The Value of Vulnerability (44 page)

She spared him the briefest glance before turning her attention back to Ford.

Liana tugged at her. “Come on, kid,” she urged quietly. “Let it go.”

She trailed after Liana, her face turned back to hold Ford’s gaze as long as she could, but the crowds closed in rapidly and she soon lost sight of him.

When at last they turned the corner, she dug into her handbag to retrieve her BlackBerry, passing it to her sister. “Don’t let me have this unless it rings.”

Liana nodded. “Let’s get some alcohol into you.”

Erin heard the BlackBerry power down. And didn’t argue
.

*

He didn’t know how long he stood there watching her disappear into the crowd, but finally it sunk in that she was long out of sight.

“The airport, sir?” the hovering driver prompted.

Nodding vaguely, he climbed back into the limo. Pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes did not obliterate the mental image of how beautiful she had looked. How proud and poised she was in that amber dress.

Oh, he remembered that dress
. He remembered everything about the night he had first seen her in it—and out of it.

But that smile—what did that mean?

That thought occupied him all the way to Pearson. Disturbed his sleep on the flight. Interrupted the flow of his words in meetings at the conference.

By the time his jet was en route home eight days later, he had concluded conclusively that Erin’s smile had caught him unprepared.

It must have been those extra drinks he had had that evening. That maudlin mood, the lack of concentration, the headache—all those things had interfered with rational thought.

Therefore, that smile wasn’t what it had appeared to be.

Because it was impossible that a woman he had treated so carelessly could ever smile at him with such love and compassion. And those moist hazel eyes could not possibly have held promise of love enough for all of eternity. Not for him. Not from her.

By the time the jet taxied into Juneau for maintenance, he recollected that he had met her on the same day he had been informed of his father’s illness. Perhaps he could concede that news had unsettled him somewhat
, leaving him vulnerable to the irrepressible charm of Erin.

All an accident.

Whereas she had deliberately, entirely, made herself vulnerable to him. Laying cards on the table, wearing her heart on her sleeve, and several other clichés, she had offered her love to him. All she asked in return was that he open up a little and meet the family.

No wonder she left me
, he conceded as he deplaned. And still, she could smile at him with all her love.

At last he acknowledged: he would never find another woman like that. Period.

The loss hit him with the force of physical pain.

What have I done?

Emotions frozen for so many years within the scar tissue of repeated wounding and responding vengeance were suddenly loosed, and the final bit of veil was ripped away.

He might be a scary son of a bitch with virtually no conscience, but he craved love and peace as much as any human.

At least, he craved Erin’s version of it. Craved her. Would do—was going to do—anything to get her back. And keep her. And, god help him, love her.

That was the moment he learned that Brett Howard had died peacefully in his sleep some hours before.

“Erin, can I tread on personal ground?” Spencer leaned against the bar at Zuzu’s, where they were amiably discussing how Xcess was performing and what they could do to improve on what they had accomplished.

“Sure.”

He did not proceed immediately, smiling ruefully into his pint. “I take it you and Ford aren’t seeing each other anymore.”

“No. Not for a while.” It had been almost a month. Better than a week since she had seen him on the street. “I wasn’t sure if you even really knew I was seeing him.”

“When the CEO of BHG calls to, er,
suggest
that schedules get rearranged, there’s a good chance it is not all strictly professional. And, of course, he called me directly when that crap with Woods all happened.” He heaved a breath. “I owe you an apology. I had some serious doubts in the beginning about you. Even though you exposed the Xcess mess, so to speak, you were so cocky I assumed it came from having an in with Ford. And, being a cocky sort myself—”

She grinned a little.

“—I was pissed to think my authority as president was compromised by
my
boss having someone on the inside. Like a spy or something.”

Everyone’s scared of spies.
She was
so
tired of those suspicions, even when they were legit. “He didn’t. We didn’t meet until the night of the buyout.”

“I just wanted you to know that—whether seeing him or not—you’ve done nothing but work hard and successfully. You’re going to go far, Erin. The company, with BHG behind it, is going to grow exponentially from this point. Senior positions need filling.”

She held her breath.

“How’d you like to be head Systems Analyst?”

“I’d really like that,” she smiled. “Is it being offered to me right now?”

“Right damn’ now. Accept?”

“Damn’ straight I do! That is: thanks, Spencer. I really wasn’t expecting it yet.”

“We’ll talk more tomorrow and hammer out the details, including money.” He winked.

“Hells, yeah.” They clicked glasses in a toast.

“Jess, two more when you get a minute,” he called to the bartender, glancing at the widescreen television over the bar. “What the hell?”

“What?” Erin turned to see what it was that got his attention.

Her stomach plummeted.

The banner on the screen screamed
Breaking news
and
BHG jet lost
. Ford’s handsome image was in the corner of the screen.

Seeing their riveted attention, Jessica turned up the volume.

The sound of the anchor’s voice rumbled over the music and buzz of conversation.

“. . . lost track of the jet northwest of Fort McMurray. With a stop in Juneau, the flight plan changed at the last minute. Spokesperson Penelope Flynn of BHG has stated that CEO Ford Howard was expected to be on the plane, as well as Senior R&D Director Michael Rens and Chief Compliance Officer Dalaja Indrani. The corporate team was returning from a conference on sustainable mining in Yakutsk, Russia. No further information is yet available. In other news . . .”

Erin hyperventilated.

Spencer swore, dragging a barstool over and pushing her onto it. “Breathe, Erin. Slow down. In and out.” He gripped her hand and breathed with her. Jessica grasped her other hand, reaching across the wood to do so.
Clientele stared at her.

“He’s dead.” Erin got the words out.

“No. His plane is missing. Don’t panic.”

“Planes go missing because they’ve crashed and everyone is dead.” She snatched her hands away and pressed them to her forehead. Her face twisted and a tiny moan escaped.

“Stay calm. Let me see what I can find out.” He dialled a number on his cell.

Jessica put a shot of Jack Daniel’s in front of her. “Do you want me to find other news?”

She nodded, not looking up as Jessica flipped through the channels.

“. . . storms in the area. Search teams out of Fort McMurray are sweeping the area south and east of where contact was lost, but it may take days to find the wreckage. This tragedy is yet another blow to the Howard family, whose patriarch Edmund Brett Howard lost his brief battle with cancer early yesterday. ”

She threw back the shot and collected her jacket and satchel.

“Where are you going?” Spencer demanded.

“Fort McMurray.”

***

Timing was with her. She arrived at Pearson International forty minutes ahead of a flight to Edmonton via Calgary. She phoned Ford’s cell, praying, but it went directly to voicemail. The message she left was a mere, shuddering, “Please call me, love.”

Surfing the BlackBerry, she garnered nothing new before forced to go to airplane mode. She slouched in her seat, staring blankly out of the window, unseeing, unhearing, and unfeeling.

Ford was dead. But she had to go, see the place where he had died, and carry on.

Carry on?
How did one carry on?

Everybody has hurts. Everybody loses someone. Everybody . . .

Not very comforting when you’re the one losing, but still true.

What would Ford do? Seek vengeance on anyone involved. She had neither the power nor the desire to do that. He had alluded to such emotions though.
When the unspeakable happens, it becomes just that. Unspeakable.
The inference being:
Then don’t speak. Act.

And what had she done? Given ultimatums and stormed out and never tried to help him.

It was the guilt phase, with its inherent exaggerations, but she didn’t try to control it. From there, she dissected every minute of her life with Ford, from that very first vision of his face over Stephanie’s desk at Xcess to that still image on the TV at Zuzu’s. It all ran in a circle, so fast it became a blurred mess.

The connecting flight out of Calgary was on time, arriving at Edmonton International just shy of ten o’clock local time. An inquiry on flights to Fort McMurray revealed there were no more until morning, but even then the first flights—always in high demand for the booming city—were sold out as reporters and family members scrambled to get to the site.

She bought a ticket on the first flight available. Half resigned to waiting, she debated renting a car. Wasn’t that far. Four hundred clicks or so, maybe.

Ticket reservation in hand, she mentioned the idea in passing to the ticket-counter clerk. The woman made a doubtful grimace.

“Tricky driving on that road, Ms. Russell. Especially if you’re unfamiliar with it. And at night? I recommend waiting for the flight.”

In any case, she was too exhausted to do it right now.

A takeout coffee in hand, she sank into a padded chair at a cafe table in front of the Living Wall, some sort of instalment art composed of vertically growing plants that created patterns in many shades of green. She stared blankly at it for the longest time, finding the intricacy and simplicity of it an intriguing distraction, helping to rid her of some of the more horrible thoughts running through her head.

Ford had to be alive, so she could she tell him about this fantastic expanse of art. He’d love it.

No, he wouldn’t. Not even a little bit. He would point out flaws. Give her one of those askance looks reserved for when she was too over the moon about something. And then appreciate the construction of it. But ultimately, dismiss it.

From the start, they’d been too d
ifferent. From the start, he had rejected her essential self—that sometimes annoying sunniness—as frivolous. No real-world application.

She closed her eyes. That wasn’t true either. He had respected her. Liked her. Wanted her.
That argument at the end—he had been lashing out, terrified by the unknown.

The Wall couldn’t keep the immediacy of disaster at bay forever. And she desperately wanted a news update. The BlackBerry had run down and, per usual, she didn’t have her charger. So she went in search of a television, and curled up in a chair in front of it.

Finally, the news cycled the story.

Instantly, film of the smoking and burning fuselage of the BHG jet appeared on the screen. Erin listened to the drone of the report, the details of how and where the plane had been found buzzing in her ears. The report turned to the flight manifest
. Headshots of the uniformed flight crew and executive Michael Rens flashed on the screen. And then Dalaja Indrani, with a few words about her stellar career. And then . . . a mini biography of Ford, with pictures (there was even one of him as a boy of about ten, looking terrifically stoic and sullen all at once in a school uniform) and archive film that had been hastily assembled. After all, why would anyone have been prepared to give an obituary of such a young man?

She watched as recent footage from a press conference showed him, smiling in that coolly wry, predatory way he had, smoothing back that lock of pitch-black hair from hard amber eyes.

The video freeze-framed. Ford’s image looked into the camera, right at her.

The anchor’s voice penetrated. “Ford Matthias Braxton Howard, presumed dead at thirty-four.” A beat. “In other news . . .”

It was official. There was buzzing in her ears.

Thirty-four. She must have missed his birthday. He was only thirty-three when they met. She wished she had known.

The buzzing grew.

“Erin?
Erin!
”

Turning her head as if it weighed several tons, she attempted a smile.

“Hi, Nick.”

Her body slithered out of the chair as she fainted, her coffee spilling in an ever-widening pool as the cup fell from her limp hand.