by Nancy Bush
“I’ll be back before you know it,” he said, closing the door behind him.
Beneath Rory’s head the floor reverberated with sound. She was certain she would never get to sleep. It didn’t help that with every breath, she inhaled Nick’s scent from the pillow she’d taken from his bed. She turned her face into it and filled her lungs. God, he smelled good. Had Ryan ever smelled like that? She couldn’t remember.
The room was dark save the faint outline of Nick’s bedroom window and the glowing aquarium. She calculated Nick had been gone about an hour. She waited and then drifted off to sleep, then woke up suddenly.
Below her, the party was winding down. The music, though throbbing, was softer; the voices, a murmur rather than a deafening scream. Her eyes adjusted to the darkness and she propped her arms behind her head, idly watching the tropical fish.
Maybe this trip had been the ticket after all. Though her thoughts constantly touched on Ryan, the hurt was less acute. She wasn’t in love with him. Whatever insanity had possessed her was gone. She wouldn’t be so foolish again.
Footsteps sounded on the stairs, and she braced instinctively. If J.D. walked through that door she wasn’t certain what she’d do, but by God, he’d know it had been done!
The door creaked open. Framed in the aperture was Nick. Quickly he shut the door behind him, as if afraid to awaken her.
“I’m awake,” Rory told him.
He crossed the room carefully, his eyes apparently not adjusted to the dark. His toe bumped into her leg. “Sorry. I can’t see.”
“It’s all right.”
“You could’ve used the bed. I can sleep on the couch downstairs.”
“This is fine.” Rory sat up, plumped the pillow, then leaned back on her elbows. She was wearing a Wazzu T-shirt; nightgowns weren’t her thing. Nick crouched down beside her and yawned.
“J.D. didn’t bother you while I was gone, did he?” he asked, his voice sharpening as the thought occurred to him.
“I think he left about the same time you did.”
He snorted in disgust. “I’m going to be glad to graduate next year, even if it means joining the ‘real world.’”
He started untying his shoes. Rory watched, feeling kind of strange. She’d known they might be sleeping in the same room regardless of his comments about the downstairs couch, yet it suddenly seemed odd. “You’re still majoring in business?”
“Investments. That’s what I want. To handle other people’s money.” His teeth flashed white in the dim light. “I’m expecting you to make a fortune and let me invest it for you.”
“Ha. I wouldn’t trust you with a nickel.”
“Why not?” He sounded genuinely surprised.
Because you’re a man, Rory thought before the implication struck home. How prejudiced. How unfair. But it was true. Nick, though he was a wonderful, terrific friend, was just as fickle about love and romance as any other man. She didn’t trust a lot of them. Not with her heart, not with her money, not with nothing.
“Well, it’s something we won’t have to worry about because I’ll never make a fortune anyway,” she assured him. “I just want a nice, safe job with no surprises.”
“That’s B.S., you’d vegetate. You need a challenge as much as I do.”
“Since when are you an expert on me?”
“I’ve always been.” After his shoes came his socks and then he stood up, undoing his belt. Panic lanced through Rory, and she shut her eyes so tightly they hurt. Nick didn’t seem to notice. She heard the soft swish and jingle of his pants hitting the floor. Shortly thereafter the bedsprings creaked. During a look out of the corner of her eye she saw that he’d tossed a blanket over himself. She wondered if he had anything on. He was watching her, smiling. Damn. He knew what she was thinking.
“This is interesting, don’t you think?” he asked. “We’re sleeping in the same room together.”
“Big deal.” Rory scrunched back into her sleeping bag until just her nose and eyes showed.
“Have you ever slept with someone, Rory?”
She was shocked to the soles of her feet. “You mean besides that girl I met first semester?”
“Yeah, her. What was her name again?”
Rory couldn’t stop her smile. Nick was so quick on going there with her. “I’m having trouble thinking of it myself.”
“Seriously,” he said. “Anyone?”
“I believe it’s none of your business. And if you’re offering your services, forget it.”
Now she’d shocked him. His jaw dropped. “The way you talk, Ms. Camden,” he drawled.
“Yeah? Well, get used to it. Nobody’s going to push me around any longer. I’ve learned my lesson.”
“Is that what this trip to Seattle’s all about?”
“Something like that. Good night, Nick.” Rory turned over, offering him a view of the back of her head.
“Rory.” She jerked at the feel of his hand on her shoulder.
“What?”
A long moment passed. His touch, though light, sent strange signals along her nerves. Oh, come on! she railed at herself. Here she was, shattered and disillusioned; her trust in human beings half dead, and all she could think about was the feel and heat of Nick’s fingers?
And not only that, now she was beginning to feel the bewildering heat of desire. When his fingers lay against the thin fabric of her T-shirt, her skin burned. She realized with a twist of her heart, that if Nick suddenly pulled her into his arms and asked to make love to her, she might not be able to say no. Talk about trading her current problems for worse ones. Did she feel she had to prove her desirability? Was that it? What was wrong with her?
The thought flashed across her mind at the same moment her breath caught. Suspended, she waited for him to make a move. In her mind she could already feel his body pressed close to hers, could smell his seductive scent, could taste his mouth. Shivering, she waited.
“I’ve asked Jenny to marry me,” he said. “The wedding will be sometime next spring. I think she’s going to ask you to be a bridesmaid. For me.”
He withdrew his hand and Rory stared unseeingly across the darkened room to the fish tank. Her soul cried out in anguish, but she didn’t make a sound.
“Rory?”
“Congratulations,” she forced out. “Best wishes and all that.”
“You mean it?”
“Of course I do,” she said and felt the lone tear trail over the hill of her cheekbone.
There was only one place large enough and nice enough to have a wedding reception in Piper Point—the Piper Point Country Club. It wasn’t posh, but it was nice nonetheless. The main building’s stone façade made it look like an English country manor. Azaleas and rhododendrons bloomed in brilliant colors of lavender, fuchsia, cream and goldenrod. A sprawling hot pink rock daphne perfumed the air along the front walk. Bees droned gently as Jenny Shard stood beneath the portico, clutching her new husband Nicholas’s arm and rapturously greeting guests and friends.
Rory hung back from the proceedings, standing on the small arched bridge at the edge of the ground. She’d prayed the wedding wouldn’t come off. She’d spent untold sleepless nights creating scenario after scenario where Nick begged Jenny’s forgiveness and told her he simply couldn’t marry her. He didn’t love her. It was a mistake.
Rory had ceased asking herself why it mattered so much. All she knew was that she had deep unresolved feelings about men in general and Nick in particular. Did that mean she loved him? That she wanted to be in Jenny’s place? She didn’t think so. She hoped not. It was certainly too late now anyway.
Her gaze followed the path of the gully beneath the bridge as she tried to ignore the misery that had crowded into her heart. A year after Ryan, she still felt leery and distrustful of men. Except Nick. For some reason, though time and circumstance should have dimmed Rory’s memory of Nick’s kiss, it still haunted her thoughts, and seemed more tangible now than it had been when it happened.
Was that merely because it was safe to feel twinges of passion for a man she couldn’t have?
“There you are,” a familiar voice drawled.
Rory didn’t have to glance around to know it was Nick. She heard the sound of his shoes on the bridge, felt him rest his elbows next to hers on the rail.
“Shouldn’t you be with the wedding party?” she asked.
“You’re part of it, too.”
Oh, yes. What a joke. Jenny’s bridesmaid, when Jenny would have preferred Rory was blasted from the planet. But Jenny put up with Rory for Nick, and Rory dutifully played her part as well. Neither woman could really stand the other.
“Hey, Nick!” a voice called. Jenny’s brother, camera in hand, waved at them. “Come on over here.”
Rory protested when Nick grabbed her hand, but he quelled her with a look. She followed, nearly ripping the slit in her blue crêpe gown as she stumbled behind his ground-devouring strides.
All the bridesmaids, ushers and other members of the wedding party were in a semicircle around Jenny. Glowing, Nick’s parents stood to one side; Jenny’s mother fluttered anxiously on the other. Only Rory and Nick were missing.
Nick let her go and she took her place beside Kim and Allison, two other Piper Point High cheerleaders. The camera flashed. Flash. Flash. Flash. More pictures.
The group broke up and everyone went inside. Champagne poured. A few glasses were downed and Rory started to feel dizzy. She wanted to escape. Before she could, however, Nick caught her around the waist, dragging her onto the dance floor. His face was covered with lipstick marks.
“Aren’t you even going to kiss the groom?” he demanded, half-drunk with delight.
Rory narrowed her eyes at him. “Oh, yeah. That’s what I want to do.”
“Then, c’mere…” he murmured, ignoring her. He bent down and kissed her loudly on the lips. Flash. The photographer caught them at just the right moment.
They danced together, not well, since Rory had never focused her energy on anything other than school. Nick couldn’t have cared less. He was higher than the flag that drifted lazily from the spire above the clubhouse.
The afternoon changed into evening. Rory tried to escape half a dozen times. Tiny white lights, twisted around the upper balconies wrought-iron rail, glowed like fireflies as she made one last attempt to find a few moments alone.
But Nick, ever dogged, found her. He was calmer, quieter, more tired. It was long past the time he and Jenny should have left.
Rory folded her arms across her chest. “What are you still doing here?”
“We’re leaving. Jenny’s saying a few goodbyes. So am I.”
Years afterward Rory would wonder if he meant to sound so final. His quiet words pounded like a club, hurting way down deep in a secret place that Rory had kept well hidden, even from herself. He was shutting a door on all they’d shared. Rory, his “sister”, was being cast aside.
“Then goodbye,” she said lightly, fighting back the tears gathering silently in the corners of her eyes.
“We’ll keep in touch. Pinkie swear.”
She didn’t believe him. Nevertheless, she held up her little finger, and his hooked through it. Then Nick’s arms suddenly surrounded her. He didn’t see her distress, and she would have ducked her head, but his lips found hers. He kissed her again, this time with the kind of bittersweet passion that made her heart ache. Rory responded woodenly, afraid he would discern her feelings if she let go too much. Surfacing, she pushed lightly at his chest and took a step back. “Go be a husband.”
“Goodbye, Rory.” He stared at her a long, long time.
Smiling weakly, she gave him a jaunty salute. It was over. All over. The words “I love you” flitted across her mind but were left unspoken.
It was the poignant end to a beautiful friendship.
DEAR DIARY — NANCY BUSH
Chapter Four
Jacobson & Kern
Spring
Tuesday: 10:00 meeting with owners about possible buyout.
Wednesday: fundraiser plans for Children’s Hospital—9:00 a.m. sharp. Decide on personal donation.
Return Nick Shard’s call… if you have the nerve.
The notes stared at Rory. Scratched out in her own handwriting, they seemed to have acquired a personality of their own. Nick. Rory smiled in disbelief. Apart from an occasional email, she hadn’t heard from him in years. Years. She could scarcely believe that he’d actually called her.
Rory drummed her fingers on the desk, then snatched up her desk phone receiver. She could count her heartbeats, they were suddenly so loud in her ears, but before she had time to wonder at herself, his voicemail came on and she was saved from talking to him.
Now, she re-listened to the message he’d left her. He’d called her work number after hours last night instead of her home phone. She’d been the last person on the planet to get a cell phone, so Nick didn’t have that number.
“Hey, Rory,” Nick’s disembodied voice said. “I’ve been… thinking about you. Give me a call?” And then he left his number. She absentmindedly replaced the phone in its cradle.
Thinking about you…
Glancing at the time, Rory pushed back her chair and paced around the office, stopping to stare out her window, twenty-two floors above Seattle. In a few minutes she had to attend a meeting with Mr. Jacobson and Mr. Kern, the co-owners of Jacobson & Kern, the investment company where she worked, to find out their latest decision about selling the firm. Both men were in their eighties, had no children or other heirs and were interested in selling lock, stock and barrel. They’d weathered the ups and downs of the economy and had emerged fairly unscathed through this latest recession, which had only burnished their already sterling reputation in the Seattle financial circles. To date, they hadn’t accepted any lucrative offers to sell from businessman who somehow failed to meet their high expectations. A pending buyout had hovered like a pall for years, but so far the two men had stubbornly refused to sell, though the employees were called into meetings about twice a year to be formally told that everything was business as usual.
While Rory watched the traffic, her mind moved from the upcoming meeting back to Nick’s message. She hadn’t heard from him in what? Five years? Six? The last time he’d phoned had been during the worst of his divorce and not long after his father’s death. It had been a rushed conversation, leaving more unsaid than said. Then he up and moved from Seattle to San Francisco before Rory even had a chance to commiserate. That was at least six years ago. Actually probably closer to seven. Rory had written him several emails during that time, but he never responded. She’d been right to think their friendship had ended with his marriage. Even his divorce hadn’t resurrected it.
Her phone buzzed imperatively. “Don Tisdale’s just come from Mr. Kern’s office and he’s moving fast toward your office,” Pamela, the floor receptionist, revealed in an undertone on the intercom.
Rory’s lips twisted. “I’m ready,” she said.
“Five, four, three, two—”
The door to her office blew open. Don Tisdale, immaculate in a three-piece dark pinstripe suit, charged forward, his normally perfect, plastered-down, brown hair frayed and standing on end.
“Bingo,” Pamela murmured and clicked off.
“I just talked with Mr. Kern,” Don began without preamble. “They sold!”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, Jacobson & Kern. They sold the company!”
“No.” Rory was astounded. “They couldn’t have. We would have known about it before.”
“That’s what I said,” Don sputtered. “After all the rumors about this person or that person, or this company or that company… I just never believed they’d go through with it.” Don was beside himself. “They signed the papers last night.”
Rory sank down into her desk chair, her mind racing. Don had been with Jacobson & Kern for years; Rory since out of college. Neither was eager to have new employers, nor did they want
to beat the street for an equitable position with another firm.
“I guess this isn’t really a surprise,” she said slowly.
He made a strangled sound. “Yes, it is. The whole damn company’s been pulled out from under us!”
“We’re still employed.”
His face turned so red he looked as if he were about to burst a blood vessel. “But for how long? In this economy? We might as well kiss our asses goodbye.”
Rory remained calm. Over the ten years she and Don had worked together, she’d gotten used to his tantrums and outbursts. “Whoever’s bought us out will look at our work records and make their decision on that. There’s no reason to get hysterical.”
“Easy for you to say,” Don muttered, flinging himself into a chair. “You look great on paper.”
Rory ignored him. Yes, her ten years as an investment advisor had awarded her a nice job in an enviable career. She did her job well. Not remarkably, perhaps, but soundly. People liked her. They trusted her. She was calm and knowledgeable. Trustworthy. Dependable. Good old Rory Camden.
Nick had once told her she possessed an adventurous spirit. No way. She was successful and happy and it all came from doing the job right. Period.
“Do you know who bought us out?” she asked.
Don gave her a strange look. “You don’t have to play coy with me, Rory. Really.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You know who it is.”
She stared at him, baffled. “Sorry, Don. I’m in the dark.”
“Well, he called you didn’t he? I saw the note on your desk earlier.”
A haunting sense of awareness swept through Rory. “Nick Shard has bought Jacobson & Kern?” she asked, her voice sounding strange and far away. She started to laugh, at first in small chuckle, then with huge gasps of air until her eyes burned with tears.
“What’s so damned funny?” Don demanded.
She shook her head, unable to answer. For several hours she’d thought… what? That Nick was about to make a reappearance in her life? That he was lonely and longed for the friendship they’d once shared? That he’d wanted plain old Rory? How unbelievably ridiculous. He’d merely bought another investment company. It just happened to be the one she worked for.