back of the car. Eventually I became his fixer.”
Grace’s eyes lit with curiosity. “What did you fix?”
“Anything and everything that was a problem for him. The job covered a lot of territory.”
She tapped a finger on the table and gave the subject a moment’s thought.
“I think we’ll change that job title for this talk,” she said. “Fixer sounds a bit shady. Mob bosses and sleazy government officials have fixers.”
He studied her over the ri
m of his glass. “Got a better word for fixer?”
“Executive administrative assistant works. Like fixer, it covers a lot of territory.” She smiled a little, satisfied. “Out of curiosity, how did you apply for that first job?”
“I sent my résumé to the HR department of the company. Got no response. So I went to the president’s office and sat there all day, every day, for a week until he got tired of walking past me and agreed to give me an interview.”
Grace glowed with approval.
“That’s it,” she said. Her eyes were bright with enthusiasm. “That’s your story. I love it. You’re going to inspire everyone in your audience.”
“I am?”
“You’re going to tell them to look around and find at least one person who won’t be able to get a foot in the door the traditional way and help that individual do what your mentor did—open the door a little wider.”
An icy chill shot down his spine. “You want me to give a motivational talk?”
“You can think of it that way.”
“You are out of your mind,” he said, enunciating each word with great precision. “The audience tomorrow night will be composed of businesspeople and their significant others. It is not, I repeat, not a motivational seminar.”
“An audience is an audience. You’re going for an emotional hit. Your job is to make people leave feeling good about themselves. You want them to be inspired by their better angels.”
“If you gathered up all the better angels in the audience tomorrow night, you wouldn’t have to worry about how many of them could dance on the head of a pin because you wouldn’t have a single dancing angel. Trust me on this.”
“I disagree,” Grace said. “I’m sure there will be a sprinkling of self-absorbed narcissists in the crowd. And statistically speaking there will be a few sociopaths—hopefully the nonviolent type. But I think most will be folks who at least want to think of themselves as good people. Your job is to remind them to heed the call of their better natures.”
“So that they can feel good about themselves?”
“No, because it’s a matter of personal honor for each individual in that crowd. Your job is to remind them of that fact.”
“We’re talking about businesspeople, Grace. All they care about is the bottom line.”
“I understand that’s important to them.” Grace assumed a patient air. “And there is nothing wrong with making money. You evidently do that rather well. But I also know that honor matters to you. It will matter to a lot of those in your audience. If nothing else you can remind them that they have a golden opportunity to leave a legacy. That legacy will be in the form of the people they mentored along the way.”
“What makes you think that I care all that much about honor?”
She smiled. “You’re a Marine. Everyone knows there are no ex-Marines.”
He could not think of a response to that so he looked at the notepad. “You’re living in fantasy land. I wouldn’t even know where to begin to write a talk like the one you’re suggesting.”
“We’ll start with your own personal story. Tell them how you got that first job with the man who became your mentor. Trust me on this. I helped Sprague write his motivational talks. I know what I’m doing here. I guarantee you that you’ll have the audience eating out of the palm of your hand.”
“So I give them a feel-good story,” he said. “How the hell do I end it?”
“Think like a Marine. Give your audience a mission and send them out to fulfill it. They’ll feel great about themselves after you finish, and that’s the whole point here.”
He contemplated her in silence for a moment.
“How did you learn about Marines?” he asked finally.
“My father was a Marine.” She smiled a misty smile. “He was killed in a helicopter crash when I was a baby. I never got the chance to know him. But Mom told me a lot about him. That’s how I know what I know.”
Julius considered that for a while.
“Okay,” he said, “I’ll try the speech your way. But I’m warning you, it will probably be an even bigger disaster than my old Speech from Hell. I’m not into this motivational crap.”
“That’s the spirit. Think positive.”
“Actually, there is a silver lining in this situation,” he said.
“What’s that?”
He smiled slowly. “You’ll be there to witness the fiasco. Later I will get to say I told you so. Everyone likes to say that, right?”
“The new version of your speech will work.” She got to her feet and crossed the room to open the oven door. “By the way, you never told me the name of your first employer—the man who became your mentor.”
“Harley Montoya.”
“Harley?” Grace turned around quickly, shocked. “Your next-door neighbor? The man who sold you the house here in Cloud Lake?”
“That Harley.”
Grace smiled, pleased. “That is sort of sweet.”
“Sweet is generally not the first word that comes to mind when people describe Harley.”
Sixteen
They worked on the Speech from Hell until sometime after nine with a break along the way to eat the tofu satay and seaweed salad. Julius decided that tofu and seaweed tasted surprisingly good, at least as long as Grace was sitting on the other side of the table.
“That should do it,” Grace said. She hit save on the computer. “Your audience will love it.”
He studied the notes he had made on the notepad. “I don’t know that anyone will love it, but it certainly won’t be the speech they’ll be expecting from me.”
“There’s nothing like the element of surprise to wake up an audience.” She got to her feet. “I need some exercise. The rain has stopped. Want to go for a walk?”
He looked out the window. “It’s cold out there.”
“It’s not that bad.”
“And dark.”
“The moon is out, there are lamps along the footpath and we can take flashlights for backup.”
A moonlight walk with Grace suddenly sounded like an excellent plan, Julius thought. It would give him an excuse to stick around a little longer, maybe come up with a way to present his grand plan for staying the night in the city at his place.
He felt better already. Maybe there was something to the positive-thinking nonsense.
“You’re right,” he said. “After all that speech writing, I could use some exercise, too.”
She bundled herself up in the jacket that he would always think of as her Little Red Riding Hood coat. He took his leather jacket off the back of the chair and pulled it on. Together they went out onto the back porch. Grace paused to lock the door.
The night air was well chilled. They went down to the water’s edge. He waited to see which way she would go. Turning right was the route into town. It ended at the public marina. Left would take them past his house. Beyond that, at the top of the lake, heavily shrouded in trees and night, was the old asylum.
He was not surprised when Grace chose to walk toward the lights of town. He fell into step beside her. Neither of them spoke for a while but the silence felt comfortable, at least it did to him. Silver moonlight gleamed on the surface of the lake. The low footpath lamps created a string of fairy lights. They did not need the flashlights.
“Thanks for the help with the SFH tonight,” he said after a while.
“You’re welcome. By the way, you owe me twenty bucks.”
“I always pay my debts.”
“Thanks for understanding why I had to buy a new refrigerator.” She paused. “We’re even, right?”
“Even?”
“You know, a favor for a favor.”
“Oh, yeah. Got it.” He came to a halt. “Do you have a problem with owing someone a favor? Or is it just me?”
Grace stopped, too. “Not
exactly. Okay. Maybe it’s just you. I’m not sure yet.”
“You’re not making things any more clear.”
“It’s just that I don’t want you to think of me as some kind of hobby,” she said.
He tried to wrap his brain around that. And failed.
“What?” he asked.
“You heard me.” She turned her head slightly to look at him. The hood of the jacket shadowed her face, making it impossible to read her eyes. “I think you’re just bored. I don’t want you to get the idea that involving yourself in my current problems would be an interesting way to . . . distract yourself.”
He stared at her, a slow-burning anger heating his blood.
“That is the dumbest reasoning I’ve ever heard,” he rasped. “No wonder your track record with relationships is so bad.”
“My track record?” Her voice rose in outrage. “You’re the one with a failed marriage behind you and no visible signs of a serious interest in dating since your divorce.”
“Who told you that?” he demanded.
“Irene is my friend, remember? I told her the blind date hadn’t gone well but that I had hired you to consult for me. I think she panicked. She thought I ought to know a little more about you.”
“We’re a real pair, aren’t we?” He gripped her shoulders with both hands. “Just to clarify, I am not getting involved in your problems because I’m looking for a way to distract myself.”
“No? Why, then?”
“Damned if I know.”
He pulled her close and crushed her mouth beneath his own before she could say anything else.
He wasn’t looking for a distraction but he was looking for something, and since he could not put a name to it, he was willing to settle for sex—as long as it was sex with Grace.
As far as he was concerned the kiss had been waiting to happen since she walked through Devlin and Irene’s front door the previous night. But it seemed to catch Grace by surprise. She went still.
For three of the longest seconds of his life he wondered if he had made a terrible mistake by misreading the heat in the atmosphere between them.
But on the fourth beat of his heart he felt a shudder go through Grace’s supple body. She braced her gloved hands against the front of his leather jacket.
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