Dillon stood up and enclosed her hand. There was a vast difference between shaking hands with Jade Sperry and shaking hands with another man. Her hand was small, for one thing, and cool and dry and soft. It didn’t seem to fit into such a masculine gesture, yet the feel of it left an impression long after he had released it.
“Excuse me. I won’t be long.”
She left him alone in her office. He moved to the window and gazed out over the city. It was still hard for him to believe that this was happening. The night she had taken him to dinner, he had thrown up a dozen barriers to her and her proposal. Afterward, however, he couldn’t stop thinking about it.
Finally he had relented and picked up the prospectus she had left with him. After he’d read it a dozen times, GSS’s TexTile plant became as much an obsession as his grief was.
For seven years he had been outrunning his guilt. The coroner’s report stated that Debra and Charlie had died accidentally, but Dillon knew he was responsible. After the ambulances had taken away their bodies, while he was raging through the house, demented with grief, he had discovered the list of chores he hadn’t got around to the preceding weekend. The last item on the list was, “Check furnace.”
After leaving Tallahassee, he had aimlessly wandered about, with his guilt in tow. He had taken it with him to the frozen frontiers of Alaska and into the teeming jungles of Central America. He had tried to drown it in gallons of whiskey, abuse it with meaningless sex, and kill it by taking unnecessary risks. Yet, he couldn’t shake it off. It was like regenerative living tissue, a part of him as distinguishable as a fingerprint.
After days of contemplating Jade Sperry’s proposal, it occurred to him that perhaps he could merge his two obsessions. If he accepted this job and performed it well enough, it might atone for his failure that had brought about the deaths of his wife and son.
“Everything is set.”
Dillon jumped reflexively when Jade reentered the room, bringing with her a three-page contract. He studied it carefully, filled in the missing details, then signed his name.
She said, “As soon as you have a permanent address in Palmetto, please
call it in for the records.”
“If it’s all the same to you, I’d like to live on the premises.”
“At the construction site?”
“I’d like to lease a trailer large enough to serve as an office and living quarters.”
“Suit yourself.” Jade stood and moved toward the door. Dillon followed.
“I’ve notified Mr. Seffrin. His office is in another building, but he’s on his way over.
“Mr. Stein heard that you were in the building and asked to meet you, too. Beforehand, there’s another matter I feel we should clear up.”
She lowered her eyes. From his angle, her black, curly eyelashes looked like they had been painted onto her fair cheeks with a fine brush. “You shouldn’t have kissed me that night in L.A. Nothing like that can happen again. If you have a problem working under a woman’s supervision, I need to know.”
He deliberately waited to respond until she lifted her eyes back to his. “I would have to be a blind eunuch not to notice that you’re a woman. You’re a beautiful woman. But it wouldn’t matter if you had a mustache as thick as mine. I want this job.
“You’ve also left no doubt in my mind that I answer to you. That’s cool. I don’t have any sexist hang-ups. Finally, you’re safe from me. When I want a woman, I’ll find one, but it’ll be for the night only. I don’t want one I have to look at or talk to the morning after.”
Her deep swallow was audible. “I understand.”
“No, you don’t understand, but that’s immaterial. Just rest assured that I haven’t made a practice of romancing the people I work for.”
“Then why did you kiss me?”
He smiled wryly, tilting up one half of his mustache. “Because you pissed me off.”
“How?”
“I wasn’t having a very good day to begin with,” he said sarcastically. “Then you came along, a real cool customer dressed fit to kill and flashing a Gold Card. I’m a grown-up. I don’t appreciate being ordered around any more than you like being condescended to because you wear perfume and pantyhose. I don’t know a man alive who likes being patronized by a woman.”
“And vice versa.”
“Then you should have slapped me when I kissed you.”
“You didn’t give me a chance.”
The conversation had lasted ten times longer than the kiss, and he was ready to drop the subject. It made him uncomfortable. He didn’t know what had motivated him to kiss her. The only thing he was sure of was that he didn’t want to know. Nevertheless, he couldn’t let the matter drop without asking one more question of her.