Risky Business (17 page)

“That's why you color coded the boat reservations on the calendar and use symbols. You can read colors and pictures.”

“Yes. Exactly.”

“That's ingenious.”

His shoulders seemed to relax, as though he'd been worried about her judgment of him. He moved closer to the desk. “I don't think I'd call it ingenious. It sucks, to be honest.”

“Is the condition improving or did it plateau?”

He moved a little bit closer to the desk. “It plateaued a long time ago. It's been almost thirteen years since it happened. I did my time in physical and occupational therapy, years of fighting to regain the brain functioning I'd lost, then years learning tricks to compensate when it became clear that I wasn't going to get any better. I've perfected a system, and it works.”

He said that last part so defensively that she felt an immediate need to defend herself. “Look, I don't know the first thing about business or finance. Until Lowell was arrested, I'd never paid a bill before, not really. I've been taken care of by one person or another my whole life, and I'm not proud of that. In fact, I'm pretty embarrassed about how far into the sand I had my head buried. I refuse to go back to being that person. I don't want you to coddle me with the business and I don't want you to do everything for me. I want to learn, and since you're the one teaching me, show me how you want it done, and that's what we'll do.”

He studied her face as though he was seriously considering her argument. Then he opened a lower desk drawer and brought out a box Allison already knew was full of little cassette tapes because she'd run across them while scouring the drawers looking for paperwork and a calendar. Each cassette was labeled with a different image, symbol or color.

“I can read individual words, but my brain doesn't connect them with a meaning, so I use two different types of recorders to compensate. This old-school cassette recorder for information I need to keep permanently, and I need them to be actual physical tapes so I can label them and find them later. I have a really hard time reading screens like computers or calculators at all, so I use the digital recorder for temporary things, like when I get something in the mail. I can read the words into the recorder, then listen back to understand what I read.”

He picked up the one cassette marked with the tiny image of a check. “When I make a reservation, I record the date, the person's name and the amount on one tape. Then, when I get a check in the mail or a customer brings it in, I read it into a different tape recorder, then at the end of the month, I listen to both and cross-check them. Then, when I get the bank statement, I take it all to Duke and he helps me sort it out as one last double-check.”

That sounded like a whole lot of work to Allison and not a very secure system. It was astounding, all the systems he had in place to cope with his disabilities. She was impressed, if doubtful about her ability to fall into step with them. “That takes a long time.”

“Welcome to my normal. It's not very fun, is it?”

“No. You're right; it sucks. But I also bet you have an incredible memory.”

He shrugged, unfazed by her compliment. “It's like holding your breath. Your lung capacity grows the more you practice.”

She couldn't hold her breath very long, seeing as how she never went willingly into water and she'd long outgrown holding your breath contests.

“I've worked at Cloud Nine for ten years and not much has changed on a day-to-day operating level, which keeps things simple for me.”

No wonder he wanted to buy Cloud Nine. It was his best bet at supporting himself and guaranteeing himself an income for the rest of his working life. No wonder he'd been so threatened by her sudden ownership. In his mind, she was going to mess everything up—his system, his plans. He must have been so scared, feeling that out of control.

She touched his hand. “You've worked for years developing your system. You had a plan and you thought I was going to screw it all up.”

“You did.”

The words were harsh, unexpected. Confused, she took her hand back. With what had happened between them the night before, she'd believed their relationship had changed in a fundamental way. Two people didn't kiss that passionately, then go back to sniping at each other like enemies trapped together in a prison cell.

Shaking his head, he looked away, but whether he was frustrated with himself or her—or the situation—she couldn't tell.

“That didn't come out right,” he said with quiet reserve. “You did screw everything up for me, but I see now that Lowell did the same for you. But with Katie, your options are much more limited. I could get another job. It would be a lot of work setting up new adaptive reading systems, and I'm not qualified for much beyond construction or working on machines, but I only have myself to worry about. A baby changes everything.”

“You're right. She did change everything for me. I don't expect you to agree with me on this or know how I feel, but all I know is that she's worth it. Her future and well-being are worth me fighting with you for this place. She's worth your and my futures' changing course.”

Her eyes stung with a welling of emotion. They both looked at Katie, who was in her activity station, chewing on the fish on the stick, drool dripping from her chin. Perfect, precious baby grossness.

She shook off the heaviness that had fallen over the room. For Katie, to make this business work, they needed to get back to the task at hand. “What about queries from the Internet? I also found a calendar on the computer, but it hasn't been filled out since around the time Shawna quit. I'm assuming we have reservations since May is only two months away . . . I hope, right?”

His attention swung back her way. Clearing his throat, he reached to a drawer along the wall and pulled a spiral-bound calendar from it. Allison had seen it there in her rummaging around, but it didn't have any writing on it, just different colored lines.

“The computer's the worst for me. I can't read on a computer monitor at all, or at least in any functional way. The first thing I did after Shawna quit was get the webmistress to omit our email address from the website. That forces people to call if they want information.”

“Do you make reservations over the phone?”

“Yeah, all the time.”

“How do you keep track of them?”

He picked up the cassette with the little square on it. “I record it while I'm repeating the details to the customer over the phone, then I go to the calendar and figure out which days and which boat they're reserving. Each boat has a different color marker and I put a big dot in each square for the number of days they've reserved it.”

“So you can read the numbers on the calendar?”

“I have to concentrate and wear glasses, but yes, I can read shapes, colors, and individual letters. You could hold up a single letter right now and if I had my glasses on, I could tell you what it is and remember it. I can remember two- and three-letter words for the most part, too. But it's like my brain is this black hole. The words go in and they just disappear.”

“Glasses? I'd like to see them.”

He sighed, frustrated. Clearly, he'd been hoping to avoid this part. But he was a good sport. He reached into the back of the cassette box and pulled out a glasses case. From it, he pulled a pair of stylish, black framed, thick-lensed glasses and slid them on.

From the moment they touched his face, Allison knew she approved. He looked sexy in them. Really sexy.

He looked at her, serious and searching. She smiled back, loving those cute, thick, nerdy glasses on gruff, testosterone-dripping Theo. She had no choice. She had to kiss him.

Allison angled her head and leaned in to Theo, coming in for a kiss. He wasn't opposed to the idea because he'd thought of little else besides kissing her again since the night before, but he didn't get it, why she'd want to kiss him while he was wearing thick, ugly glasses, right after he'd demonstrated his near total incompetence with reading and writing.

Maybe to prove she wasn't scared off or turned off by his disabilities? That possibility gave him an unexpected thrill. He wrapped an arm around her waist, taking over the lead in the kiss. She yielded control, parting her lips for him, letting him sample her mouth. Once, she bumped into the glasses, so he tried to pull them off only to have her stop his efforts. Maybe this wasn't about proving something to him. Maybe Allison just had a thing for guys in glasses. What the hell he did know?

Regardless, he'd never kissed a woman while wearing glasses. Hell, he'd never put them on around a woman other than his doctors and therapists, not even Shawna. When he needed to read, he retired to Lanette or the garage and handled his business in private.

Perhaps a better question other than why Allison had wanted to kiss him was why he'd been compelled to be so goddamn thorough in laying out all the many, ugly intricacies of his disabilities? There were still some ugly parts of his past that he wasn't ready to share with her yet, but he'd never laid his true self so bare before. Forget about never wearing glasses around a woman before, he'd never explained his reading management systems to anyone outside of his occupational therapists. He never, ever talked about his trouble with writing. Why now? Why this particular woman?

He thought back to the way she'd looked at him in the kitchen the night before—as though she got him on a soul level. She'd looked at him like that earlier, before he'd snapped at her. Before she got defensive about Katie, and then again once he put the glasses on. She looked at him like she understood him, even the flaws, and wanted him anyway.

Don't kid yourself. You want her like that, too. Even the flaws.

That was a hell of thing. A first for him, for sure, that his desire for a woman was about more than physical appeal or mutual superficiality. He didn't know what to do about it, because he didn't want casual sex with her. That would be a disaster. It would disrespect her and the odd, wondrous connection that had sparked the night before.

After the kiss ended, she looked apologetic, as though she were gearing up for him to snap at her again, but he knew they were past that part of their relationship for good, no matter what the future held.

“I'm sorry about that. It turns out I like kissing you.” It was the least apologetic apology ever . . . and it made him smile, it was so
Allison
.

Before he could correct her way of thinking, she forged ahead. “I think, moving forward, what you and I need is a truce about the business.”

A truce. So much for being swept away. He was fighting the urge to kiss her senseless and she wanted to negotiate. Did she think the two were somehow linked, like he was coming on to her as a manipulation technique? “What would be involved in this truce?”

With her gaze roving from his shoulder down his arm, she sighed in a way that told him she'd given it a lot of thought. “Lanette.”

His heart gave a squeeze. “What about Lanette?”

“I haven't been able to find a deed for it or any record of sale, so my plan is to have a change in ownership contract drawn up. That's your home and it deserves to be yours outright.”

His mouth went dry. Lanette was the one of the main reasons he hadn't quit after Allison arrived—because a man didn't just give up his home when the going got rough. And now she was handing it to him. That was more than a truce. That was her giving up her main bargaining chip without even realizing it.

But he no longer had it in him to bargain with her, or worse, threaten to sue her if she didn't sell to him. He no longer wanted to take Lanette, flip Destiny Falls and Cloud Nine the proverbial bird, and skip town. Now that he'd kissed her, now that he understood how vulnerable and precarious her life and future were, the idea of demanding that she sell the business to him or he'd walk away didn't feel right anymore. The plan felt dastardly, if he was being honest. He couldn't be ruthless with her. Lowell Whitley had been ruthless to her. The world had been ruthless to her. Not Theo, too.

“You want me to buy Lanette from you?” he asked.

“No. I'm giving her to you. Or, more accurately, righting a wrong. Lowell should have done this for you years ago, and I'm sorry he didn't.”

“What do you want from me in return?”

“I want you to stay. Manage Cloud Nine. Kiss me a lot.”

He thought about the letter from Lowell pledging the business to him. He thought about the years of sweat and effort he'd put in to this place. He thought about his reading and writing problems and how difficult it would be to find another employer who would hire him despite his disabilities, especially a job that paid the bills. Not impossible, but so much work it exhausted him to consider it.

All he knew were two things: one, that he couldn't leave Allison to sink or swim without his help, and, two, that he couldn't live like this for much longer. He couldn't have his life, his job, and his home at the mercy of a woman who stirred up so much chaos inside him.

He wanted too much from her—the business, sex, and a thousand other things. He simultaneously wished she'd never come into his life and wished she'd never leave. But she was here to stay, and though he loathed that she needed his help, he had this nagging, gut instinct, as he had last night, that he was fated to this purpose, that everything he'd been through in his life—the pressure, the scorn of his family, war, his injuries—had put him in a unique position to help her figure out how to stand on her own two feet.

As soon as he got back to Lanette, he'd phone Oscar and call off the lawsuit. From that moment forward, Theo decided that he had a new agenda—keeping Allison Whitley from drowning again, this time in a situation of her own making.

“Should we shake on it?” he asked.

“You mean kiss on it?”

“Yes. That's exactly what I meant.”

***

Allison smiled as soon as she stepped foot in the Iceplex. She took a deep breath through her nose, loving the scent of dampness and icy chill for the first time in her life. Katie, riding on Allison's hip, clapped. She loved this place, too.

She'd kept a close eye on Katie's temperature throughout the day. Her fever hadn't returned and, though she had a sniffly nose, she didn't seem to be sick or run-down, so Allison decided she was clear to go to the hockey game that night. Katie had loved being at the game the week before and had even slept in the next morning, which had been a rare treat and worth a repeat attempt tonight.

“Uh, why did we stop?” It was Chelsea, who'd surprised Allison by wanting to tag along.

She'd been acting weirdly all day, distant in that way that told Allison she might be about to fly the coop. She claimed she wanted to go to the game so that if Katie's fever returned or her sniffles made her cranky, then Chelsea could take her home so Allison could stay and enjoy herself, but Allison wondered if she was trying to cram in some extra sister bonding time to butter Allison up for when she dropped the bomb that she was leaving.

Allison would miss her, but she knew the drill. She might even see if she could scrounge up some traveling money for Chelsea as a parting gift until the next time she breezed through Destiny Falls.

“Just taking it all in, Chels. I love this place.”

“Okay.” Chelsea drew out the word in a tone that said she thought Allison had lost her marbles.

The players weren't warming up on the ice yet, but she could see from the entrance that Harper was already in her seat at the scorekeeper's table. Allison had secured the choice seating next to her again by asking Harper to teach her how to keep the official score. Behind Harper, Marlena, Olivia, and Presley already had beers. Presley was telling an animated story.

“Oooh, a snack shack,” Chelsea said. “You get seats, I'll get nachos.”

“Pick me up a beer, too, would you?”

Chelsea's eyes widened, impressed. “Hockey players
and
booze? I think I love this place.”

Allison walked to her seat with one eye on the closed locker room door, giddy with nerves about seeing Theo in uniform once more, even though she had no idea where the two of them stood. When she'd gotten in her car that evening, the gas tank had been full, even though the night before, the empty light had been on. The windshield wiper didn't squeak anymore, either.

The quiet gestures had touched her, even though she was determined to handle her own business. Her parents, Janie, and Grant had hovered over her for the whole of her life, like she was fragile and incapable of caring for herself. Lowell had, too. But it was sweet and such a testament to the caring, good man that Theo was behind all his bluster that he'd taken care of her car like that. She wished she could thank him, but she knew better than that. She'd have to find another way, something less direct that perhaps involved kissing.

After their kiss that morning and his acceptance of her truce offering of Lanette, they'd gotten a call from folks in Virginia looking to make reservations. Theo had walked her through his process, which they'd repeated when another call came an hour later. With his help, she'd created a cheat sheet about his color coding system; then he'd used the boat diagrams she printed out from Cloud Nine's website to give her a virtual tour of the boats so she'd be better equipped to handle callers' questions.

What she hadn't let on, or allowed herself to think excessively about until after he'd left for the team's pre-game meeting and warm-ups, was how unnerving it made her to have Theo handling the rental contracts and payments because it was hard for him to keep track of payments or tell if he'd been paid the correct amount.

She didn't care one whit about his disabilities, other than her frustration on his behalf that he had to deal with them, because there was so much more to Theo than what that roadside bomb had taken away from him, starting with the whole new side to him he'd let her see since their trip to Walmart the night before. He was tender and vulnerable and so, so sexy behind the gruff exterior he used as a shield.

The trouble with the newness of his confession and the change in their relationship was that she didn't think his system was efficient or necessary now that she'd be the one running the office, while he focused on the boats. It only made sense for her to put a new reservation and payment system in place that was easier for her to manage. He'd admitted to being worried that her ownership meant that she'd mess up his system, but that was exactly what she needed to do, moving forward into Cloud Nine's tourist season.

The thought of talking to him about that gave her a knot in her stomach, so she gave herself permission to worry about Cloud Nine later, determined to enjoy the hockey game to its fullest extent.

All her friends greeted her and Katie enthusiastically when she got to her seat. Allison had brought a baby seat that attached to the table, which Katie was loving. It was so much nicer for Allison to have her torso free to twist and talk to her friends or clap or lean into the table. For her part, Katie had a grand time pounding on the table and being so close to the action.

“I was just talking about you behind your back,” Harper said, smiling to let Allison know it wasn't anything to be concerned about.

Allison had already filled them in about the whore bed destruction and bonfire at the last game, and they pretty much knew all the rest of her dirt. What she wasn't up for sharing was the new developments in her and Theo's relationship. She didn't know what they were, but she was sure it was none of anybody's business, not even their friends at that point. Because it might be nothing. It might end with the wonderment of how delicious and satisfying it was to kiss the other. She hoped not, but she wasn't exactly worldly when it came to the whole dating experience.

“Were you telling them how fast I ate that stew you brought over the other night? That was fantastic, by the way.”

“Thank you, but no. Olivia was curious about why you hadn't changed your last name, so I was telling them. I hope you don't mind.”

“I just can't believe you were with a man like Lowell. He wasn't your type at all,” Olivia said. “I'm sorry if I overstepped.”

Allison waved off her apology. “Not at all. My life with Lowell feels like a bad dream most of the time. We were terrible together, but he gave me Katie, so I can't regret it. And without me marrying Lowell, I would have never moved to Destiny Falls.”

“You're liking it here?” Presley asked.

“I am, very much.”

“It was a tough start, I know, but we're getting Cloud Nine's finances in order and I think you're going to do great.”

Presley was a terrific accountant, competent and cheerful, and Allison thanked her lucky stars that Harper had recommended her to take over from Lowell's accountant. The two of them had met a few times already, but there wasn't much for her to do yet except get organized and make sure all the taxes and bills had been paid like they were supposed to have been. It was enough to put Allison's mind at ease, especially now that Theo had started showing her the ropes in the office.

Marlena set a hand on Allison's shoulder. “Don't be hard on yourself about Lowell. Everything happens for a reason, even our mistakes. Especially our mistakes.”

Allison knew Marlena meant that to be comforting, but to Allison, it only served as a reminder of how little control they each had over their own lives, a reminder that a force beyond their control would always be pushing on them in one direction or another, as if they were boats in the ocean.