Corporate Daddy

by Arlene James

  Eden let go of her hand and gave it a little pat, saying, “Don’t mention it.”

  “We won’t if you don’t,” Emily quipped, and they all laughed.

  Cathy wiped her eyes again, her smile a little brighter, her beauty a little more radiant. “You’ve helped me more than you know. I’m pretty sure what I’m going to do now, at least for the immediate future.”

  Eden snatched up her water glass this time and held it aloft. “To good friends and smart single women!”

  “Long may we live!” Cathy added, raising her own glass.

  Emily lifted her own glass. If anyone noticed the sadness behind the smile this time, it wasn’t mentioned. Maybe they were smart, but if that was the case, then why did single feel so lonely?

  She already knew that she wasn’t as smart as she’d once believed. A really smart woman wouldn’t have behaved as she had, sleeping with a man she couldn’t have, a man destined to break her heart. Like Cathy, it was time for Emily to think of the future. She only wished that her own future looked a little less bleak.

  Fourteen

  It was time. She’d waited too long as it was, and her only excuse was that she didn’t want Amanda Sue to feel abandoned again. But she couldn’t go on as she was. Every day with Logan and Amanda Sue, every night with him, she gave a little more of herself, loved a little deeper, wanted a little more from him. The real danger was in the wanting, she knew. She’d already realized that she couldn’t do anything about the loving. She loved Logan Fortune and his amazingly intelligent daughter as she would never again love anyone else in the same way. They were part of her, and it was killing her to think of going, but how much worse would it be if she waited until they left her? Maybe the miracle would happen, and she wouldn’t have to go. Eden, after all, had intimated that she expected Logan to marry Emily.

  She took a deep breath and sent a glance sideways at Logan, who was taking a rare moment to actually read a newspaper.

  “You haven’t really asked me about my lunch with Eden and Cathy.”

  “Hmm?”

  “My lunch with Eden and Cathy.”

  He collapsed the newspaper into his lap. “Oh, right. How did that go?”

  She shrugged. “It was fun, lots of talk and joking around. I think Eden and Cathy really like each other.”

  “That’s good,” he said lightly. “What’d you think of the restaurant?” He waggled his eyebrows suggestively. “Did the, um, service measure up to what you got the last time you were there?”

  Torn between embarrassment and laughter, she chose the latter, bursting out with it. “Really, Logan, you have to do something about that low self-esteem of yours.”

  He just grinned at her, and she knew he was remembering much of what washed over her in that moment. She cleared her throat. “We were talking about my lunch with Cathy and Eden.”

  “Mmm-hmm, and you were saying?”

  She was appalled at how easily her tone adjusted to nonchalance. She hated anything that smacked of manipulation, and yet here she was, fishing for—what? A marriage proposal? The words slid out almost unaided. “Cathy is thinking about breaking her engagement with Brendan Swift.”

  Logan sat back in some surprise. “Whoa. Brendan Swift is one of the top box-office draws in the country. Has he been cheating on her?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “What’s the problem, then?”

  “I’m not sure really.”

  He shook his head derisively. “She must feel something for him if she accepted his proposal. Is she anti-marriage? What?”

  “I think it’s more a life-style thing. I mean, he’s the ultimate Hollywood insider, you know, and Cathy’s tired of the whole Hollywood scene. She’s really thinking of giving it all up.”

  Logan shrugged meaningfully. “Couldn’t she give up acting and still support him in his work? I mean, if she really loved him…”

  Emily sighed, wondering why he was so concerned about this. “You’re right, of course. If she really loved him, it wouldn’t matter, would it? So I guess she just doesn’t love him like she should.”

  “Poor guy.” Logan shook his head contemplatively.

  Emily had to laugh. “Logan, he’s a billionaire! He’s a movie star! I’m betting the line of women willing to comfort him is already forming.”

  “What difference does that make, if the guy’s in love with her?” Logan argued.

  Emily bit her lip. Dare she hope that he felt the same way about her? “You’re right again. It doesn’t make any difference. When you love someone, really love them, nothing else matters, does it?”

  “That’s the way I see it,” he muttered, lifting his paper again. “Poor sap probably just assumed she was crazy about him, and look what it got him.”

  “I’m sure she didn’t mean to hurt him.”

  “Well, that’s likely cold comfort to him, don’t you think?” he said sharply, turning down one corner of the paper to glare at her.

  “I guess.”

  “And women wonder why men aren’t chasing them down to propose marriage,” he muttered.

  Emily closed her eyes. She had her answer. Logan Fortune had no intention of proposing marriage to her, none. Whatever Eden had meant, it obviously had nothing to do with the facts of hers and Logan’s situation. Yes, it was time to make the break. She just had to keep reminding herself that as difficult as it was to do now, it would be much more devastating later. She got up off the couch and went into the bedroom. If the end was upon them, she meant to make the most of what time was left.

  Logan looked up from his desk and smiled with sheer pleasure. It had been a long time since the professional Emily had walked through his office door. He took one look at the conservative suit, the prim white blouse and the reading glasses and congratulated himself on knowing so well the delicious woman who lay beneath it all. Her hair was twisted up into a sophisticated roll, and he thought how it shimmered and shined when spread out against his pillow, how it flowed around him when she leaned over to put her mouth to his. His body hardened in response, the result so instantaneous that he deemed it unwise to rise just then. Instead, he leaned back in his chair and let his smile be his welcome.

  “Well, well. And to what do I owe this pleasure?”

  She surprised him further by carefully closing the door before approaching his desk. He waited with bated breath for her to skirt the desk and approach him, perhaps sinking down onto his lap. When it became apparent that she wasn’t going to do that, he cleared his throat and disciplined his thoughts.

  “I assume that you don’t have Amanda Sue with you.”

  Finally she spoke. “No, Amanda Sue is with Carol. She hardly seemed to notice when I kissed her goodbye. Carol made her homemade play dough.”

  Logan chuckled. “That Carol’s a gem, isn’t she?”

  Emily nodded. “Yes, she is. You’re very lucky to have found her. Amanda Sue seems to feel very secure with her, and that’s why I’m doing this now.” She opened the purse hanging at her side from the shoulder strap and extracted a white envelope, which she dropped in the center of his desk mat.

  He couldn’t imagine what was going on, but he was willing to play along with anything Emily might have in mind. Smiling coyly, he leaned forward and picked up the envelope, saying, “This is all very mysterious.” She bowed her head, standing almost at attention while he opened the envelope and extracted the single sheet inside.

  Forcing his attention away from her and onto the sheet of paper, he unfolded it and started to read. He couldn’t believe it. He spread the letter flat on his desk and read it again. Resigning? She was resigning? His mind rebelled at the thought. Looking up at her, he said simply, “I don’t understand.”

  She took a deep breath. “It’s very simple really. I can’t come back to this office. It wouldn’t be fair to Hal.”

  “I’ve already told you—”

  She shook her head, saying, “I can’t take a promotion, either, Logan.”

&n
bsp; “Why not?”

  “You know what people would say,” she told him. “And they’d be right. I’ve been sleeping with the boss. Any promotion, any job here, would be suspect.”

  He sat back with a gusty sigh of resignation. “Okay. I don’t agree, but if this is how you want it, I’ll go along. So what exactly are your plans? I take it you’ll be going to work for someone we know, and I can live with that, I just wish you’d talked it over with me first.” He was envisioning a two-income family, him and her both hurrying off to work of a morning, juggling schedules, trusting Carol to care for Amanda Sue when they couldn’t be there.

  She licked her lips. “I don’t think you’ve quite gotten the message,” she said, her voice trembling. “I tried to make you see how it would be from the beginning. I tried to make you understand. Now, I have no choice but to…t-take myself out of the picture.”

  That cozy, if confused, little scene he’d been conjuring evaporated like so much mist. “Out of the picture,” he echoed, knowing but unable to accept what she really meant. Out of his life.

  “I’ve moved all my things out of the town house,” she said evenly, “and I’ve taken a job with—”

  He didn’t know he was going to stand up until he did, his hands planted flat on the surface of his desk. “You’re leaving me. Us?”

  She gulped and backed up a step. “I—I can’t just abandon Amanda Sue. I don’t believe you want that, either. So, I thought, if it was all right with you, I could see her on my lunch hour two or three or times a week.”

  He could only stare at her for a long, agonizing moment. Him. She was leaving him. He should have known. Why hadn’t he known? She’d fought him every step of the way. Not once had she ever said that she loved him. He wondered if he was going to be sick. Dimly he became aware that his eyes were closed and that she was speaking somewhere in the distance. He tried to focus on her voice.

  “Please understand. I don’t have any choice. I have to do this.”

  Sure that her next words would be that she didn’t love him, he waved her away with a sweep of his arm. “Go,” he gasped. “Just go.”

  Sometime later he realized that his legs were trembling, and that if he didn’t sit he was going to fall. He sat with a plop, as lifeless and powerless as tissue paper. He took breath, and pain rushed in instead of air.

  Left him. Gone. She didn’t love him, had never loved him. He remembered times when the shoe had been on the other foot, times when women had vowed undying devotion, how they had cried when he’d explained that physical attraction did not necessarily lead to love. He’d always been honest about that. He’d always let them know from the very beginning that love wasn’t part of it for him, and yet so often they’d seemed to expect it to find him between the sheets of their beds. Eventually he’d learned to steer clear of those whose control of their emotions he could not trust.

  Perhaps it served him right. If anyone could understand that physical attraction didn’t necessarily equal love, he could. And yet he’d been caught in his own trap. He loved Emily. He had always loved Emily, far longer than he’d even known. But she didn’t love him. She’d given him the most amazingly satisfying sex of his life—but not her love. Poetic justice? No doubt.

  The question now was, how did he survive it? How did he survive losing Emily?

  It was a genuine coup, proof that she could do anything she set her mind to. This gambit had made her career. Emily sat back in the big leather chair and looked around her plush new office. She had reached high, and she had grasped the brass ring. Head of real estate management for one of the largest banks in the area. It boggled the mind. So why wasn’t she jubilant? Where was the joy? She glanced at her watch. Two more hours until she could see Amanda Sue. Would Carol have a message for her from Logan?

  Shaking her head, Emily reached for a file folder and pulled it toward her. She had a lot of reading to do before she could even begin to take on her duties. Half an hour later she reached for another folder, but even as she opened it, tears filled her eyes. It was so hard to stay away, to be apart. Why hadn’t she stuck to her guns? Why had she allowed herself to fall into his bed, to share his life? Worse, how was she going to survive without him now? No job, no career, no lap full of file folders could make up for the barren emotional desert her life had become. She didn’t even have her blasted cat anymore.

  Logan folded his hands behind his head and smiled at his precocious daughter, who sat astride his chest, attempting to balance a wooden block on his nose. It didn’t take her long to realize that the nose was not an ideal building site. Heaving a sound of pure disgust, she switched to the spot between his eyes, succeeded in placing one wooden cube and added another. When the tower grew to three blocks, she swept out her hand and jubilantly knocked it down, laughing as he squeezed his eyes shut and turned his head to avoid the falling blocks. Laughing with her now, he sat up, using his hands to catch her as she tumbled backward. Executing a neat flip, Amanda Sue came up on one knee, jubilant about this new trick.

  He allowed her to push him down again and throw herself across his chest. Tickling and tussling, he wrestled with her until, exhausted, she sat down on the floor, leaned back against his side and crossed one ankle over the opposite knee. Judging it safe now, Goody ambled over and plopped down next to her, purring loudly, while his striped tail flicked rhythmically in Logan’s face.

  Couldn’t she have taken her damned cat with her? he grumbled mentally, but then he sighed, seeing Amanda Sue dig her fingers into the cat’s fur. Why couldn’t she have loved him? It had seemed so perfect, the two of them and Amanda Sue. He should have known it was an illusion, a mirage. At least he hadn’t humiliated himself by asking her to marry him. Cold comfort when he missed her so.

  As if reading his thoughts, Amanda Sue put her head back against his chest and said, “Oan Mimly ome.”

  Logan swallowed a sudden lump in his throat. “I know, angel. I want Emily to come home, too, but Emily has to work.” He sat up again and pulled Amanda Sue into his lap, searching for words to explain. “You know how Daddy goes to work every day and comes home at night to be with Amanda Sue. Emily used to stay here to take care of you while I’m gone, but now Carol does that.”

  Amanda Sue pointed to the top of the stairs with a finger damp from her mouth and said, “Carl woom.”

  “Yes, Carol’s in her room now, writing letters, but when Daddy isn’t here, Carol takes care of you. So Emily has decided to go back to work.” He knew he was making a hash of it, but he didn’t know how else to explain. He licked his lips and stumbled on. “The thing is, see, Emily doesn’t work at the place that I do anymore, and she…she can’t be here so much anymore, but you see her sometimes during the day, don’t you?” He knew that Emily had been there that very day during her lunch hour. Carol, apparently, had made her a sandwich.

  Amanda Sue turned over and stood in his lap so that she was eye level with him. Placing a hand on his cheek, she said pleadingly, “Oan Mimly.”

  He hugged her close, feeling as if he were drowning in his own misery. “I know, sweetie. I want Emily, too.”

  Shoving away from him, she went to the chairside table where the cordless phone rested. Pointing at it, she insisted, “Caw Mimly.”

  For a moment, Logan felt perilously close to tears. How could he explain to his innocent little daughter that he did not dare call Emily? He couldn’t bear to speak to her now. He just couldn’t. Choosing the coward’s way out, he leaped to his feet, declaring brightly. “Bathtime! Aren’t you ready for your bath?”

  Emily put aside for the moment, Amanda Sue nodded eagerly and lifted her arms to be taken up. Logan swung her onto his hip and headed for the stairs, knowing that he was sentencing himself to another agonizingly long night. It was early for her bath, and once bathtime was over, bedtime came, which meant that Logan would find himself alone even earlier than usual. He’d sleep on the couch again, unable to face that big, empty bed—not that he’d get much rest, either way. Broke
n hearts and unfulfilled desires didn’t seem to take breathers.

  “At least I have you, ’Manda mine,” he whispered as he climbed the stairs with his daughter in his arms. “Thank God for that.” He didn’t even want to think about his life now without her. He wasn’t sure he’d have the strength to survive this pain without his daughter. He wasn’t even sure he’d want to.

  Emily steeled herself. For the first time in weeks she would actually see him. Her heart was pounding like a big brass band, her hands knotted beneath the conference table. When the heavy, oak-paneled door opened, her breath seemed to solidify in her lungs, neither coming in nor going out. Her boss and co-workers got to their feet as Logan and the efficient Hal entered the room, but Emily could not bring herself to make the effort; she was doing all she could do to keep herself intact. Hands were shaking all around her, greetings were murmured. The sound of his voice slid over her nerve endings like balm on a scrape, but she knew that the sting would be quick in coming and severe.

  She felt it the instant he realized she was there. His hand came momentarily into her view, but she made no move to take it, and it disappeared with a jerk. So she sat, both dreading and longing for the moment when Logan spoke to her.

  He didn’t. Instead, he simply turned away and walked to an empty chair farther down the table. Jerkily, he opened his briefcase and began extracting papers, Hal at his elbow. Emily lifted her hands to the tabletop and sat forward, forearms braced against the smooth, glassy surface. A cup of coffee appeared at her elbow, dispensed by a silent secretary in beige wool crepe. Her boss was saying something pompous about market returns and overbuilt suburbs. The goal, she knew, was winning a hike of half a percentage point in the interest rate on a development loan. She personally expected Logan to walk out. She’d told her boss that he could go anywhere for financing on this project; he didn’t need them, but for some reason her current employer felt now was the time to try for the hike.