Page 26 of Lovesick

Louise handed her a folder, then one to everyone else in the room. She said, “Most of you are familiar with the details, but this outlines what we have in mind for the affair in two days. Saturday we’ll be entertaining our customers, many prominent New Yorkers among them, while they buy up a storm.”

Sosi nodded as she flipped through the folder. She stopped in the middle and Louise knew exactly which page she was looking at. The company doctor spread. She eyed Max speculatively, with the kind of interest that Louise recognized. Impossibly, Louise felt mixed emotions. Jealous and at the same time hopeful that maybe Max would have sway with her. Before she could figure out how they could use the edge of Max’s possible influence, Sosi spoke.

“Are you trying to squeeze more money from our investors with this event? After we’ve made an already generous offer?”

George snorted and looked around the room to quiet the murmurs, some incredulous, a few hopeful for more money and impressed with the negotiating tactic.

He said, “No, Ms. Petrov. We’re trying to prove the point that we can make more money than you’re offering us if we continue to run our company the way we have been. In the long run.”

Sosi sat down and the board officially scheduled the vote on her investment offer for the following Friday, one week from tomorrow. Everyone rose from the table and began leaving. George and Louise met near the door to speak to everyone as they left. Sosi was one of the last to reach them and they all walked out together.

“Unless you’re going to take the offer off the table?” George said.

“Wouldn’t you like that? No. The offer stands until further notice,” Sosi said.

“In the meantime,” Louise said, “I’d like to personally ask you to come to our Back to the Future event. Even though it’s one of those terribly inefficient, yet somehow effective types of things we, as a quaint company store, do that seems to keep people interested in coming. We’re not just a place to buy things, we’re an experience.”

Sosi looked her over as if she were day-old bread and said. “Fine. I’ll be there. Do I need to wear a costume?” It was a sarcastic question, but Louise was up to the challenge.

“Sure, something like what you’re wearing now will do.”

Louise turned on her heel and left, her quick steps muted by the carpeting. She didn’t stop, not even when Max called out to her. She was on a roll and she didn’t want to spoil it with any drama between them. Because she knew there would be. The idea that he didn’t want her to meet his son squeezed her heart with full force now that the meeting was over. If she had to face him now, she wouldn’t be able to help crying in spite of her years of vaunted, cool, businesslike control. She hadn’t been herself since she’d met Max. Maybe she needed to purge him.

The painful prospect caused a shudder. She turned left and pushed open the ladies’ room door. This was a better place to be, to hide, if she dared admit she was hiding, than her office where he could just walk in.

A very sad woman stared back at her from the mirror, a woman who belatedly realized that maybe she was missing out on something in life. Something special.

Max could be what she was missing. Or maybe she was clinging in desperation to the idea of him, because he was there.

Not flipping likely. He was the most difficult man to cling to, to pin down. For a woman who’d been dealing with logistics in a billion-dollar operation with multiple stores since she could talk and walk, she was having a hard time dealing with the logistics of a relationship with Max.

Something that should be so simple—dating—was far too complex with him.

She had the store, her family, the vote.

He had his son, his new job, and the shadow of his need to save the world—the likely reason for his failed marriage.

It was just her luck that his ex-wife had left him because he’d been traipsing around the world with Doctors Without Borders. Not that he’d ever admitted that to her, but she was smart and it didn’t take a genius to figure. Now he questioned everything, weighed it against interfering with the stable life he’d set up for him and his son. Louise didn’t blame him for seeing her as not fitting into his little family unit. Why else would he ask her what she thought of kids? He figured she wasn’t family oriented because she’d devoted her life to business. Maybe he was right.

Up to a point. After all, she was all about the Regal family, first and foremost, wasn’t she? She was lucky that the Regal family and business were the same thing—up until now. Maybe she ought to be thinking of a different kind of family, one with children of her own who she could pass on the legacy of the family business to. And luck would have nothing to do with figuring out how to fit in her work and—dare she even think it—children?

In the meantime, keeping the business in the family it would be take grit, cleverness and good old-fashioned hard work.

Splashing water on her face, she heard the door open. No big deal. She’d finish up and be on her way.

“Louise, I’d like to talk to you,” Max said.

She spun around to see him leaning against the door—the damn ladies’ room door—arms folded across his chest, determination on his face.

Big deal? This was a very big deal.

She couldn’t read what he was about, but the slamming of her heart in her chest told her she instinctively expected something bad. As best she could while looking into those knowing eyes of his, she steeled herself.

He lowered his arms and stepped toward her. Instinct moved her back against the wall. He stopped two feet from her. Close enough for the scent of him to reach out to her, but not close enough to touch, to feel his warmth, that warmth that she’d counted on since she’d first kissed him, tasting his innate goodness along with his hotness.

“Talk.” She had no choice. Her stomach told her it was glad they were in a ladies’ room, conveniently close to a sink. Clenching her jaw, she determined that she would not get sick, no matter how much her stomach disagreed.

“I—you did a great job in there.”