Twist Tied

by Guimond, Heather

  While I was lost in my memories of her beauty, I heard her loudly clear her throat on the other end of the line.

  “Wyatt?” she prompted, reminding me she’d asked a question.

  “Oh, sorry. I got distracted by something on my TV. Give me a second to turn it off,” I replied, then held the phone to my chest. The TV wasn’t even on, but I waited a few beats to make it seem like I was occupying myself with the task.

  “I’m back. Sorry about that.”

  “Good. So where were we?” she asked, sounding a tiny bit put off.

  “As far as your work as my personal assistant, I imagine it’s pretty much what you already do for Blackstone. Maintain my calendar, schedule me for events, both public and online, handle my advertising, make sure there’s always something going on in my fan group, you know stuff like that.”

  I could hear her tapping away at keys on her end, I assumed taking notes on everything I said. My mind began to wander again. It really was too bad we hadn’t met another way. She was beautiful, and her ability to be playful at the party combined with her brisk, businesslike attitude while we discussed her job duties really piqued my interest. She wasn’t a good-time girl. I could already tell by the sound of her rapid typing, once she got down to business, she was determined to excel. It was as though our fun night had never happened. Though I felt a phantom pang of disappointment, I started to feel more confident our arrangement would be a good one. My little buddy didn’t have to be involved at all. He was the hoarse voice of objection in the back of my head, but I promised him some playtime with someone else soon. Just as soon as I could find someone.

  “Okay. I also do some alpha reading for Gage and Stacy. Do you want me to do that for you? I’m pretty good with shaking things up when they hit a wall. Sometimes new ideas break free from just one discussion,” she offered as her keystrokes stopped.

  “That’d be awesome. I happen to be at that point right now. I’m three chapters into a new book, and I’m just not feeling the chemistry between the characters. I know the story is there, I know it’s a good idea, but I just can’t seem to get a feel for the female. I’m not sure what it is.”

  “Then that’s the first major thing we’ll tackle once you’re home and ready to work. In the meantime, I’ll need you to give me access to your calendar and all your author files. I’ll check over your last assistant’s system and see if there’s any way I can streamline things for the both of us. Now, as for travel, do you have anything else coming up?”

  “I’ll have to check everything out and get you what you need,” I replied, wondering how the hell I’d do that since I was largely clueless about anything but how to use my Word program. “Susan always handled everything. She’d call me with an update every morning to let me know what I needed to do or where I needed to be. I never even thought to manage my time on my own.”

  “Then let me reprioritize. That will be the first thing we do. I’ll keep your calendar, but I will not babysit you. I’ll give you weekly reminders, but your day-to-day is going to be your job. I can’t take care of more than one person at a time if I have to follow you around making sure you’re doing what you’re supposed to be doing every minute of the day,” she said pointedly.

  “Just who’s the boss here?” I asked with a chuckle. Of course, I was only kidding. Everyone knew the assistant had all the power.

  “Me and don’t you forget it,” she said, her voice sharp and decisive. I felt my insides withering under its intensity. I had no doubt this woman was boss, no matter what she was doing. Fuck, that was kind of hot too.

  “Okay, so you’ll travel with me when you can,” I said, trying to steer my brain away from any and all things hot—or even remotely warm, but, of course, travel reminded me of things like hotel rooms, and I’d always been of the belief if I was staying in a hotel anywhere, sex was mandatory. Maybe we shouldn’t travel together.

  “Yes. I’ll expect you to cover my expenses while we’re away, and of course, I’d have my own room.”

  “Of course,” I replied coolly.

  “It all sounds pretty standard to me,” she said finally, then took a large breath. “If anything else comes up, we’ll figure it out as we go along.”

  While part of me was still shaky about my ability to work closely with her without fucking things up, her professionalism gave me at least some security she would keep me in line. It only took a few minutes in her presence to realize Clarisse was no-nonsense. I thanked my lucky stars she was all business.

  “Before we put the final seal on this deal, there’s something I have to ask you. It’s uncomfortable, but I need the full story so I know how to handle anything that might come up in the future,” Clarisse said in her forthright way.

  Uh oh. Here it comes…

  “Sure, go ahead. I’m an open book for you,” I replied, trying not to feel defensive. I didn’t want her to think I was the douchebag I’d been before.

  “Last year there was some under the radar buzz about you leading on a few of your fans. Is that true?”

  I fidgeted with a pen on my coffee table as I tried to figure out the best way to explain everything to her. I took a deep breath, deciding to just dive right in.

  “Yes, it’s true. Well, I didn’t intend to lead them on. I thought we were all just having a good time. Some harmless fun.”

  “From what I heard, it went a little further than that.”

  “There’s not much to say,” I said, shrugging one shoulder though she couldn’t see it. “I inadvertently led one woman on by engaging in a text/phone relationship with her. I’d thought it was just a little-shared fantasy, but to her, it was much more than that. I flirted with another woman who surprised me at a signing. We ended up in bed, which had some, um, unfortunate consequences. Again, I misread the situation, and it meant more to her than I realized. A war broke out in my group, and I had to go underground.”

  “You’re pretty nonchalant about it. Aren’t you sorry?”

  “Don’t mistake my embarrassment at having to admit it for a lack of regret. I wish I could turn back time and make very different choices, but I can’t. I tried apologizing to both women, but they wouldn’t listen. They have me blocked on all social media now.”

  “I’ll keep my personal opinion about your behavior to myself, saying only if I’d been your assistant at the time, I’d have dropped you like a hot rock. If Susan hadn’t done such a good job keeping this from becoming a major scandal, we wouldn’t be having this conversation now. The only way I’ll move forward with you though is if you swear to me that you’ve learned from your mistakes.”

  “Scout’s honor,” I replied, even holding up three fingers to the empty room in front of me. “I never want to be that guy again.”

  “We need to be prepared. Your reemergence onto the scene might incite more drama. If that happens, I’ll handle it. You keep your head down and keep writing,” she said firmly.

  “You don’t have to tell me twice,” I said, nodding in agreement and trying to stifle the surge in the constant self-loathing I’d felt since everything exploded.

  I stewed the whole day after our phone call. Where had the flirty man from New Year’s Eve gone? The one who had been grinding on me like a porn star on hump day, who’d given me the most amazing kiss of my short life? He’d been the consummate professional during our meeting. Maybe he had learned too good a lesson from his colossal fuck up. I had my work cut out for me.

  Clearly, I was going to have to be methodical with my plan to squeeze my way into his personal life. I brushed aside the unpleasant memory of my cousin Molly’s subversive efforts to ingratiate herself to Gage. That was totally different. She was unhinged and still hospitalized back in Wisconsin for her delusions. I was perfectly sane. Wasn’t I? I didn’t believe I was in a secret relationship with Wyatt; I only wanted to be in one. Big difference. Right?

  I took some comfort in the memory of his kiss. He was attracted to me on some level, or he wouldn’t have done it
. I just needed to figure out what had brought out the tiger in him and use it to my advantage. It didn’t occur to me that all this scheming was as “unsub-like” as I could possibly get but desperate times and all that. I wasn’t above a little passive-aggressive manipulation. I didn’t like leaving what I wanted to chance. I told myself I could still take charge of my life when there was no one around to do it for me. If or when Wyatt agreed to train me, I could stop managing every detail of my life down to the minute. Until then, I was still the boss, and I made shit happen.

  As I was thinking, my cat, Wheezy, climbed in my lap. She was old, black as midnight with luminous green eyes and a breathing condition that made her sound like an asthmatic in the deep South. She couldn’t sneak up on anyone if she tried, but I loved the little girl more than life itself.

  I dropped my bags just inside the door and scooped Wheezy into my arms. I’d only been gone a day and a half, and I’d left plenty of food out for her, but I could tell by the way she kept bumping her head against my chin she wanted me to feed her. None of that dry bullshit either. She wanted the Fancy Feast. She was a pampered kitty, so I happily obliged her with a can of seafood entrée.

  As Wheezy devoured her mid-day snack, I unpacked my bags and put my dirty clothes into the basin of my small stacked washer/dryer combination unit. Pouring in a cup of detergent and a smattering of softener beads, my thoughts continued to wander.

  What was it going to take to slide in under Wyatt’s guard? I couldn’t accept he’d just been having a good time on New Year’s Eve and there wasn’t the potential I wanted there to be between us. I wouldn’t have felt that current zipping back and forth if he was just cutting loose, right? Or did delusions run in my family and I was as bonkers as Molly?

  Just as I flopped down onto my sofa, intent on coming up with a bona fide, multi-step plan for successfully seducing Wyatt, my phone rang. I looked at the screen and saw it was my former roommate and bestie, Rae. She was probably calling for the replay of the holiday. She was well aware of my mission.

  “Hey, Rae,” I answered. “How was your office party?”

  “It went fine, no dancing on tabletops or ending up in the copy room with Brad, the file clerk. Though I did try. How about you? Any spankings, spiked collars, or ball gags to speak of?”

  “No,” I said, laughing at her dry wit. “I did get a New Year’s kiss though.”

  “From the man?” she gasped. “Tell me everything twice.”

  “It was amazing, I can’t lie. I nearly threw myself at his feet and begged to be his slave.”

  “That’d be the day,” she murmured.

  “What? I can beg when the occasion calls for it,” I said, thinking of precisely what kind of occasion that might be. Her next words followed my line of thinking.

  “I don’t think ‘please, don’t stop’ qualifies as the kind of begging expected from a submissive,” she replied sarcastically.

  “What would you know about it?” I laughed.

  “The exact same things you do. Nothing other than what we’ve read in Wyatt’s and a handful of other authors’ books.”

  “Okay, so maybe there’s more to it. That’s what I want to learn.”

  “Do you really want to be tied up and spanked? To have all manner of implements used to violate any orifice deemed interesting?” she asked, the curiosity genuine in her voice though we’d had this conversation a million times.

  “I can’t explain it, Rae. It calls to me, I crave it. It’s not just the kink, it’s the idea of having someone else take control, being the boss for once. I’ve been living on my own since I was seventeen. I’ve been calling all the shots in my life for the last seven years. I’m already tired. I want someone to take all the decisions off my hands and tell me what to do.”

  “Do you even know yourself? You’ve exchanged every single birthday and Christmas gift I’ve ever given you. You never let anyone else make decisions for you.”

  “Hey, it’s not my fault you still haven’t figured out I don’t like chocolate,” I giggled as I stretched out fully on the sofa, bending one knee and crossing the other leg over it.

  “Everyone likes chocolate. You’re an extraterrestrial being, one with control issues.”

  I sighed. I didn’t know how to explain it any simpler. I took charge of my life because I had to, I didn’t have a safety net. I’d left Wisconsin with just my beat-up Honda, five hundred dollars in the bank, and a suitcase full of clothes, just to come to work for Gage. I didn’t have the luxury of someone else to rely on. That was what I wanted. Someone who had nothing but my best interests in mind, who could handle life for me while giving me a rowdy time in the bedroom. Was that so unrealistic?

  “I do not have control issues, not if I’m willing to hand them over to someone else.”

  “Okay, so say Wyatt gives you the opportunity you’re hoping for. The first time he tells you that you can’t wear your red halter top on a Girls’ Night Out or worse, you can’t have a Girls’ Night Out at all, how are you going to react?” Rae asked, just daring me to lie to her.

  “You know I’d do it, anyway. Let the punishment fit the crime,” I giggled. “Besides, that’s not the kind of dominance I’m after. I don’t want someone who says no, just because he can.”

  “Here’s the thing you don’t get, Clarisse. You don’t get to decide what sort of dominance he offers, he does. That’s the whole gist of the relationship. I don’t understand how you don’t see that. It’s not about handing him a stack of bills and your checkbook and asking him to take care of it all for you. It’s not just about having him intervene when your mom calls every time your brother makes off with the grocery money to feed his addiction. It’s about serving his needs before your own.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know that, and I want that, too. I want someone I can shower with attention and affection.”

  “Clarisse, we’re talking about servitude, not your relationship with Wheezy. Although I admit she’s a pretty harsh taskmaster,” she said just as the cat in question crawled onto the sofa next to me. “I’ll let the subject of the long-term lie for now. We can have this argument again later. Until then, tell me all about this kiss…”

  Two hours later, we finally hung up with me promising to give her regular reports on the status of my mission. Rae was in the midst of an ugly divorce, so she lived vicariously through all her friends, but my personal fantasy had gotten her attention more than anything else—even if she was trying to talk me out of it. She wouldn’t admit it, but I thought she harbored her own secret dominance and submission fancies. After all, we both read the same books and recommended them to each other. I was confused though because her soon-to-be ex, Bruce, was a jerk who’d kept her down the entirety of their eight-year marriage. Now, at the age of thirty-two, she was ready to restart her life. She just didn’t know what shape that was going to take. Romance novels had been her way of escaping Bruce’s frequent belittlement. She’d gained about twenty pounds over the course of their marriage, from stress eating in my opinion, and he took great delight in telling her every chance he got she’d never find anyone better than him—now that she’d finally found it in her to drop his sorry ass. I really hoped something wonderful was coming her way. She was a beautiful person, inside and out, no matter how much she weighed. I would have figured she’d be looking to be the one doing the dominating in her next relationship.

  I allowed myself another half-hour of idle time as I stroked Wheezy’s silky coat. I did some of my best thinking just cuddling with her, but no answers how to win Wyatt over were coming to me. Finally, I got up, put her in her cat basket, and spent a few hours on the computer, recording Gage’s and Stacy’s sales from the conference, then on social media looking for nearby signings in the next three months that might have space for one well-known author. If I was going to make any headway, I needed to be one-on-one with Wyatt. I found a few that looked promising, so I sent inquiries to the event coordinators before finally calling it a day.

 
* * *

  “So, how did things play out last week?” Stacy asked as I stood in her kitchen the following Monday while she pulled a cake out of the oven. She’d gotten on a baking kick after Harry was born, thinking her child should have a mother with at least one motherly quality, never mind the fact the boy was barely over two months old.

  “It was the strangest thing,” I replied, my mind going back to Wyatt’s kiss on New Year’s Eve. “He was playful and sexy at the party. We did some major dirty dancing that got everyone’s attention as you saw.”

  “Yeah, nobody missed that show,” she replied with a knowing grin. “I nearly dragged Gage upstairs after watching the two of you.”

  “Shut up,” I laughed. “We got separated for a while after his fans figured out who he was and wanted to dance with him too. He found me just before midnight, then gave me the kiss of my life.”

  “That all sounds good to me. What’s strange about it?”

  “Well, when we went over the responsibilities I’ll have as his PA, he was nothing but business. There were no flirty looks, grins, winks, nothing. No mention of the toe-curling, skin scorching lip-lock from the night before. It was like it never happened.”

  “Did you try to bring it up?” Stacy asked, leaving the cake pan on one of the stove burners before pulling out a mixing bowl and measuring out a cup of powdered sugar.

  “Hell, no! I’m trying to ease my way into this. You know this man must be tired of being hit on all the time. I’m trying the sneak attack,” I said, retrieving a stick of butter from the refrigerator for her.

  “Then you’re just going to have to be patient. Don’t obsess over what every little thing does or doesn’t mean. Let it happen organically.”

  “Fuck that. I’m not one to rest on my laurels, waiting for what I want to come to me. You know that already,” I scoffed. “I just need to find a reason to go out to Santa Fe. Nothing will ever happen if we’re in different states.”