When I entered the front lobby, I could see that the rest of the building had that same look. Everything was contemporary, rounded, metal. It was such a difference from The Sun-Times, which looked like it hadn’t been updated since the 1940s.
It wasn’t hard to figure out where Callum’s offices were. The very top of the building. The floor that towered over everything.
I marched onto the elevator, hit the button for the top floor, and waited. More people piled into the elevator with me, pushing me further and further back. Eventually, the door closed.
The elevator moved.
It seemed we were stopping on nearly every floor.
When we did, some people exited the elevator, but others got on. It stayed at the same relative level of crowdedness.
I was beginning to feel nervous. Even though I’d stayed up all of last night thinking about what I was going to say to Callum, now I could hardly remember any of it. I knew that I’d had a lot of righteous anger working for me. But now, I felt cowed by the size and splendor of his office building.
This was Callum Rutherford I was talking about. He had more money than God. He owned half of Aurora—the half that wasn’t owned by organized crime. Here I was, walking into his domain, trying to tell him that he had to clean up his act? Was I crazy?
My stomach turned over, and I began to fidget with the edge of my shirt—a plain blue shirt that buttoned up the front. I wore it over a pair of black slacks and some black Mary Janes. My hair was in its typical braid. (Oddly, stealing Callum from Airenne had not made her relinquish the shower in the morning.) I looked professional, but I didn’t look stunning.
Hell, compared to the girls that Callum had been making out with last night, I looked positively boring.
But that’s mostly in presentation, I reminded myself. I could look like that too if I dyed my hair and wore the right clothes and makeup.
Hell, I had looked like that. Was that what he wanted from me? Was I not enough for him because I was too plain? Too no-nonsense?
The elevator dinged up another floor. The doors opened.
People exited. People entered.
My heart thudded in my rib cage. What was I going to say to him? Why couldn’t I remember?
I closed my eyes. I’d tell him he had to choose. I’d tell him he had to be with me and only me or I wouldn’t be with him at all.
And I’d mean it.
Wouldn’t I? Oh hell, I wasn’t sure. What if he refused? Would I really be able to resist him when he came to me at night, clad in all that black spandex, his deep voice sexy in my ear, his adept hands working on the most sensitive parts of my body?
I took a deep breath.
Sure, I’d resist him.
Sure.
Oh, who was I kidding? I was screwed.
The elevator was stopped again. People were nudging their way inside, pressing buttons for their floors.
I had to tell him anyway, even if I couldn’t resist him. If I rolled over and let him treat me like dirt, then I’d lose respect for myself. I’d lose respect for him. Eventually, it would all blow up in my face. So I had to tell him.
If he refused to change, well, I’d deal with that then.
* * *
Finally, the elevator made it to the top of the building. By that time, I was alone in the elevator. Everyone else had gotten out on a lower floor.
The doors opened, and I stepped out onto snowy white carpet. There were stainless steel light fixtures on the walls, which stood out against the bright white walls. Ahead of me was a stark black desk with modern angles. The woman who sat behind it had her hair up in a beehive hairdo. She was wearing cat-eye glasses. Somehow, she managed to make her very 1950s ensemble look like the cutting edge of contemporary fashion. She was one of those women who makes things look fashionable that would simply look ridiculous on everyone else.
She raised her artfully plucked eyebrows at me. “Are you lost?” She had a British accent.
I hated her. “I’m not lost. I’m here to see Callum.”
“Mr. Rutherford doesn’t have anyone on his schedule for this morning.”
“Good,” I said. “Then he’s got time for me. If you’ll just point me in the direction of his office?”
“I’m sorry. He’s really quite busy. He can’t take just anyone who walks in off the street.” She gave me a once-over, and I could tell she didn’t approve of my clothes. Maybe she would have liked it if I was wearing a poodle skirt or something.
“I’m not just anyone,” I said. “He’ll want to see me. Trust me.”
She laughed. There was an icy undercurrent. “Why would he want to see you?”
I didn’t have to listen to this. I started walking past her desk. The door to Callum’s office had to be around here somewhere.
“Stop,” her voice rang out.
I ignored her.
“If you don’t stop this instant, I’m calling security!”
A door opened ahead of me. “Ellen, what are you yelling about?” Callum’s head popped out of the door. He saw me. His expression changed.
“I’ll have her removed, Mr. Rutherford,” said Ellen. “Don’t worry. I’m calling security right now.”
“No, it’s okay,” said Callum. “I’ll see her.” He opened the door wider, making room for me to go past him.
I shot a triumphant look over my shoulder at Ellen, who scowled. Then I stepped into Callum’s office.
It was white and stark, just like the rest of the floor had been. The carpet and walls were white. The blinds and the accents were black. The office was huge, taking up the entire floor. It was surrounded by windows, which looked down on the city of Aurora. There wasn’t much in the way of furniture, but what there was stood huge and massive, so large that it was impossible for the room to swallow it. A large black desk seemed to take up one entire side of the room. On it sat the largest computer monitor I’d ever seen. It was thin and flat, but so, so wide. I imagined it could easily double as a widescreen television set. There were two armchairs in front of the desk, both enormous and white. Across from the desk was a big fish tank, full of day-glo fish and coral. It was gorgeous. The whole room was overkill. It was too much, too extravagant, too large. Like Vigil himself.
But not like Callum, who somehow looked woefully small in his enormous office.
He stood just inside the door. He’d closed it behind him. He was looking at me with concern in his eyes—something like fear.
I folded my arms over my chest. I found that my courage was returning. I could tell him exactly what I thought if he was behaving this way.
“What are you doing here?”
“I need to talk to you. I told you that last night.”
“Well, you can’t talk to me here. You’ll have to wait until later. I was going to swing by your apartment last night, but I was patrolling late. Barclay took me on some kind of wild goose chase. It was like he knew I was following him. He kept traipsing all over the city, but he didn’t make any moves against any girls. He just kept me running practically until daybreak.” He sighed. “I’m tired, Cecily. I’m tired, and this isn’t the place to talk about Vigil business.”
I felt bad for him, running after Barclay. For a minute, anyway. Then I remembered him kissing those girls, and my sympathy vanished. I looked at him coldly. “Maybe Barclay killed a girl while you were at that charity function with your three dates.”
He looked confused for a minute. Then surprised. “That’s what you wanted to talk to me about?”
“You kissed three women on the news.”
“You’re jealous. You called me because you’re jealous.”
“I wouldn’t call it jealousy exactly. I’d call it righteous anger.”
He spread his hands. “But you know that I hire those women.”
“Even worse,” I said.
He stalked across the room and threw himself into his chair behind his desk. “Go back to work, Cecily. I don’t have time for this kind of crap.”
“Crap?” I said. “That’s how you see this?”
“Look, it’s what Callum does,” he said. “It’s part of his image. He dates a lot of women. But it doesn’t mean anything, not really. None of it does. Everything with Callum is just a show. It’s all pretend. That’s the world he lives in.”
He was talking about himself in third person again. But this time, he wasn’t in the Vigil costume, and it was twice as disturbing.
“The world you live in,” I said softly. “You’re Callum Rutherford.”
“Yes, I’m aware of that, thank you.” He turned his attention to his massive computer screen. “You need to go now.”
“I’m not going anywhere. We haven’t even talked.”
“There’s nothing to talk about.” He sounded bored and disinterested.
I marched across the room and sat down in one of the big, white armchairs. I sank into the giant-sized piece of furniture. “You said we were together. You said we were very together.”
He glanced at me. “What? Are we in high school? You want my class ring or something?”
“No,” I said. “I just want you not to kiss other women. Or anything else that you might have done with them last night.”
He sighed. “It’s not real.”
“It is real,” I said. “Your real lips were pressing against the real lips of three other girls. On television. While I was watching. Your very, very real lips, which you used to give me my first ever orgasm from oral sex not two nights ago. You don’t get to just spread those lips around. I can’t handle it.”
He sat back in his chair. He didn’t look at me. “It isn’t like that.”
“The hell it’s not.”
“You and I are together when I’m Vigil,” he said. “When I’m Callum—”
“You are Callum. You’re not a different person out of that costume. You don’t get to have girlfriends for each of your personas.”
He swallowed.
“Unless you’re really that fucked up. Unless you really can’t separate—”
“Stop it,” he said softly.
We were quiet.
He got out of his chair. He walked over to the window and opened the blinds. He peered down at the city below. “Maybe I am that fucked up, Cecily. Maybe I’m too fucked up. Maybe you should never have gotten involved with me.”
“Probably not,” I said.
He turned to me sharply.
“But it’s kind of too late now, isn’t it?” I said.
“What is it you want?”
“I want you to stop taking hired girls out in public. Or anywhere for that matter. Stop hiring them.”
He turned back to the window. “So, then who do I take with me?”
“What about me?” I said. “Are you ashamed to be seen with me?”
He shook his head. “Do you have any idea how much attention that’s going to bring to you? Callum hasn’t—” He took a deep breath. “I haven’t had one girlfriend in a very long time. They’ll want to know everything about you. It will be a circus. You’ll have no privacy, and it will make it harder for us to do our work taking down Barclay. Not to mention the fact that it’ll will further blur the line between Callum and Vigil.”
“Blur the line?” I said. “Blur it for who? For you? For me?”
“For the public,” he said. “You will be associated with both of us. They’ll figure out who I am.”
“They won’t,” I said.
“You don’t know that,” he said. He shook his head again. “No, this article you want to do for your friend is too much as it is. Any more than that and it will be too far.”
I shot up out of the chair. “Are you saying you expect me to be featured in a national magazine as your girlfriend while you blatantly date other women?”
“Please don’t make it sound worse than it is.”
“I’m not.” I glared at him. “I’m telling it like it is.”
He looked at the ceiling. “You know it’s a farce—”
“You were kissing them,” I said.
“But not because I liked them,” he said. “Not in any real way.”
“Jewel said that you sometimes sleep with the women you pay. Did you sleep with any of those girls last night?”
“No, I did not,” he said. “Do you really think that I would bother with women like that when I have you?”
“You’d bother to kiss them.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Cecily, it’s not the same.”
“You really won’t give them up?”
“It’s not like that,” he said. “But if you’re asking me to change my entire image, and to deal with the media scrutiny that goes along with that, then the answer is no. I can’t do that.”
I started for the door. “Fine, then, Callum. You and I are breaking up.”
“That would probably be easier,” he said. “A relationship between you and Callum is just messy. We should go back to the way it was before, just you and Vigil. That—”
“I don’t just mean that I’m breaking up with your persona, you asshole. I mean, all of it, it’s over. You and I have nothing more than a business relationship.”
“Cecily,” he said.
I yanked open the door to his office. “Goodbye, Callum.” I strode out into the waiting area.
Ellen was sitting straight up, her eyes wide.
Callum came after me. “Cecily, get back here.”
I went to the elevator and pushed the down button.
“We are not finished,” he said.
The elevator door opened. I got inside.
“Cecily—”
The door closed on him.
* * *
I leaned against the wall of the elevator, my heart pounding. What the hell had I just done?
I couldn’t break up with Vigil. He was the most exciting man I’d ever been with. He was the most skilled lover I’d ever had. I didn’t want to give him up. I didn’t want that at all.
Of course, maybe we didn’t even have a relationship. Maybe we only had really hot sex.
But no.
What was a relationship anyway? Basically, it was finding someone that you got along with, who shared interests with you, that you could also have hot sex with.
And Vigil and I were perfect as far as all that was concerned.
Admittedly, I didn’t really have any desire to be in a relationship with a billionaire playboy, but Callum seemed to come along with the package, so I had to deal with that.
Except I didn’t have to deal with it.
Because I’d just broken up with him.
Holy hell. I was a complete idiot.
So, he wanted to pay girls to make out with him. So what? Was I ever going to find another man who could make me have that many orgasms in a row?
I shook my head, scolding myself. “No, Cecily,” I whispered. “You shouldn’t think about it like that. Sex is not important. It’s only sex. Being unfaithful, that’s important. You were right to take a stand.”
So, if I was so right, why did I feel like ass about it?
My trip down the elevator was interrupted when it stopped and the doors opened.
At first, I half expected to see him outside, glaring at me.
But the elevator was ten floors down by now. It wasn’t Callum. It was some other worker who hopped on and hit a button.
And thus began the stop and start of the elevator, yet again.
Eventually, I made it back to the bottom floor. I left the building and trudged to my own office. Somehow, I was going to have to try to concentrate on work today, even though all I could think about was how I’d broken up with Vigil. With Callum. With both of them.
I logged onto one of the computers in the main area and checked my work email to see if anything had happened that I needed to know about. Not much had. There was a message from the layout guys saying that it would be easier for everyone if we went ahead and submitted our copy in Palatino and we justified the text. They were wasting too muc
h time cleaning up everyone’s articles.
Since I always did that, I deleted that message.
There was another message, this one about parking and how we were losing half of our parking lot because we could make more money selling the spots than we could selling the paper, and since the paper was in financial trouble, the staff was either going to have to take the bus, find other parking, or pay for the spaces.
Since I didn’t drive, I deleted that one too.
The next message was from Lauren. She wanted me to cover something around noon today. It was something to do with the police department and a bake sale or something. Basically, a PR piece. Something the police department was doing to try to salvage their image. I hated stuff like that because I felt like there was pressure to slant my piece favorably. But I’d do it. I wasn’t going to get anywhere rejecting assignments. No, I had to be sure to do what was asked of me to the very best of my ability. That was what would ensure my success.
“Cecily,” said a deep, angry voice.
I looked up. Callum was standing over me. He was a little out of breath and there were tiny beads of sweat on his upper lip. He must have run all the way here.
“Um, hi,” I squeaked. I got out of my chair.
“How do you like it when I invade your work?”
“Um…” I fidgeted. “What are you doing here?”
He looked around the office. “You want a public acknowledgment of our relationship, right? You want to be my official girlfriend, and you want everyone to know it?”
“I…” I guessed that was what I wanted. “I don’t want you to kiss other girls.”
“Fine,” he said. “I won’t.”
“Good,” I said.
“Good,” he said. He looked around the office. “Where’s the Lifestyles/Entertainment/Whatever editor?”
“Uh… you mean Jenny?” I pointed at her office. It was next to Lauren’s, and the door was open. “She’s over there, but I don’t see why that’s important—”
“Jenny!” yelled Callum.
“What are you doing?” I said, feeling confused.
“You want it public, right?” He glared at me.
“I—”
“Callum Rutherford?” said Jenny’s voice. She was coming out of her office, a big smile on her face. “What a surprise.”
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