Judith McNaught - Remember When

He didn't feel lucky, though, as he headed down the hall to the bedroom he'd used since he was a boy whenever he spent the night at his uncle's. He felt depressed. He was so depressed, he actually felt sorry for Michelle, because he knew damned well she'd agree to the bargain. He knew it just as he knew that she'd be making a mistake, because she'd be settling for what little of himself he had to offer, and that wasn't very much.

His last relationship, with Vicky Kellogg, had failed for exactly that reason, and he hadn't changed since then, nor did he intend to. He was still married to his business, just as Vicky had accused him of being. He was still contemptuous of the aimless thrill-seeking that Vicky and her friends had enjoyed. He still traveled a great deal, which had annoyed her, and he was still incapable of prolonged periods of unbroken laziness. No doubt, he was still the "cold, callous, unfeeling son of a bitch" she'd called him when she moved out. The point that she hadn't understood was that Cole was directly or indirectly responsible for the job security and investment security of more than a hundred thousand of Unified Industries' employees.

The bed beneath him felt lumpy and narrow as he shoved the old chenille bedspread aside and stretched out between fresh white sheets that smelled of sunlight and summer breezes. Against his bare skin, the thin cloth felt weightless and baby soft from Letty's countless washings.

Linking his hands behind his head, Cole stared at the ceiling fan revolving slowly above him. Slowly, his depression began to recede, along with all thoughts of marrying Michelle or anyone else. The idea wasn't just obscene; it was absurd. So was the notion that his uncle might not live until the end of the year.

Cole had been working eighteen hours a day for months; he'd taken a rare day off today to fly down here from Los Angeles only to have weather problems. The stress and weariness from all that, combined with the discovery of his uncle's worsening health, had all combined to warp his thinking, Cole decided, as his eyes drifted closed and an odd sense of confidence and well-being began to assert itself.

Cal was going to live for another ten years, at least. True, he hadn't looked robust tonight, but as Cole tried to assess the individual changes that age and illness had wrought by comparing the Cal he remembered to the man he was now, the changes weren't nearly so alarming as they'd seemed at first. He thought back to bygone days when he'd watched Cal mending fences in the blazing sun or cantering into the corral behind dusty steers he'd rounded up and driven in from the pasture. With his Stetson and boots adding inches to his height, he'd seemed like a giant to Cole when he was little, but when Cole reached his full height of six foot two, he'd been at least three inches taller than Cal.

The reality was that Cal had never been a big man with a powerful physique like Cole's; he'd been lanky and lean, with a wiry strength and endurance that served as well as bulky muscle for the heavy work around the ranch. He hadn't shrunk six inches and wasted away to a skeleton, as it sometimes seemed to Cole that he had. When his arthritis bothered him, as it obviously had tonight, he shifted his shoulders forward, which distorted his posture and cost him an inch or so from his natural height.

His hair hadn't suddenly turned white; it had been white for as long as Cole could remember—thick and white with close-cropped sideburns that framed a tanned, narrow face with a square chin and pale blue eyes that seemed to look out at the world from a different perspective; sharp eyes that gleamed with intelligence, humor, and hard resolve. His face had lost its tan, and his eyes looked out from behind bifocals now, but they weren't faded and dull, and they missed nothing.

True, his body had lost some of its strength from age and lack of exercise, but his real power had always come from his mind. And as Cole had discovered tonight, his mind was as sharp and fit as ever.

In the next few days, Cole would find solutions that would suit his uncle and himself and solve everything. In the morning he would start a vigorous search for some sort of new or updated treatment for his uncle's condition. New medical treatments were being discovered every day, and old, effective ones that had been discarded were being rediscovered. If he'd known sooner that his uncle's heart condition wasn't staying the same or even improving, he'd have been looking hard for solutions already.

He had always found solutions, Cole remembered.

Finding solutions to seemingly insoluble problems was one of the things he did best. It was a knack that had helped bring him wealth and success beyond even his own wildest dreams.

Sleep pressed down on his eyelids as he lay in the plain, unadorned bedroom where, as a boy, he had dreamed of his life as a man. There was something about the monastic simplicity of the small room that had encouraged him to dream big dreams in his youth. Now, in his adulthood, the room soothed and lifted his spirits. Cole owned homes and apartments all over the world, all of them with spacious bedrooms furnished with large beds in a variety of shapes, but he was already falling asleep more quickly here than he'd been able to do elsewhere in years.

He decided the room itself still had some sort of mystical, uplifting effect on him, much as it always had.

Peace settled over him and followed him into his dreams, just as it always had when he slept here.

The window was open and a sliver of moonlight filtered through the sheer curtains, turning them into shiny silken webs that drifted weightlessly on a flower-scented breeze. The air seemed fresher here, just as it always had.

In the morning, when he was well-rested, he would be better able to think and plan and solve. For now, the walls of the room, with their familiar framed pictures, seemed to surround him and shelter him, just as they always did whenever Cole slept there.

On the nightstand beside the bed, an old alarm clock ticked with the loud, steady rhythm of a heartbeat, lulling him further asleep, reminding him that time was passing and things would look better in the morning, just as they always did whenever Cole slept there.

Sometime later, Cole rolled onto his stomach, and the sheet lifted magically, covering his bare shoulders, just as it always seemed to during the night, whenever Cole slept there.

Beside the bed, Calvin Downing gazed down at his sleeping nephew, frowning at the deep lines of tension and weariness etched at the corners of Cole's eyes and the sides of his mouth. He spoke to the sleeping man, his voice lower than the whisper of the curtains drifting against the window, his words low and soothing, tinged with gruff emotion, just as they always were whenever he came in to check on his nephew and felt the need to tell him in his sleep what he could not say to him while he was awake. "You've already accomplished what most men only dream of doing," Cal whispered. "You've already proved to everyone that you can do anything you set out to do. You don't have to keep pushing yourself anymore, Cole."

The sleeping man stirred and turned his head away, but his breathing remained deep, peaceful.

"Things will look better in the morning," Calvin promised him softly, just as he always did whenever Cole slept there. "I love you, son."

Traffic on the interstate between Houston Intercontinental Airport and downtown Houston was heavy for five p.m. on a Saturday, but the chauffeur maneuvered the long black Mercedes limousine skillfully from lane to lane in a graceful, daring dance of speed, power, and timing.

Heedless of the driver's efforts on his behalf, Cole sat in the backseat, poring over a thick, detailed analysis of the complexities involved in having Unified participate with other corporations in a collaborative effort with the Russians to put a gas pipeline through to the Black Sea. He did not look up until the car glided to a stop beneath the green canopy at the entrance of the Grand Balmoral Hotel and a uniformed doorman appeared beside his window. Reluctantly, Cole put the report in his briefcase and got out.