by Maya Rose
Discreet? Why do I need to be kept discreet? Rage slams me in the gut. “And this is your brother. He had every reason to kick me out, but he fed me, treated me with decency, gave me a reason to laugh in a really freaking long time--which is more than I can say for you. And instead of thanking him or apologizing for not letting him know beforehand, you’re kicking him out? If I’m going to live here, you miserable excuse for a man, Scott has a right to know why!”
It comes out, one word after another, no thought in between. So it takes me a lot of seconds to catch on that I’m suddenly everybody’s center of attention. But the other two are in my peripheral vision, because no way am I backing down from the incensed look Eli’s giving me.
Maybe I’ve taken it too far, because I’m envious and hurting, but I meant every word. I don’t know about his relationship with his brother, but what makes him think it is okay to easily disregard people like that? I’m wishing he loses it like he did yesterday in my apartment. I also want to climb him like a tree and jab my tongue into his mouth, but obviously that’s off the table. So short of physically hurting him, I don’t know how else to fight back against whatever he thinks he’s doing here.
But he’s not the one that talks to me. No, she does. And he lets her.
“Ariel, why don’t you get cleaned up and ready while El and Scott talk? Here, I got some clothes to tide you over for a few days. And today when we go out--”
“I’m not going anywhere with you!!!” I turn and lash out at her. Selena. All poise and grace and organic figure, and I bet she has parents who dote on her. Even her name is exotic. Special. Of course he wants her. I’m the unwanted one. I’m always the unwanted one. Except when nobody’s there and they’re thinking with their dick. My own mother didn’t want to keep me for God’s sake, when she realized I would be the reason she would lose Warren Walton for good. By then it was medically too late to make the little me in her belly go away. Somehow, that’s not something she ever forgets.
“Look sweetheart, El and I...we’re just trying to help.” She says patronizingly--or maybe I’m hearing it that way, and I grip Scott’s arm tighter. We? Sweetheart? What am I--5?
“I don’t remember asking for it.” I bite at her. “And last I checked, he’s your boss, or in line to be, isn’t he? His name is Eli--not El, Eli. What--you’re so busy you don’t have time for one more freaking syllable? Or do you call Warren Warr?”
Her mouth gapes open at first, before irritation sneaks up on her knockout face, but it surprisingly doesn’t stay long. Her grey eyes examine me with way more interest than they did a moment ago, and when she speaks up, it’s a different tone. Less...superior. “Ms Jenning, all I’m saying is--”
“I’ll do it.” My head swings, as Scott speaks up, before keeping the design down once again on the table, then continuing. “I don’t know what is going on here, but I’m on my way to university, and I only have a submission due today. No classes. I can help Ariel with her admission formalities--I know all the offices and people. And I can also go with her to get whatever she needs...from wherever.” Then he pivots fully towards me. “I do think you should change though. Don’t get me wrong--it’s hot what you have on--but it’s a little out there for a first impression with Mrs Hubster in the enrollment office. She’s a prude and she will make you suffer.”
He says it with a disarming smile, waiting for my answer. He’s not trying to help the situation, I realize, he’s trying to help me. There’s no pity. He wants to help me. And I don’t want to put him down, or question his motives. Not now. So I snatch the bag Ms Uppity was offering me earlier from her hands.
“Give me fifteen minutes.” I say to him, before heading back inside to the same room I came from. I don’t care if it’s Eli’s or a guest one. I clean up and change, and thankfully the attached bathroom is stocked with extras. But the damn clothes the woman gave me--is she a size minus or something? Where do you get such clothes for a stick?
I make the t-shirt somehow fit while the jeans are trying to suffocate me, one thigh at a time. I’m used to wearing fitting clothes, but Christ, this is a prison and my body parts are individually in solitary. I don’t think my pride can take Eli giving me a critical review. So when I come out to no one talking to each other, I avoid looking at anyone but Scott.
“I’m ready.”
“Alright--let’s do this.” Scott gets up from the table, and I follow him out the door, resisting the urge to see if Eli’s looking at me go.
It’s only in the car, sitting in the front passenger seat next to him while he drives, that I ask him. “Did Eli--”
“Tell me that you’re Warren’s daughter? Yeah. Did you just find out?”
“No, I’ve...known for a while. Warren knew too. Eli didn’t.”
“Jesus.” He nods his head side to side, face deep in thought, followed by a quick glance my way “Are you okay? This can’t be easy.”
I don’t know how much Eli’s told him. But instead of probing me on what most people would, he’s asking me how I’m feeling. It’s pitiless, and the genuine kindness in his words is inundating. So I shrug and look away, unsure how to respond. Am I okay?
“Thanks for sticking up for me, by the way. All badass, not taking Eli’s shit.”
When I turn at his words, a shit-eating grin is garnishing his face. Damn it. If there’s an elephant in the car, I have to confront it now. “Ummm...so listen...I don’t want things to be weird between us...because I don’t mean to give you the wrong idea or have you misunderstand me...like I’m leading you on or whatever...so just to be clear, I’m not...”
“Interested?” He finishes when I’m still searching for the right words, giving me a side peek before focusing on the road again. “Duly noted.” His wry chuckle echoes in the car. “Although I’m tempted to hit on you just to spite Eli.”
Ummm what? “Spite?”
“You know, because he told me I’m not allowed to put any moves on you.”
Heat washes over my face. How little does Eli King think of me if he had to warn his brother away? “He probably thinks I’ll corrupt you or something.”
“No, he said you have enough shit as it is to tackle, without having to fight off someone making passes at you in the house where you’re going to live. And I get it. What I don’t get is why he’s suddenly so concerned about another human being.”
The heat’s still there, except now it’s a different sort of warmth that gives me all weird feels. Eli would hormone-proof his house for me?
“I’m guessing there’s money involved.” Scott adds with scorn when I don’t say anything. “You best watch your back with him.”
“What do you mean?” I ask, my irritation growing. Why is this line of talk about Eli bothering me?
“He’s flaky as fuck.” Scott states flatly, in a blunt voice. “Does whatever he wants, whenever it suits him, everyone else be damned. He’s the last person you should count on to watch out for you.”
I don’t know why, but I have this loony urge to shake him violently so he stops and I don’t have to listen to any more of this. There’s clearly no love lost between the two brothers. And Eli might be selfish, but it bugs me nonetheless that Scott’s talking smack behind his back when he’s not here to defend himself. But I reel the crazy in and do the next best thing. Change the track we’re on.
“So why architecture?” I quiz him. Why hotels, I wonder about Eli.
The abrupt question has him silent for a few seconds. “To build that one big, perfect, exceptional house with my name on it. That’s the dream, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know. Big houses are not really my thing.”
He chortles. “Then you must have loved Warren’s.”
I shake my head to get the picture of that spooky place out of it. “Did you and Eli ever live there?”
“For a few months.” He replies. “Then Eli started working for Warren and we shifted into a rental.”
“Why not just live there? Given that Warren did
n’t have any kids?” He pulls up an eyebrow, so I add, “That you knew of.”
“Because Eli decided we should. He was my legal guardian and my job was to follow him wherever he took us. Far be it for him to explain himself to me.”
Damn it--how are we here again? “What’s your all time favorite movie?” I pilot the conversation as astronomically far away from Eli as I can.
And I keep it there for the rest of the day, as we finish up things at the U, then have lunch, go shopping for clothes and phone and shit, and belt Adele’s songs tunelessly in his car when we drive around. When he’s not bitching about his brother, Scott is laid-back and fun and interesting and just nice. The conversation is devoid of tension, and the day is...easy.
No reason why I should keep thinking about Eli freaking King every other millisecond. But I do. I keep wishing it was him with me, brawny and daring, saying cruel things, devouring me with his bright blue eyes, keeping me undamaged from everything but him, lulling me into a carefree dauntless sleep by just being around.
This nonsense in my head won’t last, right? Right????
Chapter 8
Eli
◆◆◆
It struck me like a bolt of lightning when I saw the two of them together. Happy and free and so annoyingly youthful. They could have a normal relationship. They could actually work. Which is fine. It is. What do I care? He’s an adult, and she’s...on her own.
“This is all too much. It’ll take our teams a significant time to ramp up and learn the new technology. I don’t see what is wrong with our current system, Eli.”
I hear everything that the man sitting next to me says, but piecing it together takes time. The whole damn day has been like this. It’s 3pm. And nothing from Scotty. My brain’s divided, work fighting not-work for territory. What is this guy talking about? What is this meeting? I see a nerdy guy standing in front of the screen still projecting the presentation. The slide helps me recall. The new tech for the billing and reservation system.
I start to explain, knowing it’s not what he wants to hear. “Everything’s wrong with the current system, Michael. It’s slow, it’s manual, it’s hard to manage, it’s difficult as hell to streamline between all the properties, and it doesn’t run on the latest versions of any operating systems. And your headcount requests to maintain it are increasing every year. We need an upgraded system because I want to simplify this. I don’t want to hire forty more people to do work that a simple software can get done with a few clicks.”
He frowns. “We would have appreciated you running this by us before signing them on, Eli. You make these big decisions by yourself and expect us to just fall in line--it’s unfair.”
The last time I ran an idea by him first, he prattled on about it in an interview, and I had to renegotiate prices with the vendor because it was proprietary beta technology that we were not supposed to talk about. “I’m trying to stay competitive here, Michael. And after I didn’t realize I needed your permission to do my job.”
He turns a rusty shade of red from the neck up, as he looks down at his laptop. I hope he is embarrassed because I thought of this when it is technically his job to figure out issues in the current way we operate, and not because his direct reports are watching this. But if I want something done right, I have to do it myself.
But Michael shuts his laptop down and gets up. “Then there’s no point to this meeting.” He turns to the presenter who’s awkwardly taking everything in. “Just have your guys send us your schedule and ETA for implementation, and we’ll set up meetings to get the project going.”
The techie looks at me as if for corroboration. He works for the company whose software we’re going to use, and he has just been given a glimpse into the infighting here. But Michael just keeps giving him directions, oblivious. Or maybe he isn’t oblivious, but is doing it anyway. Fuck. I text Selena to make the NDAs for these guys iron-clad. But when she responds, it’s not about the NDAs.
>>Selena: I have the contract printed and ready to go. Will drop it by later. Get her to sign it tonight. That chick’s...don’t think there’s a word for it.
There isn’t. I never know what she’s going to say or do next. And fuck if it isn’t enticing. Even when she’s brutally taking me down a peg for my brother’s sake. God, I just wanted a bite out of her--those tits and that ass in Selena’s tight clothes...
>>Selena: So hot. If I was batting for the other team, I would have called dibs.
Motherfucking hell.
>>Selena: Speaking of which...Mr “Stay-away-from-her-she’s-off-limits”--ready to talk about that or still gonna avoid it?
Yup, still going with avoid. After Scotty and Ariel left in the morning, I only got out of Selena’s interrogation when she thankfully got a call from the office. She wouldn’t buy my I-did-it-for-Warren, and I’m still not sure how else to convincingly pitch it. To her or myself.
Speak of the devil. My phone lights up with a message from Warren.
>>Let’s talk in ten.
He has access to my schedule, and he takes full advantage of the fact. Usually I’m game, but I’m still raw from the previous night, wishing he would give it a rest for one goddamn day.
“How is she doing?” He launches at me in the first second of the video call.
“She’s fine.” I reassure him. And maybe me. “Scotty’s getting her set up in NYU.”
I wait for him to call me out on punting her out to my brother, but Warren simply nods. What the heck?
“I want to tell the board about her, Eli. And the executives. Then I want to start seeing her around in the office.”
Want want want...will he shut it? “Warren, you need to pace it out. She’s new to all of this.”
He gives me that same evaluating expression he did last night when I pushed back on his browbeating ass.
“You worried about her, champ?”
Evil son of a bitch. “I told you not to call me that.”
But ignoring things he doesn’t agree with, is his specialty. “And I’m going to set up a press conference so it comes from me, and not some loose-lipped over-zealous board member. Martin especially can’t keep a secret to save his life.”
Goddamn hell, what? Is he serious? Or just insensitive? I have a flashback of the week following dad’s suicide. With the media frenzy, and the constant flashbulbs following me and Scott every single place we went. Documenting our fall from grace with harrowing precision. Checking into the motel. Buying from the Lifelong thrift store. Interviews with people claiming to know us. They didn’t even stop when we shifted from Seattle to New York, to live in Warren’s million year old house. It subsided only after Michael Jackson’s death went viral a couple months later. And now the vultures will feed on her life. Dissecting it and putting it under a microscope. Digging up juicy details from her past. Prodding her, haunting her, stalking her. I imagine those light cinnamon eyes perennially shrinking in fear as she lives her new reality, and I want to throw something at Warren’s image on that high resolution plasma.
Snap out of it. She means nothing. And one way or another, regardless of what she was before, she will now always be Warren Walton’s love child. There’s no going back from that.
“Fine. When?” I ask him.
“As soon as you can. Maybe give her a few days to settle in with you. Then she can officially start coming to the office.”
“Anything else?” I seethe, scornful.
But he keeps rolling. “Get her a bodyguard. Someone needs to guard her 24/7.”
It burns me. Now I have to find a man who will escort her all day every day? Protecting her, defending her, saving her? What is wrong with the damn air in here? I glide my fingers inside the collar of my buttoned up shirt, at my throat, but it’s still too tight. “Warren, for heaven’s sake, pump the brakes on this. I understand you’re in a hurry, but--”
“Dr Hershman told me two weeks ago that my body has stopped responding to the combination they were trying.” He pauses. “I told
them to stop treating me like a lab rat. I know in my heart that nothing's going to work. And it hurts all the damn time. My time’s almost up, Eli. And I won’t die without telling the world unequivocally that she’s my heir as much as you are.”
His eyes well up, shining with a fierce strength of will, stripping away the businessman, and leaving only the father. Is it idiotic that despite everything, I think she’s lucky to be related to the crazy bastard? “Are you going to tell her?”
“Yes. Just not...yet. I came on too strong yesterday, I realize that. But I don’t have a choice.” A sudden sly smile tugs at his mouth. “But you convinced her, when it’s not exactly your strongest suit. I’m so damn proud. Surprised, but proud.”
This is exactly why I can’t truly hate him, no matter what he does. All I have to do is close my eyes, and I’m transported back to March 2009, rudderless, hopeless, until he waltzed in with a kind voice and a bleeding heart. Teaching, sharing, helping us cope. Isn’t stopping you from cheating him, my conscience rears its head, contract and everything. I’ve earned this, I quell that voice. And it’s not like I’m hanging her out to dry. I just don’t want to share. Why should I have to share?
My eyes absently focus on my phone, my face unlocking it, and why the fuck won’t Scotty message me?
“Problem?”
I look up at Warren—shit, I’ve never been distracted for a microsecond in a meeting with him. “Nothing I can’t deal with.”
He laughs. “You know, before yesterday I would have been skeptical.” He shakes his head, as if amused. “Alright, let’s talk tomorrow.”
I cave, and message Scotty the moment Warren’s off screen.
>>Me: Her number.
His reply flies in within seconds.
>>Scotty: Ask her yourself.
Asshole. Cut it the fuck out, I want to say. But I’ve dug myself a hole here. If I ask him again, he’s going to ask why I won’t do it myself. And I don’t know him well enough to read between his words. Ask her because he doesn’t want to do my work? Or ask her because he’s purposely being a dick? Or did she put him up to this?