The Backup Plan (17 page)

Maggie could say that now, because she didn't know what she was talking about. If she knew about Peter, that Dinah had let him die in her place, if Maggie knew that
she'd messed up at her job because she could no longer focus, would she still feel the same way? Dinah doubted it. She certainly couldn't forgive herself for any of it.

“It's my problem,” Dinah said stubbornly.

“And that makes it ours,” Maggie insisted just as stubbornly. “Maybe you've lost touch with friendship, but that's the way it works. When you shut us out, it puts a wall up between us. Maybe you don't mean it that way, but it tells us you don't think we're smart enough or caring enough to understand.”

“It's not that at all,” Dinah said, genuinely dismayed.

“When you were trying to decide whether to go up north to college, didn't I give you good advice?”

“Of course.”

“And when you couldn't decide between the red sequined dress and the pastel pink for prom, didn't I tell you to go with the red? And wasn't every guy in the room drooling?”

Dinah laughed. “Oh, Maggie, I'm so sorry. Obviously I should be confiding in you. The red dress was a master stroke,” she joked, then regarded her friend seriously. “But this isn't about a dress. It's about my life.”

Maggie shook her head, her expression filled with sorrow. “If you gave me half a chance, you might discover that I even have a few good ideas about that.”

“To be honest, you probably have better ones than I do,” Dinah said.

“Then tell me.”

“I can't,” Dinah said apologetically. “I wish I could, but I can't say the words, Maggie. I've tried. I'm afraid if I say it out loud, I'll start sobbing and never, ever stop.”

Maggie immediately looked stricken as the depths of Dinah's distress finally sank in. “It's that bad?”

Dinah nodded. “Worse than anything you could possibly imagine.”

“Okay, then,” Maggie said briskly, pushing aside her uneaten salad and leaning forward, her elbows on the table in a way that would have had both their very proper mothers cringing. “Here's the deal, Dinah. I'm not going to press you to talk to me, but I am going to insist you see someone who can listen objectively to what ever it is and tell you how to cope. I may be way out of my depth, but I do know one thing. Hiding out the way you have been and hoping it will all get better or will simply go away isn't working. You said it yourself. You're a mess. First you wanted to marry a man you know you don't love. And now you've gotten involved with a man you once claimed to despise. Personally I can totally understand that, seeing it's Cordell we're talking about, but if you were in your right mind, you'd never reach out to him.”

Dinah knew Maggie's intentions were the very best, but they were getting way too serious. “You're going to insist, huh?” she teased. “You and what army?”

Maggie didn't smile in response. “I won't need an army. If I have to, I will have Cord throw you over his shoulder and haul you off to the appointment,” she assured Dinah. “And if you don't think I will, just test me.”

Something in her friend's unwavering voice and unflinching gaze told Dinah she would do exactly as she said. “I'll think about it,” she promised.

“Not good enough. I'm calling you tonight to see if you've made an appointment. If you haven't, I'm making one for you and that's that.”

“I don't need you to take charge of my life,” Dinah grumbled.

“Somebody has to,” Maggie retorted. “You're certainly not doing it yourself.”

Dinah wanted to lash out at her presumption, but she couldn't. Unfortunately, Maggie had the situation pegged exactly right. And if she and Cord ever did team up on Dinah, there was little doubt that Dinah would wind up doing exactly what they expected.

“I'll make the appointment,” she promised dutifully.

“By tonight?”

“Yes, Maggie. By tonight.”

“And not for some time in November, either. Make it for tomorrow.”

“I'll take the first appointment available,” Dinah told her.

“Fine,” Maggie agreed. “As long as it's for tomorrow.”

“I think I was happier when I was avoiding you,” Dinah lamented.

“No, you weren't. You were just living in a fool's paradise.”

Despite herself, Dinah laughed, though there was an edge of hysteria to it. If where she'd been living was any sort of paradise at all, she hoped she'd never catch a glimpse of hell.

 

Cord finally had a chance to stop by his office during his lunch break and was greeted with a sour look from his receptionist and a handful of messages, some dated days earlier.

“Nice of you to drop in,” Pam said. “I vaguely remember a time when Covington Plantation was not where you spent every single second of your day.”

“You can always reach me on my cell phone,” he responded.

“Oh, really? Where is it right now?”

Cord reached into his pocket, but the phone wasn't there. He checked for the case he occasionally attached to his belt. Nothing.

“I must have left it somewhere,” he muttered.

“You left it somewhere last week, to be precise. I've been trying to catch up with you since Friday.”

“How come? What's so important?”

She handed him another little pile of messages. “All from Tommy Lee Davis,” she said. “He wants to see you ASAP.”

“Really? Did he say why?”

“Just that it was important and that you weren't to say a word about it to anyone.”

“Why the secrecy?”

She frowned at him. “Do you actually think he bothered to explain that to me? He was ticked enough that I couldn't seem to track you down.”

Cord couldn't begin to imagine why Dinah's brother was so anxious to see him. Nor did he have time to waste with another meeting, but something told him he needed to make the time for this one.

“See if you can reach him and see if now's a good time,” he said. “I assume you have his cell phone number.”

“And it probably works, too,” she said sarcastically.

Cord let the comment pass and went into his office to try to straighten out the mess his desk had become. Pam tended to pile things on it haphazardly when she was annoyed with him. Important files were mixed in
with stacks of junk mail and letters he needed to sign were buried under all of it.

He was trying to make some sort of order out of it when she stuck her head in the door. “Tommy Lee's on his way.”

“Send him on in when he gets here,” Cord told her.

“Can't,” she said. “I'll be at lunch. I'll put the phone on the answering machine while I'm out. Keep your ears open for the door.”

“Yes, ma'am,” he said, amused despite her best efforts to let her displeasure be known.

“It's a good thing I like your brother,” she said. “Otherwise you couldn't pay me enough to work here.”

He laughed. “Duly noted.”

Pam had been gone for barely ten minutes when Tommy Lee came in. Compared to Cord, the man was a veritable fashion plate in his Armani. Oddly enough, despite his blueblood background, the attire didn't seem to suit him. He looked as if he'd give just about anything to strip off the tie and open his collar.

Cord didn't know Tommy Lee well. He was younger than Dinah, so he and Cord hadn't crossed paths in school. They'd bumped into each other from time to time at social functions in recent years, but Tommy Lee had always struck Cord as a man whose life hadn't gone quite the way he'd expected.

Cord waved him toward a chair. “What's up?”

“This is between us, right?” Tommy Lee asked, his expression filled with concern.

“Sure. Who would I tell?”

Tommy Lee gave him a wry look. “You're pretty tight with my mother and from what I hear, you're even tighter with my sister.”

“Fair enough,” Cord said. “I won't tell either of them about this visit.”

Tommy Lee nodded. “You're doing a good job out at Covington Plantation. My mother took me on a tour a few weeks back.”

“Thanks.”

“And I've been hearing a lot of good things about the projects you and Bobby have going over in Atlanta.”

Cord regarded him impatiently. “Could you get to the point? I need to get back out to Covington.”

“I want a job,” Tommy Lee blurted.

If he'd announced a desire to appear on
American Idol,
Cord couldn't have been any more shocked. “Why? You're the heir-apparent to an entire banking empire.”

Tommy Lee squirmed uncomfortably. “I hate banking. I love all this restoration stuff my mother gets mixed up in. And, to tell you the truth, I'd rather be building something and working with tools than pushing papers all day long.”

Cord realized Tommy Lee was totally serious. “What's your father going to have to say about this sudden career change?”

“He'll blow a gasket when he hears about it,” Tommy Lee said candidly, then shrugged. “Then I suspect he'll be relieved. He was dreading turning the bank over to me. He knows I'm no damn good at it. In fact, if I weren't family, he'd probably fire me. The one who's really going to be stunned is my mother. She'll think I'm throwing away my heritage.”

Cord saw the distress in his eyes over that. “I think you're wrong,” he told Tommy Lee. “I think she'll see it as exchanging one part of your heritage for another. You did get some of your genes from her, after all.”

Tommy Lee's expression brightened at once. “Maybe
she will see it that way. So, what about it? Any room at Beaufort Construction for me?”

“Do you want to buy into the company or do you just want a job?”

“A job,” Tommy Lee said eagerly. “I know I need to pay my dues. I don't want to buy my way in. If it works out and I can make a real contribution, we could talk about the rest down the road.”

“Do you have any skills in construction?” Cord asked.

“Enough not to embarrass myself or make you regret hiring me.”

Cord liked what he was hearing, a combination of humility and eagerness. He tended to hire with his gut. The fact that Tommy Lee was a Davis was both a blessing and a curse, but he figured the positives outweighed the negatives. He stood up and held out his hand. “You're on. I can use another carpenter. We're behind schedule. When can you start?”

“Give me a couple of weeks,” Tommy Lee said, clasping his hand in a strong grip. “I'll speak to my father today, but it may take that long for me to mop up the collateral damage.”

“You need any help with your mother, send her to me,” Cord offered. “But I think she'll surprise you.”

In fact, as far as he could tell, most of the Davises were just full of surprises these days.

A
fter Tommy Lee left his office, Cord's thoughts drifted back to Dinah's crying jag that morning and to her mother's opinion that they should delay taking the drastic action of calling her boss. He wished he were as certain as she was that they weren't making a mistake by waiting. Dorothy hadn't seen her daughter face-down in the mud at his house the night of the storm. Nor had she witnessed Dinah sobbing so hard it seemed as if she'd never stop. It was his opinion that time wasn't doing a thing to heal Dinah's wounds. If anything, she was worse than that very first night she'd turned up at his place full of sass and vinegar looking for Bobby.

He was about to violate his agreement with Mrs. Davis and call the network, when it occurred to him that Maggie might have had better luck with Dinah than he'd had. He'd call her, find out if they'd gotten together and once he had her take on things, then he'd decide what needed to be done.

As soon as Maggie heard his voice, she laughed. “Took you longer than I expected, Cordell. You must be slipping.”

“Meaning?”

“I'm guessing you want to know how things went with Dinah. Or am I mistaken? Did you call to see if I was busy tonight?” she asked, her tone filled with irony.

Cord sighed. Maybe this had been a bad idea, after all. Now that he had her on the phone, though, he intended to plunge ahead. “No, it's about Dinah. I'm sorry if I'm putting you in an uncomfortable situation, Maggie. I really am. I wouldn't do it, if it weren't important.”

“I know that, you idiot,” she chided. “I was teasing. You have not broken my heart, so stop getting all weird every time you talk to me. We're bound to run into each other and it'll be thoroughly uncomfortable if I have to watch every word out of my mouth.”

“Sorry.”

“Stop apologizing, dammit! I haven't heard so many
sorry
s out of one man's mouth since—well, I won't say who—had a little difficulty in the romance department one night, if you know what I mean.”

Cord laughed. “I'm a little tense.”

“After seeing Dinah, I can't say that I blame you. She's in trouble, Cord. More than either of us imagined.”

“Trust me, my imagination has already run pretty wild on this score. Did she tell you what it's about?”

“No. She flatly refused to get into it. I got the impression she's terrified that once she talks about whatever it is, we're all going to lose respect for her.”

“That's absurd.”

“I didn't say it was rational,” Maggie told him. “I just think she's expecting all of us to be as hard on her as she's being on herself. I did convince her to make an appointment with a counselor of some kind. I gave her the name of someone I know, but whether she goes to
him or someone else, I made her promise to schedule an appointment for tomorrow.”

“And she actually agreed to that?” Cord asked, surprised. In his experience, Dinah was not the sort of woman who'd be inclined to ask for help from any direction, no matter how desperate the circumstances. “If she won't take advice from people she trusts, what makes you think she'll consider taking it from a stranger, even a trained professional?”

“I added a little incentive,” Maggie said smugly. “I'm certain it will do the trick.”

“Which was?”

“The image of you throwing her over your shoulder and carting her in yourself, if she didn't do it on her own.”

He bit back a smile. He had to admire Maggie's gumption, to say nothing of the depth of her friendship. “And she bought that?”

“To tell you the truth, I think she likes the idea of you as a caveman type, but I don't think she'll risk doing anything to see if you'll pull it with her, especially in public.”

“Just what I've been longing to hear,” Cord said wryly.

“Are you going to see her tonight?” Maggie asked.

“We don't have plans. Why?”

“Because one of us needs to make sure she made the appointment.”

“I'll head on over there,” Cord said at once. His intention of getting any work done this afternoon had been pretty much doomed from the minute he'd left the plantation, anyway.

“She's going to think we're all ganging up on her,” Maggie warned. “It could backfire.”

“Then there's always the caveman thing,” Cord said,
resigned to being the bad guy, if need be. “Thanks, Maggie. She may not be happy with either one of us, but if it snaps her out of this state she's been in, that's all that matters.”

“I agree, but don't push her too hard, Cord,” Maggie said, worry threading through her voice. “For her to be so withdrawn and willing to let things happen, rather than taking charge of her own life, I suspect she's more fragile than either of us imagined.”

Cord agreed. “Hey, I know a little bit about finesse,” he claimed.

“And a whole lot about charm,” she added. “Use it.”

“That's a promise.” He wanted Dinah whole again. He wanted that flash and sparkle back in her eyes, the temper in her voice, the grit and determination in her attitude. Even if that meant she'd leave him in the end, pushing her to get help was the only choice he had.

 

Maybelle greeted Cord at the front door with a sour expression. “You, again.”

He grinned. “Not happy to see me, Maybelle?”

“Just getting tired of answering the door when I've got other things I could be doing. You going to be showing up all the time, you might start coming round to the back and save me some time.”

“I'm going to assume you don't mean to suggest that I'm not good enough to cross the front door threshold,” he said.

She didn't seem to appreciate his attempt at levity. “Got nothing to do with that. It's got to do with me not being as young as I once was.”

“Then I'll take that into account,” he promised. “Where's Dinah? Out by the pool?”

She shook her head. “In her room, watching the television again. She's been up there most all afternoon. Seeing her like this is worrisome.”

“I know.”

“Then do something about it. You want to go up there, it's fine by me,” Maybelle said, then gave him a fierce look meant to intimidate. “Just mind your manners, you hear me?”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“That girl's not been herself since she came home,” Maybelle said, her brow furrowed with genuine concern. “I'm trusting you to do something about that and not just add to the problem.”

“I'm doing my best.”

“See that you do.”

Cord took the stairs two at a time, aware that the housekeeper's watchful gaze was on him. At the top he gave her a jaunty salute that almost put a smile on her lips.

When he got to the third floor, he rapped on Dinah's door, though he doubted she could hear him over the sound of the television blaring the argument between a mother-in-law and her son's wife over who had more right to the man's attention. Cord heard enough before he walked in to know he was on the daughter-in-law's side.

“Somebody ought to tell that old biddy to butt out,” he said as he sat gingerly on the edge of the bed beside Dinah.

She didn't seem all that surprised to see him. In fact, she never even glanced away from the TV. He decided to up the ante by stretching out beside her.

“Someone just did,” she commented, seemingly more
fascinated by that than she was by the fact that he was lying right there thigh-to-thigh with her.

“Do you suppose we could turn that off or is it more scintillating than my company?” he inquired, trying to keep his tone light.

She did look at him then and turned the sound down, but not off. “Did you come over here prepared to be scintillating, Cordell?” she inquired with evident fascination. “Right here in my mother's house?”

He gave her his most wicked grin. “Now that truly would be my pleasure, sugar, but actually I came to talk.”

She groaned. “Not you, too. Did you and Maggie compare notes and decide I needed a booster pep talk?”

“Something like that,” he admitted, seeing little point in denying it. He didn't want her to get all sidetracked by conspiracy theories.

She turned the sound on the TV back up. “Then go away.”

“Not until you tell me what happened in Afghanistan,” he said, removing the remote from her hand and clicking the TV off entirely.

She frowned. “I thought the deal was that I had to talk to some shrink or something.”

“I'm giving you one last chance to talk to me first.”

“I don't want to talk to you. To be perfectly honest, I don't want to talk to anyone, but Maggie kept pushing, so I agreed to see a professional. I can tell you now what he'll say. He'll tell me that it's going to take time. At a hundred dollars an hour, I figure that's a waste of money, but if it will shut the two of you up, I'll do it.”

“Did you make an appointment?”

“Not yet.”

“Office hours will end soon. It's already past four.”

She shrugged. “Then I'll call in the morning.”

Cord backed down from that fight for the moment. “How about I tell you what I think happened over there? You can correct me if I get it wrong.”

“Whatever,” she said without inflection, her gaze averted.

He took that for a yes. “Okay, here's the way I see it. You were a little too close to the action. Someone died, probably right in front of you. Maybe even someone you knew,” he said, watching her face closely for any sign that he was getting close to the truth. Her face remained perfectly blank, but there was a tiny flicker in her eyes. Anguish, if he wasn't mistaken. He kept pushing. “You didn't do anything. You couldn't. That started you off on the panic attacks. It made you second-guess everything you were doing.”

He looked into her eyes, but once more she averted her gaze. He tucked a finger under her chin and made her face him. “How am I doing so far?”

Her lips stayed stubbornly clamped together, but there was even more turmoil in her eyes.

“You were used to being the best in the business, but all of a sudden you were off your game. Your bosses wouldn't cut you any slack. They wanted you at full speed or not at all. Before they could fire you, you quit.”

She swallowed hard and a tear leaked out and trailed down her cheek. Cord had to fight the longing to wrap his arms around her. He kept pushing.

“Why'd you quit, Dinah? Did they really back you into a corner? Or were you the one who decided you couldn't cut it anymore? Now I may not know much about the network news business, but the way I see it,
you were too valuable for them to suddenly toss you out on your behind. My guess is they tried to get you to take a leave of absence or another assignment, just something you could handle till you got your head straight, but your pride kicked in. You saw anything less than being on the front lines as a humiliation, right?”

She blinked hard, but the tears kept coming. “Why are you doing this?” she asked, her voice choked.

“Because you need to face it,” he said. “You got scared that you couldn't cut it anymore, so you ran. And now you don't know what to do with yourself. You've lost confidence. That would be one sorry thing for most people, but for a woman like you, a woman who's always known her own mind, fought to get what she wanted, it's a downright shame.”

Now there was real fire flashing in her eyes, thank God.

“I am still a better reporter than ninety percent of the people over there,” she shouted at him. “You don't know anything about it, Cordell. You don't know what it takes to do that job.”

“No,” he agreed. “But you do. Can you still cut it, Dinah?”

“Yes,” she said emphatically.

“Then why are you here? Come on, Dinah. Just say it. Why are you here, instead of over there doing what you do best?”

Her fragile hold on her temper snapped. “Because I'm terrified, dammit! There, I said it. Does that make you happy?”

Cord did wrap his arms around her then. “No, it doesn't make me happy. It breaks my heart.” He leaned away and smiled at her. “But it's the first step on the road back, Dinah. I'd stake my life on that.”

She gave him a startled look. “You want me to go back?”

Cord struggled to get the next part right. “No,” he said, wiping a stray curl away from her damp cheek. “The last thing I want for my sake is you leaving here to go anywhere at all. But I want you to know that you can go back, that you're strong enough to do it, if that's what you choose to do. Journalism mattered to you. Nobody should lose something that matters to them that much just because they're scared.”

She gave him a sad look. “I don't know how not to be scared anymore.” She waved an arm around the room. “This isn't where I belong. I know that. Hiding out isn't who I am. I just don't know how to stop.”

“Face whatever happened,” he said. “Once and for all, face it. Until you've done that, you'll never be able to put it behind you. That means looking all the ugliness straight in the eye without blinking. No more hiding from it. No more keeping it bottled up inside. The more you talk about it, the less powerful its hold on you. Right now you've got it built up in your head like this huge, awful black monster that can swallow you up. I can't chase it away—Lord knows, I would if I could—but you can.”

He reached for the phone beside the bed and handed it to her along with a slip of paper with the number Maggie had given him. “Call now and make that appointment.”

She looked as if she might argue, but finally she took the phone from his hand and dialed. Her voice was steady and emphatic when she said she needed an appointment for the next day.

Her gaze locked with Cord's. “Yes, it's an emergency,” she said quietly.

“What time?” he asked when she'd hung up.