Chapter 6
T he evening was so still the external heaters formed a welcoming cloud of warmth.
The terrace held a rough-hewn, almost pagan feel.
Illumination from table candles and torches rimming the terrace caused the diners to dance and weave while seated.
Each table was an island, as intimate a setting as ever designed by man.
Brody floated behind the waiter, guided by Rae’s hand on his arm.
He was caught unawares by the onslaught of emotions he thought dead and buried.
He had no idea why he had spoken like he did.
The words had felt drawn from some hidden depths, opened by the presence of this woman.
Rae was no longer the college girl he had fallen in love with.
She was that and more besides. Holding onto secrets did not fit with the night.
Brody knew full well this was probably a singular event.
For her, it was a chance to renew an old acquaintance, come to know her new client a little better.
He was so unaccustomed to feeling anything at all in a woman’s company, the experience left him defenseless.
She asked, he answered. It was that simple.
Rae directed him into a seat so that his back was to the table where his boss held forth.
Just the same, he could feel the man’s ire, strong as the terrace’s heat keeping the ocean chill at bay.
He asked Rae to order for them and pretended to listen as she and the waiter discussed the night’s specials.
He accepted the wine list, asked for a suggestion, agreed, all without really making conscious note of what was said.
Now that they were seated and she faced him across the expanses of linen and glittering silverware, her presence enveloped him.
The years had refined and strengthened Rae Alden, and the result was a far lovelier woman.
Stable, centered, utterly aware. Rae’s eyes were a remarkable wash of deepest green, her hair a cultivated blend of brown and auburn.
She wore it long and draped over her left shoulder.
She had come straight from work, and her navy suit was somewhat creased from a stressful day.
The long hours only accentuated her determined strength.
He breathed, and caught a hint of her scent, an enticing mélange of what would never be his.
Rae said, “I want you to forget about the man over there. If Jacob decides to insert himself into our night, it’s his choice. Unless that happens, he does not exist. He does not enter into the equation. Okay?”
Because it was Rae who asked, he replied, “I’ll try.”
When she paused, Brody knew she was about to pose another highly personal question. What amazed him the most was how little he minded.
His world of high-wire tension and fast money contained a multitude of liars.
The 24/7 realm of global markets was home to people who eagerly redefined themselves.
They built an external myth, a shell that declared to outsiders that here was a ruler of the moneyed universe.
In contrast, Brody didn’t lie. He simply hid in plain sight.
He let people think what they wanted. Yet he held one trait in common with so many of his fellow traders: Brody had no idea who he was at life’s deepest levels.
Whatever it was she wanted to know, he would tell her. The answer was there in his heart and mind, seemingly before she even posed the question. As if he had waited years for this night, this hour, this woman.
Just the same, there was one thing he had to know. “Did you ever marry?”
She reversed course. Brody saw it in her eyes, like reading an incoming shift in the wind by watching the tiny wavelets, the feathering effect of change.
He half-expected her to say it was none of his business.
Which was fair enough. This was not some arrangement where she had to give in response for getting.
But when she spoke, it was to ask, “You remember when we met, I was still recovering from an early flame.”
He did, in fact, which revealed how Rae had branded his heart.
Brody had known from the outset that some guy had hurt her badly.
Shattered that gemstone gaze and left her determined to avoid future entanglement.
Rae had never said a word, of course. And Brody had done his best to offer the good-time comfort she was after. “Curtis—do I remember that right?”
Her eyes glinted with momentary humor. An ideal moment to comment over how he remembered such details after so long. Instead, she said, “I never told you what it meant to become involved with you. How you helped me heal. Look beyond what hadn’t worked out.”
Actually, she had. But Brody did not want to risk breaking the momentary spell of shared intimacy. Even when it hurt to have their time together packaged around the shadow of her previous love. He remained silent.
And he remembered.
Brody had offered Rae what he hadn’t to so many others. He tried to think of her first, a new concept as far as he was concerned. With Rae, though, it had felt natural. Because he had fallen in love.
Rae continued, “I had a couple of close calls, once in law school and another here. My lawyer flame had his heart set on the big city. And I’m an island girl.
Come what may.” She smiled at the waiter setting down their first courses, and when they were alone again, she went on, “Then there was Jack.”
He hated the guy already. “Uh-oh.”
Between bites, Rae described the relationship that had been over for almost nine months and seemed like much longer.
Brody ate mechanically. The excellent food was secondary to what she was saying.
He mostly feasted on this rare chance to share an intimate moment.
Despite how his ardor was not reflected back in her voice or gaze. And never would be.
“This probably sounds terrible and callous and cold,” she told him. “There were a dozen reasons why we could have made a go of it. But the truth was, our relationship never truly captured my heart or my mind. When he broke it off, I admit it hurt. But not for long. And not all that much.”
Brody felt encased in the wonder of a night he never thought would happen, not in a million years. Seated here with Rae, relishing how she shared her heart. In this moment, the candles and the starlight and the blanketing warmth and the ocean’s siren whisper. It was enough.
She looked up, offered a fractured smile. “Sorry.”
“For what? Rae, I really appreciate—” He stopped because she straightened in her chair and looked beyond him.
Instantly, Brody knew his boss was on approach.
Rae set her napkin on the table. “Do you have representation for this upcoming negotiation?”
Brody felt himself drawing away. Their intimate evening was over, replaced by the same indecision and worry he had lived with for over a month.
Rae shocked him by reaching across the table. She gripped his hand and said softly, “Pay attention and answer my question.”
“Rae, there’s no negotiation. I don’t even know what representation means.” There was a great deal more he could say. How ultimatums formed Jacob’s hardball negotiation tactics. Win at all costs. That was Jacob Whitinger.
But Rae had heard enough. She tightened her hold on his hand and commanded, “Stay seated. Don’t speak. Trust me.” She released him, pushed back her chair, rose to her feet, and took a step forward. Directly into Jacob Whitinger’s path.
Sometimes it bothered Rae, how much she relished confrontations like this. She did not actually enjoy doing verbal battle. The question of pleasure did not enter in. This was something else entirely.
Growing up, she had heard Curtis’s dad and her uncle talk about the difference between a cop and a civilian.
How it was second nature to them, running toward trouble when everybody else fled.
Putting their lives on the line for strangers.
That was how Rae felt about the sort of conflict the legal profession required her to handle.
In such situations, she came into her own. It was that simple.
The torchlight illuminated a man she instantly recognized.
Jacob Witinger was a star in the financial world, one of the few who made North Carolina home.
He was a frequent guest on televised business reports.
Rae had heard him speak at the regional TED talk.
He was often quoted in the Journal . He had adorned covers, his cleft chin and rugged features and handsome smile making for good press.
None of this mattered.
Jacob stepped in close, using his height and prowess to crowd Rae. Yet he ignored her entirely and instead focused on the younger man who had not yet looked his way. Clearly, he sought to intimidate Rae. Make her small and insignificant.
Good luck with that.
Jacob demanded, “Brody, who is this woman standing in my way?”
“Rae Alden,” she replied. Courtroom voice, calm demeanor, utterly unfazed by the man’s demeanor. “Attorney of record.”
His expression suggested he’d just found something on the sole of his shoe. “Brody, what is this?”
“My client and I were discussing issues related to Mr. Reames’s next steps.”
His smile was as false as it was unwavering. “Brody, tell this woman her presence is unnecessary.”
Rae pretended he had not spoken. “We would be happy to meet with you in the coming days, Mr. Whitinger. As soon as my client decides whether his professional life requires a move.”
The chairman and chief executive officer of the southeast’s largest investment fund was a global negotiator, a man rarely shaken by opponents seeking to blindside him.
He offered Rae the sort of meaningless smile he might show a misbehaving child.
Before the first strike. “In that case, I suppose it would cause me some minor regret to accept one of the multiple requests I’m fielding from prospective crew members. ”
Sometimes after a particularly intense courtroom battle, Rae woke in the early dawn and lay there remembering.
She did not focus on the argument or what was said or the reasons for conflict.
Instead, her mind became captured by the way certain elements had stood out.
How she had been so intensely fastened inside the moment, she could have counted the beat of a hummingbird’s wings.
Every tiny aspect of the place, the opposing counsel, the judge, the jury, it was all embedded in her awareness. Just like now.
She heard the sputtering torches, the indistinct drift of conversation from other tables, the ocean’s soft whisper. How the flickering light turned Whitinger’s smile into a clown’s mask. How his eyes held the color of flint. How his expression declared he was totally in control.
Wrong.
She replied, “Then we should probably thank you for making our analysis of options so much easier.”
He hated having to ask. Just hated it. “Options?”
“Why we are meeting here tonight,” Rae said. “Other groups have come forward, willing to pay Mr. Reames what he deserves.”
“Do they also offer your client the option of continuing with his second career? I think not.”
“Which is precisely why it would be in your best interests to reconsider your approach to my client,” Rae countered. “Since he holds such importance to your personal goals.”
“No crew member on my vessel is irreplaceable, Ms. …”
“That depends on how vital you consider the goal of winning, doesn’t it, Mr. …”
That definitely worked under his skin. “The only crew member vital to winning races is the skipper. Myself.”
“Is that your formal response?” Rae gave it a beat. “Instead of opening negotiations so that we can settle on what would prove to be a fairer offer. Which would naturally include two nonnegotiable elements.”
The torches sputtered in tune to the rage Whitinger did his best to suppress. “I’m waiting.”
“Payment of this year’s bonus, which we both know he fully deserves.” Rae might as well have been reading off a script she’d spent weeks preparing. “And written acknowledgment of my client’s freedom to appear on whatever program, and speak at whatever event, that he feels—”
“That is not happening.”
Rae responded with her best theatrical regret.
Not fully suppressing her smile. A woman representing a client in high demand.
And letting this blowhard know, in no uncertain terms, he was no longer in control.
She plucked a card from her pocket and offered it with “I do hope you will reconsider that position. In which case, I look forward to discussing terms that guarantee this irreplaceable employee remains in a position where he both serves the corporate good and is available to crew whenever his services are required.”
Whitinger despised needing to take her card. He glared a final time at Brody and replied, “We’ll see.”
He did not lose his smile as he backed away.
Once he melded with the shadows, Rae resumed her seat. It would have been wrong to show any hint of delight over how the confrontation had played in their favor. Because she knew without looking that Whitinger was watching.
Brody, however, looked one step away from total meltdown. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“Serving your best interests.” She resisted the urge to renew her grip on his hand. “Smile at me. Pretend you’ve just won. Which, by the way, you just did.”
“Rae, you don’t know him. That man—”
“Is watching. Do what I say. That’s it. You’re having the time of your life.” She reveled in the focused intensity, the power she had to make even Brody rise to the occasion. “When would your boss expect to hear from you next?”
A long moment, the torches hissing and breathing for him, then: “Tomorrow we should be starting ocean trials on our new vessel.”
“You mean, his boat.” She lifted her chin.
“Take a drink from your glass.” When he had done so, she continued, “Sometime before Christmas, we’re going to go shopping for your new boat.
Because, believe you me: when you don’t show up for training, your boss will have someone track you.
Hearing that you’ve begun scoping out what’s available and on sale will tell him what we want him to know. ”
Brody’s gaze carried a genuine confusion, as if he’d seated himself across from one woman and now found himself in the company of someone else entirely. “Which is?”
“The clock is ticking on Jacob Whitinger.” Another uplift of her chin. “Finish your starter.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“Did I ask you that? No, I did not.” Rae smiled as he picked up his fork. She sounded so much like Emma it was ridiculous.
Before she was able to give in to worry over her aunt’s state, Ellis stepped closer to the veranda. Holden’s crewmember stood silhouetted by the rising moon. Rae looked away and allowed herself a moment to ponder what it was she really wanted to see happen.