The wine-and-black tweed carpeting muffled his footsteps as he made his way to Dylan’s office. He heard the sound of Darlene’s light laughter, the baritone of Dylan’s voice. But as he came to Dylan’s office and pushed open the ajar door, he felt like an intruder into a Sunday-afternoon matinee. Dylan was in his office, but he wasn’t working. He was sitting in his oversized leather chair with Darlene on his lap! Darlene’s hair was mussed, her lipstick smeared, and the buttons of her blouse were open. They both started like guilty teenagers when they saw him.
Adam could have backed out. He could have mumbled an excuse and left. He could have pretended he didn’t see what he saw. But he liked Darlene. She was a good secretary, and he didn’t want to lose her. If Dylan was just fooling around…
“Have I interrupted something?” he asked, with the nonchalance that widened both pairs of eyes that were on him.
As Darlene tried to scramble away from Dylan’s lap, the CFO kept her still. “Don’t go anywhere,” he mumbled to her as he pulled her blouse together and held the material in his fist. “Adam, if you could give us a minute,” Dylan said in a patient tone.
“I think you need more than a minute for what you were into. At least I hope so.”
A dark flush crept up Dylan’s neck. “This isn’t what you think.”
Now Darlene managed to hike herself off Dylan’s lap, quickly buttoned the buttons of her yellow cotton shirt, then shakily ran a hand through her brown hair. Her face had paled.
Squaring her shoulders, she said to Adam, “Mr. Bartlett, I…I’m sorry you found me in this unprofessional…position. I like working for you, and I promise if you keep me on, it won’t happen again.”
Dylan was out of his chair in a shot. “What do you mean it won’t happen again? We’re dating. Of course it’s going to happen again.”
Adam had never seen his friend quite so rattled. “Darlene, this is Sunday. Your time’s your own. I’m not going to fire you. But maybe you could give me a few minutes with Dylan?”
Avoiding Adam’s gaze, as well as Dylan’s, she skittered to the door. “I’ll be out at my desk.”
“Darlene,” Dylan commanded, as if he didn’t want her to leave.
She said again, “I’ll be at my desk.”
The silence that enveloped the office had never been quite so tense between the two friends. Finally Adam broke it. “Do you think that’s wise?”
“Don’t act like a big brother,” Dylan muttered. “And don’t talk to me about wise, when you have your high school sweetheart living at the ranch and you know she’ll be history again in a couple of months.”
Uh-oh. Dylan was on the offensive. For a guy who was usually placid, he seemed undeniably unnerved. Adam didn’t take the bait. “Darlene’s a nice woman, Dylan. I’d hate to see her get hurt. She’s the one who might be too uncomfortable staying here if you decide Natalie fits your lifestyle better.”
“Natalie’s gone. She and I were never…compatible.”
“And you and Darlene are?”
“It might not look like it, but yes, we are. We both went to parochial school.”
Adam raised a brow.
Dylan’s hand slashed through the air defensively. “It impacted her more than it impacted me, but the point is we have similar backgrounds. She has as much energy as I do. She’s a night owl who can get up at 5:00 a.m. if she has to. She’s terrific fun. When I talked to her about the letters, she offered to resign. You were right. She was having a problem with them because she was trying to make them perfect. She admitted she liked me.”
Adam smiled at the surprise in Dylan’s voice. “You’re a likeable guy.”
Dylan shook his head. “I mean it, Adam. She likes me for me, not because I’m CFO of this company, not because I drive a Jaguar, and not because I can fly her to Hawaii for the weekend and the cost won’t dent my bank account. We’ve seen each other almost every night for the past week, and all she wants to do is cuddle in front of the TV and eat popcorn with me.”
Adam gave Dylan a skeptical look.
“As opposed to having dinner in a five-star restaurant,” Dylan explained. “That’s what I like about her. No pretense. No edge. And I find that I like staying in with her.”
That statement, above all others, impacted Adam. He knew Darlene was a sincere, honest, hardworking young woman. It seemed as if she’d gotten to his partner in a big way.
“Are you telling me this is serious?”
“More serious than I’ve ever been.”
“Maybe she should just work as my secretary and you should hire another one. Then, if things don’t work out, it might not be so awkward.”
“I’d rather keep her as our secretary and think that things will work out. Where’s your optimism, Adam?”
Adam looked away from his friend and out into the gray sky. “My optimism is in a nosedive right now.”
“Things not working out with trying to be ‘just friends’ with the former lover?”
Dylan was entirely too perceptive. Adam wasn’t about to spill his guts, or admit how unsettled he was about Leigh and everything else that had happened. “This is where I leave.” He moved toward the door.
“You can poke into my life, but I can’t poke into yours?”
“That sounds like a good policy,” Adam joked.
Dylan shook his head. “One of these days, you’re going to realize that all of those safety fences you’ve built around yourself don’t do one bit of good. They might keep people out, but they don’t prevent you from feeling what goes on inside.”
“You’ve missed your calling. You should host a talk show.”
“And you, my friend, need to get honest with yourself.”
Unsure of exactly what Dylan meant, Adam didn’t respond. He left Dylan’s office, crossed to his and shut the door. The computer beckoned to him, and he liked the familiarity of it. Right now, he liked the idea of losing himself in cyberspace and shutting everything else out.
If Adam thought he could lose himself in cyberspace, three hours later he knew he couldn’t. He’d skipped from one project to another all afternoon. None of them kept his attention for very long. All of his thoughts kept coming back to Leigh and Mark and Jared Cambry.
Dylan had stopped in an hour ago and said he and Darlene were leaving. Now, in the silent office building, Adam heard a sound that was unusual for this time of year. The grumble of thunder. Rain was part and parcel of Portland’s charm. Once in a while, storms rolled in from the mountains, but that was rare for the end of March. Weather patterns had seemed to change over the past few years, though.
Staring out the window, he thought he saw a flash of lightning. Damn! And Thunder was out in the corral. He didn’t like the idea of the horse getting spooked. With the door of his stall open, he could go inside. But would he?
Adam shook his head. Sometimes animals didn’t know what was good for them any better than humans did.
What was good for him? Adam wondered. He simply didn’t know anymore.
Fifteen minutes later, flashes of lightning occurred more often as Adam drove home, his foot heavy on the accelerator. Darkness had fallen, and rain was pouring down by the time he had parked in the garage. Lights were turned on in the house, but he couldn’t find Leigh anywhere. Lightning cracked, sounding as if it had hit something close by, then thunder rolled over the dining room skylight, threatening and loud. Leigh’s car was in the driveway. Going to the foyer closet, he found her jacket missing. She wouldn’t have gone to the barn. She wouldn’t have…
Without even thinking about stopping to grab his coat, Adam raced outside, across the yard and lane to the corral. He couldn’t believe his eyes. Under the forceful white glare of the barn’s floodlight, he could see Leigh had her hood up, buttoned around her face, and was carrying a lead rope in her hand as she made her way toward Thunder. The stallion stood at the far end of the corral under the shelter of two maple trees. Before Adam could move, Leigh was hurrying across the corral. All he
could think about was the day Delia had opened the gate…had stepped inside—
Lightning seemed to strike a nearby fence. Great rolls of thunder boomed as Leigh approached the horse. Thunder reared up, and Adam was moving over the fence in a leap, then proceeding at a dead run across the corral. Lightning flashed as Adam relived the day when he was seven—every emotion, every fear, every regret. The memories seemed so terrifyingly real that when he peered through the rain and saw Leigh was out of harm’s way, he almost couldn’t believe it.
Thunder reared up again, and Adam was afraid she wouldn’t be as lucky the second time…afraid he couldn’t reach her before the unthinkable happened.
Unaware of anything but what she was doing, Leigh waited until Thunder was on all four hooves again, then she grabbed his halter, hooking on the lead.
Her hood slipped from her head, and rain washed down over her hair as lightning lit up the sky a third time.
Adam reached her and yanked the lead rope from her hand. “What the hell are you doing out here?” he yelled. “Get into the barn. Get away from a horse that could trample you down with one hoof.”
“I couldn’t leave him out here.”
“Get into the barn!” he commanded again and waited until she ran toward the shelter. Then he patted Thunder’s neck and ran with the horse into his stall.
Leigh was standing on the inside walkway, and Adam didn’t say a word as he unhooked the lead, closed the outside stall entrance and climbed over the fence, landing beside her. Adrenaline was still rushing through him, hard and fast.
He was so furious with her, language didn’t come easily. “You could have been killed.” The words sounded gritty and harsh. He was soaked and she wasn’t much better, but he didn’t care about that right now.
“I know how much he means to you,” she said, her eyes huge. “I didn’t want anything to happen to him. When the storm turned severe, I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know when you’d be home because you didn’t tell me. You didn’t call.”
He hadn’t told her because he hadn’t known. He hadn’t called because he hadn’t known what to say to her. Now all he could say again was, “You could have gotten yourself killed.”
Swiping drops of rain from her face, she looked angry, too, as she returned, “People who care do things because they’re right, no matter what the risk.”
“Do what’s right? You don’t want to do what’s right, Leigh. You want to do what’s convenient. You don’t want to do what’s right, you want to hang on to a dream that’s as old as you are. Is that right?”
She took a shaky breath. “It is for me. Don’t you see this is exactly what I was trying to avoid ten years ago when I wrote you that note? Don’t you see it would have been that much harder if we had stayed together?”
“So you took the easy way out? No courage or risk there.” He shook his head, knowing what he had to say, but not wanting to say it. He didn’t want her to leave, but she was going to go anyway. “You’re the one who broke us apart once before, and you’re the one who’s going to do it again. So maybe we should both take the easy way out. We might as well just end this now.”
He spotted the quick glitter of tears before Leigh turned away. He saw the quiver of her chin right before she ran out of the barn.
But he didn’t go after her. There was no reason to. She had made up her mind ten years ago, and he was old news. They were old news.
Going to the tack room, he picked up a towel to wipe down Thunder, denying the pain in his heart, the tightness in his throat and the burning behind his eyes.
Chapter Fourteen
It was seven o’clock Monday morning when the phone rang. Leigh was getting dressed, trying to find something in her suitcase on the sofa that didn’t need to be ironed. Since her mother was in the shower, she ran for the phone in the kitchen, using every bit of energy she had. She hadn’t slept all night. She missed Adam more than she could say. Everything that had happened with Thunder and afterward had plagued her throughout the night as she’d rolled it all over in her head.
Now she tried to shake herself awake as she picked up the phone, hoping desperately it was Adam. Maybe they could work things out. Maybe she could fly to Portland and he could fly to Cleveland. Maybe the hours wouldn’t be as grueling as she imagined. Maybe—
The phone rang insistently again and she picked it up. “Hello.”
“Miss Peters? It’s Jared Cambry.”
She tried to find her professional voice. “Hello, Mr. Cambry.”
“I didn’t know if you’d be at this number or not. I couldn’t reach either of the numbers you gave me, and when I called information, they listed this one for your mother.”
“Yes, I’m sorry I didn’t call you with the new number. There was a fire at our apartment and I…I was staying somewhere else for a while. I lost my cell phone in the fire and haven’t gotten another one yet. What can I do for you?”
“I have a request. I was speaking to Mr. Seneft, the producer for Breaking News. He told me he spoke to you and Adam.”
“Yes, he did. Adam turned down the interview.”
“Yes, I know that. This morning I’m going to try to convince him to change his mind. But even if he doesn’t, I’d like you to take part. Marietta Watson will be away next week. She won’t be able to explain the transplant process on air. We’d also like to promote the donor registry. You’re knowledgeable about both of those things. I wondered if you’d consider doing the interview.”
“Adam was concerned everything would be sensationalized.”
“I know. The producer told me that. But I have Seneft’s guarantee that everything will go exactly as we script it. This won’t be tabloid news, Miss Peters. You’ll have a real chance to get the word out about the good work that’s being done. What do you say?”
“Do you think you can convince Adam to do the interview?”
There was silence on the other end of the line for a few seconds. “I don’t know. I haven’t handled very well anything else where he’s concerned lately.”
“You’ve been worried about Mark.”
“Yes, I have. But Danielle pointed out a few things to me, and I’m going to see Adam this morning. Will you do the interview even if he doesn’t?”
She thought about her work in oncology…the children and what she believed in. “Yes, I’ll do it. Just tell me where and when.”
A few minutes later when she hung up the phone, her mother came out of the bedroom, dressed for her day. “Before you go to Cleveland, you should think about buying a couple of suits on sale. They’re professional, and you might need them. I’ve also gotten a box together of spare products—shampoos, lotions, that kind of thing.”
When she’d come home last night with her suitcase, Leigh’s mother hadn’t said a word. She’d accepted her back as if it had been inevitable. Adam’s name hadn’t been spoken. Now Leigh knew it had to be. In fact—
Ever since she’d moved into her new apartment, her mother had been planning and buying and worrying about everything Leigh should take to Cleveland…about her schedule when she was there…about her trip home over the Christmas holidays if she could get away. For the past few weeks as well as most of the night, Leigh had thought about the differences between being a nurse and a doctor. She’d thought about how these days doctors had little time with their patients. What she enjoyed most was working with patients—comforting them, informing them, being a friend to them. The more she’d thought about what Adam had said, about her dream being as old as she was, about becoming a doctor being an ambition of her mother’s, all of it had rung true.
She’d admitted to herself she was falling in love with Adam again. What she hadn’t admitted was that ten years ago she had loved him, and she loved him still.
Was accepting the scholarship and becoming a doctor the easy way out? It had seemed ludicrous. Yet it made sense, too. Why couldn’t she trade one dream for another? Why couldn’t she do the work she loved and have a life with
Adam? Maybe he wouldn’t still want her. Maybe she’d destroyed their chance to have a future by turning her back on him again.
“Leigh? Did you hear what I said?”
“About the lotion and the shampoo?”
“No. About the suits. Ever since last night you’ve been so distracted. Who was that on the phone so early? Was it Adam?”
Her mother sounded horrified at the thought, and Leigh had to put a stop to that. She had to put a stop to a lot of things.
“No. It was Jared Cambry. Breaking News is going to do a story about his family and finding Adam and the transplant. He wants me to be part of the interview.”
“Do you think it’s wise to get involved with a TV production?”
Taking a deep breath, Leigh said, “I’m going to do it because Jared Cambry’s story is an important one. It will give me a chance to talk about the transplant program.”
“Well, if you think that’s best. I suppose Adam will be a part of this interview?”
“I’m not sure he will be. I’m hoping he will because I have a few things I need to tell him. I left Cedar Run last night when I shouldn’t have. We had an argument—”
“About what? Did he ask you to stay here? Did he ask you to give up your scholarship?”
“No, Mom, he didn’t. And now I realize why. He wants my dreams to be my own dreams. He doesn’t want to interfere with what I really want. Just like I haven’t interfered with what you really want.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Ten years ago Adam and I were young. I accepted your advice and your guidance. Maybe I didn’t know what I truly wanted then. Or maybe romance looked bigger than life. But you got through to me, and I broke up with him. Now I know I shouldn’t have.”
Claire looked shocked. “Of course you should have. You’re a nurse now, and on your way.”
Take A Chance On Me (Logan's Legacy) Page 18