The Billionaire’s Handler

Chapter Ten

“Oh, my…oh, my…oh, my.” Maybe she’d daydreamed about spending the night in a tree house, but the reality was infinitely more wonderful. Right outside the window, on a nearby branch, perched an owl. A big owl. A big, beautiful whiteish owl. Just sitting there, where she and Maguire could look at him. “Isn’t he magnificent?”

“Compared to you, no. Compared to other creatures-yeah, he’s pretty damn amazing.”

She twisted in his arms. The cushions on the floor made a mattress. Moonlight pouring in was brighter than any artificial light. She was scooped in his arms, using one of his arms as a pillow, his other arm tucked around her, both of them naked beneath a mound of sleeping bags. “Did you just call me magnificent, Maguire?”

“Couldn’t have.”

“Because it sounded like it.”

“You misheard. Or it was a slip of the tongue, because it’s so late and we’re both tired.”

“We’re both tired because you were so magnificent.”

Oops. Wrong thing to say. He tensed up like a shutter slamming out sunlight. For a while, he’d been lazy and relaxed, the Maguire she knew could be coaxed out of hiding. He was a man who laughed, teased her, took teasing back, inhaled the silver-and-black-velvet night out there with the same relish she did.

Apparently he forgot he was the relentless alphamale Maguire for a few hours…but now he went quiet on her again. It occurred to her-it kept occurring to her-that she’d used silence as a way to protect herself in a very similar way. Maguire might not have a case of hysterical deafness, but just like her, he’d found a way to shut himself off from things that were threatening to him.

“Hey, lover,” she murmured, trying to capture his attention, and of course, she did. She got “the eyebrow” at the use of the endearment. “The tree house is impossibly wonderful. I’m really glad you found it.”

“Me, too. I can’t believe I never even thought about one before.”

“It’s such a perfect hideaway. Nothing big to take care of. Just a place to hide out. Forget civilization for a while.” Without skipping a beat, she segued into the topic on her mind and heart. “Maguire, if you’re feeling guilty because of something to do with me-don’t.”

His head swiveled toward hers immediately. His eyes looked huge and dark in the moonlight. “Want some wine?”

“Nope. Just want to say…I’m hugely glad we did this.”

“Good,” he snapped.

She’d survived putting her finger in an electric socket before. And was willing to risk it again. For him. “You know,” she murmured, “I have every right to love you if I want to. Every right to admit that you turn me way, way on. To admit that I care for you. To admit that I’ve never felt…this kind of desire before. And that I’m old enough to throw caution to the winds and do something just for myself.” When he didn’t respond-how easy for Maguire to shut up and dodge her that way-she said bluntly, “You care a lot for me too.”

“Of course I do.”

“No. Not like a big brother. Not like a responsibility. I mean…the lover kind of caring.”

“Do we really have to have this talk?”

“Uh-huh.” She nodded vigorously, propped up on an elbow.

He sighed, heavier than a north winter wind. “Here’s the thing. This shouldn’t have happened. The making love. The problem is…your vulnerability. I came into your life to right a wrong, to fix things. Making love with you was taking advantage.”

“Hello. Do you remember my participation both times? Did you have to sell me tickets?”

“Two weeks ago you were crushed.”

“Yeah, I was. A mess. But that was then. I wanted this. You wanted this. We’re both bringing trust and respect and a whole lot of plain chemistry to the table. I don’t see anyone getting hurt in this scenario.”

“You could be hurt.”

“Maybe. But isn’t that what you said our time together was about? Making me tougher. Making me stand up for what I want and need. Making me decide what’s right for me and how to go about it.”

“Carolina. You’re not in love with me. This is just a moment in time. Two weeks. Not a vacation from life, but a moratorium on stress. Nothing you want or do is wrong. I just don’t want you getting long-term hopes-or fears-that are distracting. I want you going back to your life feeling strong and good.”

She leaned closer. Touched his bottom lip with her fingertip, saw his eyes, that flash-fast spark with fire.

“Okay,” she said, “but what I’ve been trying to tell you, Maguire, is that you’re exactly what I needed. Not just the mentoring lessons and all the spoiling. But you, specifically you. Making love with me. There’s no guilt or wrong. What you’ve been with me has helped me become stronger.”

“That sounds real good, Ms. Toughie. But it doesn’t make sense.”

“You’re not a woman. It makes perfect sense to me.” She touched his arm-not in invitation, not about the discussion, but to motion him outside. The white owl had spotted prey somewhere in the darkness. One instant he was perched high and silent, the next soaring, swooping down…silent and beautiful.

“I have the feeling a mouse is going to have a very bad night,” Maguire murmured.

“But our owl has to eat too. He’s been sitting there for hours in the cold.” Like Maguire, she thought. He took it for granted. That he’d always be alone in the cold. “Okay, you.”

“Okay, what?”

“Okay, I know you’re sick of talking. That you don’t like this kind of talk. So I just want to say one more thing and then you’re free.”

“No. Nothing good ever follows after a woman says she only wants to say one more thing.”

She grinned. But not for long. She went soft and quiet. “You made me reexamine my life, Maguire. Made me think about all the things I’ve yearned for or wanted-and most of them, I figured out, aren’t about money at all. They’re about fun. And wonder. And new experiences. And wanting richness-not money richness, but richness in life experiences and relationships with people.”

“Yeah. That was exactly where I was hoping you’d go. Not letting anyone define stuff for you. Defining what you want and need for itself.”

“And I get it. You’ve been a fabulous mentor.”

“Good.”

“But what about you?” she whispered. “How come you’re alone? You’ve never wanted a wife, kids, that kind of personal life? What do you do in your free time that makes you happy?”

He shot her a familiar look of impatience, even as he stroked the curve of her shoulder. “When you’re ten years old, you worry about what’ll make you happy. When you’re an adult, I’m not so sure that “happy” is a meaningful criterion of anything.”

“Okay. We’ll use a different word. You, being you, need to feel productive at the end of a day.”

He glanced at her. “Yeah, I do. If I haven’t accomplished concrete things at the end of a day, I feel off kilter.”

She nodded. “You have to make a difference. You have to behave by your own high standards-whether anyone else is looking or not. You have to live by what you believe in, no matter what anyone else says or thinks.”

He rolled his eyes, as if that evaluation were true of everyone. “Okay, so where are you going with all this?”

“Here’s the point. Have you ever done what you asked me to do? Make a list. A list of things you’d like to do or see. Then go after those things. Name them. Protect them. Get them on your life agenda.”

“I’ve got what I need,” he said impatiently.

Yeah, she thought. And she wasn’t on the list.

How could she expect otherwise? They’d known each other for the briefest of times, under only extraordinary circumstances. Their backgrounds were different, their families, education, everything. When it came down to it, they had nothing in common except for Tommy.

And that she’d fallen hopelessly, helplessly in love with him.

“Okay, you,” she said. “No more talking. You have what you need. I got it. But…”

“More talking?”

“Nope,” she whispered. “I was just going to show you one eensy-teensy thing that you might still need tonight.”

“No. Not that. Anything but that.”

“Shut up and take being seduced like a man, Maguire,” she said gruffly, and then, gently, “although, you can offer a suggestion here and there if you feel like it. I’m a believer in making rolling readjustments.”

“Are you now?”

Her man was thirsty and hungry. Not for water or food. For sustenance of the heart. But…

She was about to give him a second helping. Something to hold him for a while.

Because she was leaving after that. She knew it. He knew it.

And she had absolutely no way to stop it.

A day had never passed so fast. Maguire never specifically said, “That’s it, back to real life now”-and neither did she. Carolina didn’t need to talk about an elephant in the living room to know it was there.

Chores followed chores-the MG had been returned, the messes from their overnight in the tree house dismantled and taken back to the lodge, then the lodge tackled. She put her belongings together, cleaned the fridge. Maguire made heaps of phone calls and worked to make the lodge “turn key,” prepared for an absence.

At some point, the schedule went on the table. At ten in the morning, Henry would fly her directly to South Bend, and see that she was settled back at her place. Maguire had a temporary business thing in Denver, after which he was disappearing back to wherever else he lived, whatever else he did.

There was only one way she could handle this, Carolina determined, and she bounced down the stairs a few minutes before ten the next morning. She was wearing her red shoes, old jeans, new sunglasses, her hair all flyaway and her cheerfulness out front, brassy and brazen.

With only minutes left, she wanted him to see exactly what she wasn’t. A princess. A well-mannered, well-bred, perfect type of rich man’s wife. She was what she was-a teacher who came from a blue-collar background. Who was going to love her red shoes until the day she died. Who loved sleeping with owls. And pigging out on lobster. And who was always going to have to work at certain flaws in her character, because they were pretty close to unchangeable.

“Okay, let’s get these goodbyes over with and this show on the road. Kiss,” she demanded of Henry. Who pecked her properly, even as he stood in the door with her luggage.

She pranced over to Maguire, her cheerfulness beaming even brighter. “Kiss,” she demanded.

He held her by the shoulders, his grip just a little too tight, his eyes just a little too dark. “Listen,” he said.

“No. I’ve listened to you until I’m blue in the face. You’ve taught me all you’re going to teach me, big guy. But I’ve got advice for you. Don’t kidnap any other women, okay?”

He grinned, but the smile faded away, and still he held on to her shoulders. “When you were a kid, I’ll bet you read a book by Shel Silverstein. The Giving Tree.”

She blinked in surprise. “Well, yeah, who hasn’t? I adored it.”

“That’s what you need to guard for, Carolina. Your nature is to be that giving tree. But you can’t do that-give and give and give-without stripping yourself bare. You put up your boundaries. You get tough.”

“Yes, sir. Are you going to give Tommy a big hug from me?”

“Yes.”

“Are you going to let me visit him sometime? And vice versa?”

“Absolutely yes.”

“So where’s my kiss goodbye, Maguire?”

She was trying to sound saucy and sassy and fun. But he didn’t want to kiss her. She could see it. She could feel it, like a knife twisting in her heart, a sharp ache of awareness. He might want her. He might like being with her. He might even love her, to a point.

But he didn’t want to.

She was just a project for him. A responsibility. A problem he had to fix.

“Okay, okay,” she said teasingly. “No kiss for you. Just know, I’m not about to forget you.”

She made it inside the plane before she started crying. Henry didn’t see her, nor did the copilot up front. Both were locked in the front cabin, while she had the whole fancy back to herself. A down blanket and poofy pillows were set up for her to nap, a gourmet lunch with cold shrimp and lobster dripping ice whenever she wanted it.

All she wanted was to find some Kleenex.

The trip was around four hours, and by the time the jet landed, her eyes were over-dry, but she’d tidied up everything in back-washed her few dishes, folded up the blanket, nothing out of place, as if she’d never been there. Henry came through from the front and took one narrow-eyed look at her face.

“Are we doing okay?” he asked tactfully.

“Of course we are.”

“Mr. Cochran set up a car waiting.”

“Of course he did,” she said hollowly.

Henry drove her from the airport to her old apartment. Carolina thought the short drive was a little like landing on Mars. All the familiar landmarks seemed to be someone else’s landmarks. She knew the roads, the restaurants, the gold dome of Notre Dame, the infamous Grape Road-but none of them gave her a feeling of being home.

Her apartment was the worst, although Henry kept up a steady patter to fill her in. “We had your car checked out, tires, gas, oil, all that, because we didn’t know what shape it was in when you left.”

“Thanks, Henry.”

“It was Mr. Cochran who did it all, really. I wouldn’t have thought of all the specifics and details, not the way he did. In the meantime, your regular email and phones have been turned back on. I’ve got a folder of contacts-who we contacted, so they’d know you were all right. And who was trying to reach you. You realize we’d have given you the communications before if there’d been any kind of emergency-”

“Of course,” she said.

“Like a family illness or anything like that. Mr. Cochran was only trying to give you a break from demands on you for that short stretch.”

“Of course,” she said.

“I took the liberty of having your fridge stocked with just a few things. Fresh milk, fresh eggs. Bread. Not much. But so you wouldn’t have to immediately run to the store.” He hefted the two suitcases from the trunk-she’d gone with nothing; and come home with cases that were chock-full. “I’ll return your key. And I have a list of phone numbers here. Mr. Cochran. Myself. The list of contacts he discussed with you before. So if you need anything-anything at all-”

“Henry, Maguire fixed me. Completely. I won’t need anything from anyone. I promise.”

Finally, he set down the suitcases, then stood at the front door like an awkward geek who didn’t know how to stay or go. She said, “If you stand there a minute more, I’ll throw my arms around your neck to thank you for all you’ve done for me.”

That did it. He took an immediate step back, eyes wide with alarm, and reached for the door. He said, “I think you’re the best thing that ever happened to him, Carolina.” And then left, hiking back to the rental car at a speed designed to outwit robbers, bill collectors…or women who might hug him without restraint.

Then she was alone, for the first time in quite a while.

She wandered through the four rooms, feeling like a cat trying to find the right spot to settle. The apartment had been cleaned stem to stern. The sinks shined. The pink towels in the bathroom were hung straight. The book she’d been reading was still face-down on her nightstand-but dusted-and her gold-leaf lamp, a treasure inherited from her grandmother, gleamed when she flicked on the light.

She’d decorated every inch of the place-some from Ikea, some from yard sales, some from family attics, pulling together colors and textures she liked. When everyone first heard about the inheritance, they’d all urged her to move to a nicer place.

She could. But the reason the apartment no longer felt like home had nothing do with furnishings or style or any other details like that. It was about feeling the absence of Maguire.

She would have to get used to it, she told herself. As crazy as it sounded, he was where her home was. Her heart. But that, of course, was foolish thinking.

A sudden sound jarred her thoughts-the phone. Her phone, her landline.

Two weeks ago, she’d caved at that torturous sound. Now she gulped and strode toward the phone. She’d left a life dangling.

She wasn’t ducking and running from anything that mattered to her, ever again.

Maguire was on a video cam when Henry yelled out a hello. Henry’d been gone for three days. Maguire had been chasing his own heels the whole time, working nonstop. The video cam was essentially a business call between an Austrian, Japanese and British counterpart-it was no mean feat to find a time and time zone where they could all comfortably talk together. Their common project was still in the engineering stage, but they’d all invested several million. It was time to separate the men from the boys, so to speak. The lady from Austria very definitely was tough, but the discussion was tricky and complicated. Everybody might have their feet in the same water, but they each had sharply different ideas about how to swim to the other side.

Henry showed up in the office doorway, saw what was happening, waved a greeting and disappeared-undoubtedly to raid the kitchen, Maguire assumed.

He couldn’t cut the video meeting short. It had taken hell times ten to put it together to begin with. The project mattered. It was one of his babies right now, in spite of the precarious economy.

But he was as distracted as a porcupine with an itch. He finally got all the business accomplished and severed the call. Two in the morning was a tough time to negotiate. He jogged toward the living room, hoping to hell Henry wasn’t already asleep.

He wasn’t. Looking, as always, impeccable in unwrinkled sweater and slacks, he had the television on in the kitchen, some war flick, a tidy sandwich in one hand and a beer stein in the other.

“All hell’s broken loose since you were gone,” Maguire said, and started the fill him in. Henry was due some R &R. Maguire had fires burning in Atlanta, Chicago, a sort-out with Jay in the middle, a stupid speech he’d somehow signed up for in D.C. Wednesday night. He was behind, of course, from having disappeared for the last two weeks.

“I need you home-”

“Which home, sir?”

“I’m going to base out of the Chicago condo for the next while. I need you to call, get things opened up, food, all that-”

“Yes, sir.”

“Would you mind contacting Billingham for me. He’ll be expecting a call, and I know I won’t get to it. Folder’s on the desk-”

“Yes, sir.”

“If he still has a question, contact me.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Did we get a new security set up for the Elkon system?” Maguire poked around in the fridge, saw beer, milk, finally pushed aside debris, found some fresh OJ.

“No. You put that on hold until next month.”

“Well, let’s push it up again. It’s been on my mind. There’s too much to protect to let that slide. Scare up the bids again, would you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Now, on Carolina. Let the weekend go, but check on her Monday.”

“No, sir.”

Maguire closed the fridge, turned around. “Beg your pardon?”

“I said no, sir. I’m not spying on Carolina.”

Maguire frowned. A headache had been playing slice-and-dice in his temples for three days. He was used to pressure. Used to having an impossibly heavy schedule. Used to finding discipline and endurance when there couldn’t be any left.

He just wasn’t used to pain having this fist-grip on his heart.

“I wasn’t asking you to spy on her, Henry. I was asking you to check in.”

Mild as milquetoast, Henry said again, “No.” And turned off the tube.

“You work for me, remember? I give the instructions. You say yes, and then follow through better than I would myself. That’s your job. And you’re great at it.”

“Yes, sir. Although you can outwork anyone I ever met.”

“Which is the point. I’m extremely busy. And it’s not as if I were asking you to do anything. I just need to know that Carolina’s all right.”

Henry stood up from the couch, dusted two crumbs from his trousers, took the sandwich plate to the kitchen and neatly slid it in the dishwasher. “I understand your concern, Mr. Cochran. That Carolina, she just isn’t of the me-me-me generation. I don’t doubt she can look after herself. I just think she could easily fall into her old ways.”

Maguire picked up that beat as if it had been on his mind. “Giving in to everybody. Riding herself ragged for everyone else. The calls will have restarted by now. Her family and friends and all will realize she’s back home. It’ll start up again. I think she’s stronger. I think she has good ideas on what to do. Stuff she can do. But I need to be sure.”

“Then call her yourself, sir.”

“I beg your pardon?”

Henry didn’t seem to hear. He aimed for the stairs, as if intending to crash for the night. “I keep remembering how she was when you first brought her here. Not hearing. Jumping at every shadow. I just think it’d be easy for her to get over her head again. I’m not all that positive you can teach a kitten to be tough.”

“Which is precisely why I want you to follow up and make sure she’s all right.”

“Well, I would, Mr. Cochran, because I’m not looking to get fired. I love my job. I can’t even imagine a job as good as this one. But she’s not my business, sir. She’s yours. If you don’t mind my saying, I almost didn’t recognize you when I walked in here. You obviously haven’t slept or showered or apparently eaten since I left. You look like hell, sir, and that’s putting it as politely as I can. I fully recognize that you’ve never appreciated advice-”

“Then it would probably be extremely wise for you to shut the h up, Henry.”

“But in my opinion, you don’t just need to call her. You need to find her. I have no idea what was wrong with the men in South Bend in the past, but they can’t all be shallow and blind. Someone is going to take a look and have the sense to realize that she’s absolutely one of a kind.”

Maguire’s eyes narrowed. “You think I don’t know that? But she’s not a keeper for me, Henry. I kidnapped her, remember? She didn’t ask me to be in her life.”

“So if she needs help now, you wouldn’t be there?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I’d be there in two seconds.”

“Then call her yourself. To find out if she’s all right or not.” Henry’s voice rose a full decibel before he shut down and turned around, stiff-necked and red-cheeked. “I’m going to bed, sir.”

Maguire didn’t answer, just stared after Henry. He’d never heard Henry yell before. Henry didn’t even raise his voice for football games or tornados.

He could have fired him, of course, but Maguire couldn’t imagine doing that for a single indiscretion. It wasn’t as if Henry regularly-or ever-stepped out of line, or had given Maguire any reason to doubt his dedication.

Henry was loyal. Apparently he’d picked up some mighty loyalty to Carolina as well.

Henry just didn’t understand, Maguire thought glumly. Once he’d kidnapped Carolina, everything changed. He’d had good reasons to steal her off, but the “force” word was the bear. She’d been forced to be with him.

Now…it would have been easy, so easy to call her, fly to see her, tell her he’d fallen crazy in love with her, that nothing had been right since she left. It was the truth.

But it was also the truth that he couldn’t, ethically or morally, force Carolina to be with him again on any terms. To manipulate another situation would be the act of a control freak, not a lover. A bully, not a man hopelessly in love.

How could he ever know how she really felt if she’d never been free to make her own choices?

So he’d tied his own hands.

And it was killing him.