Private Pleasures (21 page)
"It should go quick," Wendy said, trying to stop moisture flooding her eyes and nose. "Even in a crappy market, you've got such a great location." Her voice broke on the last. She tried to cover it up with a cough then totally gave herself up with a loud sniff.
"Hey now," Drew said, cupping her cheek and urging her to meet his gaze. "I never thought Wendy Carmichael was one for tears."
"I'm not," she said, trying and failing to scrub them away. His own eyes were dry, but there were dark shadows in their stormy gray depths. "It's just—" she closed her eyes, pressed her lips together, trying desperately to hold back the words she didn't want to say out loud, didn't want to admit even to herself. "I'm going to miss you. So much." She sat up, looking him square in the face as she made her confession. "I really didn't think I would. I just thought we'd have fun, and when it came time for you to go, time for us to end it, I'd be ready. But I'm not."
"I'm not ready either," he murmured and tangled his fingers with hers. "You know, there's nothing preventing us from continuing to see each other."
"Easier said than done with me here and you in Boston," Wendy said.
His fingers tightened around hers. "There's phones, emails, Skype… and last time I checked there were at least a dozen direct flights a day between San Francisco and Boston."
Wendy's breath froze in her chest as she felt like she was being crushed by a huge weight. Weight of her desire, shocking in its intensity, to do exactly what he suggested.
And even more, the weight of her certainty that it would never work out. "Come on, with my schedule and you taking over as CEO, you know there will barely be time to send an email much less hop on a plane. Why delay the inevitable?"
His mouth pulled into a tight line, but he didn't say anything, and his grip on her hands didn't soften.
"Besides," Wendy said with little laugh that sounded forced even to her own ears, "chances are as soon as you land in Boston you'll have hoards of hot young things wanting to know all about the new guy in town. Just wait, two weeks, tops, and you'll have forgotten all about me.
Something flared in his eyes, anger mingled with hurt, but it was gone so quickly she wondered if she'd imagined it. Replaced by a tight smile that didn't quite reach his eyes that had gone cold and hard as cement. "Yeah, you're probably right."
Though she'd been expecting it, his words hit her like a spike through her chest. As he released her hands and swung his legs over the side of the bed, Wendy sat there, frozen in place, feeling like a hole had opened up in her chest and her heart was pumping it full of blood.
The sight of Drew pulling on his pants snapped her back to life. "You're leaving already? It's not even nine o'clock yet."
He buttoned his pants and shrugged on his shirt. "My flight's at the crack of dawn, and I have some last minute things to take care of," he said, not bothering to meet her gaze as his fingers quickly moved over the buttons.
Wendy grabbed her robe and followed him out of her room, every cell protesting as he slipped on his shoes and pulled on his coat. A thousand pleas swirled through her head, each one more illogical and impossible than the last.
Tell me to screw work and beg me to come with you. Forget about Boston and stay with me. Promise me you won't find anyone else because I know I never will.
But she said none of these things, silently following him to the front door where he paused and held out his hand.
She flung herself against him, unable to stop herself as she threw her arms around his waist and held onto him for dear life. He hesitated a second, but then his arms were around her and he was holding her as tightly as she did him.
His deep sigh and heavy swallow as he buried his face in her hair told her that despite his cavalier reply to her flip remark, he wasn't any less affected than she was.
He tilted her face up to his and kissed her so sweetly she felt a fresh wash of tears in her eyes. "You take care of yourself, okay?"
Wendy nodded as she sniffed. "You too."
He released her and stepped back. "I hope you get everything you want out of life, Wendy. You deserve it."
But as she watched him leave, she had the horrible feeling that everything she really wanted had just walked out of her life for good.
One Month Later
"Congratulations," Cooper said as he reached out to shake her hand. "You've worked hard. You deserve it." She watched the eyes of her colleagues widen at the unprecedented praise.
"Thank you sir," Wendy said as she pumped his hand, but even Cooper's praise couldn't make her smile feel less strained as he released her hand and made way for the next well-wisher.
She'd just been named partner at Chapman, Cooper & Winters, the youngest associate to do so in the firm's history. The announcement had been made earlier today, and now she and several of the firm's partners and senior associates were celebrating with drinks at the Top of the Mark, located, as its name suggested, at the top of the Mark Hopkins hotel.
It was one of San Francisco's oldest and most popular drinking spots, the kind of place you went when you really wanted to celebrate.
But as she nodded absently at something one of the partners said and looked past him at the spectacular view of the city, Wendy had to keep reminding herself that this was one of the best days of her life. The day she'd dreamed of for so long, when she was finally rewarded for the years of toil and got exactly what she'd worked so hard for.
Exactly what she'd wanted.
Yet as she sipped her drink and accepted more rounds of congratulations, she couldn't deny that this latest victory felt hollow. As hollow as her chest where her heart had once been. The blue funk that had settled over her the night Drew left hadn't eased in the month that had passed, but had instead gotten more severe.
She'd never felt this down after a breakup, not even when Alan—who she'd been happily planning to spend the rest of her life with—called off their engagement and married someone else.
In an effort to distract herself she'd thrown herself into work, even more so than before as she tried to drown out memories of Drew, his hands on her skin, his lips on hers, his laugh as he took whatever she dished up and gave it right back to her.
And it had all paid off, exactly how she'd planned. Except she'd never counted on how crappy she'd feel when her dreams finally came true.
As the partners started to disperse—their families were waiting for them in large houses scattered across the wealthy neighborhoods of Marin to the North, the Peninsula to the south, and the hills of Piedmont to the east—she told herself she should call her family and Julie to let them know the good news. Or call Courtney to come meet her to help her celebrate.
Instead, as she pulled out her phone she found herself dialing the number of the only person she wanted to talk to right now.
She felt a pathetic thrill when she heard his voice in the recorded greeting as her call went to voicemail. As she had every single call she'd made to him in the last month. And when he called her back, inevitably she'd be unable to pick up, and he'd leave a message of his own.
Thirty days and nearly that many calls, and the closest they'd come to speaking live was when she'd only missed his call by two minutes. They kept up through email and texts, but the need to hear his voice was getting so bad it was like a physical ache.
"You're receiving this call from the newest partner at Chapman, Cooper & Winters," she said trying to keep her voice light as she forced it past the lump that seemed to have taken up permanent residence in her throat. "So yeah, I did it, just like you said I would." Just yesterday Drew had sent her an email in response to her "wish me luck" message as her review approached.
You've got it nailed and you know it,
he'd written back with all the confidence she couldn't seem to muster.
"Exciting day and all that," she continued, "so I'm heading home for the night if you want to try to call." She checked her watch. It was eight here, so that meant it was eleven in Boston. If he wasn't answering his phone he was either asleep or... busy.
Though Wendy had taken a "don't ask don't tell" approach, she didn't kid herself that Drew had spent the last month alone. She knew first hand how big his appetites were. There was no way he would be celibate for long.
Just thinking about it hit her with such force it felt like the wind was being knocked out of her.
She hung up and went home, where her dark, empty apartment greeted her with all the warmth of an iceberg.
The next day, she noticed several raised eyebrows as she walked into work. When she reached her new office she saw why: a huge bouquet of deep red roses—at least four dozen— sat smack in the middle of her desk.
Wendy gave a little smile as she reached for the card.
Congratulations, killer. Never let anyone hold you back.
She could practically hear his voice, so vivid was the memory. God, she wanted to see him, smell him, feel his arms around her as he said the words in person. Wanted it more than she'd wanted anything in her entire life.
As she read the closing, the card blurred in front of her.
Love, Drew.
Love Drew.
Even though it was nothing but a meaningless courtesy, the words rang through her head like a thunderclap. Love Drew.
She loved him. Had loved him almost from the start, she realized in a moment of clarity so jarring she had to brace herself against her desk to keep from falling to the berber carpet that adorned her floor.
She loved him, and instead of trying to figure out a way to make it work no matter what obstacles stood in between them, she'd let him walk out of her life. Scratch that—she'd practically pushed him out of her life and all but ordered him to go forth and screw other women.
She barely managed to close the door of her fancy new office before she burst into tears.
###
"I'm really sorry about this, Drew. I tried to get them to understand you were right, but those assholes outvoted me."
Drew sat at the bar across from Travis Unger, a partner at Paradigm, who was on the board of Silverlight where until today's board meeting Drew had served as CEO. "That's how these things go. They told me they brought me in here to turn it around and didn't want to face the reality of what they needed to do to make that happened."
It hadn't taken Drew more than a week in his new role to realize that the severity of Silverlight's problems ran a lot deeper than he'd even suspected. He'd known going in that he'd need to do some housecleaning on the executive team and that there were some major hiccups and fuckups when it came to getting new software releases out to the customer.
He'd relished the challenge. Taking something hopeless and turning it around was what he did best. Not to mention the long hours and heavy travel would provide the distraction he would need to keep from obsessing over Wendy.
Keep him from wallowing around, licking the wound she'd so carelessly delivered when she'd brushed off his suggestion that they try to keep this thing going even after he left for Boston. Letting him know in her casually cruel way that not only was she not up to making any kind of extra effort, he should feel free to fuck the first woman who offered herself up to him.
And she was presumably equally free to fuck the first man who caught her interest.
He'd dived in head first, gone over every aspect of the business with a fine-toothed comb until he knew every last bit of it backwards and forwards. Though that had taken up an average of a hundred hours a week for the past month, it had still left him plenty of time to think about Wendy.
Plenty of time to imagine her waiting for him to show up at her apartment after work. To remember the way she hurled herself into his arms, the way her mouth would open eagerly under his as her hands tugged and pulled at his clothing.
To remember the feel of her skin sliding against his, the taste of her coming hot and sweet against his mouth.
The husky sound of her laughter when she laughed at something he said. The way it had felt to sleep—actually sleep with her—that first time in Tahoe. Waking up and feeling her warmth curled up against his back, her breath deep and heavy with sleep.
That was when he'd known that despite all of his internal assurances that the intensity of his feelings would quickly fade, he was so far past the point of no return with Wendy it was ridiculous.
And while he'd never in his life considered himself a coward, never hesitated to go after anything he wanted, he hadn't done a damn thing to fight for her.
Had been so caught up in his own pride and—though it killed him to admit it—hurt when she'd casually brushed him off, he didn't bother to tell her that she was different from any other woman he'd ever been with.
That she made him feel things he'd never felt before, that she made him want to make her happy. That she wanted to make him try at love, for once as hard as he tried at everything else. What if he'd said all that, instead of agreeing with her that he'd forget her in no time?
But it was too late. He'd left, determined to make good on his commitment to this new venture, as she was committed to reaching her goal of being the youngest partner in her firm's history.
At least, he'd thought it was too late.
"You know, you're taking this really well."
Drew couldn't keep the grin off his face as he drained the last of his scotch.
"Seriously, I think you're the first person I've ever seen who seems happy about getting fired."
It had happened earlier that afternoon, after Drew had presented his plan for turning the company around. One that required, in his opinion, not just some minor housekeeping but essentially a full restart when it came to the executive team, the product strategy, and the core engineers.
To say it had gone over like a lead blanket was an understatement.
And when Drew had laid out the ultimatum—if they didn't let him do what they'd brought him in to do, he was out of there—the board had voted to show him the door.