She was too polished to sneer, he realized, but on any other woman, that was what her expression would be called. “Semipalmated,” he added.
“Palm what?” Danielle jolted. She looked back at his hands again, watching one lift his drink to his mouth, suddenly mesmerized, just as she’d begun to get her footing. She drank from her own glass quickly and deeply.
“My little plovers are the semipalmated variety,” Max explained.
“Of course.”
“They’re currently reduced to a population of less than five thousand. But you knew that.”
“You’ve pointed it out to me in your many, many letters.”
“Enterprises such as yours are killing them off.”
“I’m sorry.” What was she saying? He was getting to her. She knew better than to show any edge of weakness. Danielle rallied. “I have one little enterprise. There are obscene gobs of them up and down the California coast. Why don’t you go pick on someone else?”
“Because those resorts are already in existence. That damage is done. You I can stop. You haven’t broken ground yet.”
Her chin came up like a challenge. “We’ll do it on May first.”
“Not if I can help it.”
“That’s my point. You can’t. I’ve met all zoning ordinances and every other requirement. There’s no sense in bickering about this any longer. I won.”
“Oh, I agree. The bickering stage is over. Now it’s time for some hand-to-hand combat.”
Hand-to-hand? Danielle felt the room spin away.
She looked into his eyes, a cool, gentle blue beneath dark hair. They seemed amused now. For a single, gripping moment she wondered if he somehow knew how he was affecting her, what she was thinking.
Her office was unbearably warm. Her secretary must have nudged the thermostat up again. Danielle got to her feet to check. The thermostat was set at sixty-eight.
“I’d appeal to your good will,” he continued, speaking to her over his shoulder, “but you don’t have any.”
“Of course I do.”
“No one has mentioned it.” He leaned forward to place his drink on her desk. “Let me tell you what I know about you, then we can get back to my plovers.”
“Palm plovers.”
“Semipalmated.” He grinned again and got to his feet to pace her office. Danielle went quickly to sit.
“You’re shrewd, calculating and you always land on your feet,” he began. “You married Richard Harrington when you were twenty-six, straight out of Stanford with your M.B.A. He was twenty years your elder. Your mother passed away when you were twelve. Your father—Michael Dempsey—was a labor union leader of some renown. You made the rounds with him. You were his shadow all through your youth. You learned the ropes early on.”
“Thank you.”
Max raised a brow at that, not sure if she was appreciative of his comments regarding her father or herself. Something happened briefly to her eyes. He thought a shadow moved there. “Richard—your husband—taught you everything he knew,” he continued, watching her closely.
“I only wish.”
“He died three years ago and you inherited from him obscene business assets.”
“His daughter got a portion.”
“But you bought her out.”
She engaged his eyes, then took another quick sip of scotch. “True.”
“Now you’re the uncontroverted CEO of Harrington Resorts and Enterprises, Ltd., something you’ve been groomed for all your life.”
“That’s about the size of it,” Danielle agreed. She didn’t tell him that she’d absorbed her father’s teachings almost by osmosis. She’d been by his side mostly for photo opportunities.
“They say all you care about is the bottom line,” Maxwell said.
That stung a little. “Close, but not quite.”
“And you’re alone now.”
She jumped in her chair as though he had touched her, but when she looked at him, he was studying the model of the resort. Her heart kicked. Had he said that—or had she imagined it? Again she had the panicky feeling that he could somehow see inside her head. Alone had been a cold place inside her through too many years of her life to count.
That had definitely gotten a reaction out of her, Max thought, watching her through his peripheral vision. “The Gold Beach resort is the first you’ve done entirely by yourself.”
“Insofar as from start to finish, that’s correct.” But she spoke with less than her usual force, he noticed.
“What a shame. It would have been spectacular.”
“It’s going to be a doozy.”
He laughed aloud. “What do your friends call you?”
“Why?” she asked, startled.
“Danielle? Sir? M’lady?”
“Danielle.”
“Ah.”
This time that single word slid over her skin like warm velvet. “Ah, what?” she asked suspiciously.
“Just, ah. May I call you Dani? I think it suits you more.” Danielle was the woman he’d just described, he thought. Dani would volley about words like doozy.
“No!”
Maxwell laughed again. “Then, m’lady, I will tell you this. Assuming your new resort was actually to come into being, you’d want the entrance to face the sea.”
“I would?” Danielle sat up straighter in her chair, eyeing him.
“Imagine the view during a good storm that keeps people inside.”
He had a point and she liked it.
“Unfortunately,” he continued, “this resort cannot possibly come into being because if it does, it will destroy untold unborn semipalmated plovers. The birds are indigenous to Alaska and western Canada, but they migrate twice yearly to South America and back again. And Gold Beach is one of their very favorite places to stop and nest along the way. Particularly, your section of Gold Beach.”
“They’ll be welcome, of course.” Danielle sat back in her chair again. “Our low-end rooms will start at $175 a night.”
He brought the bottle of scotch back to her desk and topped hers off without adding water. Danielle nudged it away carefully, her hands a little unsteady as he leaned across her desk toward her.
“I think that’s out of their price range,” he murmured.
She forced a shrug. He was too close. “I’m sorry. I can’t help them then.”
“Where else will they go?”
“Jonas Patterson’s place in Monterey?”
He grinned, but this time it was a fast look, gone almost before it started. It showed teeth. “The birds only visit in the spring and fall. They should return to that beach any day now. When you break ground on May first, you’re going to destroy every egg they put down. Don’t kill them off, Dani. Have a heart.”
She shot to her feet. Maybe it was because he had called her Dani. Maybe it was the fact that he’d remained close enough to her to breathe her air. Or maybe it was only because his suggestion was outrageous. “You honestly expect me to scrap a thirty-million-dollar project because of some birds?”
“Honestly,”