Frank was frowning at him.
From the corner of his eye, Julian saw that Miranda’s shirttail was by the window. She was listening. “Are you sure this is the right thing to do? Does Miranda know the business, Frank? It’s easy to see that she’s dazzled by you. But she’s half in love with an unshaven guy who lives in a cabin, wears flannel, and catches his own dinner. But you’re that man what? Two weeks a year? The rest of the year you’re in a ten-thousand-dollar business suit or a tux. I can’t see her in a Dior gown at one of your charity events, with two hundred paparazzi bulbs flashing in her face.”
“So we won’t go.”
“That’s a concession, but how else are you willing to change your life? Are you going to put her in a house in Connecticut and leave her there? Do you plan to go home at six every evening?”
“Miranda is an understanding woman.”
“Yeah, well, so were most of your women. I don’t want to see Miranda hurt. I don’t want to call her six nights in a row to tell her that her husband is staying in the city because he has to go to Tokyo, or that he has to attend some charity event that she would hate. Miranda doesn’t deserve that. She doesn’t deserve you. The real you. Not the woodchopper, but the Frank Taggert who focuses on work—and everyone and everything else be damned.”
He turned to look at Frank. “I can’t do this. I don’t want to have to try to explain you to Miranda. I don’t want to be sent to her to dry her tears with a box full of emeralds.” He paused. “In fact, I don’t want to do any of this anymore.”
Julian gave Frank time to reply, but when he was silent, Julian stood up straighter. “I’ve worked with you for ten years. I’ve admired and respected you and at times envied you. But at this moment I feel nothing but pity for you.” As he turned away, he halted. “Seeing you and Miranda together has made me remember what I’m missing. Unlike you, I’m willing to make some changes. This weekend I was supposed to go on a date with a wonderful woman, then you called and told me to bring you the papers. You didn’t ask; you just told. So I left a message on her machine and came here. I doubt now that she’ll ever speak to me again.”
Overhead was the sound of an approaching helicopter. As Julian started back into the cabin, he halted. “You will have my resignation on Monday. I left the papers about that kid, Eli, on the kitchen countertop.”
For a moment he hesitated, waiting for Frank to call him back, but Frank said nothing, so Julian kept walking.
As soon as he stepped inside the cabin, Frank saw that Miranda knew. She was at the counter reading the papers about her son. When she spoke, she couldn’t keep her voice from rising. “What do you want with my son?”
“Not what your tone is implying,” he said stiffly.
As she began to figure out what was going on, her eyes widened. “I’m not sure what these documents are saying about my son using your company’s letterhead, but I think maybe he and his friend Chelsea planned all this.” She waved her hand to include the cabin. “And you knew about it—even though you’ve pretended that you don’t know my son. Did you and those children decide to take care of dumpy little Miranda? Give her a weekend like one of those silly books she reads? Big, strong billionaire makes love to her in a cabin? Is the payoff that my son does something with your computers?”
With every word she spoke, Frank’s shoulders went farther back. The softness she’d seen in his face was leaving. This was the man the business world saw.
As for Frank, everything Julian had said was ringing in his head. If he did this wildly romantic thing and took on this woman and her child, was he willing to change every aspect of his life? Give up everything he knew to live in suburbia and invite the neighbors to Sunday barbeques? No matter how he looked at it, he couldn’t imagine doing what it would require if he were to stay with this woman.
Or was she to change? Would she set aside her pie baking to walk down a red carpet?
All in all, the two of them were almost different species.
He had to end this. He had to be the villain. He gave her a little smile. “I’ve had a great time these last few days. Please tell your son thanks from me.”
It took Miranda a moment to understand what he was saying, then it was as if all the blood left her body, along with thoughts and feelings. “Me too,” she said. “Truly great.” Turning, she went to the front door. When she’d arrived, she’d dropped her handbag onto a little table. She picked it up, draped it cross body about her, and ran to catch the helicopter before it took off.
5
The outside offices were decorated for Christmas, and in the distance was the sound of laughter and glasses clinking at the annual party at the Montgomery-Taggert offices. But inside Frank Taggert’s office there were no decorations, no lights, just Frank sitting alone, staring unseeing at the papers on his desk.
In the weeks since he’d been at the cabin and met Miranda, he’d lost weight and there were dark circles under his eyes. During that time, his life had changed. Not that he’d wanted it to, but he seemed to have lost his edge in the business world. He’d certainly lost his hunger to achieve more and more.
“Hello,” said a tentative voice from his doorway, and he looked up to see young Eli Harcourt. They hadn’t seen each other since that first meeting two years before. Their entire friendship had been conducted solely by letters, all correspondence going through a PO box in Denver. Eli was taller now and he looked less like a child. There was an adult look in his eyes that Frank thought shouldn’t be there.
“Eli” was all that Frank could say, and the first hint of a smile in a long time appeared on his face. “Come here,” he said, standing up and holding out his hands.
Closing the door behind him, shutting out the sounds of the other people, Eli walked over to stand in front of his friend.
“You look as bad as I feel,” Frank said, and opened his arms to the boy.
Eli would have died before he admitted it, but part of his anger at his father was defiance, telling himself that he didn’t need a dad. He threw his arms around Frank and the man held him close, and Eli found how much he’d missed the solid touch of another male.
Much to his horror, Eli found himself crying. Frank didn’t say a word, just led him to a small leather couch and sat down with him. When Frank offered him a clean white handkerchief, Eli blew his nose.
“You want to tell me about it?” Frank asked.
“My mother is unhappy and so am I. Everything has changed and I don’t like it. Chelsea and I—”
“Do you need money? I can—”
“No!” Eli said sharply. “I don’t want you to give me money.”
“Okay.” Frank pushed Eli’s head back down to his shoulder. “Tell me about you and Chelsea.”
For a while Eli didn’t speak. “Why haven’t you told me what happened between you and my mother?”
“I don’t think you’d understand.”
“That’s what adults always say. They think kids are too stupid to understand anything.”
“You’re right. We adults do tend to put children into difficult situations, then mistakenly think they can’t understand them. But we’re trying to protect you.”
“From Chelsea?”
“Tell me what’s going on.”
Eli took a while before answering. “I guess you know it was Chelsea and me who . . . who . . .”
“Sent your mother into the woods to take care of me? Yes. I found out all about how you talked to my brother and he made the arrangements.”
“Are you mad at me?”
“No,” Frank said. “I had a wonderful time with your mother. We went up to an old cabin where a prospector lived. There’s a legend that he hid gold up there.”
“Did you do something to make my mother so angry?”
“Not then, no.” Frank knew he was evading that question. “What’s happened with
you and Chelsea?”
“Mom won’t let us see each other. She said our lie about going on a yacht and about . . . about all of it was too much and it had to stop.”
“To be separated from the person you care about the most is awful.”
“Yes. I miss her. We understand each other. We help people.”
“True,” Frank said, “but your mom is right and some of what you two do needs to stop. Lying is bad, and using corporate letterheads is illegal, and—”
“I know!” Eli moved to sit up and look at Frank. “I know all of it. My mom has told me over and over and over. She made me tell her everything. Since she came back from meeting you, she’s been different. What did you do to her?” He was nearly yelling.
Frank got up and opened a door to a little bar area. He didn’t have much for kids but he poured Eli a glass of seltzer water and handed it to him. “I fell in love with your mother. I even asked her to marry me.”
Eli, eyes wide, drained the glass. “Did she tell you no?”
“Yes,” Frank said slowly, “but she should have. I would have made her miserable.”
“No you wouldn’t!” Eli said. “You’re the best man in the world.”
Frank sat back down on the sofa. “You’re the only one who thinks that. Since your mother walked out on me, everyone I know has told me what a jerk I am.”
“I’d like to tell them that they—”
Frank put his arms around Eli’s scrawny shoulders and kissed the top of his head. “If you and Chelsea swear to stop sending illegal letters to people, maybe your mom will let you get back together.”
“We did. We wrote contracts and signed them in blood.”
“Ouch!” Frank said. “That was a bit dramatic, but what did your mother say?”
“No. That’s all she says anymore. My dad . . .” He trailed off.
Frank’s jaw hardened at the mention of the man. “What did Leslie Harcourt do?”
“He said that Mom had turned into such a witch that he was going to go to court and make me live with him and his new wife, Heather. I don’t like her and she doesn’t like me.”
He was glad Eli’s face was down so he couldn’t see the smile on Frank’s face. “Tell me everything that’s been going on.”
Eli began talking in a steady, quick stream and Frank listened. What he heard was the story of an angry woman. When Miranda had returned from her time with Frank, she’d declared that she was going to quit being a naive, gullible woman who believed in romance.
“She gave all her novels away,” Eli said. “And she changed our house. She threw out all the pretty little things she had. It’s all . . . I don’t know, cold now. Does that make sense?”
“Yes,” Frank said and thought of his own houses, where he’d outlawed anything that made them different from one another.
“Right after she got back, Dad came over and she was mad.”
“What did he say?” Frank was frowning.
“He called Mom a slut, and said she was spending nights with men in bars and that he was going to get a lawyer and take me away from her.”
“Have you ever heard him say that before?”
“Only once when I was little. That time I got scared and so did Mom. But this time she wasn’t scared. She wasn’t even angry. You know what she did?”
“I have no idea.”
“She told me to pack my bag, that I was going home with my father. She said she’d deliver all my computer equipment to his house that afternoon and that she’d send Heather a list of foods I won’t eat.”
“What did your dad say?”
“I was really, really scared. I held on to my mother, but she pushed me to my father. He said Mom was crazy and he left. He hasn’t been back to our house since then.”
“Good for her,” Frank said. “You know, don’t you, that she wasn’t going to give you away?”
“I’m not sure, but I think you’re right.”
Frank held Eli to arm’s length and looked at him. “Your mother loves you very, very much. You are her whole life.”
“Not anymore,” Eli said. “Now she doesn’t talk. She says she has to work more and she needs to go back to school and . . .” He looked at Frank. “Did you really ask her to marry you?”
“Yes, I did.” Frank took a deep breath. “I did a very stupid thing: I fell in love. No, don’t look at me like that. It was all right to fall in love, but I was afraid and I let her get away from me.”
“Why were you afraid? I love my mother, but I’d never run away from her.”
He shook his head. “I don’t know how to explain it. In all my life I’ve never needed anyone. Maybe it was because when I was growing up, I had so many people around me. It was a huge family and I always had a lot of responsibility. I think maybe at an early age I decided I wanted to be different and separate. Or maybe it was just that I didn’t want to be like them. Can you understand that?”
“Yes. I’m different from other kids.”
“You and I are misfits, aren’t we?”
“What about my mom?” Eli urged.
“I loved her. I just looked at her and loved her from the very first.” Frank smiled. “Actually, at first I thought she was something other than what she was, and that made her angry. But then I saw that she was a sweet, gentle woman.” He smiled again. “Well, not too gentle.”
He paused. “You know what I liked best about your mom? She judged me on my own merits, not on my money or even on my looks. She just told me she didn’t like me and didn’t want to be near me. She even ran out the door of the cabin and tried to walk back to Denver.”
“She has no sense of direction.”
Frank looked surprised. “That’s true, but how did you know that?”
“It’s women. My mother has none and Chelsea has none,” Eli said.
“Better not let any woman hear you make such a generalization. Anyway, I wanted her to stay and cook for me, so I offered her a great deal of money. But do you know what she asked for?”
“Something for someone else,” Eli said.
“Exactly. That’s just what she did. How did you guess?”
Ignoring the question, Eli said, “What did she ask for?”
“An education for her son at the finest school in the world, from freshman to PhD.”
“Yes,” Eli said softly. “She would.” He spoke louder. “But what happened?”
“We, ah, we . . . Later we . . . We got to know each other a great deal better.”
“So why didn’t you stay together?”
“I hesitated and she saw it.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“You know how scared you were when you thought your life might change drastically if you went to live with your dad and Heather? That’s what I saw. A man who worked for me made me see that if I stayed with your mother it would be the end of my life as I knew it. I wasn’t ready for that. I guess I thought the things I’d worked for were what I wanted.”
He looked at Eli. “I think I wanted it all. I wanted the lights and the accolades, but I also wanted a home. I wanted someone to wait for me and be glad when I showed up.”
“Mom would be glad if—”
“Yes,” Frank said, cutting him off. “Your mother would have waited for me, but she would have been very unhappy.”
“Like she is now?”
“Worse,” Frank said.
“What are you going to do now? About my mom, I mean.”
Frank went to his desk, pulled out a leather pouch, and dumped the contents onto the little coffee table. They were unopened letters, all of them addressed to Miranda Stowe, all of them labeled returned to sender. “I’ve written to your mother every day since a week after we parted. It took me that long to realize what a mistake I’d made. You want to hear what happened?”
r /> “Yes,” Eli said.
“When I got back to town, my girlfriend, Gwyn, was waiting for me. She is really beautiful. She’s been on the cover of some magazines. She’s also smart and educated, talented and quite likable. When I got home, I told myself I was really glad to see her, glad to get out of a world of having to catch my own meals, and back to my own personal kingdom where people jumped to do my bidding.”
Frank got up to pour himself a drink, and he gave Eli more seltzer. “I was really happy for about four days, then . . . I don’t know what did it, but I became restless. I missed my right-hand man, Julian, but I was too proud to say so. I had to hire three people to do all the work he did. But it was okay because I had Gwyn. She was great. Perfect.”
He looked at Eli. “I’m not sure why, but I began to not be able to bear the sight of her. Trust me on this, but perfection is a highly overrated attribute in a human being.”
“My mom is perfect,” Eli said, sounding as though he was offering a challenge.
“She is, but in a different way,” Frank said. “Anyway, it was a bill for a Dior gown that sent me over the edge. I thought of something Julian said, then . . .”
Frank shrugged. “Anyway, I went to spend time with my cousins in Maine. I stayed there for about three days, listened to all the screaming children, went out on a boat with them. It was all the things that had bored me in the past.”
“It sounds good to me,” Eli said.
Frank smiled at the boy. “I thought about you a lot. You know what I decided? That I liked you and your mom better than all the Dior dresses in the world.”
“Is that good?”
“Very good,” Frank said. “When I got back to Denver, I had a whole new purpose in life, and I began downgrading.”
“You mean your computers?”
“No. I downsized my entire life. I delegated.” He smiled. “I shared. I turned over a lot of my businesses to my little brothers and to one of my sisters. And I began to write to your mother.”