Little Secrets. Maureen Child

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       One

      Jack Buchanan listened to his interior decorator talk about swatches and color and found his mind drifting...to anything else.

      Four months ago, he’d been in a desert, making life-and-death decisions. Today, he was in an upholstery shop in Long Beach, California, deciding between leather or fabric for the bar seats on the Buchanan Company’s latest cruise ship. He didn’t know whether to be depressed or amused. So he went with impatient.

      “Which fabric will hold up better?” he asked, cutting into the argument between the decorator and the upholsterer.

      “The leather,” they both said at once, turning to look at him.

      “Then use the fabric.” Jack pointed at a bolt of midnight blue cloth shot through with silver threads. “We’re building a fantasy bar. I’m less interested in wear and more concerned with the look of the place. If you want black leather in the mix, too, use it on the booth seats.”

      While the decorator and the upholsterer instantly jumped on that idea and put their heads together to plan, Jack shifted his gaze to encompass the shop. Family-owned, Dan Black and his sons, Mark and Tom, ran the place and did great work. Jack had seen that much for himself.

      The shop itself was long and wide and filled with not only barstools, but also couches, chairs and tables being refinished. A chemical scent hung in the air as two men at the back of the room worked on projects. The low-pitched roar of an industrial sewing machine was like white noise in the background and the guy seated at it moved quickly, efficiently. Their work was fast and good enough that they’d also done jobs for the navy and Jack figured if they could handle that, they could handle his cruise ship.

      But why the hell was Jack even here? He was the CEO of Buchanan Shipping. Didn’t he have minions he could have sent to take care of this?

      But even as he thought it, he reminded himself that being here today, in person, had all been his idea. To immerse himself in every aspect of the business. He’d been away for the last ten years, so he had a lot of catching up to do.

      Jack, his brother, Sam, and their sister, Cass, had all interned at Buchanan growing up. They’d put in their time from the ground up, starting in janitorial, since their father had firmly believed that kids raised with all the money in the world grew up to be asses.

      He’d made sure that his children knew what it was to really work. To be alongside employees who would expect them to do the job and who had the ability to fire them if they didn’t. Thomas Buchanan raised his kids to respect those who worked for them and to always remember that without those employees, they wouldn’t have a business. So Jack, Sam and Cass had worked their way through every level at the company. They’d had to buy their own cars, pay for their own insurance and if they wanted designer clothes, they had to save up for them.

      Now, looking back, Jack could see it had been the right thing to do. At the time, he hadn’t loved it of course. But today, he could step into the CEO’s shoes with a lot less trepidation because of his father’s rules. He had the basics on running the company. But it was this stuff—the day-to-day, small but necessary decisions—that he had to get used to.

      Buchanan Shipping had interests all over the world. From cruise liners to cargo ships to the fishing fleet Jack’s brother, Sam, ran out of San Diego. The company had grown well beyond his great-grandfather’s dreams when he’d started the business with one commercial fishing boat.

      The Buchanans had been on the California coast since before the gold rush. While other men bought land and fought with the dirt to scratch out a fortune, the Buchanans had turned to the sea. They had a reputation for excellence that nothing had ever marred and Jack wanted to keep it that way.

      Their latest cruise ship was top-of-the-line, state-of-the-art throughout and would, he told himself, more than live up to her name, The Sea Queen.

      “Mr. Buchanan,” the decorator said, forcing Jack out of his thoughts and back to reality.

      “Yeah. What is it?”

      “There are still choices to be made on height of stools, width of booths...”

      Okay, details were one thing, minutiae were another.

      Jack stopped her with one hand held up for silence. “You can handle that, Ms. Price.” To take any sting out of his words, he added, “I trust your judgment,” and watched pleasure flash in her eyes.

      “Of course, of course,” she said. “I’ll fax you a complete record of all decisions made this afternoon.”

      “That’s fine. Thanks.” He shook hands with Daniel Black, waved a hand at the men in the back of the shop and left. Stepping outside, he was immediately slapped by a strong, cold breeze that carried the scent of the sea. The sky was a clear, bold blue and this small corner of the city hummed with an energy that pulsed inside Jack.

      He wasn’t ready to go back to the company. To sit in that palatial office, fielding phone calls and going over reports. Being outside, even being here, dealing with fabrics of all things, was better than being stuck behind his desk. With that thought firmly in mind, he walked to his car, got in and fired it up. Steering away from work, responsibility and the restless, itchy feeling scratching at his soul, Jack drove toward peace.

      Okay, maybe peace was the wrong word, he told himself twenty minutes later. The crowd on Main Street in Seal Beach was thick, the noise deafening and the mingled scents from restaurants, pubs and bakeries swamped him.

      Jack Buchanan fought his way through the summer crowds blocking the sidewalk. He’d been home from his last tour of duty for four months and he still wasn’t used to being surrounded by so many people. Made him feel on edge, as if every nerve in his body was strung tight enough to snap.

      Frowning at the thought, he sidestepped a couple of women who had stopped in the middle of the sidewalk to argue about a pair of shoes, for God’s sake. Shaking his head, he walked a little faster, dodging gawking tourists, teenagers with surfboards and kids racing in and out of the crowd, peals of laughter hanging in their wake.

      Summer in Southern California was always going to be packed with the tourists who flocked in from all over the world. And ordinarily Jack avoided the worst of the crowds by keeping close to his office building and the penthouse apartment he lived in. But at least once a month, Jack forced himself to go out into the throngs of people—just to prove to himself that he could.

      Being surrounded by people brought out every defensive instinct he possessed. He felt on guard, watching the passing people through suspicious, wary eyes and hated himself for it. But four months home from a battlefield wasn’t long enough to ease the instincts that had kept him alive in the desert. And still, he worked at forcing himself to relax those instincts because he refused to be defined by what he’d gone through. What he’d СКАЧАТЬ