Karen Smith – The CEO's Unexpected Proposal (страница 8)
She could empathize. True intimacy demanded vulnerability and she was afraid of letting her guard down as much as anyone. “Nothing’s going to happen overnight, or in one ride around town. But if you can just share one memory with him from childhood—something that affected your life in some way—and he hears the truth in that, he might look at you differently.” Her tone took on a lighter note. “He might actually see that you’re not just his dad, you’re a
“If you want Luke to see me as a person, we really have a lot of work to do.”
She laughed.
Dawson looked as if he wanted to give her a hug … or something. Instead he lifted the suitcase again, opened the door and headed into the kitchen where the biscotti jar and chocolate milk had brought back memories of their teenage years around that kitchen table. Maybe Dawson and Luke weren’t the only ones who would have to let a few walls down. Mikala’s biggest problem would be separating the personal from the professional.
But she could and would do that. She really had no choice. And while she was doing it, she would
An hour later Dawson and Luke both stood in Mikala’s studio looking uncomfortable. If that was any indication of how their drive had gone …
“Luke, why don’t you go into the music room and make yourself at home. I just have to talk to your dad for a few minutes and then I’ll be in.”
Luke gave them both an I-don’t-want-to-do-this look, but wandered into the music room and went over to the bench at the piano. Mikala wasn’t surprised. That’s where he probably felt the most comfortable.
She said to Dawson, “Let’s step outside a minute. I don’t want to leave him too long.”
They were hardly on the stoop of the studio when Dawson said with some disappointment, “He didn’t say a word. I was hoping … We drove downtown around the park and I tried to explain the celebrations held there. You know. The happy times I remembered. Then I took him past our old house—
She knew Dawson needed some of this return-to-the-past as much as Luke did, so she asked, “How did it look?”
“Different, yet the same. New shutters, beige trim instead of white, brown roof instead of red. But the yard … I remembered practicing my pitching in that yard. Tossing baskets at the backboard on the garage. Then the garage reminded me of the weeks I worked on my first car in there. I tried to share all that with Luke, but he just sat there as if nothing I said mattered.”
“He heard you, Dawson.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“I’m sure because I can tell from Luke’s comments and his facial expressions and his body language that he hears what everybody’s saying. He’s in culture shock right now. You’ve moved him from the only home he knows. Give him time to settle in. Give yourself time, too.”
“What do you plan to accomplish today?”
“Not a whole lot. I just want Luke to get used to me. We’ll get into all the rest of it soon enough.”
“If you run over, I pay overtime.”
“We’ll talk about it if it happens.”
“Mikala, I
Gazing into Dawson’s eyes, she saw the integrity he’d always possessed, fairness that always made him a good leader. But it wasn’t integrity or fairness that practically mesmerized her as she stared into his eyes. It was something so much deeper than either of them were going to act on.
Yet even as she thought it, she noticed the tiny scar along his jaw that he hadn’t had as a teenager. She also caught a glimpse of a few silver strands in the hair at his temples. There was a swirl of chest hair in the V-neck of his shirt. In high school she’d seen him at their favorite swimming hole in his bathing suit and thought no boy in their class had looked as good.
Pushing all those memories aside, she said, “I’ve got to go in to Luke. Just trust me, Dawson.”
“I’ll try. I’ll be up in my suite. Call my cell if you need me. In fact, call my cell when you’re finished and I’ll come back over for him.”
Dawson was hovering again and he had to break the habit. “He’s my last appointment today. It might be better if we just walk over to the bed-and-breakfast and he comes and finds you.”
“Right. I guess I’m supposed to give him space.”
As she turned toward the studio, Dawson caught her hand. His fingers folded around hers, and she thought,
“I’ll talk to you later,” he said as if he expected results from her meeting with Luke.
She didn’t go over the ground rules again. She’d already told him she wouldn’t be able to report what Luke said without his permission. Yet she nodded, slipped her hand from Dawson’s and went inside.
When she returned to the studio, Luke didn’t pay her any mind. She went to her desk and picked up her legal pad, then crossed to the doorway of the music room. “Where would you like to sit and talk? In here? Or in my office?”
Luke sat at the piano with his fingers on the keys, yet he wasn’t playing.
“I don’t want to sit either place.”
“I know you don’t.”
He brought his hands down on the piano into two loud chords. Mikala quietly sat in the chair beside the piano bench and waited.
After a while Luke asked, “Aren’t you going to say something?”
“I know you’ve seen counselors before.”
“A psychiatrist and a psychologist. What are you?”
“Didn’t your dad tell you?”
“He just said you’re an old friend he went to school with, and you’re a music therapist. But I don’t know what that’s got to do with anything.”
“Your dad told me you can memorize pieces on the piano without a lot of trouble. That’s pretty cool.”
“I play them and I remember them.”
“Would you play something for me?” She was fully prepared for him to say no.
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