Do-Over (8 page)

Cara was treated to death by silence before her friend finally said, “Get real. You’ve already canceled twice.”

“I know, but technically this time I’m not canceling. I just need an extra hour or two before we take off.”

“I have Seth’s cousin covering the store from two until six. And do you know how hard it was to pull that off? I know I don’t seem like the most dedicated store owner, but I have some rules. Being open is one of them.”

Cara scrambled for a compromise. “Maybe I could call Dani and see if she could help?”

“No way. Your sister’s a menace. Remember when you and I went to look at veils, and she covered for me? It took me hours to get the merchandise back the way it’s supposed to be.”

Which was the same reason Cara generally wasn’t
allowed in Retreads without Bri’s supervision. The Adams’ orderliness gene was of the dominant variety.

Bri’s exasperated sigh added to Cara’s guilt. “Let’s just forget it for today,” her friend said. “We’d never make it out to the salon in Ann Arbor and be back in time.”

“I’m sorry,” Cara offered.

“I’ve heard that before.”

“I’ll make it up to you.”

“Heard that, too.”

“Well, how about this?” She made a kissy sound into the phone, followed by a heartfelt, “I love you.”

In the doorway, Morgan cleared his throat and pointed at his watch.

“I have to go,” she said to Bri.

“Okay, but understand that you have now abdicated any decision-making power. I’m buying you the most hideous, Scarlett O’Hara, frills-up-the-wazoo dress I can find.”

Morgan was scowling at her.

“You’re the best,” she said to Bri.

“And a parasol,” her friend added before hanging up.

“Bye,” she said to the buzzing phone line, then returned the receiver to its cradle. In the true spirit of Scarlett, she’d wait until later to think about how she’d just stomped all over her best friend.

“I recall you saying that you weren’t dating anyone.”

“What? When?” Cara winced. This guy was too good at throwing her off guard—making her sound like a college Journalism 101 student.

“The other day. Right over there,” he said, pointing
at the area in front of her credenza. “I was looking at the picture of your sister’s kids.”

“Oh, okay.” She thought back to the moment, which was easy since when not frazzled, she could recall virtually every word Morgan had said since reappearing in her life.

“Actually, I said that it was tough to find the time to date, not that I never did. But you’re getting a little personal here. We’re just business.”

“According to you. Now humor me—are you seeing someone?”

Cara could almost hear the clock ticking as she decided how to answer. If she said no, she’d sound honest, though pathetic. Everyone else at Saperstein, Underwood—including Morgan—appeared to have a life. This reality was hitting hard, fast and painfully.

If she said yes, she’d be flirting with an indisputable rule regarding attracting the male of the species: The more unavailable you are, the more they want you.

She didn’t want Morgan wanting her. At least, if she was inclined to be sane, she didn’t.

The theme song from
Jeopardy
kicked in as she weighed her options.

“Cara?”

“Yes,” she said in a rush. “Yes, I’m seeing someone.”

Great, now she was having an affair with a ticked-off bride who was about to buy her a butt-ugly dress. She fought the impulse to bury her face in her hands and howl.

“Would you mind giving me a minute?” she asked instead. “I’ll meet you back in the conference room.”

After Morgan left, Cara let fly an accurate self-affirmation. “I am so totally losing my mind.”

A
T ELEVEN THAT NIGHT
, Mark sat at a windowside table in a Royal Oak martini bar with his friend Trey, Trey’s wife, Kathy, and some girl named Mimi, whom Trey had set him up with.

“She’s a lot of fun,” Trey had said. If “fun” included disgorging every detail of one’s life from birth forward in an endless monologue, yeah, she was a regular riot. One thing was certain: Her parents had foreseen her favorite topic when they’d named her Mimi.

Mark had already figured out how to time his nods so it would appear to Mimi that he was paying some attention…if she cared. While she talked and Trey and Kathy flirted with each other in a wonderfully unmarried way, he gazed out the front window to the sidewalk café beyond and rehashed the day’s events.

Breakfast with his mom had been kind of disturbing, but necessary. She’d given him the journal her therapist had told her to write both as language practice and as a means of coping with her body’s betrayal. It had felt so intrusive, paging through her thoughts. This was the woman who’d given birth to him. But she’d insisted, and between bites of apple pancake, he’d read.

He could understand her rage, her frustration, how far she’d come since her stroke, and how far she had yet to go. By the time he’d finished the journal, Mark knew that if his father didn’t reappear damn soon and start being supportive, Mark was going to fly to Palm Beach and haul his ass back.

Mimi settled her hand over Mark’s left wrist, returning him to the present. “And I made varsity field hockey in ninth grade, which no one expected.”

“That’s great,” he said, raising his gin and olive in a sketchy toast before taking a much needed drink.

“Isn’t it? And then in my senior year…”

Mark crossed Trey off the list of pals he’d listen to when it came to women. Then he let his mind drift to his new place of work.

From a business standpoint, the day had been a relative success. Cara and Nicole had immediately hit it off, which was both not surprising and not necessarily a good thing. Not surprising because the two of them were very much alike, and not a good thing because he and Nicole had been briefly engaged before they’d wised up. He knew this would bug the hell out of Cara when she found out, which she would, since sooner or later, Nicole would have to come to Detroit for a meeting. Nicole liked to talk, but not as much as chatty Mimi.

“And then I pledged Delta Theta because the sorority house was so much nicer than my dorm room,” she was saying as she shook her bouncy black curls.

Mark nodded and smiled. At least they were up to her freshman year in college. Thank God she was young; they couldn’t have more than four years to go. He sent his mind to a pleasant place, one where a leggy redhead gave him lip, or if he was very lucky…her full mouth.

Mark figured he was as deluded as the next guy, but even he knew it was craziness to think that he and Cara could be within ten yards of each other without the unmistakable fog of sexual attraction settling over them.

“But I said who wants a job where they expect you to work more than forty hours a week? After all…”

Mark again looked out the front window. Only a few customers were braving the sidewalk café. Michigan,
even in late May, could have a bite in the nighttime air.

Mimi nudged him again. “I’ve been thinking about going to law school….”

“Great,” he said. God help the profession.

Outside, one lucky guy walked down the street, his arms draped over the shoulders of two women flanking him. Mark watched as they passed by. One companion was tiny with light-colored hair. He couldn’t see the other female as well under the wash of the streetlights, except to know that she was taller and her hair was a richer color. Just then, the trio halted and swung back toward the café.

Mark came fully awake for the first time that night. Was it possible to will an event into being? If not, he had to concede that he’d used up all of his luck for about the next hundred years. The guy and two girls—one a leggy redhead who constantly occupied Mark’s thoughts—pulled out chairs at one of the empty outdoor tables and settled in. If that wasn’t a sign from fate, Mark didn’t know what was. He stood.

Mimi actually stopped talking.

“If you’ll excuse me?” he said.

Trey and Kathy gave a chorus of, “Sure.”

“Where do you think he’s going?” he could hear Mimi asking.

His answer, had Mark stopped to give one, would have been, “Off to probably make an idiot of myself.”

As he neared Cara’s table, he assessed the situation. The guy had sat next to the petite blonde. Though there was no overt evidence of possessiveness, like his arm draped over her chair, it was clear that those two were a couple, and Cara was the single. Mark’s mood improved substantially.

The couple watched him with open curiosity when he came closer. Cara’s back was to him.

He settled his hands on the top of the vacant green metal café chair next to her, and said, “It’s good to see that you leave the office every now and then.”

Cara jumped. “You have to quit sneaking up on me!”

As mean-spirited as it was, he always got a kick out of startling her. It was as though it almost made up for the jolting impact she had on his brain—and other places.

“Your friends saw me coming,” he replied in the voice of reason he generally reserved for stubborn opposing counsel.

She looped her hair behind one ear and tilted her face upward to better see him. Her looks were so incredibly classic, and her expression was so incredibly resigned, as though she was about to walk to the executioner’s block.

“Morgan,” she said, “this is Bri O’Brien and Seth Fowler. They’re getting married in August, so just ignore all the mushiness on that side of the table. Guys, this is Morgan.”

“Mark Morgan,” he supplied since Cara seemed to still be allergic to his first name.

“Nice to meet you, Mark,” Cara’s female friend said. She was cute…kind of a fluffy, Tinkerbell-type, but with an edge.

“Sit down and let me buy you a drink,” Fowler offered.

Mark sat. “Thanks, but I can only stay a second. I’m here with some friends.”

He gestured to his table inside. Mimi’s lips were still moving, setting what had to be a land speed record for
speech. Cara watched Mimi for an instant, then looked back at him.

“So was she your morning date, too?” she asked.

“No,” Mark said, not quite able to keep the alarm out of his voice at the thought.

The waitress arrived and settled cocktail napkins in front of everyone. The soon-to-be-weds ordered, then Cara asked for a “gin martini, extra-dry, blue-cheese olive.”

Mark smiled. How different could you get from Mimi’s frothy pink concoction that was as close to a martini as she was to taking a vow of silence?

“I’ll be rejoining my drink inside,” he said to the waitress. She left to fill the order.

“So, two women in one day,” Cara commented in tones sharp enough to cut a diamond. “Morgan, where do you find the time?”

“Actually, I was out with my mother this morning.”

“Your mother?” Cara’s friend said. “I didn’t know that sharks had mothers—” She jumped as though someone had goosed her. Mark managed to hold back a smile as Tinkerbell narrowed her eyes, then did something to make Cara sit just a bit taller in her seat. Then she crossed her legs and leaned forward as she rubbed at one shin. And a fine, silken shin it was.

Mark leaned forward to see if she still wore that toering he used to like so much.

“Got a foot fetish, Morgan?” Cara whispered.

He was afraid that in her case, he might.

“As I was saying,” Bri O’Brien continued, “I thought with sharks it was one of those drop the eggs and off you swim kind of things.”

“I take it Cara told you my law school nickname?”

“Among other things,” she replied. “So what was Cara’s nickname in law school?”

“I’m not sure I recall,” he hedged. Of all the people in his graduating class, he best remembered Cara. But even then, he didn’t know much. Cara had been more accurate than he cared to admit when she’d said that everyone had been fodder to his ambition. Since then, he’d worked hard to change. The memory of his past behavior wasn’t a good one.

“I didn’t really have a nickname, Bri,” Cara said. “Everyone just called me Adams.”

She gave him a soft sideways glance. For the first time, he sensed some empathy there, some real interest. He felt vulnerable, exposed and, oddly, almost okay with it.

Just then, Fowler laughed. “I, uh, think your friend’s calling you.”

Inside, Mimi was staring him down and doing something that looked like a cross between a finger-waggle and a snap. Mark pushed back his chair, its metal legs making a grating sound against the concrete.

“I have to go.”

“Yeah, and I’d make it quick,” Cara murmured.

“It’s been interesting meeting you, Mark,” Bri said. “Very educational.”

Back inside, he was greeted by another curious audience.

“Is that the girl we saw dancing in the window last week?” Trey asked.

“Yes, it is.”

Mimi gasped. “Wow, you mean like those nude dancers across the Detroit River in Windsor? I’ve never actually seen someone who did that for a living.”
She craned her neck for a better view. “She doesn’t look all that hot.”

Aware she was being watched, Cara angled in her chair and raised her glass in a toast to his group.

Cara not hot? Hell, he was sweating. Sacrificing yourself to a volcano goddess was tough work, but Mark Morgan knew he was just the guy for the job.

Cara’s Rule for Success 8:

When it comes to co-workers,

the high road generally has less traffic…

but it’s not like you’re driving, now is it?

C
ARA CONFESSED TO HAVING
coveted a few crowns in her day. The first was her sister Dani’s really cool dress-up Barbie tiara that in a five-year-old’s fit of jealousy, Cara had stomped into nothingness. But hey, everybody grows up and gets over that Barbie thing…at least most people do.

And like any little girl hardwired into the concept of happily ever after, she had sat with her mother and sister to watch Princess Di’s wedding on live television—enough said on that one. Finally, there was the unvoiced, totally lame and futile yen to be Dondero High School’s homecoming queen.

But never, not once, had Cara aspired to the crown of Miss Congeniality. Until today.

After a marathon negotiation session on Tuesday night, Newby Holdings had, in substance, accepted the commitment letter, which meant that until the loan successfully closed, all of Morgan’s and Cara’s waking hours would be devoted to the deal.

Even then, they needed more bodies to get the work
done. While Morgan finalized the commitment for signing, Cara was supposed to be marshalling the troops. The troops, however, seemed to be outflanking her. Cara had checked with Howard and Stewart to get a sense of which of the newer associates might have time to devote to the transaction. They had given her four names.

Of those, Tina was in the throes of morning sickness, and every time she got green-faced, Cara found herself with a case of the sympathy heaves. For both their sakes, Tina was a no go.

The remaining three attorneys hadn’t done anything as life-changing as getting pregnant to avoid working with Cara. Bob and Larry had simply honed their skills at noncommittal responses, leaving her with the sense that they might possibly help her out sometime before the turn of the next millennium. Or then again, maybe not.

Now Cara was in Gail Eberhardt’s office, trying to corner her into giving at least twenty hours a week. Even talking to Gail was an act of desperation. Cara suspected that in Gail’s high school yearbook, the caption beneath her photo read: Most Likely To Eat Her Own Young. Gail’s flat, calculating stare made Tina’s head-dives into the wastebasket seem appealing.

“So what would I be doing?” Gail asked while examining her fingernails.

“Ideally, I’d like you to work as a liaison with the local counsel I’ve retained to draft the Deeds of Trust on Newby’s Colorado properties. You’d also be responsible for reviewing the malls’ leases. Then—”

“So I wouldn’t be getting any direct client contact?”

Cara managed to edit
Not in this lifetime, you vile bloodsucker
to a regret-tinged, “I’m afraid not.”

“And I’d be reporting to you?”

“Yes.”

“Why not Mark Morgan?”

A month ago, Gail would have been currying her favor. Now she was more interested in inspecting her manicure.

“He’s focusing on the Loan Agreement. I’m taking on the security documents.”

Gail looked her from head to toe, and clearly found her lacking. “That’s nice. I’ll talk to Mark. Find someone else to help you with your end of the deal.”

“Maybe I haven’t made myself clear—”

“You’ve made yourself adequately clear, and I was certain that I had, too. I’ll work for Mark, but not for you.”

“Morgan doesn’t need your help, but—”
But what?
Cara drew to a verbal halt. Holy crap, had she been about to
beg?

Gail lifted her phone’s receiver. “If you don’t mind, I’ve got calls to make.”

Shock at how efficiently she’d been marginalized was the only reason Cara didn’t make a scene. She walked out of Gail’s office in a daze.

She smelled a sickly perfume, the reek of failure around her. Since Morgan had arrived, it had marked her so that killer associates like Gail could sniff her out and cull her from the pack. She, Cara Adams, was no longer viewed as the alpha-über-lawyer.

In a show of ultimate dominance, Gail Eberhardt had to go
down.

Cara stopped in Morgan’s doorway. “Do you have a second?”

“Sure.” He sat at his desk. His tie was draped over
the brass banker’s lamp in front of him, and his shirtsleeves were rolled midway up his forearms.

Morgan had always possessed this aura of calm and relaxation when everyone around him was wired to the max. Like, say…her.

“Why don’t you have a seat?” he asked.

Too tense to take him up on his offer, Cara walked around the office. He’d begun to really settle in. There were a few sailing photos on the walls and one of him with a very elegant-looking older woman she guessed was his mother.

“Don’t let Gail Eberhardt work on this deal,” she said while looking away from him. If she met his eyes, she’d have to admit that she was begging a favor, and she’d been close enough to begging in Gail’s office.

“Why no Eberhardt?”

“She requires too much watching,” Cara replied, pleased that she’d come up with such a diplomatically ambiguous turn of phrase.

“I’ll take it under advisement.” He watched her as she paced. “Are you okay?”

“Fine.”

His gaze was loaded with skepticism, but like most guys faced with a “fine” response, he didn’t look as if he planned to push it. “So, who do you have lined up to help on your end?”

“I’m still working on it,” she said as she adjusted a small bronze sculpture of a sloop so that it was properly centered on his credenza. “I was thinking I’d check with Vic and see if he could pitch in. I know he’s pretty loaded down right now, but I’d rather have ten hours from someone I trust than twenty from someone I don’t.”

“It’s your baby. Staff it any way you see fit.”

Some of the tension eased from the back of her neck. “Thanks.” She hesitated, then went for it. “Do you want me to have a look at the draft of the Loan Agreement when you have it done?”

He stood, strolled over to the sculpture, and put it back where it had been. “That would be great. Are you going to have the time?”

“Sure.” Okay, so maybe she didn’t, really, but she’d make it. Especially if it meant she was sure Gail was going to get a smack-down in the bargain. At that uncharitable thought, Cara promised herself she’d say five self-affirmations and donate money to the poor as soon as she left Morgan’s office.

Morgan’s office…

It dawned on her that she’d been in here at least two minutes, and the resentment over what should have been hers hadn’t begun to brew. Not even the slightest simmer… How weird was that?

Morgan cut into her thoughts. “That was an interesting smile.”

Cara refocused. He stood just feet away from her now—too temptingly close. “I was smiling?”

“For lack of a better word. It was more like someone had hit you upside the head.”

“Odd,” she said, mostly to herself, then shook off the moment. Losing the temptation to touch Morgan was tougher. She drifted back a step and thought of something businesslike to ask him. “When can we expect the Newby files to get here?”

“Their counsel says everything should arrive on Friday, which should give us just about enough time to get our act together. Nicole Harris is dropping in late next week.”

“For a meeting?”

Morgan nodded.

“It will be great to talk to her in person.”

He smiled. “I figured you’d say that. Nic’s been saying the same.”

“Nic, is it? That’s pretty casual. I take it you’ve known her for a while?”

His jaw tensed as though he was steeling himself for a blow. “Actually, we were engaged a few years back.”

“Oh,” Cara replied in her breeziest voice.

“Just, ‘oh’?”

It tapped her self-discipline dry, but she managed to leave it at that. “Yes, just ‘oh.”’

“I can’t wait for the follow-up, and we both know there will be one.”

Cara rolled her eyes at his utter smugness. He’d be hearing that absurd you-were-right-and-I-was-wrong speech long before she’d indulge her curiosity about his almost-marriage.

Just business, that was the rule.

He reached out and touched a lock of her hair, where it curved against her jaw. “You still in there, Adams?”

His fingertips lingered, briefly brushing the corner of her mouth. Cara forgot to breathe. She forgot everything but the overwhelming need to turn her head just the smallest fraction and draw that finger into her mouth. He’d taste like salt and sex and sun and…damn but her defenses were down!

Just then, Gail marched in the door. “Mark, I—”

Heart pounding, knees wobbly, Cara stepped away.

Gail’s waxed-nigh-unto-invisibility brows drew together. “I’ll come back.”

“Now’s good.” Morgan had jammed his hands into his pockets.

As far as Cara was concerned it would be better for both of them if he’d just keep them there from now on.

“All right,” Gail said with a “whatever” kind of shrug. “I have a block of open time and was wondering if I could pitch in on the Newby transaction?”

What was this?
Gail hadn’t even bothered to sneak behind her back. Cara’s temper began to gnash and snarl, working hard to escape the muzzle she’d clamped on it. Instead of leaping for Gail’s throat, she turned and looked out the window.

I am in control of my life,
she reminded herself.
And killing co-workers is bad.
She searched for some distraction outside. Hell, where was that landscaping lady when you needed her?

“I have a lot I could offer you,” Gail practically purred.

Cara allowed herself one good gag-me face before she turned back to watch the world-class suck-up scene taking place before her.

Morgan didn’t appear to be buying in, bless his sharklike heart. He gave Gail an easy smile. “Thanks for asking, but we have it under control.”

A wash of crimson appeared on Gail’s cheekbones. She shot Cara a speculative look tinged with venom, then said in dulcet tones, “I’m sure you do.”

Gail left, and Cara’s stomach clenched. Years before she’d joined the firm, S.U. had been embroiled in a sexual harassment suit. As a result, they had a strictly worded policy forbidding employee fraternization.

What Gail had witnessed when she walked into the office wasn’t exactly the horizontal mambo on Morgan’s desk, but it did give her leverage. Not much, of
course, but with Gail’s type, it never took much. Before you knew it, she’d be coiled around you and dragging you to the bottom of the bayou for a death roll.

Cara wondered if Morgan had any idea the direction in which Gail’s mind slithered. Or if he was even aware of the firm’s rules.

“While they were busy wining and dining you, did any of the partners happen to mention that we have a policy against intraoffice relationships?”

A slow smile stretched across Morgan’s face as he eased into his chair, leaned back and stretched out his long legs. “Are you telling me this for any reason in particular?”

Cara focused on a fleck of lint on the carpet. “It, ah, seemed kind of appropriate based on what was happening when Gail walked in.”

“Really? So does this mean you’re ready? You remember what it takes, right? ‘Mark, you were—”’

“Totally full of yourself,” she said instead, but couldn’t quite fight down her smile. “Seriously, be careful about what you say or do around Gail. She—”

“I know, she requires watching,” Morgan finished for her. “Not to mention defanging.” His expression grew serious. “You know that I’d never do anything to intentionally harm your career, don’t you?”

“That’s good to hear, because I gotta tell you, the collateral damage has been a bitch.” The smart-ass remark—her verbal armor—was out before she even knew she’d said it.

He absently rubbed at his temples, “Do you think maybe we could get past this garbage? I’m here, you’re here, and with the exception of a few lapses, I think we’re doing a pretty professional job of dealing
with it. And stupid as it sounds given our circumstances, I really want you to be okay with me.”

It didn’t sound at all stupid to her. In fact, she couldn’t recall the last time she’d heard anything quite that nice, and she felt crummy for having snapped at him.

Her frustration was better directed at the events than the man. Besides, it seemed that he’d changed since those brutally competitive law-school days. He wasn’t soft, exactly. It was more as if he’d been down that yellow brick road and had come back with a heart. She, on the other hand, was still in the market for a few missing pieces of her soul.

“You’re right,” she said. “It’s time for me to get over it. If the partners didn’t bring you in, it would have been someone else. In a really weird, close-the-circle, woo-woo kind of way, I’m lucky it was you.”

“Thanks. I think.”

Just in case he thought she was going all mushy, she added, “This doesn’t mean I’m giving up on being the next partner, you know.”

“And you know that’s what I’m gunning for, too, right?”

“Yes.”

There, it was out in the open, no less a barrier in their relationship, but somehow healthier for all that. His smile returned, and it was hot enough to make Cara think it was a damn good thing that a wall remained between them.

“And as for the firm’s no-nooky policy,” he said, “I’ll cut you a deal. I’ll honor it in front of every other member of Saperstein, Underwood…but you. My obligation to my job stops at my bedroom door. You, on
the other hand, are free to cross over that threshold whenever you say—”

She loved the way he teased her. This was decidedly a post-law-school Morgan trait. “Yeah, yeah, I know the drill. ‘You were right and I was wrong…”’

His eyes danced with laughter and something even more tempting, too. “Just a few more words, Adams, and paradise will be yours.”

She worked up what she thought was a pretty convincing hoot. “Righty-o, Morgan. And on that note, I’m going to get to work on kicking your legal butt.” She sashayed out of Morgan’s office after one good sexy swing of her hips.

Who knew that a little healthy competition could warm a girl’s blood like this?

“Hot today, isn’t it?” she commented to Howard’s secretary, Jan. Cara strolled on, languidly fanning her hand through the cool climate-controlled air. “Just the way I like it.”