Redemption

by R. R. Banks

  “Thank you,” she said.

  I nodded at her.

  “Of course,” I said. “Go on. I don’t want her to see you before you go. Have fun while you’re gone, OK? This is your chance to be and do whatever you want. Take advantage of it.”

  I watched as she disappeared out of the office and down the hallway. When I was sure that she was gone, I walked back to Lucille’s office. She looked up at me with expectation when I stepped into the room.

  “So?” she said. “Did you do it?”

  “She’s gone,” I said. When a cruel smile came to her lips, I stepped forward and put the paper back on the desk in front of her. “But I didn’t have her fired.”

  “Excuse me?” she asked angrily. “I gave you specific instructions to have Snow Whitman removed from this office.”

  “And that’s exactly what I did, but what you didn’t seem to think about was that she has a contract. There are very specific guidelines regarding termination in that contract, and if you attempted to dismiss her outside of those parameters, you would be putting both the company and you personally at risk of a nasty lawsuit. I don’t think that that is something that you are really interested in dealing with in your first few weeks leading the company. Do you want to explain to Mr. Royal why you both fired his top employee and drained the company’s insurance because of a labor suit?”

  Lucille looked at me as if she was going to throttle me, but she didn’t move from her position behind the desk. I saw a glimmer of something in her eyes, but I chose to ignore it.

  “Has she left?” she asked, her tone quieter and more controlled now.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Where has she gone?”

  “Wherever she wants to. If there’s nothing else that you need.”

  Without waiting for her to come up with something else that she might want me to do, I left the office, closing the door behind me. I knew that this wasn’t the end. It couldn’t be. I might have been able to keep Snow from being fired today, but I didn’t delude myself into thinking that that was going to stop Lucille from doing anything that she could to remove Snow from her presence and her company. She was going to try to find a way to oust Snow and I worried that there was little that anybody could do to stop her. Hopefully her efforts wouldn’t be enough and that Mr. Royal would return in time to see that his blushing bride was nothing short of a scheming bitch. He might have turned over control of the company to her, but until it was fully in her name, which was something that I could never see him doing, she only had limited power. He could still come back and prevent her from causing any further damage to the empire that he had spent the vast majority of his life building.

  Chapter Five

  Snow

  “Your boss rewarded you for not taking your vacation every year by giving you more vacation time?” Robin asked.

  I nodded from where I lay on my bed, staring up at the ceiling.

  “So that leaves me with an even longer time than I thought,” I said. “Fourteen weeks. More than three months of having absolutely nothing to do because that crazy bitch wants to get rid of me.”

  “You are the only person I’ve ever known who would complain about having three months of paid time off just handed to you.”

  “It wasn’t just handed to me. I earned it. It was part of my perks package. I just happen to have never used it until I was just forced to. I don’t think that’s something to be excited about.” I flipped over on my side to look at him. “What am I supposed to do? I live and breathe work.”

  “Don’t I know it.”

  “I didn’t get successful because I didn’t work hard.”

  “You could have taken her route and just fucked your way to the top.”

  Robin suddenly dissolved into a cascade of giggles.

  “What’s so funny about that? It’s disturbing.”

  “I just thought about the fact that she got to the top by being on the bottom.” He giggled harder for a few seconds and then suddenly went silent, his eyes widening as if something astonishing had occurred to him. “Or maybe the top,” he said. “What do you think? Mr. Royal is pretty old.”

  I tried to withhold the shudder that coursed through me at the thought.

  “I would really like to not think about that any more if it is all the same to you.”

  “OK.” Robin looked around the room, his expression as though he was at a loss of what to talk about if he couldn’t continue down that line of conversation. After a few seconds he jumped, the thought that snapped into his mind seeming to startle him. “Oh! I can’t believe that I forgot to give this to you.”

  He leaned over and started digging through the bag that he had shoved under his chair when he sat down.

  “What?” I asked.

  He sat up and held a wrinkled brochure out toward me.

  “Look what I found.” He said. “Alright, look what was given to me by my date last night.”

  “Name?” I asked, glancing at him through slightly narrowed eyes.

  “I have absolutely no idea. But that’s not the point. Look at this. I thought of you as soon as I saw it.”

  I took the brochure from him and looked at it. The cover had an image of a cozy-looking cottage tucked into woods, a curving stone trail leading up to its idyllic door.

  “The Enchanted Woods?” I asked, reading the words swept across the cover in elaborate script. “What is this?”

  “Open it!” Robin said, bouncing slightly in his chair.

  I opened the brochure and saw a picture of what looked like a luxurious hotel room and then another of a spa-like bathroom.

  “A hotel?” I asked.

  “A retreat,” Robin said. “It’s an adults-only wilderness retreat without all the unfortunate wilderness aspects. You get to stay inside and get pampered and I’ve heard that there are some pretty beneficial services.”

  “Services?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” Robin said. “I’ve heard that they are fantastic for relieving stress and planning extraordinary experiences for their guests.”

  “What types of extraordinary experiences?”

  “Every person gets a customized plan, so I don’t really know what they would do for you.”

  “And this made you think of me?”

  Robin nodded. I knew that there was something more to that than he was telling me, but the chances of him actually explaining it were next to nothing.

  “And now that you have all this time on your hands, you don’t have any excuse not to go for it.”

  I stared at the brochure for a few seconds, unsure of how to feel about it.

  “Well, I’ll think about it. I can’t promise anything, but I’ll think about it.”

  “Good,” Robin said, sounding far more delighted than I would expect him to sound about a glorified adult summer camp. “Want to go up to the Wishing Well? I’m getting hungry.”

  I nodded and swung my legs off of the bed to stand. It felt strange to look at my closet door and not see the outfit that I would wear the next day hanging there waiting for me. It was a ritual that I went through each night, selecting my clothing, laying it out, ensuring that I was ready to get up and get dressed in record time the next morning so that I could linger over the starter cup of coffee that would carry me through until I reached the office and the blissful coffee and doughnuts that were awaiting me. My eyes narrowed and I felt my jaw twitch slightly.

  Doughnuts.

  Twenty minutes later we were sitting at the same table at the Wishing Well that we always did. It had always felt like tradition, but now it felt like routine. Predictable. As if there wasn’t any other option. Robin flipped through the night’s menu. It seemed that the dessert night had been enough fanciness for the bar for a while and everything had gone back to normal for the time. That meant that I already knew what I was going to order, and, despite all of his hemming and hawing over the menu, what Robin was going to order, too.

  We made our requests of the waiter and Robin
burst into an unnecessarily graphic description of the date that had resulted in the brochure now sitting on my bed. I tried to listen, but I found my attention wandering across the bar to a booth tucked in a dark corner. The couple sitting there was leaned toward each other, their hands gripped tightly together in the middle of the table. Their eyes sparkled as they murmured to each other, and every few seconds I saw the woman laugh. I felt an unexpected pang in my heart.

  “And then I exclaimed ‘well, peel my dick and call it a banana.’” Robin said.

  I looked at him sharply, embarrassed that he caught me drifting away from the conversation and entranced by the couple across the bar.

  “What?” I said.

  Robin shook his head.

  “You aren’t listening to me.”

  “I’m sorry. My brain isn’t here tonight.”

  “What are you staring at?”

  He followed where my gaze had been and saw the couple.

  “Ah,” he said. “Adorable.”

  There was a decided note of disgust in his voice and usually I would laugh, but this time I just shrugged.

  “Don’t you ever wonder what it would be like to have that one person? Someone who you can come home to at night and rely on completely? Someone who you can talk to about anything and share all of your experiences with?”

  “I have that person,” Robin said. “Me. I’m always there when I get home from work and when I want to go out at night, I always want to go with me. I never argue about where I want to go or try to get my way, and I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed this, but I’m a sparkling conversationalist. And as if that wasn’t enough, I also have you.”

  “I’m serious, Robin.”

  “I am, too, Snow. You seem to think that there is something missing from your life because you aren’t dating the same person who you were three years ago.”

  “I’m not dating anyone.”

  “And? I’m dating a lot of people, does that somehow make me better?”

  I didn’t know how to respond.

  “It’s not that it makes you better or worse.”

  “Of course, it does. It makes me leagues better, and you know why? Because I’m getting what I want every night of the week that I want it. I don’t sit around waiting for somebody to sweep me off my feet. I don’t define my life by another person. And I sure as hell don’t cultivate my self-worth based on whether or not I can peel the same person’s underwear off of my floor the same way every day for months at a time. I am much more interested in being able to peel their underwear off of them.”

  “Robin,” I said, but he wasn’t going to let me stop him.

  “No, Snow, listen to me. I’ve seen this little misty look in your eyes for months and it isn’t doing you any good. All it’s doing is making you doubt yourself and think that the only thing that you have in your life is your career.”

  “So, what do you suggest?”

  “Relax. Think about yourself for once. Stop always trying to please other people and figure out who you are. I bet that if you really put your mind to it, you could find out that there is a lot more to you than just that sugary-sweet persona you’ve got going on.”

  “I am sweet.”

  “I know, but that’s not all there is to you. You’ve spent your whole adult life thinking about other people. That’s your entire career, Snow. You figure out what other people want and what they would like and then you create campaigns that fully cater to them. You alter your own thoughts and perceptions to what they like. How many times have you pretended like you really believed in something that you thought was ridiculous, or helped a company peddle a product that you hated?”

  “That’s my job, Robin.”

  “I know that, but it’s just a reflection of your life. You’ve dated one person ever. You’ve had sex with one person ever. And I would venture to say that you probably figured out pretty early on what he liked and stuck with that.”

  “I liked it, too,” I said, feeling far more defensive than I would have liked to admit.

  “Did you?” Robin asked. “Or did you just like the fact that he liked it? You’ve got to think about yourself, Snow. Think about what you want for a change. Maybe you’ll find that when you know yourself, you’ll be able to know others even better. And then…then you’ll have a life.”

  That night I lay in bed thinking about what Robin had said. I had never thought of myself as only trying to please other people or that I didn’t really know myself or my own needs. The more that I thought about it, though, the more I realized that he was exactly right. The one serious relationship that I had ever had was completely based on what my boyfriend had wanted out of it. We did what he wanted to do, when he wanted to do it. I dressed the way he wanted me to and acted the way that he thought I should. Even in bed I was completely focused on his wants and needs. Maybe that was why I never understood Robin’s exuberance over his exceptionally active sex life. I couldn’t understand why he was so enthusiastic about it, and now it occurred to me that maybe it wasn’t that there was something strange about him, but rather that I just didn’t know what I was missing.

  I rolled over and reached onto my nightstand to where I had left the brochure that Robin had given me. I looked at it in the glow of the streetlight streaming through my window. As I read the description of the retreat I couldn’t help but allow Lucille’s voice to come back into my mind. She had been biting at my heels our entire adult lives and now she had managed to get herself into the position that she could destroy everything that I had worked hard for. She was going to climb to the power and success that she had always wanted on my back. The thought infuriated me and I knew that I couldn’t let her do it. I wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction of destroying my life. If she wanted to take me down, at least I was going to go out having enjoyed the months of time that I had earned working for that company.

  Chapter Six

  Lucille

  I paced around my office feeling like I was burning a path into the bright blue carpet. I hated that fucking carpet. It was like a tangible reminder of Walter every time that I stepped into the office. It was exactly like him: garish, out of place, and wildly beneath the success of the company. As soon as I could, I was going to have someone come in and tear it up so that I could replace it with something more appropriate. Exactly as I planned on replacing Walter. If not in the place of my husband, most certainly in my bed. I couldn’t bear the thought of his dry, wrinkled skin rubbing up against mine any more without something young and smooth to replace it. Something like Hunter.

  The assistant had been frustrating as hell from the moment that I first met him, but since he was gorgeous in a buttoned-up, formal kind of way, I was usually willing to deal with him. Now I had a different perception of him. Usually Hunter was quiet and out of sight until I needed him, and then he would do as I asked quickly and efficiently. Unlike Mr. Glass, who had seniority over everyone in the company except for Walter and spoke with a dull, dusty drawl that held no emotion and seemed to be uninfluenced by anything that was around him, Hunter had a voice that promised fiery emotion kept in check just beneath the surface.

  I had seen a little of that fire the day before and I hadn’t been able to get him off of my mind since. I wasn’t accustomed to being spoken to in the way that he had spoken to me. Though it was obvious that he hadn’t said everything to me that he was thinking, he had spoken his mind in a way that he hadn’t before, in a way that no one ever had. I might not have ever reached the level of success that I wanted and had faced being turned down by clients, but never had someone been so bold as to show me the intensity that he had. He was brash and aggressive, forceful and unyielding in his willingness to show me that he disagreed with what I was doing. I should have been angry. I should have felt disrespected, particularly in the professional setting. But I didn’t. Instead, I was instantly aroused. It had taken everything in me not to crawl over the desk and tear the tie away from his neck, rip open his shirt, and find o
ut just how unbuttoned he could be.

  It had been months since a man had satisfied me, and I felt like I was feeling restless. I couldn’t stand the thought that Walter was going to be home from his trip in a few weeks and would expect me to be there to greet him like a happy wife excited to see her husband after a long time apart. I needed to reinforce myself with the touch of a young, powerful man to carry me through. If I could just close my eyes and think of a hot mouth on my body and a thick, young cock inside me, I would be able to get through Walter’s “affection” that had earned me my place in this office.

  I paused in the center of the office and looked toward the door. It was just after noon. Most of the people in the office would have left for lunch, but I happened to know that Hunter didn’t leave until he had come to let me know that he was going to be out for his break. Just in case I needed him. And right at this moment, I most certainly needed him. I walked around the desk and picked up my phone. I hit the extension for Hunter’s private line.

  “Yes?”

  His voice still held some of the defiance and I felt a shiver roll down my spine.

  “Can I have a word with you?”

  “I’ll be right in.”

  The call disconnected and I walked around to the front of my desk. I was leaned back against it when Hunter rapped on the door and then stepped in.

  “Close the door,” I said.

  Hunter turned and closed the door. When he turned back to look at me I had one hand on my hip and was evaluating him, appreciating how the cut of his tailored suit cupped his ass and accentuated a body that looked far more chiseled even through the fabric than I would have expected from a corporate assistant.

  “You wanted to see me,” he said.

  “I did. I wanted to talk to you about what happened with Snow.”

  Hunter rolled his eyes slightly.

  “I don’t really think that there’s anything else to say about that.”