She closed her eyes as the wind blew through her hair, and breathed a silent prayer for God’s help in lifting her sagging spirits.
Justin knocked on her office door, and heard the low, “Come in.”
He opened the door and stepped into the broken rectangle of light cast by the setting sun. He closed the door behind him and squinted as he found her silhouetted against the window, obstructing his view of her face. The heady scent of her shower steam lingered in the room, and he breathed it in.
“I thought you would have gone home by now,” Andi said, her voice low as she crossed her arms guardedly and walked toward him. When she became more than an opaque shadow, he saw that she had changed clothes and showered since morning, and her hair shimmered like long threads of silk.
“Not me,” he said, sinking to the couch instead of the chair in front of her desk. “I’m not one to knock off just because the sun goes down.”
“No,” Andi said, leaning against the outer edge of her desk. “I knew you wouldn’t be.”
Justin crossed his legs and let his eyes peruse the brown blouse that made her hair seem lighter, the off-white jeans that accented her small frame.
“So, what brings you here?” she asked with a speculative gleam in her eyes.
He shrugged and set his chin on his thumb, stroking his chiseled jaw with a finger. “Have you eaten yet?”
Andi narrowed her eyes and stared at him for a moment, trying to decide if he was asking her to dinner or simply making a polite inquiry. His ambiguity set her on guard, and she dared not make assumptions. “No, not yet. Why?”
“I thought maybe we could go out for a bite and talk.”
Andi’s heart lurched. Was he making a move toward ending their enmity? Even after their recent explosive encounters? Could it be possible that some inner stirring was plaguing him too? She opened her mouth to say yes, until she remembered the plans she had just made with her mother. She blew out a deflated sigh. “I can’t tonight. I have other plans. I’m going to—”
“Forget it,” he cut in. “It was business anyway. We can talk about it here just as easily.”
The casual way he dispelled the notion that he was asking her for a date set her defenses up another notch. “Fine,” she said, walking around her desk to sit down. “I’ve got about an hour. Start talking.”
Leaning forward and planting his elbows on his knees, he looked at the floor, then brought his eyes back to her. “I had a call from ABC today,” he said, his voice deliberately matter-of-fact. “They want to give Khaki’s Krewe a spot on their Saturday morning lineup.”
Andi caught her breath, momentarily forgetting her anger. “Oh, Justin. That’s wonderful!”
A half smirk tipped his lips as he carefully harnessed his own enthusiasm. “What? No explosions? No lectures about conflicts of interest?”
Andi’s excitement began to ebb as she realized he was looking for a fight. “It’s not a conflict, Justin. We discussed this before I bought into your company.” Studying his expressionless eyes, she frowned again. “Aren’t you happy about it?”
“Of course I am,” he said mildly, sitting back and stretching an arm across the back of the sofa. “It’s been a goal of mine for years, and it’s still one of my highest priorities.”
“Above Promised Land?” she asked, though she already knew the answer.
He shrugged. “I wanted this before there was a Promised Land.”
Andi bit her lip and tapped her fingertips together, realizing that if the offer had come two weeks earlier, the merger might never have taken place. “It’ll be okay, Justin. I’m happy for you, and I can live with it.”
His mouth crooked in a slight smile. “Good.”
Setting her chin on the heel of her hand, Andi grinned and studied the handsome figure slouched with indolent grace on her sofa. “You must be feeling pretty proud of yourself right about now.”
Justin shrugged, his blue eyes focusing on the ceiling, glimmering with something close to worry. “I’m not getting worked up yet. They want changes in the story lines, want me to tone down the Christian theme a bit. They also want the humor to be less subtle. They don’t credit kids with enough intelligence to know when to laugh. I’ll have to see how flexible they are before I’ll sign anything. We’ll see how it goes when I get there.”
“Get where?”
“New York. They want me to fly up there to finalize things.”
She looked at him for a moment as the business side of her began to usurp the part of her that enjoyed Justin’s success. “Not anytime soon, I hope.”
“I’ve made arrangements to leave the day after tomorrow.”
“You’ve what?” Andi snapped, leaning forward, her fingers clamping on her chair’s arms. “Didn’t it occur to you to check with me first?”
“Not for a minute,” he said, his tight voice laced with satisfaction.
Andi pulled out of her chair and leaned on her desk. “Justin, I own half of Pierce Productions!”
“I run it,” he pronounced sharply, “and I don’t plan to ask your permission every time I make a decision. I came here to fill you in.”
“Then let me fill you in. You can’t go traipsing off to New York! Promised Land needs you right now!”
“I thought you just said you were happy for me. That you could live with it.”
“Well, I didn’t think it meant you’d completely neglect your responsibility to Promised Land! We have an enormous amount of work to get done in the next few weeks.”
He sprang up. “Well, you’re just going to have to wait! Good grief, Andi. I’ll just be gone a couple of days. It’s not like I took your money and skipped the country. It’ll be good for Promised Land in the long run. The more exposure my cartoons get, the more people will want to visit the park. That was the whole idea when we started this thing.”
Andi tried to swallow back her temper and looked down at her desk. Was she angry because he was abandoning the park—or because he was abandoning her? She hoped her reaction wasn’t merely personal.
It wasn’t, she told herself. She really did need him here.
She turned to him. “Can’t you send someone else? We need you to help us with the automated figures of your characters. And we’re in the middle of planning the ad campaign.”
“I’m taking Gene and Nathan with me, but they can’t speak for me. Madeline can help you with the robots. She knows the characters as well as anybody.”
Her eyes flashed back to his. With teeth clenched, she said, “Madeline is not the president of Pierce Productions! You are! You’ll just have to put it off.”
“I won’t,” he bit out, his blue eyes unwavering. They stared at each other for a moment, caught in a battle of wills so strong that each would have sacrificed the cause for a moment of victory. “Have you forgotten what the terms of our agreement were?” he grated. “Doesn’t the fact that I still own half of my company mean anything to you?” Before she could respond, he leaned toward her, the disquieting strength in his body visibly constrained as he extended a finger emphasizing his point. “I’m not going to stand here and let you dictate where I go and what I do. If you want a fight, Andi, you’ll get one!”
Andi’s back was ramrod straight, belying the fact that inwardly she was wilting with the lack of an argument. She opened her mouth to formulate one anyway, when the telephone shrilled out, adding the perfect touch to the shouting match they had found themselves embroiled in. Snatching it out of its cradle, she shouted, “Hello!”
Justin’s heart was still pounding with the force of his rage, but his breathing slowed when he saw the blood drain from Andi’s face. Her hand came up to cover her mouth and her green eyes misted over with a frightening mixture of fear and pain.
“What happened?” she whispered into the phone. Her hand went up to clutch the roots of her hair and she nodded, wetting her quivering lips. “I’ll … I’ll be right there.” She tried to hang up the phone, but her hand was trembling so badly that
she couldn’t.
Justin took the phone from her hand and set it in its cradle. Taking her by the shoulders, he turned her toward him with a sudden surge of gentleness. “What is it?”
Her eyes were glassy with chaotic emotions and tears that would not spill. “It’s … my dad … he’s had … a heart attack …”
He took a step toward her as if to hold her, but stopped himself. “He’s not … I mean, he’s still alive, isn’t he?”
“Yes!” she blurted, then caught her breath in a sob. “I think so. They wouldn’t say.” She covered her face as the possibilities took hold of her. Then she lifted her head and looked up into eyes that shared her pain and offered to help her shoulder the burden. “I have to get to him. He needs me. Mom needs me.”
“I’ll take you,” Justin whispered. A sob racked her, and she pressed her palm to her mouth, as if failing to hold back her emotion would mean failing her father somehow.
The intensity of the restrained grief and fear in her eyes broke his heart. He couldn’t remember ever having seen such vulnerability seep through her strong constitution before.
“I thought he was going to wake up,” she whispered. “I thought he’d come out of it one day, and see what I’d done with Promised Land, and—”
In that moment, Justin abandoned his agreement not to touch her. This wasn’t business, and Andi needed to be held. “Shhh,” he whispered, pulling her into his arms. “It’ll be all right. Everything’ll be fine.”
Her arms tightened around his waist as her tears soaked straight through to his heart. In that instant, he thought he would do anything in his power to spare her another moment of pain.
Chapter Twelve
The sterile hospital smell invaded even the elevator, making the reality of pain and dying more immediate, more of a monster from which Justin yearned to protect Andi.
Her tears had dried, and as the elevator made its ascent, she held her head in stubborn defiance of the most likely possibility. “He’ll be all right,” she said with that desperate bravado he had heard in her before. “I’m sure of it. By now he’s fine.”
Justin prayed for her sake that she was right. More than anything, he wanted to take her home where he could shield her from this place. Whatever the outcome, he decided, he would be there for her.
When the elevator door opened, he felt Andi bracing herself with a deep breath that seemed to harden her muscles. Slowly, the two stepped onto the floor and started up the corridor leading to her father’s room, but the sight of her mother in a lobby chair, her hands covering her face, stopped them.
“M-Mom,” Andi stuttered in a hoarse, broken voice.
Her mother looked up at them. “Honey.” Her pale, drawn face looked at least fifteen years older than it had just yesterday. Her eyes were bloodshot and red-rimmed, and standing seemed to take all the energy she still contained. She smiled wanly at Justin. “It’s good to see you again, Justin,” she said quietly. Then, taking Andi’s shoulders, she forced her to look at her. “We lost him,” she said in a racked voice, as if the end would not come until the words were spoken.
“No!” The word came out in an angry cry, Andi’s head shaking wildly to parry the words. “He’ll be okay. He …” She looked at her mother, then fell into her arms. “Oh, Mom!”
“He’s been gone a long time, honey,” her mother said softly, rocking her gently back and forth and touching her hair, as her own tears traveled down her face. “We were the ones who were hanging on. We have to let go now.”
“No!” Andi cried. “He might have come to. He might have lived!”
“But he didn’t,” her mother said in a wooden voice.
Justin watched, helpless, as Andi tried to pull the crumbling pieces of herself back together. At any moment, he thought, the thin filament of her control would snap completely. Taking a deep breath, she stepped away from her mother. “I have to see him,” she said.
“You can’t, honey. He’s not in his room anymore.”
Andi lost whatever strength she still harbored. “No!” she cried, dropping her hands to her sides in helpless abandonment. “I never said good-bye.”
Her mother closed her arms around Andi’s frail body, her own tears wetting Andi’s shirt as she quaked against her. Then she stepped back and offered her to Justin. “Take her home,” her mother said quietly. “And don’t leave her alone. I’ll stay and take care of the … the arrangements.”
The word immediately brought Andi erect and rigid. “No,” she said flatly. “I’ll help. He’s my father.”
“And he was my husband,” her mother countered, her adamant eyes making Andi back down. “He was my best friend. I insist, honey. I want to.”
Andi nodded dumbly. Looking small and helpless, she turned to Justin. Gently, he took her arm and wrapped it through his. “I’ll take care of her, Mrs. Sherman,” Justin promised.
Andi’s mother nodded, her eyes bright with tears.
“I know you will, Justin,” she said quietly.
Justin had considered taking her to his house. Instead, he took her to her own home and made up his mind to stay no matter how strong she pretended to be. He tried to tell himself that she needed him, but in his heart he didn’t know if the need he felt was hers or his. There was something about her now, something soft and sweet, something too close to the woman he remembered, the one who had plagued his memories for eight long years.
Andi’s apartment was not what he expected. He had prepared himself for plush white carpeting, velvet upholstered furniture, elaborate chandeliers. Instead he found a room with bare parquet floors and red throw rugs, bright red printed furniture with black tables, and Oriental prints on the walls. The simplicity of the apartment sent a warm surge through him as he led her in.
When he had set her on the sofa and gotten her a glass of tea, he lowered himself next to her and watched her sip it. He sensed that false bravado seeping back into her shoulders as she lifted her chin, and he knew what was coming.
“I appreciate your taking me to the hospital, Justin,” she said softly. “And helping me home. I’m all right now, though, and …” Tears sprang to her eyes again and she choked them back. “You don’t have to stay. I really just need some rest and then—”
“I’m not going anywhere right now,” Justin declared softly, leaning back on the couch and pulling her with him. “If you want me to, I’ll call your date and tell him what happened.”
“My date?” She wiped at her eyes and gave him a puzzled look. “Oh, you mean for dinner. There’s no need. It was my mother.”
Unaccountable relief surged through him that there wasn’t some other man in the wings who had more right to comfort her than he. With great gentleness he pulled her head against his chest.
“Really,” she tried again, forcing her voice to stop quivering. “I’d rather be alone. It was a shock at first and I kind of fell apart, but I’m okay now.”
“I’m staying,” he said again, his deep baritone vibrating against her face.
His persistence seemed to shake her, and she pulled out of his arms and stood up. Going to the fireplace, she leaned against the black mantel. “Justin, please. I really want to be alone.”
“The last thing you need tonight is to be alone,” he said as if it was a fundamental fact that could not be argued.
Something about his stubborn insistence seemed to rankle her. “Being alone is something I’m quite familiar with,” she bit out. “I prefer it. Especially right now. Please.”
“I’m not leaving,” he said, rising quietly and facing her off with his hands hung at his sides.
“Why?” The word came out as an exasperated cry that reached the dusty chambers of his heart. “You hated my father!”
He didn’t answer for a long time, for he wasn’t certain why himself. Was it because he knew that if he left her now he’d never see past that icy casing again?
“But I care for you.” The raw honesty in his answer left him strangely warm and bewildered,
but it inscribed itself on his heart like temporary salve that would hurt worse when the comfort wore off. He stepped toward her as she turned her back to him, leaning her head into the mantel, her shoulders shaking with the intensity of her sobs. He slid his arms around her from the back, pulling her against him until she turned in his arms and clasped him around the neck, her face buried against his shoulders. “You can call me names, tell me I’m invading on a private moment, slap me and abuse me,” he whispered, closing his eyes and kissing her hair. “But I won’t leave you right now.”
He lifted her in his arms, sat down on the couch, and held her against him for what seemed to be hours as she cried herself to exhaustion. And just before she drifted into her restless cocoon of sleep, he heard her mumble feverishly against his chest, “I miss him.”
Instinctively, his arms tightened around her, and he buried his face in her hair. An enormous sense of his own loss was growing inside him, seeking out all the dark, cold corners that had lain empty since he’d left her. He knew what it was to miss someone he loved.
When her hand fell limply onto her stomach, he shifted her off of his lap. With a soft murmur, she curled up on one end of the couch and pulled her knees to her chest, a pained expression on her face. Justin gazed down at her, gently stroking back the hair over her ear until her face relaxed in distracted rest.
But it was only momentary. As soon as he lifted his fingers, the frown on her forehead clefted again. Even in her dreams, she was grieving.
Her torment made his heart ache, for he had no idea how to intrude on her dreams and order the torturous monsters of mourning to leave her. He pulled off the afghan lying over the back of her couch and covered her gently.