Moon Over Miami: A Romantic Comedy

by Jane Graves

  "Damage control. That's all we're talking about." Edwin edged closer and dropped his voice. "Just assure me that you'll see no more of this woman, I think I can still persuade the other partners to make you the top candidate."

  For a moment all Mark could do was stand there in utter disbelief. This was what he'd wanted for ten years? To play these kinds of games? To lie on purpose? To treat a sweet, wonderful woman like Liz as if she didn't even exist, just because she didn't meet the expectations of people he thought he wanted to emulate but had just discovered he didn't give a damn about? If this was what life at the top was like, he wanted no part of it.

  Mark inched closer to Edwin, skewering him with a look of pure malice. "Listen to this, you pompous ass. For the past ten years, I've sweated blood for this company. It's been my whole life. I've come in early, I've worked late, I've given up everything for your bottom line. Anytime you said jump, I asked how high. Well, as of right now, I'm not jumping anymore."

  "McAlister! Keep your voice down!"

  "I'll talk as loud as I want to. And I don't care if the whole damned world hears me!"

  "Now, listen here--"

  "No. You listen. I'm not going to let anyone stand here and tell Liz she's not good enough for me. Because the truth is that I'm the one who's not good enough for her. I just hope I can get a ring on her finger by the time she figures that out."

  Liz stared at Mark in complete awe. He was throwing his career away. He was telling the managing partner to go to hell, and it was all because of her. He was going to regret this. Maybe not now, maybe not next week, but eventually, and when he did--

  Wait a minute. What was that he said about a ring?

  "That's enough, McAlister." Edwin's voice was low and intense, full of rage. "You've embarrassed me, and you've embarrassed the firm in front of a very important client. I can't overlook this."

  "You won't have to. You'll have my resignation Monday morning."

  Liz felt a rush of panic. "No! Mark, don't do this!"

  He grabbed her hand. "Come on, Liz. We're leaving."

  He pulled her toward the door. She looked back over her shoulder and saw Edwin turning ten shades of red. Steven Millstone watched them go, and Liz could have sworn she saw him smile. Mark led her out of the club, right past the valet, then strode through the parking lot directly to his car.

  "Mark. Stop. You can't do this."

  He kept walking, pulling her along.

  "You've worked there almost ten years!" Liz protested. "You can't just throw that away!"

  Still he ignored her. He unlocked her door and motioned for her to get inside, then shut her door and circled his car to the driver's door.

  Liz couldn't stand this. She couldn't stand the fact that he went into that country club tonight thinking he was on the verge of a partnership, only to come out unemployed because of something she'd done. Or something she was, which was even worse.

  The moment Mark got into the car, she said, "You can't give up that partnership for me, Mark. You can't!"

  He shut the door and turned to her, taking her hands in his.

  "Liz. Listen to me."

  "I never wanted this to happen!"

  "Neither did I. But I'm glad it did."

  "You're glad? You're glad you no longer have a job?"

  "I'm glad I no longer have that job." He tightened his hands against hers. "I've changed in the past few weeks. I don't like the person that firm made me. But the person I've become since I met you--I like him a whole lot more."

  "Mark--"

  "No. Listen. I went a little crazy there for awhile, thinking I knew what I wanted when I really didn't. But I've wised up a lot tonight."

  "I guess I went a little crazy, too." Liz sighed heavily, holding out her palms and looking down at the dress she'd never wanted to buy in the first place. "This isn't me, Mark. This dress, this hair, this life. I was only kidding myself to think I could be somebody else." She hated to speak the truth, but what else could she do? "You know the real me. I'm afraid that's all you're ever going to get."

  She held her breath after she said that, because maybe he wasn't thinking straight before, and he'd wake up and realize the horrible mistake he'd made and want to take it all back.

  "You're all I'll ever want," he said. "The real you. Not the made up you."

  "But your job," she said, "your future--"

  "My job isn't my future. You are."

  For a moment Liz was speechless, so overcome with happiness that she didn't know what to say. Mark drew her close and kissed her, a soft, gentle kiss that was full of the promise of even better things to come, and it made her heart soar. Then she remembered.

  "Mark, when you were yelling at Edwin in there, you said something else. Something about a--"

  She stopped short, afraid to bring it up again because he'd said it in the heat of the moment, and she wasn't sure he really meant it.

  "A ring?" Mark said.

  "Yes."

  "I know it seems like it happened overnight, but I meant every word of what I said. The question is, how do you feel about it?"

  She saw tension on his face as he waited for her answer, his gaze fixed on hers as if he were trying to read her response in her eyes. Didn’t he know how desperately she wanted him?

  "You'd better be very careful if you put a ring on my finger," she told him. "Because once it's there, it's never coming off."

  He gave her a brilliant smile. "Then we have a lot to talk about, don't we?"

  She nodded and kissed him again, her heart so full it was about to explode. Despite a few glitches here and there, this had turned out to be the very best day of her life.

  Mark glanced at her hair. "How many pins do you suppose are in there?"

  "About three or four thousand. The stylist almost had to use Super Glue to get it to stay up."

  "When we get home, I'm pulling all of them out. One by one. And you're never putting your hair up like that again."

  "Okay."

  "And if I ever hear the name 'Elizabeth' again, there’ll be hell to pay. Got that?"

  "Got it."

  "And while we're at it, I hate that dress."

  "This dress cost me three hundred dollars!"

  "I'll give you four hundred if you promise never to wear it again."

  Liz smiled. "Since when did you become such a big spender?"

  "Since I found a reason to be. I love you, Liz. And I'm never letting you go."

  He leaned over the console and pulled her into his arms, and she relished the warmth of his body against his. This night could have gone so, so wrong. Instead, it had ended up exactly right.

  Just then Liz heard her text tone. She grabbed her phone and saw that Kelsey Morrison had sent her a text. Suddenly the memory of Kiki’s prediction that night on the beach in Jamaica came roaring back, along with their promise to text each other only one word: YES if Kiki was right, and NO if she wasn’t. Liz looked up at the sky, and sure enough, there it was.

  A full moon.

  Her heart beating wildly with anticipation, she opened Kelsey’s text. It contained only one word. YES. In capital letters. With a row of exclamation points. Liz couldn’t believe it. Everything had happened for both of them, just as Kiki said it would.

  She texted Kelsey back. YES. With even more exclamation points than Kelsey had used.

  “What’s up?” Mark asked.

  Liz dropped her phone to her lap and turned to him, her heart overflowing with wonder. "I know you're not going to believe this, and if I were you I probably wouldn't, either. But I swear it's true. See, a month ago I was a bridesmaid in a wedding…"

  Then she proceeded to tell him the story about the Jamaican beach and the mysterious woman and the full moon with the promise of true love blossoming beneath it—a story the average person would have called crazy. A month ago, Liz had to admit she thought it was crazy. But now, imagining what her life was going to be like with this wonderful man in it, an odd stranger making an outlandis
h prediction that came true was more than just coincidental.

  It was magical.

  * * *

  Mark took his leave from Nichols, Marbury & White the following Monday. It took him most of the day to close out his responsibilities, to say goodbye to the people he was genuinely going to miss, and to do the obligatory exit interview in personnel. Sloan made himself scarce, which was a good thing, and he never saw a hair of Edwin Nichols' bad toupee either, which was even better.

  He came out of his office for the last time to find Tina sitting on the edge of her desk.

  "No, you don't," Tina said. "You turn around and go right back into that office. You do it right now, or I'm going to cry. And you'll be sorry about that. I don't look pretty when I cry."

  They stared at each other a long, painful moment. Then she slid off her desk and wrapped her arms around him in a heartfelt hug.

  "It's going to be terrible, Mark. I just know they're going to reassign me to some nasty, demanding jerk I hate and I'm going to end up getting fired. You're the only one here who would put up with me."

  "I'll call you the minute I get settled in a new job," Mark said. "If there's any way I can, I'll bring you along."

  "Warn them first. I'm hardly your average assistant."

  "You're right. You're not average. You're the best I've ever had."

  She sniffed a little and wiped her eyes, then backed away. Mark left the office, giving her one last smile over his shoulder.

  Some passages in life were easy. Others weren't. As he headed to Simon's to see Liz, though, Mark found himself looking forward rather than looking back. No matter what the future held, there was no question in his mind that he'd done the right thing.

  He came into Simon's, spied Liz behind the bar and headed toward her, excited at the very thought of seeing her again. She leaned over the bar and gave him a quick kiss. It wasn't until he sat down on a barstool that he realized who was sitting next to him.

  Steven Millstone.

  Mark blinked with disbelief. "Steven?"

  "Hi, Mark. Liz said you'd be here soon. I wanted to talk to you."

  "What about?"

  "Edwin told me you'd been fired."

  "I resigned."

  "Yeah, Liz finally gave me the straight story on that."

  "It doesn't matter now," Mark said. "The firm will handle your account just fine without me. Jared Sloan--"

  "Jared Sloan is an idiot. And who says they'll be handling my account at all?"

  Mark stared at him. "I just assumed--"

  "Look, Mark. I grew up in a lower middle class family, where my dad worked two jobs just to make ends meet. If I hadn't been such a computer geek, I never would have made all this money, and it makes me uncomfortable to give my business to people who are used to dealing with the rich folks. I just have a little software business that happened to get big. I don't want someone feeding me caviar and champagne and all that other crap, and then billing me an outrageous amount of money so they can cover all those expenses. I just need someone who can keep from giving away half my profit to Uncle Sam. That's all."

  The more this guy talked, the more Mark liked him.

  "So are you interested?"

  Mark blinked. "Excuse me?"

  "Ever think of starting your own accounting firm?"

  Mark stared at him, dumbfounded. He couldn't say he'd ever thought about that at all. There were a lot of unknowns there, and he'd never been a big risk-taker. But something had changed in the past few weeks, something that told him he was ready to take a chance.

  "Yeah," he said. "The thought has occurred to me."

  "Good. When I saw you stick up for Liz the way you did, I knew you were the kind of guy I was looking for. Can we get together tomorrow and discuss it?"

  Mark couldn't believe it. The million-dollar kid wanted to hand him an account that other people would saw off a limb to have? He glanced at Liz. She was all smiles.

  "Yes," Mark said. "Let's do that."

  "Great." Steven glanced at his watch. "Oops. Gotta go. Baseball game."

  "Baseball?"

  "Well, sometimes it's a stretch to call it that. It's an adult league for guys who're lucky to be able to run the bases without pulling a muscle. Tonight my company's team is playing the guys from Marty's Barbecue."

  Liz grinned. "Sounds like fun. We love baseball."

  "Then why don't you come along? I'll warn you, though. We're pretty terrible. We're just hoping Marty's guys are even worse."

  "I can't," Liz said on a sigh. "I have to work."

  Sherri came up beside her. "It's slow tonight. I'll keep things moving here. The boss won't care if you leave early."

  "Really?" Liz said, already jerking off her apron. "I'll make it up to you. I promise!"

  As she grabbed her purse and ducked under the bar, Sherri said, "Hey, Liz. I've got a five bucks that says Steven's team loses."

  "Hmm." Liz turned to Steven and whispered, "Were you just being self deprecating when you said your team is lousy?"

  "No. Sorry. We stink."

  "Good. I love an underdog." She turned to Sherri. "I'll take that action."

  It was a beautiful, breezy evening at the ballpark, with the smell of freshly-cut grass warmed by the evening sun. Mark and Liz got corn dogs for dinner at the concession stand and watched a nail-biter of a game that Steven's team pulled out in the last inning. With Liz on the bench beside him, smiling and cheering and holding his hand, Mark simply couldn't believe what an incredibly lucky man he was.

  "That was so much fun," she told him on the way home. "And I'm five bucks richer, too. I was thinking of investing it."

  "In what?"

  "McAlister & Associates."

  Those words made Mark feel as if he was walking a foot above the ground. In fact, he was so excited the rest of the evening that he had a hard time falling asleep. The longer he and Liz talked about the possibilities, the more enthusiastic he became. By the time the clock inched past midnight and he finally pulled her into his arms to make love to her, he'd made his decision. In both his personal life and his professional one, it was time he stepped off that cliff, because Liz had given him all the confidence he needed to insure he wouldn't fall. With her in his life, he'd sprout wings and fly.

  Chapter 17

  Eight months after opening the doors of McAlister & Associates, Mark was bringing in new clients almost every week. Steven Millstone's account was the largest by far, but with his recommendation, several smaller companies had also signed on. The only "associate" so far was Jeff Miller, a kid with outstanding potential that Mark had hired right out of college. Mark was also interviewing a couple of experienced accountants on Monday to help take on the increased workload.

  "It's five-thirty, Jeff," Mark said, late on a Friday afternoon. "Go home."

  "But there's plenty of work. I don't mind staying."

  "It's not necessary."

  "I'll only be here an hour or so."

  Mark started to protest again, but then he looked past Jeff and saw Liz at the door of his office. She wore a long purple knit dress with a slit up the thigh and a row of buttons from her neck to her navel. She held a bag from the deli next door.

  Mark had never seen his wife look more beautiful. Then again, he thought that every time he saw her.

  "But I don't mind staying, Mr. McAlister," Jeff said.

  "It's Mark. Remember?"

  "Mark. Right." He opened the file. "See I was looking at this client's tax liability for last year, and--"

  "I just made a new rule. Nobody works late on Friday."

  Liz winked at Mark, then rattled the deli sack a little. Jeff whipped around. When he saw Liz, he stood quickly, nearly spilling the contents of the file he held.

  "Mrs. McAlister. I-I didn't see you standing there."

  Liz gave him a thousand-watt smile, one that would send even the most experienced ladies' man to his knees. Mark just hoped the poor kid didn't wet his pants.

  Jeff swallowed hard
and set the file on Mark's desktop. "Uh, I guess I'll see you Monday," he said as he scurried out the door. Liz watched until he disappeared from sight, then came into the office and closed the door behind her.

  "Why, I do believe that poor boy is afraid of me."

  "He's in awe of you." Mark led her over to his sofa and pulled her down beside him. "So am I."

  "Eager little thing, isn't he?"

  Mark edged the slit in Liz's dress aside, then ran his hand up her leg. "Yeah. And smart as he can be. I've gotta teach him to take it easy, though, or he might get to my age and have nothing but a job to turn to."

  "Unlike his boss."

  "No. Like his boss, until his boss met you."

  Mark kissed his way along Liz's neck, his fingers finding the first of those many tiny buttons.

  "I thought you had to work late tonight," Liz murmured, her eyes dropping closed.

  "Didn't you hear the new rule I made?"

  "But I brought dinner."

  "Later." He unfastened two buttons, then three.

  Liz laughed softly. "Did I ever tell you that for a stuffy, boring accountant you're not so stuffy and boring?"

  "A time or two. Did I tell you Randall Pearson is signing with us tomorrow?"

  Liz turned around suddenly. "Oh, Mark! That's wonderful!"

  Wonderful pretty well summed it up. Pearson Paper Company had revenues in the millions, and he was going to have to do some fast hiring just to take on the extra business.

  "After we had dinner with him and his wife the other night, Pearson said you were a ’breath of fresh air.' He told me any man who was smart enough to persuade a woman like you to marry him deserved his business."

  Liz's eyes got a little misty when Mark said that, and he was amazed at how he could love her more with every minute that passed.

  Then all at once she gave him a wicked grin. "Wait a minute. If we got Pearson, that means--"

  "Sloan didn't."

  "Yes!" Liz threw her arms up in victory, then wound them around Mark's neck and gave him a kiss that resonated through every nerve in his body. "So how many more clients are you going to steal right out from under his nose?"