“You didn’t want to let go.”
“Wanted a way to keep reading the stockholder reports, make sure the new management structure isn’t driving the place into bankruptcy.”
Rowena remained politely silent for a moment.
Ben added on a drawl, “Okay, I admit it, it was pure sentiment. Didn’t seem as if it should still bear the Radford name if I wasn’t a part of it.”
“But you didn’t want a controlling interest or any active involvement?”
He laughed. “With Radford Lateral Enterprises I haven’t got time!”
Inside the restaurant, they were given a table by the windows with a glorious view of the ocean. Rowena took off her suit jacket and let the air-conditioning cool her bare arms below her sleeveless silk top, while she watched the waves.
Watched them, wondering why she couldn’t think of anything to say to the man seated opposite, until she heard him murmur, “No two ever come in exactly the same.”
“Oh, the waves? Yes, I’ve been watching them for way too—”
“I noticed. I always do it, too.” He closed his menu.
“Do you?”
“So don’t stop. We’ll both watch them.”
“All right.”
They smiled at each other, and looked at the ocean meeting the sand until the waiter came back to take their order and Rowena realized she hadn’t even looked at her menu yet. She quickly chose a seafood pasta with salad on the side, and Ben asked for grilled mahimahi with mango salsa. He ordered champagne, too, although he only allowed himself a small half glass.
For Rowena, a half glass was enough to slow the meal down, make it go a little fuzzy at the edges. Or was that the hypnotic effect of the water rolling and crashing onto the beach? She forgot to talk about the garden. At least, she forgot to talk about Ben’s garden. He asked her about other major projects she’d done, and she found herself telling him in too much detail about roses in Italy, fountains in Oregon and orchards in Maine.
This wasn’t the kind of place where they hurried you through so they could slap down fresh sets of silverware and seat the next clients. The two of them could have stayed here all afternoon. It was after two by the time they left, and she walked beside Ben to his car, feeling as if she’d been wrapped in a cocoon of well-being and expectancy.
“I’m looking forward to this, Ben,” she said, on an impulse, forgetting to find him intimidating. “It’s like a treasure hunt. I’m sure we’ll find some fascinating and valuable things in that jungle of a yard.”
“Valuable?” They approached his car, and it gave a little whoop as he unlocked it.
He looked as if he might go to the passenger side to open the door for her, but she beat him to it with a couple of determined strides. She didn’t want him standing there just inches from her while she climbed inside. He went around to the driver’s side instead, without breaking that easy stride of his.
He paused at this point, leaned his forearm on the warm roof of the car and looked at her across the dark-blue expanse, sure of himself as always. “Is that important? That what we find should be valuable?”
She looked back at him, passenger door open, one shoe tip resting on the metal rim beside the seat. “Oh, no, no, I’m not talking sell-it-on-eBay valuable. It’s less tangible than that.”
“Yeah?”
“I…I can’t really explain.”
“Try,” he invited her, and she realized how much he’d gotten her to talk over their meal, rather than talking himself.
He was still doing it. Not over a meal, this time. Over a car roof.
He rested his chin on his arm and watched her, his eyes hidden by sunglasses, while she struggled to find the words. “You know in movies, it’s always about gold, isn’t it?” she said.
Gold… The sun glinting on his hair, reflecting off the sunglasses, darkening the golden tan on his arms and face. He was way too good-looking, even when he frowned.
“Chests of jewels and coins,” she went on, fighting the way he distracted her. “Things that anyone and everyone can see are a treasure, at first glance. But sometimes there’s value in a piece of paper or a chunk of gray rock or a handful of pottery shards, and not everyone sees that. So many people are blind to it.”
“Some things have value purely because you choose to see them that way, you mean. Sometimes you have to look below the surface.”
“That’s right.” She couldn’t tell if he was really interested. “That’s part of it.”
The car roof was pleasantly hot, after the chilly and powerful restaurant air-conditioning. She stroked the gleaming blue metal without thinking too much about the action, just enjoying the warmth, suit jacket still hanging over her free arm.
“Or because they tell a story, maybe.” He was still looking at her, his expression impossible to read.
“That, too,” she said. “I love those kinds of stories. The questions you can’t always answer. The mysteries you can sometimes solve. Who made this? Who broke it? Why is it here?”
“Stories that you yourself can read and understand a little better because of your specialized knowledge, where someone else might toss the item in a garbage pile and never know.”
“Yes.”
“Which only makes the treasure worth more to you, because its value is your own private secret. Like a little girl seeing fairies when no one else can.”
She looked at him in sudden amazement. So few people understood this at all, let alone managed to explain it better than she’d ever explained it herself. “How come you get that?” she blurted out. “Nobody seems to, when I say it, not even my twin sister. But then, I’m not that fluent sometimes. You know, I’m an intelligent woman, I have a Ph. D., so you’d think, wouldn’t you? But no. When I’m nervous, or—”
“Like now?” he said, unexpectedly gentle, because she’d begun to gabble. She could hear it herself. “Why are you nervous now?”
“I wasn’t a minute ago. But you’re making me self-conscious.”
“Not that difficult to do, from what I can work out.” He gave a cynical grin. “I’ve been trying very hard to get you to relax all through lunch.”
“Oh.”
“And you do, for a while, when you talk about the things that really interest you. And then something sets you off again, and we’re back to square one.”
“Me. I set myself off. It’s not your fault.” She slumped one shoulder against the curve of the car roof, disappointed in herself, embarrassed because Ben Radford saw through to the flawed heart of her so easily. Saw through to the awkward, self-doubting, thirty-one-years-old-and-never-been-kissed heart of her being.
She had been kissed.
Of course she had.
She’d been taken to bed, too, a couple of times, but…but…
It had been wrong. Both of those men had been wrong. The wrong guy, the wrong feelings, the wrong time and place in her life. She wondered what it would take for her to get all those things right, and couldn’t see it happening right now.
“Get in the car, Dr. Madison,” Ben told her softly, seeing too much, as usual. “You’re getting car roof dust on your arm.”
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