by Hannah Ford
He nodded. “Of course you’re right.”
“And besides, nobody’s going to stop us from getting married and being together.”
He grinned wider. “When did you get so incredibly wise?”
“I just know what we have, Red. You taught me that what we have is stronger than all of the drama and silliness surrounding us.”
They kissed again, longer and just as passionate, if somewhat restrained by earlier standards they’d set. When he was done showing her just how much he loved her with his warm lips, Red grabbed her hand. “Come on, we better get a good meal in and hit the sack early tonight. We’ve got an early flight to Berlin tomorrow morning.”
***
It was strange but also kind of beautiful to be travelling to Berlin with Red Jameson. Sometimes, like when they were sitting in first class on the airplane (no private jet today), Nicole looked over at her future husband and wanted to pinch herself.
This was the man she’d spent months and months idolizing, reading about—setting him up as a kind of god on earth. In the end, she’d found that he really was just a man, but quite an extraordinary man with more layers than she’d ever imagined.
Staring out the window of the plane at thirty-five thousand feet, all she could see were clouds beneath the plane, and the plane’s shadow trailing along on the puffy white surface of them. It was like a dream, an exciting but sometimes terrifying dream where she’d gotten everything she could ever have imagined—but there monsters she couldn’t yet see who wanted to rip it all away from her.
Eventually she rested her head on Red’s shoulder and closed her eyes and slept most of the way to Berlin.
Any hopes Nicole might have had in seeing Germany were soon put to rest, as they immediately were picked up by a car service at the airport, and taken to the Concorde Hotel, a very modern building that looked more like a museum than a hotel.
As they checked in, Red spoke German fluently with the staff. Nicole was shocked, and on their way up the elevator to their suite, she asked him how he knew German.
“Once I realized I wanted to bring Jameson International into a global marketplace, I spent the next four or five years learning German, French and even a tiny bit of Japanese. But I really took to the German language for some reason.”
“That’s incredible.”
“That’s not incredible,” he said, grabbing her and pinning her against the wall of the elevator. “You are incredible. Your mind. Your body.” He looked her up and down, his gaze raking her body with ferocity. “Those tits.”
“Red!”
The elevator dinged and he reluctantly let her away from the wall. They walked to their suite, a large, modern set of connecting rooms with brown and white décor.
“I wish we had enough time for me to throw you down on this bed and show you what the word incredible really means,” he told her, as they dropped their bags and surveyed the rooms.
“You’re frisky today,” she laughed.
“I can’t keep my hands off you,” he said, grabbing her by the waist, picking her up and kissing her deeply on the mouth.
As usual, she melted into his kiss and his embrace. And then his cell was ringing again. “Dammit,” he said, moving away from her and answering brusquely.
As she watched his expression, a feeling of dread overcame her. The color drained from his face as he listened to whoever was talking. “We’ll be right there,” he said, and then put the phone back in his pocket.
“What’s wrong?” she said.
Red looked at her and his eyes were like two dark stones. “The dominoes are falling,” he said. “We’re about to lose everything. Come on.”
And then they were racing to the elevator, downstairs to the first available taxi. She was desperately trying to keep up with Red, as he was in his own world now, walking at such a fast pace that she practically had to run to stay with him. He glanced at her once and asked if she was all right.
“I’m fine, please don’t worry about me today,” she said.
He nodded as if that’s what he needed to hear. And then they were in the taxi, Red speaking German, and the taxi was racing down unfamiliar streets. The landscape outside the car windows was beautiful, so different from everything Nicole was used to. She wanted to appreciate the strange architecture and the amazing buildings of Berlin, but her heart was in her throat.
She didn’t know exactly what had gone wrong this morning, but she knew it was bad, and that was enough.
They arrived at their destination, a squat white building with sloping walls that looked like a funhouse version of a “normal” building. Red kept up his fast paced walk into the offices and they arrived at the front desk, hosted by a strange looking woman with tiny glasses and a nasally, high-pitched voice.
“I’m Red Jameson, and I need to see Lucas Bauer, please.”
She spoke lightly accented English. “Yes, we’re expecting you, Mister Jameson. So lovely to have you here.”
He gave Nicole an exasperated look. “Lovely for me, also. Thank you.”
“I will let Mister Bauer know you’ve arrived.”
Red backed away from the front desk and checked the time on his phone. He shook his head.
“What’s going on?” Nicole asked.
“You don’t want to know,” he told her.
“Mister Bauer will be down in just a moment,” the birdlike woman told them.
“Can I just go up?” Red asked.
She cocked her head. “Visitors typically are met by an employee, sir.”
“I’m not a visitor, I own this company.”
She nodded. “He’ll be down in just a moment, I assure you.”
Red grit his teeth and blew air out through his nostrils. Nicole could tell he was a millimeter from blowing up. She wanted to say something to calm him, but this was now a professional, work setting, so she kept quiet.
Lucas Bauer arrived through a set of glass doors at the far end of the hall. He was tall, smiling, with a blond head of thick hair and a mustache that seemed almost fake, it was so bushy and sculpted. Like a movie mustache, Nicole thought. He greeted them with a level of politeness that also, like his mustache, seemed phony.
“So wonderful to have you here,” he told Red. “We are so pleased.”
“Great,” Red replied in a clipped voice. “Shall we?”
“Of course, right this way,” Lucas said. As they walked through the glass doors and into the offices of the ad agency, he kept up a running commentary. He explained that the architect who’d designed this building was one of the most famous German architects of the modern era, and how they’d been the top agency in the EU for nearly ten years.
Everything was white inside. The hallways, the offices. They walked through a cavernous white room that had no cubicles, just rows of tables and chairs with computers and people working away at them, reminding Nicole more of a factory than an ad agency.
Finally they arrived at a conference room.
Inside the conference room were two more employees of the company. A short, heavyset woman that reminded Nicole of a bulldog. Her name was Helga, which Nicole thought appropriate. She looked exactly like Nicole pictured a German woman named Helga should look. And then there was a young, dashing brown haired man named Alric.
Everyone exchanged greetings and handed their business cards out to one another (although Nicole had no card so she just shook hands).
“We have coffee and scones,” Lucas said, gesturing to the trays at the back of the conference room. Nicole and Red made themselves coffee. He gave her a quick smile but she could tell he was very preoccupied.
Nicole grabbed herself a scone, too, and then she and Red took seats next to one another at the large table occupying the center of the room.
The German employees sat down and Lucas took over the meeting. “Once again, we thank Red Jameson for coming all the way to Berlin on short notice.” He nodded and smiled at Red. “The circumstances are a bit difficult at the moment, but we are determined
to come out stronger and better than ever.”
Red stared at him, and slowly Lucas’s smile faded.
“I heard through my CFO that you’ve had five executives leave the company since Jameson international acquired you.”
“And a sixth today,” Alric said.
“Who?”
“One of our art directors,” Lucas chimed in. “It’s a big problem. We can’t compete with the salary that Kane Wright is offering our people.”
“Kane Wright?” Red said, and if his gaze had been intense before, Nicole thought, it was now burning with the brightness of a thousand suns. The German ad agency executives wilted beneath his glare.
“I thought you’d been told,” Lucas peeped.
“No. I was not.” Red sat back in his chair and put a hand on his chin, looking down, lost in thought.
“It’s criminal what that man has done to Aufrührerische Kreativität,” Helga told them. “He’s purposely trying to ruin us, going after our most important people and offering them ridiculous sums of money to move to his agency.”
“Why would he do that?” Lucas asked them, throwing up his hands. His veneer of happiness and friendliness was gone, and now he just seemed bewildered. “Why would he pay so much just to take our people?”
Red still hadn’t spoken. The room fell silent as everyone looked to him for an answer. Finally, he spoke.
“Kane Wright is trying to destroy me,” he said.
Nicole watched him. She thought that he looked already as if he’d lost some enormous battle.
“We will fight back,” Lucas told him. “We are going to work hard, hire new people, and we will regain ourselves. I promise you that, Mister Jameson.”
“Who’s Kane Wright?” Nicole asked, softly.
Everyone turned to her now. They looked at her like she’d just asked him who Barack Obama was.
Red smiled. “Kane Wright is the European version of me. Only a little bit older, a lot richer, and a hell of a lot more ruthless and lacking in ethics.”
“I promise you these maneuvers of his will come back to haunt him,” Lucas said, pounding the table with his fist. “He can’t be allowed to get away with this.”
Red sighed. “I appreciate that, I appreciate your loyalty also. Have the three of you also been approached by Mister Wright?”
The three Germans exchanged glances and then slowly nodded.
Red sighed. “Did any of you accept an offer yet? Tell me now. If I find out you’ve lied to me today, I will make it my life’s work to pay you back for this breach of trust.”
Alric, the sharply dressed young man with the brown hair, uneasily raised his hand. “I’m sorry. I did just recently accept an offer to work with Kane Wright.”
Helga and Lucas turned and gawked at the younger man.
“Alric, are you insane?” Lucas practically yelled. “You’re taking the blood money from that horrible leach?”
“I’m so sorry. I know I should have told you,” he said softly.
“And you come in our meeting to spy on us?” Helga said. “You have no shame, Alric.”
They began arguing in German.
Red stood up. “Lucas, please call security and make sure they come and escort this man out of the building immediately.”
Alric started to leave, his head hanging.
“Thank you for being honest with me,” Red told him as he left.
Alric nodded, but Lucas just kept yelling at him again in German and ushering him out of the conference room.
“Could you give us a moment of privacy?” Red asked Helga.
She stood up, sweating and apologetic. “Of course, of course. We will wait outside,” she said.
Soon the room was empty. Red walked to where Nicole was sitting and knelt before her. “I’m sorry I’ve let you down,” he said.
She put her hands on his face and smiled. “You could never let me down. I love you no matter what.”
He kissed her palm, took her hands in his own. “I screwed up,” he said. “I lost focus and I made crucial mistakes.”
“Everyone makes mistakes,” she said. “You can’t beat yourself up over it.”
“I think my CFO might have been secretly angling for a position with Kane Wright the entire time. This whole thing stinks to high heaven.”
He got up and went to the back table and poured himself a glass of water, continuing to speak. “It’s like a chess match. Kane Wright set me up, knowing that if I overleveraged myself in order to buy this company, then he would be in a position to destroy me.”
“How did he know?” Nicole said.
“That’s where my CFO came in. I trusted him and he convinced me to make the deal, even though we both knew there were substantial risks. I have a feeling he’ll turn up working for Kane Wright within the next few weeks or months.”
“Is there anything you can do about it?” she asked.
“I’m weak right now. Soon we’ll lose our big clients and then this multi-million dollar acquisition will instead be a time bomb waiting to explode and destroy Jameson International.”
“There has to be a way to stop him,” she said. “Can you rehire those employees he stole, offer them even more money to come back to work at here?”
Red shook his head. “No, I can’t compete with Kane Wright in a price war, especially not now. Our stock is falling, and the word on the street is that I’m bleeding. I’ve been told that the board of directors of Jameson International is meeting at the end of next week. There’s a very good chance I’ll be terminated from my position as CEO, and Kane Wright will try and force a hostile takeover of our company.”
“But you founded the company, they can’t fire you!”
Red smiled sadly, took a sip of water and appeared thoughtful again. “Yet another mistake I made was that I only technically own forty-nine percent of the company. I needed to raise capital a few years back and so I gave a controlling interest away, knowing that it would take a very extreme circumstance for me to actually be forced out of my own company. But that day is here,” he said. “Too many mistakes, a bad economy, and a very powerful man intent on ruining me. That’s what it’s taken for me to lose everything I worked so hard to build.”
Nicole stood up. “We’ll build another company. You’re Red Jameson, you’re a genius.”
“Some genius,” he laughed. “Others might call me a one-hit wonder after this debacle.”
“Nonsense,” Nicole said. “I know what you’re capable of.”
“Apparently so does Kane Wright.”
***
After a long, grueling day trying to find solutions to a problem that seemed unsolvable, Nicole and Red finally returned back to their hotel at seven o’clock that evening.
Red was exhausted, more tired than she’d ever seen him. He went and took a long steam in the sauna and Nicole tried to relax and watch some TV. Most of the channels were in German, but she was able to find an older American film, Pretty Woman.
Nicole loved that movie, and she found it ironic that of all the movies that could have been on TV right now, Pretty Woman was the one she’d found at this precise moment.
And then she thought of Red’s mother, who’d basically accused her of being no different than a prostitute. Erica Jameson would have found it more than interesting that one of Nicole’s favorite movies was about a young, beautiful prostitute who falls in love with her rich client.
But for Nicole it was all about the love story, love triumphing over everything. No matter how different two people were, she thought, if they loved one another than they could find a way to be together.
Red had left his phone on the nightstand next to the bed. It started to ring during the scene where Julia Roberts was being treated shabbily at the posh store on Rodeo Drive (which just happened to be one of Nicole’s favorite scenes).
She glanced at Red’s cell and saw the number was unknown. For some reason, Nicole had a strange gut feeling that this call was important. “Red!” she calle
d, grabbing the cell phone and getting off the bed. “Red, someone’s calling!” she cried out, but there was no reply from the bathroom.
Instinctively, she answered his phone before they could disconnect. “Hello?”
The voice on the other end was deep, pleasant, and decidedly not American, although the accent was impossible to pin down. “I must have the wrong number,” he said.
“Are you looking for Mister Jameson?” she asked, her voice betraying her nervousness at having answered the phone without Red’s permission.
“Are you his assistant?” the man asked.
“I’m—I’m a colleague,” she stuttered.
“Oh,” the voice chuckled with good-natured humor. “A colleague. Yes, of course. I imagine you’re a rather beautiful young colleague, as well. Would your name happen to be Nicole Masters?”
She swallowed, her throat suddenly dry. How did this person know her name? She didn’t answer at first. And then, collecting herself, said, “May I tell Mister Jameson who’s calling?”
“Yes, but first I’d like a chance to speak with you, Nicole.”
She didn’t know what to do. If she denied her own name, she’d be lying for no reason. But she also didn’t feel comfortable with this strange man knowing who she was, when she didn’t know who he was. “I think I should just get Red—Mister Jameson, I mean—on the line.”
“Oh, that’s really too bad. You have a lovely voice.”
“Thanks. And who should I say is on the line?” she asked yet again.
He chuckled. “An old friend.”
Something in his voice made her nervous. And she didn’t know how she knew this, but Nicole suddenly had a strong gut feeling that this stranger was the very man they’d been talking about all day long. She’d never heard of him before today, but Nicole sensed that this was none other than Kane Wright.
“I’m not sure that Red wants to speak with you right now, Mr. Wright.”
Suddenly it was his turn to pause. After a long moment, he laughed as if delighted. “Aren’t you the smart little detective? No wonder Red fancies you. Beauty and brains, the full package.”
“I’ll let him know you called.”