“Maybe it’s time to toss out the soup and order something different.”
Debbie choked out a laugh. “Could we stop talking in food analogies?”
Cait laughed. “Sure. All I’m saying is, why don’t you actually try to talk to Gabe? Tell him how you feel.”
“And give him the chance to shut me down like I did him once upon a time?”
“I said it was a risk.”
Yes. But was it one she was willing to take?
Eight
Two hours later Victor Reyes was standing in Gabe’s office making his report. “She’s a little jumpy if you ask me.”
Gabe leaned back in his desk chair, looked up at his friend. “Not surprising.”
“Surprised the hell outta me that she’d confront me like she did.”
Gabe smiled. He wished he’d seen her jump out from behind a palm to face down the man following her. Like a mouse standing up to a hungry cat. She’d always been confident, sure of herself. Even when she’d walked away from him ten years ago, she’d done it fast and clean, as if she’d known that it was the right thing to do.
Even though it hadn’t been.
Damned if he hadn’t missed her. Hell of a thing to be forced to admit ten years after he’d seen the last of her. But there it was. Having her here with him was supposed to be punishing her. He didn’t want to enjoy her. Didn’t want to want her.
“She’s got guts.”
“Yeah, she does. Debbie never did have a problem expressing herself.”
“You might not want to hear this, boss, but I like her.”
No, he didn’t want to hear it. Worse yet, he didn’t want to understand Victor’s reasons for saying so. Frowning now, Gabe said, “Yeah, me, too.”
“So when are you going to tell her they caught the jewel thief?”
“Well now, that’s a good question.” Gabe picked up a pen from the top of his desk and idly tapped it against the sleek, red-leather blotter. They’d gotten word just a couple of hours ago, via fax, that the jewel thief had been caught and jailed in Bermuda. Not that the arrest mattered since it wasn’t the reason Gabe had held Debbie on the island in the first place. But she would expect to be able to leave and he hadn’t decided just yet how to squash that notion.
“She’ll hear about it soon enough. It’ll make the news and even if she doesn’t see it there, people talk.”
He scrubbed one hand across his face, pushed his hair back from his forehead and said, “I’ll worry about that when it happens.”
“Your call, boss,” Victor said, already turning for the door. “But if you want my advice…”
“I don’t.”
“Like I said. Your call.” He opened the door and stopped. “You want me to keep following her?”
“No.” Gabe leaned back in his chair and tossed the pen aside. “No point. Besides, maybe she’ll start wondering why you’ve stopped.”
Victor laughed shortly. “Gotta say, you two make a hell of a pair.”
When he was gone, Gabe thought about that for a long minute, then dismissed it. Once upon a time, Victor might have been right. But that was long ago. Today, they weren’t a pair. And Gabe had no interest in changing that fact.
Debbie paced the living room of Gabe’s suite, avoiding the scattered chairs as she wound in and out. Stepping from glossy floor to jewel-toned rugs, her sandals sighed and clicked in turn.
She held the phone to her ear and hummed along to the annoying wait music playing on the line. How anyone could play an oldie rock tune like the Rolling Stones’ “Satisfaction” in violins was beyond her. But so not the point.
The point, she reminded herself as her stomach jittered and her mouth went dry, was to talk to the admin at Culp and Bergman. Find out why they’d cancelled their account with her agency and see what she could do about wooing them back.
Maybe she shouldn’t have called them yet. Maybe she should have given it another day. More time for her to settle. Or, on the other hand, more time for an ulcer to develop and turn her into a gibbering idiot.
“Ms. Harris?”
When an actual human voice broke into the music, it took Debbie a second or two to respond. “Yes. I’m here.”
“What can I do for you?”
Frowning now, Debbie bit back on her impatience. The woman knew exactly why she was calling, but apparently they were going to play the game. But that was all right. Debbie’d been dealing with the coldly efficient Ms. Baker for two years now.
“I spoke to my manager at the agency yesterday and she tells me there’s a problem with the renewal of our contract with your company.”
“No problem,” the woman said, her tone clipped and businesslike. “We’ve simply decided to go with someone else.”
“Ms. Baker,” Debbie said quickly, “we’ve worked together now for two years and I think we’ve done very well by each other and-”
“Yes, but times change, Ms. Harris,” the other woman interrupted, her tone going even brisker. “We at Culp and Bergman felt that to meet all of our travel needs, it would be better to go with a bigger agency.”
“Bigger?” She couldn’t compete with bigger. That was the whole point. The fact that she was a small, independent agency had been her selling point when she’d landed the C and B account two years before. A smaller agency gave more personal attention. “Bigger isn’t always better, Ms. Baker. And I think you’ll have to admit that in the last two years, my agency has handled your company’s work in a timely, efficient manner and-”
“Yes, of course.”
The patient tone in the other woman’s voice had Debbie rolling her eyes and gritting her teeth. “I should be back in Long Beach within the week-” Please, God “-and if you’d allow me to fax over a revised contract, I’m sure we could come to terms that would satisfy both of us.”
“I’m very sorry, but a new contract has already been signed with Drifters. There’s really nothing more to be said, Ms. Harris. Now I’m afraid I’m very busy, so if you don’t mind, thank you for calling.”
The hum of the dial tone in Debbie’s ear seemed to vibrate right down to her toes. Drifters. One of the biggest travel agencies in the state, they were probably able to offer C and B all kinds of discount travel packages and who knew what kinds of incentives, and there was simply no way Debbie could compete with a company like that.
She was sunk. Literally. She could almost hear her business sliding down the tubes. Slowly, she closed her cell phone and wrapped it in one tight fist. Debbie felt as though she’d taken a punch in the stomach. Sort of light- headed and woozy.
She stared around the room as if she wasn’t quite sure where she was. Sunlight splashed through the wide windows and lay in brilliant slices across the floor. The sheer drapes at the French doors fluttered in a wild breeze and the scent of the ocean wrapped itself around her.
Yet she hardly noticed any of it. Instead she was concentrating on breathing. Pushing air in and out of her lungs. A hard ball of ice settled in the pit of her stomach and Debbie was afraid she was going to have to learn to live with it.
Without Culp and Bergman, she wasn’t going to be able to keep her company running. Unless she could find another corporate client, she would lose everything.
“Gabe will probably get a charge out of that,” she muttered.
“Speaking of Gabe,” a woman’s voice said from right behind her. “Where exactly is he?”
Debbie spun around so fast, she caught her foot on the leg of a stupid chair, lost her balance and nearly fell face-first onto the floor before she caught herself. Staring at the gorgeous brunette watching her through curious eyes, Debbie put her at about thirty, with pale white skin, dark-brown eyes and a killer lemon-yellow silk suit. She
