Sparks Fly (10 page)

“My mother told you.”

Angelina knew she had hit a tender spot, but she refused to back down so easily. “During our consultation, I couldn’t help but let her know how much I loved her work, especially the painting in the guest bedroom. She told me you were the painter. Your art is so wonderful, Will. How could you have stopped painting?”

“I never stood a chance out there in the art world.”

“And just what evidence do you have for that?”

“What was I supposed to do? Get some galleries to hang up my paintings in the unlikely chance that someone would want to buy them, while my mother worked day and night to support me?”

Angelina swallowed hard, but held his gaze. “Yes. I think that was exactly what you were supposed to do.”

* * *

Angelina could see that Will was uncomfortable with the way their conversation had gone. She felt bad for pushing him, knew that was one of her greatest faults. A Feng Shui consultant was simply supposed to observe and make suggestions. She'd always been far too invested in what her clients ended up doing.

More than anything, she wanted to see Will happy.

“I'm sorry,” she said in a soft voice. “I shouldn't have said that.”

He was silent for a long moment. Finally, he said, “You surprise me at every turn, Angelina. It's not a bad thing. Not at all.”

She reached out for his hands, but holding them wasn't enough. The kiss that came next wasn't enough either.

Since the moment she'd met this man, she'd been fighting her attraction to him. But now, it was more than pure desire that drove her. She was falling in love with him.

And she wanted more.

She stood up. Holding her out her hands to him again, she waited until he was standing in front of her.

“I'm so glad I saw your lake. Your paintings. That I was able to meet your mother.”

“I am too, Angelina.”

Slowly, she led him away from their seats, toward the back of the plane.

To the on board bedroom.

* * *

They spent the next several hours kissing, touching, giving and getting pleasure in the small bedroom. There were no words of love between them, but Angelina tried to convince herself that they didn't need to speak them aloud.

Not when they were saying everything they needed to with their bodies.

When the pilot’s voice came on over the intercom, telling them they would be landing in twenty minutes, they dressed quietly, and buckled themselves back into their seats without a word.

“Just in case I get too wrapped up in dealing with the mess at the office, I want you to know I’m thinking of you. Always.”

Angelina nodded. “Me too,” she said, too caught up with emotion to say anything more.

“My legal counsel is already here,” he said, apologetically, as he helped her down the steps to the tarmac. “Do you mind if I have my driver take you home?”

Angelina regretted that their idyll had come to an end. The real world had intruded much too soon.

“That's fine.”

Will bent down to give her a kiss filled with promise, then walked her over to his limo. And as he watched her drive away, more than anything he wished he could go home with her instead of driving straight into corporate warfare.

For the next two weeks, Angelina thought of little else but Will. Again and again she replayed their sweet and sensual lovemaking, their wonderful conversations, their spin on the Ferris wheel.

Krista tried to pick up the slack in Angelina’s life, getting into the habit of just ‘dropping by’ for coffee, or a walk, or the inevitable shopping trip. What great irony, it was, Angelina thought later, that the bomb should fall on her in the mall.

In the middle of trying on some designer shoes at Bloomingdale's, Krista suddenly dropped the pair she was trying on to the floor. “I need to go to the bathroom. Now.”

She dragged Angelina up the escalator and around the formal wear section into the ladies room.

“Quick. Give me a tampon,” Krista said, holding her hands out to Angelina expectantly.

Angelina frowned. “I don’t have any on me.”

“You always get your period two days before me.”

Angelina did some quick calculating. “I don’t have my period, Kris.”

“No way. You’re regular as clockwork.”

Slumping down into the beaten leather seat in the lounge outside the stall, Angelina felt her world shatter.

“I didn’t exactly tell you the whole story about what happened in New York. On the plane, actually.” Angelina put her head in her hands for a few moments and then looked up, staring blankly at the wall behind her friend. She whispered, “We had sex.”

“On the plane? You slept with Will on his private jet?”

“Yes. It was my idea. I just couldn't wait anymore.” She looked up at her friend. “Happy now that you know everything?”

“Only if it was great sex,” Krista said, managing to prompt a laugh out of Angelina.

“The best.” Angelina slumped deeper into her chair. “What if I’m pregnant?”

Minutes later, they were standing in front of the row of pregnancy tests at the nearby pharmacy.

Angelina felt faint.

“Kris, what am I doing here?”

“Don’t worry, sweetie. I’ll be here with you every step of the way.” Krista pointed to a bright pink and blue striped box. “This is the one I’ve seen the commercial for.”

“The one where the perfect couple is deliriously happy and can’t wait to add a perfect baby to their perfect life?”

“That’s the one.” Krista swiped it off of the counter and walked up to the checkout line.

Mutely, she followed her best friend out onto the sidewalk. “Thanks for buying that for me.”

“No problem, Ang. You shouldn’t have to buy this for yourself. It's even worse than buying your first condoms when you’re still in high school.”

Angelina raised an eyebrow. “I was in college.”

“Speak for yourself. I was in junior high.”

Angelina laughed. “You were not, you big bragger.”

But when they got in Krista’s car, with the ominous package on her lap, Angelina couldn’t keep up the smile.

What if the line was blue?

* * *

Angelina peed on the strip and prayed for pink. After all, she reasoned, she’d been under a lot of stress, which could have made her a few days late.

“I can’t take it anymore,” Krista said, pushing the door open and grabbing the indicator strip off of the counter, but Angelina had already seen the results for herself and slipped down the cold tiles onto the floor.

Tears spilled down her cheeks. Krista squatted down to rock Angelina gently back and forth, murmuring that everything was going to be okay.

“No,” Angelina said, wiping the tears from her face with the back of her hands. “Everything isn’t going to be okay.”

Krista refused to listen. “Once you tell Will, he’ll be thrilled, and...”

“He never wants to have kids,” Angelina sobbed, wiping at her nose with the back of her hand.

“People are always using him because he's rich and famous. He'll think I got pregnant to get at his money.”

“Scoot over,” Krista said, sitting next to Angelina on the floor of her bathroom. “So maybe he said he didn’t want kids, but he’s crazy about you and he'd never think something like that.”

In an instant, Angelina knew what she had to do. “I’m not going to tell him. Not yet. Not until I get my life in order.”

“You have to tell him, Ang.”

“I will eventually, I promise. I’m going to have this baby and I’m going to love it so much, but I’m not going to force Will to be a part of it.”

“What are you doing?” Krista said as Angelina stood up, walked to her office, and turned on her computer.

“I’m finding a house to rent on Wishing Lake and then I’m leaving. As soon as possible.”

Krista stood staring at Angelina. “Wait a minute. You don’t want to tell Will about the baby yet, but you’re going to move to the lake his mother lives on? Won’t she know something’s up when your belly turns into a beach ball?”

“It’s not Joyce’s fault that Will doesn’t want children. I know she’ll be the best grandmother in the world. And besides, we both know it’s time for me to leave suburbia. I need to be a part of nature again.” Angelina finished explaining and glanced up at her friend. “Are you going to help me or just stand there looking confused?”

“Give me the phone,” Krista said. “I’ve got some realtors to call.”

* * *

Will felt like his world had turned upside down. He was knee-deep in the most complex financial and legal negotiations of his career and all he could think about was Angelina. He was sure at least one of the twenty people crammed into the airless boardroom must have picked up on his unusual inattention by now.

Worse still, he had started doodling on his yellow notepad during the endless discussions. Will hadn’t even noticed he was drawing until Jerry, his lead counsel who was seated next to him at the helm of the large oval table, leaned over and said, “Hey, that’s a pretty good likeness of Bob you’ve drawn there,” with a chuckle.

Will snapped out of his fog and looked down at his notepad. He had drawn a comical, yet accurate caricature of the offending orator, complete with bulging nose, bushy eyebrows, and a waistline that had wolfed down one too many power lunches.

Hastily, he turned to a fresh page and silently chewed himself out for not keeping closer tabs on his attention. The fate of his company was at stake, he reminded himself sternly. Couldn’t he put up with a few days of stale air and lifeless discussions in order to get things back on track?

Shaking the muddled thoughts and pictures from his head, he struggled to focus on the business at hand. But he found the only way he could hold onto his sanity was by keeping his pen busy on the paper, capturing his version of the events as they unfolded.

Will thought he had completely squashed all remaining urges to create art when he'd packed up his brushes that last year of college. He was amazed to find that suddenly, in the most unlikely of circumstances, his hands and mind wanted to create with a vengeance. After nearly twenty years away from art, he was increasingly drawn to seeing what he could come up with next, with only a pen and paper as his tools.

While he drew and listened with one ear, he thought about how much he missed Angelina.

During the past two weeks, he had barely found the time to call her each evening to check in for a minute or two. It was selfish of him, but he desperately needed to hear her voice each day. When things got really crazy behind closed doors, when voices were raised with threats, and brows were being mopped up at the end of the latest round, Will found that just thinking of Angelina and the short time they had spent together made it feel like less of a do-or-die situation.

Interestingly, Will’s detachment was throwing his detractors off course. Instead of being the admitted corporate shark he had been for the past decade, he was letting his opponents flail about helplessly by not taking up arms against them. It was yet another thing that he had to thank Angelina for.

Just as this thought crossed his mind, the negotiations escalated to a fever pitch. Excusing himself, he left the room and walked down the hallway until he was outside breathing in fresh air in the parking lot. Moving to lean against the trunk of a tree, he pulled out his cell phone and dialed Angelina’s number.

“Damn it,” he thought when he got her voice mail. He needed to talk to her, needed to hear her voice.

He didn't know when exactly she had become so important to him. Just that she was.

“Angelina,” he said, knowing better than to hang up without leaving a message this time, “I’m calling to let you know that I may be out of touch for another few days.” He paused trying to gather his thoughts. “Things here are at the breaking point and I’ve got to head deep into the trenches until the war is won.” He laughed softly into the phone, his only smile in days. “Sorry about the war metaphors.

I guess they don’t call it corporate warfare for nothing.” He was getting way off track so he cleared his throat and said, “What I’m trying to say is I miss you. And even if I don’t call you for a while I’m thinking about you every moment. And I...”

Mid-sentence, he stopped speaking, realizing he was just about to say, “I love you.”

Overwhelmed by the force of his emotions, he fumbled, “And I can’t wait to see you again.”

He clicked his phone shut and leaned against the tree trunk, wondering when he had become such a bumbling fool. But since he hadn’t slept for more than an hour or two for a while, he cut himself some slack. He needed a long hot shower and to sleep for twenty-four hours straight.

He went back inside to face his opponents and as the corporate battle raged on, he found solace and strength only by drawing Angelina again and again on his yellow notepad. He drew her from every well of memory he could mine—sitting on the dock on the lake, standing on his front porch the day they met, hiking up Angel Island. He even drew her sitting on top of the Ferris wheel with the lake and trees behind her, a place he thought he would never have been able to get right.

But with Angelina smiling up at him from the sketch he had drawn, he suddenly realized that she was the missing link all along.

* * *

Angelina heard the phone ring and instinctively knew it was Will. She stopped packing up her office and stood still as a statue, afraid to even breathe for some absurd fear that he would hear her, and know she was avoiding him.

When the red light on her phone started to blink with a message waiting, she hesitantly picked up the receiver and dialed her mailbox number. At the sound of Will’s voice, she wanted nothing more than to weep. But she had promised herself when she woke up that morning, after a long night of tears, that she was gong to face her new life—the life she had manifested through her own actions—with a positive outlook. If not for herself, than for her baby.

All day she had been working diligently to get her affairs in order for her big move cross-country. She had contacted each of her clients with referrals to other consultants, deflecting their questions regarding her sudden change of plans by mustering up a cheerful tone of voice and speaking vaguely about “the wisdom of change.”