Satin Pleasures (22 page)

He raked his fingers through his damp hair. “Your father’s done with surgeries, Tess. Your parents want to move on with their lives before they’re too old. They want you to get on with your life, too.”

Tess flushed. “What gives you the right to step in and change my priorities for me behind my back?”

Dan stalked across the room and caught her shoulders in his hands. “My love for you gives me the right, dammit! I won't stand by and watch you kill yourself trying to make amends for an accident you couldn’t prevent. You think you can fix your dad's spine if you throw one more surgery at it, but it won't ever be fixed to your satisfaction. He’ll never be the same again."

He gave her a slight shake. "You can't pay for the life you think you stole from your parents with your own. The price is too high. You're going to be left holding nothing but empty air. I love you too much to let that happen."

The fire in her eyes flared briefly and died. "You once told me any man who loved me wouldn't make me choose between him and my family and my job."

"I'm not asking you to choose anything!"

"It's much easier to take all my choices away, isn’t it?" Her eyes darkened. "I may be obsessive and driven and everything you say I am, but when I love someone as much as I love—"

She grew unnaturally calm. "All I've ever wanted was to make my parents happy. If this nursery is what they want, they deserve to have their dreams come true."

"What about what you want, Tess? When do you go after your own dreams?"

"I don't have any dreams. Not anymore." Blinking furiously, she pulled out of his grasp and walked out of the kitchen.

Dan went after her, catching up with her in the bathroom doorway. "What are you saying?"

"I'm saying goodbye, Dan. I hope you find the balance you're looking for in your new charter business," she said, shutting the door with a click of the lock.

He could still see her face, the haunted shadows in her eyes and the lone tear trickling down her cheek, when his plane landed in O'Hare Airport several hours later. And that image tore him apart because he suddenly realized she was right. He did want her to make a choice. He didn’t care about her job, and he would never expect her to give up her family. He simply wanted her to choose
him
.

***

"And you left it there?" Aunt Mary stared at him from her side of the limousine that was carrying the wedding party to the country club a week later. "There are times, Danny Boy, when
you're too much like your father. You wouldn't be here if I hadn't locked my brother in the wood shed with Sarah after they broke up three days before their wedding."

Dan glanced at his mother, sitting next to his aunt, before looking at the distinguished, silver-haired man beside him. "Don't let Aunt Mary put you off, Frank. Insanity only runs on my father's side of the family." He'd inherited all of it if his recent actions were any indication.

"Nothing will put me off now, son." Frank took his fiancée's outstretched hand. "Besides, I already heard that story from Sarah. Why do you think we're all traveling to the wedding together?"

Dan’s mother winked at Frank. "Mary has a point though, Daniel. If you'd told me this earlier, I would have shipped you right back to California. Fighting for the woman you love and who loves you is more important than giving me away. It's not like I haven't walked down the aisle before."

"I never said Tess loved me."

"She's practically turned her life inside out for you. A woman doesn't go to such lengths for a man she doesn't love desperately."

Frank agreed. "I'm sixty years old and, before I met your mother, I never met a woman who'd face her natural fears to be with me. The first time Sarah got into a small plane with me, despite her fear of heights, I knew she loved me. Before she could get to her seat, I proposed."

She sighed. "It was so romantic. We never made it into the air. He got so flustered when I said 'yes' he backed up and fell out of the plane. We celebrated our engagement in the emergency room."

Frank leaned forward to plant a tender kiss on Sarah's lips, and then tapped the glass between them and the chauffeur. "Pull over."

"What are you doing?" Dan pulled up the cuff of his tuxedo and frowned at the watch he’d finally unpacked. "You're going to be late for your wedding."

"You're the only one who's going to be late, dear." His mother grinned. "In fact, I think you're going to miss it altogether. Frank's kicking you out of the plane."

She caught his hand and pulled him to her for a kiss. "Go, Daniel.
Now.
Frank and I expect to hear about a grandchild for our first anniversary present."

Aunt Mary blew him a kiss. "I'll see you in three weeks after these two lovebirds come back from their honeymoon. We'll have a combination engagement, bon voyage party before I move out of my condo in San Francisco."

Dan's head spun. "Are you sure you don't mind turning the west coast operations over to me?"

"It was our plan all along. Now, get out of here before you make your mother more than fashionably late for her own wedding."

He gazed into the twinkling green eyes that reminded him so much of his father. "Don't get your hopes up, Aunt Mary. I don't have a wood shed."

"You'll think of something, Danny Boy." She grinned. "You're not a McDonald for nothing."

***

"I know it's not exactly how we expected this to play out," Harry
Rollens
said Saturday after their meeting with the
Thorgram
Group directors. "But I'd think you'd show a little enthusiasm. You'll finally get to do all those things you've dreamed of doing around here."

Startled out of her reverie, Tess jerked in her office chair and looked at her soon-to-be-ex boss. "Will I?"

"It was one of the conditions of the sale, Tess. Weren't you listening?"

Of course, she was listening. She heard the promotion she’d worked so damned hard for went to the president's cousin, after all. On the heels of her realization nepotism would always be the strongest thread holding the company together, she heard they'd sold the mall out from under her to the investment company she'd worried about months earlier.

She was to keep her job, with a disgustingly high salary and benefits package and the opportunity to renovate and expand. It’s what she always wanted. It was too good to be true. There was a catch somewhere, but she couldn't wrap her sluggish brain cells around the problem.

"Surely, you're not thinking of turning it down," Harry exclaimed. "I hate to admit it, but you've topped out with this company. You've seen the statistics on
H.T.H. Enterprises
. It's one of the fastest growing investment companies in the nation. Your potential for career growth is staggering."

So why did her triumph, if that was what this was, taste so bitter? With her father's surgery no longer on the table, the money didn't matter anymore. And since Dan flew away with
her heart in his hand, her enthusiasm for everything else had waned. She'd completely lost her sense of direction. Finally, she could pull all those 'To Do' lists out of her bottom drawer and start checking off each item, one by one, and she could barely drum up one hooray.

"Tess! Hello?"

She pulled her thoughts together. "Harry, have you ever looked up the definition for the word ‘obsession' in the dictionary?"

He looked like she'd asked him to dance buck-naked through China Town.

"I have. The definition of obsession is the compulsive preoccupation with a fixed idea or unwanted feeling." She tilted her head thoughtfully. "Do you know
what's the worst thing you can do to an obsessive person
?"

Harry frowned. "Is this a trick question?"

Her smile held no humor. "The worst thing you can do to a compulsively obsessed person is remove her goal and watch her flounder around trying to discover why she thought it was important in the first place."

"You're not making sense."

"There isn't much in my life right now that does make sense," she murmured.

She picked up a pen and forced her mind around how all this would affect Harry. "What about you, Harry? Are you okay with this? I know the last thing you wanted to do was hand your job over to Jeff McNamara."

He shrugged. "I'm glad it's finally over. I'm needed at home. Donna's treatments are scheduled to accelerate over the next few months and I don't want her to face them alone." He tapped the wooden arm on his seat. "With any luck, I'll have her on a Mexican beach by winter."

Harry loved his wife so much it made Tess's heart ache to watch him deal with her illness. "I'll miss you, Harry," she blurted. "I can't tell you how much your advice has meant to me over the years."

"So, come see me after we get settled, and I'll dole it out poolside."

"Yeah.
Right.
Like I'm going to drop everything and fly down to Mexico."

Harry's shrewd blue eyes fixed on her. "Tess, I'm going to give you one last piece of advice before I go. If you don't want to work for this new company, tell them to take a hike. You're young and have a full life in front of you. Don't let any job suck up your best years and make you regret the choices you've made."

He held up his hand before Tess could lie and say she didn't have regrets. "It took Donna's illness to kick me in the teeth, and it was almost too late. Take my word for it, it's not worth it."

"Thanks, Harry," she shifted in her chair, "but it's already too late for me."

"Is it? If you could have anything for the asking, do you know what would it be?"

Oh, yeah. She'd jump back one week and wind her time with Dan into an eternal loop to be lived over, and over, again. She'd ask to have the man she loved waking her up each morning, filling her empty life with excitement and color and laughter. She'd beg for a different ending to their parting last week.

"I'd ask for two weeks off.
Right now.
Today."
The words slipped out before common sense raised its ugly head. "But, that's wishful thinking. The board wouldn't buy it."

"They're not your bosses as of tomorrow."

Her heart skipped at the thought. It really was too late. Wasn't it? She'd been brutal when she cut Dan out of her life.

"Do whatever you need to do to bring the sparkle back to your eyes, Tess. If you're waiting for a better time, you'll never find it."

Harry's image swam in front of her eyes. Before she could consider the movement, she picked up the phone and pushed the intercom.
"
Em
?
Book me on the first available flight to Chicago."

Her secretary didn't miss a beat. "Okay. But could you come out here first? There's a delivery for you."

The only delivery Tess could focus on was herself to Chicago, but she had to walk past Emily's desk anyway on her way out. With a teary, goodbye hug for Harry, she dashed from her office.

Her secretary was already on the telephone talking to an airline ticket agent, but Tess didn’t have to ask her where to find the delivery she’d mentioned. It wasn't difficult to spot the huge rectangular confectionery box sitting in the middle of Emily’s desk. Slipping her nail under the gold foil seal on the lid, Tess flipped it up.

Her heart stopped when she looked down on a perfect licorice replica of the bridge where she and Dan first met. Marzipan boats floated in the sea of blue-tinted white fudge around it.

"Isn't that cute?" Emily held her hand over the phone receiver, clearly indicating she’d been put on hold, and peered over the lid. "There are two little gummy cars on the bridge."

"It's one gummy car and one gummy truck." Tess lifted the unsigned business card tucked in one corner of the box and read the bold script scrawled across one side.
Sailing at four o'clock.
Meet me halfway to heaven?
Flipping it over, she read the company name.
H.T.H. Enterprises
.
Sweet mercy!

"Forget the plane ticket,
Em
," she said, a peculiar catch in her voice, "and tell Harry I'll call him when I get back."

"Wait! Where are you going?"

Tess broke into a run for the front door.
"With any luck, halfway to heaven and back!"

***

"She's not coming, Colby." Dan stepped around his pet and tossed the leash to the empty deck chair.

The German shepherd barely paused in his habitual snuffling search of the boat planking, his first order of business whenever he jumped aboard. The dog seemed a little more intent on his mission than normal, but Dan had a feeling Colby's behavior was prompted by his own unrest.

What if Tess didn't get the package? What if she wouldn't speak to
him,
let him explain?
What if you get a grip, Danny Boy?

He knew she'd received his package because he'd called the shopping center office before landing in San Francisco. Emily told him Tess bundled everything up and rushed out the door. That was three hours ago. The woman had disappeared.