Sparks Fly (12 page)

The sound of high heels clicking on the wood floor was as painful as someone playing the drums right next to his head. He looked up bleary eyed. His ex-wife was standing with her hands on her hips, looking down at him.

“What happened to you?” she said in a strangely un-perky voice.

“Not so loud. You’re killing me with that racket.”

“How about this?” she said, as she picked up a large hardcover book from the coffee table and threw it down onto the floor.

Will covered his ears with his hands a millisecond too late. “This is what death must feel like,”

he groaned, squeezing his eyes tightly shut, hoping that when he opened them his nightmare would have ended.

“Not even close,” his ex wife said smoothly, as she neatly slid onto the couch and crossed her legs.

“Why are you here?”

“I have spent the past twenty-four hours fielding angry phone calls from the wives of your board members who are worried that they aren’t going to be able to make the payments on their vacation homes anymore.”

“Oh,” Will said, his voice flat.

“Do you mind telling me why you walked out of the most important meeting of your career? I swear,” she said, throwing her hands up in the air. “I had no idea what to tell these women. You’ve always been so incredibly
responsible.”

Will was trying to figure out what the hell he should say, when she spotted the engagement ring lying on the carpet next to the fireplace.

Susan picked up the ring and examined it with a knowledgeable eye. “Wow. What an incredible ring.”

Will stared blankly at it.

Susan plopped herself in an uncharacteristically sloppy heap next to him on the carpet. “You bought this for Angelina, didn’t you?”

Will snapped out of his drunken stupor in an instant. “How could you possibly have guessed that?”

“I would have had to be completely blind, deaf,
and
dumb to have missed the sparks flying between you and Angelina that night at the restaurant. You probably realized pretty quickly that I sent her to work with you because I wanted to try and get back together. But once I saw the kind of chemistry the two of you had, I knew I needed to give you up for good. You never once looked at me the way you were devouring her.”

“Susan, I need to apologize to you for being such a jerk for so long,” he began awkwardly. “I can’t believe I never took the time to find out who you really are on the inside. I was so selfish, from the start.”

Susan’s eyes glistened slightly. “We tried our best to make things work, but we were never right for each other, were we?”

Seeming to catch herself before she got all mushy on him, she cleared her throat and held up the ring. “So, now that we’ve got all of that cleared up, why don’t you tell me why this ring was lying within chucking distance?” When he didn’t answer right away, she added, “I know I wasn’t much of a wife, but I hope I can be your friend.”

Will felt tears well up in his eyes, but he couldn’t chalk it up to being drunk. For all he'd drunk the night before, he was now stone cold sober. He reached out for Susan’s hand and gave it a quick squeeze. “Thanks, Suze.”

His ex gave him a small smile and waited patiently for him to talk.

“Angelina doesn’t love me,” he said, feeling like a pathetic, wet, shivering dog. “I thought she did, but she doesn’t.”

“What could she have done to make you believe that?”

“I left those stupid negotiations to go and propose to her, and when I got to her house it was empty. She left me.”

He had opened himself up to Angelina, and she had left with his heart and given no forwarding address.

“Like your father?” Susan asked softly.

His head whipped up. “Excuse me?”

“Will,” Susan began, “you’ve been living your whole life with a wall around your heart because of what your father did to you when he left. You’ve been carrying around this misguided sense of responsibility for so long that you haven’t even noticed how it’s wrecked your life.”

Before Will could say one single thing in his defense, Susan hammered him with, “Has it even occurred to you for one single second that there may be another reason why Angelina left that has nothing to do with her not loving you?”

When he didn’t say anything, she said sternly, “Maybe you should stop wallowing in your own self-pity long enough to give it some thought.”

“Don’t bother mincing words. It’s just my entire life we’re talking about here.”

“I know that. And that’s why I’m trying to help you get things straight.” She stood up and brushed the wrinkles out of her linen slacks. “You know what you need to do now, don’t you?”

“Find Angelina.”

“And?” Susan prompted.

“And love her forever.”

His ex-wife leaned over and gave him a gentle kiss on the cheek. “Although I’d suggest you take a quick shower first. You wouldn’t want her to run away screaming when she smells you from across the room.”

“What took you so long?” Krista said when Will barged into her Banks & Bidley law office in downtown Palo Alto.

“I take it you’re not surprised to see me?”

“I take it you had a really important business meeting you couldn’t get out of?”

It would have been impossible for Will to miss the sarcasm lacing her every word.

“I was an idiot. But I'm here now.”

His admission seemed to make Krista happy. “She’s in New York.”

“New York? Why?”

Krista shook her head. “You’re going to have to figure that one out for yourself,” she said, but she wrote
Wishing Lake
on a piece of paper and held it out to him.

“You’re going to look great as the maid-of-honor,” he said as he leaned across the table to give her a quick hug, then high-tailed it out the door.

Krista swiveled in her chair to watch Will run out to his car and speed off. She sighed and thought about Derek, who she hadn’t been able to get out of her mind for the past few weeks. Even though he was a total nerd.

“Why can’t I find my own CEO?” she muttered as she turned back to her latest case. “Heck, I’ll even take a VP at this point.”

She smiled as she thought about her best friend and the man who obviously couldn’t live without her. “He’s right about one thing, at least. I’m gonna look
damn
good at their wedding.”

* * *

The five hour flight to New York gave Will plenty of time to think about his life. Way too much time, in fact, considering he was still trying to stay clear of anything too deep or painful. Hoping to keep himself occupied with some light reading during the flight, he reached for the stack of newspapers next to his seat.

Will soon comprehended his tactical error. His picture was on the front page of the
Wall Street
Journal
, the
New York Times
, and the
Financial Post
.

Playboy CEO walks out on takeover negotiations. Shareholders are outraged as PTI stock
takes its biggest dip ever.

Tech Tycoon leaves company in jeopardy.

CFO alleges illegal activity at PTI. Will Scott, CEO, implicated in dirty dealings.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

Will was hardly able to believe the newsprint spread across the table before him. He waited for his brain to start working on the best game plan for getting his company back on track.

“Come on,” he urged himself when no inspiration was forthcoming. “There’s got to be a good idea in here somewhere.”

He paced the small confines of his private plane, figuring that some movement was all he needed to get the blood going to his brain again. The only reason he had walked out on the negotiations in his boardroom was so that he could see Angelina. After that was taken care of, he was going to head right back into his office and throw himself wholeheartedly into running PTI again.

Will heard the little voice in his head taunting him.
Hey buddy, you know you don’t ever want
to go back into that place. So why are you fighting it? You’re too much of a sissy to be a painter,
aren’t you? You always loved the excuse that you couldn’t be a painter because you needed the money.

But now that you’ve got money, you’re petrified to start painting.

Will wondered if he was going crazy from lack of sleep.

You go back into that office and keep playing CEO and you know what’s going to happen to
you, don’t you?

He was responsible to his shareholders and...

You’d get that damn word ‘responsible’ gilded in gold if you could, that way you could run from
ever having to feel anything again. You could just say, ‘Oh, look at me. I’m so important and
responsible for everyone.’

No. He didn't do that. Did he?

Why do you think your wife left you? Now you’ve got another chance at being happy, but you’re
gonna blow it, aren’t you?

No. He was going to ask Angelina to marry him.

Now isn’t that sweet,
the voice mocked him.
Won't she be ever so happy playing the cute little
wife to the big, fancy, lady-killer CEO?

Will finally saw the truth: She was going to hate it.

That’s right, Einstein. So why don’t you admit that you hate it too?

But he didn't hate it. Not everything about it, in any case.

Fine. Let me just ask you this: Would you rather be standing behind a canvas right now
painting, or back in the board room locked in for forty-eight hours?

Will punched the backrest of the seat beside him.

“Sir?” The pilot opened the cockpit door and leaned out, looking at him with concern. “Are you all right back there?”

Will quickly composed himself and nodded. “Everything’s fine, Charlie. Thanks for the smooth flight.” The pilot gave him a thumbs up and closed the door again, leaving Will alone with his thoughts.

He poured himself a glass of straight whiskey from the bar. It was time to stop focusing on doing the “right” thing all the time. Maybe all these years of being responsible simply for the sake of responsibility had been a fool’s game.

Will reached for the air-phone and called Jerry, his head legal aid, the only man he could trust to carry out his extraordinary decision in a fair, objective fashion.

It took nearly thirty minutes to outline his plan for stepping down as CEO of PTI and disburse the bulk of his owner’s shares equitably among the co-workers who had stuck with him through good times and bad.

He was about to hang up when Jerry said, “I’m proud of you kid. It’s about time you learned that there’s more to life than running this company. I had to almost lose my family, about ten years back, to figure it out myself. Mind if I ask you what you’re going to do now that you’re free?”

Will cleared his throat. “I’m going to get back the woman I love and convince her to marry me, even though I’m an idiot and don’t deserve her.”

“Ah,” Jerry said, his voice full of memories. “Sounds like true love to me. Beg if you have to, you hear?”

“I’ll try and remember that.”

“And one more thing,” Jerry said.

“What’s that?” Will asked, looking forward to any additional advice the wise older man had to give him.

“I’ve been thinking about those drawings you were doing. Boy did they make me laugh. You should let more people see your talent.”

* * *

Angelina dropped her bags onto the knotty pine floor of her new home. She breathed a sigh of relief that this lakefront cottage had a clear sense of comfort and well-being. Just being inside the house, she felt a small bit of contentment seep into her system.

In fact, as she walked around admiring the furniture and the artwork, she was reminded, to a great degree, of being in Will’s mother’s house. Needing to make the cottage seem like hers, even before the truck came with all of her belongings the next day, she wheeled her suitcase into the master bedroom to unpack a few pictures of her family and friends.

As she walked through the doorway into the large suite, she was stunned by the phenomenal view of the water before her. Still, she saw Will was everywhere she looked.

“Give it some time, Ang,” she told herself, as she bent down to unzip her bag. “One day you’ll be able to make it a whole five minutes without thinking about him.”

She finished unpacking and decided to go for a walk along the lake. Maybe she’d even get up the nerve to go and see Joyce, she told herself, still unsure how she was going to explain her sudden move.

“Oh well,” she said as she laced up her tennis shoes. “I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.”

Before she left the house, however, she did the one thing she should have done so many months ago: She went to the Love & Marriage corner of her new rental home and placed a small porcelain statue of a man and woman, entwined in their love for each other.

Feeling much more centered with just that small Feng Shui touch, she headed off the porch onto the white sandy beach that stretched all around the fresh-water lake. She wasn’t too surprised when her feet took her to the left, away from Joyce’s cottage.

“It seems that my feet are cowards too,” she said, making fun of herself.

She didn’t know how long she had walked before she was standing in front of the Ferris wheel.

Several kids were outside enjoying the rides. Angelina sat down on the bench she had shared with Will to watch them play.

She held her hand over her still flat stomach and whispered, “One day, you’re going to be riding that roller coaster and coming home with pink hands,” to the life growing inside of her.

* * *

Upon landing at the small air-strip by Wishing Lake, Will headed straight to his mother’s house.

He strolled in the front door, which he knew would be unlocked, without knocking.

“Guess who?” he said, hoping to surprise his mother with his presence.

“So you’re finally here for her, huh?” Joyce replied, unceremoniously, not even bothering to stop the brushstrokes she was adding onto her canvas.

The whole thing was so damn preposterous, he felt like he was on the roller coaster at the carnival. “I stepped down as CEO this morning. It’ll hit the news by tonight.”