by Sandra Brown
“Are you all right?”
She only nodded.
He stood there, feeling guilty, although he didn’t know why. He felt like the time Ellie had caught him stealing a ten-dollar bill from her wallet and then had insisted that he keep it. He opened his mouth to say something, called it back, then finally said, “Look, you told me to—”
“I’m fine, Mr. Burkett.” She lowered her arm and opened her eyes, but she didn’t look in his direction. “It betters my chances to conceive if I lie here for a half hour or so. That’s all.”
“Oh. So, you’re okay?”
“Yes.”
She didn’t thank him. It sure as hell seemed inappropriate to thank her.
She was pulling on her suit jacket when she walked into the living room. Seeing him on the sofa, she stopped, shocked to find him still there. Gauging by her expression, she wasn’t at all happy about it, either. She shoved her arm into the sleeve and wrestled the jacket into place. “Why didn’t you leave?”
He stood up. “I—”
“You should be gone by now.”
“I—”
“You shouldn’t have waited, Mr. Burkett.” Her voice sounded like tearing cloth. She was either mad as hell or on the edge of hysteria. He couldn’t be sure which, but this was the most emotion he’d ever seen from her. Her cheeks were red. The calm, cool, and collected lady of the manor was about to lose it. “Why didn’t you just go?”
Quietly he said, “Your car has mine blocked in.”
In an instant, her posture went from rigid to limp. She released her breath slowly, touched her forehead with the tips of her fingers, then her flaming cheek with the backs of them, looked embarrassed. “Oh.”
“I would have moved it myself, but you had the keys.”
He gestured toward her handbag. She looked down where it hung at her side. “Right.” Then, changing back into the got-it-together businesswoman persona, she said, “I apologize for holding you up.”
“No problem.”
“You should have come and told me.”
“If it helps to keep lying down after…you know…I didn’t mind waiting awhile. The whole point of this is to get you pregnant.”
She nodded, then consulted her wristwatch. “I must go or I’m going to be late for a meeting. Will you reset the thermostat, please?”
“Sure.”
“Just pull the door closed after you. It will lock. I’ll be in touch, one way or the other.”
She couldn’t get out of there fast enough, and her haste to leave made him feel ornery. He had decided he wasn’t going to say anything. If he was smart, he wouldn’t.
But.
He said, “I wondered why you would go along with this, Mrs. Speakman.”
Already halfway through the entry, she halted, turned, looked at him. “You know why, Mr. Burkett. I want a child.”
“But this?” He tapped his fly, then motioned toward her middle. The gesture caused a frisson in her cool bearing. Some of the high color came back into her cheeks. He went to her, stopping only a few steps away. “After meeting both of you, I could almost understand your husband.”
“Your understanding isn’t important to us. Or necessary.”
“Okay. Say I wanted to understand for my own peace of mind. Your husband is eccentric, maybe even altogether crazy, but looking at this child and heir thing from his point of view, from a rich man’s point of view, I could sorta get it. Sorta.” He shook his head, frowning with perplexity. “But you, I just couldn’t figure.”
“So don’t bother trying.”
He took another step closer, crowding her, making her uncomfortable, wanting to because in the bedroom she had made him feel like a vandal ravaging the village virgin. “Why, I asked myself, would you agree to making a baby this way?” His eyes held hers. He lowered his voice. “And now I know.”
Coldly, she said, “Now?”
“Now that I know why your husband is in that wheelchair.”
I can do this, Laura asserted to herself as she entered the conference room. Everyone else had assembled. She moved to the head of the table. “Sorry I’m late.”
“We promise not to tell Foster,” one of the department heads quipped.
“Thank you. We all know that punctuality is a religion to him.”
“Long lunch?” someone teased.
Her hand faltered just a bit as she reached for the water carafe. “No, just an errand that took longer than I anticipated.”
The errand hadn’t taken that long. Her recovery from it had. She wondered how women who had extramarital affairs in the middle of the day completed their afternoons with any level of composure. She’d been certain that when she returned to her office, her assistant, Kay, would look at her with accusation and say, “You’ve just had sex.”
But apparently there were no visible signs of how she’d spent her lunch hour. Kay had treated her as she always did, efficiently reminding her of the meeting as she handed her a stack of phone messages in the order of their priority.
To everyone else, this was any ordinary Monday. To Foster, it was a day of monumental importance. For her, one of substantial ambiguity. Foster was spending the day at home. She didn’t have that luxury. She had to face this assembly of corporate heads while, less than an hour ago, she’d had sex with a stranger.
Yes, it was strictly for the purpose of procreation, and, yes, she’d done it with her husband’s blessing, and, yes, for the sake of their future together she could do it again until they were successful. She would do it.
She sipped from her water glass, then smiled down the length of the conference table. “Who’s up first?”
“Me,” said the man in charge of baggage handling. “Unfortunately, we’ve had an incident in Austin. Foster isn’t going to like it.”
Foster was still very much a presence, but lately she had been his proxy for some of the executive meetings. The daily commute to the office, short as it was and with Manuelo along to facilitate it, had proved to be too much. So Foster had limited his days in the office to two per week. On days when it was mandatory for the department heads to meet, Laura presided, then in the evening she would give him a detailed recounting of what had been discussed.
In only a few short years she’d gone from asking passengers “Coffee or tea?” to serving as the CEO’s understudy. When Foster had hired her as Hazel Cooper’s replacement, her transition into management had gone smoothly. For years, she had been preparing herself for such a position. It was what she had aspired to and, having been given the opportunity, she felt confident she could meet the challenges.
But when her job description suddenly expanded to include dealing with a disabled husband as well as assuming many of his corporate responsibilities, the transition wasn’t quite so seamless. Up until that point in her life, she’d been resistant to delegating any responsibility. Now she had no choice. Minor and routine jobs that she had formerly insisted on doing herself, she began assigning to subordinates.
Even so, the largest share of the workload remained hers. Nor could the tasks she did for Foster be turned over to someone else. Only she could do them because Foster demanded they be done in a particular order and in a particular way, his particular way, which was a way far more meticulous than anyone else’s. His insistence on perfection put a strain on her time.
But no matter how difficult and demanding her schedule became, she refused to buckle under. Quitting, or even slacking off, wasn’t an option. She was doing what must be done, and she would continue to.
However, she had begun to fear the impact motherhood would have on the careful balance she was maintaining. How could she possibly be a full-time mother, which she wanted to be, without detracting from her duties as wife, department head, and stand-in CEO? The prospect of juggling that additional responsibility was daunting. But if—when—she was forced to confront it, she would.
At present there were other matters demanding her attention, such as this one involving baggage ha
ndling. “What kind of incident?” she asked that department head.
“The worst. Stolen bags.”
“You’re right. Foster isn’t going to like it. Details?”
The explanation was lengthy and involved, and generated discussion around the table. Laura tried to concentrate on what was being said, but her mind wandered. Her ability to focus simply wasn’t there. She’d left it behind in that small, tidy house on Windsor Street, along with her dignity.
Why, I asked myself, would you agree to making a baby this way?
“Laura?”
She yanked her mind back to the business at hand. Everyone was looking at her, and she wondered how many times she’d been addressed before she realized it. “I’m sorry. My mind drifted for a moment.”
The question was repeated. Laura answered. The meeting continued. While she wasn’t wholly attuned, she wasn’t caught again being inattentive. But as soon as there was a convenient point to adjourn, she did so. “We’ll pick up the rest at the next meeting, okay? I’ve got a killer schedule this afternoon.”
As the others filed out, no one seemed especially curious about her absentmindedness or abrupt adjournment. Joe McDonald did stop on his way to the door. “Hard day?”
“Harder than most.”
“Maybe this will cheer you up.” From behind his back, he produced a large white envelope and, with a flourish, laid it on the table in front of her. “Ta-da!”
“What’s this?”
“Your baby.”
“My what?”
“Uh…” Obviously taken aback by her stunned reaction, he said, “What I mean is, you’ve been waiting a long time for it. Check it out.”
Having recovered from his choice of words, she opened the envelope and slid the contents onto the table. It was an eleven-by-fourteen artist’s rendering of a SunSouth jet with a new and distinctive logo on the fuselage.
“Oh, my God!” Laura exclaimed. “This looks great, Joe! Truly great!”
He hooked his thumbs into his suspenders. “I thought you’d like it.”
“Like it?” she said, unable to contain her excitement. “I love it.” She ran her finger over the artwork as she read the words printed on the airplane. “SunSouth Select.”
Joe beamed. “As I said, your baby.”
CHAPTER
10
JOE LEFT HER, AND LAURA DECIDED TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THE solitude in the conference room. She remained seated in the tall leather chair at the head of the table—the one in which Foster had sat the first time she saw him—and looked again at the four-color rendering of the sleek jet.
SunSouth Select was a concept that she’d been working on for more than a year. It was a service-oriented innovation for the business traveler that she hoped to implement before SunSouth’s competitors did something similar. She wanted SunSouth to be the initiator, not an imitator.
Joe seemed surprised that Foster hadn’t yet seen the syllabus. Laura had worked on it for months, and once it was done, Joe had assumed she would take it straight to Foster. “No,” she told him. “I want SunSouth Select to be a surprise. I want to present it to him as a complete package.”
“You want to have all your ducks in a row.”
“Exactly. And I’m still waiting on some market analyses and cost projections. When they’re ready and I’ve had a chance to study them, I’ll lay out the entire plan for him.”
This was uncustomary. Always before, she and Foster had worked in tandem. One rarely made a move without the other knowing about it. While it was true that she wanted to surprise him with a kit-and-caboodle proposal, it was also true that, when she did, she wanted his undivided attention. She hadn’t had that in months. He’d been preoccupied with finding the right man to sire their child.
He thought of little else, talked of little else. Every conversation included at least one reference to a child and its conception. That was the prevailing issue of their lives now. If she became pregnant, she knew that Foster would become an expert on prenatal care, diet, exercise. He would spend hours researching and committing to memory every aspect of pregnancy. No doubt he would chart their child’s development on a daily basis.
He had once been quoted in Business Week as saying that his airline’s success was in large part due to his OCD—obsessive-compulsive disorder. The interviewer thought he was joking. He wasn’t.
He had been diagnosed as an adolescent, although he had exhibited the symptoms in early childhood. His parents had thought his compulsions went hand in glove with his brilliant mind and were nothing to worry about. But when those compulsions began to interfere with normal function and everyday life, his parents had sought psychiatric help.
Foster was put on medication to keep the disorder under control. He wasn’t “healed,” however, and so in a very real sense his obsessiveness was indeed responsible for his fanatic attention to detail, and therefore for SunSouth’s extraordinary success.
Unless the weather was prohibitive, late arrivals and departures were not tolerated at SunSouth Airlines.
Each packet of peanuts contained exactly the same number. One too few, the customer was cheated. One too many cost the airline money.
Flight attendants and pilots did not alter their uniforms, not even by wearing nonregulation cuff links or an unapproved shade of panty hose.
If he’d had less charisma, Foster’s obsessiveness would have incited mutiny by subordinates. But he was so personally disarming that it was indulged. Most regarded it with amusement instead of impatience. He was even teased about it. It was looked upon as an idiosyncrasy, an endearing one at that. And no one, not even his sternest critics, could argue with his success.
But Laura had a different perspective on Foster’s OCD because she lived with it. She covered for him to keep it less noticeable to colleagues. Only she knew how much it governed his life. Increasingly so, it seemed. His compulsions were an integral part of him. Because she loved him, she accepted and tolerated them. But doing so had once been easier. Before.
Laura got up and walked to the window, rubbing her arms to ward off the chill of the air-conditioning. She twirled the wand on the blinds and looked through the slats at the traffic speeding along the expressway. A SunSouth jet, only minutes into its flight, was banking toward the west. The 3:45 to Denver, she thought automatically.
She watched the jet as it climbed, the sun reflecting off its silver fuselage, hurting her eyes when the shaft of light pierced them. But then she realized that her eyes stung with the need to cry. Resting her head against the window frame, she closed her eyes tightly, squeezing out tears. She whispered, “I want my life back.”
Foster had waited one year after Elaine’s death before asking Laura out. Initially Laura had misinterpreted the invitation, believing he had invited her to attend a black-tie charity event with him for some business purpose. But when several dozen white roses were delivered to her apartment in advance of his picking her up, she began to think perhaps there was more to it. Undeniably, the thought of that made her feel bubbly on the inside.
By the end of the evening there was no question that it had been a bona fide date. If Foster had asked any other executive—say, the CFO—to accompany him, he wouldn’t have taken hold of both his hands and kissed his cheek good night.
Their evenings out became more frequent. There were dinners together after work, sailing on area lakes on Saturday afternoons, and Sunday suppers, which she cooked at her place. She attended his polo matches, and he had no compunction about kissing her in front of his teammates after a victory. She became his regular date to private dinner parties and public events. She stopped accepting other dates, even invitations from her tennis buddy, who began teasing her about her new beau.
She couldn’t apply such a frivolous moniker to Foster Speakman, but away from the office he acted like one. The more time they spent alone together, the less chaste their embraces became. She had started devoting a lot of thought to him, his smile, his eyes, his mannerisms. She
found herself engaging in gauzy daydreams about him unlike any she’d had about other men, not even in adolescence. She’d always enjoyed an active social life. She’d had a generous number of boyfriends, and enough lovers to be confident of her allure, but not so many that she need be embarrassed by the number.
But among them there were no standouts, no disappointing heartbreaks, or near-miss commitments. Because every romantic relationship she’d ever had, from the first car date to the last man she’d slept with, had been qualified. It could not interfere with her ambition.
Which now placed her in a real conundrum with Foster. Because of the professional implications, neither acknowledged their increasing intimacy and longing for more. Their kissing and groping left them fevered and frustrated, but each was determined to preserve their working relationship.
One evening while they were cuddled on the sofa in her den, watching a movie on TV, he suddenly reached for the remote and turned it off. “Thank you,” she said. “I was finding it hard to get into, too.”
“I loved Elaine with all my heart, Laura.”
Recognizing the seriousness of his tone, she sat up and looked into his face. “Yes, you did. I know that.”
“If she had lived, I would have loved her forever.”
“I don’t doubt that.”
“I’ll always cherish her memory and the years we had together.”
None of this came as a surprise to Laura. She’d seen them together on numerous occasions following that first time at their home. It was obvious how deeply they had loved each other. Since Elaine’s death, Foster had honored her by establishing a foundation to raise money for leukemia research. He wasn’t just a mouthpiece with a checkbook, either, but a crusading advocate and hands-on fundraiser. In death, as in life, Elaine was a vital part of him.