Made for Me (Danielle Grant Book 1)

by Sarah Gerdes

  Danielle stood and came up behind him. Andre stiffened when she touched his back. “Not see you, for months?” he asked. “A meeting here or there, phone sex and converse through email? They aren’t stupid. All that can be tracked and recorded. You’d be fired anyway.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that,” she admitted.

  “And then you really expect to pick up where we left off months from now, just like that?”

  “Yes, that’s exactly what I thought. You’d mentioned not being able to see a life without me…”

  Andre turned around slowly, gripping her arms. “So much so that I was going to ask to meet your father over the August break. I was already looking forward to asking you to marry me when the time was right, which I would do right now…” his face went soft for a split second as his eyes filled with hope. “Will you marry me Danielle? If we are married, I won’t be your client any longer. We’ll be related and this whole problem becomes moot. No penalties, no liabilities, no repercussions. Just us, together.”

  Danielle couldn’t see as tears blurred her eyes. It was…overwhelming, exciting, shocking and…completely impossible. After such a short period of dating? Done under pressure so she could keep her job?

  Danielle put her arms around him, burying her head in his neck, wanting to make all her problems go away. Andre squeezed her hard.

  “Does that mean you accept?”

  She drew back, wiping her eyes. “No, I can’t. Not after only knowing each other three months…I mean, it’s been great and I am in love with you. But there is so much more to experience and talk about and live…In a few months we can talk about it…”

  The cold look in Andre’s eyes stopped her. He stepped back, and she felt a shiver. A pain as strong as anything she’d ever felt crossed her chest, drawing her shoulders in slightly. She searched his eyes, hoping for his heart to turn back towards her instead of away. It didn’t. There was no explaining. No reasoning.

  She barely had time to gulp down a sob before she turned away, picking up her coat from the couch. She walked quickly to the front door, tears already streaming down her face. When she turned back to him, he didn’t even bother to say goodbye to her. He’d already wiped her out of his life.

  CHAPTER 26

  Danielle barely made it to the elevator before she broke into sobs. She leaned against the wall, wishing it were a longer ride as she frantically searched for a tissue in her purse. She was still crying when the door opened and she turned slightly, just in case someone was waiting. Seeing it was clear, she entered the lobby, keeping her head down, holding her breath, walking as quickly as possible to the doors.

  “Danielle?” Oh no. Not now. Not here. She kept walking as though she didn’t hear the voice that called to her again. The rapid tapping of shoes made her quicken her pace. She was within 25 feet of the front door. Maybe he wouldn’t follow her out. “Danielle.” A firm touch on her shoulder slowed her down, but didn’t entirely stop her.

  “Let go, Lars,” she choked. She’d done what he wanted, what she knew she had to do, and she was devastated by Andre’s outright rejection. Lars didn’t let go and she gave her arm a tug, thankful the doorman was standing with his back to them.

  “No Danielle, I’m not going to release you. Look at me.” Danielle did slow to a stop, but kept her eyes closed. He responded by walking around her side, and she pivoted away, wiping at more tears. The black-smudged mascara look wasn’t good for anyone.

  “Have you been hurt? Are you alright?” Lars’ voice held both concern and anger, as though she might have been in physical danger. She kept her face turned away, but she did allow him to step closer to hear her words.

  “No Lars. I’m not alright,” her voice splitting on the syllable. “But we had a deal, remember?” she asked, unable to keep the hurt out of her voice. “And I always keep my deals.”

  The pressure on her arm lessened. “That was Andre?” Danielle nodded briefly.

  “I just want you to know that even after what I just did, Georgy may not keep us, and then you’ll have to sue me anyway.”

  “I’m sure he will be fine,” Lars said diplomatically. “And no, we won’t sue you.”

  “Can you please let me go?” she pleaded.

  “Was he unkind?” Lars asked protectively. Even in her daze, she got the distinct impression Lars would fire Georgy himself if he thought for an instant Andre had mistreated her.

  Danielle put her weight on one leg, covering her eyes with her hand. “Only if you count a marriage proposal as unkind.” She felt warm fingers on her hand, gently overcoming her attempt at resistance.

  “Look at me,” Lars softly requested.

  She shook her head. “I don’t want to.”

  “Fine. I’ll say it anyway. I have extraordinary respect for you. Few people, men or women, honor their word. It’s unbelievably rare. I know the other partners will be very appreciative.”

  This comment got her eyes to flutter open. “I don’t really care what the other partners think,” she told him honestly. His hand lingered on her arm, the pressure increasing slightly.

  “Then what about this? I’m very appreciative of what you just did. Is that meaningful to you?”

  Danielle inhaled, nodding, her lips trembling. “Please don’t tell anyone about the proposal. That’s private. If I learn you have told anyone I’ll quit.” Lars assured her he would keep it to himself. “I need to go,” she said, turning to the front doors.

  “Let me have my driver take you,” he offered, already pulling out his phone.

  “No, Lars, I need to drive home. But…thanks,” she said, taking a slow breath. She just needed another few hours of crying and then she’d start to heal.

  Lars reluctantly agreed. “Be safe, Danielle,” he said. Danielle went home, to the quiet and emptiness of her apartment and fell asleep with her head on a pillow wet from her tears.

  On Tuesday, Danielle kept her face glued to the monitors, leaving only to use the bathroom. At twelve, Glenda entered unannounced with a package in her hand.

  “I thought you could use this,” she said, placing the sack of food on her desk. Danielle looked up. The woman’s face was filled with compassion. Neither said a word about what had transpired, but Danielle surmised it was clear to everyone in the office.

  “Thanks for this,” Danielle said sincerely. Glenda’s bonus money was riding on Danielle staying, but Danielle instinctively knew Glenda was worried about much more than that. She cared for Danielle and knew she was in pain.

  Lars didn’t come by her office, nor did Ulrich. To her surprise, Johanne made a visit, his first ever.

  “So you’re going to be here longer than the others?” he asked her, a pensive look on his face.

  “Word gets around this place I see,” she said evenly.

  Johanne rolled his eyes upward then down to meet hers. “I told you women just don’t seem to last that long, but you’ve passed the first test, which is the client gauntlet. It gets easier after the first one.”

  Danielle wasn’t in a talkative mood, but she couldn’t help herself. “First one?”

  “Most of us single people have made the mistake. Get involved with a client, then be forced to make a decision. Like I said, most women don’t last because they choose to be with the man.”

  Danielle assessed him. “But you made a different choice then?”

  “Actually, I did,” he said laughing. “But in my case, my man elected to close down his account and go elsewhere. I ended up paying my commission checks for about seven months to make up for the lost revenue, but then I was in the clear.”

  Danielle blinked. She should have guessed. The clothes. The glasses. His complete disinterest in her—in any women that she could see.

  “Are you still together?”

  He nodded. “You’ll meet him at the next event, assuming you go.”

  Danielle told him she would be there. “I told Lars I’d quit if he made me bring someone. That’s an idiotic rule.”


  “Agreed. Don’t worry. If you need a dancing partner, we’ll take you on. I may not want to date women, but that doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate an attractive, smart one who can dance.”

  Danielle looked at him quizzically. “How do you know I can dance?”

  Johanne paused, a slight smile on his face. “I saw you and Andre at the club several times before he appeared in the office,” smiling at her wide eyes. “If it hadn’t had been for the events on the boat, you might have been able to go on for a while.” He’d known and had kept it to himself.

  “Thank you for letting us have the extra time,” she said sincerely. He gave her a wink, and she actually smiled back. The upside of the breakup was her numbers. They were above average, even for her. The only time she spent away from trading involved periodic email reviews from Lani or Stephen. She was kept abreast of new hires, reviewed and commented on the proposed logos and gave her opinions on the menu. Ulrich and Lars remained absent from her line of sight, her excursions outside her office few and far between.

  Friday night she took a long bath, then a sauna, finishing the night by watching the German channel until her eyes burned. Saturday she avoided the lake, going in the opposite direction, into the mountains, through the Alps, up and over into Italy. The drive was windy and the road busy, requiring her full attention. She had no destination in mind, just the desire to be the furthest away from where she thought Andre to be. It was late afternoon when she turned around, arriving back home too tired and too depressed to eat. Sunday she stayed inside at her computer, making oatmeal when her stomach finally rebelled. That evening, her father called. He listened quietly, providing sympathetic replies where appropriate. When she stopped talking, she expected him to either berate her for not quitting or congratulate her for falling in love. He did neither.

  “Now what you need to do is get busy.”

  “What?” she asked, irritated at his response. “That’s all I’ve been is busy since Monday.”

  “No,” he drawled with fatherly patience. “I mean, busy serving others. Get out of your own head. Find a group that needs your music or an organization that needs an extra pair or hands.” In the silence that followed, she surmised he knew her emotional state as well as she did. “Look, I know right now it seems like your world is dark, but take it from a man who is now looking back instead of forward. Use the love you had to propel you toward a better, different love in the future.”

  She sighed, letting go of the emptiness she felt. “It couldn’t really get any better than Andre, Dad. There was nothing wrong with our relationship. Nothing. That’s why it’s so—devastating is the wrong word, because it’s not the end of the world. It’s just...”

  “Unfortunate,” he finished for her. “But really, Danielle, look at how it ended. I don’t see you doing a lot of self-reflection.”

  “What are you talking about? I’ve done a ton, but no longer have any desire to think any more about a man whom I accidentally fell in love, who wasn’t as strong in his conviction to wait it out as I was.” Her father coughed, and only half of it sounded like a contrived response to her comment.

  “Danielle, you have a young man that offered up marriage as a means to be with you. A lifelong commitment he threw out in a second—that very second he thought you would no longer be in his life. Does that sound like a man unwilling to wait? Or does that sound like a man who is a whole lot more committed than you?”

  Danielle fought the desire to let go a stream of thoughts of insensitivity, forcing herself to keep calm. “He was impetuous Dad, offering in to marry me on a whim? We were nowhere near that level of relationship, not by a long shot.”

  “It sounded pretty passionate to me,” her father said, his tone so dry it cut through her emotions and made her laugh.

  “Handsome and exciting and yes, passionate,” she admitted. Her time with him had been all those things, along with laughing and exploring, all in a fun way. And that’s exactly why it never would have worked, she was sure. “Dad, someone who throws out a lifelong commitment and then basically scoffs at the notion it might be hard work and not all perfect. No. Way. I would have thought he was truly serious if he would have waited for me.”

  Danielle heard her father sigh and chuckle. “A passionate man doesn’t always think and say rational things, but it doesn’t mean his heart wasn’t in it, Danielle. You keep wondering why he was so cruel in essentially throwing you out. Perhaps you underestimated him, he knew it, and you hurt his feelings by rejecting him. You then further insulted him but acting as though he didn’t know what a marriage takes.”

  His comments gave her pause. Stephen had long since contended Andre’s emotions ran deeper than what she wanted to admit. Maybe her father was right, but now she would never have the chance to find out.

  “Dad, you always wondered why I gravitated towards older men, and by older, I’m only talking a decade or so. It’s because of this…this type of immaturity.”

  “Danielle, might I say that men of all ages can be immature, the only difference is how it’s expressed. Look, a lot can change in the time you have remaining at MRD. He might still love you when it’s time for you to leave. And if not, it wasn’t meant to happen. You can’t change the past or control the future. Live in the today.”

  His words sounded like a yoga mantra. “And if I’m having a hard time, after the tears are finished?”

  “Don’t wait until the tears are dry,” he answered. “Like I said, engage in useful activities. It’s hard to feel sorry for yourself when you are helping people who really need it.”

  Riding the metro to work the next day, she knew her father was right, once again. Although she had become attached to Andre, more than any other man in her adult life, and did love him to the extent she felt possible, life would go on. Things would keep her occupied until the empty pit she felt inside began to fill with positive emotions. And if she did happen to run across a man she wanted to date, she’d make sure they were older, wiser and could handle the unexpected.

  CHAPTER 27

  The grand opening of Stars & Stripes was now less than two weeks away. Lani told Danielle Andre had invoked his right to be a silent partner, reaffirming he was committed to publicizing the opening with his media contacts and spreading the word. Lani and Stephen were thrilled, and intellectually, Danielle supported his choice. No rational reason existed to have him excised from the business. All would proceed as planned, including the preview of the food with his friends and hockey team.

  Danielle made it through the week with only one episode of extreme sadness, and that was when she went to Andre’s hockey game the night before the testing. Somehow, her father’s words reverberated with her emotions. The notion Andre had been more serious than she imagined, or significantly more committed than she had changed her feelings of sadness and anger to feeling uncomfortably needy. The resulting effect was wanting to see him one last time in an environment where she could admire him without repercussions.

  Lani had warned against it but Danielle told her she wanted to show she could be professional no matter what, saying nothing of her change in emotions.

  She arrived in the second period, making her way to a place in the middle of the row. The score was tied. She spotted Max and Andre on the ice and saw Lucas and Christian on the bench. Danielle listened to those in front of her, catching a few words here and there. They seemed to be talking about the roughness of the game, pointing to several players.

  Danielle shivered, wishing the rink was heated. When Andre skated by, she caught a glimpse of his handsome face, feeling the pain associated with his rejection along with the depth of his passion.

  Self-delusion is morally wrong, she thought. What she really wanted was for him to see her, skate up to her, take his helmet off and tell her he had made a mistake and that they could still see each other at the restaurant and hold hands under the table like teenagers, even if it were wrong and would never occur.

  The third period was half
-way over when Andre was given a hit to the boards. He fell, then stood again, skating a few yards just as another skater cross-checked him, flipping him sideways. He lay flat and motionless.

  “Andre!” she gasped, her hands flying to her face. She waited, along with the silent crowd as his friends helped him off the ice. He stayed out the remainder of the period, the game ending in a tie. Danielle stood to leave and heard her name called. She turned to see Andre skating towards her.

  Was it possible? She walked down toward the ice, her heart pounding. He skated right up to the boards. He pulled off his helmet in the same, wonderful way he’d done during his last games, his hair spiked with sweat and out of place.

  “You shouldn’t be here,” he said. She thought he sounded strained, but from the physical injury or talking to her, she didn’t know.

  “I still want to see my friends play.” Beyond Andre, she saw Christian first, then Lucas and Max watching as they slowly skated by.

  Andre wiped the back of his glove across his forehead. “We’re business partners, Danielle. Meetings only.”

  “There is no reason we can’t be friends, Andre,” Danielle said, the little flame of optimism still alight. “Only non-professional relationships are off limits.”

  “That’s right. We have a professional relationship so you don’t get fired.” He looked down into this helmet, adjusting the strap so he could slip it back on.

  Danielle wanted him to stay, just for a moment longer. “I hope you’re okay,” she said earnestly. “That looked like it hurt.”

  He lifted his helmet and adjusted it, the face guard up. His eyes were hard. “You don’t know anything about hurt.” He skated down the ice, never looking back. She caught Max’s arm wave goodbye and she robotically raised hers in response.

  She knew more about it than he could imagine, she told her dad that night. Her father gently chided her for going when the outcome was so predictable.