What's Left of Her (10 page)

“Maple. And it wouldn’t be the same.”

“Says who? We’ll get the same size, plant it in the same spot, who would be the wiser?”

She stared at him. “Well, we would for one.”

“It’s a damn tree. Next, people will be asking us to leave their flower patches or mark off the spot where they buried Fido.” He reached out, touched her hand. “This is business. We make deals, both sides get what they want, but neither side gets everything. That’s what makes a good deal. Compromise, so nobody feels like they’re getting screwed.”

Alex sighed. “I know. It’s just the look on his face… it was so sad.”

“I’d like to see how sad he is when he takes that check to the bank.”

She sat there, watching his fingers lightly stroke the back of her hand and felt nothing. It had been a long time, sixteen months to be exact, since she’d had any emotions where Eric Haines was concerned. She pulled her hand away, slid it into her lap.

He pretended not to notice. “Just wait until Walter hears the deal is final. Then I’ll have to listen to how his niece once again exercised brilliance and strategy in the selection of a WEC resort.”

Uncle Walter would be proud, though he’d never come right out and say it. She could expect a hefty bonus and a handful of prospectus regarding mutual funds, as well as annual reports on his latest stock picks. He spread charts and other investment data in front of her like a grandfather showing off pictures of his grandchildren, with a warm gentleness and overriding concern. She would never dream of telling him that at thirty-four, with an MBA from Wharton, she didn’t need his recommendations.

“So let’s go find Walter and tell him the news,” Eric said.

“Sure.” No sense mentioning Mr. Oshanski’s tree. She already knew what her uncle would say.
There’s no room in business for sentiment, Alex. Once you start letting your heart rule your decisions instead of your head, you might as well close up shop, because you’re as good as done. Bankruptcy court will be waiting with your name on the docket.

“Then maybe you and I can go celebrate,” Eric said, his voice dipping. “Pop open a bottle of champagne, go to Emilio’s for fettuccine primavera.”

“Eric.”

“Come on, Alex”—the softness was gone—“how long are you going to punish me for one stupid mistake?”

She met his blue gaze. “I’m not punishing you, Eric. I’m just not interested.” And it was true; finally, after all of these months it had become more than just a handful of rote sentences. It had become the truth.

“Christ, Alex, I made a mistake.” He leaned forward, splayed his tanned fingers across her desk. “I want to be with you… I love you.”

Love? What did he know about love? For that matter, what did she know about it? Alex shook her head, priding herself on how well she maintained control, how she had come to terms with the whole situation without the aid of anyone—therapist, family, friend. “I’m sorry.”

“She didn’t mean anything, I told you that.” Frustration crept into his voice. “Why won’t you believe me?”

“I do believe you, but it doesn’t matter now. It only mattered before, before you hopped into bed with Miss September.”

“Christ.”

“Why can’t we just let the past go, all of it? I respect you as a lawyer, and you’re a valuable asset to the company, but you’re no longer a part of my personal life.”

“But I could be if you’d only let me.” He turned his hands over, palm side facing up. “We could take it slow. I wouldn’t even press you to get married again, not right away.”

“I don’t love you anymore, Eric.” Why couldn’t he just let it go?

“That could come back given time.” His voice turned persuasive. “Even Walter thinks so.”

Alex clenched her hands in her lap, sucked in a deep breath. “Don’t you dare get him started again.”

He threw her an innocent look. “Take it easy, okay? I didn’t say anything.” He shrugged. “Can I help it if he thinks you made a huge mistake when you divorced me?”

“He wouldn’t think so if he knew the truth.” If Uncle Walter knew about Eric and his playboy bunny, he’d fire him, no questions asked. He would, wouldn’t he? No matter how important Eric was to WEC Management, family still came first. Didn’t it?
Well, didn’t it?

“Then I guess I’ll count myself lucky that your loyalty to the company overrides your personal feelings.”

“Uncle Walter depends on you. Why disrupt the infrastructure of the company because of our…”—she searched for the right words—“personal differences?” Besides, just the thought of confiding the truth to her uncle turned her stomach.
Eric chose a silicone-enhanced woman with collagen-injected lips and a 1.8 GPA over me, Uncle Walter, over me!
It was too humiliating, too degrading to even consider. Alex knew all about Miss September, Tanya Wells, had studied her as though she were preparing to present her Master’s thesis; born Tanya Lynnette Welleshanko in Tulsa, Oklahoma, age, 23, height, 5’ 9”, weight, 108 lbs., college, attended OSU three years, majoring in Communications. Currently employed as a hostess at Outback Steakhouse in Tulsa. Participated in Playboy’s College Search during her sophomore year, selected for September issue. Favorite color, pale pink. Favorite food, McDonald’s French fries dipped in a chocolate milkshake.
Gag!

And then there was the other reason, the one even she didn’t like to think about. What if she told Uncle Walter the truth and he
didn’t
fire Eric? What if he decided Eric’s little indiscretion shouldn’t interfere with the company, and continued on as though nothing had happened? Uncle Walter loved her even though he never said it.
But the company was his whole life
and she did not want to be pitted against it for his allegiance, mostly because deep down, she feared she might lose.

So she pretended her divorce fell under the blanket of ‘irreconcilable differences’ ranging from
I didn’t like the way he squeezed the toothpaste to marriage was too intimate a relationship for me.

“Alex?”

“What?” She looked up, pushed the past away. “What?”

He was studying her, his blue eyes intent behind his glasses. “I know I screwed up, but I’m not giving up on us. I won’t quit until I have you back.”

“Eric—”

A knock on the door cut her off. Walter Eugene Chamberlain, CEO of WEC Management, poked his head in and said, “Well, should I call Armand and tell him to chill the champagne?”

“Tell him two bottles,” Eric said, grinning.

“He agreed to everything?”

“Yes,” Alex said, avoiding Eric’s gaze. Her uncle wasn’t interested in anything as inconsequential as an old man’s sentimental fondness for a tree.

“Good. Very good.” He smiled, a sliver of upturned lips, and settled himself in the chair next to Eric. “This is going to be a phenomenal addition to Krystal Springs.”

“Preliminary projections indicate revenue will almost double once the ski lodge is in place,” Alex said. “Krystal Springs could be our most profitable venture yet.”

Her uncle’s smile spread, bit by bit. Talk about development and rate of return could do that to him. When he smiled, which wasn’t often, his thin lips pulled across his face in a slow, calculated manner, as though at sixty-four years of age, he still wasn’t comfortable with the exercise. He was a handsome man, his skin golden from hours spent on the green, his pale blue eyes sharp, his silver hair neat and tapered from weekly trims, his nose long and straight, his body, tall and erect. Walter Chamberlain was like a father to Alex, fitting the role with more ease and right than her real father, who, with each passing year became less reality and more of a scattered memory, torn with gaping holes. She had nothing, not even a picture to remember him or her mother by. Only memories that faded and an old chipped mirror they’d given her when she was eight, a few days before they died.

“I want you to run the numbers again, use an eight percent rate of return, see what that does,” he said.

Alex jotted a note on her legal pad. “I’ll get it to you this afternoon.”

“And I’ll have Sylvia make lunch reservations at Emilio’s,” Eric said, standing. “With two bottles of Dom Perignon.”

When he left, Uncle Walter stretched out his legs and sighed. “Ah, Alex, there’s nothing like the thrill of a good deal pulsing through your veins to keep you going.”

She smiled. “I think
any
deal, good or bad, would keep you going, Uncle Walter.”

His mouth twitched. “True, but you aren’t much different than me, young lady. You love the chase as much as I do.”

He was right, of course. She did enjoy the challenge of finding locations for WEC resorts. It was like putting together a thousand-piece puzzle of an ocean where three quarters of the pieces were blue, a slightly different shade perhaps, but still blue. Selecting the ideal site was a lot like that, at least initially. There was only one major criterion, the same one for every project—the location needed to be within a one-hour proximity to a metropolitan area. Once Alex established those boundaries, she gathered charts, maps, and graphs, studied water tables, terrain, and climates. Depending on the type of resort they were considering, summer, winter or a combination, she made her initial recommendations and then went to scout out the place.

That’s where it got interesting, living in the town for two or three months, finding out who was in charge, and it was never the mayor, who had an alliance or a relationship to whom, who could be persuaded, who needed money. These were things you couldn’t find out from studying a piece of paper, you had to get in the trenches, imbed yourself among them, kind of like a computer virus, absorbing information, collecting data without anyone’s knowledge but unlike the virus that corrupts and destroys, Alex thought of her methods as a way to help those who couldn’t or didn’t know how to help themselves. Consider the widowed part-time Super Duper cashier who’d never been farther than an hour from her home. Buying up her property enabled her to go on a cruise with her women friends and purchase a condo near her son in North Carolina. Or the fifty-year old man who’d been laboring in the same factory for thirty-two years. He sold his land, moved his family to a suburb outside of Jacksonville, Florida and opened up a pizza shop.

With research, care and timing, everybody got what they wanted. In the seven years she’d been involved with the property research division of WEC Management, there’d only been two times when an individual had refused to sell. The first happened years ago, when Alex had just taken over the division. There was a farmer in Roanoke, Virginia, Leon “Rusty” Dade, who owned fifty acres of land. He farmed some, rented out some, and kept the biggest section for his most prized possessions, his Black Angus. And no amount of cash incentives could persuade Rusty to sell. The land was his legacy, could be traced all the way back to his great-granddaddy’s granddaddy, and would be his five children’s legacy, too. The last Alex inquired, a year ago, Rusty was still farming and ranching and living out his legacy.

The only other time anyone had refused a WEC Management offer was two years ago when its chief competitor, Cora Ltd., slid in and bought up a track of land an hour from Portland, Oregon. Alex had been sure WEC would get the deal, had been shocked when they didn’t. Until she heard that the CEO’s son, Sam Cora, was keeping very close company with Lilly Arbogast, whose father, Jed, owned thirty-five of the fifty acres in question. And it didn’t surprise anyone, except maybe Lilly, that once the deal was done, so was Lilly.

“So do you want to tell me about the next venture?” Uncle Walter asked, straightening his gray silk tie.

This was when she felt the closest to her uncle, here, in this room, pouring over charts and graphs, watching his eyes spark with interest as she drew him into the planning stages of a certain piece of property, considering and discussing all of its possibilities. The usual stern expression on his face smoothed out, the brackets around his mouth faded, and he seemed almost… relaxed. If you could call a man who spent six and a half days at the office, had his hair trimmed every five days, and never went anywhere without at least a sport coat, relaxed. There was a oneness here, a unity, intangible yet real, that bound them to each other when they were planning a project. Alex felt it, he had to feel it too. So, maybe her uncle didn’t say the words, but she knew he cared. When he nodded his silver head in agreement, she felt like a child on a hot summer’s day, who’d just been given an ice cream cone. Delight. Pure delight.

“Alex? Plan on keeping it all to yourself?”

“No.” She laughed, ran a hand through her hair. “Actually, I think I may have found the ideal location for our next project.” She tried to control her excitement but it burst out, “A
year round
resort.”

“That’s quite a statement, young lady.”

“I know. But it looks perfect, at least the specs do. It’s an area in the northwestern section of Pennsylvania, about an hour from Pittsburgh. Lots of trees, birds, deer, a lake even… the whole nature bit.” She waved a hand in front of her. “The kind of landscape tourists love. And, get this”—she leaned forward, rested her elbows on the top of her cherry desk—“the first snowfall last year was October twenty-second.”

His pale blue eyes lit up. “Mix it with a little powder…”

“And by mid-November the slopes would be ideal.” She swiveled her chair around, pulled a large portfolio off the credenza and spread the contents on the desk. “Here, we’ve got a map of the area. There’s the Allegheny River, running west, which seems to be right in the town’s backyard.” She traced a thin blue line. “And over here”—she pointed to a small, blue shape—“is Sapphire Lake. The water alone is enough to get excited about, but they’ve got mountains, and steep hills, too. I can just picture them with lights and ski lifts.”

Her uncle picked up the map, studied it, rubbed his jaw. “I don’t want another piecemeal project, Alex. This time, I want the whole thing. One deal, period.”

“I agree.” She shifted in her chair. “I know you were disappointed Mr. Oshanski didn’t sell out sooner.” Her voice dipped. “He had a lot of issues to deal with…”