by Lila Lacroix
He’ll fire me for sure now.
“Who did you think I was? Fuck. You have a swing on you, Lady.” He smirked but frowned at the same time.
Vanessa looked around them, “No one—anyone. I don’t know, I was upset and alone. I’m a target in all this, I might as well tape hundred dollar bills to myself. I just reacted.”
“This area isn’t so dangerous, calm down; how about you tell me what just happened over a coffee? We could go back inside or …” He stepped forward “Hey, I’m here. You don’t have to be scared.”
His grey eyes failed to move her this time. Vanessa’s body was set to fight or flight, regardless of his attempts to calm her. She shuffled away from him, glanced at the hotel, at his wide smile, perfect teeth and sculpted face, and then over the road, where Roger offered her a safe way home. “I’m sorry Jonathan. I don’t belong in your world, with those vile friends of yours, or world famous chefs for that matter. I feel like a dirty secret, or a cheap perfume. I want to go home. I don’t think this arrangement is going to work.”
She stepped out of her ridiculously high shoes when she saw a gap in traffic, and ran to Roger, bare footed, “Roger. Please take me home.” He looked over at Jonathan, who was trying to get over the busy road to them. Realising he couldn’t he waved them both off.
Jonathan stood helplessly outside the hotel picking up Vanessa’s shoes, but this was no fairy tale, and Vanessa was no Cinderella.
At home, she closed the door and peeled off Gucci in favor of a hot shower and her flannel pajamas. She pressed play on her iPod, which stood in a dock station charging; always ready to push its tunes through the speakers. As she brushed her teeth, Something by The Beatles played in the background, and she remembered how they laughed together, how the wine tasted on her tongue, the infectious exuberance of Jonathan, and how, for just a while, they had bridged the gap between them to become … the same.
“Damn it Jonathan, I … like you.”
The Billionaire’s Heart
Jonathan called Vanessa from the back seat of his limo, while Roger drove him to her apartment. “Please don’t hang up,” he said in a rush, when Vanessa finally picked up. “I don’t know how or why, but you’re upset and that matters. Let me come round so you can tell me all about it, and I can at least try to make things right. Please.”
Just as they pulled up outside her block, she agreed to let him come up to see her, though reluctantly. “Excellent,” he smiled, “just give me a minute.”
After hanging up, Jonathan said to Roger, “Stick around Rog, she’s unpredictable and could well throw me out on my butt in five minutes.”
Roger sniggered. “Will do, Sir. She’s worth the effort to me if she’s worth the effort to you.”
“You know something Rog, she is. Worth the effort, I mean. But she’s a firecracker, and I got a feeling I’m gonna get burned.” He gathered her shoes and his cell phone, ready to leave the car.
“She emotional, is what she is;” added Roger. “Never met a woman who wasn’t, one way or another. But she has a kind heart, and that don’t come along too often.”
Jonathan listened to his wizened old driver. He’d worked as a driver for decades, and for Jonathan for around eight years. He had set him straight before, once or twice, but never commented on any of his women before. “I’ll keep that in mind, Rog.” Jonathan winked, “Hopefully, I won’t see you for a while, but stay close.”
* * *
Vanessa ran around her apartment wishing she hadn’t said he could come up. She put her joggers and a sexy vest on in place of her flannel PJ’s, and flicked hopelessly through her iPod for something sophisticated, complex. All she had were soppy tracks about love or heartbreak. “Oh crap, I need something new, or old but new to me. I’m so sick of all these songs.”
She chose 10cc’s ‘I’m Not In Love’ and shrugged, then ran to her bathroom to pinch her pale cheeks and fluff her bob. “Shit, wish I’d left the makeup on a while longer.” She gargled and spat, just as the buzzer rang. “Where did he come from already, my doorstep?”
Clicking the intercom button she asked, “Who goes there?”
“Who goes what? Ha, it’s Jonathan. Were you expecting someone else, Vanessa?”
Oh Christ, he even sounds gorgeous. “Just being safe, Jonathan. Come up.” She buzzed him in and listening to him banging his way up three flights of stairs, impressed at his level of fitness and eagerness to see her.
Or does he just want to get the conversation with the hysterical fool over with?
She checked herself at the mirror by the door, “Okay. So, what am I going to say? Am I pissed with him? With the situation? Myself? What?” Breathe, calm, control. “Shit, my contact lenses!”
Realising she’d removed her brown contact lenses, she put the door on the latch, clicked play on her iPod, then ran to the bathroom to replace them. Then she ran to her kitchenette to prepare a drink for them both. For the first time, she wished she drank alcohol so she had something more congenial to offer him than water or coffee. “Christ, I’m certainly no hostess with the mostest.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that, love!” gasped Jonathan, from the doorway behind her, all panting, sweaty and smirking.
Cringe and swoon.
“Err, oh. Come in, close the door.” She tried to remain unaffected by him, and his laidback attitude. This was serious, not a joke. “You probably woke everyone in the building banging up all those steps like that. And where did you call me from, anyway?” Vanessa suddenly noticed how messy her kitchen tops were and used that as something to occupy herself. Grabbing a kitchen cleaner spray and cloth, she got to work.
“Ah, well I started calling you from where you left me, alone and without explanation. By the time you answered, we reached your street. Here are your shoes, by the way.” He held out Vanessa’s Gucci heels.
“Don’t you mean your shoes, Jonathan? I also have your dress and your handbag in my bedroom if you’d like them. It’s quite the set.” Vanessa offered him a glass of iced water. “Here, I imagine you need this after your jog up my stairs.”
Jonathan found her defiance perplexing but sexy. He was used to women throwing themselves at him, even before his wealth. This feisty woman with principles was quite something. “Thanks, you might be right. Although, I don’t think your Gucci outfit will suit me somehow, so you had better keep it.” He half smiled, think she might throw a plate at him if he didn’t appear to be taking her seriously.
Vanessa sighed as 10cc sang the chorus.
She inwardly huffed, What was I thinking putting this on?
Jonathan seemed oblivious to her music. “How about you quit being all domestic and join me on your couch, tell me where all this angst is coming from?”
“All this what?”
Jonathan waved his hands and dropped the soft sympathetic expression, “For heaven’s sake, why are you so upset with me? You allowed me into your apartment to talk, yes?”
“Yes, but..” you have no idea, do you?
“Then talk to me. I’m listening,” he pleaded.
Vanessa wasn’t used to being listened to by men. Her father wasn’t around to do so for long, and Mike preferred to make the decisions—end of. Or fight. He loved to fight. But never listen. “Well, it’s just that. Oh you won’t understand.”
Jonathan raised his finger and frowned, “That’s a little unfair, don’t you think? What gives you that impression, or the right? Haven’t I listened to your issues and tried to help? Our arrangement is new and there will be wrinkles in the plan that requires ironing out. This is just a wrinkle, let me iron it out for you.”
He looked at her so genuinely, now casually lounging on her couch, sipping water. The overhead light reflected off the ice cubes and sparkled in his eyes.
She slumped next to him and prayed 10cc would stop singing soon. “I doubt you can iron out my wrinkles, but here goes.” Just then, Freddie Mercury started singing ‘The Great Pretender’ and Vanessa cursed her music
collection. “I’m a nobody Jonathan; a provincial, uninteresting, clueless idiot who will only serve to get you thrown out of the US! They will know we aren’t a real couple when they interview me, because someone like you wouldn’t be with someone like me.” She wildly animated, but to hell with it. “Our relationship will make zero sense to anyone with half a brain.” she said, poking her head. “I just think you chose badly. Try someone else and see if those Gucci clothes fit her. I just want to go to work, keep to myself, be myself.” If only she could be herself again ever. Lose the contacts, the brown bobbed hair, the name Vanessa.
Would I even recognise the old me if I saw her on the street? God, that’s deep for me.
Jonathan interrupted her, “Hold on a minute. Stop!”
Vanessa startled at his abruptness. “Okay! I stopped. What happened to listening?”
“I have listened, and quite frankly, I heard enough. What do you think I am, The Messiah?” He snorted and stood. “Look at me; I’m just a man.” Jonathan banged his perfectly manicured hands against his robust chest. “You think because I have money and rich friends I’m better than you, or is that because you like Freddie Mercury and I like Blues?” he sniggered a bit, but frowned too.
Shit, that’s what I’m saying isn’t it. That I’m worth less then him and his friends? Why would I think that? Vanessa closed her eyes, cringing at her own stupidity. She knew deep down she had been hysterical, but had genuinely believed she was a bad match for him. She didn’t want to be the reason he had to leave the country, after all. Vanessa sighed to herself. Mike had always made her feel like she was worth nothing, and she had spent most of their relationship believing it. She worked hard now to make sure her self esteem levels were high, but it had also been so long since she’d really been with a man that she suspected she fell right back into those old habits. He’s right. I’m completely over reacting. I am, I know I am. “I like that you don’t care about our vast difference in social standing and everything that goes along with it. I really do. But won’t all that stuff be a huge deal to your family and friends? To people who know you.”
“Vanessa,” he knelt in front of her, eye to eye, “who knows anyone, really? Umm? They’ll see a beautiful woman, the designer clothes you’ll be wearing, and will assume you are one of them. We see what we want to see in this life. For example, I allow my family and friends to know a side of me; the side I want them to see. So they like me and don’t bother me too much, or nag.” He smiled softly, placing his hands over her hands, in her lap. “But they don’t really know me.” He peered up at Vanessa, knowingly, his grey eyes so full of emotion she could have wept. In that moment, she longed to share her secret, to show him she was the same. But then she knew why she hid behind a façade: survival. What was his excuse?
She stared at his eyes intensely, as if doing so might reveal his own secrets, but he released her hands and stood.
Vanessa couldn’t speak.
“I mean, are you telling me your mother knows you, Vanessa?” asked Jonathan. “Or Danielle, does she know you, and all your deepest secrets?”
Do you know my secret, Jonathan? It feels like we are … the same. “You’re right. I guess no one ever does, which is extremely sad, don’t you think?”
“It is, but that’s just how things are,” he said, joining her on the couch again, only this time, right up close. His shoulders rounded, relaxing, no doubt relieved, as though he had made a breakthrough. “And anyway, people who date carbon copies of themselves must be raving narcissists or something. Right?”
“I guess so.” Vanessa understood, but looking at him, she longed to know why accepted that no one really knew him. She longed for it, yet fear and self-preservation prevented it.
He smiled deliciously, his breath smelt of wine and spice and warmed her face. Right then, Vanessa desperately wanted to kiss him. She hoped she meant more to him than a business agreement, that he experienced the same burning desire she did.
“Vanessa? Are you okay? Too much wine? I shouldn’t have pushed you to try it if you didn’t like it.”
Oh stop being so damned adorable. “But I did enjoy it, and I’m fine. Now anyway. Perhaps everything went to my head, the shopping trip, your nosey friends, the wine and Champagne. As well as all over Nobu’s good floors.” Vanessa screwed up her face at the memory.
“Hey, those floors are made to accept industrial cleaners, they can deal with a little spillage. But the Gucci dress might be another story.”
“Good job it’s black and soaking in a hot bath then! Course, it might shrink, but…” She wasn’t sure how or when, but somehow they had moved closer to one another. Their arms touched, their thighs touched. Each point of contact sizzled.
“That’d be a shame. You looked … quite beautiful in it.” Jonathan’s gaze moved around her face, down her throat, and lower still, and his breaths grew faintly deeper with each inch covered.
So close, he’s so close. “And here I am, Cinderella without her ball gown.” Vanessa opened her arms to reveal her less than glamorous appearance.
He took hold of one hand, stroked it for a silent moment of sizzle. Then he leant in so that their mouths almost touched, “Oh but, you never needed Gucci, Vanessa.”
And his lips touched hers softly, waiting to see if she would allow it. Slowly his hands over her thighs, his hot breath parting her lips until both mouths explored equally, both bodies as aroused and as needy as each other.
Vanessa longed, sighed, pulsed. For a blissful moment she didn’t think, her mind empty of Mike and the wounds he inflicted upon her, inside and out. She didn’t care about their arrangement. She only cared about their physical union and how it made her feel liberated.
But where Jonathan allowed the physical to take him, moving his hand beneath her vest top and over her breast, Vanessa startled at the touch, and pulled away. She denied him, in favour of reason.
How can we be together for that bloody business deal, and still make out? One or both of us will ultimately end up hurt. I’ll be heartbroken, alone, with nothing to show for it. Been there, done that. I won’t wear the bloody t-shirt.
Vanessa sighed, “This isn’t happening, Jonathan. This arrangement we have won’t work if we end up in these positions, Jonathan. I cannot do what you need me to do otherwise. We made a deal, yes?” She had to ask and hoped he’d reconsidered. “Is that still what you want?” Please at least hesitate.
His pupils looked like huge grey stones, and his gaze locked onto Vanessa’s swollen lips, as though longing to be back there. “Well, yes but—“
Vanessa interrupted, having heard the confirmation she expected, but didn’t want to hear. “Well then, I’m still up for that deal Jonathan, but let’s not blur the lines shall we?” He’s going to break my heart, I just know it. “I think you should go. Sorry.”
“Okay,” he sighed. “I understand. See you tomorrow then? I’ll call you in the morning.”
Vanessa ushered him out of the door as he did to Danielle, and felt a little guilty afterwards. But he had to go. He was right, he wasn’t better than her. Neither were his friends. She deserved respect and needed to protect her heart. The job had to be done; but it would be done without extra curricula activities.
* * *
Over the next couple of weeks, Vanessa spends lunchtime with Jonathan in his office, just as they did before, but now something else loitered silently in the background.
* * *
Vanessa did enjoy their new routine. At work, they messaged each other silly things via email, like animals opening doors or annoying pop stars dubbed to sound awful, and they chatted casually over lunch. And sometimes, they even went for a much more reasonable dinner. A small Italian Bistro for pizza, a local Chinese Restaurant for something with noodles, and a raucous Irish Pub for live folk music with pie and mash. She wore her own simple clothes and felt much more relaxed, and Jonathan blended in with the rest of the clientele by wearing jeans and t-shirts. They were designer brands of course, but
at least he discarded the formal suits.
Vanessa found herself forgetting that he was her boss, that he was a millionaire businessman with wealthy friends and too much power. That he was extravagant, and even hypocritical. Instead, Jonathan became a friend, a source of fun and pleasure, but unfortunately, one who she secretly yearned for, yet could not have.
As she had enough secrets, their relationship was at once liberating and frustrating.
Although she knew he wanted her too, after that kiss, at least physically, she refused to complicate their arrangement with her silly emotions. She wasn’t like men in general, and some women; she couldn’t have sex without it meaning more. Especially when more may already be there, ready to pounce if she didn’t keep a tight rein on it. As an emotionally driven woman, this presented a great burden for Vanessa. Being practical and holding back her emotions was not easy. But she had learned love didn’t solve everything, and passion could swiftly turn to rage.
* * *
Then one morning, Jonathan sent Vanessa a couple of emails, first of all not really saying anything, then asking if he could come down and see her, giving her ten minutes to get her bag and get ready before he made his way down.
Vanessa didn’t really expect anything more than a come up a bit earlier for lunch. Now she was a bit stunned. But she grabbed her bag and ran to the bathroom to check her hair and makeup, then waited by her desk. Nervous, excited, even longing to see Jonathan, though she forced those thoughts out of her head. She had made it quite clear where they stood.
Then Jonathan walked confidently through the agency, from his office to Vanessa’s station, ignoring everyone who sat up straight, dropped pencils, stuck out their bust, flicked their hair. His eyes were only on Vanessa, and hers on him. It gave Vanessa such a buzz to know everyone else saw how he looked at her.
“Ah, my Vanessa. As ripe and blooming as any rose.” declared Jonathan. He grabbed her hand, “Let’s go.” They continued moving together to the lifts, and out to Roger in the limo.