Making Waves

by Laura Moore

  His reaction—alarm followed by confusion and shock, then all three replaced by dawning appreciation—made laughter bubble up inside her. She tamped it down. “Please, Dr. Carr? I think I need to be seen by an expert. I’ve heard you’re the best in your field.”

  Playing the game, he stepped into the role, assuming an authoritative air. “To properly evaluate you, I’ll need to do a complete examination.”

  “I’d be ever so grateful. I know you must be a very busy man.”

  “I am.” He glanced at his watch. “Luckily for you, I’ve had a cancellation. My exam room is on the second floor, at the end of the hall. You can change there.”

  “Shall I take everything off, Doctor?” She batted her lashes, trying for a mix of coy ingenue and blatant tease.

  He cleared his throat. “In order to make an accurate prognosis, it’s absolutely necessary.”

  “I understand,” she said solemnly. “It’s such a relief to be in good hands.” She stepped closer. “I just know you’ll make me all better.”

  “I won’t rest until I do.”

  —

  Max fell back against the mattress. With her inspired role-play, Dakota had blown his mind and then another equally appreciative part of him. When she landed in a sprawl on top of him, he exhaled a tired but grateful huff. Even in his depleted state, he loved the feel of her breasts cushioned against his torso.

  Opening his eyes, he caught her satisfied smile and knew it originated as much in the pleasure she’d given him as in the way he’d made her arch and writhe, then cry his name, begging him not to stop.

  He let his eyelids drift shut, the better to enjoy the idle patterns she was tracing across his pecs. From the twitchy response of his cock to the slow drag of her fingernail, he knew that were her fingers to travel toward his navel and then meander down and take hold again, she’d have him hard, aching, and desperate in a matter of minutes. Such was her power.

  She dropped a kiss on his collarbone. “That was fun. I’m sure Dr. Davis won’t mind that we borrowed the exam gown for such an excellent purpose.”

  He grunted to preserve his words for when he got to the office. With luck he’d have recovered a few brain cells by then. But to prove he wasn’t a complete Neanderthal, he allocated precious energy to lifting his arm and letting his hand settle on her ass, squeezing it lightly.

  She squirmed a little and her breasts rubbed against him, and that was good. But then she shifted back, presumably to look at his face, and the absence of that lush weight had his brows drawing together.

  “So I’ve been thinking.”

  “Yeah?” he managed, his voice sounding like a car rolling over stones.

  “About names,” she continued.

  “Names?”

  “For the baby.”

  He gave another grunt, this one of avoidance. Not yet fully recovered from his earlier bout of panic at the doctor’s, the last thing he wanted to talk about was the baby.

  She must have misinterpreted his response, for she continued, all blithe confidence. “I’ve been compiling a mental list. Now that we know we’re having a girl, it’s so much easier. I’ve got a couple that I think are great, but the one I like best of all and think would be really lovely, is Rosie. For your sister.”

  It was as if she’d punched through his chest, grabbed hold of his heart, and was squeezing it mercilessly. He sat up, forcing her to roll off him, and swung his legs over the edge of the mattress.

  “Max?” she asked as he stood.

  Ignoring her, he stalked to where his clothes lay in a discarded heap. He dressed, shoving his limbs into his clothes with quick jerks.

  From behind was a rustle. Then he heard the pad of her feet as she came up to him, either stupid or fearless in her approach. He didn’t turn. He couldn’t.

  Her voice was close. “Max? I thought you’d like the idea of naming the baby after your sister. I know how important she was to you.”

  His clothes felt weird against his skin. Then he realized why: he was shaking inside them.

  “It would please your father, too, wouldn’t it? The news that you’re going to have a baby girl and that you intend to name her Rosie as a way of honoring her memory—that would help things between you and him, wouldn’t it?”

  God, she was relentless in her do-gooder optimism. He had to stop her. Of all the scenarios he’d imagined in which he told her about Rosie and his father, this one was the worst. “No, it wouldn’t. My father doesn’t want anything to do with me.” He spoke through gritted teeth as he rounded on her.

  She stood before him naked, yet it was he who felt vulnerable, exposed, and, worse still, out of control.

  “But a baby—your baby, Max—that changes things. Your father will—”

  His baby. God, it had been so much easier when he’d thought of the child growing inside Dakota as hers. “No, he won’t. Listen, I get that you’re hung up on your newly discovered father. I understand how torn you are about approaching him. But don’t start thinking that because you can’t find a way to bond with Diego Salinas, you can dream up some nifty plan where I’ll be reunited with my father. There’s a really good reason we don’t speak.”

  She’d gone over to the chair by the fireplace, picked up her clothes, and begun dressing. Fastening her shirt, she looked at him. “And you don’t believe that anything can change that?”

  “I don’t simply believe, I know we can’t mend fences or whatever it is you’re envisioning.”

  “Why not? He should be proud to see the man you’ve become.”

  He dragged a hand through his hair. Would she ever quit? “That’s a laugh.” His mouth twisted. “My father’s the furthest thing from proud.”

  “But why—”

  Enough already with the damned whys. “You want to know why, Dakota? I’ll tell you. He fucking hates me, that’s why.”

  “But—”

  “But why? The answer’s simple. Because he blames me for Rosie’s death.”

  She lowered her hands from the last button on her shirt. “You said Rosie died in a car accident. How’s that your fault, Max?”

  He’d expected her to crumble under the blast of his rage and pain. But she continued to stand tall and calm and strong. It infuriated him.

  “I left out a few details. Let me tell you about Rosie. She was everything I wasn’t. Creative and dramatic and sensitive. She could draw for hours, memorize lines from Shakespeare, and belt out Broadway show tunes at the drop of a hat. What she couldn’t do is drive for shit. Driving made her nervous. With her active imagination, she envisioned accidents and the horror of hitting someone or running over a chipmunk. So I drove us. To school and back. To the mall. Wherever. In the evenings, if Mom and Dad were busy, I’d pick her up at her art or drama classes. And I was fine with it. I loved getting out of the house and cruising the streets of Mason. Even if Rosie had been cool with driving, I probably would have fought to stay behind the wheel, ’cause driving was awesome and studly. Yeah, that was me in my Camaro—captain of the football team, ace driver. One hundred percent chick magnet.”

  He realized he was pacing their bedroom like a prosecutor before the jury, meticulously laying out the closing argument. Ironic, since he was not only the prosecutor but also the accused. But who better to plumb the depths of his guilt?

  “But Rosie never asked to drive. Dad tried to get her to take the car out and practice, but she always had excuses. Valid ones. She was an A student, served on the student body, and was involved in a ton of extracurriculars. Her day started at six A.M. and ended at midnight. Senior year she was even busier getting her portfolio ready in order to apply to college. In April, when she got into Michigan’s BFA program, she renewed her promise to practice; she wanted a car at college to drive home on weekends—Ann Arbor’s only a little more than an hour away—because she was going to miss our parents like crazy.”

  They’d reached the worst part, the part that made it impossible for the hole inside Max ever to heal.


  “So Dad laid down the law. Rosie would drive us to school. And sometimes she did, but mostly she whined that she wasn’t awake yet or complained about the Camaro’s hood and how she couldn’t see past it and how she didn’t want to arrive at school all stressed. Like I said, Rosie was real dramatic.

  “I let her get away with it. Along with everything else, Rosie drove at a crawl, at least five miles below the speed limit. And I wanted to roll into the school parking lot as cool as Tom Cruise and impress the hell out of Annie Bauer, because Annie was hot and I wanted in her pants.

  “I was getting there, too,” he said, careful not to look at Dakota as he passed her before doing a 180 on the wool rug on his trip across the room again. “Annie and I had gone on a few dates. We’d necked, fooled around, each time going a little further.

  “A few days after graduation, there was a party at a fellow senior’s lake house. Although Rosie and I ran in different circles, we were equally popular, so we both got invites. I made sure Annie had accepted before I committed.

  “Our parents were cool with our going. Rosie was a straight arrow. They counted on Rosie to stop me from any wild partying and on me to look out for her. Because brothers looked after their sisters. And while Rosie knew about Annie and me, Mom and Dad didn’t.

  “I’d wanted to take Annie to the lake house, like on a real date. But Rosie’s friends didn’t have room in their car, so she insisted on going with me. No way was I going to do something as lame as drive my date to a party with my twin sister in the backseat cramping my style. Both of us were pissed, and it set the tone for the ride to Nate Hicks’s lake house. I needled her about all her broken promises to be more independent and drive herself places. She gave as good as she got, telling me Annie was way too smart to go all the way with a horny toad like me.

  “Nate’s house was rockin’. I scoured the place until I found Annie. I got us some pop—she wasn’t a drinker and I wanted to show I was more than a beer-slugging jock—and we wandered down to the lake and sat down on the dock. We were talking, really talking. You know, that adolescent soul sharing that goes down on a spring night under the stars? And I was halfway in love with her. From the way she kissed me, I was hoping she felt the same.

  “I was kissing her again when the dock behind us bounced and then steps came toward us. It was Rosie, saying she needed to talk to me. From her voice I could tell she was miserable, but I didn’t care. I was too pissed off at her interrupting us. I hadn’t forgotten her taunts about me and Annie on the way to the party, either. I told her to spit it out.

  “Long and short of it, Rosie’s gang had all bailed on the party before we arrived and were over at someone else’s house. She needed a ride back to Mason.

  “No way was I leaving Annie and giving up the chance of making it with her to chauffeur my sister to her friend’s place. I dug the car keys out of my front pocket and jangled them in front of her. ‘Here,’ I said. ‘Your very own set of wheels.’ I didn’t need to see her face to know how tight it was. Her cheeks and mouth got all scrunched up when she was upset. I didn’t care. It wasn’t a long drive and she wasn’t going to be on any highways. She could deal.

  “She snatched the keys out of my hand in silent fury. See, I wasn’t the only one who liked Annie. Rosie thought Annie was super-cool because she’d traveled to Europe the previous summer with her parents and visited the foreign capitals, seen the monuments, and explored the museums, everything Rosie longed to do herself one day. It would have embarrassed her to reveal to Annie she was a dork who couldn’t drive. This was Michigan.

  “While Rosie was too angry and freaked out to say anything, it didn’t stop me. As she turned around, I offered a parting shot, determined to win the evening’s feud. ‘Hey, Rosie,’ I called out. ‘Make sure you don’t get caught speeding.’ Those were the last words I spoke to my sister.”

  He stopped in his tracks and swallowed hard, forcing back the bile, a composite of self-loathing, regret, and never-ending sorrow.

  “It was a ten-mile drive back to Mason. Four miles from Andy’s family’s weekend house, a drunk driver plowed into her, ramming the car into a tree. She’d bled out before the emergency crews could cut her out from the wreckage. My mother died of ovarian cancer less than a year after Rosie’s death. At her funeral, my father finally said what was in his heart. I was responsible for both their deaths. Rosie had died because I didn’t look after her the way I should have. And if my mother hadn’t been grieving over Rosie, she wouldn’t have ignored her symptoms until it was too late.

  “And those were the last words my father has ever spoken to me. So I don’t plan on ringing him up to let him know I’m having a baby girl and want to name her after his dead daughter. Not that it would change anything if I did.”

  He looked up at Dakota. Tears magnified her eyes.

  “How do you know if you don’t try—if you don’t give him a chance?” Her voice vibrated with emotion.

  Hating the sound, unable to bear her sympathy when she couldn’t ever understand, he reached for numb detachment. “He’s had fifteen years of chances.”

  “I don’t think you believe that any more than I do.”

  “What?”

  “I’m guessing it’s been more like fifteen years of regret over every rash word he uttered. Your father was obviously inconsolable with grief when he said those things.”

  “He was obviously right, damn it. I wasn’t the brother I should have been. I was the stronger twin, and I gave Rosie the keys knowing and not caring that she was inexperienced—”

  She held up her hand. “Stop it, Max. It was the drunk driver who shouldn’t have been behind the wheel. Who’s to say that if you’d been driving you’d have been able to react any quicker? Then both of you might have died. You know that. I also think you know your father carries just as much guilt inside him for not insisting your sister practice her driving skills. Then he lost his wife. Don’t you think that added to his despair and rage? So he did something terrible. He lashed out at you.”

  “He told me I killed my sister.” His voice hurt his ears.

  “A horrible, horrible thing to say to your own child. But after his grief waned and he recognized what he’d wrought and whom he’d hurt, his remorse must have been paralyzing. Maybe he feels what he’s done is so terrible he can’t make the first move. He’s waiting until you can forgive him. You’re a good man. A brave man, Max. Don’t you think it’s time you tried?”

  “I did try. I sent him money to repay—”

  “Oh, Max.”

  The heavy sympathy in her voice made his head pound viciously, as if a nail was being hammered through his skull. He had to get out of here. “This is utter bull. I can’t do this. I didn’t ask for any of this. Not you, not the baby, not marriage, not all this reconciliation crap.” He flung out an arm to encompass the totality of what he was dealing with.

  Anger was a gold flame in her eyes. “I didn’t ask for any of this, either,” she said, standing her ground. “Yet I’m trying my best. I’m trying to make it work.”

  You’re fucking tearing me apart, is what you’re doing, he wanted to scream in retaliation. Instead he made his voice as cold as a tomb. “That’s great. But see, I’ve never claimed to be a good person like you. I don’t help people. I source companies. I negotiate deals, and I reap the profits. I make lots and lots of money. I’m not like you, Dakota. I don’t need a father. I don’t need a family.” He glanced at his watch, glad it was nearly time to leave for the airport, where he could go back to the world he knew and the life that worked for him.

  He bent down and pulled on his shoes. Straightening, he spared her a glance, and told himself he didn’t care that the tears had escaped her eyes. “I’m outta here. I’ll call later.”

  The next morning Max sat next to Chris, the two of them facing Bob Elders. His desk, a big, black rectangle, separated them. Max had his ankle crossed over his thigh. The sheen of his polished shoe caught the reflection of the reces
sed light shining from above. While he sipped the coffee that Bob’s personal assistant had brought them, his white French cuff and silver and onyx cuff link peeked out from the sleeve of his gray suit. His dark blue silk tie had a bold geometric pattern. He was the portrait of a Wall Street warrior, the picture of chill.

  Only he knew of the caffeine he’d poured into his system to combat the sleepless hours he’d passed, he alone aware of the war raging inside him.

  “So Chris’s told me he wants to use this meeting to bring us up to speed on how things are going at Chiron before the board meets tomorrow. What have you got for us, Chris?” Max said.

  Chris was looking relaxed. Very relaxed. Max wondered whether it was a sham on his part, too.

  “Things are going according to our restructuring plan. We’ve closed one manufacturing site, which will allow us to make further cuts in the workforce in addition to the initial management layoffs we made. At another site we’ve retrofitted a tablet press, increasing production volume for several of the drugs.”

  So far Chris was sticking to the turnaround strategy the Summit Group had devised for Chiron: cutting labor, consolidating physical plants, and upgrading technology.

  Max tried not to think about the cuts that had been made on the manufacturing side. A key part of business was to pinpoint inefficiencies and redundancies and eliminate them. But Max’s father had started out on the assembly line. Even after being promoted to management, he’d liked to hang with the guys who worked on the floor. He said they were the heart and arteries of the auto factory.

  He blamed Dakota for making him think of his father. He reminded himself that there was no room for sentimentality in big business; he reminded himself that, given Chiron’s shaky financial health, those jobs would have been in peril no matter who bought the company. He reminded himself that he didn’t do sentimentality. At least he hadn’t, not for years. Not until he met Dakota.