A Bird Without Wings Read online

  A Bird Without Wings

  a romance

  Roberta Pearce

  ***

  A Bird Without Wings

  Copyright © 2013 by Roberta Pearce

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Your support and respect for the property of this author is appreciated.

  No part of this ebook may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means whatsoever without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in review.

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademark status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorised, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

  Adult Reading Material

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Epilogue

  Other Books by this Author

  Prologue

  The pupils of Mrs. Simms’ second-grade class looked up at their teacher, eager faces shining as they leaned precariously in their little desks, hands waving and fingers flicking, calling the chorus of “Ooh! Ooh! Ooh!” designed to get a teacher’s attention since Plato opened the Academy.

  Even the new girl had her hand up! Callie was very sweet, a little odd, and incredibly bright, but did not participate often. Mrs. Simms was afraid the curriculum bored her smartest pupil.

  So, extremely surprised and pleased, Mrs. Simms asked: “Yes, Callie? What is the most important thing in the world?”

  Though flushing in embarrassment as all attention turned to her, Callie’s enormous eyes looked at Mrs. Simms in unblinking seriousness. “The most important thing in the world is Money.”

  Not-quite-silent shock rippled through the classroom.

  “No, Callie,” Mrs. Simms said gently; sadly. “That is wrong.”

  Callie’s eyebrows formed quizzically lopsided arches—she rarely had the wrong answer—and she nibbled on her thumbnail while waiting to hear what everyone else had to say about the Most Important Thing in the World.

  The consensus swiftly came back: It was Love.

  “Do you understand now, Callie?” Mrs. Simms asked, smiling encouragingly.

  Callie liked Mrs. Simms, so she nodded and said: “Yes, Mrs. Simms. I understand.”

  But Callie knew better. She already had love. Her parents loved her. She loved them. She loved her big brother Leon. Everybody loved everybody else.

  Love was nice.

  But if only there was more money.

  Callie worried about money. It kept her awake at night. Her parents didn’t seem to care that she needed milk money (though she had learned to squirrel away for rainy days), or that there was not enough money for the rent—again. But there was just enough money to fix the camper trailer. Just this morning, she had overheard Mom doing that sweet-talking thing to soothe and assure the landlord that even though the Dahls were behind in rent, they’d soon catch it up. Mom was good at sweet talk. It might go on for a few more weeks before the landlord got wise. And as Dad always said, it’s tough to evict people in the winter.

  So maybe there was a bit of time. Callie liked this school. She liked being in school, period. It’d been awhile. She liked making friends, and was pretty good at it. Pretty good at not getting too attached anymore, too. She hardly ever cried now, she thought proudly, when she left people and places behind.

  There was no point in crying. Because there was no avoiding it. No avoiding the fear and anxiety and the fast-approaching inevitable midnight run. No avoiding the hated downtime from school until Mom and Dad’s itchy feet decided to stop again. And then there’d be yet another new school for her and Leon, in yet another new town.

  Maybe if there was more money, Mom and Dad could get medicine for those darned itchy feet.

  A dejected little sigh left her as she watched pretty Mrs. Simms happily encouraging the class in a shout-out to the various things they loved best.

  That poor, deluded woman.

  Chapter One

  Wipe the drool from your chin, remember that you’re no one important, and try for once to not look at the boss’s butt.

  Okay. That was easy. Easy-peasy. Piece of cake. Cakewalk. Walk in the park.

  . . . holding hands, smiling at passersby who could only dream of sharing such a moment, looking into each other’s eyes . . .

  Callie only scarcely stifled a groan. Eight months, one week, four days, and—she glanced at the time display on her cell—forty-three minutes of fantasy-without-fulfilment should be sufficient time for any reasonable woman to let go of a pipedream. Alas, although she looked the poster child of serious, and was, in fact, very reasonable about nearly everything else in her life, she was not reasonable when it came to the boss.

  “Hey, Cal!” A passing executive stage-whispered conspiratorially. “What are you in for?”

  Callie nervously tapped her fingers on the hardcover notebook she clung to and shifted her feet, tucking them further under the uncomfortable chair. “I don’t know, Rache. I was just asked to be here this morning.”

  The boss’s secretary glared tolerantly.

  Rachel grinned. “Hope you didn’t screw up, Callie. Lucius’ tongue-lashings are legendary.” A naughty chuckle underscored that. “A girl can hope, can’t she?”

  In her youth, Callie had once read about a heroine who ‘controlled her colour.’ A remarkable skill to be sure, but as she blushed ridiculously at the decadent thought of Lucius and tongues, she wondered how one learnt such an obviously apocryphal thing.

  The tolerance level of the secretary’s glare lowered significantly and Rachel beat a retreat, but not before winking at Callie and begging a full report at lunch.

  Startled, she could only nod at this invitation. Elegant and popular, Rachel had always been nice to her, and they got along famously on team projects, but never before had such an overture been made, and she could only wonder: Why now?

  Her gaze flicked to the door of Luscious’—damn!—Lucius’ office. It was unusual for employees to be summoned here without being in serious trouble. To her knowledge, she had not done anything wrong (her teeth tortured her thumbnail as she mentally reviewed her work—Nope, all good), and since being in that sort of trouble usually meant a trip straight to HR for a pink slip and severance, her summons must be for some project that needed her help.

  That would explain Rachel’s interest—the opportunity to be in the know. Everybody was scrambling at FalTech since Lucius’ dish of a cousin ran away with the silver spoon eight months ago, taking precious capital and destroying long-standing relationships with many clients. Keeping tabs on the intricacies of the office was valu
able to anyone who equated knowledge to power.

  Callie was not one of those people. With a brain crammed full of useless facts, she was about as powerless as it got. Sure, she was pretty smart, with a good-paying job that suited her skills if not her interests. And while some personal goals were being met, she had no idea how to even start to go after Lucius. Moreover, she didn’t have the looks or the social status. He would never look twice at her. Indeed, she was certain he had never looked once at her while she leered at him in fretful lust on the rare occasions he stormed his mercurial self through the main office workstations or when she saw him in occasional meetings.

  Oh and today was a particularly horrific day on all fronts in the looks department. The blazer was the worst of the lot in her wardrobe. And this skirt! Ugh. She tugged at the knee-length hem. Garnering a man’s attention required something sexier than this disaster, and there were a couple of appropriate outfits in the back of her wardrobe she could have worn had she remembered this meeting was going to happen.

  If only Leon hadn’t called this morning. Big brother only called for one reason: cash. Or rather, the shortage of it. Seeing his number on her phone sent her into automatic tailspin even though she didn’t answer, and in the whirl, she had donned the worst of her wardrobe.

  The cheap but pretty lace on her cami top peeked between the lapels of the blazer, and she idly fingered it. The cami was a bit sexy, and it didn’t look too bad on her. Maybe she should take off the jacket. The air conditioning was out in the building, and she was a bit warm. Okay, dying, though it wasn’t nearly as bad as her apartment. Would the cami look too unprofessional on its own? She played with the single large button on the blazer, debating how much the cami looked like lingerie. Not very, she supposed, and some women in the office wore much racier items.

  Her body wasn’t bad; perhaps not modishly thin anymore, but curves were (probably) not the criminal offence fashion magazines suggested they were, and personally she preferred food over starvation, self-imposed or otherwise—but to each their own. No, from the neck down, she was okay. Both ex-boyfriends had said so.

  From the neck up, however . . .

  She tucked the cell phone into her pocket and removed the reading glasses there, settling them on her nose. They did an excellent job of disguising some of her glaring flaws—though they did blur the distance. She’d just have to be very careful walking while they were on.

  In the movies, it was a simple matter for a plain, bookish girl to remove her glasses and shake out her hair to achieve beauty. She had tried it once (again) recently in the sanctity and privacy of her apartment while thinking about Lucius, and the results were sad—and completely ruined the moment. Mousy brown hair fell in a mess of unruly corkscrew curls that frizzed at the slightest suggestion of humidity (and in a Toronto summer, one got more than suggestion). As for her face—well, there was no escaping the fact that her grey eyes were far, far, far too large for her face, emphasising the tiny nose (or perhaps vice versa), and that her mouth was far, far, far too wide for the pointy little chin above which it sat. Her skin was pasty white except when she blushed, which was frequently, when it went a solid cooked-crustacean red. (“Want some butter with that blush?” Yes, her first ex-boyfriend had missed his calling in stand-up.)

  That boyfriend . . . she idly wondered what had become of him. He had dumped her in the middle of finals in her last year of university in favour of a girl doing her MRS. So, while her first attempt at normalcy had been brief, she supposed it was lucky she had landed a popular Varsity jock as her boyfriend. And he was a trust-fund baby, too, while she made a church mouse look entitled. Quite a coup, now that she thought about it. How had she managed that?

  It was the tutoring. She needed the money; he (really, really) needed the help, and one thing had led to another. Still, it boggled the mind that he noticed her, let alone wanted to sleep with her.

  Absently, she tugged at a loose thread on her skirt and stared in horror as a chunk of hem fell.

  Damn! When had things come to this? That boyfriend of way-back-when had seen something in her, and whatever it was, it wasn’t this poorly dressed frizzy girl! Of course, she had way more polish then (and even more later, when the second attempt at normalcy trotted by), but still it was a surprise when he made overtures to insignificant her—which admittedly, she and her raging hormones leapt at.

  Yes, she had been a virgin. No, the sex had not been great, even after the awkward first time. Maybe sex wasn’t all that books cracked it up to be. Maybe she just wasn’t good at it. Maybe she was frigid.

  “Mr. Ransome will see you now, Ms. Dahl,” Lucius’ secretary informed her.

  As her nipples tightened and her sensible cotton panties moistened at the mere sound of that name, Callie was fairly certain frigidity was not her problem.

  ***

  Lucius wanted nothing more than to hunt down Cousin James, beat him to a pulp, shoot him, sell off the assets of FalTech, and retire in comfort in the Caribbean. Couldn’t fit that all in today, though. It would have to wait.

  Listening to the cheerfully gloomy drone of his uncle’s voice coming through the receiver, he made a concerted effort to loosen his clenched jaw; there was no time to fit in a dentist appointment today, either, and the way he was grinding his teeth, he was sure to shatter a molar.

  “Uh huh,” he agreed, without knowing to what he agreed. “Hold on a second. I have another call,” he said, truthfully enough, for another line flashed with annoying repetition on the console.

  Placing Thomas on hold, he pressed the intercom. “Dana, who’s holding?”

  “Your mother.”

  “F—f—fine.” He managed to keep it polite. Pressing the heel of his hand into one eye, he leashed his temper.

  His open eye fell balefully on the painting taking up a huge chunk of real estate on the wall in the lounge area of his office. Fortunately, it was to the left of the door, so was not the first thing people saw when they entered—just the last thing they saw on the way out. Good for instilling terror. Truly the ugliest painting in all of art history, it depicted a flock of crows tearing a carcass to shreds, complete with dripping blood and strings of flesh. Twisted, sick thing; it had been in the family forever. He’d love to take it down and burn it—preferably on James’ funeral pyre.

  Maybe he should consider primal scream therapy. It sounded like a lot of fun right now.

  “Can you explain why I only get calls from bloodsuckers?”

  “Very important people called you all day yesterday,” Dana soothed. “And do you think it’s appropriate to refer to family as bloodsuckers?”

  His mouth twitched into a half-smile even as he growled: “I don’t give a damn about appropriate. Is whatshername here?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Send her in, I guess.” It was a stupid idea, this plan the family had, another in a long line of stupid ideas, and he did not want to spend another dime chasing after shadows the way four—or was it five?—generations of Ransomes had. But to appease them—and maybe get them off his back for thirty seconds so he could (another big maybe) save FalTech and salvage the Ransome Group’s reputation—he would give whatshername over to their schemes.

  Anchoring the receiver between his ear and shoulder, he unbuttoned his cuffs to roll up the sleeves. He was melting, it was so bloody hot. “What’s the word on the air conditioning?”

  “I’ve been promised that it will be fixed within the hour. I remind them of that every ten minutes when I call to check,” Dana assured.

  “Thanks, Dana,” he said with true appreciation. What a gem she was! Whatever happened to the companies, he was taking her with him when he returned to England—momentarily forgetting that today’s plan was immediate Caribbean retirement.

  Retrieving the call from Thomas, he spoke quickly before the man could start up again. “Tom, I’m looking into it. Give me a few days. Gotta go.” Hitting the release, he picked up the other line.

  The office door sq
ueaked open a fraction. Beckoning impatiently at the face that pressed against the minute opening, wondering why whatshername didn’t just walk right in, he greeted his mother impatiently.

  “Very busy, Mom. What do you want?”

  “Lucius, dear. What a greeting! We’re all under a great deal of stress, but you can be civil.”

  Stress? They didn’t know from stress. “Can’t take civil to the bank. What do you want?”

  Something about reputations and family pride came pouring out. Lucius lowered his head, not really listening, too busy trying not to laugh at the scene unfolding before him. It was the first genuine humour he had felt in months, and he appreciated it through the veil of his lashes.

  Whatshername (Can’t keep calling her that! Miss Dahl, he corrected, slicing a hasty glance at the PDF open on his monitor) swung the door inward a little more, allowing barely enough space to squish through. The sleeve of her boxy black blazer caught on the handle and she fought for a few seconds before deducing why she was unable to proceed further. Freeing herself, she again tried to pour herself through the narrow opening, only to have her pocket catch next.

  He heard the slight tear of material over his mother’s voice.

  Miss Dahl struggled to get the door handle out of her pocket and, successful at last, edged a foot into the room. The heavy clip holding the biggest briar patch of hair Lucius had ever seen caught on the doorframe as she moved forward, pulling her head back sharply.

  He winced. That had to hurt.

  A now-loose hunk of medium brown frizz hanging along her fire-engine-red cheek, glasses tilted at a crazy angle, and a black notebook shoved under an elbow, she wrapped herself around the door’s edge, practically humping it as she held the inner and outer handles in either hand, keeping it still as she dragged the last of her body into the office. Slowly, hinges squeaking all the way, the door started to close.

  Snap! Thud! Bang! Slam!