Keeping the Pieces

by Brenda Lowder

  Honey drifted farther into the room. “So when exactly did all of this happen?” There was a hitch in her voice. She cared. Just not enough to refuse Cameron’s proposal, apparently.

  Derek squeezed Emma’s hand, but looked at Honey when he said, “Does it matter?”

  Cam stepped forward and put his arms around Honey, hugging her to him. “It doesn’t matter at all,” he answered with a winning smile. “We’re happy to see our two friends happy with each other. And so soon.” He bent and kissed Honey over her shoulder. Derek felt Emma stiffen beside him.

  Honey nodded when Cam released her. She seemed to be agreeing to the bizarre turn of events. “We’ll leave you two alone.” She smiled and waved, the wistful look in her eyes at odds with the sweet upcurve of her lips. Cam let her exit the room in front of him. The door banged shut behind them.

  Emma sat up. “So we’re agreed then?” Her tone was terse. All trace of the sexy little tiger was gone. Business baby was back.

  “Hell, yeah,” he said. “Work together. Make them jealous. Split them up.”

  Emma smiled. She was dazzling.

  “Exactly. Split them up and keep the pieces for ourselves.” She held her hand out for him to shake. He shook it, but then pulled her in for a bear hug.

  “You’re a genius.”

  “I know.” She grinned at him. “You’re not too bad yourself.”

  “I’m really quite good.” He wiggled his eyebrows suggestively.

  Emma laughed. “Lucky for Honey.”

  “She will be. And Cameron’s a fortunate man.” He smiled down at her.

  She took a deep breath, her eyes blazing with excitement. “This is going to work.”

  “Too true. It’s in the bag.”

  Chapter Five

  When Emma got to the café, Derek was nowhere in sight. Not that she’d expected him to be. She was compulsively early and even more so when she had a pressing project on her mind. Compulsively early except for oversleeping and getting to Cam’s thirtieth birthday party late. And look how well that turned out. Ugh.

  She asked to be seated outdoors. They were meeting early to beat the worst of the lunch rush. The rain of the past few days had cleared the heavy air, making the atmosphere less muggy than Atlanta’s usual. Late September was typically just an extension of summer, but it was cool enough today to warrant the light sweater and boots she was wearing with her normal work attire of dark dress pants and a silk blouse.

  Emma unpacked her briefcase and set up her color-coded pens parallel to the pad of graph paper and legal tablet she’d brought. She ordered a caramel macchiato from the waiter and worked on her notes until Derek arrived.

  “Sorry I’m late,” he said as he approached their table. “I had a client run overtime.”

  Emma looked up from her preliminary lists. As a nod to the pleasantly cool weather, he was wearing a leather jacket over his black T-shirt and jeans. She decided not to notice how good he looked in the snug-fitting denim.

  “Oh? What is it that you do?”

  “I’m a personal trainer.” Derek slung his gym bag into the empty chair and took the seat across from her. “I’m Honey’s trainer, actually. That’s how we met.” He motioned the waiter over and ordered a bacon double cheeseburger, fries, and a Coke.

  She tapped her pen on the table. “You’re a personal trainer, and that’s what you’re going to eat?”

  “Yup. Don’t tell my clients.” He winked.

  “Does Honey know?”

  His face clouded over. “She knows.”

  “So, um, how long have you known Honey?”

  Derek looked at his watch. Was he figuring out the hours? Or thinking she was wasting his time? “Guess it’s been two years now.” He nodded at her. “You and Cam?”

  “Almost twelve years.”

  “Yikes.” He grimaced.

  Emma nodded. “Exactly.”

  Derek played with his napkin. “You don’t date anyone while you’re waiting around for Cam?”

  “Of course I do. I’m not a nun. I just, well…” She put her pen down and stroked the side of her water glass, feeling the condensation collect against her fingertips. “He’s always been my number one wish. The one I keep coming back to.” She sipped her water, giving herself a moment to unspool her tangled emotions so she could say what she really meant.

  “Cam is the thing that should have happened in my life. The person that, if I could find a way to be with, would make my life better. Complete. The way it should be.” She looked up. “You know what I mean?” She saw a shadow flicker across his eyes.

  “Yeah, I know what you mean.” His voice was gruff.

  Derek’s lunch arrived. The delicious smell of a bacon cheeseburger and fries coaxed a grumble from Emma’s stomach. She changed her mind about eating and ordered a chicken Caesar salad. And fries.

  “You’re a bad influence.”

  Derek grinned. “And so quickly too. Usually it takes months for me to corrupt someone. You must be open to temptation.”

  Emma thought back to their interlude on the couch at Cam’s party almost a week ago. They’d put on a convincing show, which had gotten under Cam’s skin. He’d been downright weird at work this week. She’d made Cam jealous, and she’d had a lot of fun doing it. She should let Derek corrupt her more. She thought about that for a second, a smile on her lips, then pushed the image from her mind and cleared her throat. It was time to get to work. She opened her folder and presented her first graph, turning it so Derek could see.

  “Let me show you what I’ve been working on. I think I have a good start on it.”

  Derek swallowed his bite of hamburger. “What in God’s name is that?”

  Emma looked at the color-coded activity lines. Her presentations had always been highly praised. She was an ace at visual stats.

  “It’s research. For the plan.” There was no reason for her to lower her voice when discussing the plan, yet she did. No one in the café was paying attention or would even care if she uttered the word “plan,” but just knowing that she had one, that it was subversive, and that she was desperate to achieve her goal despite who else might get hurt, made her feel like a villain who had secrets worth keeping. Thus the whispered “plan.”

  “You think we need charts and graphs and things like that?” He wiped his greasy fingers on the white linen napkin.

  “I think it will help if we’re organized and coordinated in our approach, don’t you?”

  He shrugged. “Why not? Show me what you’ve got.” He reached for the graph but she held on to it.

  “If you don’t want to see it, don’t bother.”

  “Who said I don’t want to see it? I showed up, didn’t I? Of course I want to see it. I want to see what takes eight different colors and a line graph to plot.” He grabbed the paper and the corners of his mouth quirked.

  Emma snatched her chart back. “If you’re going to be ungrateful about it.”

  “Ungrateful? So I’m supposed to be grateful?” He wadded up his grease-stained napkin.

  She stuck out her chin. “You were late, and you can see I’ve made a lot of progress here without you.”

  “Yes, I can see you’ve made a lot of progress. You and Cameron are riding off into the sunset. Tell me, when is the happy date?” He folded his arms and relaxed against the seat back with a wry expression.

  “Oh, never mind. You are so frustrating.” She put her chart into her leather portfolio and slammed it on the table, making her pens jump. She hurried to straighten them.

  Derek exhaled. “And you’re angry at me for being late.” He leaned forward and shoved a few fries in his mouth, chewed, and swallowed. “I’m sorry.”

  Slightly mollified, Emma watched as the waiter set her salad down in front of her. She took a few bites and immediately felt better. Low blood sugar could get her every time.

  She continued to eat her salad, feeling better with every bite, and spoke between mouthfuls. “Okay, never mind about the charts.”<
br />
  “Chart-zz?” He raised an eyebrow at her as he sank another fry into the ketchup pool. “There’s more than one?”

  “If I’ve done my job, there will be several.” She pushed her hair out of her eyes and took the chart from her folder. “But that’s not the point. I’ll maintain the charts and keep tabs on the quantifiable progress we’ll be making. Right now, let’s brainstorm our attack. I have several ideas for striking on multiple fronts.”

  “Of course you do.” Derek rolled his eyes, but he smiled good-naturedly.

  Emma continued as if he hadn’t spoken. “First things first. It’s all about access. Geography. Geography is key. We can’t get to them if we can’t physically get to them. So we have to evaluate our access and expand it where possible. Now, you know I work with Cam. We spend all day together on the same team at Earth Drinks. We often work late nights together on marketing accounts. We depend on each other.”

  “Already the work-wife, huh?” He nodded. “Looking to make it official outside the office.”

  Emma smiled and leaned her chin on her hand. Wife. Cam’s wife. Her mind automatically replayed snippets from her favorite Cam-and-Emma-together-at-home fantasies. Cam, shirtless and mowing the lawn. She, wearing nothing but a ruffled white apron as she baked him an apple pie. Getting him horizontal on the kitchen table the minute he came in from outside, sweaty and hungry…for her. “Exactly.”

  “Now, how does the expanding geography work?” Derek’s deep voice broke through her daydream.

  She grabbed a pen. “How often do you see Honey?”

  “We usually train three times a week, but before Cam’s party she’d talked about stepping it up to five.”

  Emma made a note on her legal pad. “That’s perfect. More days. More access. More opportunities for us. This is exactly what I’m talking about. And we should keep our eyes open for other activities to introduce our presence into.” She made circles in the air with her pen. “To encourage them thinking about us.”

  “Like what?”

  She bit on the end of her pen, thinking. “Like…Cam and I have an office party coming up. It’s a retirement party for the boss’s secretary. Everyone’s going to be there. Cam is sure to bring Honey. So I should bring you. See what I mean? Increased access. You’ll be there, looking all hot and swarthy in a suit, and Honey will get a chance to see you outside of the normal setting she sees you in every day.”

  “‘Swarthy?’ Really?” He cocked an eyebrow at her. “Everything else sounds good.”

  “Another way to increase access is to learn their routines and orchestrate more pseudo-accidental run-ins.”

  Derek paused with his burger halfway to his mouth. “You mean I should stalk her?”

  Emma rolled her eyes. “No, no. Don’t be ridiculous. I’ll stalk her.”

  “What?” A piece of ketchup-soaked bacon fell off his burger and landed on the plate.

  She scooted forward in her seat. “It’s the beauty of having a partnership. Neither of us has to stoop to spying on the object of our affection—the other person is going to do it for us.”

  Derek shook his head and chomped down on his burger.

  “Hear me out,” she continued. “I would naturally go to more of the places that Honey goes, like the hairdresser or the nail salon, than you would. I can observe and report to you. And when things are opportune, I can discreetly text you to show up and be there. Voilà! Accidental run-in.”

  He swallowed and wiped his mouth with a napkin. “That’s not a bad idea.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Although I’m not sure your pretty boy would go to the kind of places I go. And I don’t think I can convincingly sit next to him while he has his weekly appointment getting all his body hair waxed.”

  She put her pink glitter pen down. “Stop picking on him, okay? I get it. You’re a manly man, blah blah blah. And you don’t like Cam. For the sake of our working partnership, just lay off, okay?”

  Derek sat back and stretched his legs out under the table. She had to move her feet so they wouldn’t touch his. “Yes, ma’am.”

  His bit of southern drawl did squirmy things to her belly. She sighed and continued. “Okay, so step one is Geography. Step two is Loyalty.”

  “Loyalty?” He lifted an eyebrow. “Aren’t we looking for a way around that?”

  She pushed her Caesar salad aside and leaned her elbows on the table despite her very proper mother’s training. #mannersareforever “Exactly. Listen. What happens when you know you’re being attacked? You put up your defenses, right? The most successful attacks are the ones that no one sees coming.”

  “So we’re going to sneak attack them?”

  “Yes.”

  “Break into their apartments and make love to them in the middle of the night?” Derek folded his arms and looked at her like she needed to check into a mental ward.

  She felt herself blush. “No. When I’m talking about loyalty, I’m talking about us. Our loyalty.”

  He cocked an eyebrow at her again and stole one of her fries. He’d finished all of his. “Not sure I follow.”

  “We have to seem like we’re not a threat. To them. To their relationship. So their defenses will go down. We have to be off the market, so to speak.”

  “Off the market? How do we do that?”

  “By finishing what we started. You know how we were making them jealous at the party? It was totally working. It hurt both their little egos to see us canoodling when they’ve been priding themselves for years on the fact that we’re completely in love with them.”

  “True. They were pissed.” He pointed at her with another of her French fries.

  “Exactly. So I propose that we are now dating. An actual couple. A completely smitten couple who doesn’t have the time or inclination to worship them as they’re used to being worshipped.”

  “That’ll work.” Derek rested his elbow on the arm of his chair. “Honey does like being admired. If she doesn’t get enough attention, she pouts.”

  “Right! Exactly.” Emma waved her pen at him. “We’ll get them to miss our attention. Be jealous that we’re focused on each other. And suddenly the hunters will be the hunted. They’ll be trying to break us up. They’ll want us back and will do anything to get us.”

  “Unless they’re really in love with each other.”

  There was a pause as she gazed up into Derek’s eyes. They both burst out laughing.

  “Right. Just checking.” His grin stretched wide. “This is brilliant.”

  She glowed. “Thank you.”

  He raised his index finger. “Suggestion.”

  Emma felt a pang. He said “suggestion” like he had one. Like she’d overlooked something. And she hadn’t. She was sure of it. She was very prepared. She couldn’t think of anything she hadn’t already accounted for. But this was, after all, supposed to be a partnership. She took a deep breath. “Sure. Suggest away.”

  “We have to make ourselves less available. It can’t just be that we’re spending more time with each other, etc. We have to actually be there for them less when they expect us to be. They have to think they can’t command our love. They have to experience the absence of it.”

  She nodded. “Good point. That must be why you’re so good at being the bad boy. Always leave them wanting more, right?”

  He raised his eyebrow at her and smiled a slow, wicked grin. “Something like that.”

  She ignored all the natural hotness the bad boy was generating and flipped open one of her charts to continue laying out the plan.

  “So since we’ll have each other, we will avoid their suspicions, making a window for each of us with the object of our affection. At this point, we will also need to continue the loyalty program by promoting our better halves.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Being each other’s spokesperson. Getting endorsements. You know how in marketing it always matters more what other people—famous or important people—are saying about a product? Li
ke Pepsi executives can say Diet Pepsi is wonderful, and we may or may not believe it, but if Sofia Vergara is advertising it, we see her drinking it, enjoying it, and looking drop-dead gorgeous, then we want to run out and buy it, right?”

  “She’s not my type.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “I’m starting to. And you’re devious.”

  “Thank you. So when we sense that their defenses are down, we’ll cross-promote each other. I’ll find ways to drop hints to Honey how great you are, and you’ll find ways to tell Cam how great I am.”

  “Well, how do I know what Cam thinks is great in a girl?” He leaned forward, taking up more of the table.

  “That will be part of increased access. You’ll have to buddy up to Cam, and I’ll have to buddy up to Honey.”

  “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.”

  “Exactly. There’s a reason Iago was there to plant the idea of adultery in Othello’s head.”

  “Who?”

  “Never mind. We’ll just get close to them—as distasteful as that may seem to us,” she added for his benefit, rolling her eyes, “and thus we will get closer to our goals.”

  “I can live with that.”

  “Great. Because then there’s step three.” She waved a pen in the air.

  Derek’s eyebrows shot up. “What’s step three?”

  “Divide and conquer.”

  He stole her last fry. “The old tried and true.”

  “Yes. We’ll find things that will drive a wedge in their relationship, and then we’ll exploit that wedge by inserting ourselves into it and chiseling them apart.”

  “Yes, let’s ‘insert’ ourselves all over the place and then get down to the chiseling.”

  Emma ignored the innuendo and took another bite of her salad. She wished she had more fries.

  “What will we use to put wedges between them?”

  Emma wiped her mouth on her napkin. “I don’t have that fully figured out yet. But like I mentioned, Othello might help. Hints of infidelity. Things like that.”

  “Sounds perfect.”