Rosanna looked steadily at him, but she didn’t say a word. Both her hands held the coffee cup, yet she did not raise it to her mouth. He wondered what she was thinking. Her quietness unnerved him. David had stood before judges with the worst reputations. He’d stared down criminals and bullies. Yet this underweight woman was making him sweat with her mute stare.
“You were the assistant manager at Bach’s.”
After a moment she finally said, “It was my last position. I started there as an assistant buyer.”
“The Bachs spoke highly of you and your abilities.”
Her mouth moved slightly. It was the shadow of the beginning of a smile. Then her expression quickly returned to its original blank stare.
“Are you having a bad day?” David suddenly asked.
The question seemed to get her attention and knock her off center. She set the cup on the table between them.
“No better, no worse than any other day.” Her tone was sour.
“Are you working? I mean do you have another job since Bach’s?” He didn’t think so. It was the middle of the workday and she was home. Her hair and lack of makeup told him she’d been home all day. She might work from home, of course, but there was no evidence of it in the rooms he could see, and that was most of the apartment.
“Yes,” she answered coldly. “I work nights.”
She offered nothing more. That told him that whatever she was doing, it was below her abilities.
David smiled, hoping she’d see that he was about to offer her something better. He couldn’t tell by her expression.
“Do you like your job? Is it satisfying?”
She gazed at him for a moment. “It pays the bills.”
She didn’t answer his question, but what she said revealed more than an answer would have.
“I’d like you to come back.”
“Back to what?”
“To Thorn’s.”
“I’m not interested in working at Thorn’s. The Bachs have sold out. The store is gone. They’ve moved on, so will I.”
David put down his cup and clasped his hands together. He stood up and looked around, then brought his gaze back to her.
“Is that what you’re doing?” His voice was stronger, back in his lawyer-addressing-a-witness mode. “It sure doesn’t seem so.”
The comment brought her out of her seat.
“What do you know about it?” she challenged, her eyes bright and angry.
“Not much,” he said. “But I know the person the Bachs talked about, a woman who is competent and efficient, is not the one standing here.”
“Get out,” she ordered.
His comment angered her. He’d designed it that way. David needed to pull her out of this depression, which seemed to have not only settled on her, but also on every aspect of this room.
“You know nothing about me, nothing about anything. You should try to find out something about the people here before you go blundering into their lives. It hasn’t been easy down here since the storm and all the lives that were lost. So why don’t you take yourself and your car back to New York and leave us alone.”
She’d seen him drive up, he thought. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have mentioned the car. David caught the underlying message in her comment. He understood that what his car cost could probably pay for this apartment several times over. He wondered if she had enough food to eat, and it caught him like a blow to his gut. He picked up the coffee cup and drank, unwilling to waste a drop in case she couldn’t afford more.
“The storm was like a war,” she said. “It changed people. They are no longer the ones they were before it happened.”
David should be angry with her attitude, but he admired her spirit. She really felt for the people of Logan Beach and how they were treated.
“I may not know that, and I can’t fix everyone who was affected, but there is one person I can help. I can only do one at a time and today it’s you.” He stopped, letting his words sink in. “I need you to come back and be the assistant manager at Thorn’s.”
He was careful to choose his words and to let her know this was his store, not a replica of the one she’d left.
“This offer is open for the next twenty-four hours. If you want to stop wallowing in self-pity and return to meaningful employment, my offices are in the building next to the store. Third floor.”
He drained his cup and put it down. Then he took a slip of paper with the office address and a business card from his pocket and dropped them on the coffee table.
“I truly hope to see you.” He’d lowered his voice to one of concern mixed with sincerity.
Outside her door, David dragged a breath into his lungs. He gripped the stair railing and held it tight enough to splinter the wood. His body was so solidly coiled, he felt only a long run or a hundred laps in a pool would relieve the tension. Rosanna Turner had touched something inside him that roared and he didn’t like it. He’d never been in a place so devoid of life, watched a person move through air and not disturb it. David had seen soldiers who were shell-shocked, and Rosanna reminded him of them. He wanted to somehow restore her, force her out of the pattern she’d set and let her know there was a future. This feeling of protection was foreign to him, something he’d never experienced before.
Yet, he’d found the spark of life in her when she accused him of not understanding what had happened to her and the people of Logan Beach. He hadn’t been here, had never been in a place where nature had destroyed life and property. He was usually the well-dressed attorney in court, seeking damage restoration for wealthy victims. When working his pro bono cases, which gave him personal satisfaction, they were usually related to personal injury by clients who were financially unable to afford his corporate fees.
David felt bad for treating Rosanna unkindly. His parents didn’t rear him that way, but Rosanna needed to be kick-started. It was obvious she’d been pitying herself for a long time and someone needed to let her know that things would not change if she didn’t change them.
David hoped that change would begin before the sun rose the next day. He felt Rosanna Turner was more than a depressed woman in a dingy apartment. She only showed a small amount of spark, but David felt it was there and all he needed to do was wait. She would come out of that shell and decide to rejoin the living.
Twenty-four hours would tell him if his theory was true or false.
* * *
Rose moved to the window. Sunlight highlighted David’s dark hair as he stepped out of the building. He stood a moment, looking first left, then right. She did the same. There wasn’t much to see. Several apartment buildings, none of them in great condition, were separated by either demolished buildings or cleared, but overgrown, lots.
The storm had happened two years ago, yet the devastation was still evident. Rose knew about it firsthand.
David moved, catching her attention. He went around his car, shrugged out of his suit jacket, folded it carefully and placed it in the back seat of the luxury car. He opened the driver’s door, then looked up. Their eyes connected and Rose jumped back as if she’d been burned.
A moment later, she heard the car door close. The engine purred to life and when she glanced down again, the car accelerated away. Letting out a long, slow breath, she turned away from the windows.
The business card he’d left lay on the table, a small white beacon in a sea of dark wood. She lifted it between two fingers. It bore his New York office address. His cell-phone number had a red circle around it, a signal that he