Their Unfinished Business

by Braun, Jackie

  It dawned on her then that she was still on her knees gazing up at him like the same starry-eyed girl whose heart he’d broken.

  Pride fired Ali to her feet. She wiped her soiled hands on her jeans and inwardly cursed her habit of not wearing gardening gloves. There was no help for her dirty cuticles or her perspiration-damp appearance beneath the ball cap she wore, but she damn well wouldn’t kneel like some supplicant before Luke Banning of all people.

  “Hello.”

  To her relief her voice sounded normal, its tone just this side of cool, but he was smiling as if he thought she were delighted that he’d rumbled down her lane, disturbing her peace and nature’s quiet on this sunny Sunday afternoon.

  “God, you look the same as I remembered…give or take a dirt smudge.”

  Laughing, he reached out and touched her cheek, presumably to wipe away some errant soil. His smile dimmed when Ali backed up a step and crossed her arms over her chest.

  “Believe me, I’ve changed.”

  “I guess we all have.” He slipped off the glasses and she felt lost in those blue eyes until he added, “Ten years will do that.”

  “It’s been eleven.”

  He nodded and one side of his mouth crooked up. “Eleven. How have you been, Ali?”

  “Fine.”

  “I read in the paper last year that Audra had married again. When I spoke to her on the telephone a couple weeks ago, she seemed very happy.”

  “Yes. Apparently the fourth time is the charm,” Ali replied. And because the words seemed somehow disloyal given the vast metamorphosis her twin had gone through, she added, “Seth’s a great guy. I think this one will stick.”

  “I’m glad for her. What about you? Anybody special in your life these days?”

  She hadn’t expected him to come right out and ask her such a personal question, and so she spluttered, “I—I’m seeing someone.”

  Did one date actually count as “seeing”? Bradley had asked her out again since then, twice in fact. But she’d put him off. Standing in front of Luke, she decided there was really no reason she shouldn’t take Bradley up on his offer of dinner the following Saturday.

  “Is he an islander?”

  “No. In fact, he’s relatively new to the area. He lives on the mainland, just outside Petoskey.”

  Luke nodded. “Speaking of the mainland, there’s a lot of new development along the waterfront. I barely recognized parts of it when I flew over.”

  When Ali glanced in bafflement at his bike, Luke caressed the motorcycle’s handlebars. On a shrug he said, “One of the perks of having my own aircraft is that I always have room for my Harley.”

  His priorities apparently hadn’t changed, but she kept that thought to herself. No reason to dredge up the past. Indeed, she planned to keep the conversation as impersonal as possible.

  “Those new developments on the mainland are giving Saybrook’s some stiff competition, which is why we want to buy the property adjacent to the resort and add a golf course as soon as we can manage it.”

  Luke shook his head and grinned again. “I still can’t believe you guys bought the resort.”

  The comment rankled, so much so that her determination to remain impersonal began to waver. After all, he wasn’t the only one who had made something of himself. Ali had graduated cum laude with a degree in business and was now part owner of one of the Midwest’s most storied resorts.

  “It’s prime real estate and despite the fact that the previous manager drove it to the brink of bankruptcy, it’s already starting to rebound,” she said. “A couple of good seasons and we’ll be operating in the black. But then I’m sure you already know that or you wouldn’t be considering entering into a partnership with us.”

  “I’m not questioning the soundness of the investment,” Luke said, holding up a hand. “It’s just that back when we were kids who would have guessed that the Conlans would someday own Saybrook’s?”

  “Yes, and who would have guessed that a high school dropout would go on to be called Entrepreneur of the Year by a respected national business journal?” she replied.

  The words came out snide rather than tinged with the begrudging admiration she felt. Ali could tell Luke realized that. He slipped his sunglasses back on, his happy-go-lucky grin receding into a taut line of compressed lips.

  “Yeah. I guess the kids at Trillium High who voted me most likely to wind up incarcerated are eating their words about now. Makes me almost sorry I didn’t make it for the last class reunion.”

  Ali felt too small for reminding him of his rocky adolescence to point out that since he hadn’t graduated, technically he would not have been invited to any of his class’s reunions.

  “That was a long time ago,” she murmured, realizing even as she said it that she certainly hadn’t let go of the past.

  It was a moment before Luke broke the awkward silence. “I did get my diploma, you know.”

  She blinked in surprise as much at his words as at the quiet pride with which they were spoken. He’d dropped out of high school during his senior year, and although Ali was three years his junior and they hadn’t started to date until she was nearly a senior herself, his lack of a diploma had been the cause of more than a few arguments. She had urged him repeatedly to go back to night school or earn a general equivalency degree. He was too smart not to, she’d told him.

  “I didn’t know,” she said. Then, “I’m glad.”

  “I took adult education courses after I left. It didn’t take me very long.”

  “What made you decide to do it?”

  He shrugged and glanced away. “It was just after I’d made my first million with the dot-com I’d founded. I guess I didn’t want people to think I was a fluke or…stupid.”

  “I never thought you were stupid.”

  “No.” The grin was back in a flash of white teeth. “You just thought I was reckless and impulsive. I still am, by the way.”

  And because the grin had sent a shower of sparks through her system, she retorted crisply, “I can tell. You’re driving that damned Harley without a helmet. That’s illegal, you know.”

  “Not in every state. Besides, you can’t get the full experience with a bucket strapped to your head.” A pair of dark brows rose over the top rim of the sunglasses. “Want to go for a ride, Ali? I can go real slow if you’d like, or take you fast.”

  His silky tone and the double entendre implied along with his raised brows had gooseflesh appearing on her arms.

  “Fast or slow, I never liked your bike,” she answered primly.

  “No. But you used to like me.”

  What she’d felt had gone a great deal beyond “like,” and he damned well knew it. Ali notched up her chin and let the chill seep into her inflection when she said, “So, what are you doing all the way out here today?”

  She asked, but she thought she knew. Surely he had driven to this secluded shore of the island to speak with her in private before the midweek meeting at which Dane and Audra would be present. An apology would be coming any minute…an apology she still planned to decline.

  Ali’s stone cottage, which had once belonged to her grandmother, sat on Trillium’s western shore, affording it a breathtaking view of Lake Michigan. It was tucked in amid a huge parcel of state land, making it the only private residence for miles. The only private residence except for…

  Even before she could finish the thought, Luke was pointing to the slight rise at the northern edge of her property. Since the leaves on the trees were still sparse, Ali could just make out the pitch of the neighboring cottage’s roof and she cursed her hubris.

  The place had belonged to Luke’s grandmother. Elsie Banning had raised Luke after his father, an alcoholic, had died while Luke was still in grade school. Luke’s mother had already abandoned the family by then. As Elsie’s only surviving kin, the cottage and the seven wooded acres on which it sat technically belonged to Luke.

  “I thought I’d swing by the old house and see how it�
��s fared since I’ve been gone.” He took off his sunglasses again and fiddled with the ear pieces. Regret colored his tone when he added, “I should have had someone taking care of it over the years.”

  Elsie had died just three months before he’d left Trillium. If the man had one redeeming trait, Ali knew it was that he’d loved his grandmother without reserve. Her death had devastated him.

  “I’ve looked in on it from time to time,” she admitted.

  She’d done more than that, actually. She’d kept the grass mowed, the carpet roses trimmed back and the cobblestone path that led from the driveway to the front door free of weeds. She’d done it for Elsie, not for Luke, or at least that’s what she’d told herself. But sometimes, after finishing the yard work, she would sit on the rear porch that faced the big lake, rock slowly back and forth in the wide swing where she and Luke had long ago shared their first taste of passion, and wonder what he was doing and if he ever thought about her.

  The fact that he’d run into her today by accident seemed to answer that question now.

  “I appreciate it,” he said.

  “It’s no trouble to walk over,” she replied on a shrug.

  Luke motioned toward the house behind her. “Does that mean you live here now?”

  She nodded. “My grandmother deeded it to me when she moved to Florida with my parents six years ago.”

  He smiled slowly and despite Ali’s closed posture, laid one warm hand on her upper arm and squeezed. The casual contact caused her traitorous pulse to shoot off like a bottle rocket and had her irritated all over again. He seemed not to notice, lost as he was in reminiscing.

  “I think I spent as much time in your grandmother’s kitchen as I did in my own. She made the best sugar cookies on Trillium. Remember how when we were kids we would sneak them off the baking tray before they even had a chance to cool?”

  Ali didn’t want to be reminded of the ways in which their lives had once twined together so sweetly since his abandonment had caused her heart to fray apart afterward. And so when he asked, “How is Mrs. Conlan doing these days?” she announced baldly, “She died last winter.”

  “God. I’m sorry.” He slipped the glasses back on, making Ali wonder if she had just imagined that fleeting shadow of what had looked like self-reproach. “I didn’t know.”

  “How would you?”

  “Ali.” He said her name quietly, and then stroked her cheek. This time she didn’t back away, if only to prove to herself that his touch meant nothing.

  A bee buzzed past and overhead a blue jay’s shrill cry rent the silence as they regarded one another.

  Finally, motioning in the direction of his grandmother’s property, Ali said, “Don’t let me keep you, Luke. I know you’re a busy and important man.”

  He hesitated, and she thought for a moment he was going to say something, but then he dropped his hand and straddled the bike, firing it to life with a swift downward kick of his booted foot. Over the engine’s throaty growl he hollered, “See you Wednesday.”

  Wednesday, Ali knew, would come much too soon.

  Luke slowed the bike as he approached the driveway to his grandmother’s cottage, but in the end, he sped past it, instead following the rutted road as it wound through the woods and then spilled back onto the main drag a dozen miles later.

  He hadn’t felt up to seeing the cottage and confronting any more of his past. Not after seeing Ali.

  He’d known her right away. She hadn’t changed much. Even the baseball cap snugged over her crown was the same. He snorted out a laugh that was lost to the wind. The woman just couldn’t give up on the Detroit Tigers even though they hadn’t won a World Series since 1984.

  Despite her poor taste in baseball teams, she looked good. Better than good, actually, even with her dark hair sprouting from the back of the cap, perspiration dotting her upper lip and dirt streaking her right cheek. Her eyes were still a couple shades darker than caramel and she’d kept her figure, that long-legged, slim-hipped athletic build that had given him many a sleepless night in his youth.

  He frowned, realizing that none of the women he’d dated during the past decade had looked anything like her. There had been blondes and redheads, but not a single brunette. Certainly none of those women had been a fan of baseball much less able to pitch one low and inside while the bases were loaded in the bottom of the ninth.

  That had been only one of Ali’s talents, of course. Remembering the others nearly had him crashing his bike into the unforgiving trunk of a sugar maple.

  He’d thought he’d forgotten her. No, that wasn’t true. He’d never forgotten her. But over the years he’d convinced himself that adolescence and inexperience had magnified and romanticized the feelings he’d once had for her. In a way, she’d been the girl next door, since their grandmothers had lived side by side. He and Ali had always known one another and hung around together since Luke and her older brother, Dane, had been good friends.

  Then, the summer she was seventeen, the pigtails he’d once pulled had become the sleek tumble of hair he’d weaved his fingers through. God, he still remembered the magic of that first kiss and the way her slim arms had wrapped around him and held tight when he would have backed away. He’d been twenty at the time and Luke had known that everyone on the island, including her family, thought their match was a mistake.

  Looking back now, he didn’t blame them. He’d had no prospects at all, just big dreams as he’d pumped gas for the luxury cabin cruisers that stopped at Whitey’s Marina. Ali, on the other hand, was set to graduate top in her class and had plans to go away for her degree after completing a couple years at the community college on the mainland to save money.

  He’d always figured his leaving had been as much a favor to her as a way out for him. Despite being accepted at the University of Michigan a few hours’ drive downstate, she’d begun to talk about staying on Trillium, taking correspondence courses or transferring to a less prestigious university near Traverse City and commuting a couple days of the week. Both of their futures had seemed so doomed.

  Then his grandmother had died.

  Luke could still hear the words Elsie Banning had spoken to him as she lay in a hospital bed, hooked up to an assortment of beeping, buzzing machines.

  She’d gripped his hand with her knobby fingers and in a voice barely above a whisper she’d commanded, “Be happy, Luke, and make me proud. You’re not your father. It breaks my heart to see you settle for being less than what you were meant to be.”

  Even now, her words drove him. He revved the bike’s engine, catching air as he crested another hill. Before touching down again on the other side he caught a glimpse of the big lake glittering in the midday sun. His grandmother had always loved that lake and the limitless potential she said she saw in its sheer vastness.

  “I’ve made something of myself!” He shouted the words as he raced against the long shadows of his past.

  At thirty-four, he enjoyed the distinction of being one of the few dot-comers who’d gotten rich and then wisely gotten out before the bubble burst. Since then he’d invested in more traditional ventures, primarily real estate, cultivating a reputation as a shrewd dealmaker. He’d accomplished every goal he’d set and exceeded even his own very high expectations.

  He was Luke Banning, successful businessman, respected entrepreneur. No one pitied him now or looked askance at him when he walked into a room. Hell, people paid him large sums of money and sat shoulder to shoulder in crowded auditoriums just for the privilege of hearing him share his expertise.

  “I’ve made something of myself,” he shouted again, wondering why his triumphant return to Trillium didn’t feel quite as sweet as he’d imagined it would.

  And wondering why it was that for all he had accumulated over the years something still seemed to be missing.

  CHAPTER TWO

  ALI thumbed through the clothes in her closet once again. Even though Audra wasn’t in the room, she swore that every time she selected someth
ing, she heard her twin whispering, “You’re not going to wear that, are you?”

  And so it was that with a mere forty minutes before the Conlans were to meet with Luke Banning, Ali found herself standing in her bra and panties, and dithering between a navy skirt and a black skirt that were the exact same conservative cut and by the same maker.

  Gazing at the garments, she muttered aloud, “When did I become so damned boring?”

  Exasperated, she tossed both skirts onto the small mountain of clothes on her bed and stuffed her arm into the far reaches of the cramped closet. After a minute of fruitless fishing, she finally produced what she was looking for: A suit the color of freshly spilled blood.

  The jacket cut in sharply at the waist and then fell away at the hip. As for the skirt, it was a little shorter than the rest of her closet’s offerings. Instead of ending primly just below the knee, it skimmed to the middle of her thighs. She’d bought it on sale last fall while shopping with Audra, which explained the vivid color and more daring cut. She’d planned to take it back. In fact, the tags still dangled from one sleeve. Now she was glad she’d kept it. Black, tan and navy just didn’t suit her mood today.

  Blood-red did.

  Half an hour later, she stood in front of the full-length mirror that was affixed to the back of her bedroom door and surveyed her appearance.

  None of this, she assured herself, was for Luke’s benefit. She’d been thinking about making some changes, paying a little more attention to small details like putting on eyeliner and a faint sweep of blush to highlight her cheekbones.

  Besides, she didn’t want the man thinking that all she owned were blue jeans and ball caps. She wanted him to see her as a professional and an equal. And okay, she could admit it. She wanted him to see her as a woman…a woman who was off-limits.

  She’d left her hair loose. She couldn’t remember the last time she hadn’t yanked it all back in some sort of clip or another. When they were girls, she had envied Audra her wild tumble of curls. The grass always being greener, her sister had complained mightily that Ali had lucked out with her stick-straight mane. Today, Ali had to admit, she rather liked the way it fell to her shoulders in a sleek cascade the same color as the antique mahogany bureau that had once belonged to her grandmother.