Rough Harbor (6 page)

She closed her eyes to get away from his gaze. “I have to go. I have a job to get to.” When she opened them, she saw a hint of a smile cross his lips.

“I hear the boss is a real hard-ass.” They were close again, their faces level, and Caitlyn could feel nothing, see nothing except Noah’s dark eyes, the line of his jaw with its morning stubble, feel nothing but the heat coming off of him.

“Yeah, me too.” A seagull screeched and wheeled above them, recalling her to her senses. Slowly, eyes not leaving his face, she slid from the rock and down to the sand, backing away before finally turning to find her way back home.

Caitlyn wasn’t running late, at least that was not her intention, that morning. But her conversation with Noah on the beach had given her pause, and she kept rewinding it her head, even as she showered and dressed.

So, by the time she made it to the office, the phone was already ringing and messages had piled up on her desk, including one from Mrs. Smith-Sullivan. It took Caitlyn a moment to remember that it was the lady from Maxwell’s funeral, saying that she must speak to her. Caitlyn put that one aside.

Her phone rang again. Caitlyn intended to ignore it, but it kept ringing. Swiveling in her chair, she saw that Heather wasn’t at her desk, again. The caller ID said “private.” It could be, hope against hope, a client – one who wanted her to manage a very large account with total carte blanche, and oh, by the way, knew several other friends and family also looking for a genius of a financial manager.

It hardly ever worked that way, Caitlyn thought, but you needed to try. Straightening up in her chair, she plastered her best smile on her face.

“Hello, this is Caitlyn Montgomery.”

“Kit-Cat,” Michael St. John said, his voice silky smooth, so English you could smell the tea and crumpets.

She waited – waited for her stomach to flip, her knees to tremble, her mouth to go dry. Nothing. Nothing happened, no reaction of love, or fear, or desire. She felt not one iota of anything for him, beyond the mild irritation that she had to speak to him at all.

“Hello, Michael, I thought I told you I didn’t want to speak to you anymore.” Her own voice was steady and even, her palms without a trace of nervous sweat. It was a glorious feeling, this sense of freedom, that he no longer had any kind of hold over her, that she would no longer drop everything to be with him, that she would no longer lose herself in an effort to be more pleasing to him. No more would she spend hours wondering how to have dinner with him, spend the day with him, make love to him, all of the things she had worried and fretted over with him. The last thing she had ever been with him was herself.

“Caitlyn,” his voice was a reproach, chastising her for not calling. He waited, and when she said nothing, merely shuffling through some papers on her desk, he rushed on.

“I’ve been wishing to speak with you.”

“Well, I suppose I was unlucky enough to pick up. What can I do for you?”

“I was hoping you would come back, Caitlyn.” His voice was pitched low, a tone to make her think that he was a sensitive soul.

“You know I won’t.”

“I’ve fixed things up for you. Everyone understands that it was just a mistake, not even yours – they’re all clear on that. You can come back to your old position, perhaps even as a vice president.”

Clever, Caitlyn thought, he was dangling the promotion she had failed to receive and left the company over. Of course, the reasons for that failure were not important – he had fixed those as well. Easy enough when he was the most probable cause.

“You know that I won’t do that, Michael. I thought I had made it very clear to you.”

“But you can’t possibly be so stubborn, Caitlyn. There’s a lot of money involved in this. I know how you like money.”

Of course she did. Who didn’t? But it wasn’t stubbornness this time; it was pride. Michael St. John, a man consumed by his own ego and arrogance, seldom met anyone who didn’t come around to his way of thinking. Caitlyn was defying his wishes, and in so doing, she was making herself that much more alluring to him.

“We could work something else out. Another firm, another job altogether. I could talk to a few friends. Caitlyn, it doesn’t have to be this way.” He was actually pleading with her.

Caitlyn pictured him, an ocean away, at his desk in his office, behind glass doors, turned towards the windows, looking out on a London that was well into nightfall. It would be cold and rainy, of course, the weather a virtual guarantee. He would be sitting there in a crisp white shirt, handmade to fit him precisely. Suspenders, crisscrossed against his back, silk foulard tie with a discreet, yet quirky pattern. Wool suit trousers, polished, hand-cobbled wingtips. Blue eyes straining to convey sincerity, blond hair so fair and fine that it fit his head like a golden cap. Manicured hands, Mont Blanc pens on the desk, everything the finest from shops and stores that the general public never knew existed, shops that catered to the last of the dying breed, the gentleman.

That image of him speaking to her, thousands of miles away, moved her not at all. She checked her vital signs where Michael was concerned and found that she was not registering, not even anger. She was in control, had the upper hand, and though she did not wish to torture him, would never use it in that way, it fortified her to know that she did not weaken in the face of his relentless and wheedling charm.

“Michael, our problems go far beyond a job.”

“Or you wouldn’t have to work at all, once we were married,” he said over her, and she almost laughed.

“What a kind offer, Michael, but as I was saying, we have other problems, as you might recall, and I don’t really see any way around those. You chose your path, Michael, and now you need to live with those consequences.”

Even as she said it, she doubted that he ever worried about the consequences, unless they were good ones. If they were not, he simply did his utmost to manipulate the situation back to his advantage.

“Caitlyn, what more do I have to say? It was a mistake, and I wish you would forgive me.”

She noticed that he did not say he was sorry, and she wondered which mistake he was talking about.

“I can forgive you, Michael,” she said, meaning it, “but I can’t forget and, quite simply, I can’t quite trust you. And I can’t live that way.”

“Kit-Cat, please.” Only he used that nickname, and now she hated it. “Give me another chance; please let me make it up to you. Fly here, and then we’ll go to Paris for the weekend, or the Alps to ski. Or someplace warm, instead. Anyplace you wish. Please let me show you that I still care.”

Caitlyn almost laughed, but that would have been a mistake. More than most men, Michael believed he possessed special gifts in bed. Like most women, Caitlyn had not found that to be the case, her attraction to Michael having been much deeper and more complicated than that.

“No, Michael, absolutely not. It’s over. You made your choice when you decided to sleep with Zoë in our bed. I knew you were a flirt, but you crossed a line. You humiliated me, Michael, and that was the last straw, the last.”

“Caitlyn, you made me realize my mistake. Please, how many times do I have to say I’m sorry?”

Just once, she thought, and mean it. To forgive didn’t mean to forget. “It won’t make a difference. It’s over. We’re over.”

Caitlyn hung up, the click of the receiver adding to the finality of her words. He was probably calling her a bitch, but she decided she did not care, and this, too, was another step towards freedom for her.

Caitlyn sat at her desk, mindful that the day was passing, her mind trying to focus on work. It wasn’t the phone call from Michael. No, it had been the morning with Noah on the beach and how her body had reacted.

What had she wanted? Caitlyn sighed, her pen drawing doodles on a pad. She had wanted to kiss him, had wanted him to kiss her.

It should have been easy to pass off as heightened emotion on both their parts. After all, Noah was grieving, and, well, she was… what? Grieving, too, after a fashion. Her engagement, her life in London, the death of Maxwell, who – if he hadn’t quite been her friend – had been something like a mentor. Not to mention all the other emotions Noah’s re-appearance had brought up: nostalgia, loneliness, anxiety and, even, of course, more than a little bit of lust. They hadn’t even kissed, but her body had reacted all the same.

It had been months, possibly years, since she had felt like that, remembering the way her stomach flipped and her body trembled. Snatches of that summer came back. Bright, sunny days spent at the beach, or sailing, together, always together. They had been inseparable that summer.

She needed to avoid him. That was the only thing to do. She was not going to get caught up with another man, not going to get caught up in the past and not going to get caught up with someone with whom she had as much history as Noah Randall.

Resolved, Caitlyn turned her attention back to her desk and the unfinished work that was in front of her. When she had returned to Queensbay, Maxwell had made it clear to her that her main job was to bring new clients. She had understood why after being here. The firm had been on shaky ground, barely holding steady, making money for its clients, but not great amounts. Too many people wanted too much these days, and the slow and steady approach was in disfavor. Maxwell wanted to push a more aggressive strategy of making money, and Caitlyn was supposed to do her best to find clients with a higher risk tolerance.

In London, she had gained a reputation as a networker, a woman with connections to people just starting to make money. Caitlyn’s strategy was simple. Find people, young and hungry, who were going someplace and help them before they became truly rich and sought after. Gain their loyalty early. Maxwell had once asked her how she knew, how she was able to spot her winners. She had told him it was a gut feeling, and since he often worked on that alone, he had not pressed. It was even simpler than that. She just looked for people like herself.

He’d been pleased with her progress and authorized that the firm take a position in one of her picks, a small trucking company that soon announced it was being acquired, resulting in a nice little bump in the stock price. Caitlyn had made her first money for other people.

<<>>

“Mr. Harris wants to see you.” Deborah Muller put her head in. She was Sam Harris’s assistant, in her early thirties, with two children and a dentist husband. In her former life, she had been his dental hygienist, but got tired of sticking her fingers in people’s mouths and shifted to office work. She had red hair and green eyes and always seemed good-natured. Today, though, she was less than chipper and did not stop to chat with Caitlyn and give a run-down of her children’s busy schedules.

Getting ready to go into Sam’s office, Caitlyn took a moment to compose herself. He’d been having meetings with individuals all day long, each of the associates going into the office, the door swinging shut behind them, emerging sometime later with the same inscrutable expression they had worn before. She put on her suit jacket and smoothed down her hair. Ready as she could be, she followed Deborah along the corridor and into the small suite that was Sam Harris’s domain.

Sam sat in his chair, gray hair neatly combed, impeccable in a dark charcoal suit and a red tie. He had a single file on the desk and over to the side, standing with his back to the door and staring out the window, was another man, arms clasped behind his back, brown hair curling over the collar of his jacket.

Caitlyn almost stopped when she saw Noah, but forced herself on as if it were the most natural thing in the world to be having a meeting with both of her bosses, including the one whom she had recently been fantasizing about kissing.

“Caitlyn.” Sam smiled and indicated one of the chairs in front of his desk. She took it and sank into the seat that was too big for her. Perching on the edge, she was careful not to look or feel like the little girl who had been called into the principal’s office. Noah came and sat in a seat to the side of Harris, facing the both of them, the role of an observer rather than a participant.

“I asked everyone to come in today to talk about the future of the firm and how things stand. As you might imagine, some people view this as a crossroads for the firm. A great deal of the company’s mystique was tied up in Maxwell. Without him, we need to very actively work to find a way to continue on, to ensure that the mystique does not end with us.”

Caitlyn nodded. She was careful not to look over at Noah.

“As you might know, Noah Randall inherited the firm from his father. However, that does not mean that there isn’t room for ambitious people to move up. Maxwell thought highly of you, and you’ve done an excellent job. We were very happy you were able to bring aboard Johanna Temple and Ryan Fitzhugh.”

Johanna Temple had inherited two magazines from her father, both with flagging circulation and laughable ad revenue. In two years, she had managed to turn around one of them by making it the bible of the lady sailing set. A small but profitable niche. The other one, targeted to amateur tennis players, was also doing well, and Johanna was considering her next acquisition.

Ryan Fitzhugh made commercials for ad agencies, which happened to pay well, if not exactly exalt him in artistic circles. Caitlyn was proud that she had been able to deliver.

“We think that you will be an invaluable asset for the company, and in order to demonstrate that to you, we would like to offer you a raise and an additional bonus, if you agree to stay for another year as the firm makes its transition.”

“Transition?” Caitlyn asked, still looking at Sam Harris.

“Well, there are a number of options available to us, Caitlyn, and when they present themselves formally, they will be shared with all of the associates.”

Noah was thinking of selling. Caitlyn looked at Sam and realized he thought Noah was thinking of selling to him.

Noah confirmed this when he said, “It’s my decision that the company is best served by having professional managers such as Sam running it. In that way, we can all be sure that the company is well-positioned for any future opportunities. Things will go on a usual, with Sam handling the day-to-day operations.”

Their eyes met, perfectly neutral. Caitlyn felt a surge of anger.

“I see,” Caitlyn said.

“At the current time, we expect everyone and everything to proceed as usual.”

“What about promotions?” she asked.

Harris looked at her. She ignored Noah.

“When I came here, it was with the clear understanding that I would be considered for promotion.”

“And there still is,” Sam smoothly rushed to assure her. “As I said, we’re proceeding as usual; however, since there is no written record of this agreement, we’ll have to follow the accepted schedule. You’ll be judged on client acquisitions.”

“What about investments?”

“Caitlyn, you know your strengths. Tommy Anderson will be heading the investment selection.” It was clear: deliver or else.

It was on the tip of Caitlyn’s tongue to ask when she could expect that retention bonus, but instead she nodded, rose and left. She didn’t bother to glance back at Noah, though she felt him looking after her, looking for some sign that he was doing the right thing. She wouldn’t give it, she thought, since he had already made his decision. It did make her position that much easier, she thought, if he wasn’t around.