The Boss's Proposal (14 page)

“I can't say I was happy to do it because I wish I hadn't had to do it at all, but I'm glad I was able to
help.” He hesitated, looking down at Max, willing her to look up. “All right, I'm going to go.”

She glanced at him with the same blank stare, her eyes smudged with exhaustion. “All right.”

“Good.” Walk out the door, he told himself. Just turn around and walk out the door. “Is there anything else I can do? Anything you need?”

“No.” She looked at him but it was as though she was looking at some point miles beyond him. “Go ahead and go. I don't need anything from you at all.”

 

So he left the hospital, and later Portland, landing in New York to return to a condo that felt no more personal than a hotel room. He went to his office and stared out the window, ducking calls from Nabil. He knew he ought to finish making his plans for Dubai but it was hard to be interested in it.

It was hard to be interested in much of anything at all.

 

As the days passed in the hospital, the McBains developed a schedule. The nurses only allowed two people into the CCU at a time, so they'd rotate which one of them got to partner with Amanda. Whoever had come out most recently did the food and drink run, though for Max, it was difficult to even think about food under the circumstances. It was difficult to think about anything.

Their access was limited, information even more
so. The nurses would promise an update in half an hour and four hours later there would be nothing. In desperation, Max took to keeping vigil in the hallway, sitting on a ledge that gave her a line of sight toward the entrance of the CCU. When the doors opened to let staff or visitors through, she'd get a glimpse of the unit. And her heart would hammer while she waited to discover whether the scene at her father's bedside was calm or a frantic stir of activity.

The only time she could really relax was at shift change, when the constant coming and going of nurses meant she got an extended view of what was going on.

She watched a pair of pretty young nurses pass by, one of them talking animatedly about her upcoming vacation to Cancún. It jarred Max for a moment. The real world existed outside the hospital walls. She felt as though she'd been living in this shadowy half world of fluorescent lights and tile floors for as long as she could remember.

There was an insistent and gnawing pain under her breastbone that she recognized vaguely as hunger. More from a desire to stop the irritation than from any real appetite, she slid down off the ledge and walked to the waiting room. She rummaged through a box of doughnuts that Damon had brought in and picked the least stale-looking one. Then she turned back to her post.

A nurse was just coming out of the double doors,
wiping her eyes. Something prickled on the back of Max's neck. She looked through the doorway.

And the rush of panic hit.

Seemingly the entire staff of the unit clustered around her father's bedside, some of them moving quickly, others just staring. And among them, just before the doors closed, Max saw the shining red of her mother's hair.

She knew the rules. She knew you had to wait to go in. She knew you needed permission. In that moment, it didn't matter. She slapped the square pressure switch that opened the doors and strode through, unable to stop herself, hurrying to her father's bed, the fear like a hand clutching her throat.

Only to see her father's eyes open and clear. He smiled up at his wife and held her hand to his cheek.

It robbed Max of breath. Any word she might have said died in her throat. For a moment she just stood there, swaying.

A nurse touched her shoulder. “I'm sorry, you're really not supposed to be—” She stopped when Max looked at her and just shook her head and handed her a tissue.

It wasn't until then that Max realized tears were streaming down her cheeks.

 

Dylan zipped up his garment bag and set it on the floor. Next stop, Dubai. Not that he was looking forward to dealing with the prince and Nabil again.
He wasn't looking forward to much of anything these days.

The week had gone by in a sort of stop-action frenzy. He'd sat in meeting after meeting with his staff, trying to compress weeks' worth of work into the few short days before he left again for Dubai. The problem was that his mind refused to focus on the work at hand for more than a few minutes at a time. Instead, it kept returning to Max, her father, her family. He couldn't help wondering how she was. The last time he'd seen her, in the waiting room, she'd been so far away from him he wasn't even sure she'd even registered who he was.

And every time he thought of her, he felt the punch of loss.

“Idiot,” he muttered to himself. No matter what happened with her father, Max was done with him, she'd made that very clear. A smart man would take the hint and go on with his life.

So why couldn't he make himself do it?

 

Max stood outside the hospital doors, inhaling the fresh air, feeling the sun on her shoulders, really feeling it, for the first time in nearly a week. If she'd been sealed in a bubble for all that time, it had been taken away by the sight of her father conscious and alert, next to her mother.

Her parents' love for each other had formed the backdrop for her life. She couldn't imagine either one of them alone, she thought as she walked across the
parking lot. The moment she'd seen her father press her mother's hand to his cheek had said it all, that one gesture encompassing a lifetime of love, the kind of emotion that built lives, the kind of emotion most people only dreamed of. The kind of emotion—

She stopped.

The kind of emotion she'd had with Dylan.

They'd kissed on the pavement where she stood, a kiss that had transported her, a kiss she'd tried to turn away from. As she'd turned away from him so many times, driven by fear. Like a wave, he'd kept coming back, wearing down her protests, showing her what could be between them. And coming back even after she'd told him it was over, coming back not because he wouldn't take no for an answer but because he wanted to help, asking nothing from her. Except that last moment she'd seen him, when she'd told him she needed nothing from him at all.

Her heart lurched in her chest. She'd been the worst kind of fool, lying to herself, lying to him, running from the best thing that had ever happened her.

Running from love.

And then she found herself running again, but this time toward something, toward her car, toward BRS—

Toward the most important person in her life.

 

“Max! How's your dad?” Brenda came around to the front of the receptionist's desk to hug her. “Everything okay?”

No, everything wasn't okay. Until she fixed things with Dylan, things weren't okay at all.

“My dad's doing much better, thanks. They say he's out of danger. They're going to release him to a rehab facility in a couple of days.”

“That's great news,” Brenda said, returning to her desk.

Max nodded, walking on into the main office, heading toward Dylan. Except she couldn't go more than a few steps without people stopping to ask about her father. She suppressed her impatience, answering the questions, trying not to wonder why he wasn't coming out of his office, too. A little stir of disquiet ran through her. Could the things she'd said to him have changed things irrevocably?

She swallowed. Maybe they had, but she'd never know until she talked to him. She had to take that chance.

Hal stepped out of his office and came over to give her a hug. “How's your father?” he asked.

“He's going to be all right,” she said. “I'm sorry I had to miss so much work but I…”

“Don't think twice about it,” Hal said. “Everything is here waiting for you when you're ready.”

And because he was watching, she turned to her office instead of Dylan's, the place she most wanted to go. Maybe it was for the best if she took a few minutes to get herself settled and decide what to say. Then she'd ask him to go down with her for a cup of coffee and just tell him everything. Tell him she'd
been wrong, tell him that she'd realized what mattered most.

Tell him that she loved him.

She walked through her door and stopped. A rectangular package wrapped in brown paper leaned against her desk. Taped to it was a note. Her heart began to said. She reached for the slip of paper.

For the memories. Dylan.

Fingers trembling a little, knowing already what was in it, Max lifted the package onto her desk and pulled away the brown wrapping.

And saw the sunset over Casco Bay.

Abruptly, she missed him so much it was a physical ache in her chest. She'd been such a fool. He'd been there and she'd sent him away. She had to find him now. She had to make this right.

He wasn't in his office and his computer was no where in sight. In fact, she saw with alarm, there was no sign of him at all.

She hurried to Hal's office. “Where's Dylan?” she asked, not bothering with the niceties.

“New York. He had some things to finish up there before he flies out to Dubai. Late tonight, I think,” Hal said. “I can give you his office number if you need to talk to him about the project or anything.”

“Forget it.” Max was already turning away. “I'll find him.”

The drive to New York was a blur. Still, it gave her something to concentrate on instead of waiting
in the airport for hours to catch an afternoon flight and take the chance of arriving too late.

She hadn't, she thought, as she rode the elevator up to Dylan's offices. It was still early afternoon and if she knew him at all, he'd be at his desk finishing up. If she'd had more nerve, she would have called him on his cell phone, but this was a conversation they needed to have face-to-face. If nothing else, he deserved an in-person thank-you and apology.

And deep down, part of her was afraid that she'd discover she'd pushed him too far and lost him forever.

 

Dylan stared out the window, trying to get his thoughts focused. He'd spend a few weeks in Dubai, then look in on the Singapore project, and perhaps the one in Rio. Moving around would keep him busy, keep him distracted. Somehow, though, he couldn't face any of it with the same enthusiasm as he normally did. It wasn't because of the weeks in Portland, it was because of Max.

She'd talked once about home. It wasn't a place with your stuff, she'd said, it was a feeling, a person. And Max was his home.

He shook his head. “Dammit, no,” he said aloud and rose. He wasn't going to walk away. Not like this, not without trying it again. He wasn't going to—

“Dylan?”

He froze, then turned from the window to see Max standing there.

She swallowed and looked to the side. “Um, do you have a minute?”

He nodded, not trusting himself to speak. She stepped inside and shut the door. She didn't sit, he noticed, but stood, twisting her hands together. She wore a pair of worn jeans and a T-shirt with a spot of coffee by the hem. Her hair looked disheveled and like it hadn't been washed for a few days. He'd never seen anyone look better in his life.

“How's your father?” he asked.

Her smile shone out, stopping his heart for just a moment. “He's going to be all right. No permanent damage. He came out of the coma this morning.”

“That's great news. I'm really glad to hear it.”

She took a deep breath. “I wanted to talk with you about what happened the day of the presentation. To apologize, for one. I said some things to you that I never should have said. I was upset, but still…”

“It was a bad situ—”

“No,” she interrupted fiercely, “let me get this out. When we were in the car, you said something to me that I've been thinking about all the way from Port land. You told me that I was holding on to the past and that I was blaming you for what somebody else had done. You were right.”

She bit her lip. “After everything that happened in Chicago, all I could think about was protecting myself so that it would never happen again. But it's like you said about Glory's sculpture, if you put up
a high enough wall, nothing—and nobody—can get in.”

He stepped toward her, heart thudding a little.

“What happened between us was the most incredible thing I've ever experienced. And I know I told you that it was over between us, but I was upset and I was scared and I was stupid and I was wrong.” She looked at him, eyes swimming. “I was so wrong,” she whispered. “And I don't know if I screwed up for good between us but I love you, and I don't want this to end.”

He'd swept her into his arms almost before she stopped speaking. For a moment, he said nothing, just held her and absorbed the wonderful reality of having her in his arms again. “If you knew what the last week has been like,” he murmured. “I thought it was over. The way you looked at me in the hospital the night I left—”

She stopped him with her fingers on his lips. “That didn't have anything to do with you. I was so overwhelmed I couldn't deal with anything. And you stayed there, and you did so much for us, you were so wonderful.”

He pressed a kiss on her hair. “I couldn't stay away. I couldn't know what you were going through and not try to be there to do something, anything. What I said that day in the car was the truth, Max, I love you. I love you,” he repeated, just to hear the sound of the words.

“And I love you,” she said in wonder at how good
it felt. “I know you have to go tonight but we can talk, right? And maybe see each other when you get back and try to figure how to make this work?”

“I have a better idea. I say you come to Dubai with me.”

“Dubai?” She leaned away from him. “In case you don't remember, I've got a job and a pretty important proposal in the works.”

“I have another proposal to offer.” Dylan looked down at her, mischief in his eyes. “How about if you take a different job? I happen to know of an opening in New York for the right architect.”