Past Midnight

by Jasmine Haynes

  She wanted to scream at him. God, she’d felt so good last night. But today came the inevitable flameout, as if she just couldn’t maintain a good feeling. “You should have told me all about this up front when we first started working on that gauge. We should have hired the patent attorney then.”

  His lips thinned. She’d gone too far, criticized his business capabilities. But damn it, they were talking about a hell of a lot of money and all the lawyers’ fees it would cost even if they won in the end.

  “I’ll take care of it,” he said flatly.

  Just like a man. I’ll take care of it. Fuck that shit. Last night she’d trusted him to take care of her. What had it gotten her? Just this. A lie.

  Jesus. She couldn’t think straight. Her heart was racing, head aching, it was hard to breathe, and honestly, she was seeing stars, too. Like a panic attack. She leaned her fists on the countertop and struggled to calm down.

  “Erin.” Dominic touched her shoulder.

  She shrugged him off because if she wasn’t careful she’d say something they’d both regret. Yet she wanted to strike out with words, vent all her frustration. Like that day with Jay, before she knew he was sick, when she hadn’t know his behavior was a symptom of what was eating him alive. Instead, she’d been so angry and frustrated. And she’d let it out. Then Jay was gone and she could never, ever make it up to him.

  Oh God, the things she’d said. How could she have gotten so angry with a little boy? A bad day? She couldn’t remember. There were so many bad days after that she couldn’t separate them all.

  But dammit, if Dominic had done his part, if he’d taken Jay on the outing the way he was supposed to, she never would have had to say those things to Jay. She wouldn’t have needed to. But Dominic had made that decision without consulting her, too.

  She had to stop, needed to stop. Because if she let herself go, everything inside would come tumbling out. And she’d never survive it.

  She pulled back, tried to keep her voice neutral. “Just fix it, okay.” The way he hadn’t fixed anything else. She barely kept herself from adding the last bit, but it was there, so close to the surface.

  “Sure, whatever you want,” she heard him say, his voice dripping sarcasm, as she headed out of the lab. It was all she could do not to slam the door behind her. Obviously he’d seen through her neutral tone.

  She stormed across the roundhouse to her office.

  “Omph.” Rachel bounced back after colliding with her.

  “What are you doing there?” Erin snapped.

  “Wa-alking,” Rachel stammered. “I’m sorry.”

  Erin merely growled and marched into her office. She hated this place. She was buffeted around by what other people did, what other people wanted.

  She crossed to her desk, slumped down into her chair. She’d felt good when she got to work this morning. Then it had all gone to hell. And she still had to do mediate with Atul and Cam about their language barriers. If she didn’t get some semblance of control, she’d blast one of them. Or both. Plus she had to confront Matt about his failure rate and his girlfriend troubles or whatever the hell was going on with him this time. Why did she have to do it? Why couldn’t they act like adults? God. She’d just treated Rachel like crap again. The thought made her inexplicably close to tears.

  If only Dominic hadn’t lied to her.

  She was losing control, going totally ape. She closed her eyes, wanted to cry, just let it all out. Was a day’s delay in telling her about the WEU letter really that much of a crime? Of course not. She’d gone overboard. And she didn’t even know why. A delayed reaction to Orlando? Or last night? Because they’d both gone overboard last night?

  She put a trembling hand over her mouth and breathed deeply. Okay, get a grip. She wasn’t going to take her crap out on her people. That was for sure. Leaning over her phone, she hit the intercom button. “Rachel, can you come in a minute?”

  She opened the door before Rachel even had a chance to knock and motioned her in. “That was my fault out there, and I’m sorry I was rude to you.”

  “Oh, that’s okay. I know you’re busy and all.”

  “No, it’s not okay.” Rachel let her get away with too much. “I was wrong.”

  Rachel tapped her fingers on the doorjamb. “You know, Erin, you have this habit of taking the blame for everything. You’re always apologizing. It’s okay to have a bad day sometimes.”

  It was not okay. But she took another deep breath instead of shouting again. “That’s the kettle calling the pot black. You always apologize, too.”

  Rachel shook her head ruefully. “We both need to stop.”

  Erin gave a soft snort. “Agreed.”

  Having turned on her heel, Rachel stopped just outside the door. “I promise not to apologize anymore if you run into me, or if your husband makes arrangements behind your back.” She smiled, not too bright or phony, just genuine, and fluttered her fingers genially as she left.

  Erin picked up a pencil, then threw it back down on the desk. Shit. She probably owed Dominic an apology, too. Why was it so much easier to apologize to her employees than to her husband? True, he should have told her about the letter yesterday, but he’d done his due diligence on the patent issue, and they had discussed it. She’d agreed with moving ahead. WEU coming after them wasn’t his fault. But with an apology, he’d want to know why she’d flipped out, and if she couldn’t exactly explain it to herself, how was she supposed to tell him?

  FUCK. HE SHOULD HAVE KNOWN LAST NIGHT WAS TOO GOOD to last.

  Dominic ground his fist into the letter on the countertop, then crumpled it and threw it viciously at the wall. Goddammit. He had checked it out with their patent attorney before they started the design on the through-coat gauge. There was prior art, and in theory, nothing should have gone wrong. But if anything ever got fucked up, he was the one to blame.

  WEU was playing hardball with them. Just fix it. Erin was so good at issuing orders. Sometimes he was just another one of her minions, like Rachel, or Yvonne, or Steve. He could not fix everything for her. He could not go back and change what he had done. There were so many goddamn things he couldn’t undo. If he could, then when he got home tonight, Jay would be in his room doing his homework.

  He scrubbed a hand down his face. He should have called Hansen yesterday. He’d chosen a local patent attorney, not one of the big guys but someone who charged reasonable rates, yet nevertheless knew his stuff. He made the call now.

  Hansen wanted the letter faxed. He’d have to smooth it out.

  “I’ll send the bastards a response and tell them to take a flying leap,” Dominic said. He’d tell Garland Brooks to shove it up his—

  “Leave it to me, Dominic. I’ll handle everything as your attorney. We’ll have to do some searches, find the support for your case, and hopefully make this all go away.”

  He hated leaving it to Hansen. But the man was right, this thing needed to be handled methodically and documented all the way. That was the part he’d skipped. “Fine. Thanks. I’ll send the fax. Give me a call when you’ve got something.”

  It was as Erin said, time and money, how much, and whether they could afford it. But his blood pressure had eased in the time it took to talk to Hansen. He saw things from a new perspective. Erin’s moods had been bouncing all over the place since he’d first arranged the trip to Orlando. It was the holidays, the memories, everything, but after having been almost completely emotionless for a year, maybe her new emotionalism was actually an improvement, a good sign. Maybe it would force her to deal with him on more than a superficial level, to deal with Jay, and after that, maybe they could find a way to deal with each other without sex or anger as an excuse.

  13

  ERIN SIGNED THE RETAINER CHECK TO HANSEN. DOMINIC NEVER seemed to consider how hard she worked to make sure they had operating cash. It flowed out more easily than it flowed in, and December was the worst month for coming up with extra. Companies put off purchasing until the new year and t
he new operating budget. Nevertheless, Bree had added it to the Wednesday morning check run, silently laying the backup folder on Erin’s desk. Bree was always quiet, but she’d been more so lately.

  Erin didn’t have time to think about it. “Why now?” she asked Dominic. “WEU only just realized we were selling a through-coat gauge?” Yesterday morning, when Dominic showed her the letter, she hadn’t been in the correct state of mind to consider it. And last night, well, they didn’t talk at home.

  “Because we’re small potatoes to them.” He stood in her doorway, arms folded across his chest. “Until they noticed their loss in market share. It’s just bottom line.”

  “We should send them a letter and tell them our bottom line; that they don’t have a leg to stand on.”

  Dominic shook his head, his mouth grim. “The letter isn’t a legal threat. It’s a shot in the dark. We’re not engaging them in a pissing contest. We’ll let Hansen do the legwork. That’s what we’re paying him for.” He held his hand out for the check.

  “I don’t like it.” She should have insisted on talking to Hansen with Dominic.

  “This is the best way to handle it,” he reiterated.

  “All right, fine. Just don’t leave me out of the loop this time.”

  He bared his teeth. “Yes, Erin.”

  Yeah, she’d sounded petulant. But he was dictatorial. And she had work to do. She’d gotten through the mediation with Atul and Cam yesterday afternoon. They’d smiled, nodded their heads and agreed they’d work better together. She hadn’t believed them for a minute, but she’d give them a chance to prove her wrong before she took it another step. She hadn’t dealt with Matt, though. He’d gone home sick before she had a chance.

  So she went in search of him. DKG’s factory was one big room with polished concrete floors, work benches set apart by cloth partitions, shelving equipped with bins for parts storage, and a roll-up door at the far end for shipping and receiving. Heaters hung from the ceiling.

  Matt hunched over his bench. She didn’t think for a minute that he was so engrossed he didn’t hear her. He was a skinny, lanky kid with big ears, and he didn’t smile much, but he’d been a good worker until the last three months when his girlfriend moved in with him. He’d said it was to share expenses, but Erin had a feeling it was more about his girlfriend wanting to take the next step and Matt not knowing how to say he wasn’t ready.

  “Let’s grab a smoke,” she said. She didn’t smoke, but if someone else wanted to, it was up to them as long as they did it outside and didn’t toss their butts on the ground. The picnic table sat in the middle of a grassy area between their building and the one next door. Thankfully it hadn’t rained and the bench was dry. Facing out, she crossed her legs. Matt sat next to her. The sun warmed her. Monday and Tuesday had been rainy, but today was in the low seventies. The Bay Area was like that; every day a surprise.

  “Spill,” she said, “and don’t tell me nothing is going on because I checked Steve’s report and he’s turning back three out of every four units you work on.”

  Matt lit up and blew smoke in the opposite direction. “I’m not happy.”

  She wanted to laugh. Who the hell was happy? “You’ll be a lot unhappier if you don’t have a job.”

  He grimaced. “She just never lets me have anything my way.” She used to have a name, which had been said with a dreamy, boyish sigh. No more.

  “Are you making any compromises on your end?”

  “On everything. She even makes me smoke outside.”

  “I make you smoke outside.”

  “But she smokes, too.”

  “Maybe she doesn’t like how the smoke gets into everything, the curtains, the couch, the carpet.” Not to mention the ashtrays and the burn marks on the coffee table.

  “Whatever.” He shrugged his bony shoulders. “There’s other stuff.” He pulled on his earlobe, a nervous habit.

  “What else?” she prompted. It wasn’t her business, but from experience, she knew Matt had to get things off his chest before he’d start making changes.

  “She put slip covers on the sofa and chairs. Even the dining room chairs. Like I’m going to get them dirty.”

  “And?” It was best not to say that Matt’s jeans did look pretty dirty.

  He tugged on his other lobe. “She makes all the decisions, like what we’re going to have for dinner”—she wondered if his girlfriend did the cooking, in which case, she had a right to decide—“and what we’re going to watch on TV, and I hate shows like The Bachelor and Dancing with the Stars and all that crap.”

  She did not laugh. Because it was what every couple did, fight about stupid crap. Until you weren’t talking at all.

  Until you were so far apart you couldn’t even talk about your child.

  Erin stuffed down the thought. “Why don’t you tell her you’ll watch her show if she watches one of yours?”

  He stubbed his toe on the grass beneath the picnic bench. “She doesn’t listen to me.”

  “You have to take the bull by the horns, Matt, and tell her what you want, make sure she hears. Maybe you’ll find out there are things you’re not listening to either.”

  He made a scoffing sound in his throat.

  “Sometimes you have to figure out what it is they want and give it to them. Once they’re happy, you get what you want.”

  “Uh-huh,” he agreed, though he clearly didn’t get what she was saying.

  Fine, whatever, he needed to think about it for a while. “Only you can fix it, and only you can fix your work performance. We can’t have this kind of failure rate.”

  He stabbed his cigarette into the ashtray next to the table. “I know, Erin. I’ll do better. Thanks for listening.”

  He was easy to please, though she wasn’t sure she’d done a bit of good. His work would improve, at least for a few weeks, but if he didn’t do something about his home life, she’d be having the same talk again. She didn’t want to have to fire him.

  She stayed in the sun after Matt returned to work. Figure out what they want, give it to them, then you get what you want. Her problem was that she wasn’t sure what she needed. She wanted Dominic to handle his end of the business, but when he did it his way, she got pissed off over the results. It hadn’t always been that way. She used to butt out of his stuff, but now she’d developed her own dictatorial side. It wasn’t all him.

  But he sure could make demands when he wanted to.

  With her eyes closed and the sun’s warmth on her legs, images that had nothing to with Matt played across her eyelids. Dominic had been the one to set up all their dates, telling her what to do, what to wear, where to meet him, calling all the shots, giving her the orders. A stray thought made her smile, a naughty little idea. Maybe Dominic needed to be taught a lesson about his dictatorial side. Maybe he needed to be on the receiving end of a few orders. Just the thought made her hot. The irritation that had swept over her was vanquished by the lick of sexual heat. Sure she was trading one emotion for another, but this one was better, more powerful than anger.

  Dominic needed to be punished. And that could be so much more satisfying.

  HIS BLACKBERRY CHIRPED WITH A TEXT MESSAGE. HE READ:

  “I will book a hotel room for you on Friday night.”

  A room for just him? Dominic knew better than to question good fortune. Erin wanted to play a game. She had forgiven him. He typed back. “Okay.”

  “You will arrive at seven o’clock. You will shower and lay on the bed naked.”

  Wednesday. He had two days to wait. He didn’t know if he could make it. He wanted to ask her to book the room tonight, but he couldn’t risk spoiling things. She’d made a date. She’d engaged him. She wasn’t coming along for the ride; she was directing. He’d thought it would take weeks to get her to that point, especially after her blowup about the patent. Christ, she’d been furious. Now this. Another sample of her changeable moods and rocketing emotions. But this had to be a good thing.

  “I’ll
be there.” He didn’t ask where, hitting the keypad so fast he got some of the letters wrong and had to retype.

  Then he read her swift reply. “You will do everything I say, no questions asked. Do I make myself clear?”

  He smiled. His blood heated. He would do anything. For her, he had no limits. It was as if they were newly married again, hot for each other, as if he’d never fucked up their lives.

  He could never hope she’d forgive the unforgivable. But he could live with pretending.

  STANDING AT HER WINDOW THAT LOOKED OUT OVER THE PARKING lot, Bree wiped her eyes. Rachel could see her tearstained face in the reflection.

  “You need to tell Erin,” Rachel said in a soft voice.

  “No,” Bree answered without turning.

  “You’re going to have to tell her sometime.”

  “I won’t need to say anything.” Bree’s voice was a little stronger now.

  Rachel knew it was none of her business, but really, she couldn’t ignore Bree’s tears. All she’d done was walk into the office and point out that the address wasn’t complete on one of the checks. Running everything through the mail machine was Rachel’s job, and she double-checked the work.

  “You can’t avoid it forever.” She was becoming a mother hen, telling Erin not to blame herself for everything that went on at DKG, now offering Bree advice. It wasn’t like Rachel had her life in order. She barely made enough to cover the bills even with child support to help.

  “Oh, yes, I can.” This time Bree was adamant. She flipped her long black hair over her shoulder, turned. The only thing left of her tears was a small smudge of mascara below her eyelashes. Her dark eyes were clear. “I’m sorry about that. I just had a bad moment. It won’t happen again.”

  With that, she shut Rachel out, pulling her chair away from the desk and sitting down to tap on the keyboard. “I’ll correct the address in the file right now. Thanks for showing me.”