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Joe beamed. “As I said, your baby.”
CHAPTER
10
JOE LEFT HER, AND LAURA DECIDED TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THE solitude in the conference room. She remained seated in the tall leather chair at the head of the table—the one in which Foster had sat the first time she saw him—and looked again at the four-color rendering of the sleek jet.
SunSouth Select was a concept that she’d been working on for more than a year. It was a service-oriented innovation for the business traveler that she hoped to implement before SunSouth’s competitors did something similar. She wanted SunSouth to be the initiator, not an imitator.
Joe seemed surprised that Foster hadn’t yet seen the syllabus. Laura had worked on it for months, and once it was done, Joe had assumed she would take it straight to Foster. “No,” she told him. “I want SunSouth Select to be a surprise. I want to present it to him as a complete package.”
“You want to have all your ducks in a row.”
“Exactly. And I’m still waiting on some market analyses and cost projections. When they’re ready and I’ve had a chance to study them, I’ll lay out the entire plan for him.”
This was uncustomary. Always before, she and Foster had worked in tandem. One rarely made a move without the other knowing about it. While it was true that she wanted to surprise him with a kit-and-caboodle proposal, it was also true that, when she did, she wanted his undivided attention. She hadn’t had that in months. He’d been preoccupied with finding the right man to sire their child.
He thought of little else, talked of little else. Every conversation included at least one reference to a child and its conception. That was the prevailing issue of their lives now. If she became pregnant, she knew that Foster would become an expert on prenatal care, diet, exercise. He would spend hours researching and committing to memory every aspect of pregnancy. No doubt he would chart their child’s development on a daily basis.
He had once been quoted in Business Week as saying that his airline’s success was in large part due to his OCD—obsessive-compulsive disorder. The interviewer thought he was joking. He wasn’t.
He had been diagnosed as an adolescent, although he had exhibited the symptoms in early childhood. His parents had thought his compulsions went hand in glove with his brilliant mind and were nothing to worry about. But when those compulsions began to interfere with normal function and everyday life, his parents had sought psychiatric help.
Foster was put on medication to keep the disorder under control. He wasn’t “healed,” however, and so in a very real sense his obsessiveness was indeed responsible for his fanatic attention to detail, and therefore for SunSouth’s extraordinary success.
Unless the weather was prohibitive, late arrivals and departures were not tolerated at SunSouth Airlines.
Each packet of peanuts contained exactly the same number. One too few, the customer was cheated. One too many cost the airline money.
Flight attendants and pilots did not alter their uniforms, not even by wearing nonregulation cuff links or an unapproved shade of panty hose.
If he’d had less charisma, Foster’s obsessiveness would have incited mutiny by subordinates. But he was so personally disarming that it was indulged. Most regarded it with amusement instead of impatience. He was even teased about it. It was looked upon as an idiosyncrasy, an endearing one at that. And no one, not even his sternest critics, could argue with his success.
But Laura had a different perspective on Foster’s OCD because she lived with it. She covered for him to keep it less noticeable to colleagues. Only she knew how much it governed his life. Increasingly so, it seemed. His compulsions were an integral part of him. Because she loved him, she accepted and tolerated them. But doing so had once been easier. Before.
Laura got up and walked to the window, rubbing her arms to ward off the chill of the air-conditioning. She twirled the wand on the blinds and looked through the slats at the traffic speeding along the expressway. A SunSouth jet, only minutes into its flight, was banking toward the west. The 3:45 to Denver, she thought automatically.
She watched the jet as it climbed, the sun reflecting off its silver fuselage, hurting her eyes when the shaft of light pierced them. But then she realized that her eyes stung with the need to cry. Resting her head against the window frame, she closed her eyes tightly, squeezing out tears. She whispered, “I want my life back.”
Foster had waited one year after Elaine’s death before asking Laura out. Initially Laura had misinterpreted the invitation, believing he had invited her to attend a black-tie charity event with him for some business purpose. But when several dozen white roses were delivered to her apartment in advance of his picking her up, she began to think perhaps there was more to it. Undeniably, the thought of that made her feel bubbly on the inside.
By the end of the evening there was no question that it had been a bona fide date. If Foster had asked any other executive—say, the CFO—to accompany him, he wouldn’t have taken hold of both his hands and kissed his cheek good night.
Their evenings out became more frequent. There were dinners together after work, sailing on area lakes on Saturday afternoons, and Sunday suppers, which she cooked at her place. She attended his polo matches, and he had no compunction about kissing her in front of his teammates after a victory. She became his regular date to private dinner parties and public events. She stopped accepting other dates, even invitations from her tennis buddy, who began teasing her about her new beau.
She couldn’t apply such a frivolous moniker to Foster Speakman, but away from the office he acted like one. The more time they spent alone together, the less chaste their embraces became. She had started devoting a lot of thought to him, his smile, his eyes, his mannerisms. She
found herself engaging in gauzy daydreams about him unlike any she’d had about other men, not even in adolescence. She’d always enjoyed an active social life. She’d had a generous number of boyfriends, and enough lovers to be confident of her allure, but not so many that she need be embarrassed by the number.
But among them there were no standouts, no disappointing heartbreaks, or near-miss commitments. Because every romantic relationship she’d ever had, from the first car date to the last man she’d slept with, had been qualified. It could not interfere with her ambition.
Which now placed her in a real conundrum with Foster. Because of the professional implications, neither acknowledged their increasing intimacy and longing for more. Their kissing and groping left them fevered and frustrated, but each was determined to preserve their working relationship.
One evening while they were cuddled on the sofa in her den, watching a movie on TV, he suddenly reached for the remote and turned it off. “Thank you,” she said. “I was finding it hard to get into, too.”
“I loved Elaine with all my heart, Laura.”
Recognizing the seriousness of his tone, she sat up and looked into his face. “Yes, you did. I know that.”
