Brad's fingertips skitter over the keyboard as he continues to investigate. I should be opening my office door and ushering Brad out of the offices. Instead, I peer over his shoulder to get a better look at what Brad is looking at.
He’s found an article in a trade industry website titled, "Major Shakeup at Johnson and Mathers," which details a realignment, as well as the departure of one Samantha Mack, approximately 18 months ago. I feel a high sense of pride that Samantha has managed to put together a business so quickly after being laid off the company. There's an undertone to the article, though, and part of me senses something bad went down at Johnson and Mathers. It doesn't make sense that they would let go of someone so clearly talented as Samantha without something going on behind-the-scenes.
Brad seems to be reading my mind. "I wonder why they let someone like her go," he says. "I'll ask around and find out what happened."
Brad knows a lot of people in the city, which I suppose is useful for his real estate investment business, which involve a lot of personal connections.
I squint at him. "I don't think that's a good idea," I say. "We've intruded too much as it is."
I turn the doorknob, shaking my head. When I open the door, I am surprised to see Samantha standing on the threshold, a puzzled expression on her face. I blink at her, my face going hot at being caught snooping. Hopefully, she didn't hear what Brad and I were talking about.
"Uh, hi, Samantha," I say, feeling awkward as fuck.
She is so close that her huge hazel eyes seem to dominate her face. So close that I can see the detail of the spattering of tiny brown freckles over her nose. Her hair is loose, and as puffy as a dandelion gone to seed. And she smells wonderful. Coconuts and some kind of flowery soap scent. Exotic, fresh, and alluring.
I resist the urge to lean in for a longer, deeper sniff. I wonder how much she heard of my conversation with Brad.
Brad turns to watch my exchange with Samantha, and I hear the "click" of the laptop closing, hiding the evidence of our snooping into Samantha's life. Brad is on his feet in an instant, tucking the laptop under his arm, to introduce himself. Grinning from ear to ear, Brad pours on the boy-next-door charm.
"Is this Samantha Mack?" he says. "The Samantha Mack?" He reaches around me to shake hands.
"Um, yes?" she says, a little shyly, unsure of what to make of Brad.
"I've heard so much about you," he says, pumping her hand. She still looks a little suspicious.
Her eyebrows come together, her eyes narrow, and suspicion tinges her expression.
"Really?" she asks. "I don't think I've heard anything about you. Other than you're apparently Link's wingman." She places special emphasis on "wingman," and I realize she heard at least part of my and Brad's conversation. How much she heard, I do not know.
Suddenly, she takes the trash can from me, giving me a sly, cheeky smile. I follow her into the reception area.
"Good afternoon," I say. I'm aware of the fact that I sound like a tool, especially since she's heard us gossiping about her like a pair of thirteen-year-old boys.
"Good to see you, Link." She hustles to the corner of the reception area to set down the trash can near the door to the corridor, her back to me.
"I—uh..." I say, but when she turns abruptly to look at me with those mesmerizing eyes, the words stop. I am speechless.
"I came back to take care of a few things for you," she says, and I feel relief. I hadn't realized until that moment that I'd been afraid she wouldn't come back. Part of me worried the escalation of our personal relationship would damage our work relationship.
"You did?" I say.
"Of course," she says. She sashays into my office, edging her way around Brad, then plucks a slip of paper off my desk. It's the pink dry cleaning receipt. She gives me a bright smile. "They are so picky about customers bringing their tickets."
I narrow my eyes at her, as I am now suspicious. She came in just to retrieve the dry cleaning ticket? Her smile remains unchanged, but her eyes soften a fraction as she looks at me. We stand mere inches apart, staring into each other's eyes. Her hazel eyes are mesmerizing, and I feel myself falling into them, into her, the sensation similar to that of being on a roller coaster just as it crests the first hill. It's like she has a magnet in her eyes, drawing me closer. My heart pounds, leaving me a bit lightheaded. I want to kiss her.
And maybe I would have, except Brad, the asshole, takes that moment to clear his throat.
Samantha blinks, her long, curly eyelashes fluttering. I can see the moment she comes back to herself.
"I'll, uh, see you for our Thursday lunch meeting," she smiles again. She is nervous, her lush, full lips trembling a bit as her smile falters, and I'm reminded of how soft they are to kiss, how they look wrapped around my cock, and now it's not my pounding heart that makes me lightheaded, it's the surge of blood headed to my groin.
"Of course," I say, my voice coming out in an unmanly squeak. I clear my throat and shift on my feet in an attempt to subtly adjust my man parts.
She turns on her heel and crosses the reception area, headed for the door leading to the corridor. I follow, finding myself deeply distracted by the swaying motion of her hips and tortured by memories of nibbling on it, slapping it, and soothing it. The skin on her backside is so firm that her flesh jiggles only minimally before springing back. At the door, she pauses, turns around quickly, and I crash into her.
Her wonderful curves bounce against my torso, and with great difficulty, I set her away from me. My dick is now as hard as stone; I try not to think of the fact that we did not address any of my office sex fantasies. If my so-called "friend" wasn't here, I would not allow her to leave the office.
Our gazes connect, and we both stop moving. My breath hitches. She gasps. Her pink tongue peeks out, and she licks her lips nervously.
I'm about to lose my mind.
"Smack—" I say as, propelled by my hormones, I move closer. She puts a hand on my chest, stopping me.
"Thursday," her breath comes in a whisper.
I give her a silent nod, and she leaves.
I stand there for long moments, just staring at the closed door. I suck in a deep breath, tell my dick to chill the fuck out, and taking a deep breath, turn around to confront Brad, who is bent over the laptop again.
"Who or what is a Dear Ida?"
Chapter Seventeen: Samantha
Thursday morning, as I go about the business of taking care of my clients in the blast-furnace heat that is Dallas in the late summer, I also give myself an internal pep talk.
What do I tell myself?
A litany of affirmations reinforcing the idea that I'm a very capable, professional woman, and my dalliance with Lincoln was but a single blip in a scrupulously professional work history. Well, mostly scrupulously professional. I choose to avoid thinking of what happened at Johnson and Mathers, which really wasn't my fault at all.
It is for this reason that I resisted coming into the office after the night we spent together. I felt my absence would be a sort of palate cleanser, a way to reset our relationship back to where it should have been all along. We got the simmering sexual tension between us out of our systems; therefore, we can now resume a completely professional relationship. When I arrive at the office, I do so loudly, with lots of banging of drawers and loud chattering into my cell phone. When I stopped by the day before, I unfortunately overheard part of a conversation between Lincoln and Brad, during which they seemed to be discussing the fact that they were each other's wingman. Frankly, I had no interest in hearing anything more about it.
When I arrive, the lights are on in the reception area, and Lincoln's door is closed. I hear two male voices, one of which is definitely Lincoln, and the other sounds familiar, though, I'm sure it cannot be who I think it is. There's something in the air too, an oddly familiar displacement of air that has the hairs of my arms standing straight up, almost as if, as my mom would say, someone was walking over my grave. The shiver of unease travel
s through my body, and my heart beats faster. On shaky legs, I sit at my temporary desk with a hard thud. Something doesn't feel right.
Chiding myself for being silly, I open my laptop and began to answer some of the email that had popped up on my phone. I am deep into a detailed response to one email when the door to Lincoln's office opens suddenly. When I tear my eyes away from my laptop screen, Lincoln is there shaking hands with someone I never thought I'd see again.
Howard Becker.
Howard is an attractive man in his late thirties, blue-eyed, dirty blond, tall and with a lanky build. Today, he is wearing a charcoal gray, expensive three-piece suit. He is as well-groomed as always, his handsomeness the result of metrosexual sensibilities, meticulous skin care, twice-monthly trips to the barber, and weekly sessions with his manicurist. Standing next to Lincoln, who's wearing dress slacks and a dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up, Howard looks like he's trying too hard to be cute. He is also shorter than Link by several inches, thinner, and less ruggedly handsome. Both men have been coworkers, and I try not to let my mind get snagged on the fact that I've slept with both of them. Seeing the two men together, it seems to me only one of them was worth sleeping with. What did I ever see in Becker? They say love is blind. Howard Becker is Exhibit A of why you should never get involved with someone you work with.
My mind reels. Things have been over between me and Becker for more than a year, and I thought leaving Johnson and Mathers would mean I'd never see him again. I guess I was wrong.
"Samantha!" Lincoln says. "Come say hello to Howard Becker." Lincoln makes an expansive gesture, inviting me to join the two men.
I am wearing my usual work attire, jeans and a polo with my company's logo emblazoned over my right breast. It is right around lunchtime, and I've already spent the day running hither, thither, and yon for clients on a number of odd jobs. My lipstick has worn off from the lip nibbling I do when I'm really focused on something. My wild hair dislikes humid weather so I have it pinned up in a kinky mass. In all the time I spent with Becker, he never saw me with anything other than flat ironed hair. Now, as I approach the two men, Becker eyes me with an uncomprehending squint, as if examining a virus under a microscope. His nonverbal communication, including the slight curling of his upper lip, suggests revulsion at my casual appearance. Nevertheless, he puts out a hand to shake mine. I do not want to shake hands. I have already shaken hands with Howard Becker, and I do not want to do it again.
I lick my lips, plaster a smile on my face, and give Becker a head nod.
"We've already met," I say. "We were coworkers."
Becker's hand hovers in the air before he retracts it with one of his slick smiles. I am not shaking this man's hand.
"Indeed, we have," Becker says, his obsequious smile still firmly in place. "We were on the same account team at Johnson and Mathers."
I smile so hard my teeth might just crack, and my cheek muscles might seize. Of course, Becker would fail to mention how he cheated on me while insisting we needed to keep our relationship on the down low. He won't mention the way he sabotaged my work when we were competing for the right to pitch a lucrative client. He also won't mention how he also managed to get me fired when I threatened to go to HR with the proof of his treachery. While he was seeing me, he was also seeing the niece of Thomas Mathers, one half of the Johnson and Mathers partnership, and he needed me out of the way to ensure he could close a deal with Alicia and her uncle. When the dust settled, I was out of the agency with a recommendation, and Becker was promoted to the vice president of client relations job we had both been competing for.
Howard reads my expression for any flicker of weakness. Howard is a shark and never stops looking for blood on the water. His lips curve into a shit-eating grin.
"What brings you here, Howard?" I snap, crossing my arms over my chest. The message is clear: we are not friends.
"Business development," Howard says curtly, his toothpaste-ad-ready, bright white smile never fading. He looks pleasant, and because I'm not shaking his hand, I look like an asshole.
Lincoln speaks up. "Howard called me from out of the blue to talk about possible investment opportunities," he says, his eyes bouncing between the two of us. The crease between his eyebrows suggests he senses something going on between Howard and me, but he doesn't want to say so.
"Well, not exactly out of the blue," says Howard, still smiling. "We're both SMU business school alumni. I heard through the grapevine that Cooper restaurant group might be looking for outside investors for an expansion. As you might already know, I'm no longer with Johnson and Mathers."
I did not know this, and I stifle a snappish comeback to this news. Perhaps the powers that be at my former employer decided to stop hiring snakes and booted his ass out of there.
"Oh, really?" I say with feigned incredulity. It's on the tip of my tongue to ask whether he and Alicia had made wedding plans yet. I don't ask, though, since I do have some pride.
"Yes, really," Becker says. I want to ask whether he was fired for cause or for incompetence, but I decide to leave well enough alone.
"Great," I say drolly.
"What do you do here?" Becker says, giving me another condescending onceover.
I open my mouth to speak, but Lincoln interrupts. He has a look on his face that says he suspects there's something between me and Howard, but he's not going to mention it.
"Smack does a little of everything, all of it essential for the running of my business," Lincoln says smoothly. "I couldn't get through my day without her."
"Smack?" Howard says, looking puzzled.
"It's an inside joke," I say in a tone that conveys my lack of desire to discuss it any further. "When I left the firm, I decided the best way to secure my financial future was to go out on my own," I say. "And now I run around for my clients, so they don't have to."
I finish my speech on an upbeat note.
We stand in a triangle of awkwardness for several long, quiet, smiling moments.
"Well, you've given me a lot to think about," says Lincoln, giving Becker a speculative look. He places his hand on Becker's shoulder. "Let me see you out."
The two men take the back entrance out of the restaurant, and I stand alone, wishing I had something breakable to throw at the wall. I'm annoyed that Becker still has the power to get to me. I know I am over him, but I still wish I hadn't been blindsided by Becker's presence at my place of work. When I left Johnson and Mathers and couldn't find another job in the industry, I forced myself to put the entire infuriating episode behind me. It worked, for the most part, even though he'd had the nerve to call me repeatedly after his engagement to Alicia was announced. Because, apparently, being a lying, cheating asshole isn't enough without a steady side piece to keep life interesting. He stopped calling me a few weeks after I left the firm, but only after I threatened to call his so-called fiancée if he didn't stop.
That finally did the trick. I suspect Becker was the reason why I couldn't find another job in the industry, but I have no way of proving it. Old resentment descends as I remember my last day at Johnson and Mathers, packing my things into cardboard banker's boxes as security looked on. When it was time to move my things, we were joined by a maintenance man wheeling a hand truck, as if I might abscond with a computer, desk, or file cabinet. Then there was the shame of walking past the agency worker bees slaving away at computer terminals after hours. When I'd joined the company, I'd met both Johnson and Mathers for the last interview, which was held at a high-end restaurant downtown, the better to gauge my table manners and client-facing demeanor.
When you're fired, there are no more cozy lunches. Your once stellar performance reviews turn into a series of grinding periodic humiliations necessary to build a case against me, the inconvenient employee who would be managed out of the firm.
My relationship with Becker and the ensuing fallout was one of the main reasons I decided to go out on my own. I never want to be in the position where I'm beholden to any one perso
n or organization for my livelihood. Maybe it's a good thing Becker showed up in Lincoln's office when he did. Becker reminds me of all that can go wrong with workplace relationships. I no longer entertain any thoughts of continuing any sort of personal relationship with Lincoln. Situations like the one I experienced with Becker are precisely why a relationship with Lincoln would never work.
I sit at my desk, pretending to answer email as my mind whirs like a fan on a hot day, when Lincoln returns. He gives me a speculative look before mumbling something about needing to make a phone call before our lunch meeting.
"Why don't you grab a table in the dining room, and I'll come find you?" he says. Without a word, I nod my agreement, pick up my things, and head for the dining room.
Since it's two in the afternoon, the lunch rush has passed. One of the hostesses puts me at a table with a view of the front door, and I sit and brood. Not 30 seconds later, a smiling waitstaff plunks a basket of Cooper's awesome fresh bread on the table. Normally, I would attack the breadbasket, but today, I stare at it morosely.
Lincoln joins me soon after, settling in the bench seat across from me. Despite my current turmoil, I find his presence oddly reassuring, and when he flashes his beautiful smile at me, it's impossible not to smile back. His eyebrows wrinkle as he looks at me, a question in his eyes. I play with a white napkin on the table in front of me and try to steal furtive glances at Lincoln when I think he isn't looking.
"I had no idea you knew Howard Becker," Lincoln says carefully. "I take it you're not friends?"
I shrug. "No, not really," I say. I think of what to say, finally settling on a fairly neutral, "we were teammates."
Lincoln raises an eyebrow as if he's not sure what to make of my admission. I think he senses he's not getting the whole story.
Tough Customer: A Hero Club Novel Page 12