Do-Over (13 page)

Later, while Mark dozed, Cara felt hot tears slip from the corners of her eyes and travel down the sides of her face. Morgan had gone and done it. Her love was no longer a mere possibility. It was real, solid and overwhelming. She didn’t expect him to love her back; with her selfishness since his arrival, she’d given him little reason to. But if those do-over gods were worth their salt, they’d help her find a way to earn that gift.

O
N
O
LYMPUS
, H
ERA
smiled and blew a kiss to her favorite mortal.

“You’re doing fine all by yourself, sweetie. Truly, you are.”

Cara’s Rule for Success 12:

Flexibility is an asset in today’s business world…

and if you bomb out,

there’s always a spot waiting for you

as a circus contortionist.

O
N
S
UNDAY
, C
ARA WAS
happy—quite possibly even delirious. After a night spent making love, Mark and she showered and went up to the house in time to see Nic off.

Once Nic had departed, Cara did the dutiful-yet-gag-inducing thing and suggested that maybe she and Mark should put in a few hours at the office. Instead, Mark handed her a sweatshirt to wear over her wrinkled dress, then gave her a ride in the boat that had been the bane of his teenage years. When they returned, windblown and laughing, he packed an overnight bag and took her back to her apartment.

Since they were totally incapable of keeping their hands off each other, they didn’t surface again until evening, when she dragged him along for the weekly dinner at Dani’s house.

Her sister’s three-bedroom bungalow was no Lakewind, but to his credit, Mark didn’t flinch. He didn’t even look too grossed out when four-year-old Sarah
was ushered from the table after sticking green beans up her nose. Cara, however, was put off her food entirely.

And that night, back at her place, Mark sweet-talked her into wearing the black lounge-singer dress he’d surprised her with a month ago. Then he peeled it off her inch by inch, his hands and mouth exploring all he exposed. Cara was simpler in her demands—she wouldn’t let him wear anything at all.

Evil and gray, Monday morning arrived. Cara tried to ignore the tension that was already boiling in her stomach and knotting the back of her neck. She and Mark drove to work separately, timing their arrivals so no one would suspect they’d been together all weekend. This, she knew, was just the beginning of the game they would have to play, and Cara hated it.

Then at nine-thirty, the courier dropped off yet another pissy piece of news about the Newby transaction. The land survey for a Connecticut mall disclosed that a corner of the parking lot sat on someone else’s property. The discrepancy was just enough that it appeared the mall might not have the required spaces to meet local regulations. A legal gnat, easily swatted, but for some reason the news was landing on Cara more like an elephant.

In need of a friendly face, she wandered from the conference room to Mark’s office. Stewart was on his way out just as Cara came in.

“Say the word and we’ll have you to the top of the waiting list,” Stewart was saying. He looked ready to add something else, but stumbled to an awkward verbal stop when he noticed Cara. He gave her a bluff smile, then escaped.

She sat opposite Mark. “What was that about?”

“The partners were wondering if I might be interested in joining a country club.” He showed her a glossy folder emblazoned with the name of one of the most exclusive—and expensive—clubs in the area.

“So the firm would be footing the bill?”

Looking uncomfortable, he nodded.

Cara hated golf and wasn’t especially fond of country clubs. In this instance, though, membership was also a benefit of the one thing she’d wanted for years: partnership. And they were handing it to Mark.

Cara waited for that bolt of fury and jealousy to sear her heart. Except it didn’t come. In its place was a huge, howling nothingness that seemed to have sucked the breath from her.

“That’s great,” she said, then pushed the corners of her mouth up in something she hoped passed for a smile.

He deserved partnership.

He really did.

Mark flipped the folder over. “Cara, we need to talk about what’s going to happen.”

She could scarcely function; her lips were going numb. “No. No, we don’t. At least not right now.”

“Sweetheart…”

She glanced toward the open door. “I really need to…”

He walked around the desk. “Are you okay?”

“I don’t know. I need to be someplace else.”

I need to be someplace else…

Out of the mouths of babes and psychotic women. Cara closed her heart against the rush of emotion, but it was no use. She turned and hurried out the door.

Behind her, Mark was calling her name. Fighting panic, she waggled her fingers in a backhanded wave.
Cara grabbed her purse from beneath her desk, then fled the building.

“Oh God,” she said as she jammed her car key into the ignition. Six freaking years of her life hammering though every crisis thrown her way. Six years battling for dominance. Six years gone and never coming back.

She needed out.

After leaving S.U.’s lot, she lowered the car windows, craving the air, the noise, even the exhaust fumes. She cranked the radio as loudly as she had back in high school, then headed south on Woodward to her home turf.

She’d invested six years of her life fighting for a prize. It was slipping away and instead of anger, she was feeling…
relief?

What the hell was wrong with her?

Am I happy?
wasn’t a standard question in Cara’s self-awareness repertoire. In fact,
Am I feeling a little PMS’sy?
was about as close as she came, and that one only occurred to her on those days when she felt like choking the morning-TV weather guy for being so relentlessly cheerful.

Mark was the only person who, in recent memory, had asked her if she was happy. Her family assumed she was, and maybe she’d never slowed down enough to figure it out. Or maybe she had been processing that question all along on some subliminal level, and ignoring the results.

Mark loved his job. The more knotty and obnoxious the problem, the more jazzed he got. She, on the other hand, was drowning in zeroes. The responsibility that came with handling thirty-seven million dollars of someone else’s money was an enormous burden to her. No wonder the announcements placed in financial
newspapers about deals such as these were called “tombstones.” One more and she felt as if she’d be dead.

It was her fault that she’d taken on more than she’d needed to, and she’d done it for some really crummy reasons: to show up Mark and to spite Gail Eberhardt. Okay, so the spite thing still didn’t bother her a whole lot, but what did was that she’d gotten so wrapped up in the game, she’d never even noticed that she no longer felt like playing.

In a rare incident of good karma, a parking spot opened in front of Bri’s store just as Cara neared. Cara parked, then went inside to find Bri sorting through a bunch of dresses still entombed in dry cleaner’s plastic.

“I screwed up,” Cara said.

“How? Forget to pay a bill or—”

“No, in a big way.” She paced a tight circle around the rack of Chinese robes. “The biggest.”

Bri stopped sorting dresses and latched onto Cara’s wrist. “Sit down and take a few deep breaths, okay? You’re going to make me dizzy.”

Cara sat on the red velvet fainting couch and thought back to that day only several weeks ago when she’d planted herself exactly here. That day on which she’d taunted the gods. Stupid, stupid Cara.

“What made you decide to come back to Royal Oak and open Retreads?” she asked her friend.

Bri didn’t question her, she simply answered, “I had an anxiety attack in the middle of the Miami airport. I wouldn’t recommend it as a method of self-discovery.”

“What happened?”

“I’d been gone about a week doing spot-checks of
our stores’ Juniors departments. I was sick of hotels, guys’ pickup lines and denim clothing, and to top it off, my flight home was delayed. So there I was, bored out of my skull, when it suddenly struck me that I couldn’t remember having made arrangements for someone to feed Wenda.”

“Not that Wenda couldn’t do with a spa regimen,” Cara pointed out. Bri’s cat was obese.

“Don’t dis my cat,” Bri replied. “Anyway, I grabbed for my planner to look up my neighbor’s number, but it was missing. I totally spazzed and emptied my carry-on bag onto the concourse floor. It was as if I didn’t find that planner, I was going to die.”

Cara had an ugly vision of herself digging for keys the night she’d missed Bri’s shower.

“Weird, huh?” Bri said with a shrug. “In retrospect I can see that stuff had been building up for a while. But at that point, all I knew was that I was a horrible person and that I’d just starved my cat to death. I snapped. Airport Security wasn’t very impressed.

“I got home and obviously discovered that I had remembered to take care of Wenda. Of course, I couldn’t quite get past that lost planner hurdle, so I phoned a therapist, got some antidepressants and then went about changing my life. And here I am, poorer but happier.”

The phone rang and Bri picked up.

“It’s Mark,” she said, covering the mouthpiece with one hand. “Do you want to talk to him?”

Cara shook her head vehemently.

“She can’t come to the phone right now…. Yes, I promise you she’s okay.” After saying goodbye, Bri hung up. “He’s really worried,” she said to Cara.

“I know. I think I scared him. Except for that cat-starving
thing, right now I’m pretty much you in the middle of the Miami airport.”

Bri settled next to her on the couch and draped an arm over her shoulders. “So what’s it going to be, girl?”

“A week off work, to begin with,” Cara said. Making that decision took the edge off the panic. “Then we’ll see.”

Just after lunch, Cara returned to work. News of her earlier sprinting departure must have must have made the full loop of the gossip circuit because people kept asking her if she was okay.

Yes seemed much simpler answer than, “I don’t even know what the hell okay means, as it pertains to my life.”

Mark was behind his desk. When she came in, relief was apparent on his face.

“Are you—”

Cara smiled what was probably a crazy-chick smile. “Yes, I’m okay. Would you mind coming down to Howard’s office for a minute?”

“All right.” She could tell that, like Bri, he was curious about where she was going with this. But also like Bri, he was friend enough to give her some latitude. Her throat tightened at the thought of Mark as just a friend.

One crisis at a time or you’re a goner for sure,
she told herself.

Once they were in Howard’s office with the door closed so that the firm’s snoops would have to work a little harder, Cara said, “I need to take the rest of the week off.”

“Impossible,” Howard replied.

She glanced to her left, at Mark. She couldn’t tell whether he was angry.

“I’m not asking, I’m telling,” she said to Howard.

“The Newby closing is in less than two weeks and you’re going to what—go work on a tan?”

Cara stood. “I haven’t taken more than a long weekend in three years. I need this time. This isn’t a whim or even fun for me. I’ve got some issues, which you of all people should understand, okay?”

“Whatever issues I have, I’ve never—”

“I’ll wrap up Newby,” Mark interrupted.

“What?” Howard said.

“There’s not a whole lot left to do, and if Cara needs some personal days, she should have them.”

Howard’s eyes grew as narrow as his stupid little glasses. “You’re not in charge of this practice group.”

“And maybe you shouldn’t be, either, if the way you reward your best associates is by working them to death.”

Cara raised her voice a notch. “At the risk of repeating myself, gentlemen, I was telling you, not asking.” She focused on Mark. “Let’s run though everything before I leave.”

And that was that.

O
BSESSIVE IS AS OBSESSIVE
does, and Cara seized life-rebuilding with a vengeance. Monday afternoon, she stopped in the bookstore and picked up a hardcover journal. Then she plopped herself down in the sidewalk café at her favorite coffeehouse and started writing lists: what she liked, what she was good at and what really mattered. Cara looked to see where the three converged.

Volcano goddess was first on her preference list,
then lawyer, but she couldn’t imagine there was much of a hiring market for volcano goddesses. At least, not much of a market—other than Morgan—she cared to serve. So she was still going to be a lawyer, which was a major relief considering the years and money she’d thrown in that direction.

But she also wanted variety. Other than covering for Howard on one of his innumerable speeding tickets, she’d never been inside a courtroom. She knew that plenty of lawyers could say that, but it made her feel like a fraud. Plus in her limited experience, it had been kind of fun locking horns with judges. What all of this meant was that she needed a new job—one at a firm smaller than Saperstein, Underwood—a place where people weren’t pigeonholed.

She’d been pushing through life as though pleasure was the big reward at the end, instead of something one savored along the way. The big trick, best as she could see, was grabbing that “en route” happiness. She’d never thought about things like family and children, but she had to admit that she had room in her heart for a few green-bean stuffers—someday.

As afternoon was drifting into evening and her stomach was demanding food, Cara stopped at the market, then headed back to her apartment. She wasn’t surprised when at just past eight, Mark arrived at her door. He wore the look of a man who had resolved to choose his words carefully.

“Mind if I come in?”

“Of course not.”

She led him into the living room, preferring that he not see the dinnertime reading she’d left scattered across the kitchen counter—information on the recruiters who had, at one point or another, contacted
her to see if she might be interested in making a move. Though she hadn’t been at the time, she’d also been smart enough to keep a list. Friday was Independence Day, and the coincidence didn’t escape her. If she really hustled she might be free of Saperstein, Underwood by then.

“So what are you going to do with your week off?” he asked once they were seated on the couch.

Her body had automatically sought the comfort of his, and with her head cushioned against his chest, Cara listened to the solid beat of his heart.

“I’m going to take it easy, mostly.”