Clark cocked his eyebrow. “I had no idea my reputation for that kind of thing was so renowned.”
Again, Baxter ignored the innuendo. “In business, you do it with your company name, your emphasis on employee empowerment and your fancy benefits packages.”
“I should be shot.”
“With your friends, you do it with loyalty and generosity, and don’t forget jobs.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it.”
“More than one poor sucker who happened to have grown up in your neighborhood or went to college with you or even some kid who used to deliver your paper, you’ve rewarded with a high-paying job and fat expense account, myself included.” Baxter began to pace, his long, gangly legs taking him swiftly from one end of the room to the other. “You do it with charities, too. You buy them equipment and hand out grants. Why, just this week you’re launching a scholarship program at our old university.”
“That? I just want to give back some of the opportunities that helped me succeed. It’s my way of coming full circle, of wrapping things up in a neat little package.” He sat forward in his chair and pressed the buzzer on the office intercom. “Miss Harriman, any luck yet?”
“No, sir, not yet,” the voice crackled back at him.
“Well, buzz me as soon as you find out anything.”
“Yes, sir.”
Where was that girl? How could she have just vanished like that?
“And women, too,” Baxter raved on. “You do it with women. You most certainly do.”
“I can’t help it. I happen to like women.” He sat back in his chair, glanced at Baxter and smiled. “That kind of thing is genetic, they say.”
Baxter didn’t even crack a smile.
Clark didn’t care. His mind was elsewhere—with that girl. He could still see the look of stupefied innocence and outrage in her sparkling eyes, the tinge of red flushed over her peaches-and-cream complexion.
He glanced down at the charm. A baby bootie. A token representing her own child? He thought not. No woman who had become someone’s mother would allow herself to get so easily flustered by a seductive wordplay and a predatory glance by a stranger.
Besides, a mother who’d lost a sentimental token like that would have waited there by the elevators for him to bring it back to her. He’d tried, gotten off at the next floor and come back down, but she’d already taken off. Maybe it didn’t mean as much to her as she wanted him to think. Maybe she’d expected him to offer a large remittance for damage to the trinket and when he did not offer that instantly...
“You’ve got it all figured out with women, too.” Baxter created a flourish with his hand. “You lavish the women in your life with gifts and take them on luxurious trips and pamper and spoil them—”
“The poor dears, and I practically have to force them to accept.”
“And when it’s all over, do they want to scratch your eyes out? Write tell-all books about their horrific experiences? Slap you with palimony lawsuits?”
Clark started to push the intercom button again, then curled his fingers into a fist. Someone had to have seen that girl. Her appearance alone drew enough attention to her to insure that, and the scene she’d made, not to mention her last threat to him...
“No, any woman you’ve tangled with always wants to stay friends. They actually still like you even after you’ve treated them like goddesses and given them their every desire!”
“Imagine that. They must be deluded.”
“Yes, they are, and the sad fact is they don’t even know it.”
“If you were deluded and you knew it, you wouldn’t exactly be deluded, not in the strictest sense, would you?”
“They think they’re happy!”
“But they’re not?”
“No! How could they be? They’ve all been run through the Clark Winstead patented self-integrity shredder.”
Clark frowned. “Which one of my companies makes that one?”
“Make fun if you want. But I’m telling you the truth. Look out this window.” Baxter swiveled Clark’s chair around so that he had a view of the street below. “Any other person would look at all those people there and see the pride and accomplishments, boredom and despair, the little joys and deep-seated depressions that are all part of the human condition.”
Clark gazed at the smudges of color through the rain-speckled glass. She was out there, somewhere. A wounded kitten who thought her claws made her a tiger. How was he going to find her?
“But does Clark Winstead see those things? No, he does not!”
Clark scanned the bustling crowd, wondering if he might be able to pick her out from this distance.
“Clark Winstead sees every human being with a price tag on them.” Baxter straightened up, his neck lengthened, his chin up. He gave his head a shake like a rooster getting ready to crow. “And if he likes what he sees, he has no problem meeting that price to get his way.”
Clark blinked, then twisted his head toward his friend. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means that all of us, every employee who takes a frivolous bonus or accepts a bigger salary than they earnestly merit, every woman wearing a piece of jewelry given by you—and not a one of them a wedding or engagement ring in all your thirty-nine years, I might add—”
“The first few of those thirty-nine years they had to settle for candy necklaces, I’m afraid.”
“Every charity that names a Clark Winstead scholarship winner or dedicates a Clark Winstead memorial wing,” Baxter went on with dogged determination to finish, “every friend who takes a handout and company that gets treated to one of your affable takeovers, we’re all walking around with your flag blazing over us—planted right square in our backs—like the proverbial dagger.”
“I’ll have to see if our insurance covers that kind of thing.”
“We all know, deep down, that you’ve got us. We’re bought and paid for and we owe you. As much as we like you, we do owe you. We’ve sold out, and no man—or woman—can be truly happy knowing that about themselves.”
Clark considered that a moment.
“That’s why I think you’ve never married, my friend.”
“I’ve never married—I never intend to marry—because I do not personally believe in the institution. I saw how it destroyed my parents and I want no part of it.” He started to turn his attention back toward the window.
“Had!”
Clark gawked at Baxter.
“You’ve never married, Clark Winstead, ol’ pal, because you know what I just said is true. You know that you could have any woman you want, but you don’t want any woman you could have because in your heart you’d know it was just another sellout. Ironical, isn’t it?”
“What’s that?”
“That good ol’ Clark Winstead is trapped in the same illusion as he’s created for the rest of us. He thinks he’s happy, but because of who he is and what he’s got, he can’t be—”
“Then I’m content in my anguish,” he lied, feeling all but content in his impotence at finding this girl with the wayward charm.
“Ha!”
“What