Sam stayed on her heels. "This company isn't going to work if you pull any more power plays like that. That's not what we're about. It isn't going to frigging work!"
Yank began tapping his pants pockets in search of his keys. An eddy of cool night wind whipped Sam's hair up from his neck. Her heart ached. Why did he have to be so fierce? So driven?
"You've blown this deal, Suzie. I mean you have destroyed everything. Everything we've been working for. Everything we've tried to do. It's like you deliberately set out to sabotage us."
Yank tapped his shirt pocket and said in a distracted voice, "She didn't blow it, did you, Susannah?" "No," she replied. "I didn't blow it."
"She didn't blow it, Sam."
Sam stared at both of them, and then at her. "What do you mean? Did he say something to you? What are you talking about?"
Without bothering to consider how Yank had known what would happen, she managed to say, "Mitch has accepted. He's joining SysVal as our fourth partner."
Sam's face shattered as if a sunlit prism had broken apart inside him. "He told you? He's accepted? That's fabulous! I mean, that is freaking fabulous!" He grabbed her and pulled her to his chest. But the moment of shared joy that should have been perfect had been ruined for her.
He released her and threw his arms into the air. "This is going to be fantastic!" With his neck arched, he began drawing word pictures of the revolution they were about to begin. He wasn't as tall as either Yank or Mitch, but as he sliced the air with sweeping gestures and spangled the night with his grandiose dreams, he seemed so much bigger than either of them.
She could feel his energy pulling at her, that indomitable force of will tugging her up toward his personal rainbow. She wanted to go with him on his climb, but this time something within her resisted. Only when he saw how rigidly she was holding herself did he grow quiet. After studying her for a few moments, he said, "Yank, Suzie and I are going to take a walk. Wait for us, okay?"
Yank began searching the ground at his feet. Sam extracted the Duster keys from his own pocket and tossed them over. "We won't be long."
He caught her arm and began drawing her back toward the row of stores. "You're still too chicken to fight with me, aren't you? You're incredibly pissed, but you're going to sulk instead of fight."
Some of her spirit began to come back. Was it his touch? Did he have a magical way of passing his energy through his skin and into hers? "I'm not afraid of fighting with you," she said. "But right now, I'm just not certain you're worth it."
Even as the words were slipping from her mouth, she couldn't believe she was uttering them. His steps faltered, and she knew that she had hurt him. It was a strange feeling to realize she had any power over him at all. She moved up onto the sidewalk. An ice cream cone lay deflated in an ugly brown puddle on the pavement. They walked past the door of Mom & Pop's. She stopped in front of the dry cleaners and stared blindly at a wedding gown entombed in a windowed cardboard box. Once again, she reached deep inside herself to find the courage to say what she must.
"Don't ever try to cut me out again, Sam," she said quietly.
"Is that what you think I was doing?"
"Yes. You excluded me and then used marriage as a bargaining chip to keep me in line."
"You're getting paranoid. I assumed we'd get married one of these days. You're not the sort of woman who's going to be happy shacking up for very long." He slipped one hand out of his jacket pocket and laid it over her shoulders. "Suzie, I'm sorry. I wasn't trying to pull any sort of power play. I just didn't understand you were so hung up about crossing all the't's and dotting the i's."
"To me, it was more than crossing't's."
"But I don't see it that way. You and I are a couple, aren't we? What one of us has, the other has."
He was so earnest, so persuasive, but this time she wouldn't let herself be swept away. "Then why didn't you drop out?" she asked gently. "Why didn't you say, 'I'll step aside. Let Susannah be your partner. What she's got, I've got'?"
He pulled his arm from her shoulders. "That's ridiculous! It's not even logical. This whole thing was my idea. SysVal means everything to me."
"I lost my father, Sam. SysVal means everything to me, too."
The harsh glare faded from his features as he took in the significance of what she was saying. Slowly he smiled-a rueful, apologetic smile. Some of the ice inside her began to melt. He tilted his head toward her and touched her forehead with his own. Her eyelids drifted shut. They stood like that for a moment, with their eyes closed and foreheads touching.
"I'm sorry," he whispered.
She knew that she was near tears, and she forced them back so that she didn't sound self-pitying. "I want to be as important to you as the company."
"You and the company are all mixed up together in my mind."
They stood like that for a few moments with only their foreheads touching. Then their noses brushed, and their mouths. Although their lips were together, they didn't kiss.
"I love you, Suzie," he whispered, his voice sounding young and scared. "I know I get crazy sometimes, but you've got to promise me you'll stick with me. Please, babe. I need you so much. Oh, God, I love you. Promise me you'll always be there for me."
He gripped her hands at her sides so tightly he seemed to be trying to couple their flesh. At that moment, she realized how fiercely she loved him. Her throat had constricted and she couldn't talk-she couldn't force out the words he needed to hear. Instead, she parted her lips and gave him a dark, desperate kiss.
Chapter 16
"Slap some paint on his shirt, Susannah," Sam said three weeks later, as he placed a two-by-four over a pair of sawhorses. "I'm embarrassed to be in the same room with him."
Mitch looked down at his crisply pressed work shirt and a pair of dark blue jeans with razor-sharp creases. "What's the matter with the way I look? We're building a wall, for Pete's sake, not going to a fashion show."
Sam snorted, and Susannah smiled to herself. Building the partition to separate the assembly and storage areas in their new office space was the first job the four of them had done together, and despite the fact that Sam and Mitch had been trading jibes all morning, the wall was taking shape rapidly.
She had spent the first two weeks of October scouring the Valley for office space, but it had been difficult finding something that was adequate and yet met their limited budget. With Mitch as a partner, they had easily secured a bank loan. Each of them was now drawing a minuscule salary, and their cash flow problems had temporarily eased. But they all knew the loan was only a temporary stopgap, and in order to postpone going to the venture capitalists, they had to scrimp wherever they could.
She had finally found office space at a reasonable rent in the back of a tilt-up, one of the low rectangular buildings that filled the Valley's industrial parks. It wasn't a large area, but it was bigger than the garage and, with a few additions, would meet their needs. They had begun constructing the dividing partition the day before.
"I'll bet you go to a tailor to get your underwear made," Sam said to Mitch as he held the board for Yank to cut.
"My tailor doesn't make underwear," Mitch replied. And then, "I've heard there's a market in the Orient for human hair, Sam. It occurs to me that if you'd sell yours, we could buy this building instead of just renting it."
Susannah groaned. "Tell them both to be quiet, will you, Yank? They're giving me a headache."
"You didn't have a headache this morning." Sam leered at her, and then swung the two-by-four around so that it gently slapped her rear.
She absolutely refused to blush. If she were going to work with men all day, she at least had to pretend to be one of the guys. "That's true," she countered sweetly, "but I'll certainly have one by tonight."