Frowning, she swiveled back to the desk, realizing she was still holding the pen. “I don’t doodle.”
“Really? ’Cause I just sat here listening to you go on about how strong, trustworthy, reliable, and responsible the man is, plus he can stick the landing on a quadruple orgasm.”
“Well, he has all those qualities.”
“Maybe, but please don’t fall for him. Promise me.”
“I’m not falling for him. I like him. I enjoy spending time with him, but I am not going to fall for him.” Of course, she wasn’t. The air backed up uncomfortably in her lungs. Was she?
“Good.” Danny sounded genuinely relieved. “It’s not that I don’t want to lose you to Captivity—though I don’t—but as much as you enjoy going wild with the bear for a few weeks, can you honestly see yourself living there, city girl?”
“I don’t know.” Even she heard the irritation in her voice. “It’s beautiful here, in a rustic, unspoiled way.”
“Izzy, I’m staring at a screensaver of your terrified face as you fled for your life from a pack of killer waterfowl. They have bears—the real kind, not just the kind that can make you come by brushing up against you in a flannel shirt. Wolves. Caribou. Long, dark winters. Honey, it’s the rugged outdoors. They have accidents and fatalities all the time. I looked up the stats. People take headers off snowy slopes. They fall through ice into freezing water. They get lost on a hike and are never heard from again. Young people. Active people. People who know their way around the wilderness. For you? Guaranteed deathtrap.”
“I’m not completely helpless or hopeless when it comes to outdoorsy stuff, and I would never do anything even remotely dangerous without someone who knew what they were doing by my side.” She thought about snowshoeing with Trace that first morning and almost said, Trace would never let anything happen to me, but then she thought about his brother. Shay. Native son, experienced outdoorsman, dead at twenty-five. Things happened.
Unaccountably shaken by the thought, and accountably annoyed by Danny’s perhaps not totally unreasonable lack of faith in her ability to thrive anywhere that didn’t have a Whole Foods and a Lululemon, she cranked the stupid space heater down a degree and tossed her pen onto the desk. “Anyway, this is a pointless conversation. I’m only in Captivity temporarily, I’m not planning any outdoor adventures while I’m here, and I’m not going to fall for Trace Shanahan.”
“Glad to hear it. Especially since your temporary Captivity might be ending sooner rather than later.”
“What?” Ending sooner? Why? And were those needles of panic pricking her skin because something might be killing the deal—and her shot at a partnership—or because ending sooner meant she’d say goodbye to Trace sooner than she’d counted on?
“It’s all good,” Danny said. “I think Chuck was going to email you this afternoon, but from what he told me, the buyer wants to accelerate the timeline. I guess he’s happy with everything he’s seen so far and asked his firm to cut back on the diligence requests and start negotiating the deal. Chuck will send over the purchase agreement as soon as he receives it.”
“Oh.” She tapped her laptop to life and scanned her emails. One from Chuck sat at the top of the inbox. “Do you know…” She had to stop and sip a quick breath. “Do you know if he wants me to fly home to do that? I mean, in theory, I don’t have to be here to negotiate.” This was good news. Great news. So why was her stomach sinking like the Titanic?
“I don’t think so. There are a few more items on the due diligence checklist that they do want to see, and Chuck definitely wants your touch on how those documents are organized, summarized, and presented. Beyond that, I think your, ahem, client, is singing your praises. Chuck told me it’s been valuable to have you there, on site, spearheading everything for our side of the deal, and I don’t think he anticipates handling the purchase agreement negotiations any differently.”
“Okay. All right.” Her sinking stomach stabilized. “Then that’s what I’ll do.”
“They’re serious about taking a fast-track. Pack those bags, baby, and get ready to come back here and Cristal-christen your new corner office. This guy wants to ink the deal in a couple weeks.”
“A couple weeks? I-I haven’t even seen an updated term sheet yet, much less the contract. There are still a number of open issues to lock down—”
“I’m just telling you what the guy wants, not giving you a hard and fast timeline. But the good news is, he’s tipped his hand completely. I mean, if he wants this done that quickly, so badly, I have a funny feeling all those open issues are going to go your way. Right?”
Yeah, he had a point, but as she ended the call, she also faced another important implication. Her time in Captivity was winding down.
…
Trace buried his axe blade into one of the fallen spruce limbs they’d cleared and stacked by the trail. With half an ear he listened to Lenna and her husband Tom talk with Jorg, Annie Watkins, and Rose about their vacation in Seattle while they hoed overgrown brush from the trail. The whine of chainsaws Wing and Mad wielded on bigger fells higher up the winding path blurred the conversation a bit, but that was okay. He’d already caught the highlights while flying them home that morning.
They’d visited their son and his wife, played with the new grandbaby. They sounded happy. He’d considered whether his parents ever wondered when the hell he or Bridget would give them grandkids. That, strangely, had led his thoughts to Izzy and their bedtime story and how anxious he’d been to see if they could switch things from fantasy to reality.
Memories of this morning with Izzy made him smile to himself as he chopped wood. Switch accomplished. Epically and irrevocably. Before his mind made much progress on how to follow up on the morning’s epic-ness with some evening epic-ness, the chainsaws suddenly shut off, and Lenna’s words carried to him clearly.
“…can’t wait to meet the woman who captured the boss’s heart.”
“I swear, you leave town for two weeks, and next thing you know, they’ve painted the library hazard-cone orange, and Trace’s got himself a love life,” Tom grumbled.
“She’s really sweet,” Annie said, and Rose agreed. “City girl. Very beautiful.”
“Sexy,” Jorg corrected.
Lenna laughed. “I think Jorg has it right, at least where Trace is concerned. When he dropped us off at home this morning, he was like”—she mimicked driving fast and furious, then did a sound effect for screeching brakes—“here’s your house.” She threw two hands worth of imaginary luggage. “Your bags. Go.”
“I think I have a boot mark on my ass from where he kicked us out of the car,” Tom said.