“Gabe?”
He snapped out of the memory as Josh gently prodded. “I…I’m not sure.”
“Were they your in-laws?” Josh’s drawl was barely discernable, telling Gabe how carefully he was picking his words. “Hope’s parents?”
“Yes.”
“Tough,” Josh said.
Gabe turned to look at his boss then. “Yes,” he agreed.
“They made a special trip out here to see you?”
Gabe nodded. And then, because no one knew better exactly how he felt, he let it out.
“They want my wife declared dead.”
Josh was silent for a long moment. If it had been anyone else, Gabe might have assumed he had nothing to say, but the head of Redstone, Inc., was never one to speak lightly or without thought. That characteristic delay—and the drawl—gave some, to their detriment, the idea he was slow or lazy. They inevitably spent time afterward musing on the cost of their assumptions.
“They want their daughter declared dead?” Josh finally said, quietly.
And there, with the insight typical of him, Josh reminded him gently that their loss was as great as his. Greater, perhaps; they’d had Hope Waldron for twenty-nine years, he for only six of those.
“I know, I know.” Gabe shoved a hand through his dark hair, realizing only after he’d done it that he’d still, after all this time, raised both hands as if he were wearing his officer’s combination cap, to be removed before the gesture and resettled after precisely an inch and a half above his eyebrows, according to navy regs.
“Old habits die hard,” Josh observed mildly, and Gabe knew he’d caught the lapse. “Old thoughts sometimes die harder.”
“How long did it take you?”
The question escaped him before he could block it. Not for anything, even to ease his own pain, would he intentionally call up bad memories for this man he admired, respected, even loved, as did most who worked for him. Josh Redstone had built an empire that spanned the globe, employed thousands, and Gabe would be willing to bet there wasn’t one of them who wouldn’t walk into hell for the man. In part because they knew he’d do it for them—and had.
“I’m sorry,” Gabe began, but Josh waved him to silence.
“How long did it take me to accept that she was gone?” Josh asked. “In my head, I knew it right away. But then, she died in my arms. I felt her go.”
Gabe’s breath caught. He hadn’t known that. He’d known Elizabeth Redstone had died of cancer several years ago, known that Josh had been alone ever since, knew the common wisdom at Redstone was that she’d been his soul mate and he would never even try to replace her. But Gabe had never really thought about the details of it. Hope, he thought, would likely have had the whole story within minutes of meeting the man; she had always been good at getting people to open up.
An odd smile curved Josh’s mouth, lifting it at one corner in an expression of ironic sadness. “I never thought of that as a particular advantage before, other than being with her until the end. But from your view, it is, isn’t it? At least I knew, without doubt.”
Gabe couldn’t deny that, and instead fastened on Josh’s answer to his question. He repeated his boss’s words back. “You said you knew it in your head.”
Josh’s mouth quirked, and the steady gray eyes closed for a moment. Then he opened them and looked at Gabe. “You always were detail oriented.”
“Comes from years of dealing with politically oriented navy brass,” Gabe answered. “Most of the time what they didn’t say was more important than what they did.”
“I’m sure,” Josh agreed. And then, after a moment, answered what Gabe hadn’t really asked. “I’m not sure my heart, my gut, have accepted it yet. I know, logically, that it’s crazy after all these years, but I still catch myself expecting to hear her voice, or thinking that she’s just in the next room….”
Gabe smothered a sigh. That was not what he’d wanted to hear. He’d wanted to hear that it was over, sealed away in some silent, impenetrable place in Josh’s mind, never bothering him, never surfacing unless he wanted it to. If Joshua Redstone, one of the strongest—and strongest-minded—men he’d ever met, couldn’t get past this, what hope did he have?
“What brought this on now, after all this time?” Josh asked.
“The U.S. Postal Service,” Gabe said wryly.
Josh blinked. “The Postal Service?”
“They just delivered a postcard to Hope’s best friend. From Hope, mailed right before she disappeared. It really upset them.”
Josh let out a low whistle. “Ouch. Eight years?”
To his own surprise, Gabe had to stifle a chuckle. Josh, he knew, would never tolerate that kind of thing. Redstone wasn’t consistently in the top five highest-rated places to work because it was easy. It was Josh himself, and his reputation, that made a Redstone job among the most coveted. He hired the best, let them do what they did best, paid them well, treated them all with fairness, and mostly stayed out of their way. But above all he let them know that if they needed it, the full power of the Redstone empire was behind them.
“Why don’t you head for open water?” Josh said.
Gabe drew back slightly. “What?”
Josh shrugged. “Take her out. Clear your head.”
Only Josh Redstone would make an offer like that, to take a hundred-and-forty-nine-foot luxury yacht, complete with a media room and helipad, out for a spin as if it were a new car rather than the latest, and as yet unnamed, design from his fertile and incredible mind.
“Thank you,” Gabe said automatically, “but—”
“You saying you don’t do your best thinking at sea?”
Gabe’s mouth quirked. “You can take the boy out of the navy, but you can’t take the navy out of the boy?”
Josh grinned. “Something like that.”
Neither of them mentioned that in Gabe’s case, he hadn’t been taken out of the navy, he’d quit. Gabe knew he’d had no choice, and Josh, when he’d learned the full story of what had driven a man who’d once chosen the navy as his career to leave, had answered in the best possible way: he’d offered Gabe a way out that didn’t require him to leave his love of ships and the water behind.
“I’ve got to head back to my office,” Josh said, and Gabe knew the reluctance he heard in his boss’s voice was real. Josh was not an office-bound executive, even at Redstone Headquarters, which was as much a paragon of comfort and thoughtful design as this boat was.
“Take her out,” he said again. “Put all this on the back burner, focus on something else for a while. It’ll help you work through it, where chewing on it up front won’t.”
Gabe smiled at the rustic simile, thinking again of those who made the mistake of assuming the drawl and the down-home manner were all there was to Josh. It amazed him how anyone could look at the size and scope of Redstone and think that anyone less than a genius could have built it, but people were often ruled by their own filters and perceptions, a fact Josh frequently used to his advantage. And since his naval career had come to a crashing end because of such people, Gabe couldn’t help but appreciate Josh’s talent in that area.
“And,” Josh added as he went down the gangway steps, “if you need anything, if Redstone can help, call.”
Gabe nodded, knowing that what would