Corporate Affair (9 page)

“Sorry.”

Jordan’s smile deepened. “That’s okay. Oh, and I remember John showed up.”

“Who?”

“John Giamo, our police chief.”

“Yes. He was there. He’ll tell you they got a call about a young woman driving drunk.”

Jordan put her hands up to her face. “I can’t believe this!”

“Believe it,” muttered Aiden. “Can I turn on a stronger light?”

Jordan nodded. Aiden switched on the bedside lamp, and Jordan glanced at the red numbers on the digital clock. It was two a.m.

“I’ve got to get home,” she said.

“I’ll drive you,” said Aiden. “It still wouldn’t be safe for you to drive.”

“You’re right.” She sighed as she bent down to pick up her shoes from the floor. “I don’t even think I can walk in these heels right now. I’m still dizzy.”

“Oh, so you want me to carry you down, too?”

She looked at him, noticing a playful smile on his lips. “Did you carry me up here?”

“I did,” he said. “I wanted you to be safe.”

She was silent for a moment and then she said, “Well, thank you, Aiden. Thank you for that.”

Aiden coughed in embarrassment. “It’s okay,” he said softly. “Any time.”

Jordan stood up shakily. “I better go home. They’ll be wondering where the hell I am.”

Aiden stuck his neck out with his next question. “They?”

Jordan fumbled with her hair, trying to wind it back into a bun. “I live with my parents,” she said simply.

“Is Grace your mother?”

Jordan looked up sharply. “Why do you ask?”

“You mumbled something about Grace while you were sleeping.”

“Oh. Oh, well, yes. Grace is my mother. Look, I have to try to put myself back together. Excuse me.” She went into the bathroom and closed the narrow door behind her.

“Crap!” she said with a groan. “I look a fright!”

“You don’t,” came reassurance from the other side of the door. “You look fine.”

“Thanks for lying to me,” she said as she opened the bathroom door. She was barefoot, and her hair was pulled back from her face except for a few tendrils that curved over her forehead. She was suddenly aware that Aiden was watching her with something in his eyes that made her pulse quicken.

“Let’s go.” Her tone was urgent. “I don’t want anybody to see me here like this with you. Rumors spread like wildfire in a town like this.”

Aiden led the way down the creaky old stairway. They crossed the lobby silently, and when they got outside, Jordan stopped for a moment. “Would you lend me your arm, please? I want to put my shoes on now.”

Aiden offered his arm without hesitation as she lifted her legs up, one by one, and slipped her shoes on. Her dress hiked nearly to her hip, and she hurriedly yanked it down as she caught a glance out of the corner of her eye. “There,” she said. “I’m ready. Where’s your car?”

Aiden led the way to his BMW. He followed her directions and headed out of town on a side street. She had the strange feeling she was in high school again, sneaking home in the wee hours of the morning. It was good to drive over the back roads with a cute guy next to her. Aiden reached down to shift gears in the sports car as she gave directions, and his hand grazed the exposed skin of her thigh. He didn’t seem to notice, but Jordan’s heart leaped. Suddenly, it wasn’t business anymore. It was personal.

“Here. Right here. Turn right,” Jordan spoke up and pointed. A colonial style lamppost lighted the end of the driveway. Aiden turned in and pulled up to the garage door. The ride was over way too soon. Reality came crashing down.

“Thank you so much, really,” Jordan said hurriedly as she opened the door, but as she turned her body to get out, Aiden laid his hand on her arm. She paused and looked back at him.

“Will we still be having a meeting tomorrow?” he asked.

“Of course,” she answered stiffly. She paused, then continued, “Look, I really appreciate what you did for me—”

“You said that. You’re welcome.”

“What I mean is, you have to tell me what you think happened with Fenton.”

“I told you what I
know
happened.”

“I want to hear it again, in detail. This has changed everything. This is criminal. Can you meet me at nine in my office?”

“You won’t get much sleep.”

“I never get much sleep. I run a business, and I—” She paused and pushed the car door open.

“You what?”

Jordan gave a little laugh. “I get tired,” she replied. “Good night, Aiden, and thank you again. We’ll talk tomorrow. Or, rather, later this morning.” She got out of the car.

“Good night.”

It seemed he might have wanted to say more, but she needed to leave, to go inside and get the rest her body needed. Jordan closed the car door and walked away without looking back. From the front window of her parents’ house, she peered out discretely, noticing that Aiden had waited until she’d gone inside before turning the car around and heading back down the road.

She tipped toed across the kitchen floor, trying to get to her bedroom without waking anyone, but it was too late. Her mother stood in the hallway in her nightgown and bathrobe.

“Jordan!” she admonished in a stage whisper. “Why are you so late? I was getting worried.”

“Oh, Mom, I’m sorry. I—I had to go back to the office after the dinner and do some changes on the proposal. Did I wake Grace?”

Her mother shook her head. “She fell asleep between Dad and me. I just moved her into her crib a few minutes ago. You look a wreck. Are you all right?”

Jordan brushed at her hair with her hand. “Oh, I fell asleep in my chair while I was working.”

“Well, get into bed as quickly as you can. You can still get a couple hours of good sleep.”

“Thank you, Mom,” Jordan said, and she bent forward and kissed her mother on the cheek.

“I’ll just be happy when you get this behind you and you can work regular hours again and have more time with Grace.”

“Me, too,” agreed Jordan. She walked quietly down the hall and into Grace’s room, closing the door softly behind her.

Grace lay asleep in her crib. Jordan gazed at her baby as the nightlight illuminated the innocent, rosy-cheeked face. She drew the blanket up tenderly over the baby’s shoulders and watched her for a few more minutes. Nothing had ever been so perfect. Soft as a butterfly kiss, she touched Grace’s cheek. Then she crossed the hall to her own room where she undressed and pulled on her old, comfortable pajamas. Exhaustion was setting in for real as she walked into her own small bathroom which her father had made for her out of part of her closet. She managed to wash her face and brush her teeth, but she crawled into bed without even trying to put a brush through her tangled hair.

The cloying, sick feeling was beginning to fade now. Jordan closed her eyes and willed herself to relax so that sleep might come, but her thoughts were slow to stop swirling. She was horrified by the events of the evening. Now all her plans for the business were in a tailspin. She couldn’t even think about what to do until morning. She squeezed her eyes in an effort to banish the worry. As she drifted toward rest, she found herself thinking about Aiden. How did he happen to materialize just when she needed help? And why was he so maddeningly attractive? Jordan’s thoughts stopped as she recalled her feelings at the accidental brush of his hand against her naked thigh when he’d shifted gears in the car.

That touch had made her stomach leap and her heart pound. She’d pretended she hadn’t noticed, but the spot where his hand had touched her felt enflamed and hot. That heat had spread through her entire body, awakening feelings she had not felt since before Grace was born. Feelings she thought were gone for her forever.

Tears of exhaustion, confusion, and self-pity welled up in Jordan’s eyes, but she blinked them back and buried her head deeper into her pillow. There was no room in her life for outbursts of feelings, emotional or physical. There was certainly no room for self-pity. The only thing that mattered now was that little person with the riotous red curls who lay sleeping in the room across from hers. She focused on thoughts of her baby and finally drifted into a fitful sleep.

Chapter Six

E
VEN
T
HOUGH
A
IDEN’S
H
EAD
didn’t touch the pillow until three thirty in the morning, he was wide awake three hours later. He stretched and yawned, only to discover his mouth felt like the inside of a Dumpster. A shower was the first priority. He got out of bed, went into the bathroom, and cranked the faucet firmly toward “Hot.” The little room filled with steam, occluding his reflection in the mirror as he brushed his teeth.
Just as well,
he thought.
I don’t look so great this morning
. He pulled back the curtain and stepped under the cascading water.

Twenty minutes later, showered and shaved and dressed in jeans, a blue striped shirt, and a leather jacket, Aiden went downstairs to the breakfast buffet. Despite the weird drama of the night before, he was hungry. He took a plate, helped himself to blueberry pancakes and coffee, and revisited his little table from the night before, now empty and made up fresh for the morning with a spotless white tablecloth and a bud vase with a daisy in it. Flatware and a snowy napkin were already laid on the table. Aiden sat down to eat and ruminate on the events of the previous night.

His meeting with Jordan was at nine, and he wondered how she would act. He wondered whether it was prudent to bring up what had happened last night. Personally, he thought she should report the whole incident to the police and take Fenton to the mat. The man was ruthless to a dangerous degree—to the degree that he would actually play with peoples’ physical well-being to get what he wanted.

His cell phone vibrated in his pocket. Aiden pulled it out and saw his father’s number. He stared at the screen for a few seconds and then made a command decision, touching “Ignore.” Aiden had not spoken to his father since the previous afternoon, before these unbelievable incidents had taken place. Now, until he managed to unravel this mess, he decided not to. There would be plenty of time to hash it out with the old Yankee. Whether he closed the deal or failed didn’t seem so important to Aiden anymore. It was suddenly perfectly clear: what was important was Jordan Fitzgerald. From the start, she had affected him in a way he’d not been prepared for. He found himself thinking about her constantly—and not in a business sense. Now, Aiden wanted to know what this enigmatic young woman thought about him, if she thought about him at all. There was only one way to find out and that was to ask her. He gulped down the last of his coffee, pulled on his jacket, and walked outside.

The morning was cool and bright. Birds were twittering, and again there was an underlying scent of lilacs in the air. Aiden stood on the porch and breathed in the fresh air. The world of Clark’s Corner was just beginning to wake. An empty school bus drove by, followed by a couple of pickup trucks. Otherwise, everything was quiet. The offices of ChatDotCom were only about three miles away. Aiden glanced at his watch; he had plenty of time and decided to walk there. As he walked, he looked around.

Clark’s Corner was centered around the pretty little green, bordered on one side by the Inn and other side by the main route that ran through town. A quaint gazebo, reminiscent of the turn of the century, adorned the green at one end, its six-sided railing decorated with green planter boxes full of pansies. On the other side of the main street was a brick-walled cemetery. Aiden could see the old crypt, built into a rise in the ground and covered over with grass, as though it was part of the natural turf. He read the date, 1726, above the bolted steel door. In those days, when the ground was too frozen to dig a proper grave during the winter months, people were laid to rest in the crypt until warm weather in the spring allowed for burial. It was a peaceful, cozy cemetery with lilacs, old hydrangeas, and huge maples growing in between the old slate stones and the newer granite ones.

Most of the houses along the main street were the old Victorian style with their pretty gingerbread trim and their turret rooms. Many of these had been turned into businesses. There was a dress shop and a dentist’s office in one, a real estate office in another, and then there was the one that housed MacTavish’s Pub. As Aiden reached the end of the main street, the houses changed, reflecting the older Federal and Georgian designs. These had undoubtedly been built by the first wealthy farmers and merchants in the area. The Victorians would have followed later, when the factories were built along the river, on the other side of the railroad tracks.

Aiden walked along until the sidewalk ended. Then he crossed the main street and proceeded east toward the railroad tracks. The houses here were smaller, more tightly packed. They had been built by the first laborers who had saved enough money to build their own homes. In amongst these houses were nestled Rick’s Garage, a plumbing and heating business, and a hardware store. The farther he walked, the more Aiden saw of the town’s history, laid out before him like an open book. How many generations had struggled here in this sleepy place, building homes, businesses, building lives? How many people had been born here, labored here, and finally rested in the walled cemetery?