In Like Flynn

by Dorien Kelly

  “That’s headquarters,” Annie said, pointing at the building for Flynn’s benefit.

  Flynn cupped his hand above his eyes, shielding his gaze from the morning sun. “It looked bigger on the Internet.”

  “Trust me, lots of things do,” Sasha joked.

  Flynn chuckled. “I’ll not be touching that comment.”

  Sasha and sexual banter went hand in hand, but this time it wasn’t sitting well with Annie. She gripped tighter to her briefcase.

  “Did Hal get you set up with human resources?” she asked Flynn. The words came out sharper than she’d intended.

  Sasha gave her a what’s-up-with-you? look.

  Eternally unruffled Flynn replied, “I’m to go up and see Mrs. D’Onfrio.”

  “Okay.”

  They entered Donovan’s lobby, with its wall-engulfing artsy mural of Hal and his four surviving sons looking down on their pizza kingdom. While Sasha and the Irishman continued to chat, Annie impatiently waited for the elevator. It arrived, and she pushed the top floor button for Flynn and the less prestigious seventh floor for Sasha and herself.

  “You’ll find Mrs. D. straight ahead when you get to your floor,” Annie told Flynn.

  He nodded. “I’ll be seeing you at nine, then?”

  “Yes.” The elevator bumped to a stop.

  As the door slid open, Flynn said, “It was grand to meet you, Sasha. And Annie…” His voice grew low and intimate. “Be thinking of what you’re worth today.”

  “Okay,” she said, not sure how else to answer. Annie hurried out of the elevator and joined Sasha just before the door closed.

  Sasha hauled Annie into her office, then quickly closed the door. She leaned against it as though weak-kneed, then practically purred, “Where’d my grandfather find him?”

  “A souvenir from his vacation,” Annie said while dumping her briefcase onto a guest chair.

  “I shop at all the wrong places,” Sasha said, abandoning her take-me pose. “So is he why you didn’t call me back this weekend? I’d have kept him all to myself, too.”

  Annie was about to offer up a flip “Want him?” but the words lodged somewhere midwindpipe. This was bad. Very bad.

  “He’s incredible,” Sasha enthused.

  Annie briefly rested her hand against her throat. Beneath her fingertips, her pulse ran rabbit-scared. She gave a casual smile, then walked to the window. On the sidewalk below, a lazy summertime flow of morning coffee-and-newspaper seekers strolled past.

  “Come on, Annie, admit that he’s hot,” her friend said.

  “He’s also baggage we don’t need,” she replied, hoping a tacit admission would shut Sasha up. “Some years behind a bar and the ability to talk to anybody, anywhere about nearly anything are his only qualifications. He’s like a walking invitation for people to get off task.” Herself included.

  “You know, it’s a good thing I love you because you can be such a snob,” Sasha said.

  A tightness in her voice drew Annie’s gaze from the streetscape.

  “Sometimes I don’t think you have any idea how lucky you are,” her friend continued. “Not everyone plans ten years in advance and takes the right step every time, Annie. Some of us are more fallible, okay? So what if he doesn’t have your kind of pedigree? Do you know what it feels like to only be trusted with stuff like which kids’ soccer teams we’re going to sponsor? Or how many pizzas we need to send over to the charity skate-a-thon? Or, ‘Sasha, what shade of ivory should we use on the cocktail party invitations?’”

  Annie drew in a breath. “Sasha—”

  She turned away. “Shit. I’ll catch you later, okay?”

  Sasha was out the door before Annie could even begin to absorb what had just happened. She walked to her desk, sat down and absently traced her finger over the gold embossed initials on the crimson leather portfolio her brother had sent her when she’d finished grad school.

  Annie had known Sasha since tenth grade. Annie’s parents had been offered jobs at the university, and she’d been dumped into yet another new school. Some people made friends quickly, but she’d never been one of them. Annie had tried her hardest to act as though she didn’t give a rat’s ass that she had no one to sit with at lunch or hang out with after school. Then quirky, bohemian Sasha had marched into the middle of her life.

  Through the years when Annie had stayed in Ann Arbor for undergrad, then made the hour-long commute to Michigan State for her MBA, Sasha had flitted from major to major, city to city, never quite finishing college. It hadn’t seemed a big deal. Her employment had always been Donovan guaranteed. She’d always seemed content, too. Who wouldn’t be, born into a pizza empire?

  Annie pushed away from her desk, grabbed her coffee mug and wandered down to the galley tucked between two conference rooms. She eyed the bag of bagels someone had brought in for mass consumption, but found her stomach oddly hollow, and passed them by. She filled her coffee mug and returned to her office, keeping her eyes low. She wasn’t in the mood to manufacture Irish-pub enthusiasm for well-wishers, ill-wishers or the flat-out nosey.

  Door closed, she called Sasha, got her voice mail and left an are-you-okay? message. Sasha didn’t call back, so Annie leafed through her presentation materials for Hal until just before nine o’clock. At least this meeting was one thing she could get right. Annie triple-checked her file, then went upstairs.

  “They’re waiting for you,” Mrs. D’Onfrio said as she approached. “Go on in.”

  After a quick knock, Annie opened the double doors to Hal’s office. He wasn’t behind his desk. Instead, he and Flynn were in the more informal seating area, deep in conversation. Annie had to say that they looked pretty cozy.

  Hal glanced at his watch. “Nine o’clock already? Come on over, Annie, and have a seat.”

  Since Hal was in the only chair, she was stuck joining Flynn on the horses-and-hounds-print couch. She did, settling into a spot at least a foot farther away from him than office protocol required. She set her research folder on the low table in front of them and pulled out the CD she’d burned yesterday afternoon.

  “I have a short presentation ready,” she said, gesturing at the computer and small projection screen on the opposite wall. “Should I set it up?”

  “Not just yet,” Hal said, with a casual wave of his hand. “Daniel was just telling me that you had him to a family dinner last night, Annie. Maybe one day he can return the favor. You’d like Ireland.”

  Only if she could travel by ship.

  Flynn’s mouth developed that unsettling semismile. She needed to get this morning back on track.

  “So,” she said to Hal, “if you’re not in the mood for a full presentation, how about a quick run-through of what I’ve done?” She didn’t wait for an answer, since odds were it wouldn’t be to her liking anyway. “I’ve already found one company that specializes in pub designs and an architectural salvage warehouse just over in Ypsilanti that should be able to locate vintage materials for us.”

  She reached into her document file and began spreading pages across the cocktail table. “Of course, I’m still tracking down the best menu consultant to bring on the team. There’s a former executive chef from—”

  “Rein it in, Annie,” Hal said. “That’s all good, but you’re ahead of yourself.”

  She froze, one hand halfway in the file. Hal usually liked the way she surfed the front edge of a project. “In what way?”

  “Before we discuss any of this, you’ll be going to Chicago, then Seattle. Plan on being away for a minimum of three days.”

  “Seattle, as in Washington?” she heard herself ask.

  “I think that would be the one,” Flynn replied. Hal laughed, and Annie felt seriously outnumbered.

  “We’d fly there?” she asked, both knowing and dreading the answer. For the past several years of her employment, she’d been able to duck any mention of her little problem with airplanes. It wasn’t so much that she refused to get on one. It was more like she’d expend e
very last brain cell trying to find a way to avoid it.

  “Flying beats walking,” Hal replied.

  She glanced at Flynn, who was wearing a sympathetic look. It rattled her to think he could be intuitive enough to understand that she hated air travel. Sometimes it seemed that in the Donovan corporate culture, a tattoo reading planes suck emblazoned across her forehead would go unnoticed. In this instance, at least, she much preferred flying below the radar. Or not at all.

  “I don’t…I…” Aligning the papers on the table, she drew a breath and tried again. “I don’t have time to go to Seattle. I suppose if I really had to, I could drive to Chicago. I mean, it’s only a few hours.” God, the village idiot had returned, in full babble mode. “Or Flynn could go and send back a report.”

  “If I wanted Daniel to go alone, that’s who I’d be sending. Do you have a problem with this, Annie?”

  She had a great many, but she’d yank her liver through her nose before she’d bare yet another weakness.

  “No problem, just time-management issues,” she said. “It makes no sense to send both of us.”

  Hal’s brows drew together, two shaggy silver caterpillars battling. “Ninety percent of what will make this first pub a success is atmosphere. Daniel says that Chicago and Seattle have two of the most vibrant pub communities in the States, plus they’re the spots where he knows the most staff to raid. I want both of you to take in the sounds, taste the food, listen to the music. And most of all, Annie, I want you to use that intuition of yours and tell me what else it is the customers want.”

  “Why don’t we commission a market study?” Like any nonnutcase businessman would do, she wanted to add. Except Annie knew that when it came to this project, he’d chucked sane right out the window.

  “I want more than someone else’s data. I want your impressions and whatever staff Daniel can recruit.”

  She turned to Flynn, who had apparently forgotten great chunks of her take-a-back seat talk. “Fast work.”

  “Just doing what I do best,” he said.

  She was being served up her own words, and they tasted rotten.

  “No fussing, Annie,” Hal said. “This will be an easy trip. Mrs. D’Onfrio will make the arrangements, and all you need to do is show up.” He looked at Daniel. “Will tomorrow be too early for you?”

  “Not a bit. I doubt they’ll be delivering my furniture so soon, even if I choose it today.”

  Did no one think she had a life?

  “I need a few days, Hal,” she said. “Thursday would be better.”

  Her boss shook his head. “No, tomorrow. We’re on a deadline, and we both know you don’t have any personal engagements keeping you here. No one who works around-the-clock could.”

  She had seen him pull the autocratic act on his sons in management meetings countless times before. When they’d been in the line of fire, it had seemed funny. Now that it was aimed at Annie, she was nearly nostalgic for last night’s brand of family mortification. She turned her head just enough to cut Flynn from her peripheral vision. One more pitying look would send her straight to the vending machine with a roll of quarters.

  “My personal life is just that,” she said as crisply as she could.

  “You go tomorrow. If you have a dog or something, make my granddaughter feed it.”

  Annie rose, then picked up the folder filled with a wasted weekend’s work. “Your granddaughter’s name is Sasha,” she said, just ticked enough to venture into rocky Donovan relationships. “And I don’t have a dog.”

  Though she’d trade her MBA for a leash and muzzle on Hal Donovan.

  6

  DANIEL WATCHED AS Annie lifted her obese carry-on above her head and tried to lodge it into the bin. Not even taking into account the house-on-wheels she’d checked, she’d packed far too much. She teetered backward, endangering the souls across the aisle. He lifted the bag from her hands.

  “I’ve got it,” he said, then hefted it into place and latched the compartment. “You’ve the window seat…just go on in.”

  “Okay,” she said, but still lingered. A worry line seemed to have taken up residence between her brows, and her gray eyes lacked their usual spark. After watching her talk her way around her fear in Hal’s office, Daniel was sure that even boarding the plane had been a struggle for Annie. Still, though, here they were and damned if he’d let her back out now.

  “Annie, you’re holding up matters.” He gave a “sorry” to the people waiting behind them. “Would you rather have my aisle seat?”

  “Yes.”

  She moved just enough to let him edge past. Daniel considered the brush of his body against hers a reward, brief though it was. He knew he’d just consigned himself to having his knees to his chin all the way to O’Hare, but the cause was noble—getting this plane from the tarmac without Annie Rutherford being tarred and feathered. After nearly smacking his head on the overhead bin, he folded into his seat.

  “Wait!” she blurted. “I’ve changed my mind. I want the window.”

  “Come on, already,” someone groused.

  “Sit and we’ll switch when everyone is by,” he said.

  She didn’t move.

  He motioned to the empty seat between them. “Just set your briefcase there.” He felt as though he were talking her back from a ledge.

  “But—”

  “Annie…”

  “Okay.”

  Passengers pushed their way by as soon as she was in her seat.

  “Nervous flyer,” Daniel said to the worst of the glares and eye rolls.

  Once the aisle was again clear, Annie stood. “Time to trade.”

  “You’re sure of this?” he asked. “It’s not some trick to make me hit my thick skull while getting out, is it?”

  She nearly smiled. “I’d like to be able to look out the window.”

  And as he’d like to be able to occasionally stretch his legs, the deal was made.

  Daniel resettled in the aisle seat, buckled his seat belt and closed his eyes. He could hear Annie next to him, apparently wrestling with her briefcase.

  “You’ll have to put that under the seat in front of you, ma’am,” a flight attendant said.

  “Okay, just a sec.” More scrabbling about from Ms. Annie, then finally silence. Daniel let tension ease away, leaving him lax.

  Usually, while sitting on a flight, he’d dream. He would block the noise of the other passengers, focusing instead on whatever bit of fiction he happened to be working on. He’d put nothing on paper, just let the ideas simmer warm and slow the way his mam did with her best lamb stew. Then as soon as he was back on the ground, he’d write his tale like a man possessed.

  Click-click…click-click

  A sound—and not at all a pleasant one—crept into his consciousness. He kept his eyes closed, willing himself to that still place…that quiet place…

  Click-click…click-click

  Feck it all.

  Click-click…click-click

  It was Annie, he knew it. He opened one eye just far enough to see what the woman was doing. She had a leather-bound notebook open in her lap and a retractable ballpoint pen in her left hand.

  Click-click…click-click

  She stared straight ahead, her thumb working the little button atop the pen. He settled his hand over hers.

  She yelped.

  He briefly squeezed her hand tighter and said, “If you don’t mind stopping the business with the pen?”

  She tugged her hand from beneath his. “Sorry.”

  “No problem,” he said, then let his eyes close again.

  Click-click.

  “Sorry,” he heard her say again. “Nervous habit.”

  Giving up his Zen state for lost, Daniel focused on Annie as she slid the pen back into its loop on the inside of the portfolio.

  She had perfectly polished oval nails, petal-pink and enough to make him wish he could nibble on them, if she’d not take him as a fetishist—which she would.

  The flight
attendant began her recitation of the safety information. Annie listened avidly, which was exactly what he’d expect from her. When the plane taxied, she squeezed her eyes shut and gripped the armrests so tightly that her knuckles shone white.

  Again he wrapped his fingers over hers. Annie’s eyes flew open. She looked at their hands—one covering the other—and a pink nearly matching her nails began to color her cheeks.

  Daniel waited for her to grow all prickly and pull her hand away. She didn’t, though. She relaxed and accepted the comfort he offered. The plane took to the air and soon finished the last bumps and jolts that had a way of making one a believer in a higher authority.

  “Do you have to be so nice?” she asked once all was settled.

  He smiled at this patent bit of Annie-ness. “Sorry. It’s hereditary.”

  It was more than that, though. God help him, he wanted her to like him, and not simply because they’d be together for the coming weeks. He wanted her to laugh when he teased her, to listen when he offered ideas. And he wasn’t exactly opposed to finding out if she had any places the sun hadn’t kissed with a scattering of freckles.

  After slipping her hand away, she relaxed against her seat and closed her eyes. Smiling, he did the same. Try as he might, though, his manuscript—now damn near overdue to his editor—wouldn’t fill his mind. It was far more taken by imaginings of sleek white skin sprinkled with gold. Before long, the plane was descending. Daniel went to reach for Annie’s hand again.

  “I’m okay. Really,” she said.

  It was grand that one of them was, since the smile she gave him was nearly sufficient to stop his heart. Once they landed, he averted any further in-aisle crises by retrieving her monstrous carry-on and wrestling it off the plane for her.

  “I can handle it,” she said, trying to tug the bag from him as they joined the sea of people in the terminal.

  “I’ve no doubt of that,” he replied, but kept it just the same.

  They made their way to the baggage-claim area. In time his suitcase made its way around the carousel. He grabbed it and waited for Annie’s beast, which seemed to have opted for a late, grand entrance.