Do-Over (9 page)

A
T LUNCHTIME
, M
ARK
stood outside the door of Retreads, about to take a step into the great unknown. He’d never bought a woman a dress before, at least, not without her dragging him to some ritzy sales counter and wheedling, “Mark, honey?” which really meant “Mark’s money.”

On the other hand, he knew that Cara wouldn’t even ask him for parking meter change. He respected her independence, but still had managed to rationalize today’s purchase by deciding it was far more to his benefit than hers.

Mind made up, Mark pushed through the front door. Retreads held a few other customers, but not many. He took a quick look around, trying to take in
the mind-blowing array of clothing and just plain stuff.

“Hey, shark man,” Bri O’Brien said with such casual good humor it was almost as if she expected him.

“You can call me Mark.” If a friendly face didn’t, and soon, he was in peril of forgetting that he had a real first name.

“Okay, Mark. What can I do for you?”

“I walked by your shop a few weeks ago, and Cara was dancing about right here,” he said, with a glance at the now inactive disco ball above him. “She was wearing this black dress that, ah…” Maybe discussing the precise physical effect the dress had had on him wasn’t the best approach.

Gathering his thoughts, he glanced at the shop’s two other customers—a pair of incredibly tall women currently holding red lamé formal dresses up to each other and squealing. Wait, one of those women had a big-time case of five o’clock shadow….

“You were saying?” Bri prompted.

“The dress.” Mark tried to drag his mind away from the thoughts of how much plucking, shaving and tweezing guys with those particular preferences had to endure. Not to mention panty hose… “Yeah, the dress. I was wondering if you still have it?”

“It just so happens that I do. It’s too small for my queen-sized customers,” she said with a nod to the guys who had now moved on to silk robelike things.

“Good. I’d like to buy it.”

“Really? It won’t fit you, either,” she said in a deadpan voice.

He smiled. “But it will fit Cara.”

“True.” Cara’s friend walked to a rack and began to search through it. She was practically swallowed
whole by the array of sequins, prints and bold color. Finally, she emerged with the dress in question.

Yeah, this gift was definitely for him. Just looking at the black dress, he could feel himself rise to the memory.

He pulled out his wallet, but Bri said, “Not so fast.”

“What do you mean?”

“One of the perks of being my own boss is that I get to decide whether I want to make a sale. Usually, it’s a no-brainer. But this time, the dress is going to come with a few extra strings.”

“Such as?”

She looped the garment’s hanger over a vicious, medieval-looking pike that was sticking straight out of the wall behind her sales counter. “Along with paying me seventy-two dollars plus tax, you’re about to get the mess-with-my-friend-and-I-rip-your-privates-out-through-your-nose speech.”

Mark winced. “You know, for such a fluffy-looking girl, you’ve sure got guts.”

“Thanks,” she said, obviously cheered by the thought. “And you’re a pretty perceptive guy, which means you already know that as together as Cara appears, her heart is one big marshmallow. Here’s the deal, shark-man… If you’re chasing her just for kicks, stop now. It’s bad enough that her work life is shot to hell. Leave her something to hang on to.”

Was he chasing Cara for kicks?

It didn’t feel that way. In fact, it felt like some sort of weird compulsion. Almost as if someone “up there” was controlling him. And he was one happy fool, dancing to their tune.

“I never thought I’d be saying this, but I’m not that kind of guy. At least not anymore.”

She snorted as she wrote out a receipt for the dress.

“Really. When I came back to Detroit, women weren’t on the agenda. Cara’s changed that, and the exception is just for her, okay?”

She shoved the receipt across the counter to him. Mark counted out bills from his wallet. After she’d made change, Bri folded the dress and dropped it into a bag.

“I’ll buy that ‘agenda’ routine for now, shark-man, but I’m watching you. One wrong move and…” her eyes narrowed and the curve of her mouth grew bloodthirsty. “…you’ll be singing soprano.”

One of the queen-sized crew applauded. “You go, girlfriend,” he cried in a voice that fell octaves below Bri’s threatened soprano.

Mark took his volcano goddess’s dress and got the hell out. Manhattan clearly hadn’t cornered the market on nuts, and he wasn’t talking about the shopping queens.

C
ARA’S
F
RIDAY MORNING
had dawned much the same as the prior two days had: hazy with a ninety-percent chance of life-sucking overwork. She had stayed late every night to check in with the various out-of-state lawyers she’d retained. Then she’d read her way through the title work and land surveys for most of Newby’s malls. Merchant wasn’t messing around on this deal. They’d taken everything but the employees’ first-born children.

To deal with the flood of paper, Cara had even taken over the empty secretary’s cubicle outside her office, which might explain why the two proposed replacements for gone-and-nearly-forgotten Leigh had
taken one look at their future workplace and declined the offer.

The sole benefit of this trial-by-glut-of-paperwork was being in the office late at night with Morgan, when no one else was around. He was working a slow, subtle magic on her. Over the past few days, she had discovered that he could be witty, funny and subtly romantic. She suspected she was being wooed, and she loved it.

Morgan was a man of his word. He never crossed that line from flirtation to something hotter…something that might lead to sweaty moaning and shrieking on the conference room couch. Not that she’d shriek, of course. But if she could keep pulling off this subtle sex goddess vibe that had channeled itself into her from God knew where, if the opportunity arose,
he
just might.

But prior to ten in the morning wasn’t the time to be considering noisy sex. Cara headed to the office’s small kitchen area for another mug of coffee.

She had just resettled the pot when Annabeth joined her.

“Carpet glue,” the receptionist said.

Cara picked up her mug. “Come again?”

“Did you check out Stewart Harbedian this morning? He’s pierced his ear.”

Botox…pierced ear. Next came the tattoo, no doubt. “And this relates to carpet glue, how?”

Annabeth poured herself some coffee and then added nearly an equal amount of sugar. Cara’s mouth went gummy at the thought.

“I’ll admit the burial mound thing is unlikely,” the receptionist said. “But think about it…we move to a
brand-new building and everyone wigs. I say it’s fumes from the carpet.”

“So what’s your solution?”

Her smile was positively blissful. “Who needs one? Let’s just surf the high.” The phone next to the doorway rang. Annabeth picked it up and answered with her standard apathetic, “Yeah?”

Annabeth had an issue with whatever the speaker was saying. She made a pouty face that might have been marginally more appealing were she a toddler. After she hung up, she said, “There’s a delivery at the front desk, and they actually expect
me
to help sort it out. You’d think I was hired help or something.”

Cara refrained from pointing out the obvious, opting to escape before she was enlisted. As it turned out, she was snagged, anyway. Twenty minutes later, she was lamenting the smudges and grime on her pale ivory trousers, which had fallen victim to more shipping boxes than she’d ever seen before. Each of the boxes indicated that the sender was Newby Holdings.

“So much for the Digital Era,” Cara said to Annabeth, who looked damn pleased to have the mess relocated from the reception area to Cara’s office. “Hasn’t Newby ever heard of computers?”

Morgan edged in the doorway. “What do we have here? A rat maze?”

“They’re boxes,” Annabeth said.
You moron
was implicit in the curl of her lip.

Cara gave the receptionist a back off glare, then focused on Morgan.

“They’re the Newby mall leases and…” she looked around one more time “…a hell of a lot of other stuff. I have no idea what though.”

He pulled the packing tape from the top of the box closest to him. “Wow.”

“What?” Cara wove her way through the waist-high stacks of boxes and stood next to him.

“It’s definitely not what I expected to see,” he said.

Random documents had been thrown loosely into the box. She sifted through. Some were photocopies, some were originals, and most had the remnants of a great number of coffees and lunches staining them.

“Ugh.” Cara stepped back from the box. She hustled to her desk, and pulled the travel-sized bottle of hand sanitizer from her pencil drawer. “Does your client realize they’re about to fork over thirty-seven million dollars to a company that rubs their files with jelly doughnuts?”

Morgan laughed, but Cara really failed to see the humor. This was a huge amount of money, and the Newby people were obviously nuts.

Annabeth peeked into the box and her lip curled. “I’m getting out of here before I’m contaminated.”

Morgan worked his way around the rest of the maze, counting to himself as he went.

“Incredible,” he said in a voice that sounded a tad too cheery to Cara, given the situation. “This is like a huge jigsaw puzzle.”

“I hate puzzles,” Cara muttered.

“Yeah, but in this line of business, they pay.” He hesitated before saying, “I know she’s not your favorite person, but if this is too much for you to get through, let me see about getting Gail in here to help you.”

This little voice in the back of her head was screeching “Take the help!” but she didn’t dare. Not from Gail, who was out to knife her, or any other associate,
for that matter. Maybe it was time to learn to like puzzles, even thirty-seven-freakin’-million-dollar ones.

“No way. I want to put the files in order myself. I don’t know if Newby’s just the worst-run business in America, or if they’re intentionally hiding something. Either way, I’m not leaving it for Gail to make the call.”

“I appreciate the personal investment, but I think you’re taking on too much—”

“Let me be the judge of what I can do.” She was a grinder, Cara reminded herself—the very best of grinders. And she would do what grinders did: work until she dropped. So what if vultures were already circling over her life?

Morgan’s expression was dubious. “Cara…” He shook his head, then gave a disgusted sigh. “It’s not going to do me any good to argue with you, is it?”

“It’s partnership or die,” she replied, softening the words with what she hoped was a gutsy smile.

“Great…Cara Adams, the first legal lemming. I’m getting this stuff moved to the small conference room, where it looks like you’ll be living.”

He nudged the closest pile of boxes with his toe and laughed again. Did he have to be so damned happy?

“Awesome,” he said. “I’m going to call Nic and give her a heads-up.”

And by six o’clock Saturday morning, Cara was facedown on the conference room couch. Forget the luxury condo in downtown Royal Oak. Her new address was Legal Hell, Michigan.

Cara’s Rule for Success 9:

The harder you work, the more you get ahead…

but only if someone important notices,

so make a show of it.

M
ARK REFUSED TO FEEL
guilty because it was Sunday afternoon, he was on the golf course, and Cara was at S.U., training for the title of Most Bloodshot Eyes. Her choice. Her life.

Mark lined up his shot and swung. The ball immediately spun into the trees to the right of the fairway. God, sometimes he hated this game.

“That’s one nasty slice,” Stewart Harbedian commented, barely able to contain his glee.

“Thought you were a scratch golfer,” Howard Blenham added.

“We all have off days,” he said to the partners. For Mark, golf was a Zen experience. When all was right in his world, all was right in his game.

On this seventy-degree sunny Sunday, with the late-spring breeze eddying around him, all was wrong in Mark’s world. Though he refused to feel guilty about Cara’s obsessive work habits, he reserved the right to be good and pissed off.

He’d brought her dinner last night and the night before,
after she’d refused to be coaxed out of the building. And both nights he’d stayed until he was almost too tired to drive home. It seemed she thought they were in an endurance competition. She could forget that noise.

Today she could starve. She could read until her eyeballs rolled across that vile-looking blue conference room carpet. She could—

“Mark? You with us, pal?” Stewart gave him one of those paternalistic pats on the back that Mark detested.

He kept his expression as neutral as he could. “I’m still here. You were saying something?”

“We were just wondering how the Newby deal is progressing. Perfectly, we assume, since we haven’t heard otherwise. That Cara is a real trouper. Firms need workhorses like her.”

So much for neutrality. “She’s not an animal. She’s a woman. A brilliant and determined woman.”

Stewart held up his hands in mock surrender. “Hey, I meant it as a compliment.”

Mark reminded himself that he was touchy on the subject for reasons Harbedian had no way of knowing. Stewart was being as complimentary as he was able. People were accessories to him, and apparently Cara was one who suited.

“Maybe we could try to go nine holes without talking business?” Mark suggested.

The partners’ answering snorts made it clear he’d have better luck asking them to golf blindfolded.

“We like what we’ve seen of you, so far, Mark,” Howard said as he wiped the grip on his driver with a crisp white handkerchief. It appeared that his germ
anxiety extended beyond the office. “We think you’re a good fit for Saperstein, Underwood.”

“That’s great to hear.” Especially since he’d undone his New York life to the point that there was no easy reassembly.

“We’ll be making some substantial decisions in the next few months, ones that will affect your livelihood.”

Mark said nothing, because there was nothing to be said.

“We want you to know that you shouldn’t worry,” Howard said as he returned the hankie to his pocket. “Relax, finish the Newby transaction and know that things are looking good.”

With that, Howard addressed the ball, swung, then cupped his hand over his eyes and tried to follow his shot’s trajectory.

“The ball’s still on the tee, Howard,” Stewart said.

Mark looked at his watch. Yes, sometimes he really, truly hated this game.

I
T WAS PAST THREE
o’clock when Mark escaped the Square Lake Country Club and the worst golf experience of his life. He’d meant to head straight home. Instead, he found himself taking the long way, the route right past the office.

He knew Cara was there. Without pulling off Woodward or going down the drive, he knew. But he had to check, anyway. He couldn’t leave her working alone, not when all the credit was accruing to him.

And he couldn’t feel sorry that he had the contacts to bring in work in the first place. That he was born a Morgan was indisputable. And God knew it had its downside, too. His father had come back from Palm
Beach early yesterday and immediately closeted himself in his home office. He hadn’t spoken a word to family members, unless telling his driver, Paddy, that there was a scrap of paper in the back of the Mercedes counted.

His mother’s dignity in the face of her husband’s stony silence had been a killer to watch. As an escape, Mark and Jerome had taken her to Detroit’s Eastern Market. They had stopped at the nut company and bought her the pistachios she loved, loaded her down with fresh-cut flowers and had even gotten her to haggle with a vegetable vendor. It wasn’t much in the face of a crappy marriage, but it was the best Mark could do before he’d had to hit the office—just like his old man.

Now there was another thought that killed.

Back to work yet again, he parked right next to Cara’s car. As he made his way up the walk and into the building, his sense of disquiet grew.

His father hadn’t cornered the market on using work as an avoidance technique. He could name one leggy redhead who had that act down cold.

He marched past her empty office, around the corner, down the hall and past the bust of Saul Saperstein, the stone poet laureate of S.U., who today was wearing dark shades and a black beret.

Cara was—as always—in the conference room.

“What are you doing that can’t wait until Monday?” he demanded.

“Helping your client and saving my ass.” She paused. “Hey, I must be really fried. I didn’t even jump when you snuck in here.”

Mark pulled out a chair and sat opposite her. “I
didn’t sneak, and my client would prefer that you didn’t work yourself to death on their tab, thanks.”

She dragged a hand through her raggedy-looking red hair and then tugged at her T-shirt. She looked as if she was still in college and in the middle of a cram session for final exams. All the picture needed was cold, half-eaten pizza on the table and cans of caffeine supercharged drinks littering the floor.

“Were you insane enough to sleep here?” he asked.

“Yes, not that it’s any business of yours. But since you’ve apparently appointed yourself my keeper, Morgan, here’s my schedule… I’m about to go home, get cleaned up, then sink into a bubble bath with a glass of wine and a book. Is that okay by you?” She stood. “And, no, you’re not invited.”

Somewhere beyond annoyed, Mark stayed and counted to ten, then ten again for good measure, before he followed her.

C
ARA WAS RUNNING FRESH
out of Tough. She wasn’t smarter than Morgan—well, not by much. She wasn’t better connected. In fact, other than some work helping Bri incorporate Retreads, which Cara had refused to charge for, she hadn’t brought in a single client.

The only thing she could do was outwork Morgan, and even the odds on doing that were pretty ugly. If he wasn’t in the office, he was out at meetings or with the practice group’s partners, doing whatever it was that members of the Old Boys’ Club did. She knew that Mark wasn’t trying to tank her partnership chances; he was simply doing his job. Still the more tired she grew, the more upset she became, and the more the sheer size of the Newby deal scared her.

She’d stopped home last night around ten for some
clean sweats, but other than that, it had been a marathon session in unraveling Newby’s knot of files. Already she was so tired, she was forgetting simple things, like whether she had gas in her car or if she had promised to bring something to the family dinner tonight.

And there Morgan was in her doorway, looking as if Tiger Woods and he had just been out for a round, and he’d won. Though she’d never admit it, Morgan looked really good, and she only felt grungier by comparison. Grungier and more scattered. She pinned on a smile and tried to make chat.

“Did you ever have the feeling that there was something you were forgetting?”

“In your case, I’d have to guess that was what the sun looked like, or where you lived.”

It hadn’t escaped her that her skin had regressed from white to translucent. “Cute.”

“I’ve been feeling this way all day.” She dug through the heap of sweaters, blazers and other stuff she’d abandoned on one of her guest chairs over the past few days. “As if there’s someplace I’m supposed to be. But other than my usual Sunday get-tortured-by-the-family dinner—which I slept through last week, so they’ll be gunning for me—nothing turned up in my planner.”

At least she’d unearthed her purse and could now find her car keys. How the hell had the purse sunk so low in the pile? It must have happened when she was looking for a mint to cut her case of empty-stomach breath.

Frustrated and desperate to get out of the office, she began to dump the purse’s contents onto her desk. The keys gave up their resting place after a fight. Cara was
scooping the rest of her stuff back into the bag when a pen-and-ink card with a caricature of Bri and Seth caught her attention. A jolt from a stun gun couldn’t have been any more effective. Panic set in.

“Crap.”

“What’s wrong?” Morgan asked.

She was going to cry, and she wanted to do it without Morgan hovering over her. “Nothing. Nothing at all.”

“Right.”

Cara’s hands shook as she flipped open the invitation. The couples’ shower for Bri had started at noon, over two hours ago. “Go away, Morgan. I need to make a call.” God, her voice was trembling worse than her hands.

“Tell me what’s wrong.”

Eyes watering, Cara walked to the other side of her desk and dialed the RSVP number on the invitation, which belonged to a friend of Bri’s from her old job, and now one of her bridesmaids. A nonsucking, attentive, deserving bridesmaid. Three rings… Four…

What was she going to say when they brought Bri to the phone—”
I forgot about you?”

She hung up and grabbed for her tissue box.

“Come on, Cara. What’s the matter?”

Apparently, Morgan wasn’t giving up. “I missed Bri’s wedding shower, okay? It was this big party for couples, and—” She tried to pull herself together. “She’s my very best friend, and I—”

She couldn’t talk again, not without really losing it. Cara dragged in a shaky breath and worked on a solution other than burying herself under the damned Newby files forever.

The message light was flashing on her phone which
shouldn’t have surprised her, except she’d been in and out of her office a few times already today. Stress obviously made for tunnel-vision. Cara hit the speaker button then dialed into her voice mailbox.

“Hi, girl, it’s the bride. Don’t forget to emerge from your cave and come to my shower.”

Shit. More guilt.

She punched the skip code to hear the next message.

“They got you tied to a desk or something? Give me a call and let me know you’re okay.”

Skip again.

Finally, Cara heard Bri say, “There had better be something wrong with you, because if there’s not, you’re dead.”

This time, Morgan reached across the desk and disconnected her from the rest of the messages.

“Where is this shower?” he asked.

“In Ferndale, about twenty minutes from here.”

“Let’s go.”

“What?”

“You said it’s a couples’ shower, right? I’ll take you. It’s not like I’d trust you behind the wheel of a car right now.”

“No way. Look at us. You’re there in your golf clothes, doing your Biff the Wonder Preppie impersonation, and I look like I just came off the voyage of the damned.”

“So what? They’ll get over it. At least you’d be there.”

She couldn’t. She was mired in a mix of embarrassment, fear and the knowledge that she didn’t deserve to go. “Thanks, Morgan, but it’s so late that it would be less disruptive if I just stayed away.”

“You’re making a mistake. Bri would want you there.”

“Two hours ago, maybe. Now, it’s as if she’s an afterthought.” Which was exactly what she’d turned her best friend into. Cara’s throat tightened with the tears she refused to let slide. What was wrong with her? It was as though she’d lost some crucial part of herself and could no longer connect with other people. Like, say, maybe her mind.

“I’m going to go home and get ready for dinner at my sister’s. I don’t want to risk being disowned by her, too.”

Morgan’s mouth was set in a somber line. “Cara, I’m worried about you.”

“Don’t be.” She swooped up the pile of clothing from her other guest chair. “I’ll be fine,” she said, not even convincing herself. “See you tomorrow.”

He stayed her with one gentle hand on her arm. “Do me a favor, would you?”

“What’s that?”

“Take tomorrow morning off. Sleep in, visit Bri, just don’t come to the office until after lunch.”

With her last, miniscule shreds of Tough, she said, “No can do, Morgan. But I think your tan is looking a little uneven. Why don’t you take the morning off and hit the course?”

Cara didn’t even make it another heartbeat before the Tough ended and the tears began. Morgan offered his kindest gesture yet. He left her alone.

C
ARA WAS BECOMING
a pro at pushing back hysteria. Besides, it was amazing what a crying jag, good food and ten hours of sleep could do for a girl. Not quite as
much as a night of abandoned, mind-blowing sex, but hey, no one had offered.

When Monday rolled around, she was almost back to her old self. The qualifier of “almost” remained because she’d been unable to reach Bri. Cara had, however, eloquently groveled to her friend’s answering machine. She’d give it a day or so before cornering Bri in Retreads. Bri did best after her Irish temper had cooled, and Cara did best when her guilt had subsided enough that she wasn’t defensive.

And because she didn’t want Morgan to think she was pathologically inflexible, she’d stayed out of the office until almost ten. Even now, she lingered at the front desk with Annabeth, not quite ready to face the horrors of the Newby files.

Based on what Cara had almost literally unearthed so far, the malls’ tenants weren’t paying rent at quite the rate Newby had represented to Morgan Financial. Plus there was the matter of several pending lawsuits they hadn’t disclosed, either. A couple of them were of the slip-and-fall, probably bogus variety, but one contentious dispute with an anchor tenant of about a dozen of the malls was really making Cara jittery. It was one of a number of items she planned to discuss with Morgan later today…when she was good and ready.