Come Fly with Me (11 page)

“I'm not here to have a good time. I'm here to get you to read the damned contract and sign it.”

“You work too hard.”

“How would you know?”

“I can tell. If you could have seen yourself Friday night...” He shook his head disapprovingly. “You looked like an exhausted, woebegone little waif.”

“If I looked that lousy, I'm surprised you were so hot to take me in.”

“That's exactly why I was so determined to take you in. I wanted to see some sparkle in those beautiful green eyes of yours.”

Lindsay gave him her most beguiling smile. “You should just see the sparkle when I get a signed contract in my hands.”

“I never promised I'd sign it,” he reminded her. “Only that I'd read it.”

“When?”

“When the time is right.”

“Damn it, Mark! When will that be? I
can't stay here forever,” she said desperately. “I have other work to do.”

“If you ask me, you're running away.”

“From what?”

His gaze caught hers and she could see the knowledge that lit those black eyes until they burned with an exciting flame of passion.

“Only you can answer that one. Think about it,” he suggested, as he calmly pulled on a jacket and went outside for a walk, Shadow bounding along beside him.

While he was gone, Lindsay did think, though not about Mark's taunting question. She already knew the answer to that: she was running from him. What puzzled her more was his ability to turn any conversation away from himself and back to her. While she had revealed so much last night, allowed herself to become increasingly vulnerable, he had remained a charming enigma. No amount of sensitive probing had revealed the reason for his brooding silences, the distant stares. It bothered her that even as she was growing to trust him, perhaps even to fall a little in love, if she were to admit the whole truth, he didn't seem to trust her at all. If for no reason other than that, it was time to retreat to the safety
of her own environment, where she could regroup her defenses.

Even more than wanting to escape from an emotional situation she wasn't prepared to handle, though, she'd come to realize that these last few days had been a fantasy in other ways as well. She'd hardly noticed being virtually stranded in the middle of nowhere because Mark was constantly showering attention on her...talking to her, skiing with her, playing backgammon, simply sitting by her side while they were both engrossed in their own reading or thoughts.

But that closeness and attentiveness wouldn't last forever. It couldn't be sustained day in and day out over a lifetime, even if two people were madly in love. For one thing, sooner or later Mark would have to go back to writing, shutting her out for hours on end. What would she do then? She'd never be able to bear the loneliness. Perhaps one of the greatest paradoxes in her life was that while she was pushing people away to avoid commitment and loss, she was at the same time terrified of being alone.

L
indsay didn't have to wait long to find out what living in the middle of nowhere with Mark would really be like on any kind of permanent basis. Not that he'd exactly asked her to stay forever, she reminded herself. He had, however, given her plenty of indications over the last few days that he wasn't in any hurry for her to leave.

Still, when she woke up early Tuesday morning and found that he was already locked away in the den, it depressed her. She
could hear his typewriter rapidly clacking along in a steady, intense way that did not invite interruptions and she immediately felt as shut out of his life as if there'd been a Do Not Disturb sign hanging on the closed door.

Trapped by Trent's obsession with this movie project, ensnared by her growing physical and emotional response to Mark and left at loose ends with only the sound of the typewriter to interrupt the endless silence, she began to feel cut off from the world for the first time since she'd arrived in Colorado. She had a feeling that if she screamed her head off, the only one for miles who'd notice or care would be Shadow, who'd been sneaking into her room since the very first night and sleeping at the foot of her bed.

Lindsay wasn't particularly surprised by the stark sensation of loneliness, only that it had taken so long to overcome her. Obviously Mark's attentiveness had kept it at bay. Now that he was hard at work again there was nothing to occupy her usually active mind.

No newspapers were delivered to the door way out here. They apparently collected for days at the general store until Mark went to pick them up. During the idle time they'd
spent just sitting together in front of the fire, she'd read every back issue of the
Rocky Mountain News
and
Denver Post
, all of his magazines, plus those she'd bought at the Los Angeles airport. She'd even gone through every bit of work she'd thrown into her briefcase before leaving the office.

Bored, increasingly resentful of Mark's sudden defection, and resigned to the idea that she had accomplished nothing regarding the contract and wasn't likely to, she called Trent, hoping for a reprieve. His greeting dashed her hopes and made her mood even more foul than it already was.

“Where the hell have you been?” he snapped with more than customary rudeness, when he finally took the call after leaving her on hold for a solid fifteen minutes.

“Where the hell do you think I've been?” she snapped right back. “You sent me on a fool's errand and I've been following your orders.”

“You're not in Denver,” he accused. “I called that blasted hotel yesterday when you didn't show up for work or call in. They said you checked out first thing Saturday morning.”

“That's not exactly true.”

“Lindsay, don't play games with me. I'm in no mood for them. Either you're there or you're not there.”

“I am not at the hotel. Your Academy Award winning writer checked me out.”

“Then where the hell are you now?”

“At his place.”

“Ahhh. I see,” he said, his voice smoothing out with distinct pleasure. Trent was thoroughly disgusting when he thought one of his plans was working out just the way he'd intended. He took a certain amount of perverse delight in manipulating people like pawns in a high-powered chess game.

“You don't see a damn thing, you bloody idiot. I'm stranded out here in the damned wilderness with nothing to do, while your writer friend is holed up in the den pounding away on his typewriter.”

“Is he writing the screenplay?” he asked hopefully.

“For all I know he's writing a letter to his mother.”

“Has he signed the contract?”

Her voice was thick with sarcasm, she retorted, “Would I still be here if he had?”

“Only you can answer that, my little dove,” he replied with exaggerated suggestiveness. He wouldn't have used that tone if Lindsay'd been in the same room. She'd thrown his prized crystal paperweight at him for far less.

She and Trent Langston were a more than even match most of the time. That was why he'd hired her. Even though he loved to shove his employees around, he only respected those who shoved right back. Lindsay not only shoved, she kicked and screamed. Usually.

Now she only pleaded plaintively, “Trent, I want to come home.”

“Fine,” he agreed cheerfully. “As soon as he signs, you can hop the next flight.”

“You don't understand. I want to come back now!”

“Then get him to sign the contract now.”

“Have you ever met Mark Channing?”

A bewildered silence greeted her question. Then he demanded irritably, “Who the hell's Mark Channing?”

“David
Mark Channing
Morrow.”

“Oh. Yeah. I met him once. At one of those awards ceremonies or something. We
didn't talk business or anything, but he seemed like a nice enough guy. Why?”

“A nice enough guy,”
she mimicked derisively. “The man is about as stubborn as an old mule that's made up its mind to stay in the barn. He's an awful lot like you, come to think of it.”

“Lindsay!”

“Well, he is. He won't look at the contract, much less talk about it. I even stuck it in the middle of a magazine he was reading, but he threw it back on the table like it was just a dumb bookmark and went right back to an article about some actor's crusade to save the wilderness. Maybe if you offered to buy him his own mountain, he'd listen to reason,” she suggested dryly.

“If you know of one and it's not too expensive, try it.”

“Trent, I was kidding,” she muttered in exasperation.

“I'm not.”

Lindsay sighed. “No. I know you're not. If I happen to pass a mountain with a For Sale sign on the peak, I'll check it out.”

“Good. You hang in there, Lindsay. I know you can pull this off.”

“Exactly how long am I supposed to hang in here?”

“Until he signs.”

“Then send some information on my retirement benefits,” she suggested bitterly. “I may be a very old lady by then.”

“Knowing how you feel about cold weather, I doubt you'll let him put you off that long. Bye, kiddo. Got to run.”

“Trent!”

It was too late. He'd already hung up and she knew perfectly well there was no pressing call or important meeting awaiting him. He didn't want to give her any more time to try to wheedle him into letting her leave. Not that he was likely to take pity on her anyway. Men like Trent did not make their fortunes by being kind and thoughtful where their employees were concerned. They made them by being single-minded. Trent did that better than anyone she'd ever known.

Resigned to her fate, she went into the kitchen and fixed herself some toast and tea and took it into the living room. She scanned Mark's haphazardly arranged bookshelves, marveling at the diversity of his taste in literature. Finally she found a thick novel she'd
been wanting to read since its release two years earlier and settled down in front of the fire with Shadow sprawled out on the floor right next to her.

She should have been thoroughly relaxed, grateful to have some time to spend to herself after months of nonstop traveling and high-pressure assignments, but instead she continued to feel incredibly edgy. The fact of the matter was that she had no experience at relaxation. She usually avoided it like the plague, filling her time with business meetings, research and strategy sessions until she was so exhausted that she fell immediately to sleep the minute her head hit whatever pillow in whatever city she happened to be in.

As if this unwanted vacation weren't frustrating enough, the book she'd waited so long to read bored her to tears. It was one of those trashy, mindless concoctions of sex, violence and power struggles that would probably make millions as a television miniseries.

“I can't stand it,” she finally muttered, snapping the book shut.

She sat on the floor and did a series of exercises, though muscles she'd never known existed until she'd taken up skiing screamed
in protest with each leg lift and sit-up. Shadow cocked his head, watching her activity and listening to her muttered curses, then settled right back down.

When she couldn't do another single stretching exercise, she found a deck of cards and tried playing solitaire. She lost.

Finally, in desperation, she went back to her room and bundled up in her horrible winter underwear, slacks, jacket and boots, pulled on her cap and mittens and went outside, amazed that she actually felt better with the fresh air whipping around her. It cleared her head of all sorts of confusing thoughts about Mark, murderous thoughts about Trent and her own range of insecurities that had been surfacing more and more frequently over the past few days. They were insecurities that she'd deluded herself had been long overcome. Instead, she was discovering that they'd merely been buried, awaiting a situation like the one she was experiencing with Mark to surface again.

When she reached the end of Mark's driveway, her boots crunching on the ice-covered snow, she turned down the road in the direction of the general store. Maybe there she'd
find some lively company to offer further distraction from her disturbing thoughts. At the very least she could pick up any newspapers and magazines that had come in for Mark, so she could occupy herself for the rest of the day.

She came upon the little shop about twenty minutes later, its front porch piled high with stacks of wood, a welcoming puff of smoke curling from the chimney. She stomped her feet to get the snow off her boots, then went inside. An old man with a healthy, graying beard and a pipe was sitting in front of an old wood-burning stove and a woman she knew immediately must be Mrs. Tynan was working behind the counter, piling groceries into a bag for a couple who seemed to be tourists. They were asking for directions to a lodge Lindsay knew was farther up the side of the mountain.

“You look half-frozen,” the old man said to her, gesturing to a chair close to the stove. “Sit down here and rest a spell, young lady. This old stove ain't much to look at, but it'll warm you right up.”

“Thanks.”

“So,” he said, dragging the word out as he
scrutinized her closely. “You must be Mark Channing's gal. Heard tell he had a pretty young visitor up at his place.”

Lindsay winced. It was just as she'd expected. The grapevine was in fine working order. Not that it had had far to travel from Mrs. Tynan to the man sitting beside her stove. It still made her uncomfortable to be thought of as
Mark Channing's gal
, when she wasn't quite sure Mark Channing was thinking of her at all.

“I'm visiting Mr. Channing on business for a few days,” she said stiffly.

“Hmmph,” the old man said with a toothy smile. “So that's what you young folks call it. Ain't nothing the matter with two people living together as far as I can tell. Nobody around here gives a hang anyway, leastways that's what I've been telling Grace for the last ten years.”