Justine Davis - Her Best Friend's Husband

“Old habits die hard,” Josh observed mildly, and Gabe knew he’d caught the lapse. “Old thoughts sometimes die harder.”

“How long did it take you?”

The question escaped him before he could block it. Not for anything, even to ease his own pain, would he intentionally call up bad memories for this man he admired, respected, even loved, as did most who worked for him. Josh Redstone had built an empire that spanned the globe, employed thousands, and Gabe would be willing to bet there wasn’t one of them who wouldn’t walk into hell for the man. In part because they knew he’d do it for them—and had.

“I’m sorry,” Gabe began, but Josh waved him to silence.

“How long did it take me to accept that she was gone?” Josh asked. “In my head, I knew it right away. But then, she died in my arms. I felt her go.”

Gabe’s breath caught. He hadn’t known that. He’d known Elizabeth Redstone had died of cancer several years ago, known that Josh had been alone ever since, knew the common wisdom at Redstone was that she’d been his soul mate and he would never even try to replace her. But Gabe had never really thought about the details of it. Hope, he thought, would likely have had the whole story within minutes of meeting the man; she had always been good at getting people to open up.

An odd smile curved Josh’s mouth, lifting it at one corner in an expression of ironic sadness. “I never thought of that as a particular advantage before, other than being with her until the end. But from your view, it is, isn’t it? At least I knew, without doubt.”

Gabe couldn’t deny that, and instead fastened on Josh’s answer to his question. He repeated his boss’s words back. “You said you knew it in your head.”

Josh’s mouth quirked, and the steady gray eyes closed for a moment. Then he opened them and looked at Gabe. “You always were detail oriented.”

“Comes from years of dealing with politically oriented navy brass,” Gabe answered. “Most of the time what they didn’t say was more important than what they did.”

“I’m sure,” Josh agreed. And then, after a moment, answered what Gabe hadn’t really asked. “I’m not sure my heart, my gut, have accepted it yet. I know, logically, that it’s crazy after all these years, but I still catch myself expecting to hear her voice, or thinking that she’s just in the next room….”

Gabe smothered a sigh. That was not what he’d wanted to hear. He’d wanted to hear that it was over, sealed away in some silent, impenetrable place in Josh’s mind, never bothering him, never surfacing unless he wanted it to. If Joshua Redstone, one of the strongest—and strongest-minded—men he’d ever met, couldn’t get past this, what hope did he have?

“What brought this on now, after all this time?” Josh asked.

“The U.S. Postal Service,” Gabe said wryly.

Josh blinked. “The Postal Service?”

“They just delivered a postcard to Hope’s best friend. From Hope, mailed right before she disappeared. It really upset them.”

Josh let out a low whistle. “Ouch. Eight years?”

To his own surprise, Gabe had to stifle a chuckle. Josh, he knew, would never tolerate that kind of thing. Redstone wasn’t consistently in the top five highest-rated places to work because it was easy. It was Josh himself, and his reputation, that made a Redstone job among the most coveted. He hired the best, let them do what they did best, paid them well, treated them all with fairness, and mostly stayed out of their way. But above all he let them know that if they needed it, the full power of the Redstone empire was behind them.

“Why don’t you head for open water?” Josh said.

Gabe drew back slightly. “What?”

Josh shrugged. “Take her out. Clear your head.”

Only Josh Redstone would make an offer like that, to take a hundred-and-forty-nine-foot luxury yacht, complete with a media room and helipad, out for a spin as if it were a new car rather than the latest, and as yet unnamed, design from his fertile and incredible mind.

“Thank you,” Gabe said automatically, “but—”

“You saying you don’t do your best thinking at sea?”

Gabe’s mouth quirked. “You can take the boy out of the navy, but you can’t take the navy out of the boy?”

Josh grinned. “Something like that.”

Neither of them mentioned that in Gabe’s case, he hadn’t been taken out of the navy, he’d quit. Gabe knew he’d had no choice, and Josh, when he’d learned the full story of what had driven a man who’d once chosen the navy as his career to leave, had answered in the best possible way: he’d offered Gabe a way out that didn’t require him to leave his love of ships and the water behind.

“I’ve got to head back to my office,” Josh said, and Gabe knew the reluctance he heard in his boss’s voice was real. Josh was not an office-bound executive, even at Redstone Headquarters, which was as much a paragon of comfort and thoughtful design as this boat was.

“Take her out,” he said again. “Put all this on the back burner, focus on something else for a while. It’ll help you work through it, where chewing on it up front won’t.”

Gabe smiled at the rustic simile, thinking again of those who made the mistake of assuming the drawl and the down-home manner were all there was to Josh. It amazed him how anyone could look at the size and scope of Redstone and think that anyone less than a genius could have built it, but people were often ruled by their own filters and perceptions, a fact Josh frequently used to his advantage. And since his naval career had come to a crashing end because of such people, Gabe couldn’t help but appreciate Josh’s talent in that area.

“And,” Josh added as he went down the gangway steps, “if you need anything, if Redstone can help, call.”

Gabe nodded, knowing that what would have been a casual offer, never really intended for acceptance from most people, was something quite different coming from Josh Redstone. When he offered help to one of his huge family—which meant anyone who worked for and with him—he meant it.

In the seven years he’d worked for Josh, overseeing the smallest but one of the most loved—by Josh, anyway—divisions of the empire, so small it didn’t even have its own name but rather existed as a sideline of the aviation division, he’d both seen and heard of the kinds of things Redstone had done for its people. The cruise he’d captained for the bereaved family had only been the latest in a very long string of things done that Josh took for granted; if you were Redstone, Redstone helped when you needed it.

Later that morning, when Gabe stood out on deck, having let the eager young first mate take the wheel for a while—although the boat had the newer, joystick type of controls, Josh was enough of a traditionalist to have also included the wheel—he had to admit his boss was right. Being out here, on blue water with the smell of the salt air and the sounds of the sleek red-and-gray vessel cutting powerfully through the water, soothed his mind and soul in a way nothing else could.

By the time they were back at the dock and he was overseeing the cleanup and making his log entry, he was resigned. He would do as the Waldrons had asked; he wouldn’t fight them. Gwen’s pain had been too real, too palpable, and he couldn’t stand in the way of anything that might ease it, no matter how ambivalent he might be about it.

Besides, he thought, it might be a relief to him as well, when people asked, to be able to say with some truth that she was dead. It was so much more finite than “She vanished,” less painful than “She walked out on me without a word,” and certainly less uncomfortable than “I have no idea where my wife is.”