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“None, sir,” he said with the confidence of knowing he had the right answer. “I’m divorced.”
“No children?” It was a well-known fact that Coppel didn’t believe a man should desert his children. Which was why he’d never had any of his own.
“None.”
Nodding, Coppel broke into a small, satisfied smile.
“You have anybody else who might want a say on your time?”
You got a lover? Michael read into the question.
“No.”
He saw women occasionally, but he’d been sleeping with Susan again, on and off, over the past three years, although they’d been divorced for seven. He couldn’t seem to find a passion for anyone else.
“Any dependents at all?”
What is this? Michael shifted in his seat, suddenly uncomfortable. He sent a sizable amount of money to his parents and brother and sisters back in Carlisle, but that was nobody’s business except his.
“Why?”
Eyes narrowed, Coppel sat forward. “I’m thinking about offering you a new position, a move from a subsidiary company to Coppel Industries itself.”
Michael didn’t move a muscle. Didn’t breathe.
“But the position I have in mind would require constant travel, and I won’t even consider offering it if that meant you’d be shirking personal commitments. I don’t break up families.”
Coppel had come from a broken family, had his father run out on him, been forced to quit school and provide for his ailing mother. He’d entered high school at nineteen after his mother passed away. He’d put himself through college exterminating bugs, and the rest was history. Not only history, but public knowledge now that Coppel was one of the top businessmen in the country.
“I have no one,” Michael said.
HE MADE HIMSELF WAIT until he was pacing the gate at the airport before calling Susan. Just to keep things in perspective.
Only to find that she wasn’t in her office. A hotshot corporate attorney, Susan was out slaying dragons as often as she was in.
Picturing his ex-wife in her dragon-slaying mode, he grinned as he hung up the phone.
“I WANT to have a baby.”
Seth spit the whiskey he’d been sipping, spraying it across the table. “What?”
Laughing, Susan wiped a couple of drops of Crown Royal from her neck. At least her silk blouse and suit jacket had been spared. “It’s not like you to waste good whiskey,” she admonished. Actually, she was a little concerned on that score. It was still only eleven. A bit early for her brother to be hitting the hard stuff. He’d ordered a drink the last time they’d met for lunch, as well.
Leaning across the table, Seth whispered, “Are you out of your mind?”
“Not as far as I know.”
“Susan.” He sat upright, every inch the imposing engineer who flew all over the country inspecting multimillion-dollar construction sights. “Be serious.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever been more serious in my life.” She was still grinning, but mostly because if she didn’t, she might let him intimidate her.
“Why?”
“I’m thirty-nine.” Neither of them touched the sandwiches they’d ordered.
“Yeah. So?”
Susan shrugged. “If I don’t do it now, I’ll have lost the chance.”
“That’s no reason to have a kid. You’re supposed to want it.”
“I do.” Oddly enough.
Picking up a fry, Seth still looked completely overwrought. “Since when?”
“Since I graduated from law school.”
He stared at her, fry suspended in midair. “No kidding?” She’d obviously surprised him.
“I have it all written down.” She spoke quickly, eager to elaborate, to convince him that her decision was a good one. The right one. To win his approval. How could she possibly hope to convince Michael if she couldn’t even get the brother who championed everything she did on her side?
“Before I married Michael, I spent a weekend at a lodge in Kentucky, assessing my life, my goals, my dreams. Life was suddenly looming before me and I was scared.” She warmed beneath Seth’s empathetic gaze. “Frightened that I’d lose myself along the way somehow.” Her brother nodded, looking down at the plate between his elbows.
“By the end of the weekend, I’d mapped out all my goals, both short- and long-term, in chronological order.” Seth was staring at her again, his expression no longer empathetic. Unlike the sophisticated lawyer she was, she rushed on. “It was the only way I could be sure I wouldn’t let myself down, wouldn’t end up sixty years old and regretting what I’d done with my life—when it was too late to do anything about it.” Like their mother, she wanted to add but couldn’t. The boys didn’t know about those last hours she’d spent with their mother before she died. No one knew. Except Michael.
Seth continued to stare silently. “I wrote down career goals first,” she said, then took a sip of her brother’s whiskey. “Where I wanted to be by what time. Financial goals. Work goals. Personnal goals. For instance, I wanted to be able to play the violin by the time I was thirty-five.”
“That’s why you took those lessons?”
“Because I wanted to learn how to play? Yes.”
“But did you still want to play the violin when you got to that stage in your life?” Seth asked, pinning her with a big-brother stare he had no right to bestow on her. “Or did you just take the lessons because you’d written down that you had to?”
“I wanted to learn to play.” She’d just been unusually busy that year, which was the only reason she hadn’t enjoyed the experience as much as she’d thought she would.
“When was the last time you picked up your violin?”
That was beside the point. She’d been too busy these past four years.
“I wanted to travel to Europe by the time I was thirty-six.” She steered Seth back to the original conversation. “And,” she added before he could grill her, “I loved every second of the month I spent there.”
Of course, she’d been with Michael, and as a general rule, she loved every second she’d spent with Michael, period. They’d even made getting divorced fun. They’d rushed straight home afterward, tripped over his packing boxes on the way to their bedroom and made love furiously until dawn.
Seth chomped on a couple of fries. Brooding. His classically golden good looks were broken by the frown he was wearing.
“I’ve always known I’d have a baby by the year 2000,” Susan said softly, seriously, begging her brother to understand.
“Listen to you! Learn to play an instrument, go to Europe, have a baby by the year 2000. It’s ludicrous, Susan.” When his intensity didn’t sway her, he slowed down. “What happens after you have this baby?” he finally asked.
“Then I raise him or her.”
“You can’t just bring a child into the world because some stupid plan tells you to, Susan.”
“Who says I can’t?” Not exactly an answer to be proud of, but he was making her defensive.
“You aren’t mother material, for God’s sake! Can’t you see that?”
She opened her mouth but couldn’t speak. Not one word came out. She just sat there, mouth gaping, staring at him.
Until her eyes filled with tears. “How can you say that?”
“I’m sorry, sis.” He glanced away, took a sip of whiskey. “I love you, you know that.”
She’d thought she did.
“Look at your life, Susan, all mapped out, running right on schedule. The last thing children do is follow your schedule. They shouldn’t have to. They should be free to follow their own way, their own hearts. And they need parents who can give them the time, the freedom of choice to do so.”
“Like you’d know?” she asked, still hurt by his sudden abandonment.
He acknowledged his own lack of family with a nod. “I do know,” he said, surprising her with his fierceness. “Which is exactly why I’m so goddamn alone.” He finished off his whiskey with one swallow.
“Seth?”
There was a lot more going on here than she knew. A lot more that she needed to know.
“Not now,” was all he said, flagging down the waitress for another whiskey.
Susan pushed her plate away, untouched. She’d had breakfast at nine. It was way too early to be thinking about eating again.
“There’s another factor that’s missing here. Unless something else has happened since I left town.”
Susan shook her head. Life had been predictable, the same, for months now.
“A baby needs a father.” Seth’s voice was strong again. He made a show of glancing around them. “I don’t see one hanging around.”
Susan took a deep breath. “I’m going to ask Michael.”
Eyes suddenly alight, Seth grinned and grabbed her hand. “You two are getting back together?”
She couldn’t hold his gaze, couldn’t watch it dim. Sliding her hand from his, Susan shook her head. “Of course not. Nothing’s changed there.”
“Careers still come first, you mean?” he asked.
Susan nodded, awash in the sadness she felt emanating from her younger brother.
“My point exactly.” He finished off the second whiskey. “A kid deserves to come first.”
CHAPTER TWO
“SO THIS BABY THING is the reason you didn’t feel like working today?” Seth asked as he walked her to her car fifteen minutes later. He seemed huge and intimidating in his expensive overcoat.
And he was making her mad again with his refusal to take her seriously about the baby. If she couldn’t convince Seth, how in hell was she ever going to convince Michael? But because she didn’t want to face the fact that she might not be able to convince either one of them, Susan let his comment go.
To a point.
“No,” she finally answered him, studying the shadowy trail her breath left on the air.
They’d reached her Infiniti, and Seth opened the door she’d unlocked with her antitheft device as they’d approached. “I’ve actually got a small problem at work that was making me wish I was somewhere else this morning.”
“A small problem?” Seth leaned into the car, one arm on the hood, one on the open door. “That means there’s something major coming down. What is it?” He paused, frowning again. “Your job isn’t in jeopardy, is it?”
Susan laughed then, but without much humor. “Hardly.” They both knew she could write her own ticket as far as Halliday Headgear for Sports was concerned. She’d saved them enough money over the years to buy them out twice.
“Then what is it?”
“Just a case I’m working on. No big deal.” Susan started the car, turning the heat up full blast.
“Is Halliday in trouble?”
“Nope.”
“You going to tell me, or you want me to just keep asking questions until my ass freezes?”
“It’s nothing, really.” Susan grinned up at him. “Just a little suit I could have won even before I attended law school.”
“And?”
It was annoying how well Seth knew her. She’d have to remember to stay away from him when she was having birthday blues in the future. “I just feel for this boy, okay? His face mask snapped, a production problem with one of the hinges. The kid suffered a subdural hematoma which is pushing against his brain, causing paralysis on one side of his body. His father’s out of work and the family doesn’t have insurance. They don’t have money for surgery, let alone the months of physical therapy he’s going to need.”
“If his face mask malfunctioned, isn’t Halliday responsible?”
“We would be if he’d been wearing it to play softball—the mask’s intended use.”
“Why was he wearing it?”
Susan looked up at her brother. “He was playing soccer.”
“Halliday’s getting off on a technicality?”
“A big one.”
“And the kid?”
Susan shrugged. “I don’t know. Even if the surgery’s performed, he’s not going to be able to walk again without rehabilitation.” She took a deep breath. “I could win this one for him if I were on his side. I know of a loophole that would override ours.” “Damn!” Seth whistled. “You sure as hell don’t need to be wasting energy worrying about babies, Susan. Sounds like you’ve got some soul-searching to do a lot closer to home.”
“Yeah.” She’d be doing some soul-searching, all right, but having a baby was about as close to home as she could get.
A MESSAGE FROM Michael was waiting for her back at the office. Susan was inordinately disappointed to have missed his call. Especially in light of the dissatisfying hour and a half she’d just spent with her punk of a brother. Who the hell did he think he was telling her she wasn’t mother material? How would he know?
