by Nora Roberts
With her hands laid lightly on the arms of her chair, she nodded. “And you’re hoping to convince them that you belong at this desk.”
“They’re businessmen, Sydney. And though sentiment might prefer a Hayward at the head of the table, profit and loss will turn the tide.”
Her expression remained placid, her voice steady. “I’m sure you’re right again. And if the board continues to back me, I want one of two things from you. Your resignation or your loyalty. I won’t accept anything in between. Now, if you’ll excuse me?”
When the door slammed behind him, she reached for the phone. But her hand was trembling, and she drew it back. She plucked up a paper clip and mangled it. Then another, then a third. Between that and the two sheets of stationery she shredded, she felt the worst of the rage subside.
Clearheaded, she faced the facts.
Lloyd Bingham was an enemy, and he was an enemy with experience and influence. She had acted in haste with Soho. Not that she’d been wrong; she didn’t believe she’d been wrong. But if there were mistakes, Lloyd would capitalize on them and drop them right in her lap.
Was it possible that she was risking everything her grandfather had given her with one project? Could she be forced to step down if she couldn’t prove the worth and right of what she had done?
She wasn’t sure, and that was the worst of it.
One step at a time. That was the only way to go on. And the first step was to get down to Soho and do her job.
The sky was the color of drywall. Over the past few days, the heat had ebbed, but it had flowed back into the city that morning like a river, flooding Manhattan with humidity. The pedestrian traffic surged through it, streaming across the intersections in hot little packs.
Girls in shorts and men in wilted business suits crowded around the sidewalk vendors in hopes that an ice-cream bar or a soft drink would help them beat the heat.
When Sydney stepped out of her car, the sticky oppression of the air punched like a fist. She thought of her driver sitting in the enclosed car and dismissed him for the day. Shielding her eyes, she turned to study her building.
Scaffolding crept up the walls like metal ivy. Windows glittered, their manufacturer stickers slashed across the glass. She thought she saw a pair of arthritic hands scraping away at a label at a third-floor window.
There were signs in the doorway, warning of construction in progress. She could hear the sounds of it, booming hammers, buzzing saws, the clang of metal and the tinny sound of rock and roll through portable speakers.
At the curb she saw the plumber’s van, a dented pickup and a scattering of interested onlookers. Since they were all peering up, she followed their direction. And saw Mikhail.
For an instant, her heart stopped dead. He stood outside the top floor, five stories up, moving nimbly on what seemed to Sydney to be a very narrow board.
“Man, get a load of those buns,” a woman beside her sighed. “They are class A.”
Sydney swallowed. She supposed they were. And his naked back wasn’t anything to sneeze at, either. The trouble was, it was hard to enjoy it when she had a hideous flash of him plummeting off the scaffolding and breaking that beautiful back on the concrete below.
Panicked, she rushed inside. The elevator doors were open, and a couple of mechanics were either loading or unloading their tools inside it. She didn’t stop to ask but bolted up the steps.
Sweaty men were replastering the stairwell between two and three. They took the time to whistle and wink, but she kept climbing. Someone had the television up too loud, probably to drown out the sound of construction. A baby was crying fitfully. She smelled chicken frying.
Without pausing for breath, she dashed from four to five. There was music playing here. Tough and gritty rock, poorly accompanied by a laborer in an off-key tenor.
Mikhail’s door was open, and Sydney streaked through. She nearly tumbled over a graying man with arms like tree trunks. He rose gracefully from his crouched position where he’d been sorting tools and steadied her.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t see you.”
“Is all right. I like women to fall at my feet.”
She registered the Slavic accent even as she glanced desperately around the room for Mikhail. Maybe everybody in the building was Russian, she thought frantically. Maybe he’d imported plumbers from the mother country.
“Can I help you?”
“No. Yes.” She pressed a hand to her heart when she realized she was completely out of breath. “Mikhail.”
“He is just outside.” Intrigued, he watched her as he jerked a thumb toward the window.
She could see him there—at least she could see the flat, tanned torso. “Outside. But, but—”
“We are finishing for the day. You will sit?”
“Get him in,” Sydney whispered. “Please, get him in.”
Before he could respond, the window was sliding up, and Mikhail was tossing one long, muscled leg inside. He said something in his native tongue, laughter in his voice as the rest of his body followed. When he saw Sydney, the laughter vanished.
“Hayward.” He tapped his caulking gun against his palm.
“What were you doing out there?” The question came out in an accusing rush.
“Replacing windows.” He set the caulking gun aside. “Is there a problem?”
“No, I…” She couldn’t remember ever feeling more of a fool. “I came by to check the progress.”
“So. I’ll take you around in a minute.” He walked into the kitchen, stuck his head into the sink and turned the faucet on full cold.
“He’s a hothead,” the man behind her said, chuckling at his own humor. When Sydney only managed a weak smile, he called out to Mikhail, speaking rapidly in that exotic foreign tongue.
“Tak” was all he said. Mikhail came up dripping, hair streaming over the bandanna he’d tied around it. He shook it back, splattering water, then shrugged and hooked his thumbs in his belt loops. He was wet, sweaty and half-naked. Sydney had to fold her tongue inside her mouth to keep it from hanging out.
“My son is rude.” Yuri Stanislaski shook his head. “I raised him better.”
“Your—oh.” Sydney looked back at the man with the broad face and beautiful hands. Mikhail’s hands. “How do you do, Mr. Stanislaski.”
“I do well. I am Yuri. I ask my son if you are the Hayward who owns this business. He only says yes and scowls.”
“Yes, well, I am.”
“It’s a good building. Only a little sick. And we are the doctors.” He grinned at his son, then boomed out something else in Ukrainian.
This time an answering smile tugged at Mikhail’s mouth. “No, you haven’t lost a patient yet, Papa. Go home and have your dinner.”
Yuri hauled up his tool chest. “You come and bring the pretty lady. Your mama makes enough.”
“Oh, well, thank you, but—”
“I’m busy tonight, Papa.” Mikhail cut off Sydney’s polite refusal.
Yuri raised a bushy brow. “You’re stupid tonight,” he said in Ukrainian. “Is this the one who makes you sulk all week?”
Annoyed, Mikhail picked up a kitchen towel and wiped his face. “Women don’t make me sulk.”
Yuri only smiled. “This one would.” Then he turned to Sydney. “Now I am rude, too, talking so you don’t understand. He is bad influence.” He lifted her hand and kissed it with considerable charm. “I am glad to meet you.”
“I’m glad to meet you, too.”
“Put on a shirt,” Yuri ordered his son, then left, whistling.
“He’s very nice,” Sydney said.
“Yes.” Mikhail picked up the T-shirt he’d peeled off hours before, but only held it. “So, you want to see the work?”
“Yes, I thought—”
“The windows are done,” he interrupted. “The wiring is almost done. That and the plumbing will take another week. Come.”
He moved out, skirting her by a good two feet, then walked into the apartm
ent next door without knocking.
“Keely’s,” he told her. “She is out.”
The room was a clash of sharp colors and scents. The furniture was old and sagging but covered with vivid pillows and various articles of female attire.
The adjoining kitchen was a mess—not with dishes or pots and pans—but with walls torn down to studs and thick wires snaked through.
“It must be inconvenient for her, for everyone, during the construction.”
“Better than plugging in a cake mixer and shorting out the building. The old wire was tube and knob, forty years old or more, and frayed. This is Romex. More efficient, safer.”
She bent over his arm, studying the wiring. “Well. Hmm.”
He nearly smiled. Perhaps he would have if she hadn’t smelled so good. Instead, he moved a deliberate foot away. “After the inspection, we will put up new walls. Come.”
It was a trial for both of them, but he took her through every stage of the work, moving from floor to floor, showing her elbows of plastic pipe and yards of copper tubing.
“Most of the flooring can be saved with sanding and refinishing. But some must be replaced.” He kicked at a square of plywood he’d nailed to a hole in the second-floor landing.
Sydney merely nodded, asking questions only when they seemed intelligent. Most of the workers were gone, off to cash their week’s paychecks. The noise level had lowered so that she could hear muted voices behind closed doors, snatches of music or televised car chases. She lifted a brow at the sound of a tenor sax swinging into “Rhapsody in Blue.”
“That’s Will Metcalf,” Mikhail told her. “He’s good. Plays in a band.”
“Yes, he’s good.” The rail felt smooth and sturdy under her hand as they went down. Mikhail had done that, she thought. He’d fixed, repaired, replaced, as needed because he cared about the people who lived in the building. He knew who was playing the sax or eating the fried chicken, whose baby was laughing.
“Are you happy with the progress?” she asked quietly.
The tone of her voice made him look at her, something he’d been trying to avoid. A few tendrils of hair had escaped their pins to curl at her temples. He could see a pale dusting of freckles across her nose. “Happy enough. It’s you who should answer. It’s your building.”
“No, it’s not.” Her eyes were very serious, very sad. “It’s yours. I only write the checks.”
“Sydney—”
“I’ve seen enough to know you’ve made a good start.” She was hurrying down the steps as she spoke. “Be sure to contact my office when it’s time for the next draw.”
“Damn it. Slow down.” He caught up with her at the bottom of the steps and grabbed her arm. “What’s wrong with you? First you stand in my room pale and out of breath. Now you run away, and your eyes are miserable.”
It had hit her, hard, that she had no community of people who cared. Her circle of friends was so narrow, so self-involved. Her best friend had been Peter, and that had been horribly spoiled. Her life was on the sidelines, and she envied the involvement, the closeness she felt in this place. The building wasn’t hers, she thought again. She only owned it.
“I’m not running away, and nothing’s wrong with me.” She had to get out, get away, but she had to do it with dignity. “I take this job very seriously. It’s my first major project since taking over Hayward. I want it done right. And I took a chance by…” She trailed off, glancing toward the door just to her right. She could have sworn she’d heard someone call for help. Television, she thought, but before she could continue, she heard the thin, pitiful call again. “Mikhail, do you hear that?”
“Hear what?” How could he hear anything when he was trying not to kiss her again?
“In here.” She turned toward the door, straining her ears. “Yes, in here, I heard—”
That time he’d heard it, too. Lifting a fist, he pounded on the door. “Mrs. Wolburg. Mrs. Wolburg, it’s Mik.”
The shaky voice barely penetrated the wood. “Hurt. Help me.”
“Oh, God, she’s—”
Before Sydney could finish, Mikhail rammed his shoulder against the door. With the second thud, it crashed open to lean drunkenly on its hinges.
“In the kitchen,” Mrs. Wolburg called weakly. “Mik, thank God.”
He bolted through the apartment with its starched doilies and paper flowers to find her on the kitchen floor. She was a tiny woman, mostly bone and thin flesh. Her usually neat cap of white hair was matted with sweat.
“Can’t see,” she said. “Dropped my glasses.”
“Don’t worry.” He knelt beside her, automatically checking her pulse as he studied her pain-filled eyes. “Call an ambulance,” he ordered Sydney, but she was already on the phone. “I’m not going to help you up, because I don’t know how you’re hurt.”
“Hip.” She gritted her teeth at the awful, radiating pain. “I think I busted my hip. Fell, caught my foot. Couldn’t move. All the noise, nobody could hear me calling. Been here two, three hours. Got so weak.”
“It’s all right now.” He tried to chafe some heat into her hands. “Sydney, get a blanket and pillow.”
She had them in her arms and was already crouching beside Mrs. Wolburg before he’d finished the order. “Here now. I’m just going to lift your head a little.” Gently she set the woman’s limp head on the pillow. Despite the raging heat, Mrs. Wolburg was shivering with cold. As she continued to speak in quiet, soothing tones, Sydney tucked the blanket around her. “Just a few more minutes,” Sydney murmured, and stroked the clammy forehead.
A crowd was forming at the door. Though he didn’t like leaving Sydney with the injured woman, he rose. “I want to keep the neighbors away. Send someone to keep an eye for the ambulance.”
“Fine.” While fear pumped hard in her heart, she continued to smile down at Mrs. Wolburg. “You have a lovely apartment. Do you crochet the doilies yourself?”
“Been doing needlework for sixty years, since I was pregnant with my first daughter.”
“They’re beautiful. Do you have other children?”
“Six, three of each. And twenty grandchildren. Five great…” She shut her eyes on a flood of pain, then opened them again and managed a smile. “Been after me for living alone, but I like my own place and my own way.”
“Of course.”
“And my daughter, Lizzy? Moved clear out to Phoenix, Arizona. Now what would I want to live out there for?”
Sydney smiled and stroked. “I couldn’t say.”
“They’ll be on me now,” she muttered, and let her eyes close again. “Wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t dropped my glasses. Terrible nearsighted. Getting old’s hell, girl, and don’t let anyone tell you different. Couldn’t see where I was going and snagged my foot in that torn linoleum. Mik told me to keep it taped down, but I wanted to give it a good scrub.” She managed a wavery smile. “Least I’ve been lying here on a clean floor.”
“Paramedics are coming up,” Mikhail said from behind her. Sydney only nodded, filled with a terrible guilt and anger she was afraid to voice.
“You call my grandson, Mik? He lives up on Eighty-first. He’ll take care of the rest of the family.”
“Don’t worry about it, Mrs. Wolburg.”
Fifteen efficient minutes later, Sydney stood on the sidewalk watching as the stretcher was lifted into the back of the ambulance.
“Did you reach her grandson?” she asked Mikhail.
“I left a message on his machine.”
Nodding, she walked to the curb and tried to hail a cab.
“Where’s your car?”
“I sent him home. I didn’t know how long I’d be and it was too hot to leave him sitting there. Maybe I should go back in and call a cab.”
“In a hurry?”
She winced as the siren shrieked. “I want to get to the hospital.”
Nonplussed, he jammed his hands into his pockets. “There’s no need for you to go.”
She turn
ed, and her eyes, in the brief moment they held his, were ripe with emotion. Saying nothing, she faced away until a cab finally swung to the curb. Nor did she speak when Mikhail climbed in behind her.
She hated the smell of hospitals. Layers of illness, antiseptics, fear and heavy cleaners. The memory of the last days her grandfather had lain dying were still too fresh in her mind. The Emergency Room of the downtown hospital added one more layer. Fresh blood.
Sydney steeled herself against it and walked through the crowds of the sick and injured to the admitting window.
“You had a Mrs. Wolburg just come in.”
“That’s right.” The clerk stabbed keys on her computer. “You family?”
“No, I—”
“We’re going to need some family to fill out these forms. Patient said she wasn’t insured.”
Mikhail was already leaning over, eyes dangerous, when Sydney snapped out her answer. “Hayward Industries will be responsible for Mrs. Wolburg’s medical expenses.” She reached into her bag for identification and slapped it onto the counter. “I’m Sydney Hayward. Where is Mrs. Wolburg?”
“In X ray.” The frost in Sydney’s eyes had the clerk shifting in her chair. “Dr. Cohen’s attending.”
So they waited, drinking bad coffee among the moans and tears of inner city ER. Sometimes Sydney would lay her head back against the wall and shut her eyes. She appeared to be dozing, but all the while she was thinking what it would be like to be old, and alone and helpless.
He wanted to think she was only there to cover her butt. Oh yes, he wanted to think that of her. It was so much more comfortable to think of her as the head of some bloodless company than as a woman.
But he remembered how quickly she had acted in the Wolburg apartment, how gentle she had been with the old woman. And most of all, he remembered the look in her eyes out on the street. All that misery and compassion and guilt welling up in those big eyes.
“She tripped on the linoleum,” Sydney murmured.
It was the first time she’d spoken in nearly an hour, and Mikhail turned his head to study her. Her eyes were still closed, her face pale and in repose.