Business or Pleasure? (2 page)

She picked up the trophy and thought about all those evening practices, laughing with Alec and her co-workers, feeling a real sense of belonging and—if she were totally honest with herself—fantasizing that someday Alec would finally wake up, take her in his arms and declare his undying love for her. Right there on the diamond. In front of a crowd of corporate weekend warriors.

Ah, yes, she thought. Fantasies were lovely—at least until reality crashed in.

After lingering for another moment over both the trophy and her unrealized expectations, she set the prize back down on the desk with a noisy
thunk.
No sentimental baloney, she reminded herself as she put on her glasses, plucked the letter from the printer's tray and proofed it quickly. When she was satisfied, she slid the page into a waiting envelope and headed for Alec's office before she lost her nerve.

But as she reached for the doorknob, she paused for a second to gaze at her murky image reflected in the thick, opaque green glass that made up Alec's door. She acknowledged her familiar faults—not tall, not blond, not beautiful—but consoled herself that she had, as her salary had grown in the last few years, made something of an effort to buy more fashionable professional clothes and had even exchanged her haircuts at the local Quickie Cuts for a quarterly visit to an actual stylist.

She tugged at the hem of her short skirt and felt like an idiot for trying to dress to impress this morning. Maybe she was a late bloomer, or maybe growing up with just her father and three older brothers for role models had kept her from acquiring the requisite skills in cosmetics, fashion and flirting know-how. Whatever the cause, though, it still added up
to the same thing: she was never going to snag the man she longed for.

Up until today she'd kept telling herself that it was just a matter of time. All she had to do was keep bringing him his Krispy Kremes, booking his travel plans, making his dinner reservations and picking up his dry cleaning. In her naïveté, she'd actually thought that if she kept doing all those things, he would eventually realize he couldn't live without her, both professionally
and
personally. But that was before this morning, before Alec had given her one final nudge out of the nest and she'd fallen from her fantasies to the cold, hard, unforgiving earth.

She sighed, smoothed her crisp, tailored suit jacket and gauzy skirt, straightened her glasses and told herself again that all that foolishness was over and done with. Then she turned the knob and marched confidently into Alec's beautiful, richly decorated office.

He didn't look up as she entered, and even though his dark head of wavy hair was tipped down, Daisy could imagine the concentration in his deep, indigo eyes. She noticed the way his black shirt hugged his strong shoulders as he scribbled notes on a quadrille pad. The well-developed arms she'd spent much too much time gawking at over the past couple of years flexed and tightened with the movement.

The sharp edge of the envelope dug into her palm as she clutched the letter. So what if he was a looker? She absolutely, positively, wasn't going to let that sway her now. She'd been hiding out behind this sweet, agreeable, I'll-wait-forever-for-you-to-notice-me facade far too long. It was time to be who she really was, so she put one hand on the sleek leather chair that faced his desk and cleared her throat firmly.

Alec looked up, stretched lazily and poured on that heart-melting smile of his, all white teeth and hot charm and oozing charisma. “Hey, Daze.”

Normally that smile could make her stomach tighten and her heart go pitter-pat, but not anymore. Even a crush as stubborn as the one she had on Alec couldn't survive her humiliation when she'd realized he wasn't asking
her
to go to dinner to celebrate a job well done. It wasn't his fault, really, but she'd known at that very moment that she had to get the hell away from him. It was her only hope.

Without a word, she handed him the envelope, and his chair squeaked in protest as he reached out for it. “What's this?”

She squeezed the back of the chair so hard the smooth leather creaked beneath her grip. “My letter of resignation.”

His smile shrank a little and one dark eyebrow shot up. “Now say, ‘April fools.'”

In spite of her resolve to be strong, nervous waves kicked up in her stomach. “This isn't a joke, Alec.”

Long, quiet seconds ticked by, one after another, but the silence was by no means calm. In fact, she started to imagine they were two gunfighters, each waiting for the other to twitch.

A moment later he caved when he unfolded his six-foot-plus frame and stood, looming over both his desk and her. “Aren't you happy here?”

A headache flowered behind her eyes and she wondered idly if there might be an oxygen shortage in the room. “That's irrelevant,” she said, and the flatness of her own voice shocked her.

A muscle twitched at his jaw, his eyes darkened and narrowed. “Is it something I've done?”

Try something you haven't done, you dope,
she wanted to shout, but said, simply, “No.”

Alec used his fingers like a comb, dragging them through his incessantly messy, longish dark hair, but one disobedient wave of it fell back over one eye immediately. She stared at it, wishing—not for the first time—that it was her right and privilege to push it back into place.

“Well, I won't accept it.” To punctuate his claim, he crumpled up the envelope and shot it into the trash can across the room.

A cold fist of frustration curled up inside her as she watched her carefully crafted resignation rebound off the credenza and sink gracefully for three points. Now that she was finished with the frantic pace of part-time school and a full-time job, she had more time than ever to contemplate the yawning stretch of futility that would be her life if she stayed here. Unless she made a change, she knew it would be more of the same—she would watch from the sidelines, powerless and lonely as he dated one bimbo after another and remained blissfully unaware of her as anything other than his loyal, hardworking assistant.

“I was actually just thinking that we'd have to change some things now that you're finished with school,” he said, his voice low and relaxing and sure. “And this is as good a time as any to discuss it. Whatever it is you want, I'm sure we can work it out.”

“You don't understand, Alec,” she said, keeping her tone firm with substantial effort. “If you'd read that—” she jerked her head in the direction of the trash can “—you'd know that I'm giving two weeks notice. But I am leaving. I'm taking another job, one that is more in line with my career goals.”

Since she hadn't actually taken another job, she experienced a tiny flash of guilt. Lies weren't her normal style, but she knew it was better this way. It would be a clean break and, more important, she wouldn't have to suffer the humiliation of telling him the real reason she was leaving.

As Alec stared at her, his eyes registered something that on anyone else she'd guess was hurt. Then he moved to the window and looked out over the short, featureless buildings to the ocean. He stood with his back to her, his hands on his hips, and his breathing was the only sound she could hear. He stayed there a moment, only a moment, but whatever it was that he saw beyond the glass triggered a change in his demeanor that shook her.

Because when he turned back to her, his blue eyes were icy, his mouth was drawn into a thin line. “It won't be necessary to give notice,” he said, his voice as frosty as his gaze. “You can leave now.”

She wouldn't have thought it was possible for her heart to sink further but it did, right down to the soles of her new summer sandals. Heat flooded her cheeks and the anxiety in her stomach revved up to a riot, but she managed to keep the flood of emotion out of her voice when she said, “I should at least finish out the day.”

No particular expression lit his face as he said, “That won't be necessary.”

Daisy bit her bottom lip to keep it from trembling. Dammit, this wasn't how it was supposed to end. Her heartbeat began to pound in her ears, but not so loudly that she couldn't hear the voice of some nameless, faceless coach from her sports-filled youth advise her with Obi-Wan-like wisdom,
Don't show weakness. Don't let 'em see how you really feel.

A new resolve began to fill her, giving her strength. She stuck out her chin, put on a smile and threw out a hand for Alec to shake. “All right, then. I guess this is goodbye.”

Alec's eyes were slightly glazed as he looked down at her outstretched hand. It was only after a long, long moment that he finally took it in his. His palm and fingers were rough and surprisingly work-worn, and the mere touch of them sent a ripple of warmth through her that shocked her so completely, she yanked her hand away as if it had been burned.

His eyes lit briefly with blue fire as he looked down at her, then they seemed to just…flicker out. Without another word, he turned away from her again.

She ran a hand down the front of her skirt absently and stole one last look at his familiar profile before forcing herself to walk out the door.

Now I know I've made the right decision, Daisy thought as she quickly threw as many things as she could into her tote and beelined for the elevator, rounding the cubicles that stood between her and escape as if she were running the final few yards of a marathon. He was bound to break her heart someday. Today was as good a day as any.

Once in the lobby, she hit the button to call the elevator before casting a quick glance at Nikki, receptionist and in-house gossip queen, who was holding the phone aloft and watching Daisy like she was going to be tested on the event later.

Daisy almost groaned out loud. During the last year, she'd often fantasized about ending her working relationship with Alec, but in her fantasies that ending had looked far more like an afternoon wedding by the sea than a cold, angry confrontation in his office.

When she entered the elevator, she pasted on a game smile for the receptionist.

“Are you coming back today?” Nikki asked, her dark eyes taking in Daisy's flushed skin and overflowing tote.

“No, definitely not,” Daisy said, feeling a momentary flash of guilt at her evasion. While she and Nikki weren't particularly close, Daisy had made many friends at Mackenzie. She could only hope they wouldn't be worried about her when they found out she'd left without saying goodbye.

Thankfully, the elevator doors closed before Nikki could ask any more questions. And then Daisy Kincaid was left not only without a job, but without something she needed far more: the ever-present optimism that had made her think everything she wished for would come to her eventually if only she didn't give up.

B
y the following afternoon, the coffee was charred, the copy machine was broken, the blueprints were late, and no one in the entire office had a clue about how to contact the maintenance guy to come turn off the emergency exit alarm that was clanging both inside and outside Alec's head.

He was just taking a deep breath and trying to decide which crisis to deal with first when the alarm suddenly quieted.
Good.
At least one thing had been handled, even without the help of the woman he was only just now realizing had been the friggin' beating heart of his company.

He stifled a curse, the same one he'd been muttering ever since Daisy had handed him her resignation and run out of the office with all that stuff she kept on her desk spilling out of her bag. He remembered now how he'd stood in his doorway and watched her go while the scent of her had still hung
in the air around him. Cookies and warm milk. How could anyone smell like cookies and warm milk? he'd thought then, even as something unfamiliar inside him had urged him to run after her.

He hadn't, of course. After all, it wasn't the first time he'd watched the door close behind someone he cared about.

Still, he couldn't quite believe she was gone. Over the years he and Daisy had worked countless late nights together, had hundreds of early-morning conference calls, organized dozens of groundbreaking celebrations, even shared birthday lunches at her favorite Chinese restaurant downstairs. The very idea that she could quit like that—without any discussion or explanation, without even giving him a chance to tell her how important she was to him and the company. After all they'd been through together…well, it still stung, that was all.

Move on, Mackenzie, he told himself as he pulled the next potential emergency off the top of his phone message pile. He should be used to the important people in his life bailing out on him by now. He would just put Daisy out of his mind and focus instead on deciphering the loopy handwriting of the gum-chomping teenager the temp agency had sent him this morning.

The phone on his desk rang five shrill rings before he saw the light begin to shine steadily.

“You have a call,” the temp murmured languidly via the intercom.

“No kidding,” he mumbled as he reached for his phone. “Mackenzie,” he growled into the receiver.

“Alec? My God, boy. Who was that woman? She was so rude.”

Could this day get any worse?
“Good afternoon, Mr. Bald
win,” Alec said, cooling his temper as he prepared to soothe his most important client.

The normally placid Joseph Baldwin, the man responsible for awarding Alec's firm the contract for the Santa Margarita project, sounded flustered when he said, “Where's Daisy? She's not sick, is she?”

Intellectually, Alec knew grinding his teeth wouldn't help, but it seemed this week was destined to head downhill in a cart with no brakes. “No, no. Daisy's left the company,” he said casually, but the sound of it in his own ears gave him a sharp pain.

Worse, his bleak announcement was met with an unnerving silence from Baldwin. Alec glanced at the latest issue of the industry's most important magazine,
Architectural Abstracts,
and was reminded that Baldwin was the golden key Alec needed to prove himself once and for all to his critics.

“Left for good, son?”

“It seems so.” Alec rubbed one aching temple. For the dozenth time that day, he told himself he should belly up to the bar, go find her and drag her back here. But he discarded the idea just as he had ten minutes ago and ten minutes before that. He'd never crawled to anyone in his life and he wasn't going to start now—even if the “crawlee” was the best assistant he'd ever had.

He had no idea how he was going to replace her. Over the years, she'd become his right-hand man—or, more appropriately, his right-hand
woman.
In addition to keeping his personal life running smoothly, she'd taken on more and more business responsibilities, doing everything from purchasing to negotiating to preparing bids.

Anyway, none of that mattered now, Alec thought as he
tuned back in just as Baldwin was saying, “I have to be honest with you, son. If you could allow a diamond like her to slip away, my confidence in your judgment is shaken. My wife has a sort of sixth sense about people, and she sees a lot of potential in the girl. In fact, Virginia has decided to stay on the island during reconstruction just to work with Daisy on the project.”

This time Alec did grind his teeth. “I can see I wasn't clear about the depth of Mrs. Baldwin's feelings for Daisy,” Alec said carefully. “But you should know that while Daisy would have been an important part of the project, she wasn't scheduled to be on the island, anyway.”

“We put it in the contract that she would be.”

Alec looked down at the thick contract that he hadn't had time to finish reviewing even though he should have had it signed and back in Baldwin's hands this morning.

“I thought you knew that her input and organizational talent were factors in selecting Mackenzie,” Mr. Baldwin continued. “Virginia sees the renovation of the mansions on Santa Margarita as the chance to cement her family's legacy. I don't think…”

It had been clear to Alec since his first meeting with the Baldwins that it was Virginia Baldwin who called the shots, so it didn't take a genius to guess the man didn't want to face his wife with the news of Daisy's departure. Alec almost felt sorry for him.

“I understand what you're saying.”
But there's no way I'm going to run after her. No way.

There was another long, disturbing silence that let him know Mr. Baldwin's ah-shucks routine had grown very thin. “All right, son. Tell you what. Call me by the end of the day
so I'll know whether to go back to the other bids for our project.”

And just like that, Alec's blood turned icy cold.
Other bids?
Without a signed contract, Baldwin was certainly within his rights to go back to bid. Alec could think of several of his competitors who would kill or die to wrench the Santa Margarita deal out of his stunned grip. His own best friend would be dancing on Alec's professional grave by Happy Hour if he heard there was a chance the project was up for grabs.

Alec glanced again at the issue of
Architectural Abstracts,
the one that had come out just yesterday with an unpleasant article about his work entitled “The Dilettante Designer,” which had implied that his success was more a result of his family's money and connections than his own talent.

He tugged an agitated hand through his hair. Well, he was going to stuff the evidence of his talent down that writer's sleazy, lying throat soon enough, and to do that he needed the Santa Margarita project more than ever. He'd be damned if he'd let any other architect on earth have a shot at this job. After all, nothing less than his career and the respect of his professional community were hanging in the balance.

The phone's receiver bit into his hand as he gripped it. The only word he could manage as his mind began to wrap around what he now had to do was “Understood.”

He could almost feel Baldwin releasing a long-held breath. “Fine. Wonderful,” he said, and his voice was light as he said his goodbyes.

Alec hung up and headed for the elevator before he had time to rethink what he was about to do. In the grand scheme of things, this was merely a speed bump, he told himself as
he hit the down button. He'd get Daisy back, then she could pack up their office and relocate to Santa Margarita with him for the duration of the job. That would keep her from flying the coop while he wasn't looking
and
give Mrs. Baldwin what she wanted.

“Will you be back today, Mr. Mackenzie?” Nikki called from behind the reception desk.

“Probably.” He glanced at the girl over his shoulder, then muttered to himself, “Unless the little fugitive gives me trouble.”

“Excuse me?” Nikki asked as she practically fell over the desk in her efforts to hear him.

“Just talking to myself.”

As he rode the elevator down to the garage, the sadness he'd seen behind the determination in Daisy's eyes the day before flashed into his mind. More disturbing, that image was followed closely by the memory of her velvety skin on his just before she'd pulled her hand away.

Alec cursed under his breath and swept the unsettling thoughts from his mind. Then he got into his car, gunned the engine and peeled out of the parking garage. Nothing mattered now except securing the Santa Margarita contract. And to do that, he had to do something he said he'd never do, something he wasn't even sure he knew how to do.

Grovel.

 

“Money?” Daisy Kincaid repeated the word into the phone she had tucked between her ear and her shoulder.

“Yes,” her oldest brother, Tom, answered with longsuffering patience. “Green stuff? Exchangeable for goods and services worldwide? You've heard of it, surely.”

“Very funny. You know what a miser I am. My savings will float me,” she said as she looked around her drop-cloth-draped kitchen which was strewn with paint cans and pans and brushes. “That is, if I stop my midnight runs to the twenty-four-hour Home Depot.”

“Oh, good Lord. Tell me you're not painting again.”

“Uh,” she stalled. “Did I say I was painting?”

“Daze, your house is going to start looking like a kaleidoscope if you open a can of paint every time you get stressed out.”

“I'm not stressed out,” she said, and her stomach chose that moment to remind her she hadn't eaten since yesterday. She sighed, then wrapped her brush in plastic wrap so it wouldn't dry out and climbed down the ladder. “I'm just reviewing my options.”

Tom was quiet a moment, and she could almost see his mouth twisting into a who-are-you-trying-to-kid frown. “I thought you said you already had an offer.”

“I do,” she said, then added sheepishly, “sort of.” Over the years, she'd had many offers from both colleagues and competitors of Alec's, so all she really had to do was get out some résumés. She knew for sure that Todd Herly would love to get his hands on her, if only to win one more round in the friendliest feud in history. Somehow, though, the prospect of working anywhere but Mackenzie depressed her.

She opened a can of tuna, gave the fishy smelling water to her cat, Bam Bam, then quickly put together a sandwich as Tom, the most responsible of her three older brothers, began a long-winded, well-intentioned lecture.

Out of habit, she listened to him yammer on as she ate, even though her mind was in the next county. What she was
really thinking about was that on a normal Tuesday afternoon she'd be grabbing bites of a brown sack lunch at her desk instead of stenciling the trim around her kitchen cabinets and listening to her brother. But nothing about her life was normal, she thought as Bam Bam looked up at her, blinked lazily and licked his chops. No job, no income, no Alec.

“I've got a handle on it, Tom,” she said, feeling suddenly tired. “I've got résumés ready to go to my two best prospects and I have a Rolodex full of business cards from Alec's colleagues. Some of them have been trying to poach me since the beginning.”

Tom laughed. “Good. That ought to send Mackenzie off his hinges. At least it'll give him something to think about before he starts taking his next assistant for granted.”

Daisy tried not to think about how Alec probably wouldn't care at all. Surely he'd seen his business associates slipping her their business cards at meetings and ground breakings and grand opening parties and saying things like, “If you ever decide to leave this bum, blah, blah, blah.” At the time, she'd just laughed and filed the information away for a rainy day, but now…

Well, now it was pouring. In buckets.

“If it makes you happy, I'll place a few more calls when I'm done here,” she said as she cleaned and put away the dishes in that compulsive way she wished she could stop but never could.

“Good. And call if you need anything.
Anything,
you hear? You've been doing for other people long enough. Let someone help you for a change.”

She promised that she would before she hung up, then she climbed the ladder and unwrapped her brush.

What was she waiting for? she asked herself as she dipped the short bristles into a jar of thick paint. She should be happy to be moving on in her career. After all, being someone's assistant wasn't why she'd worked so hard to put herself through college. And it wasn't why she'd stuck it out even in the face of holding down a full-time job and taking care of her father and older brothers.

No, she'd done all that because she had a dream, a dream that she refused to abandon just because she was currently stuck on one of life's sandbars. Once she'd saved enough money, she was going to take her business know-how and her passion for taking care of people and she was going to pour it all into owning and running her own bed-and-breakfast. She knew she had a long way to go and many things to learn yet but she was still hanging on tightly to the vision she had for her inn. After all, she'd been tinkering with it ever since she was eight years old and her mother had taken her to stay at one of Santa Barbara's best B&Bs—a trip that unexpectedly had turned out to be their last “girls only” weekend together before her mom had passed away.

Daisy sighed, brushed a strand of hair out of her eyes with her wrist and refocused on the situation at hand. Now that she'd left Mackenzie, she realized that she'd been staying on there for two reasons she was not proud of: an unrequited crush and a salary she'd be hard-pressed to make anywhere else. The first one she'd put behind her the moment she'd seen Alec's eyes turn hard and brittle as he essentially told her to take her two-weeks' notice and stick it. The second one she knew she would eventually, through diligence and determination, replace.