Love Is Patient and A Heart's Refuge (20 page)

The harsh click in her ear told Becky how soothing her words had been.

Becky shoved her hands through her hair and grabbed the back of her neck. It felt as tight as a guitar string.

And in five minutes she had to face Rick Ethier.

She wondered if she had time to run across the street
and grab a bite to eat. Better not. Instead she pulled open her desk drawer and pulled out the grease-stained bag. She shook out the rest of the muffin into her hand and popped it into her mouth. Two days old, but it was a much-needed snack.

She gathered up her papers and slipped them all into her portfolio, along with her Day-Timer. A paper covered with scribbles fluttered to the floor and she bent to pick it up. Notes for her most recent book.

Since Rick had come, she hadn’t had a spare minute to work on it. And if the past few days were any indication of the work Rick required to change the magazine’s direction, she wouldn’t have any time until Rick left.

In twelve months.

Dear Lord, am I ever going to get anywhere with my writing?
The prayer was a cry of despair. She looked over at her crowded bookshelf. Her own book sat tucked away amongst all the others. But one book does not a career make, and if she wanted to live her dream, she needed at the least a multibook contract.

All her life she had wanted to be a fiction writer. But she had loans to repay and she had to live. So she took the job her father offered and for three years she had poured her heart and soul into that first book in her infrequent spare time.

When she received the call that this, her first book, had been bought, she broke down and cried like a baby. Then she celebrated.

Though her parents were overjoyed for her, her mother had given her the best advice. Advice, she was sure, countless other authors had received.

“Don’t quit your day job.”

So she stayed on with
Going West,
editing and writing nonfiction during the day, writing fiction in the evening, begrudging each minute away from her work as she put together her next book.

Then came Rick’s review, the sales figures just behind that, and her publisher started stalling on a contract for her option book. And now she didn’t have the time to work on it.

Becky pushed herself away from her desk. Enough wallowing. She had other things to discuss with Rick.

Such as maintaining her “day job.”

B
ecky strode down the hallway to Rick’s office but was stopped when she faced the closed door. One of the many changes that had swept through this office since Rick took over. She knocked lightly.

“Come in.”

To her surprise, Rick wasn’t elbow-deep in the computer printouts that dominated his desk, but instead stood by the window, looking out over the town to the mountains beyond.

“I love the view from this office,” Becky said with forced cheer. She was going to be nice. Going to be a good example of Christian love. “Though it always makes me want to quit what I’m doing and head out to the mountains.”

Rick shrugged. “I suppose it could, if you were the impulsive type.”

In spite of her good intentions Becky felt her back bristle.

Nice. Nice. I’m going to be nice.

“So what did you want to discuss today?” she asked, sitting in her usual chair in one corner of Nelson’s office.

She wanted to give him a chance to talk before she brought up her own grievances.

“I’ve been working on clearing up the deadwood.” Rick dropped into his chair, massaging his temple with his forefinger. “This magazine is practically in the Dark Ages.”

“Considering that we don’t use a Gutenberg press to put out the paper, that seems a bit extreme,” Becky said, tempering her comment with a smile.

Rick gave her a level glance but Becky held her ground. She had promised to be nice, but he didn’t need to be so cutting.

“Just because
Going West
has a glossy cover doesn’t mean it’s keeping up.” Rick pushed himself ahead, pulling a pencil out of the holder on a now-tidy desk. “We’ve got to move forward.”

“From the phone calls I’ve been getting, that means leaving behind people like Gladys Hemple and Alanna Thompson.”

Rick shrugged again. “Alanna was a terrible writer. Overly emotional and bombastic. Gladys, an anachronism.”

“I would think that would be my call to make.” Her words came out clipped. Tight.

“Would you have cut them?”

Becky held his gaze, trying to distance himself from the harshness of Rick’s words, so close to what he had said about her own writing.

“I don’t know. I guess it would have depended on this ‘vision’ we are going to talk about right now.”

“They don’t fit. I would have told you to cut them anyhow.”

Becky held his gaze, realizing that she was dealing with a far different sort of publisher than Nelson and his easygoing approach.

“And who or what are we going to replace them with?”

“I’ve got a guy lined up to do a weekly column. Gavin Stoddard.”

Becky struggled to keep smiling. To stay positive as her brain scrambled for words that weren’t confrontational. “Gavin has a rather cynical take on Okotoks. What would he do a column on?”

“He’s on the local chamber of commerce. He has a thriving business in an area that’s expanding. He’s exactly the kind of person that can give some helpful advice to other businesses.”

“So that’s your focus? Business?”

Rick leaned forward. “In order to increase advertising revenue, we have to make the magazine appealing to the business sector of our readership.”

“But more ads means fewer features. That would make it…” She stopped just short of saying “boring.” Too confrontational.

“Make it what?”

She waved the comment aside. “I would like to get back to Alanna and Gladys. Please let me know before you do something like that again, so we can discuss this together.” She held her ground, knowing that she was
right. “It makes my job difficult otherwise. I’m still editor and I prefer that we work together.”

Rick swayed in his chair, his finely shaped mouth curved into a humorless smile. “Do you think that can happen?” he asked.

Becky accepted the challenge in his gaze even as she thought of the book she couldn’t finish. She needed this job for now, but she wasn’t going to get pushed around.

“I think it can. As long as we keep talking.”

But even as she spoke the words, Becky realized he had been right about one thing that he had said earlier.

Twelve months was going to be far too long.

The day had disappeared, Rick thought, looking up at the darkening sky with a flash of regret.

This morning, when he came to the office, the sun was a shimmer of light in the east, the dark diminishing in the west. Now the bright orange globe hovered over the western horizon. In the east, the dark was now gaining.

While he was tied to his desk, dealing with reluctant employees, courting new advertisers, wrestling with his editor over the new plan for this magazine, the sun had stolen across the sky and he had lost an entire day.

Glowering, he walked to his vehicle, a battered and rusty Jeep. He patted its dented hood, as if commiserating with it. “Only eleven months and twenty days to go,” he murmured, “and we can be on the road again.
Outside
during the day, the way we should be.” He glanced around once more. The town looked complacent this time of evening. Most people were, he was
sure, sitting at the dinner table, eating with their families.

Domestic bliss.

An oxymoron as far as he was concerned. When he and his mother lived with Colson, all he remembered of domesticity were large cold rooms that echoed as he walked to the wing of the house that his grandfather had set aside for Rick and his mother. He remembered sad music and the sounds of his mother’s muffled crying.

When she died, Rick’s life became a round of boarding schools during the year, and nannies and housekeepers over the summer months.

Colson remained a shadowy figure in Rick’s life. A figure to whom Rick spent most of his youth trying to gain access. And trying to please.

Rick did a monthly book review column for his grandfather’s magazine, one of Colson’s many enterprises, as a way of acknowledging Colson’s contribution to his education. Through it he enjoyed the chance to take a contrary view of some of the more popular literary works lauded by other critics.

But it was traveling that ignited a passion in him he didn’t feel for anyone or anything else. It provided a ready-made conduit for his articles, and the money they made him became a way to finance more trips. He usually found time to make semiannual duty trips back to Toronto to connect with his editor and, of course, to see his grandfather.

Going home always turned to be a straightforward debriefing of what he had done, how he was doing. But in the past year Colson had been getting more involved
in Rick’s life—putting increased pressure on him to join the family enterprise, inviting him to supper, with eligible young women in attendance.

This put Rick in a quandary. He felt he owed his grandfather, but at the same time didn’t think he had to mold his entire life around Colson’s whims. It came to an ugly head in a confrontation, which led Colson to offer Rick this ultimatum. Bring this small-town magazine Colson had bought on a whim to profitability in twelve months and Colson would leave him alone for the rest of his life. That was all Colson required of him and Rick had reluctantly accepted. It was only the thought that he wouldn’t have to listen to Colson’s tired lectures on Christian faith and Rick’s lack of it that made Rick accept this position.

Rick stopped at one of the few streetlights in town and glanced over at the café, the lights and the bustle within luring him on. He was hungry but didn’t feel like eating alone in the furnished apartment he had rented. At least at Coffee’s On, the crowd would provide some semblance of company.

The café was surprisingly full, this time of evening. Rick paused in the doorway, letting the clink of cutlery, the chatter of conversation wash over him. He nodded at the owner of a car dealership he had met yesterday on his trip with the sales team around town, smiled at one of the waitresses who hustled past him.

He glanced around the café looking for an empty table. As he walked farther inside he spotted one beside Becky Ellison.

Becky sat at her table, chin in hand, staring out the
window, her laptop open in front of her. The overhead light caught flashes of red in her auburn hair, burnished her skin glowing peach.

When she had bustled into the meeting room, that first morning, late, laden with papers, coffee and a muffin, he couldn’t help feel a frisson of energy and attraction. There was something beguiling about her that drew his eyes, his attention to her. He didn’t want to be as firm with her as he had, but the magazine staff had been working together for some time, making him the interloper.

Something that was made fairly clear to him the first time he and his editor spoke.

Antagonism radiated from her from the moment she raised her hazel eyes to his. And in most of the meetings since then the feeling only seemed to grow.

But tonight there were no other empty places, so with some resignation Rick walked over to the table beside hers and sat down.

Becky’s gaze was averted so she didn’t see him. She wore her hair down today instead of pulled back in her usual clip. A half smile played over her lips as she absently toyed with her hair.

If it wasn’t for the fact that Rick knew Becky didn’t care much for him, he’d be more attracted than he was.

“Coffee?” The waitress came between his table and Becky’s and he looked up.

“No. Just a glass of water. And you can bring me the special.”

Her wide smile gave Rick’s ego a light boost.

The sound had broken Becky’s reverie. As if waking from a dream, she blinked, straightened up, then looked around.

Rick could tell the instant she saw him. Once again the smile faded and once again he was treated to a detachment that negated the little lift he’d gotten just seconds ago.

“Hey, there,” he said, leaning back in his chair. He folded his arms across his chest, a defensive gesture, he had to admit. “Taking work home?”

Becky glanced at her computer and gently closed the top, a surprising flush coloring her cheeks. She looked as if he had caught her doing something illegal. “No. Just a writing project I’ve been spending my scant spare time on.” Her tone was careful, almost resentful.

Writing project. Obviously not work, or she would have said so. Formless thoughts tumbled through his head.

“What kind of writing project?” he asked, intrigued in spite of himself.

“A book.”

“That takes a lot of time.”

“Exactly. Trouble is, I can’t seem to find the time.”

Rick grinned. “One thing I learned is that you don’t find time to write. You make time and then defend it. You’ll never get a book written by ‘finding’ time.”

“I have written one book already,” Becky said, her voice taking on a defensive note.

“Really? What kind?”

She lifted her chin in a defensive gesture. “Fiction.”

Rick could only look at her as his thoughts coalesced. Becky.
Rebecca.
“You wrote a book called
Echoes.
”

She nodded.

“I did a review of one of your books, didn’t I? For my grandfather’s magazine?”

Becky’s only response was to look away, but he knew he was right. He remembered now.

“I gather the review wasn’t favorable.” He couldn’t remember the details of what he had written. The editor of his grandfather’s magazine liked Rick’s reviews because he wasn’t afraid to go against the grain and pronounce a currently popular literary novel prose without purpose.

Obviously he had done just that with Becky’s book.

“‘Wasn’t favorable’?” she repeated, fixing him with a steady gaze. “Try unnecessarily cutting. Or sarcastic.” She looked like she was about to say something more, but she pressed her lips together.

Rick let her words wash over him as he had done with other authors and authors’ fans. He refused to take her seriously, his opinion was his own opinion, and as he tried to explain again and again, it was one opinion. If writers couldn’t take criticism, they had better try something else.

“So it’s not because I’m some Eastern interloper that you tend to be slightly ticked off at me.”

Becky angled her head to one side, as if studying him. “That, too.”

Rick leaned forward and cocked her a wry grin. “Get used to it, sweetie. I’m around for a while.”

She held his gaze, her eyes steady. “Don’t call me ‘sweetie,’” she said quietly. “It’s insincere.”

Was it?

Maybe she wasn’t a “sweetie,” per se—her tawny eyes and crooked grin negated that image—but there was definitely something about her that appealed. In spite of her off-putting attitude. “Maybe I’m teasing,” he said.

“Maybe you should be nice.”

“You could teach me.” The comment sounded lame, but he couldn’t think of anything snappier to say.

“Well, you know the saying, if you can’t say something nice, become a reporter.”

He couldn’t stop his burst of laughter. “You are in the right job.”

The waitress came just then with his order. “Here you go. I hope you enjoy.” She gave him a broad smile, lingered just long enough to show her interest but not long enough to create an embarrassing situation, and was gone. But she didn’t hold his interest.

The woman who did was packing up, and to his surprise, Rick felt a twinge of disappointment. It had been a while since he’d spent any time with a pretty woman. An even longer time with one who didn’t seem to be afraid to challenge him.

“The muse desert you?” he asked, unwrapping his utensils.

“She’s been a bit flighty lately.” Becky slipped her laptop into a knapsack.

“You’re so fond of mottoes, surely you know that for writers, when the going gets tough…” Rick let the sentence trail off.

“The tough writers huddle under their desk chewing the cuffs of their sleeves,” Becky finished off for him.

He couldn’t help it. He laughed again.

She slipped her knapsack over her shoulder and pulled her hair loose from the straps, shooting him an oblique smile as she did so. With a muttered “See you tomorrow,” she left.

As she wended her way through the tables, someone called out her name and she responded, her smile genuine now. She stopped at one table to chat someone up, waved at another person across the café and joked with Katherine Dubowsky, the owner of Coffee’s On, while she paid her bill.