Dante's Twins

“I’ll keep a seat at the head table.”

And set the tongues to wagging more furiously? “No!”

“Leila?” An edge decidedly more suited to a CEO sharpened his tone. “Is something wrong?”

“No,” she repeated more moderately. “But singling me out that way will raise more than a few eyebrows.”

“I can handle raised eyebrows.”

“I’m not sure I can,” she said. “Not quite yet.”

“Our being seen together isn’t hurting anyone, Leila. We’ve done nothing wrong.”

“I know. It’s just that I’m new here and....”

And there are some in the company who’ve made it pretty clear they think I’m prepared to sleep my way to the top. But if she told him that, he’d insist on names and he’d act on the information. And she’d got off to a bad enough start with some of her colleagues without making matters worse.

A moment of silence hummed along the line before Dante said, “Okay, we’ll do it your way for now. Come down as soon as you can. If I can’t sit next to you, at least let me be able to look at you.”

“Of course,” she said, her fears somewhat allayed.

Who was she going to listen to, after all: the man to whom she’d given herself in love and trust—or Carl Newbury and his misplaced moral indignation?

CHAPTER TWO

NEWBURY divided the dinner hour between shoveling food down his throat and harping on the fact that Leila had elected to sit at a table other than theirs.

“Glad to see you’ve managed to pry her off, Dante,” he leered, swabbing a chunk of bread through the remains of his fish soup. “The way she gravitated toward you the first chance she got, I thought we were going to have to call in the troops to rescue you. It’s no wonder the guys are up in arms about her. A woman like that can undermine the stability of the whole company.”

“To put it mildly,” Dante said, deliberately misunderstanding the last remark. Company be damned! In the space of a few days, she’d rocked the foundations of his entire life. Even now when he ought to have been occupied with other things, he couldn’t keep his eyes—or his mind—off her.

She sat four tables removed from his, with her back toward him. Each time she turned her head to speak to the people seated beside her, the hurricane candle in the middle of her table illuminated her profile, emphasizing its exotic cast and highlighting the upswept coil of her black hair. She was the loveliest woman he’d ever seen.

“...Beginner’s luck, that’s all it is. Things just fell into place for her. That she should wind up enjoying a week here in the Caribbean when there are guys in the office who’ve been plugging away for years and never made it—”

She sat like a queen, dark-eyed, dark-haired, and so beautiful it was unnerving. Ethereal, almost. Like a dream that couldn’t possibly live up to reality. Or was it the blend of shy reserve and elegant dignity that lent such mystery to her? Or the fact that she seemed oblivious to her impact on those around her?

“Nobody bent the rules for her,” Dante said, continuing to observe her. “The top thirty employees get invited to Poinciana, the rest stay and run things on the home front. The standard remains the same regardless of who’s on the payroll.”

“Ah!” Newbury pounced on the remark as eagerly as he attacked the stuffed land crab entrée placed before him. “It’s the way she accomplished it, swanning in and taking over a plum assignment which was my right to assign, that soured me on her. But is she grateful? Not her! She treats me to the royal brush-off with her cool smile and snotty attitude. As if I’m not good enough to polish her shoes.”

Considering Carl at times displayed all the charm of a sewer rat, her instincts were, in Dante’s view, right on target. But the guy was married to Gavin’s goddaughter, which made him family of a sort, and Dante set great store by family. So he kept his opinion to himself and hoped Carl would tire of the subject.

He didn’t. “Her appointment’s upset more than a few people, Dante. There’s a discord present that wasn’t there before she came on the scene. Knowing that, can you honestly sit there and tell me that, if you’d been there when she applied for Hasborough’s job, you’d have agreed to hire her?”

No, he thought. I’d have proposed to her instead before some other man beat me to it. But the presumption behind Newbury’s question was too blatant to go unchecked.

“Are you questioning the chairman of the board’s business acumen, Carl?” He phrased the question pleasantly enough, toying idly with his wineglass the whole time, but Newbury heard the warning and took heed.

“Not at all! Gavin’s a fine man—experienced, well respected in the import business. But he’s.... ”

“A pushover for a pretty face?” Dante laced his smile with phoney sympathy.

Newbury took the bait without a second’s misgiving. “Well, aren’t we all, Dante, if a woman plays up to us?”

“No,” Dante said, his smile disappearing along with any semblance of congeniality. “Especially not Gavin Black and especially not where business is concerned. We’re talking about a man who’s already forgotten more about running an import company than you or I will ever learn, and who’s a devoted husband, father and grandfather to boot. Yet unless I’ve misunderstood where all this talk is leading, you’re suggesting he allowed his professional judgment to be swayed by what could well be interpreted as sexual discrimination.”

“No!” Newbury practically choked in his haste to extricate himself from the hot seat. “I’m not saying that at all. Anything but!”

“That’s good,” Dante said. “Because if you were, Carl, I’d have to question very seriously if you really belong in a vice president’s position.”

“I worked hard to get where I am, Dante, you know that.”

“And I applaud your dedication. However, I value loyalty more.”

“So do I. The company always comes first.” Newbury began to sweat.

It wasn’t a pretty sight and reason enough for Dante to cast his gaze elsewhere. It zeroed in on Leila with the accuracy of a missile seeking its target.

Something the man on her left said had amused her. Dante watched, fascinated by the flash of her smile, the graceful arch of her throat as she tilted her head back in laughter. Everything about her was small, elegant, refined. Beside her he felt clumsy, unfinished. Too big, too earthy, too ordinary.

And he wanted her in a way that both startled and elated him.

As if she’d read his mind, she swiveled suddenly in her seat and stared at him expectantly. He realized then that she was not alone, that conversation throughout the room had died to allow one of the senior partners to give the annual morale-boosting spiel. This year, it was his turn.

Wrenching his mind back to business, he stood up and acknowledged the applause. “Thanks,” he said, “and a belated welcome to Poinciana. We’ve already wrapped up two days of seminars and before the week is over I’m confident we’ll have resolved some of the problems we’ve faced over the last year. But we don’t fly our brightest and best to the Caribbean to spend all their time indoors.”

Her eyes, dark gray and almond-shaped, fixed on him earnestly. Returning her gaze, he lost the thread of what he’d been saying, recalling instead the image of her lying beneath him that afternoon. His body responded accordingly.

In danger of finding himself seriously embarrassed in public, he looked away and scanned the room at large. “Classic Collections,” he said, falling back on lines he’d repeated so often he could recite them in his sleep, “bought Poinciana five years ago but although it’s the company name on the land title, the island really belongs to all of you. Your effort, your support, made its purchase possible. There are no bosses here and no employees, just people with a common interest and a common goal—to meet the challenges ahead with energy and a united effort to keep Classic Collections at the top where it belongs.”

He indicated Gavin, his one-time mentor and for the last five years, his partner. “We hope,” he said, and despite himself, found he was focusing on her again, speaking directly to her, “that you’ll take advantage of the beaches, the trails, the weather and the excellent food, to recharge your batteries. Except for when you’re in seminar, you’re on island time. Make the most of it and enjoy.”

Right on cue the steel band on the terrace started its nightly gig, the rhythm pulsing through the applause in the dining room.

“Wonderful,” Newbury murmured obsequiously in his ear. “You always say exactly the right thing, Dante.”

“I try,” he replied, stifling the inclination to tell the man to can it. Instead, he turned to Gavin’s wife who sat on his other side. “Shall we start things rolling, Rita?”

“Might as well,” she said, smiling up at him. “There are a lot of ladies who’ve waited all year to dance with you, Dante, and I wouldn’t like to get trampled in the rush.”

Across the table, her husband laughed and held out his hand to Maureen Vickers, the fifty-six-year-old head of personnel who, like every other employee present, had gone the distance and then some in her devotion to the company over the last twelve months. “Let’s give them a run for their money, Maureen.”

The small dance floor filled quickly, forcing couples to spill out to the terrace. Above the coconut palms fringing the beach, the moon rose bright and full. The sea rolled ashore, seeming to be drawn as much by the hypnotic rhythm of the steel band as the pull of the tide.

A summer paradise beside which February in Vancouver sank into cold damp oblivion, it was Poinciana as he’d never seen it before, its beauty made all the more memorable because of Leila Connors-Lee. Automatically, his gaze swung over the crowd, seeking out her ivory-clad body swaying in the arms of a junior accountant whom Dante decided he’d never much liked. There was something about the man’s soft white hands and the way they moved up and down that straight elegant spine....

“You’re very quiet, Dante,” Rita Black said. “Something on your mind?”