“Normal?”
Helen smiled. “Something like that, yes.” That was unusual too-Jon never made fun of himself. Just the opposite, in fact-he thought he was God’s gift to the Western world. Helen looked down at her slacks, casual blouse, and plain jacket. “I feel underdressed standing next to you, Jon, and that’s certainly something I never thought I’d say. It feels weird.”
“I’m very glad you’re here, Helen,” Jon said. He held out a bouquet of red roses. “Happy Valentine’s Day,” he said, looking into her eyes.
A puff of wind could have knocked Helen Kaddiri over. She accepted the flowers with a stunned expression. The most he had ever given her in the past was a hard time. “Thank you,” she said in a tiny voice. “I’m flattered. Now tell me: Who are you, and what have you done with the real Dr Jonathan Colin Masters?”
“No, it’s me, all right,” Jon said. “We’re this way.” He motioned toward the marina.
“We’re not meeting in the hotel?” said Helen. “I’ve asked my attorney to join us. He’ll be here in a few minutes.” Jon looked confused. “I assumed this was in response to my settlement agreement, Jon.”
“No. I hadn’t planned on bringing any lawyers,” Jon said. “You can bring him if you want, but it might spoil…”
“Spoil what?”
“Spoil… the mood,” he said, a little embarrassed.
“The mood?” Helen retorted. She had been intrigued at first, even titillated by what Jon was doing; now she was getting angry. This sounded like yet another Masters prank. But it wasn’t the fact that he was pulling another prank that made her angry-it was her sense that this wasn’t a prank, and then realizing that she had deluded herself. “Jon, what is this? What’s going on? If this is some kind of gag, so help me, I’ll brain you!”
“It’s not a joke, Helen,” Jon said. “Follow me.”
“Where are we going?”
“It’s a surprise,” Jon said. He led her down the steps to the hotel marina. A man in a white waiter’s outfit smiled, bowed, and opened the wharf security gate for them. “I’d ask you to close your eyes,” Jon said, “but the thought of you closing your eyes on this dock makes me dizzy.”
“Jon, where are we going?” Helen asked irritably. “This is crazy. If we can’t discuss our differences like rational human beings, we should just…”
“Here we are,” Jon said. He had stopped beside the most beautiful yacht Helen had ever seen. It had to be sixty-five feet in length-it looked as big as a house. A waiter in crisp white was standing in the aft cockpit, ready to help them board, and opposite him was a violin player. Up a short ladder was the covered aft deck, on which Helen could see a table laid with a gleaming white tablecloth and place settings for two. The yacht’s engines were running, and dock crews were holding the lines, ready to get under way.
“Jon, what in the world are you up to?” Helen asked.
“We’ll talk on board,” Jon said. “Let’s go.”
“Where are we going?”
“Oh, I thought we’d go to Catalina for the weekend,” Jon said. “Depends on the weather. Or we can go to Dana Point, or Mexico…”
“Mexico?” Helen asked. “Jon, what is all this?”
“Helen, we can talk on board,” Jon said again. He looked up and down the wharf. Attracted by the soft violin music, a small crowd of gawkers had stopped to watch, which was making Jon uncomfortable. “Your chariot awaits, madame.”
“We’re not going anywhere until you answer me,” Helen demanded. “What’s going on? Is this another one of your elaborate pranks? If it is, I haven’t got time for any of it.”
“This is no prank, Helen,” Jon said. His face was beginning to show the dejection of someone realizing his grand plan maybe wasn’t going to work. “This is a night out for both of us. A chance to be together, to talk, to have a nice dinner, to see the coast at night.”
“No one else?”
“No one else.”
“What makes you think I’d fall for any of this, Jon?” Helen asked.
“ ‘Fall’ for this? There’s nothing to ‘fall for,’ Helen,” Jon responded. “We have a lot to talk about. There’s so much I want to tell you…”
“This isn’t about the settlement agreement, about the buyout?”
“No, it’s not about any of that,” Jon replied.
“Well, what then?”
“It’s about… it’s about you and me, Helen. About us.”
“Us? There is no ‘us,’ Jon.”
“I want there to be an ‘us,’ Helen,” Jon said sincerely. “Can’t we go on board?”
“Talk to me right now, Jon,” Helen insisted. “What are you saying?”
Thankfully, the crowd had started to go on its way. The violin player stepped inside but continued to play. “Helen, I sensed something in you during the BERP demonstration up in Sacramento,” Jon said. “I don’t know if I’m right or not, but I know what I sensed. And when I thought about it, thought about you, I felt really good.”
“You mean… you mean, you like me?” Helen asked, sounding perhaps a bit more incredulous than she meant. “As in, romantically like me?”
Jon took her hands in his. “Yes, Helen. Romantically. I want to see if there’s anything there, you know?”
Helen paused, looking into Jon’s eyes. This was too much to believe, too much even to grasp. Was this really happening? She became acutely aware that he was holding her hands, and she took them away.
“Jon… Jon, this is very nice,” Helen said awkwardly. “I’ve never been treated to anything like this before. But…”
“But what?”
“We are in the middle of a multimillion-dollar buyout negotiation, Jon,” Helen said. “You’re paying three thousand dollars a day in legal fees to resolve our differences…”
“Well, that’s over,” Jon said. “Whatever you want, you can have. Full rights to the patents, full ownership of the unpatented designs you created, full market value of the stock, and your stake in the underlying Dun amp; Bradstreet value of the company in cash or in percentage of profits. You deserve it; you should have it.”
Helen Kaddiri was flabbergasted. “Two months of legal negotiations ended just like that?” she asked. “What’s the catch?”
“There is no catch,” Jon said.
“I don’t have to go on this boat with you? I don’t have to have dinner with you? I don’t have to sleep with you?”
Jon gave her a mischievous grin and shrugged. “Well…”
“You are a piece of work, Jon, you really are,” Helen said angrily. “You can’t browbeat me with a bunch of lawyers, so you decided you’re going to try to woo me to sign your buyout deal?”
“No! That’s not it at all!” Jon said. “The deal’s already been done. I signed your last counteroffer four hours ago.”
“You did?”
“Yes,” Jon said. He took her hands again. “So maybe we can consider this a celebration cruise, or perhaps a reconciliation cruise?”
Helen looked at Jon, at the yacht, then back into his eyes. “Are you serious, Jon?” she asked. “You just… want to spend time with me?”
“Yes,” Jon said. “Maybe more, in the future, if you want. But let’s make this the first step, shall we? I’ve got so much to tell you, so much I want to share with you.”
“Oh, Jon,” Helen said disapprovingly. She let his hands drop again, not as sharply as before but still a rejection. “I guess I’m just not a dinner-on-a-yacht girl.”
Jon motioned to the upper deck, where a small rigid-hulled inflatable boat was waiting on davits. “They’ve got a cool little Nouverania up there we can use.”
“It’s not that,” Helen said after a little laugh that made Jon’s heart do a somersault with hope. “Jon, after all we’ve been through together, this is just not the way I imagined it ever happening. I never expected to be… courted, I guess. And I certainly never expected to be… to be swept off my feet. Especially by Jonathan Colin Masters.”