A Heart's Refuge

Rick turned back to his food, feeling curiously deflated, as if the day had lost even more light. He finished his supper quickly, then left for his apartment and his own brand of domestic bliss.

“I don’t know if I like the emphasis in this article.” Rick pushed the paper across his desk toward Becky and leaned back in his chair, his fingers steepled under his chin. He wore a black cotton shirt today, the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. His usual blue jeans. The subdued morning light highlighted the blond of his hair, shadowed the faint dimple in his cheek. He looked more like the cowboy she had written about in the article, than a publisher of a magazine.

Becky glanced down at the article, wishing for a moment that Rick Ethier weren’t so physically appealing. Not because she was attracted to him, mind you, but because the women in the office were starting to annoy her. And it was starting to interfere with her own objectives. She needed people on her side if she was going to maintain a toehold of control over this magazine.

Just this morning she had to listen to Trixie wax eloquent about those eyes, that careless hair. The way he, “well, you know, Becky, kind of strolls. Like he’s in charge of his world.” Which he was, of course.

Trouble was, it was also her world.

“It’s a fairly basic profile. What’s the problem?”

Rick rocked a couple of times in his chair, then leaned forward. “Here’s the deal. You’ve got an article about working cowboys who make lousy wages, yet you write it like these guys are the happiest men alive.”

“It’s what they told me.”

“That they were the happiest men alive?”

“That they loved their work. That it wasn’t a job as much as a vocation.”

Rick acknowledged this with a quick nod. “That may be, but you don’t bring up any of the negatives. And don’t tell me they didn’t talk about any.”

“Of course they did. They work long hours. Get hurt a lot. Have to work with rank horses and ornery bosses. As many more of us have to.” The words slipped out before she could stop them.

Nice. Nice. Be nice.

“I’m going to take that last comment as a generality.” Rick got up from his desk and stood by the window, his hands shoved in the back pockets of his pants. “But none of what you just told me made it into the article.”

“That wasn’t the point of the article.”

Rick turned to her, a dour smile on his face. “And that’s my point. You took your own preconceptions to the story and only used facts that worked with what you wanted to show.”

Becky didn’t have time for this and wondered that he did. She was behind on her own work and phone calls. She knew he was busy consulting with his marketing and focus group on the redesign.

“So what do you want me to do? Rewrite it?” She bit back the anger that was starting up again.

“No. I’d just like to see a bit more balance in what you’re doing.”

“In keeping with the vision of the magazine,” she finished with a light sigh. She wasn’t going to concede immediately.

“The vision is more business oriented. As well, I’m also trying to shape this magazine into a more honest view of life in this part of the country.”

“Oh, you made that very clear.” Becky stopped. Took a breath. “But business isn’t all grimness and focus. There are people who enjoy what they do. I wanted to show that in this article.”

“The glass is half-full.”

Becky frowned, then caught his inference. “Okay. So I’m an optimist. You say it’s half-empty. Neither of us is wrong. It just depends on what you want to focus on.” She felt, more than heard, the hardness creeping into her voice and tried to inject a note of humor. “And if you were our art director, you would say we would need a different glass.”

Rick frowned. He didn’t get it, obviously. “Water management aside, I’d also like to see the article shorter if possible.”

“Design will have problems with that.”

“We need the space for ads.”

“It’s a magazine, not a shopping network.”

“But ads pay the bills and our salaries.”

Becky bit back a comment. In the few days Rick had been here, she realized one thing. Money talked to this man. Loud and clear.

“I’ll see what I can do,” she said. “Anything else you want to discuss?”

“I’m calling a meeting tomorrow to go over the results of our market survey.”

Becky pulled out her Day-Timer and flipped it open to the date. “Sorry. I’ve got a practice with the children’s choir.”

“How about after?”

“After, I’m supposed to be meeting with the banner committee to discuss the new designs for the Thanksgiving service in the fall.”

Rick drummed his fingers against his thigh. “How about the next night?”

Becky flipped the page and shook her head as she glanced up at Rick.

“Don’t tell me,” he said, holding his hand up, palm out. “Whatever it is, cancel it. This is important.”

Becky stifled a flare of resentment. “So is my meeting.”

“Find someone else. This is your job.” Rick picked up a folder and flipped it open. “While we’re talking about your job, I also want to comment on the lack of letters to the editor.”

“People here are generally low-key. If they like something, they don’t say anything. If you want a reaction, you have to stir up the nest.”

“Not something you’re prone to doing.” He tilted her a half smile that, in spite of their momentary antagonism, slipped past her defenses and kindled a faint warmth.

“I think I’ve done a good job.”

“But I don’t want good,” Rick said, holding her gaze. “What I want from you is your best.”

Becky frowned, uncomfortable with this new tack. Did he think she was doing a mediocre job? “And that’s what you’ll get,” she said softly. She gathered up her papers and left without another look back, a self-doubt niggling at her confidence.

As she walked down the hall, she reread the article. Had she been overly positive? Had she done a mediocre job?

She thought of the wry grins of the cowboys as they talked about their work. She recognized the griping. Her brothers talked the same way when they had a particularly unpleasant chore. Yet underneath the words, she knew there was a love of a challenge. A pride in their work.

“Hey, Becky, eyes on the road.” Cliff caught her by the shoulders and set her aside. He angled his chin toward Rick’s office. “Had your bi-hourly meeting with the boss?”

Becky resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Cliff didn’t need to see her own frustration. Rick was ruffling all kinds of feathers, but in public she needed to stand behind him. “We had to discuss an article he wants me to look over.” Among other things.

Cliff drew her aside and lowered his voice. “Becky, you got to help me. This Rick guy is driving us nuts. He wants us to redo the layout for the next issue. Unless we work 24/7, it’s not going to get to the printer on time. Can you make him see sense?”

Becky took a deep breath and drew on the devotions she had read this morning.

“…in humility consider others better than yourselves.”

She had seldom stumbled over that passage. Until now.

“You know what’s at stake here, Cliff. We’re in transition.” She’d had to face the reality herself. As well, for the sake of unity in the office, she had to at least publicly toe the same line as Rick, though she disagreed with him in private. “It’s sort of like sharks. We don’t move, we die. And if moving means putting in more hours until we know where this magazine is going, I guess you should return those videos you rented for the weekend.” She flashed him a smile, hoping to soften her comment.

Cliff glared at her. Scowled at the door of Rick’s office. For a moment Becky thought he was going to charge in and give Rick a blast of his infamous temper.

“It’s just for now, Cliff,” Becky said, laying her hand on his arm to restrain him. “In a few months it will all settle down.”

Cliff’s glare shot to her. She smiled back. Held his gaze.

“He wants me to use more stock photos instead of photo shoots for the next issue. How’s that supposed to make us stand out from the other magazines?”

Becky gave him a light shake. “It’s just for now. Once we get the magazine turning a better profit, you can unleash your creativity once again.” She hoped.

Thankfully, his shoulders slumped. He fingered his goatee and Becky knew the moment had passed.

“I’m doing this for you, Becky. Okay? Just so you know.”

“Thanks, Cliff.”

The door to Rick’s office opened and Cliff glanced back over his shoulder at Rick, looking guilty. He flashed Becky a quick grin and ambled back down the hallway.

“Problems?” Rick asked, raising one eyebrow.

“Not anymore.” Becky held up the papers. “Got to get back to work here.” She scurried down the hallway and ducked into her office. Retreated into her sanctuary to regroup and hoped she didn’t have to deal with anyone else’s complaints about what was happening at the magazine.

Ever since Rick started, she spent as much of her day calming irate people and putting out fires, trying to be optimistic about what he was doing.

Which she wasn’t.

And what kind of reaction were people going to have when Gavin Stoddard started spewing his opinionated coffee-shop talk all over the magazine each month?

Alanna may have been emotional. Gladys may have been anachronistic. But neither generated the kind of mail she was sure Gavin would.

Becky pressed her fingers against her eyelids, pushing back the stress lurching in her midsection. She had head space for only one disaster at a time. And for now, this article took priority.

As she spread the papers in front of her, she felt a twist of frustration. The whole time she was working on the article, she had tried to make sure it was a balanced depiction of what these men did for a living. Yet at the same time she wanted to show their obvious pleasure in their work. Had she been “overly sentimental” again as Rick had once accused her of?

Misgivings slithered through her mind as she read the article through once more. She should listen to the interview tapes again. She had the number of the tape written in her Day-Timer.

Day-Timer. She groaned as she realized where she’d last seen it.

Becky swallowed her pride, got up and walked back to Rick’s office. He was on the phone but gestured for her to come in. She pointed to the burgundy folder on the desk and he nodded, not missing a beat in the conversation.

She picked it up and left. But as she closed the door, she caught him looking at her.

And frowning.

Chapter Three

“How are you enjoying the West?” Colson Ethier’s voice sounded overly hearty as if he was trying to inject enthusiasm for his project into his guinea pig.

Rick cradled the phone in the crook of his shoulder as he made some quick notes on one of the papers spread out on the dining room table of his apartment. “The natives are restless and the weather is the pits.” Behind him the rain ticked against the glass of the kitchen window, as if testing it. Seeking entry. He had hoped to drive into the mountains this evening and do some photography, but the weather had sent him indoors.

“Have you met Sam and Cora Ellison yet?”

“Grandfather, the extent of my socializing has been to smile at the waitress at Coffee’s On.” And sitting around an empty apartment on weekends looking over spreadsheets and articles.

“How are you getting along with Becky?”

Rick rapped the table with his pen. “We’re not.”

A measured beat of silence then, “She’s a lovely girl.”

She was more than lovely. More than frustrating, too.

“I was hoping you two might get along,” Colson continued.

His grandfather sounded pained, and the suspicion that Rick had about Colson’s motives was immediately confirmed.

“Editors and publishers aren’t supposed to get along.” The timer on the microwave went off. “My supper is ready.”

“You better go eat then.” Colson Ethier paused, cleared his throat as if he wanted to say more. And quickly hung up.

Rick tossed the phone on the couch. “Goodbye to you, too, Grandpa.”

Rick couldn’t remember his grandfather ever saying goodbye. Since the age of seven, when the death of his mother put him into his grandfather’s guardianship, Colson would bring Rick back to the private boys’ school he was enrolled in, drop him off and drive away without a backward glance.

The housekeeper told Rick, Colson wasn’t comfortable around children, but Rick knew his grandfather was only uncomfortable around him. The evidence of his mother’s indiscretion. Consequently Rick and Colson didn’t spend a lot of time together, which cut down on the opportunities not to say goodbye.

Once Rick graduated and moved away to college, their farewells were limited to Christmas, Easter and occasionally Thanksgiving. So his grandfather’s new interest in Rick’s life was too little, too late.

Rick retrieved his dinner from the microwave sat down at the table and set his food in front of him. He paused a moment. Habit, more than anything. Colson Ethier always prayed before meals and had taught him to do the same. The boarding school he attended tried to instill the same religious beliefs.

After his mother died, Rick didn’t trust God much. Living on his own didn’t help. When he started traveling and started seeing what the world could be like for people less privileged, cynicism and reality slowly wore away any notions of a loving God in charge of the world.

Rick ate mechanically. The reheated food tasted lousy, but he had eaten so many different kinds of foods in so many different places that he had come to view it simply as fuel. A steady need that had to be responded to at least twice and, if he was lucky, three times a day.

Which reminded him, he had to talk to some of the restaurant owners about participating in a contest he hoped to run in conjunction with the launch of the new magazine. He’d had to scale down his original plan when he sat down with Trixie and the reality of the finances stared him in the face.

He dug through his papers and found his Day-Timer. It felt heavy in his hand and seemed fatter than usual. Frowning, he flipped it open.

The pages were crammed with scribbled notes written in every direction in various shades of ink. Butterfly stickers danced across the page and flowers decorated another. Phone numbers were written sideways.

He flipped back a page, scanning over the dates, trying to make sense of what he read. Was someone at the office playing a practical joke on him?

Then he saw his name, stopped and read, “What am I going to do about Rick?” The question was heavily underlined.

He read the words again, then checked the front of the folder. The initials R.E. were imprinted in the soft burgundy leather. He and Becky must have accidentally switched agendas.

Rick glanced over the rest of the pages, looking for other mentions of his name before he realized what he was doing.

Snooping. He closed the book with a guilty flush and set it on the table. He should let Becky know right away he had it. From the look of the jam-packed days, she was going to be lost without it.

“What am I going to do about Rick?”

The words snaked into his mind. Why had she written them?

He went back to the articles Gavin Stoddard had written.

“In order to move into the ‘new’ market, the Internet market, local business owners will need to rethink their calcified methods of doing business. The name of the game is education, or how to teach an old dog to double-click.”

Rick forced himself to concentrate on the rest of the column. But the little leather folder beside him drew his attention like a magnet.

“What am I going to do about Rick?”

What did she think she had to “do”? And what was the problem?

And why did he care?

“…this new way of doing business can be a boon for savvy business owners and a stumbling block to diehard traditionalists.” He continued to scan.

He wasn’t a problem that she had to solve, he thought, throwing down the paper in disgust. He was supposed to be her boss. If there was a problem to be solved, it was his problem with her.

His chair creaked as he pushed himself back from the table, dragging his hands over his face. He had too many things on his mind to be concerned with what his bossy editor thought of him. Tomorrow he was going to be attending a meeting with the chamber of commerce to talk about the magazine and its potential for the town. He had to get a speech ready, a spreadsheet together. He was operating on a shoestring budget and he didn’t think he was going to make the ends of the string meet, let alone keep them tied.

He dropped his supper dishes in the dishwasher, tidied the counter then went back into the dining room. As he straightened the papers on the table, he glanced at the burgundy folder again.

And opened it before he could convince himself otherwise.

While his agenda only had a week per page, hers had a page per day and held two months’ worth of booklets. Each page was crammed full of notes. She had a busier schedule than the prime minister.

He flipped the pages back to the day they first met, and started reading. “Met Rick Ethier, new boss and old enemy this morning. Too good-looking and I made a fool of myself. Of course I was late for important first meeting.”

Rick felt a moment’s surprise. He hadn’t imagined that brief spark of attraction after all, and the thought kindled a peculiar warmth that was extinguished with the words following. But “old enemy”?

“Got interview with premier.” Several exclamation marks followed that one. Obviously excited. “Call secretary and get background information.”

“Meeting with Rick. Again.” The hard double underline clearly showed her frustration. “Don’t like the direction but at least there is some. Praying for patience. Constantly.”

Prayers again.

He flipped the page over, skimmed over notices to call friends, an appointment with her hairdresser, a meeting that evening at the church, a reminder of another meeting the next night. Wondered who was the Trevor of “Trevor’s back,” written with a little heart beside it.

“Rick is driving me crazy.” No heart beside his name, he thought with a surprising flicker of envy. “He’s hired Gavin. Big mistake. Mom and Dad told me I need to pray for him. Said I need to see him as a child of God.”

Rick slapped the book shut and pushed himself away from the table. He knew he had made enemies at the magazine. If he’d had a couple of years to make the changes he wouldn’t have had to be so aggressive.

He glanced back at the Day-Timer. “I need to see him as a child of God” replayed through his head.

He wasn’t a child of God. Wasn’t a child of anyone.

He had to return this. Thankfully she’d written two phone numbers inside. No one was at home, so he tried her cell phone.

“Hey there.” Becky’s voice was almost drowned out by music and voices in the background.

“This is Rick,” he said, wondering what place in Okotoks could generate that volume of noise. “I think you’ve got something of mine.”

“Just a sec. Can’t hear you.” She said something unintelligible. The noise receded and was suddenly shut off. “Sorry about that. Who is this?”

“It’s Rick. I think you’ve got my Day-Timer,” he repeated.

“You’ve accused me of that before, but I’ll check.” A rustling noise and, “Oh, brother.” Deep sigh. “You’re right. This isn’t good.”

She was probably remembering some of the things she had written.

“Where are you now?” he asked. “I could meet you so we can swap.” He didn’t have time, but a mischievous impulse made him want to see her face when they made the exchange. Impulse and a bit of bruised pride. He didn’t usually generate hostility in the women he met.

“I’m at the church, but I can come over.”

“No. I’m not doing much. Where’s the church?”

She paused and Rick smiled. She was probably squirming in embarrassment. Then she gave him directions which he noted. “See you in a bit,” he said with a hearty cheeriness.

A short time later, Rick pulled up to the front of the church, surprised at how large and new it was. Obviously religion went over well in Okotoks. He jogged through the rain, avoiding puddles on the crowded parking lot. The noise he had heard through Becky’s cell phone grew as he approached the building.

What was happening on a Friday night at church? The services he occasionally attended with his grandfather were held in a large stately church on Sundays, and as far as Rick knew, not much else happened there.

This place had cars and trucks in the parking lot and kids running around the outside of the building in spite of the rain that poured down. He opened the large double doors and stepped inside, brushing moisture off his hair and face. A few young kids were hanging around the foyer laughing and roughhousing.

“Thomas, Justin and Kevin. If you’re done with youth group, leave. If you’re supposed to be practicing, get in there.” The woman who spoke was tiny but her authoritative voice even made Rick stop a moment.

“Sorry, Cora,” one of the kids said. The teens scampered into the auditorium, letting out another blast of noise as they yanked open the doors.

The woman walked toward him, smiling as she held out her hand. “Naturally I wasn’t talking to you. Welcome. I’m Cora Ellison.”

Her gray hair was cut bluntly level with her narrow jaw, her hazel eyes laughed up at him. Rick caught glimpses of Becky in the generous mouth and pert nose. He guessed this was Becky’s mother. “I’m Rick Ethier,” he said, returning her firm handshake.

“Well, now. Finally.” Cora took his hand in both of hers, her grin animating her face even more. “I told Becks to invite you over, but she always says you are too busy. And here you are. This is great.”

Her exuberant welcome puzzled him. It was as if she knew him, but he doubted her information came from Becky. Not if her Day-Timer were any indication of what she thought of him.

The door beside them opened up and Becky rushed out, her coat flying out behind her, her hands clutching a folder identical to the one in Rick’s coat pocket. She saw her mother and veered toward her. “Hey, Mom, I have to step out a moment…” Becky’s voice trailed off as her eyes flicked from her mother to Rick. He didn’t think he imagined the flush in her cheeks.

“Hello, Becky,” he said, tilting a grin her way. “I believe you have something of mine.”

Becky looked down at the folder in her hands and her flush deepened. “Yes. Here.” She shoved it toward him without making eye contact. Rick slipped it into his pocket.

“You were expecting him, Becky?” Cora Ellison asked.

Becky nodded. “We, uh, accidentally switched Day-Timers.” She glanced up at Rick, her expression almost pleading. “Can I have mine back?”

“Oh. Sure.” Rick enjoyed seeing Becky a little flustered. It deepened the color of her eyes, gave her an appealing, vulnerable air. But he took pity on her and handed her the leather folder. “Safe and sound.” Luckily he wasn’t easily embarrassed or he might be flushing, too, knowing he’d read private things.

Becky took it from him and glanced down at it as if to make sure it hadn’t been violated. If she only knew.

“Thanks,” she said, and was about to turn away when her mother caught her by the arm.

“Becky. Wait a minute. You should have told me Rick was coming.” Cora turned to Rick. “Now I can ask you directly. We’d like to have you over for lunch. What about this Sunday? After church?”

Rick stifled a smile at Becky’s panicked gaze. He guessed she didn’t want him over, which made him want to accept the invitation. “That would be very nice. Thank you.”

“I’m looking forward to having you,” Cora said, folding her arms over her chest in a self-satisfied gesture. “It will be like the closing of a circle.”