Love Undefeated (Unexpected #5)

by Anne Leigh

  Looking into the small mirror, I inspected my neck for any evidence of Xavier’s trademarks, though he never left them in visible areas.

  “Gullible. So, so gullible you are,” Nelson said in a Yoda-like voice accompanied by a tsking sound. I threw him a murderous glance. “Easy there, sistah. I’m just trying to calm you down.”

  Raising my brows, I countered, “Calm me down? In what universe is letting a woman know right before she has a very important meeting that she has a huge hickey on her neck an acceptable way to calm her down?” My words coming at warp speed because of all the adrenaline that had been infused into my body before I even entered this room. “You need to go change your Yogi if that’s what he teaches about ways of calming another person.”

  “Phew, my Yogi has a great ass. I’ll never leave him.” His right hand lifted as he brought the coffee mug to his mouth. “I was just tweaking your twerk, Nalee. You looked so uptight coming in that you needed a daily dose of,” he paused, tapping his left hand on the table, “Nelson’s Xanax.”

  I couldn’t help but smile at him. He was such a character. Without him, the office would be all shades of gray. Nelson brought all the colors of the rainbow with him. Literally. He dressed as if he robbed the color wheel of all the bright hues. A Columbia cum laude, he was hired six months after me, I oriented him, and the second he coined the phrase “no calorie brownies” he became my friend.

  Today he was shades of purple and gold – a purple suit with splashes of black lines and a gold tie. “You look like the president of Kobe Bryant’s fan club.”

  “I’m a loyal Lakerette,” he proclaimed while adjusting an invisible wrinkle in his glaringly bright golden tie, which for some odd reason his fashion choices always worked. On him anyways.

  “You were a loyal Golden State fan last week,” I pointed out. Our banter sustained me through dragging work hours. We were assigned together on most projects because we belonged in the same team. He was a great work partner and I’m sure that he would be up for a promotion very soon. “Why the sudden change of heart? You were bleeding gold and blue just a few days ago and now your heart is all purpled out. What gives?”

  “Well well, my date last night was muy perfecto.” His eyes waggled and he closed his thumb and index finger together to form an “O” as he continued while gesturing with his hands all over his office attire. “And he’s a big Lakers fan so ta-da!”

  I couldn’t help but laugh. “Nelson, you switch teams at the same rate you change your ties.”

  “That’s how flexible I am.” Shaking his shoulders to show how flexible he can be in his tight suit, Nelson was not the one to care about other people’s opinions about him. He was flamboyant, unapologetic, and had a marshmallow heart. Turning a serious face to me, he asked, “How’re you doing, Nalee?”

  Though I kept everything that happened to me a secret, it didn’t escape his attention that something serious had occurred to me because I was on medical leave for a month and a half.

  The morning I came back to the office, Nelson didn’t ask me what happened, he just hugged me.

  It wasn’t one of those hugs that lasted a few seconds; the one he gave me was a tight teddy bear hug that lasted for a few minutes. I had been so close to tears until he’d spoken up, “Don’t ever ruin your mascara for a man, sweetheart.”

  He then lifted my chin up and added, “You know when they say, ‘Maybe she’s born with it, maybe it’s some cheap-ass mascara?’” I’d nodded and he finished with, “You, my dear, you were born with it. The essenz.”

  By that time, I knew he wasn’t talking about mascaras. With Nelson, beauty products were conversation starters. “Your eyes hold the power in you. I see you now and I see sadness. You know what else I see, Nalee?”

  I couldn’t form any words because I was still locked in the tight embrace.

  “I see strength and I know that you will continue to rock those fabulous peep toe Kate Spade’s you’re wearing in the middle of winter and you will be fine.”

  He then raised his hands to my face, fixed my windswept hair, and left me in the room. I held on to his words, repeating the mantra that I would be fine because what else was I going to hang on to when the fight within me had left me. My body had been through so much and my heart had taken twice the beating.

  Before that day, he was a regular co-worker who I had hung out with for a couple of drinks here and there. After that, he became a quasi-best friend. Quasi because he told me he didn’t befriend people, he merely uses their company for amusement, which I found so hard to believe since he was such a nice person. Nelson was the breath of fresh air in my darkened world and his words helped me go through the motions of life every day until one day, I was able to step into my heels and feel like myself again.

  “Ha-lu! Earth to Nalee,” Nelson’s voice cut off my trek to the past, his hand was waving in front of me. “Where did you go? Is this one of your lost-in-space moments again?”

  I laughed. “I don’t have those moments.”

  “Yes you do.”

  “Since when?” I intoned, though if I was being honest with myself, there were many times these past few months that I’d felt lost…in space and time. My emotions were in a constant state of flux. One day I’m fine, happy, the next I’m feeling out-of-sorts.

  Before I could respond to Nelson, the glass door to my right opened, and Devon in a black suit and light blue tie carrying a laptop case on his right hand entered the room, followed by Justin in a similar outfit.

  “Sorry we’re late,” Devon started, opening his carrying case and pulling out his laptop. “We had some last minute docs that needed to be filed this morning.”

  “We had them ready to go last night,” Justin said, his expression in a smirk. “But Mr. Perfect here had to make some last minute changes because a word didn’t suit him.”

  I sneaked a glance at Devon who by now was looking quizzically at Justin. “Nothing wrong with changing things while you still have the chance to do so.”

  “The word was ‘if’, Devon,” Justin replied, a slow smile forming on his face as he continued. “And ‘whenever’ was the word being replaced so not a huge difference there, buddy.”

  “There’s a difference,” Devon countered while tapping on his laptop. “When you say if, it’s a conditional statement such as, ‘If the lady agrees to have lunch with me today, it will make my day.’” His eyes bore down on me, making me feel flushed all of a sudden. “And ‘Whenever the lady has lunch with me, it always makes my day.’ It starts with an ‘if’ and the ‘whenever’ is achieved later on. Big difference.”

  Nelson’s pretend coughing was the plausible excuse for me to not respond to Devon’s obvious come-on.

  “Let’s get this show started,” Justin said, his eyes straying between Devon and I. I wasn’t uncomfortable with Devon’s advances. It was flattering really. Devon was an attractive guy. And he seemed like a nice guy. It would have been great if I’d known him at a time when I wasn’t attracted to another man. A man whose eyes can see through the bottom of my soul. A man who…

  A knock on the door impeded my thoughts on Xavier.

  “Nalee, there’s a call on line five for you,” Carly announced while peeking in our yet-to-start meeting.

  “Can you hold it?” I requested, then remembered that I’d asked her to hold off all calls except for emergencies. “Who’s calling?”

  “Mr. Lockheed. Xavier. He said he’s been trying to ascertain if you got here safe since he’s been calling your cell, but you haven’t been picking up.” My ears started to heat up at the flood of information being delivered by Carly to the spectators inside the room who were trying so hard not to look like they were eavesdropping. Justin and Nelson were surreptitiously scanning the data sheets in front of them. Devon, on the other hand, stopped what he was doing and was now watching Carly and I with rapt attention.

  “Can you let him know that I’m in the middle of the meeting and I’ll call him as soon as I get ou
t?” The files I’d been trying to upload had just shown on the 87-inch smartboard, and as my luck would have it, it might start glitching out if I reloaded it again.

  “Xavier as in Xavier Lockheed?” Devon said, in a half-inquiring, half-unbelieving tone.

  Carly, who just noticed the other three occupants in the room, turned her bright purple head of hair to the interrogator. “Oh I’m sorry, I didn’t know the clients had arrived. Celeste told me that they were running late so I thought…” Celeste was the receptionist in the lobby and was the go-to gal when you needed someone to tell you who showed up at what time and where at.

  “It’s okay, Carly,” I waved a hand. “Can you please tell him I’ll call him asap? After this.” Xavier could be very persistent when it came to me so the faster we could get this meeting rolling, the sooner I could call him back.

  In an uncharacteristic show of assent, Carly nodded her head and closed the door behind her. More often than not, Carly did what Carly wanted to do. She was outstanding in her secretarial duties, but had a penchant for forgetting specific instructions; there have been quite a few times when she’d barged into meetings after being asked not to. Often she was forgiven because she was as organized as they come and was a flexible employee, both of which were assets in our firm.

  “Xavier’s a Tau brother,” Devon said, his gaze staying with me as I slowly processed his words. “I…ah, haven’t seen him in a while.” Adjusting his tie as if he was getting robbed of air, he opened his mouth and a second later closed it.

  From my periphery, Nelson and Justin exchanged intrigued looks, clearly enjoying the drama unfolding in front of them. Good for them, but I wasn’t going to give them the satisfaction of a protracted opera. I’ve had enough drama to fill a thousand water cups.

  Speaking of water cups… “Has your company re-evaluated how the waste is going to be managed during the drilling?” I’d made recommendations in that area. Any drilling process could be of an Exxon Valdez disaster-in-the-making. Maybe not in the scale but in terms of the magnitude of the affected species. Over twenty years since the disastrous spill occurred, oil pockets could still be detected in nearby beaches, the wildlife still suffered, and the blame game still overflowed.

  Justin responded nonchalantly, “We’ve put your recommendations in the plan. We’ve basically plagiarized everything you’ve written because you’re the expert in this.”

  Nelson seconded, “That she is.”

  On the screen, I enlarged the image on where the proposed project was going to be, knowing that Justin might be rethinking what he’d said a few minutes ago. The preservation of special habitats was my job as well as my passion. Endangered species were exposed to danger because we don’t value their contribution to the ecosystem; because we put our needs first before theirs.

  “There’s an area here,” I pointed the laser to the small section of the Pacific Ocean waters, “that should be closed off to production.” I left off the “I think” part of my statement. This was not something I wanted compromise on.

  Justin slightly raised an eyebrow. Nelson resisted uttering a word. If Briles and Sons wanted a sign-off on this, they would have to do so without touching that section.

  Devon spoke, “It’s two miles west to our proposal. I calculated our potential revenue for that site to be about 175.8 mil per year.”

  So he was a devil in disguise. A person could not work for an oil company and not be concerned about profits. How could I think he was an attractive guy? Good looks didn’t mean good principles.

  “I suggest that you reconsider your proposal.” I stood firm. Who would fight for the voiceless sea creatures if I didn’t?

  “What Ms. Sands is saying is that maybe you should think of expanding the area to the other side,” Nelson was standing up for me; he was an ally through and through.

  These were the final meetings before the proposal went public. Briles and Sons was itching to have our approval at the earliest possible date, like yesterday.

  I was facing him so I saw the exact moment when Devon’s eyes turned the darkest shade of blue as he glanced at me, then turned his attention to the screen.

  “In my estimation, our revenues would be double the starting figures if the oil demand increased which always does,” he said in a thoughtful voice, and as if he’d forgotten something, he swiveled his neck to the right, and asked, “Justin, can you read the last paragraph of our revised proposal?”

  Justin pushed a couple of buttons in his computer and replied, “All of it?”

  “No, just the last two sentences under pollution and hazardous waste.”

  “It says, ‘Contractor shall observe and comply with all laws, rules and regulations now or hereafter in effect whether federal, state, or local, governing pollution and the generation and transportation of hazardouse waste.’”

  “In accordance with the local laws, we’d be making millions on the west side, Nalee. However, I read and re-read your proposed amendments, money is not the all and be all.”

  “Has your boss ever heard you say this?” Justin said, his expression a mix of both amused and bewildered.

  Nelson laughed, and I beamed.

  I wasn’t wrong about Devon, his principles were intact, as cool as the varying shades of blue in his eyes.

  “You pointed out the marshlands that will be affected because of tidal influence, how the noxious invasion in the air and water if we drilled the oil there would invade the propagation of rhizomes, which honestly I have no clue what they’re about. I took all that into consideration and since my boss trusts my judgment, instead of a well in that area, we will use that as a manning station. There will be no drilling, Nalee. Not on my post.”

  I could manage an “Oh” and squeaked out a, “Thank you.”

  The rest of the meeting went by with a lot of yes’s, mostly from me. It was clear to me that Devon was proficient with numbers and what the consequences were when the numbers we were talking about couldn’t fit in a basic calculator. He checked the risks and balanced the scales. Justin gave his input every now and then, but you could see the respect he had for his colleague’s opinions.

  At the end of the meeting, just as my stomach growled, we stood up and shook hands.

  “It was nice working with you two,” Nelson stated as the four of us walked towards the lobby.

  Justin and Devon conveyed their agreement with nods. Nelson asked Justin a question to which Justin moved to his side and checked something on his phone.

  Devon and I kept walking to the elevators.

  “So you and Xavier?” he asked with a straight face, his hands clutching the messenger bag on his right shoulder.

  “You and Xavier?” I asked, a coward’s way of not answering his question.

  “We’re frat brothers.”

  “Small world.”

  “Wish it was a bigger,” he uttered, glancing my way for a brief moment then eyeballing Nelson and Justin who seemed to be discussing significant sales at Bloomingdales. From what I could hear, Justin was asking for advice on what to give his girlfriend who was a Golden State fan.

  “Thank you for making the changes,” I said, noticing the way the two female visitors in the lobby were eyeing Devon. Couldn’t blame them, he offered a better view than the bare, off-white walls of our building.

  “No need to thank me. You were right.” He smiled and the show of his pearly whites complemented by the small scar on the right side of his lip was devastating. “But if you really wanna thank me…”

  Whatever his request would be, I would give it to him. He just handed me my first big project.

  “You could go out to lunch with me. I mean, us. Justin and I.” A rambling Devon was kind of cute.

  He asked so I allowed myself to say, “Okay.”

  “He’s my frat brother, Nalee,” he said, almost to himself.

  “He’s…” I paused, then reconciled with the fact that despite Devon’s enigmatic good looks, supplementary great brains and personality,
Xavier was, “…very important to me.”

  I had an ego, but I wasn’t an egotistical maniac.

  I know I looked good, and that is something I thanked my parents for. Their gene pool created one hell of an attractive son.

  I worked hard to maintain my body because I could have the most amazing eyes and softest hair in the world, but it would mean shit if I was covered in flab. It’s my body and I could do whatever the hell I wanted with it. I could shoot it up with all sorts of drugs and jack it up on sugars and it would be okay because I chose to do that.

  However, I chose to be here, running around Balboa Park, trying to cover the entire field, with one goal in mind: to score.

  Off the field, I do my best because failure is not an outfit I liked to wear. My friends called me easy-going and I know that compared to a lot of other people, I’d had an easy life. But it doesn’t mean I don’t care. My laidback attitude doesn’t mean I’m apathetic.

  “What the hell?” I yelled out, feeling the slashing of the stick by my right knee.

  Kojak, one of our defensemen, pushed the yellow and green clad player who was most likely the culprit of slashing me below my stick.

  The referee blew his whistle and got between the two players, who would not be the only two fighting since tension was now spreading among the other guys on both teams.

  The searing pain on the front of my knee distracted me from joining Kojak in defending myself against the asshole who thought it was okay to play with mean tricks with the crosse.

  Fuckin’ amateur.

  The referee handed out a three-minute suspension to the opposing team and I was sent to the sidelines.

  “Sucks, dude!” My teammate, Joaquin, a speedy runner who was also our best shooter, commented with a swinging of his head from side to side. “What the fuck was Regata thinking?”