Climbing High (11 page)

He took advantage of the waiter’s arrival with their meals to regroup, moving them from the white waters of a potential capsize to a quiet eddy. “I bet you do want to know if we caught the bad guys.”

Folding her arms on the table, she leaned closer. The tight lines around her eyes disappeared. Her mouth softened. “Oh, yes, that I do want to know. Did you catch the guys in JDI and IYM?”

“We have them. It turns out both the guys are women. They’re cooperating fully. When they found out he’d played them both, the blinders came off. We have two angry women out for revenge. One took a keepsake photo when he wasn’t looking. CSIS used it to get an identity. He’s wanted in several countries for Internet fraud and theft. STS is working to find the stolen money and get it back. They have hackers hacking him. They want him badly, so they’re keeping it top secret, which suits my publicity department just fine. By the time it comes out, we’ll have the money back and our press release ready to minimize the fallout.”

Her eyes sparkled with each piece of good news. “Here’s to JDI and clean slates.” She tapped her wine glass with Jake’s tumbler and took a sip. “They toppled like dominoes. I’m so happy for you. This must have been the biggest threat to your company ever. What a strain you’ve been under.”

His eyes measured her reaction. “I wouldn’t be out from under it yet if you hadn’t found the pattern. I’m in your debt for saving my company and I’d like to say my peace of mind. However, I haven’t had any since I met you, for a different reason entirely.”

“There’s no debt, other than the hefty fee Ty has charged JDI.” Siree laughed. “And as to peace of mind, I haven’t had any since a café in Paris, so we’re even.”

Jake’s phone vibrated. He pulled it out and read the text. “Tom says one of the pests who chase me around with a camera just staked out the Toe Hold. We better get out of here.” He signaled for the check.

“I just need a minute.” She rose and headed to the rest room. From inside one of the stalls she heard the door open and close and thought nothing of it. She moved to the sinks, where a bone thin brunette stood staring at her in the mirror. Siree washed her hands with speed and grabbed a paper towel from the dispenser. She thought the woman might be high on drugs. She seemed agitated and the eyes that stared into Siree’s, in the mirror, had a wild look. Deciding she didn’t need to freshen her lipstick, Siree tossed the towel in the trash and pulled open the door.

“Hey, bitch,” the woman rasped at her, lifting her phone to snap a picture of Siree. “I won’t forget you.” She looked down at the photo. “You won’t look so pretty with acid thrown in your face.”

Siree went out the door like a shot and didn’t feel safe until she could lean into Jake where he stood by the cashier.

He looked down at her in surprise, but wrapped his arm around her, his eyes warming.

She didn’t care what kind of mixed messages she gave him at the moment. She needed his strength to sooth her nerves.

“How about letting Thomas follow us in your car, so I get to drive you home?” He suggested.

“Yes.” She nodded. He tried to step back and let her precede him out the door, but she had a death grip on his jacket and refused to let go.

“Hey, you okay?” He put a finger under her chin and raised it so he could see into her face. “What’s the matter? Did something frighten you?”

She pushed herself further under his arm. “Just a woman on drugs in the washroom. She gave me the jitters.”

Jake paused in the process of opening the door of the SUV his bodyguard had brought to the door. “I’ll speak with the manager. You wait with Thomas.”

“No, Jake, please, will you just take me home?” She dug into her shoulder bag and pulled out her car keys. “Here are my keys.”

“The navy Prius in the front row at the Toe Hold. We’ll wait till you pull onto the street, so you can follow us.”

Siree let Jake help her into the SUV. He leaned in to fasten her seat belt, his cool hair brushing her cheek. She took a trembling breath, following his progress around the front to the driver’s door. She didn’t feel safe until he sat beside her.

The car moved forward. Her jitters receded as the distance between the doped up woman and her grew. Like filings to a magnet, her thoughts returned to the man beside her. She knew his security staff could follow him from the GPS implant in his arm, and would already know the make and model of her car. While his efforts to lend a normalcy to the evening made him even more desirable, she couldn’t forget the reality of his life. People with cameras followed him everywhere, wanting to make their livelihood off his every action. The hairs on her neck stiffened in alarm. Was the woman in the washroom a professional?
You’re blowing this all out of proportion. She was doped to the back teeth, lashing out at life, probably didn’t even know me. Forget it. You’re becoming paranoid.

Jake settled behind the wheel. She focused on the scent of clean skin and spring air he brought with him. His vitality flooded the small space, tempting her to reach out to him, to feed off his beautiful mouth and saturate herself in the energy of his strong body. But things weren’t normal between them, wouldn’t ever be the normal she wanted. Her heart tearing up at the coming loss, she sat back and let Jake take her home.

****

Jake had another full morning ahead of him. Gribbs always got first dibs on his time, setting out security for the day. His lawyers came next. They’d flown in from Toronto to take the depositions from their internal thief and the second thief at IYM. Both had been arrested in their homes, their PCs and smart phones seized as evidence. The Vancouver legal team had to prove the stolen money belonged to JDI and get it back in their coffers. The more people working on the problem, the bigger the potential for leaks and false rumor. Now with the third thief identified, he would lift the secrecy ban and let his people assess the fallout of full disclosure, transparency being part of JDI values. He met with the head of PR to formulate a press release, his legal department, and then his board of directors to bring them up to date and strategize how to keep their shares from falling when the news of the theft came out.

Finchley had a raft of paperwork for him to sign at lunchtime. Halfway into it, his head designer called up with a snag about their latest software system for an Australian cruise line, and Jake gave up his lunch hour to finding a solution. Returning from the lab, he fielded Finchley’s scowl and dove back into the paperwork. While his brain ran on overdrive, getting him through the routine of a typical workday, his subconscious worked on the problem of Siree. Midafternoon inspiration struck. He held up his hand. “Hold that thought, I have to make a quick call.” He walked out of the meeting room, where his legal team briefed him on their next action and strode down the corridor to his office. Punching Sharon Campbell’s number into his phone, he circled his desk, circled it again, counting the ring tones.

“Sharon, Jake Ingles here. I wonder if you have some spare time later today to meet with me. I’d prefer to come when Siree isn’t there. Any chance she’ll be out then? Jogging with Ty. Excellent. At four. Thank you, Sharon. See you then.” He strolled back to his meeting, whistling under his breath. Nobody knew Siree like her mother, and Sharon Campbell, with her wisdom and mother’s love, would tell him straight up what to do about Siree. His pace slowed. He stood outside the meeting room, his thumb pressed into his bottom lip.
And let me have the strength to follow her advice if it isn’t what I want to hear.

The rest of the afternoon crept by at the speed of a caterpillar climbing a mountain. He made the decision to drive himself to the Campbell condo and whizzed out of the garage in his customized Thunderbird, one of Gribb’s men on his tail. Within two blocks he had a motorcycle and a Chev glued to his bumper. He said to hell with the harass-arrazi, who sucked on his life like leaches. If they even guessed he was meeting with Sharon, he’d distract them by making another contribution to one of her organizations and leaking it to the press.

He pulled up in front of the building and handed his keys to the parking valet. Security took his name and waved him through. The news hounds would be stuck staking out the front door.

Sharon answered the doorbell herself and ushered him down the hall to her office. She closed the door and settled onto a brocaded love seat. It faced two wingbacks in an informal sitting area. “I made coffee. Will you have a cup?”

He seated himself in one of the chairs opposite her. “Thank you, Sharon. It’s been one of those days when food and drink have been few and far between.”

“I anticipated you.” She set his coffee on the occasional table near him and uncovered a plate of sandwiches. She handed him a plate then offered him thick slices of beef and spicy mustard on multigrain bread. At his look of pleased surprise, she laughed. “Years of putting in those kind of days myself.”

She sat back and picked up her cup, describing the inroads they’d made in establishing the hospice for homeless teens. Jake ate several of the sandwiches, aware Sharon offered up the effortless monologue to give him time to do so. Tension leached from his system. He’d liked her from the moment he met her. With her intelligence and insight into the human psyche, he could see why she had gained the reputation of being a respected and influential ambassador.

She set down her cup, leaned to refill his, then sat back. “But you came here to talk about Siree, I believe.”

“True.” He gathered his thoughts. “Did Siree tell you that we met in Paris before Tyrus ever asked her to take the contract with JDI?”

“She told me about the accident in the café and how you climbed together. It must have been quite a surprise to have her show up in your office half a world away. Kismet?”

“Exactly. You learn a lot about a person on a climb, and what I learned about her made me want to know more. I thought about her so much after, that when she walked into my office, I felt like I’d called her to me. Kismet indeed. Fate giving me the chance to spend time with her, come to understand what she values, desires, dislikes.”

“And you found out what is a part of your life that will probably never go away is one of the things that she dislikes most: the publicity.”

“Exactly.” He leaned forward, forearms on his thighs. “My mother died when I was fourteen, my father left long before that, when she was first diagnosed with cancer. I grew up alone and driven to, I guess you could say, fill that void of loneliness with action. I’ve gotten everything I ever went after, everything I ever wanted. I don’t know any other way. And right now I want your daughter in my life, but I also want to protect her.”

“And you’re wondering if she needs protecting from you?”

“Half the time, yes. The other half I think I could help her come out of hiding. It seems to me she has never dealt with her father’s death. She uses her aversion to the press, her change of identity to hide from reality. She needs to blame them, so she doesn’t have to blame herself.”

Sharon met his gaze, her face grave. “You see more clearly than I’ve chosen to, Jake. I too hated the press en masse after Miles died. It took me a long time to acknowledge that only two journalists were involved and that Miles made a poor choice to outrun them. Over the years I’ve come to accept it was an accident. But Siree has never let go of her anger. I always thought it was because of how they hounded us at the funeral.”

“I think she believes if she hadn’t called her father to come get her it would never have happened, that she caused it by ending up in that hotel room. Maybe she associates the ugliness of those drunken boys with the ugliness of the vulturine press.”

“If that is the case, she has never brought it out and faced it. She refused counseling and though she’s listened to me talk about the accident, she’s never shared her feelings.” Sharon sighed, her expression pensive. “Between the weight of my duties and my own grieving, I didn’t give her what she needed after she lost her father.”

“Teenage girls and their mothers are never the best combination, I understand. I don’t imagine Siree, grieving, enraged, and full of self-hatred and guilt, would be easy to deal with.”

“I should have found a way, need to find a way to free her from those feelings now.”

“So my quandary has become yours. Sorry, that’s not why I came, to lay this on you. I don’t even know if I’m right about what she fears, or if I’m grabbing at psychobabble to justify pushing my way into her life.” He met her eyes. “I want your take on whether I’ll do more harm than good, if I keep pushing to see her. Could I help her understand and deal with her conflict? Or am I just going after what I want without taking her wishes into account?”

“I think the fact that you’re here, trying to get an answer to that question speaks for itself. You wouldn’t be conflicted if you were ruthlessly bent on getting your way. You obviously care for her.” Sharon’s focus turned inward.

He held his breath, waiting for her verdict, wondering if he’d already had his last moments with Siree. He’d walked away from her before, let her haunt him for eight long months. He didn’t think he’d have the strength to do it again.

Sharon straightened, her blue eyes searching his. “I have to ask what your intentions are, if you persuade Siree to continue to see you. You haven’t mentioned anything long term. Are you thinking of marriage?”

Jake struggled for air and answers. He owed Sharon the truth. He’d asked her for it.

“I’m not thinking marriage at this stage. I guess like most men in their mid-thirties, I’ve explored the idea of marriage for the sake of children, but haven’t yet convinced myself it would be worth it. Abandonment and death aren’t the best role models for it.” He knew his answer sucked. It would be the last thing Sharon wanted to hear. He owed her more.

“We all carry wounds.” Sharon’s voice held compassion. “Maybe Siree can help you heal yours while you help her to close up her own.”

“I just want to be with her, discover why together we seem to make up more than two parts of a whole. I feel fully alive around her and want to be the best person I can be for her. And I want to be the guy who brings out those feelings in her, too.” He felt like he’d stripped himself naked in front of the woman. He hadn’t realized, until he’d voiced the words aloud, that his subconscious had an agenda of its own. Siree had the power to destroy everything he wanted to be with her. No wonder he’d settled for transient relationships with women who couldn’t hurt him.