Loved Me Once (Love, Romance and Business) Read online

  "Then you think they're just pretending to be enthusiastic?" Halbrooks asked her.

  "It's more complicated than that," Maggie tried to explain. "There was a cartoon – I think it was in the New Yorker – where this dog named Ginger is listening to her person go on and on about something and you see this thought balloon above the dog's head and it's all gibberish to her except her name — yada, yada, yada, Ginger, yada, yada, yada, Ginger. This kind of situation produces an effect a lot like that. In my experience, when an outfit with a lot of resource starts talking about coming into an area with a big agenda, all the locals with a particular interest think yada, yada, yada, $, yada, yada, yada, $. They know that there's going to be big bucks spread around and maybe they can figure out a way to get some of it in order to benefit their pet project. As for your agenda, they're usually interested only to the point where it doesn't interfere with their agenda."

  "If you don't think this can work, why did you take the job?" Halbrooks asked her bluntly.

  "I didn't say it couldn't work," Maggie told him. "But we need to realize up front the kind of resistance and resource diversion we're likely to encounter. That way, we can build in appropriate responses before the need arises and be ready to head off opposition, as well as distractions."

  "I assume you have strategies in mind?"

  "In terms of the talent-scout part of the picture, I'm working on the specifics. Tom, Merriman I mean, has asked me to give a presentation on the 29th."

  "Oh yes," Halbrooks said, "The end-of-year status meeting. You should find that very interesting."

  She was sure she would, but first she had to close out the WHT connection. So, this Monday afternoon found Maggie waiting to see Bill Holmes. Hilary, his assistant, looked at her curiously, but asked only if everything had gone all right at Lake View.

  "Fine, thanks," Maggie told her. "The participants seemed to like the coursework. Kimberly has all the notes and the PowerPoint program, and we've gone over everything. She should have no trouble in conducting the sessions in Seattle, Orlando and Lake Louise."

  "I just love your boots and those jeans," Hilary said. "Blue Cult? And the blazer looks fab with them."

  Maggie looked down at the tight, but comfortable jeans and the black wool blazer she'd thrown over the white linen button-down shirt, and grinned. "Thanks – I like your outfit too." That was an exaggeration, she thought, but what the heck.

  "I don't think I've ever seen you in jeans," Hilary said thoughtfully.

  "Yeah, well, somewhat different dress code where I am now," Maggie told her. It felt good to be wearing something other than the strictly corporate pant suits that were almost de rigueur at WHT.

  "And I love your hair," Hilary continued. "You look terrific with it loose around your face like that. I always hated those bun things you wore."

  Maggie shrugged and grinned.

  Bill appeared in the door to his office and beckoned to Maggie.

  "I got your fax. In fact, I was in the office when it arrived. I gather you've found another job."

  "Yes, I have," she told him. "I'm here to retrieve my personal stuff, and I'd like someone to come with me to my office while I do it. Also, I want to turn these in." She laid the WHT-issued BlackBerry and cell phone on the corner of Bill's desk. "Also, here's my laptop. Since I had to sign for all this, I'd like an email from you to this address, acknowledging their return. I can wait." She pulled out her personal Palm.

  Bill picked up the phone and issued the necessary instructions to Hilary, who wasted no time. In just a couple of minutes — a long, silent couple of minutes in which Bill seemed to be waiting for Maggie to say something — the Palm buzzed and the email popped up.

  "Got it," she told him. "Now, if you could send someone with me to go downstairs."

  "I'll go, of course," he told her. "We're friends after all, not just colleagues. I've known you since you were a little girl."

  They walked silently to the elevator, Hilary watching them. "You know that really wasn't necessary," he told her, once they were in the elevator. "I told you that you could keep the equipment, that we'd transfer the accounts over to you."

  "I remember," she told him. "During lunch last Tuesday afternoon, at the club, with all the Christmas carol stuff going on. But the thing is that my new employer is providing replacements this afternoon, so I don't need the gear. But thanks anyway."

  "Are you sure this new job is finalized?" Bill asked. "You should know that no one has called me for a reference."

  "My new boss was already familiar with my work."

  Bill laughed weakly. "That was fast, but I should have known you'd be able to call on your mother's network."

  "Actually, it's my network," Maggie said coolly. "It's nothing to do with Mother."

  Bill looked at her suspiciously. "Is this something to do with Miles Brewster? Your employment agreement specifically forbids . . . "

  "It's nothing to do with Miles or his mother or anyone else you know. Don't worry. I'm not trying to poach your client base, even your incipient client base — although the agreement doesn't get into that."

  She hadn't meant to say so much – dignified restraint was the tone she'd decided on, but it felt amazingly good to be candid, so good that she impulsively added a further comment. "I don't want your client base. You could not, in fact, give me your client base on a silver platter, especially not Miles Brewster. When you choose the next female to be your point person for him, by the way, you might want to make her more agreeable than I am."

  She turned toward Bill and smiled beatifically, just as the elevator doors opened to the entrance area outside her office. He managed to look simultaneously irritated and uncomfortable.

  Inside the office, door open, Bill watched as Maggie packed up a handful of things (the photographs, the journals with her articles in them, a couple of personal notebooks, her degrees) and tossed some others (contents of her desk drawers, old magazines, partly empty Altoids tins) into the trash can.

  "There, I think that's it," she said.

  "How about your Lucky Seven award?"

  "Oh, yeah, I was forgetting that." Maggie walked over to where it hung on the wall, removed it, and dropped it carefully into the trash can.

  He lifted his eyebrows, but said nothing.

  "Well, Bill, thanks for everything. Now I must be going."

  "At least let me go down with you to make sure you get a cab."

  "I appreciate it, but there's a car waiting for me."

  This time, as the elevator doors closed, Maggie had the satisfaction of being the one inside, with Bill Holmes standing outside, slack-jawed, staring at her.

  In the lobby she texted Sam, the driver, who quickly appeared.

  "Back to home base, Miss McLaurin?" he asked as he took the box from her and put it on the floor of the limo.

  "I'd like to drop these by my condo first." She gave him the address, and on their arrival handed off the box to the doorman. "If you'd have these put in my foyer, I'd appreciate it, Cooper."

  "Yes ma'am. Will you be home this evening?"

  "Probably. Why?"

  "A nice young gentleman was asking about you this morning. Very well dressed. Most generous." Cooper smiled at the memory.

  "What did you tell him?"

  "That you don't share your schedule with me, Miss, that he should ask you himself."

  "Perfect answer, Cooper. I'll see you later."

  He held the limo door for her. "Now I'm ready," she told Sam.

  "Home base it is," the driver said.

  "I'm curious," she told him. "Why do you call it home base? It's more office than home, isn't it? I mean this isn't where Mr. Scott actually lives, is it? But the office part goes on whether he's here or not."

  "That's true, Miss. I hadn't thought of it before. Everyone called it home base when I first took the job, so I picked it up from them. Maybe it's because Mr. Scott's aunt lives there much of the year, in an apartment in one of the townhouses."


  Her personal cell phone rang. Not many people had the number. Could it be Miles? Caller ID, however, showed that it was Ann Longstreet.

  "Well, I've got some news for you," Ann said. "Guess what?" She sounded happy but surprised. "I've sold your house if the contract's acceptable to you."

  "Oh, gosh, Ann. I should have called you. Things have changed since we talked, and I'm not sure I'm interested in selling any longer."

  "Just let me tell you," Ann said, obviously excited. "I negotiated like crazy, and we've got an offer tailor-made for your situation. The buyer's agent has proposed a price that's easily 20 percent above market right now — approximately what you could have gotten last year — with your mother to retain guaranteed possession for five years, with an option on your part to renew should she still require the house at that point. You'll get 20 percent in cash right now and 10 percent in each of the next four years, with the remaining 40 percent to be paid at the end of the five-year period. And the buyer is paying all closing costs, as well as my commission up front, with the sum to be proportionately deducted from what they pay you in each of the next five years."

  Maggie almost collapsed against the seat back. "That's incredible, Ann. You must be some negotiator to get that out of the Mybawrs. From what you said and what I saw, Heather didn't strike me as the patient type."

  "And she's a saint compared to Richard, her husband," Ann said. "But that's the funniest thing of all. The Mybawrs aren't the buyers. I think it may be this mystery outfit that's been buying up area properties with big grounds under different names for the last several years and then renting them out. We think it's someone who wants to assemble enough land to do a large development. Which would explain the willingness to hold."

  "I hope this doesn't interfere with your ability to sell your family's old house," Maggie told her.

  "Luckily enough, it doesn't. I'd also been speaking to the people on the other side, you know, in that Mission-style adobe, and it turns out they were willing to sell, so the Mybawrs had already signed a contract on both those properties on Sunday, in the nick of time. If the mystery buyer wants that lot as well, they'll have to contact Mybawr."

  "Well, I'm glad it worked out so well for you," Maggie said sincerely.

  "So you're willing? Shall I fax you the paperwork?"

  "That'd be great," Maggie told her. "I'll look it over and get back to you later today. Will that work? Let me check the information they gave me this morning – I started a new job and I don't have the contact stuff memorized yet." She looked at the card listing everyone's address, fax numbers, email, BlackBerry IDs, Palm IDs, and cell numbers. She read Alysha's fax number to Ann, who repeated it. "I'm on the road, but I'll arrive at that location in about half an hour. Can you fax the offer there?"

  She leaned back and resisted the urge to hyperventilate. What an unbelievable week it had been. Just seven days ago, her loan request was summarily rejected by SunTrust, she still had her job with WHT, and she could see financial catastrophe looming. Tom Scott was no more than a memory with unpleasant connotations, to be avoided on the covers of national magazines. Now there was no need of a loan. With the sale of the house on those terms and careful planning, everything on the financial front should be OK; and Tom Scott had offered her the job of a lifetime.

  The only downside was Miles. Her euphoria vanished. She had lost Miles. There would be no more surprise meetings, no more fun lunches. Never again would she look up to see Miles waiting for her in unexpected places, that wonderful grin on his face. She had lost Miles.

  This sense of loss was worse than anything she could remember feeling before. When she thought all those years ago that she'd been abandoned by Tom Scott, she had believed with every atom of her seventeen-year-old heart that she would die, that the world would end. Now, she knew better, which was almost unbearable. Losing Miles would stop nothing. She would not die, and the world would go on, no matter what. It would just be colder and less friendly and not nearly as nice as before. She would be alone again, and it would be worse because for a while she hadn't been. Miles had been there, first as a friend and then . . .

  She closed her eyes and thought of the times they had made love. A chill ran through her body, and her heart literally began to ache. She realized if she could take it back, what she'd said to him Thursday evening, she would. Not that she would back down; she didn't see how she could do that, then or now. But she could have told him she needed to think about it, given him time to cool off and maybe get used to the idea. She could have tried harder to understand why he was so adamant, tried harder to make him realize he had nothing to fear from Tom, this older Tom who was so different in most ways from the young man she'd known, the young man she'd gotten over so long ago. Then it hit her. Miles had come by her condo building. He'd tried to see her. Maybe he was having second thoughts too. His private cell number was programmed into her cell, and it was the work of seconds to reach him.

  "Brewster," he said, rather peremptorily.

  "It's Maggie," she told him. "Did you go by my building today?"

  "Yeah," he said, somewhat absentmindedly she thought, as if he were thinking about or even doing something else. "I wanted to return some of your notes that ended up with my paperwork. I was in New York for a couple of hours this morning, so I thought I'd drop them by your place, leave them with the concierge."

  "So you're back in Boston?"

  "Yeah, it was a Q&D trip, to do with that deal we're doing with the competitor. So you're back in New York?"

  "Sort of, but not back at the condo. I appreciate your taking the time to return the notes."

  "If you haven't been back, how'd you know about my coming by?"

  "When I checked in, Cooper said I'd had a visitor, a nice young man, well-dressed, pleasant-mannered." She tried to keep her voice light.

  "Yeah, well, that's me – well-dressed, pleasant-mannered, nice. For what that's worth."

  She'd never heard him be sarcastic before, at least not toward her. It was clear that he hadn't changed his mind. "Well, okay," she said. "Thanks."

  "Any time," he said.

  There was another awkward silence, then Sam began to slow the limo, and she could see the TTI townhouses.

  "Well, I've got to go," she told him. "Thanks again."

  She depressed the call-end button, tears in her eyes. Miles hadn't even sounded mad, just irritated and somewhat surprised to hear from her, like a spoiled child no longer interested in the plaything that has disappointed him.

  In With The New

  Maggie rang the bell, feeling a little like the new kid in school after the first recess period as she stood in front of the minicam that transmitted an image of anyone on the stoop to the on-site Security office. She'd been in for only a few minutes that morning to sign the employment agreement and be given an abbreviated orientation tour by Alysha Harding, Tom Scott's assistant. Now she was here to work in earnest, for there was a lot to do before she had to stand up the following week in front of the TTI team that had been working together for almost a year and convince them she could bring something to the table. The lock clicked, and she was buzzed inside. It was a confusing setup, she thought, even though Alysha had tried to explain it. In all, TTI owned three adjoining circa 1910 townhouses, each four stories in height, not counting their garden levels. Inside, the whole thing appeared to be a work in progress, with luxurious residential elements coexisting rather uncomfortably with a mishmash of standard office decor. TTI visitors entered the center townhouse, in the hallway of which she now stood. In this building, she remembered, were many of the offices of those TTI employees who worked in New York. The townhouse to the right contained the apartment lived in part of the time by Tom Scott's aunt, but it also held at least some office functions on an upper floor because that was where Alysha's office was, if Maggie were remembering correctly. The townhouse to the left held conference rooms and also some sort of staff-use rooms. From something that was said, she knew that somewhere in all thi
s Tom Scott had an office, but she wasn't clear as to even the general location.

  The hallway in which she stood was small and very quiet, with little in the way of decoration. There were no identifiers on the multiple doors that led into adjoining rooms, and no signs indicating the direction to various functions. She hesitated for a moment to get her bearings before heading past the minute elevator toward the rear of this building to the stair that led down to the garden level.

  The office was temporary, she'd been told, until renovations were complete in the adjoining townhouse, and the room was definitely on the spartan side, with only a large desk, rolling leather armchair, a side table holding a still-boxed laptop and printer, a couple of Eames-style office chairs, and rows of mostly empty bookcases on one wall. A worn tan raffia rug covered part of the tile-paved floor. The rear wall held two large windows and a set of French doors that opened onto this townhouse's back garden. Curious, she opened one and walked outside, to find herself on a small, snow-encrusted, walled terrace centered around a tree, now bare of leaves but large enough to shade the stone-paved area once its foliage returned. Beyond the paved area, at the rear of the lot, sat a brick building and wall filling the width of the narrow lot. The building resembled an orangerie, its wall of multi-paned glass windows overlooking the bare-limbed tree. Pulling her coat more tightly around her to counteract the coldness of the wind, she peered through a window. The place was comfortably, even luxuriously, furnished but so tidy that there was a sense of general disuse.

  Back inside, she went over to the desk and sat down. A new BlackBerry, iPhone, and digital camera, the smallest she'd ever seen, were lined up next to the desk phone, each with its manual beneath it. In the middle of the desk was a large Manila envelope with a note on top from Alysha, time-stamped only a few minutes earlier. Inside was the sales contract that Ann Longstreet had said she'd fax. Maggie sat down and read it through. It was rather an odd contract. There wasn't even an inspection clause. There was, however, one very unusual stipulation. If at any point in the five years, she wanted to reimburse the buyer for all monies paid to that time, plus 10 percent compound interest, she could resume ownership of the property. She frowned for a minute, trying to digest that one, a clause she was unlikely to exercise, trying to find the catch. There didn't seem to be one. The contract's essentials, in fact, read like a reprieve from everything that had been worrying her so much. Her mother's situation was handled, certainly for the next five years, and – even after taxes – there would be plenty of money to pay property taxes, maintenance, and the wages of a helper for Amanda. She called Ann on her cell, and the agent answered at once.