Anxious to get back to her life, she’d returned to her home and to her work the Friday after she’d been plucked from the Atlantic. But by two in the afternoon, she wasn’t so sure she should have come in. It had taken the entire morning and part of the afternoon for Lola to be brought up to speed on what had taken place since she’d last checked in the Saturday before. Now she was so tired she just wanted to curl up and take a nap.
Instead, she shut the door to her office, letting everyone know that she wanted some time to herself. Every few minutes someone had popped his or her head in her office with a flimsy excuse or question. She knew they were just reassuring themselves that she was truly alive and back at work. It was sweet, but a bit overwhelming.
She was planning to launch a new line of no-wire seamless bras and panties this spring, and she had the sketches of promotional booths for the spring trade show in Madison Square Garden to look over. The line of microfiber lingerie had been created by the lead designer, Gina, and had huge market potential. The high-tech fabric breathed and moved with the body and had only one drawback. The bras could only support up to a C cup, although the company that held the patent on the material claimed support up to a D. Lola herself had tested the validity of the claim and had been less than satisfied. Lola Wear, Inc., would have to add an underwire in all seamless bras over a C cup.
She sat behind her desk in her brushed leather chair and slipped off her red Manolo Blahnik pumps. She spread her toes in the thick area rug and studied the sketches. But the more she looked at them, the more she got the feeling that something was wrong. Something slightly off that she couldn’t quite put her finger on.
Her eyes blurred and she rubbed her temples. She had a headache, and she’d started her period that morning and had cramps. Maybe that was her problem. Whatever the cause, it felt so strange to be in her office once again, almost as if her real life was back on the Dora Mae, and that her life here wasn’t real. When the facts were the complete opposite. This was her life. This was real. Floating aboard a disabled yacht, surviving a storm at sea, and escaping in a drug runner’s boat-that was not her life. The horrible tangle of emotions she had for Max, the terrible feeling that she could not survive without him, was still there, right there on the peripheral of her consciousness, like a flash of light she couldn’t quite catch, or a snatch of conversation she couldn’t quite hear.
Yet there were times when she awoke and wondered if she’d dreamed of her time with Max.
Without him beside her, there was nothing to let her know that the time she’d spent with him was real. Nothing but the twisted branch of lignum vi-tae still circling her ankle. The purple flowers gone, only a few leaves remained to remind her of the afternoon he’d put it there.
Most of the time she felt confused and suspended in air. Waiting. Waiting to hear from him, and every time the telephone rang, and it wasn’t him, she was left crushed and disappointed.
She glanced about her office, at everything she’d chosen in it. Everything from the lavender-and-blue-striped drapes to the English primroses planted in miniature teapots placed at exact angles on the whitewashed sideboard and on the corner of her Louis XIII desk.
She’d chosen the ceiling fan that gently circulated the air about the room and the cream damask Queen Anne chairs. The colors and patterns blended and worked to create a soft feminine space. Everything was exactly as she’d left it, yet everything was different.
Her legs were a nice golden brown from her time searching for rescue vessels aboard the Dora Mae, and she hadn’t been able to bring herself to wear panty hose, something in the past she’d always viewed as just plain tacky. Her clothes felt different, too. Her red sleeveless dress fit her looser than normal about the hips, and she couldn’t stand to wear shoes. But it wasn’t her lack of panty hose or the shoes or that she’d lost weight. It was something else.
A light tap rapped against Lola’s door just before her office manager, Rose McGraw, peeked around the corner.
“Do you have a minute?”
Lola dropped her hands. “Of course.”
“I need to get your okay for these purchases,” she said, and placed a manila folder on the desk.
Lola opened the folder and glanced over the list of office supplies. Her first question to herself was, Why is Rose bothering me with this? The answer came almost before she finished the question. Because you like to control all aspects of your business, everything from strategies and goals to paper clips. She closed the folder before she’d even begun to look it over. She’d hired good competent people, and the business she’d started herself didn’t need her so much anymore. It had taken getting stranded on the Dora Mae to see that she didn’t need to control everything.
“This looks fine,” she said. There had been a time when buying supplies had been tight, but those days were long past. She didn’t need to hold so tight anymore. “You’re a competent woman. That’s why I hired you. You don’t need me to okay printer ink and copying paper.”
A comical mix of confusion and relief washed across Rose’s face. “Are you sure you don’t want to look it over?”
“I’m sure.”
“Are you feeling okay?” Rose asked.
“Yes, thank you.”
“You’ve been through quite an ordeal.”
Rose didn’t know the half of it. No one did. No one knew the real truth. No one but her and Max. The first few days she’d stayed at her parents‘, she’d confided a bit to them. She told them that Max had been with her on the Dora Mae, but she hadn’t told them everything. She hadn’t mentioned that he’d kidnapped her. She’d left out a lot of the details because they were worried enough without knowing she’d almost died three times in the space of those few days.
The story she’d given to the press had only been a light version of the truth. The day she’d been released from the hospital, she’d stood before reporters and told them she’d been stranded on a tour boat in the Atlantic. Nothing more.
“I’m fine,” she answered Rose, but she wasn’t sure that was true, or rather it was true, only a different truth than she was used to. Which made no sense and meant she’d obviously lost her mind. This time Lola managed a more genuine smile. “Thank you.”
The heels of Rose’s pumps echoed on the hardwood floor as she left the room. She shut the door behind her, and Lola put her elbows on the desk and held her face in her hands.
Even before her release from the hospital in Key West, she’d been visited by two very official-looking gentlemen who’d impressed upon her the need for secrecy. They’d appealed to her patriotism and self-preservation. They could have saved themselves the trip and a lot of breath. She wasn’t an idiot. She didn’t need the FBI or CIA or anyone to tell her that her life might depend on her keeping the details of where she’d been, what she’d seen, and whom she’d seen it with to herself. She knew she couldn’t talk about it to anyone. No one but Max, but she couldn’t talk to him because she didn’t know how to reach him, and he hadn’t contacted her.
Lola blew out a deep breath and reached for her desk calendar. Before she’d left for the Bahamas, she’d written out her schedule for the next four months. The days were filled with meetings and lunches. Some of them important, some of them trivial. None of them life-or-death.