Instead, he closed the cover and took out his BlackBerry.
Lizzie’s face came to him, as it had on a regular basis, and he rubbed the center of his chest.
He’d wanted to talk to her since landing in Manhattan, but he’d been dealing with one problem after another in the Condi-Foods negotiations. The way things had been going, the only time he had to himself was either well after midnight or just around noontime. Neither of which were good times to reach her.
He’d tried to leave messages, but had just ended up deleting them halfway through. Even though he’d spoken thousands of sentences since getting back to the city, he somehow couldn’t find the words to let her know how much he was thinking about her. And the longer he went, the worse he choked.
He checked his watch. Nine o’clock at night.
Damn it, he had to call. Considering all the crap that was going down with Condi-Foods, he wasn’t going to get back to Boston for another week. And that was assuming the acquirer’s offer finally did make sense.
As his limo slowly progressed down Wall Street, he dialed his BlackBerry, put the thing up to his ear and loosened his tie.
After the second ring, Lizzie’s voice came through loud and clear. “Hello?”
God, she was home. “Lizzie…”
“Oh…hi.” There was a shuffling sound as if she were switching her receiver to her other hand. “How are you?”
He thought about all the ways to answer the question. The replies disturbed him because they were all about missing her. “Good. Busy.”
“I’m sure you have been.” Her voice was level. Calm.
“Work’s been hectic.” The limo came to a stop at a traffic light, a thoroughbred among the herd of taxi ponies. As it occurred to him that she’d be surprised he was sitting in something like the stretch Lincoln, he felt like a liar.
Maybe everything he was holding back from her, rather than his schedule, had been what had prevented him from calling.
Screw the maybe… “Lizzie, I need to tell you—”
“You don’t have to explain. We had a lovely evening, not a relationship.” Oh, man, her tone wasn’t just level. It was impersonal.
“Are you near a computer?” he said.
“I—ah, yes.”
“Do a search under the name Sean O’Banyon.”
“Why?”
“I want you to know who I am.”
“I already do.”
“No, you don’t.” And he wasn’t sure how to tell her without sounding like a pompous ass. “Sean O’Banyon. Do it.”
He heard the sound of keys typing. Then silence.
He knew what the search engine would pull up: References to articles on him in the Wall Street Journal. The New York Times. Forbes. Fortune. Time . Interviews logged on MSNBC and CNN and the FOX News network. Books on finance that had his name in them.
“What is all this?” she murmured.
“Me.”
More silence. “Guess you’re really not a construction worker.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Clearly.”
“Lizzie—”
“Hey, you met with the president, huh.”
“I didn’t tell you because—”
Her voice sharpened. “Because you didn’t trust me. Or you thought I was beneath you. Which one was it?”
“I didn’t know you.”
“And I guess a week away has made me more knowable?”
“I just don’t want to lie by omission anymore. It’s not right.”
He heard her exhale. Heard a mouse clicking. “God, you must have really hated your father.”
“Excuse me?”
“Do you know how hard he struggled to pay for his medications and his doctor visits? I mean, I doubt it would even make a dent in—oh, look, here’s your net worth. Yeah, whoa…wouldn’t even be couch change to you.”
“This has nothing to do with him.”
“Yeah…and you know what? I don’t think it has anything to do with me, either.”
God, he wished he’d left a couple of messages on her phone. Maybe this would have been easier. “It does, though. Damn it, Lizzie—”
“Do you think I was after your father for money? You did, didn’t you? And you figured if I knew you were loaded I’d glom on to you, too.”
“Look, like I said, I didn’t know you. And why wouldn’t I be suspicious? You mean you’ve never heard of that kind of thing?”
“Hey, check this out. You gave away a million dollars last month to the Hall Foundation. How generous.” Her voice grew heated. “Good Lord, Sean, do you have any idea how tough these last few years have been on your father? You could have helped him. You should have helped him.”
Okay, that was not a good topic to get on, Sean thought. Because he couldn’t be civil about the fact that his father had obviously poor-little-old-me ’d her.
“I’m not going to discuss him.”
“Oh, that’s right. Closed-door policy on that.”
“Lizzie, no offense, but you don’t know a thing about my father.”
“Funny, the same could be said of you. I don’t think you knew him very well, either.”
Sean’s hand curled around his BlackBerry. As he fought to rein in his temper, he reminded himself that she had no way of knowing about the past and that people, even his father, could present many different faces to the world.
“Let’s keep this just to us, Lizzie. We’ll get further.”
She exhaled sharply, which he didn’t take as a good sign. “You know what? Let’s forget about us going anywhere, okay? Let me know about the house sale when you can. Goodbye.”
She hung up on him.
Sean let his head fall back against the plush leather seat. Closing his eyes, he tried to tell himself it was for the best. She stirred up too much in him. Went in too deep. Made him feel too much.
It was better to be alone than in chaos.
Taking a deep breath, he put his palm under his tie and rubbed his sternum.
Damn, his chest hurt.
When his BlackBerry went off, he answered it without looking at the caller ID.
Mick Rhodes was in midlaugh. “Twenty-two minutes. I win.”
“What did they come back with?”
“Up twenty-five cents a share and much better financing, at least to my eye. You’re a genius, SOB.”
“Tell them to get the papers to me.”
“Will do.”
Genius? Sean thought as they hung up. What a crock of crap that was. He felt like anything but.
***
After she ended the call, Lizzie just stared at the photograph on her laptop’s screen. It was a picture of Sean looking like a total power player: Black suit. White shirt. Red tie. A hard smile and harder eyes.
A stranger.
Oh, but then he’d been that before, hadn’t he?
She glanced at the date. The photo had been taken at a gala on the night Mr. O’Banyon had died and she thought back to when she’d called Sean with the news. Evidently this fancy party had been the noise she’d heard in the background.
She shut off the computer to get away from the image and let herself sink back into the sofa.
All around her, everything seemed too quiet. The drone of the AC unit. The dulled murmur of a passing car. The soft wind catching a piece of siding and making it whistle.
She wished she had to go to work or had someplace to go. The only thing she had here at home was a whole lot of smothering introspection that she could do without. Trouble was, she wasn’t moonlighting until tomorrow night and she was not the bar-hopping type.
Exhausted and cranky, she headed for bed for lack of a better alternative, but she was pretty sure she wasn’t going to sleep. Sure enough, as she turned off the light and lay back, the mattress beneath her felt as if it were stuffed with gravel and her sheets were like sandpaper against her skin.