The Promise - By Danielle Steel Page 0,28

In some ways he still hadn't given up the dream. Even though he knew he was crazy to cling to it.

Chapter 9

“Hi, Sue. Is Mr. Hillyard in?” Ben had the look of five o'clock as he arrived at Mike's office door: not quite disheveled, but relieved that the day was almost over. He'd barely had time to sit down all day long, let alone relax.

“He is. Shall I let him know you're here?” She smiled at him, and he felt his eyes drawn to the carefully concealed figure. Marion Hillyard did not approve of sexy secretaries, even for her son … or was it especially for her son? Ben wondered as he shook his head.

“No, thanks. I'll announce myself.” He strode past her desk, carrying the files that had been his excuse, and knocked on the heavy oak door. “Anybody home?” There was no answer so he knocked again. And still got no reply. He turned questioningly to the secretary. “You're sure he's in there?”

“Positive.”

“Okay.” Ben tried again and this time a hoarse croak from the other side urged him in. Ben cautiously opened the door and looked around “You asleep or something?” Michael looked up and grinned at his friend.

“I wish. Look at this mess.” He sat surrounded by folders, mock-ups, drawings, designs, reports. It was enough to keep ten men busy for a year. “Sit down, Ben.”

“Thanks, boss.” Ben couldn't resist teasing him.

“Oh, shut up. What's with the files you brought me?” He ran a hand through his hair and sat back in the heavy leather desk chair he had grown accustomed to. He had even gotten used to the impersonal prints on the walls. It didn't matter anymore. He didn't give a damn. He never looked at the walls, or his office, or his secretary … or his life. He looked at the work on his desk and very little else. It had been four months. “Please don't tell me you've brought me another set of problems with that damn shopping center in Kansas City. They're driving me nuts.”

“And you love it. Tell me, Mike, what was the last movie you saw? Bridge on the River Kwai, or Fantasia? Don't you ever get the hell out of here?”

“When I get the chance.” Michael looked at some papers as he answered. “So what's with the files?”

“They're a decoy. I just wanted to come and talk to you.”

“And you can't do that without an excuse?” Michael grinned up at him. It was like being Kids again, visiting each other's study halls with fake homework to consult on.

“I keep forgetting your mother isn't old Sanders up at St Jude's.”

“Thank God.” Actually they both knew she was worse, but neither of them could afford to admit it. She detested seeing people “float around” the halls, as she put it, and she was usually quick to glance at whatever files they were carrying. “So what's up, Ben? How were the Hamptons this summer?”

Ben sat very still for a moment, watching him, before he answered. “Do you really care?”

“About you, or the Hamptons?” Michael's smile looked pasted on, and he had the ghostly pallor of December, not September. It was obvious he had gone nowhere all summer. “I care a lot about you, Ben.”

“But not about yourself. Have you looked in the mirror lately? You'd scare Frankenstein's mother.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“Don't mention it. Anyway, that's why I'm here.”

“On behalf of Frankenstein's mother?”

“No, mine. We want you to come up to the Cape this weekend. They do. I do. We all do. And listen, if you say no, I'll come across that desk and drag you out of here. You need to get out of here, damn it.” Ben wasn't smiling anymore. He was dead serious, and Mike knew it. But he shook his head.

“I'd love to, Ben. But I can't I've got Kansas City to worry about, and forty-seven thousand problems with it that we just can't seem to solve. You know. You were in that meeting yesterday.”

“So were twenty-three other people. Let them handle it. For a weekend at least. Or is your ego such that you can't let anyone else touch your work?”

But they both knew it wasn't that Work had become his drug. It numbed him to everything else. And he had been abusing the job since the day he walked into the office.

“Come on, Mike. Be good to yourself. Just this once.”

“I just can't, Ben.”

“Goddamn it, man, what do I have to say to you? Look at yourself. Don't you care?