Susan Phillips - Hot Shot

"Without you," she said quietly, "Sam will find someone else."

Silence fell over the table. For the first time since their confrontation had begun, Mitch had lost some of his composure. She continued to press her advantage. "Don't make the mistake of underestimating him. Sam is brash, arrogant, and lousy with details. But he has a gift. It's a gift few people have and even fewer know how to use, but he happens to be one of them. Sam has the ability to make sensible people do impossible things."

"Sensible people like you, Miss Faulconer?"

"And like you, Mr. Blaine."

For a moment he looked at her thoughtfully, and then he rose and tossed some bills down on the table. Without saying another word to any of them, he left the restaurant.

The air outside was chill. Mitch picked up his steps as he crossed the parking lot, the soles of his loafers slapping angrily on the pavement. He prided himself on his analytical mind, his ability to make decisions without being influenced by emotional overtones. But he had blown it badly in that restaurant tonight.

She wasn't anything like Louise. He couldn't imagine the woman who had gone into battle with him tonight abandoning a seven-year marriage without making any effort to confront her husband with her grievances. Despite her distant air, she was a fighter and not quite the dilettante he had imagined.

But then, maybe he was wrong. Maybe he was still so shell-shocked from his impending divorce that he couldn't judge women anymore. He slipped the key to his rental car out of his pocket and fit it in the lock. What would happen if she got her way? Would she grow bored and start looking for a new diversion?

"Mr. Blaine."

He reluctantly turned his head.

Although she was walking toward him quickly, she gave no real appearance of haste. He had noticed that about her from the beginning-the restraint in her movements, the stillness about her, the closed, cool facial expression. Those mannerisms reminded him of someone else. Louise, of course. But no, that wasn't quite right. Now that he had watched Susannah in action, he realized that she wasn't like Louise at all. She was like someone else. But who?

She stopped next to him. He drew his eyes away from her and removed the key from the door lock. "Haven't you finished raking me over the coals yet, Miss Faulconer?"

She started to speak and then stopped, no longer quite the confident woman she had been a few moments earlier. Her hesitation pleased him. He didn't enjoy finishing second place to a woman, and certainly not to one who was a neophyte.

"Just one more thing," she said. "I'd like to know why you dislike me so much. It's because of my father, isn't it?"

She was so earnest, so proper. Once again he experienced that twinge of familiarity, the nagging sense that he had met her before. "I don't like your father, but I respect him. He has nothing to do with this."

He saw that his response had thrown her off balance, and he was pleased.

"Then what? Have I done something specific? I know it can't be because of what I said tonight. You've disliked me from the beginning, haven't you?"

She was determined to press him, and he was equally determined not to put himself at any further disadvantage. He certainly wasn't going to tell her about Louise. "Do you mind if we just let this discussion go?"

She caught her bottom lip between her teeth, and he knew she hadn't finished with him. To his surprise, he heard himself saying, "Whatever my original opinions were, you've changed them this evening."

The slow smile that captured the corners of her mouth was hesitant, but so winsome that he felt his own lips begin to curve in response.

"Is that actually a compliment?" she asked.

"It's a compliment, Miss Faulconer. Definitely a compliment."

And then he realized what it was about her that seemed so familiar. The perfect manners, the quiet courtesy, the steely determination. She didn't remind him of Louise. She reminded him of himself.

The realization floored him, and then, unexpectedly, he felt his spirit lighten. In that moment, he made his decision, knowing even as he said the words that he had set his life on a new and dangerous course. "I'll accept your terms, Miss Faulconer. But don't feel too confident, because I'm going to be looking over your shoulder every minute."

"Fair enough, Mr. Blaine. Because I'll be looking right back."

He laughed. In her own way, she had as much gall as Sam Gamble, but she packaged it so much more discreetly.

Pulling the car door shut, he pressed the button to lower the window. "Tell our business partners that I might have a better name for our new computer than the SysVal II."

"Oh?"

"Maybe we should name it after you."

Her eyes widened in surprise. "After me?"

"Yeah." He leaned out the window. "Maybe we should call it the Hot Shot."

She laughed, a lovely sound, like the tinkle of antique bells. "Hot shot? Me?"

He drew in his head and slipped the car into reverse. "You, Miss Faulconer."

Susannah watched him pull his car out of the parking lot. She was still smiling as he turned out onto the highway. Imagine anyone calling her a hot shot. It was ridiculous, of course. But nice.

She heard footsteps approaching from behind, and her smile faded. Sam's hand touched her shoulder. He sounded more weary than angry.

"Just what in the hell do you think you're doing? God, you're the last person in the world I would have ever expected to have hang-ups about power."

She wanted to make some scathing retort that would hurt him as he had hurt her, but all the spirit she had summoned for her confrontation with Mitch faded. She followed Yank to the Duster, which was parked at an awkward angle in the next row.

Sam stayed on her heels. "This company isn't going to work if you pull any more power plays like that. That's not what we're about. It isn't going to frigging work!"

Yank began tapping his pants pockets in search of his keys. An eddy of cool night wind whipped Sam's hair up from his neck. Her heart ached. Why did he have to be so fierce? So driven?

"You've blown this deal, Suzie. I mean you have destroyed everything. Everything we've been working for. Everything we've tried to do. It's like you deliberately set out to sabotage us."

Yank tapped his shirt pocket and said in a distracted voice, "She didn't blow it, did you, Susannah?" "No," she replied. "I didn't blow it."

"She didn't blow it, Sam."

Sam stared at both of them, and then at her. "What do you mean? Did he say something to you? What are you talking about?"

Without bothering to consider how Yank had known what would happen, she managed to say, "Mitch has accepted. He's joining SysVal as our fourth partner."

Sam's face shattered as if a sunlit prism had broken apart inside him. "He told you? He's accepted? That's fabulous! I mean, that is freaking fabulous!" He grabbed her and pulled her to his chest. But the moment of shared joy that should have been perfect had been ruined for her.

He released her and threw his arms into the air. "This is going to be fantastic!" With his neck arched, he began drawing word pictures of the revolution they were about to begin. He wasn't as tall as either Yank or Mitch, but as he sliced the air with sweeping gestures and spangled the night with his grandiose dreams, he seemed so much bigger than either of them.

She could feel his energy pulling at her, that indomitable force of will tugging her up toward his personal rainbow. She wanted to go with him on his climb, but this time something within her resisted. Only when he saw how rigidly she was holding herself did he grow quiet. After studying her for a few moments, he said, "Yank, Suzie and I are going to take a walk. Wait for us, okay?"

Yank began searching the ground at his feet. Sam extracted the Duster keys from his own pocket and tossed them over. "We won't be long."

He caught her arm and began drawing her back toward the row of stores. "You're still too chicken to fight with me, aren't you? You're incredibly pissed, but you're going to sulk instead of fight."

Some of her spirit began to come back. Was it his touch? Did he have a magical way of passing his energy through his skin and into hers? "I'm not afraid of fighting with you," she said. "But right now, I'm just not certain you're worth it."

Even as the words were slipping from her mouth, she couldn't believe she was uttering them. His steps faltered, and she knew that she had hurt him. It was a strange feeling to realize she had any power over him at all. She moved up onto the sidewalk. An ice cream cone lay deflated in an ugly brown puddle on the pavement. They walked past the door of Mom & Pop's. She stopped in front of the dry cleaners and stared blindly at a wedding gown entombed in a windowed cardboard box. Once again, she reached deep inside herself to find the courage to say what she must.

"Don't ever try to cut me out again, Sam," she said quietly.

"Is that what you think I was doing?"

"Yes. You excluded me and then used marriage as a bargaining chip to keep me in line."

"You're getting paranoid. I assumed we'd get married one of these days. You're not the sort of woman who's going to be happy shacking up for very long." He slipped one hand out of his jacket pocket and laid it over her shoulders. "Suzie, I'm sorry. I wasn't trying to pull any sort of power play. I just didn't understand you were so hung up about crossing all the't's and dotting the i's."

"To me, it was more than crossing't's."

"But I don't see it that way. You and I are a couple, aren't we? What one of us has, the other has."

He was so earnest, so persuasive, but this time she wouldn't let herself be swept away. "Then why didn't you drop out?" she asked gently. "Why didn't you say, 'I'll step aside. Let Susannah be your partner. What she's got, I've got'?"

He pulled his arm from her shoulders. "That's ridiculous! It's not even logical. This whole thing was my idea. SysVal means everything to me."

"I lost my father, Sam. SysVal means everything to me, too."

The harsh glare faded from his features as he took in the significance of what she was saying. Slowly he smiled-a rueful, apologetic smile. Some of the ice inside her began to melt. He tilted his head toward her and touched her forehead with his own. Her eyelids drifted shut. They stood like that for a moment, with their eyes closed and foreheads touching.

"I'm sorry," he whispered.

She knew that she was near tears, and she forced them back so that she didn't sound self-pitying. "I want to be as important to you as the company."

"You and the company are all mixed up together in my mind."

They stood like that for a few moments with only their foreheads touching. Then their noses brushed, and their mouths. Although their lips were together, they didn't kiss.

"I love you, Suzie," he whispered, his voice sounding young and scared. "I know I get crazy sometimes, but you've got to promise me you'll stick with me. Please, babe. I need you so much. Oh, God, I love you. Promise me you'll always be there for me."

He gripped her hands at her sides so tightly he seemed to be trying to couple their flesh. At that moment, she realized how fiercely she loved him. Her throat had constricted and she couldn't talk-she couldn't force out the words he needed to hear. Instead, she parted her lips and gave him a dark, desperate kiss.

"Slap some paint on his shirt, Susannah," Sam said three weeks later, as he placed a two-by-four over a pair of sawhorses. "I'm embarrassed to be in the same room with him."

Mitch looked down at his crisply pressed work shirt and a pair of dark blue jeans with razor-sharp creases. "What's the matter with the way I look? We're building a wall, for Pete's sake, not going to a fashion show."

Sam snorted, and Susannah smiled to herself. Building the partition to separate the assembly and storage areas in their new office space was the first job the four of them had done together, and despite the fact that Sam and Mitch had been trading jibes all morning, the wall was taking shape rapidly.

She had spent the first two weeks of October scouring the Valley for office space, but it had been difficult finding something that was adequate and yet met their limited budget. With Mitch as a partner, they had easily secured a bank loan. Each of them was now drawing a minuscule salary, and their cash flow problems had temporarily eased. But they all knew the loan was only a temporary stopgap, and in order to postpone going to the venture capitalists, they had to scrimp wherever they could.