by Kristi Lea
“Thanks.” Claire glanced around. She had changed out the leather of the sofa and guest chairs for a crisp microfiber upholstery. Men could never appreciate how the bare backs of your legs stuck to chairs and sweated when wearing a skirt. And the fridge in the wet bar was now stocked with Diet Coke and bottled water instead of whiskey and imported vodka.
Maureen slipped a manila envelope onto the desk in front of Claire.
“You don’t need to open it just yet. I want to start off by thanking you, on behalf of the University of Chicago, for your company’s generous support. As the director of development, I like to meet with our donors in person, if possible, about once a year. As you are aware, Sheffield & Fox has traditionally sponsored two students, one in the arts and one in engineering. I know I don’t have to remind you how tough the economy is these days.”
Claire nodded. Everyone in the company had felt the bite that their lower stock price had taken out of their paychecks. Of course, most of S&F’s financial woes had more to do with losing their Shadow Fly contract than with the economy.
“Miss Sheffield, can I count on your company to continue its generous support of our scholarship program?”
“Yes. In fact, I would like to add a third scholarship.”
Maureen sat back in her chair, surprised. “Why, that’s wonderful news.”
“I would like to add a scholarship for a business student. Ideally, for a woman entering the field.”
Claire smiled as the other woman thanked her profusely, and warmed to the praise. She knew that Maureen’s flattery and graciousness were well rehearsed, but she didn’t care. This was her own idea, and she had diverted some of the CEO’s own discretionary budget to fund it. In her father’s regime, that money would have been used to woo customers with golf outings and sports tickets. That kind of marketing and goodwill were still important, but so was investing in the future. And she told Maureen exactly that.
“I could not agree more, Miss Sheffield. Now, inside that packet are the donor contracts for renewing your scholarships with the university this year. My office will draw up the papers for your new award right away so we can get it finalized and start putting your money to work.”
“I am looking forward to it, Maureen.”
Both women stood and they shook hands. Claire came around the desk and walked her toward the door.
“I have to say, this visit has been the highlight of my week. Most of my other appointments have gone the other way.” Maureen stepped through the doorway and paused next to Steph’s vacant chair. “Oh, Miss Sheffield, can I ask you a favor?”
“Sure, what do you need?”
“I always get so turned around in these big office buildings,” Maureen said with a self-deprecating smile. “Could you point me toward Mr. Forrester’s office?”
Claire’s stomach did a flip flop at the name.
“Helmut Forrester?” She hadn’t seen him in over two months now. Not since Paris.
“Yes, Helmut Forrester. I thought he was on the twelfth floor, or was it the thirteenth?” Maureen looked at her expectantly.
“May I ask why?”
“I have a packet of paperwork for him, too. Usually our office just mails it, but since I was going to be in the neighborhood, I thought I could save the postage. Every penny counts in my job.” The woman smiled at her own joke.
Claire was dumfounded. After all of the bad press at the Air Show, she was sure that every citizen of Chicago knew all about the botched contract. And their affair. “Well, Mrs. Glancy, Helmut Forrester doesn’t work here anymore. He left a couple of months back to pursue other opportunities.”
Maureen’s face fell. “Oh. I’m so sorry to hear that. I was hoping to say hello. His fiancée worked in our office in her undergrad years.”
Claire’s heart caught in her throat and she practically croaked her next words. “His fiancée?”
The woman nodded. “She was such a beautiful girl. And so talented musically, of course. Such a sad story.” She paused, then visually collected herself. “Well, I guess I will be using that stamp after all. Thank you again, Miss Sheffield.”
After the woman left, Claire quietly closed the door to her office and sank down in her desk chair. She contemplated her laptop. She had no claim on Helmut. Not an employee. Not a boyfriend, or even a lover. But whether he knew it or not, he still had a claim on her.
Over the past few weeks, no one at the office had mentioned Helmut. The man worked here for over fifteen years, and everyone acted as though there had never been another CFO before his replacement, a top-notch executive that they’d lured away from one of their much bigger commercial airline competitors.
Or maybe no one mentioned him in front of Claire.
It was normal for some conversations to halt when she walked in the door, but that was something every manager faced. No one wanted to get caught venting in front of their boss. But more than once in the past two months, Claire had suspected that she was interrupting gossip of a less professional nature.
She flipped open the screen. Human Resources records were kept online, and she had a password. But that data was confidential. Personal. When she was preparing to fire Helmut, she hadn’t looked in his files. Then, she hadn’t wanted to know if he had any blemishes on his record, any extenuating circumstances.
And now it was too late. He didn’t work here. She had no right to dig into his life. But there was another option.
Fingers pounded furiously on the keys as Claire brought up a web browser and began searching.
Forrester was a fairly common name, but Helmut was not. And he hadn’t been living like a hermit. He’d been written up in Aviation Week, in Business Week, in Forbes, in the Sun-Times. She found his name on a racquetball bracket at a club not far from the office, and even found him on the title to his condo in the city records. There were a few false hits, too, but it was easy to dismiss the logging safety equipment links.
Finally, she found a link to a campus newspaper article from the University of Chicago, dated more than a dozen years ago. Claire clicked on the link and read what appeared to be a tribute to a student who had passed away.
A sob caught in her throat as she read the words “...survived by her fiancé, Helmut Forrester, who was not injured in the accident.” She highlighted the woman’s name—Olivia Redbloom, how beautiful—and began searching again.
Olivia’s life was not as well documented as Helmut’s, and many of the links that Claire found were broken and out of date. But there was enough. Originally from a small town in Nebraska, Olivia had been a music student with a lot of talent. She had played and sung with a cover band who specialized in weddings, apparently worked as a waitress, and in the past year of her life been increasingly photographed on the arm of a young and serious-looking accountant. They had made a beautiful couple, with Olivia looking sweet but striking, and a young Helmut always gazing adoringly at her.
Claire found a short write-up in the newspaper’s archives about the accident. Helmut had been at the wheel. She was thrown from the car. He sustained minor injuries. The police called him a distracted driver. No charges were filed.
Claire sat back and tried to reconcile the Helmut she knew with the staid-looking young man he had been. She checked the date of Olivia’s obituary. Helmut would have been about twenty-six or twenty-seven.
At that age, Claire and Frank were still deeply in lust for each other and their startup company. They were busy and focused, and dreaming huge dreams of the future. Marriage was a far-off concept, at the bottom of the ever-growing to-do list. It never made it very high on the list.
What had Helmut been dreaming at twenty-seven? Of his future with the musician? Of marriage and a family? Would he have been a hands-on kind of father or the kind who was married to his work, as Claire’s father always had been. Would his youthful love for Olivia have survived a corporate career, or would they have been another divorce statistic, trading kids every other weekend the way Claire and her brother
s were traded?
He’d never had the chance to find out. Instead, his thirties had been full of press releases, golf outings and benefit dinners, with a different woman on his arm at every photo op. The life he lived sounded a lot more glamorous and carefree on paper. And in the company gossip.
But the man she knew held a lot more emotion in reserve. She remembered the way he had made love to her after their own small car accident in Paris. The haunted look in his eyes, the desperation in his kisses, in his touch. There was nothing carefree about the way he had held her that afternoon. Claire shivered.
Maureen Glancy said that Helmut donated a scholarship to the school. Claire searched the website one more time and found a link to the Redbloom Memorial Scholarship. Founded eleven years ago in memory of one Olivia Redbloom.
Helmut hadn’t attended that concert last spring on behalf of Sheffield & Fox.
Claire leaned in and studied the face of this year’s recipient. He looked vaguely familiar. She searched for his name and found him right away on MySpace.
“Heh,” she said out loud as she read his latest update. “So long, Mr. Hon. Thanks for all the egg drop soup.” Stevie was the Chinese food delivery boy from her favorite restaurant. And he’d apparently been offered a plum job composing for Disney.
“We ordered from the same place,” Helmut had told her that first night in her office. She closed her eyes and remembered how she’d spilled sauce on her blouse, and been mortified—and turned on—when he’d helped her clean it up.
Claire spun around in her chair, surprised to see orange rays of sunset sneaking around the buildings of the Chicago skyline. She hadn’t meant to stay so late.
On impulse, she picked up her phone and dialed Helmut’s home number. She regretted it the moment she hit the last number. What would she say to him when answered? Hi, I was googling you and found out all about your past.
The phone rang on the other end.
She could tell him about Maureen Glancy’s visit. It was a weak excuse, but it was the best she had. Maybe he would want to get together for a drink and talk?
The phone rang again. Maybe he wouldn’t answer.
But someone did.
“Hello?”
Claire’s heart seized. The voice was female, and youngish. Would he have a housekeeper? At eight at night? But it was too late. Her number was on the caller ID, now. He’d know it was her.
“Is Helmut there?” Please tell me it’s the wrong number.
“Um, no. Can I take a message?”
Claire exhaled. “No, thanks.”
“You’re calling from Sheffield and Fox, right?” the woman asked. “Is it about the paperwork he’s waiting for? Helmut said that if HR called to tell you to forward it to his Florida address.”
Claire almost smiled. Of course she’d called from her desk phone, not her personal cell, and the caller ID always showed up as something generic. But it gave her the opportunity to pry a little further. “Um, great. Can I get your name? I have to, um, record who I talked to. For the record.” Geeze that sounded lame.
“Sure. This is his sister, Kelsie Forrester.”
Claire felt like kicking herself. His sister. That was the second time she’d let her jealousy take over about Helmut’s baby sister.
“Thanks, Miss Forrester. Let him know that we’ll be in touch.”
She hung up the phone and popped open another web browser. Kelsie had mentioned an address in Florida. With a few clicks she had it. Big Pine Key, Florida. Helmut owned a beach house.
Chapter 22
Helmut bent to brush off the sand clinging to his bare calves from this morning’s stroll along the beach before entering Java Joint. Sam, the owner, always made a fuss of sweeping the entry way behind the tourists who wandered in from sunbathing for their caffeine fix. To call the crusty old man a barista was still a stretch, but over the past year, he’d at least learned how to brew a decent latte, and he had recently added Wi-Fi, in the fashion of all those “Yankee” coffee shops.
“You want the usual?” Sam asked, looking up from the spot of stainless steel countertop he’d been polishing.
Helmut nodded and shoved his sunglasses up onto his head, his eyes still adjusting to the shift from the blinding sunlight outside. He walked automatically to the table closest to the counter, and therefore farthest from the windows that lined both the beach and the highway sides of the small café. The glare of sunlight made his laptop screen nearly unreadable.
Sam began turning levers and pushing buttons on the espresso equipment behind the bar with a flourish and a mutter that sounded suspiciously like, “Come on, baby.”
Helmut’s lips quirked in a grin. Whether the shop owner would admit it or not, Helmut thought he liked the trappings of a “Yankee” coffee shop. Helmut pulled his laptop out of the canvas messenger bag he wore over one shoulder and booted it up.
“She yours?” Sam asked, sliding Helmut’s cup to the edge of the serving counter where Helmut could reach it.
“The coffee?”
“No, the girl.” Sam jerked a thumb over his shoulder toward the street-side windows. “I don’t think she’s taken her eyes off you since you walked in the door.”
Claire.
The morning light pouring in from the east highlighted the edges of her golden hair, glowing like a halo that framed her face and rested on deliciously bare, toned shoulders. She wore a long white washed-linen sundress that fell to just above her knees. Dangling from one bare toe was a hot pink flip flop.
The shoe dropped softly from her foot, falling to the floor soundlessly. Heat flowed to Helmut’s groin as he remembered picking up that same shoe from the steam room floor. Carefully he cleared his throat and raised her gaze to Claire’s eyes.
Slowly she stood and walked toward him, hypnotizing him with the way her dress flowed around her legs, clinging to her hips and her breasts. As she got closer, he saw the ties of a string bikini at the neckline to her dress instead of a bra. His lips went dry.
She stopped inches from the edge of his table, her blue eyes wide and unsure. “I asked at the hotel where I could get a decent cup of coffee. I had a feeling I might find you here.”
Helmut smiled and found his voice. “You got lucky. I’m having a satellite dish installed later this week. Then I’ll be able to work without walking over here every morning.”
“Hey, you didn’t tell me that,” Sam said from behind Helmut.
“Sorry, Sam. I’ll be back for the coffee, though. Sam, this is Claire. She’s a, er, friend of mine from Chicago.”
Sam gave a wave from behind the counter and set to work washing a blender. One that Helmut was sure had been clean just sixty seconds ago.
Claire’s eyes darted to the café owner and back to Helmut questioningly. “Can we talk for a minute?”
“It’s such a beautiful morning. Why don’t we take a walk on the beach.” Helmut jumped to his feet and hurriedly packed his laptop back away. He motioned for the door and stopped a few feet away, then rushed back and tossed a five dollar bill on the counter next to his still-steaming coffee.
He almost grabbed it, but outside, the temperature was already pushing ninety. Too hot for coffee. And Claire’s unexpected arrival made him feel jittery enough.
She stopped at the edge of the sand and kicked off her sandals, then slipped them in a tote bag she had on her shoulder. Wordlessly, she followed him as he took off across the beach, past sunbathers already slathered with oil.
She broke the silence. “So, you have a vacation house down here?”
“Yeah. I rent it out most of the year.” In the sunlight, that white dress was nearly transparent. He gulped.
“Mmmm,” she said. “It’s beautiful here. Are you’re thinking of staying?”
“How did you know I might be staying? Oh yeah. The satellite. When did you arrive?” The sand was getting hot, and he walked closer to the edge of the tide where the cool gulf water could cool his feet.
“I flew in las
t night.”
“You drove down from Miami this morning?” he asked.
Claire giggled. The sound bubbled over Helmut, and his gut ached. God how he’d missed her smile.
“It turns out,” she said teasingly. “That I happen to work for a company that manufacturers small private jets. And the company even owns one or two that employees can use. With executive permission, of course.”
Helmut raised one eyebrow. “Figured that out, did you?”
“Of course I’ll have to pay all costs. This isn’t exactly a business trip.”
He stopped and dug his toes into the sand, allowing the cool water to wash over them. She stood so close now that her long hair tickled his face as it blew in the breeze. He lifted a small lock to his nose and inhaled the sweet scent of coconuts before tucking it behind her ear. “Why are you here?” he asked softly.
Claire’s eyes were wide pools of Caribbean blue, her pupils dilated, her lips parted just slightly. Helmut’s body was all too aware of her nipples, peaked and visible beneath her dress and swimsuit, and the soft rise and fall of her breasts as she breathed. Just a touch too fast.
“Come on.” He took her by the hand up beach toward his house. Despite the hot morning, her fingers were cold in his, and he felt her tremble lightly as he guided her to the stairs leading to his front door, high off the ground.
He pulled her inside the house into the cool air conditioning. He put one hand on the inside of the door, above her shoulder, positioning her between his body and the steel of the door. He closed it gently, and touched her hair again, then stroked her cheek, and she closed her eyes at the caress.
After two months of hell, she had arrived, looking like an angel in white. A temptingly sexy angel. Slowly, he leaned in toward her, letting the body heat from her breasts warm first his T-shirt, then scorch his chest. He slid one knee between hers, and lowered his lips until they almost brushed hers, then stopped there. “Why are you here?” he asked again, dreading the answer, but needing to hear it anyway.