Manhattan Merger

Another surge of adrenaline electrified his body. “Say what?” he prodded.

Rainey turned her head in his direction wearing a solemn expression. “Your fiancée knows you’ve been to my apartment,” she began in a throbbing voice.

“She knows I’ve been to your office, that I’ve ridden in your helicopter. She knows I’ve been out to Crag’s Head. After last night she knows I was an overnight guest in your sister’s home.

“If I were your fiancée, I could handle all of it knowing everything was the result of the hearing. But any more contact, even a whisper of it, and I would feel…threatened.”

He took a step closer. “If you think moving back to Colorado removes that threat, then you’re very much mistaken. You could go to the ends of the earth and it wouldn’t make any difference.”

“Then you haven’t done enough to make her feel secure in your love,” she fired back.

Unable to respond to that remark without incriminating himself he said, “She’ll never feel secure about anything until she can walk again. There’s a clinic in Switzerland that might be able to help her, but she refuses to let me take her.”

Upon that remark Rainey rested her body against the edge of the desk. Her head was lowered.

“I can understand why. It would be so hard to go there on a thread of hope and then find out not even those doctors could help.”

“Diane still has some feeling in her legs, Rainey. There’s a chance she could walk again. Otherwise the doctors wouldn’t keep urging her to go for a consultation and exam.”

Taking a calculated risk he said, “This morning while Catherine and I were swimming in the ocean, an idea came to me that could change Diane’s mind. You corroborated it moments ago when you talked about her feeling threatened.”

That brought Rainey’s head up. He had her full attention now.

“Instead of putting your career on hold for your brother who still has no idea what you’re planning, how would you like to do something that could result in Diane throwing away that damn wheelchair?”

A stunned expression broke out on her face. “If I thought I could help, naturally I’d do it, but I can’t imagine what it would be.”

Rainey Bennett—I’m going to hold you to that.

“Last evening you told me you’d give anything to work alongside me.”

She shook her head. “I was carried away. You know that.”

“You meant it, Rainey. So I’m proposing that you move into my home at Crag’s Head and expand your artistic talents by making my maps for me. It’ll be a merger financially beneficial for both of us.”

An explosion of green sparks lit up her heavily lashed eyes.

“Until you came along, I never trusted anyone else to do them. With your help I’ll be free to travel without the worry that I’m getting behind on the technical end. In this business I have to set up new markets before the competition does.

“In return, let’s pray Diane is so threatened by your presence in my life, she’ll agree to go to Switzerland and learn to walk again if only to be able to face you on an equal footing.”

“You can’t be serious!” She sounded aghast.

“I never say what I don’t mean. You have to understand something about my fiancée. No one has more pride than Ms. Diane Wylie of the North Shore.

“Her condition is so shocking to her, it’s come between her and her friends, her work on the magazine. She helped on my sister’s last senatorial campaign. Once upon a time she had aspirations to go into politics herself. All that drive has vanished. She’s not the same person she used to be.”

Rainey’s eyes shimmered with unshed tears. “That’s so tragic.”

“It is,” Payne murmured. “No human being deserves to suffer like she has.

“Last night I felt her pain because she used to be vital and vivacious like you, with a hell of a lot to contribute. If I thought she could be that way again, I’d move heaven and earth to make it happen.”

“I’m sure you would,” she whispered.

“Since Trevor’s death, Catherine’s been working on Diane. In her own sweet way she’s tried to remind her that there never was any hope for her brother, but there is for Diane. Still my fiancée hasn’t responded.

“The first signs of fight I’ve seen in her were last night while you were enchanting everyone.” Enchanting me. “Catherine was a different girl because of you, and Diane knew it.