NEGOTIATION PHASE

Oh, to be torn 'twixt love an' duty.

– 

Chapter 11

Even after a handful of years, Duncan found meetings weird.

The whole business-suited, proposal/pitch/report, Danish-and-coffee and thanks-for-your-time elements of them. Then there were the politics, and the pecking orders.

Maybe that was why he didn't have an actual office. There was no escaping the meeting to his mind if a man had an office. Plus an office meant you had to staff it with people who had to be given particular assignments on a regular basis. If you happened to be the boss, that meant you had to come up with those assignments, and probably read reams of reports on the assignments before, during and afterward. And you'd damn well have to have more meetings regarding the assignments. Vicious cycle.

An office involved desks, and giving people titles. Who actually decided on titles? What made, say, an executive assistant different from an administrative assistant? And should it be the Vice President of Marketing and Sales, or the Vice President of Sales and Marketing? Things like that would keep him up at night.

Phineas nagged him off and on about the office thing, but so far he'd been able to slip and slide around it.

He liked meeting with people in one of the bars, or a restaurant. Or if it was absolutely necessary, in Phin's office, which was, in Duncan's opinion, meeting central. Going somewhere that wasn't essentially or absolutely his own place not only kept things looser, but he'd found those he met with tended to be more up-front and outspoken over a beer in a pub than they might be over glasses of spring water in a boardroom. He'd found, too, that it was often more interesting, certainly more telling, to go to the prospective meeter. Sitting in their homes, their place of business, their studio, whatever, generally made them more comfortable. It gave him a leg up on getting what he wanted or needed or hoped for if the other party was comfortable in their own space. Following that philosophy, he'd buzzed from a breakfast meeting at a cafe downtown to a funky little theater in Southside, then wound his way to a sadly neglected house in the Victorian section.

In each case, he felt he'd gotten more accomplished, and had a better time of it, than if he'd summoned all the parties involved in all the prospective projects into some stuffy office where he'd be stuck behind a desk wanting to pull a Suicide Joe and jump out the window anyway. As he made the turn onto Jones, he hoped the same would hold true for what he'd deemed his last meeting of the day.

He'd considered timing it differently, doing a kind of drop-by when Phoebe would be home. But that seemed just a little underhanded. Which was a valid strategy, true, but he figured she'd cop to it.

He parked, began the pretty stroll under arching trees.

He wanted to see her-and not just for the quick just-dropping-intosee-how-you're-doing visits he'd limited himself to for the last two weeks. Biding time, he mused. And maybe there was a little gameplaying in there, too. She didn't know what to make of him, and he didn't mind that.

He didn't always know what to make of himself, and didn't mind that either.

One thing he did know was that she'd had a major trauma, and she was working her way through it. There wasn't any point in pushing her into a date, or rushing her into bed at a time when she was shaky on her pins.

He had plans. He liked to make plans, nearly as much as he liked adjusting, shifting and altogether changing them from conception to completion.

He had plans for Phoebe.

But right now, he had plans for something else altogether.

Before he turned up the walk to MacNamara House he spotted the woman with the strange little dog across the brick road. Today's doggy bow tie was red-and-white-striped, to match the wide-brimmed hat the lady had perched on her head. It set off, he supposed, her blindingly white suit and red sneakers.

The little dog currently sniffed happily, by all appearances, at the butt of a puffy pink poodle held on the end of a gold leash by an enormously fat black man in a blue seersucker suit.

The scrawny lady and the huge man chatted away under the shade of a live oak even as the hairless dog struggled mightily to hump the pink poodle.

God, Duncan thought, he loved Savannah.

He rang the bell, admired the pots and baskets of flowers on the veranda while he waited. It was Ava, he remembered, who had the gardening talent. He wondered if he could talk her into…

"Hey." He offered Essie a smile when she opened the door. "Got time for a bad penny?"

"You're no bad penny, and I've always got time for young handsome men."

They'd progressed over his occasional visits to cheek-kissing. He bussed hers now, caught the subtle scent of her perfume.

What was it like, he wondered, to get up every day, dress and groom, knowing you'd never go out the door?

"How'd you know I was baking cookies?" she asked him, so his smile spread to a grin.

"What kind?"

"Chocolate chip."

"Come on, really? All the way from scratch? Good thing I came by so you'd have a taste tester."

"Let's get you started on that. Phoebe won't be home for a couple hours yet," she added as she led the way back. "Ava, she's running errands. She'll be swinging by school to pick Carly up after play practice.

Our Carly's one of the wicked stepsisters in Cinderella. She loves getting to be mean and bossy."

"I was a frog once. Not the turn-into-a-prince kind. Just a frog. I had to belch on cue. It was a shining moment in my life."

She laughed, shooed him toward the kitchen table. "I bet your mama was so proud."

He said nothing to that. What could he say? Instead he sniffed the air. "Smells like heaven in here."

"I got some still warm from the oven. You want coffee or milk with them?"

"Cookies and milk? I'd suffer through school again if I could come home after to you and cookies and milk."

Pleased, she pinked up. "You're a charmer, aren't you? What've you been out and about doing today?"

"Talking to people, mostly. And actually, I was hoping to finish up that part of the day talking to you. There's this property I was looking at. It's in the Victorian District, not far from a piece of the campus. Savannah College of Art and Design?"

"You don't say." She could barely remember what was outside the house and where it was set. All of that, the streets and buildings and open spaces, were a jumbled maze of squares and lines in her mind. "What kind of property?"

"Kind of a mess, actually. Like one of those Victorian ladies who fell on extremely hard times. You can still see the elegance under the neglect." He picked up a cookie, bit in. Then forgot everything in pure sensory pleasure.

"Oh God. Marry me."

She didn't laugh this time. She giggled. "If a woman can have you for a cookie, I'm surprised the bakeries all over the state of Georgia aren't working overtime." She reached across him, picked up one herself. And her eyes twinkled. "But they are damned good cookies."

"If I beg, will you give me some to take home? How can I settle for Chips Ahoy! now?"

"I believe we can spare some for you."

She moved to the stove to take out a tray, slide in the one she'd prepared.

"I lost my train of thought in cookie nirvana. This sad house off campus."

"Mmm-hmm. You're thinking of buying it and fixing it up."

He followed warm cookie with cold milk, and figured that was the sum total of heaven on earth. "That kind of depends on you." Puzzlement lifted her eyebrows as she turned away from the stove. "On me?"

"I'm thinking of buying it and fixing it up, yeah. What I've got in mind is a shop. Now… " He gestured with the last bite of the first cookie before popping it into his mouth. "I know what you're thinking."