Hot Shot (49 page)

"Why not? Misery loves company."

"I hadn't thought that far ahead."

"Maybe you'd better."

"You have a point. Although—"

"Do you agree?"

He considered her question for a few moments and then nodded.

Susannah was mystified by the conversation, but her speculation was stopped short as the loudspeaker announced the final boarding call. Neither she nor Paige seemed to know quite what to say. Susannah smiled shakily. "Thanks. Thanks so much for everything."

Paige shrugged off Susannah's gratitude. "I owed you one."

Yank had begun to wander away. Susannah grabbed him and steered him toward the gate.

Just before they passed through, she gave Paige a final wave.

Paige stood in the middle of a bustling crowd of tourists and watched her sister and Yank Yankowski disappear. As they slipped out of sight, a deep ache passed through her like a dark wave on her private beach. Something important was slipping out of her life, and she didn't have the faintest idea how to get it back.

On the trip from Athens to Heathrow, Yank told Susannah what he knew about Sam's sudden determination to sell the company. He offered the details in his customary systematic fashion, laying out the facts as he knew them and refusing to speculate on anything he wasn't certain of.

Sam wanted to sell SysVal to Databeck Industries, an international conglomerate.

Databeck had offered to buy SysVal a year ago, and at the time Sam had scoffed at them, even though several of the board members had urged that the offer be considered. No matter how hard she searched, she could find only one explanation for Sam's change of heart. He wanted to get back at her for leaving him. The idea that he would sacrifice the company that meant everything to him just to punish her sent a chill to the very marrow of her bones. How could she have thought she knew someone so well and not have known him at all?

They had to lay over for several hours at Heathrow before their plane left for San Francisco. When they finally boarded, Yank fell asleep quickly, but Susannah couldn't rest. Instead of concentrating on the crisis at SysVal, she kept imagining herself walking into the lobby. Everyone would be watching her. She envisioned the pity in their faces, imagined the whispers behind her back. The images were unbearable, and she forced herself to concentrate on the implications of Sam's turnabout.

They all had been so certain that nothing like this could ever happen. The four partners each held fifteen percent of the company, giving them a controlling sixty percent. The other board members held the remaining forty. They had always felt so safe with this arrangement. But if Sam could unite the board, and if he then threw his fifteen percent in with them, nothing that she, Yank, or Mitch could do would keep the company from being sold.

They arrived in California at six in the morning. Even though it was early, Susannah asked Yank to drop her at Mitch's house. He lived in a charming California-style ranch that sprawled over several acres in Los Altos Hills. As he opened the door, she saw that he was clad only in a pair of running shorts. Sweat gleamed on his arms and darkened the pelt of sandy hair on his chest. He looked surprised to see her, but he was so hard to read that she wasn't certain whether he was pleased or not. The strange, erotic fantasy she'd had about him when she was in Greece slipped back into her mind, and for a moment she couldn't quite meet his eyes.

"Welcome home," he said, stepping aside to admit her. "I just got back from my run." He took her traveling case and led her into the living room. Normally it was one of her favorite places in the house, a happy hodgepodge of Ameri-can Southwest and French Riviera. Chairs and couches were upholstered in nubby, neutral-colored fabrics brightened up with throw pillows printed with colorful geometries. The stucco walls held large canvases splashed with tropical flowers, and tables with curly wrought-iron legs were placed at convenient intervals. But the pleasure she usually felt at being in such cheerful surroundings eluded her.

He set down her case next to one of the couches. "Give me a minute to take a shower and then we'll talk. There's a pot of fresh coffee in the kitchen."

She stopped him before he could leave the room. "You should have told me what Sam was doing when you came to Naxos." She hadn't intended to sound so condemning, but there still seemed to be some mysterious strain between them and she couldn't help it.

"You had plenty of chances to ask questions," he replied. "I don't remember hearing any."

"Don't you play games with me, Mitch. I expect better of you."

He picked up a wadded T-shirt from one of the end tables and began to rub his damp chest with it. "Is that an official reprimand, Madame President?"

A month ago she couldn't have imagined being intimidated by him, but now there was something so forbidding about the way he was looking at her that she had to force herself to hold her ground. "You can take it any way you want."

He yanked his T-shirt on, then pulled it down over his chest. "I tried every way I knew to talk you into coming back, Susannah, but I wasn't going to force you if you weren't ready.

We've got a big fight ahead of us, and your personal problems are going to make it more complicated. If Yank and I couldn't have one hundred percent from you, I wanted you out of our way."

He was acting like she was an encumbrance. "That wasn't your decision to make," she snapped. "What's wrong with you, Mitch? When did you turn into the enemy?"

Some of his stiffness faded. "I'm not your enemy, Susannah. I don't mean to be abrupt.

Sam's called an informal meeting of the board tomorrow at three o'clock. My guess is that he intends to tighten the screws."

"Forget it," she said fiercely. "He can call any meeting he wants, but his partners aren't going to be there to see the show. I'm not going to meet with anybody on the board—

formally or otherwise—until I've had a few days to ask some questions. Without us, they can't have much of a meeting."

"We have to confront the board sooner or later."

"I know that. But I'm taking the ball into my court for a while. Make sure that you're unreachable tomorrow afternoon at meeting time. I'll take care of Yank."

Mitch seemed to be thinking over what she'd said. "I'll give you a couple of weeks, Susannah, but no more. I don't want anyone to think we're running. That'll hurt us nearly as badly as what Sam is doing."

She didn't like the fact that he was questioning her judgment, but at least some of his stiffness had dissipated. What was happening to the two of them? She'd grown to take Mitch's friendship for granted, and she couldn't imagine losing it, especially now when she felt so fragile. The burst of adrenaline that had kept her going had begun to fade, and she sat down on the couch.

He saw that she was exhausted, and went to get her a cup of coffee. As she sipped it, he told her he had reserved the town house SysVal owned for its traveling executives so she had a place to stay until she got resettled. He had also reclaimed her car from the airport and stored it in his garage. His thoughtfulness made her feel better.

Forty-five minutes later, she climbed the stairs to the town house's second floor, slipped into the freshly made bed and fell into a troubled, dream-ridden sleep. She awoke around noon and telephoned home to make certain Sam wasn't there. When she received no answer, she dressed and drove over.

She half expected to find the locks had been changed, but her key worked without any difficulty. The house looked the same—cold and uninviting. She went into the bedroom with its steel-framed furniture and gray suede walls. Everything was exactly as she had left it. Everything except—

Her eyes widened as she saw a small oil painting hanging on the wall between their matching bureaus. It was a seascape in soft feminine pastels that were at odds with the room's cold gray interior. She had found the painting a year ago in a gallery in Mill Valley and immediately fallen in love with it. But Sam had hated it and refused to let her hang it. This was the first time she had seen it since she had come home from a business trip and discovered that he had sent it back.

She sagged down on the side of the bed and stared at the painting. Tears welled in her eyes. How could he be taking the company away from her on one hand and, at the same time, giving her this painting? The pastels blurred through her tears, swimming together so that the painting seemed to be in motion. The waves of the seascape heaved toward the shore in watery blue and green swells.

She thought of Sam's wave—the wave of the future he had told her about all those years ago. That wave had swept over them just as he had promised, and just as he had promised, they had been changed forever. She stared at the painting, and the great vat of grief that had been sealed shut inside her opened up, sending dark eddies through every part of her. She hugged herself and stared at the painting and rocked back and forth on the edge of the bed while she truly mourned the death of her marriage.

And with the death of her marriage, she mourned the death of the child she had hoped to bear, that dark-haired, olive-skinned child of feisty spirit and soaring imagination who would never be born. She hugged that child to her breast and loved it with all her might, pouring years of maternal care into a few brief moments. She cried it a bleak lullaby, that unconceived child of her imagination, and let her heart tear apart as she laid it in its grave.

When she left the house, she felt as old and empty as a hollowed-out stone.

Chapter 26

Walking into SysVal that same afternoon was one of the hardest things Susannah had ever done. She wore an unadorned black knit, garbing herself in its severe lines as if it were a suit of armor. As she flashed her pass at the front desk, the security guard wouldn't quite meet her eyes. A group of jeans-clad workers conversing in the lobby stopped talking as she came toward them. They looked down at the floor; they looked at the walls.

The company grapevine was powerful, and Mindy Bradshaw obviously hadn't kept her mouth shut. By now every SysVal employee must know that Susannah had walked in on Sam and Mindy making love.

As she moved through the halls, several of the men called out cautious greetings, as if she were a terminal cancer patient and they didn't know what to say. She nodded graciously and kept walking—spine straight as a ramrod, posture so perfect she would die before she bent. She had been San Francisco's Deb of the Year in 1965. She had been trained in the old ways to retain her dignity regardless of provocation and to hide her emotions behind a mask of serenity.

As she neared her office, her palms began to perspire, but she didn't lower her head by so much as a fraction of an inch. Ahead of her a technician ducked into an office so he could avoid the embarrassment of having to greet her. The corners of her mouth began to quiver, and she realized then that she couldn't carry it off. She was no longer San Francisco's perfect socialite or SysVal's efficient president. She was a woman who had learned to feel and bleed and care. Her steps faltered. She couldn't do it. She simply couldn't go through with this.

Her muscles were so tightly wound that she jumped when a voice sounded over the loudspeaker. It was a voice that had never before been heard over the SysVal system because it belonged to the man who had been trying for several years to have that same system disconnected. It was Mitch, clearing his throat and speaking in the dry, businesslike fashion of someone whose idea of fun was spending an evening reading sales forecasts.

"Ladies and gentlemen, the security desk has informed me that our president and chief operating officer, Susannah Faulconer, has just arrived back in the building. I feel compelled to address all of you today and set the record straight. The rumors that Ms.

Faulconer has been hiding out in Las Vegas and dancing in a nude review are absolutely untrue, and anyone repeating such rumors will be dismissed at once. We have it on good authority that Miss Faulconer was not nude. She was respectably clad in a leopardskin G-string." And then the music of "The Stripper" blared out.

Heads popped out of offices. A hoot of laughter went up around the building. Susannah wanted to kill Mitch, to kiss him. He had known how hard it would be for her to come back, and this was his strange—and typically SysVal way—of making it easier. After the strain of their encounter that morning, this gesture of friendship meant everything to her.

Mitch's announcement pushed away the awkwardness and gave people something to say to her. For the next few hours, everyone teased her unmercifully. But there was still an edge of caution to their laughing remarks. Normally when she was away from the office for even a day, Sam's name would have come up a dozen times within an hour of her return. Now no one mentioned him.

More than anything, she wanted to put off seeing him. But she knew she couldn't hide away forever, and the longer she postponed meeting with him, the more difficult it would become. When Helen, her secretary, brought in the most urgent of her mail, Susannah forced herself to look up from her notepad and ask as coolly as she could manage, "Is Sam in today?"

"Gee, I—Yes, I think so."

"Good," she said briskly. "Call his office. I'd like to see him as soon as he can get free."

She forced herself to concentrate on her work. So much urgent business had piled up while she was gone that it was difficult even to prioritize it. And there were small irritations. When she turned in her chair to flick on the Blaze III she kept on her credenza, she was annoyed to discover that it had been replaced with a newer III. The machines were identical, but she had a sentimental attachment to her old Blaze. It was one of the thirteen original test models that Sam had insisted be put into use for a few months before the Blaze III was released to the general public, so that all the bugs could be worked out ahead of time.

When she asked Helen what had happened to her old computer, she was told that a technician had come for it. "He transferred all of your files to the new machine, so it shouldn't be a problem."