Love Me Later

by Libby Rice

  None of them ever ate. His murmured compliments didn’t disabuse them of the notion, but in reality, he wanted healthy. He wouldn’t take a woman to a dinner he didn’t want her to eat or prepare her a meal he didn’t want her to enjoy.

  Miranda joined him as he slid their golden breakfast from the pan. Wearing a short satin robe that showcased the smooth perfection of her long legs, she cast a pensive eye toward the food before reaching for a mug of coffee. Black, of course. Against his will, his mind’s eye pictured curving hips and high breasts, the kind of lush figure that couldn’t thrive on caffeine alone.

  He sighed, digging in to both breakfasts. Once, he’d taken his chances with a woman like that. The result had been an unjust, but no less agonizing, stint in a notorious prison.

  Relationships after Scarlet had taken on a decidedly impersonal cast. Each decrease in his emotional barometer was met with an increase in the physical “perfection” of his next girlfriend, as though his subconscious understood that less body fat and more augmentation were safer choices for a guy who didn’t want to care.

  Lately, though, the string of sterile exchanges left him cold. Ethan loathed disappointing a beautiful woman by ending their several-week fling, but neither was he prepared to maintain a liaison that existed merely for show. She got press as the starlet on his arm, along with gifts and confidence. He gave and received fleeting physical pleasures, nothing more.

  He cracked his jaw on another impossible thought. Opening and closing his mouth to release the tension, he pictured last Sunday’s brunch—Bloody Marys and eggs Benedict all around. Two bloodies in, a well-heeled family had rolled in with twins, literally trundled through the café with a stroller the size of a Volkswagen. He’d found himself ogling the kids, his desire for more than work and sex and boxing assuming the face of those two babies and their doting parents.

  With a grim expression to match his thoughts, he started in with Miranda, hoping to let her down easy.

  Less than an hour later, she slammed out of the apartment, leaving him with an overwhelming sense of relief. And an extra omelet. C’est la vie.

  The sappy urges fled with the bang of the door. He grabbed a battered NYU sweatshirt and was on the street in less than two minutes. The high life may have desensitized him to indulgence, but he’d never take his freedom—the physical ability to stand and walk out if and when he liked—for granted. Amazing how he relished knowing his doors and windows only locked from the inside.

  Ethan wound his way west and then north on Lexington Avenue, not stopping until he stood under the cerulean blue of Grand Central Station’s astronomical mural. There, he found a spot against the buffed stone of the main concourse, where he leaned back and watched, his manner and posture casual.

  With the jeans and sweatshirt and ball cap, he was rarely recognized despite the ever-increasing number of magazine articles and television interviews. He did his best to retain a degree of anonymity, allowing him to melt into the city and watch other nameless people.

  Ethan eyed the concourse, nonchalant, no camera in sight. Whether for business or pleasure, train passengers immersed themselves in their personal experiences. They embarked and disembarked, in both work and play, with a feeling of obscurity that let them sink into their authentic selves. The people they were when no one was watching.

  A living city of stimulus.

  A middle-aged man strode past. He wore a dark trench, the standard MBA coat. Ethan spied the leather strap of a briefcase slung across his chest. The man talked on a mobile phone pressed between his ear and shoulder while he hammered at the touchscreen of another device with his fingers. An Atavos smartphone, no less.

  Good choice—Ethan-made and Ethan-manufactured.

  Multitasking got the best of the man at the end of the concourse. He slammed into a young woman who rushed into the terminal from the other direction. Both phones went flying, and the woman was thrown off the points of her high heels. She reeled backward and slammed into the wall.

  The man dove for his phones, not the woman. Only after he’d secured his electronics did he take a moment to apologize or to see if the lady had been injured. She accepted his proffered hand, rubbing the back of her skull as he steadied her on her feet. When she looked up in mild reproach, Ethan froze. He jerked his gaze away before returning for another look.

  Not her. For a moment, the blond hair and delicate calves that tapered to designer-shod feet had strung him tight. But no, Scarlet Leore wouldn’t be caught dead in a common train station, and this woman’s features, while pretty, were too coarse—the nose a tad wide and the lips a smidgen thin. Attractive, but not his idea of perfect.

  Ethan shook his head in a rapid-fire thought dump, trying to tamp the rage that rose every time Scarlet invaded his thoughts. There were certain things he didn’t do anymore. He didn’t cut his own hair. He didn’t wash his clothes in the sink. And he didn’t think, wonder, or worry about Scarlet Leore. She’d lost those privileges around the time she’d accused him of assault, robbery, and attempted murder, which meant that when a distracted commuter happened to trip her pseudo-look-alike in a train station, he didn’t break the guy’s arms and leave him writhing on the tile.

  On second look, the man was probably a lawyer—the gadgets, the coat, the briefcase. He looked a bit like the public defender who’d extracted Ethan from an island prison nine years ago. Back then, the young Ron Michael had come across as an occasional gunner, with big glossy lawyer-teeth and a breezy here-today-gone-tomorrow smile. He’d so fit with the lawyer-on-a-billboard set, the image had stuck. In the throes of fury and panic, Ethan hadn’t been able to pinpoint whether Billboard had become a public defender out of a deep-seated belief in the right to competent counsel or out of a tight legal market and the want of a job. But Ron’s initially lackadaisical attitude had gradually shifted. With time and an inhuman reserve of patience, Ethan and Billboard had pieced together the unexpected reality of Scarlet’s attack.

  Another had eventually taken Ethan’s place inside that cramped cell.

  Scarlet had descended with an immediate apology. He shouldn’t have been surprised when she’d tried to plaster over her “mistake” with dollar signs. Trembling, her voice small and almost afraid, she’d handed him a check and waited for him cave in to her artifice. But Scarlet Leore had sat before a grand jury and pointed the finger at him. No amount of money could erase that kind of wreckage.

  One look at her proposed payoff and vitriol had poured out of him like acid from a drum. With each word, her face had paled another shade, until he’d exhausted the anger and the futile need to fight back against a woman and a system that had mangled his plans to rise from the gutter. His last image of Scarlet was one of shock, a diminished liar sinking to her seat and re-pocketing a check that was supposed to have paved her way, as usual. The intervening years had passed without another glimpse of her fragile, yet deceitful, facade.

  Bending his mind’s path by sheer dint of will, Ethan pulled his thoughts from Scarlet’s destruction and returned to the debacle at the end of the terminal. He knew exactly why a man, who had accidentally mauled a gorgeous blonde, would rescue his phones before the woman. All of life moved through one or the other of those devices. The guy couldn’t afford to lose them. They were him.

  Ethan pictured a product that would simplify the stranger’s balancing act, letting his attention bounce around the cavernous hall. Some stopped to review the train schedules, and others plowed head-down through the chaos. A student sat in the corner, bobbing her head to the ear buds connected to her phone, while she traced an index finger across the screen of a tablet perched on her lap. Nearby, a young professional gripped a wireless headset wrapped around one ear, yelling louder with each attempt to be heard.

  The technologies meant to simplify life now ran it ragged.

  Consumers needed one device to simultaneously manage multiple phone numbers and accounts, one product to integrate the processing and memory capabilities of a computer wit
h the password-protected firewall features of a sophisticated network.

  One device to do it all. Atavos’s next giant.

  Pushing away from the wall, Ethan wound his way back through the concourse, up the curving marble staircase, and through the maze of shops and restaurants on the upper floor. As he strolled, he continued to observe, but now his thoughts tripped over logistics.

  Atavos had grown rapidly. The conglomerate was divided into a number of business groups. His new brainchild—One—would go to the mobile solutions group, Parlann Technologies.

  Ethan reached for his own phone, dialing his secondin-command. After Ron Michael had helped prove the truth that had won Ethan his freedom, Ron had pulled an about-face on criminal defense. From that day forward, the two of them had worked side-by-side to build Atavos. The same man who’d extracted Ethan from the cell block had accompanied him to the pinnacle of the business world. Today, Ron acted as Atavos’s general counsel and president of the Parlann division.

  Ethan’s smile dawned after the first ring and grew wider at hearing Ron’s harried, “Now what?” chime in after the second.

  His and Billboard’s time had come again.

  ******

  Scarlet cocked her head far to the right, then to the left. She stifled an urge stand on her hands for another look at Lissa’s largest painting to date. The image morphed slightly with each vantage point, more a story than a still. With little logical underpinning and no attempt to reproduce an illusion of visible reality, Lissa had created a work of art that personified her spirit, an exquisite departure from the mundane. In Scarlet’s opinion, her best work yet.

  The gallery-and-frou-frou-dinner scene provided an endless array of client-entertainment options. Tonight proved no exception. The air of the Gray Halls Gallery sizzled with energy. Art patrons and serious collectors hovered around each of ten paintings displayed against a blood-red backdrop. Perhaps this would be the show to ignite Lissa’s career.

  Scarlet strolled the room, cataloguing snippets of praise from the types of people who could afford Lissa’s work, men and women—many on obvious dates—who’d dressed midweek-cocktail, dripping in jewels that exceeded the cost of a mid-sized sedan.

  “True art is incomprehensible…”

  “Breathtaking. A subtle fusion of chaos with order…”

  “…rather than any implied meaning or message, we’re encouraged to consider the visual qualities of the work. It’s so direct and incisive in its dissection of the mind…”

  “A stunning achievement. You know, Ms. Blanc has been on the rise…”

  “…a lucent mirror of our collective subconscious…”

  Scarlet circled around to Lissa, hyper-aware of her stag status and keen to share the moment with another living being. As she approached, she noted a certain bruising of the air surrounding her friend. The graceful lines of Lissa’s neck were frozen, and her hands clenched and unclenched at her sides.

  Lissa faced an extraordinarily attractive man. In distressed jeans with disheveled blond hair, the man looked like a Tommy Bahama model, only all grown up. Lissa’s proximity to a gorgeous male was par for the course. The weird part lay in the rigidity of her shoulders and stance.

  Scarlet eased forward, rising slightly on her toes to avoid a telltale heel-click when Lissa’s retort flamed in the sterile room. “You’ve called my work drivel. D-r-i-v-e-l.” Without moving so much as a hair, she added, “Scarlet, do tell me why I should hear this asshole out.”

  Scarlet reared back, caught in the act of spying and on the fence about whether to answer or plead the fifth.

  Cool eyes met hers over Lissa’s shoulder, “Yes…, Scarlet, is it? Let’s hear why your friend might want to listen.”

  Let me count the reasons. Cole’s reserve reminded Scarlet of a long-ago night in a Mexican restaurant in Little Italy, when a tantalizing man hadn’t wanted to, but hadn’t been able to resist, devouring her with his eyes. If things hadn’t gone so wrong, she still believed they might have gone fantastically right. She wouldn’t let Lissa pull a Scarlet and fuck up that kind of attraction.

  He wants you from the Louboutins up, Liss. And every woman deserves that. Even me.

  Cole’s gaze stilled, a smear of ice covering the blue depths beyond. “I suppose if that doesn’t convince her, nothing will.”

  Huh? Looking around, Scarlet realized her thought had tumbled out. In words. Every last embarrassing one of them. Yes. Way. Mustgetoutmore.

  Lissa turned, ever so slowly, until Scarlet stood in the line of fire. Now she would die by Lissa’s hand, a casualty of an art show gone wrong. All over a bit of vicarious yearning. Pressing the backs of her hands to her flushed cheeks, Scarlet focused on a nearby placard. The distraction didn’t work.

  “Really?” Lissa said dryly. “We’re getting you a date.”

  The taunt pierced Scarlet’s armored detachment. Strike getting out more. Stay in and get laid. She’d give “come early, come often” whole new meaning.

  Cole cut in—thank God—all nonchalant confidence. “I received a grant, a large one.” He paused, though Scarlet secretly didn’t think he needed the effect. “That means funding, marketing, name recognition, and an end to all… this.”

  Lissa’s teeth clenched, and she seethed, “Don’t say anything you’ll regret.”

  He looked around lazily, unimpressed, as if regret were impossible. “You’ll paint reality as I’ve photographed it, not abstract.” He shrugged, and Scarlet got the distinct impression the man wasn’t nearly as detached as he’d have them believe. Then he added, “Perhaps it’s time. Hmm?”

  Cole didn’t need to ask Scarlet twice. “Lissa,” she said, all sweetness and light, or at least as innocuous as her inner eavesdropper could manage, “you have to do it.” The time for missed chances is over. For me, too.

  Lissa bristled. “Where’re we going?”

  We. Scarlet smiled at the slip.

  Cole’s eyes went unfathomably dark for a guy getting his way. “To my estate in Colorado for training. Then to the wilds of India, city girl.” He slipped his card between Lissa’s fingers. “Don’t forget your shots.”

  As Cole worked his way toward the door, shaking hands and greeting the people—mostly women—who’d begun cluster nearby, they both stood still, staring at the sea of bodies that parted in his wake.

  Finally, Lissa turned her head, and Scarlet saw terror-tinged excitement gleaming in those almond eyes.

  And she knew. “You’re going.” In Scarlet’s fevered imagination, the gamble would bring her friend success, acclaim, adventure. With a wave of optimism, she realized Lissa’s life verged on change because she refused to let fear win the day.

  Perhaps it was time to follow suit.

  ******

  Ethan reached toward the glass encasing his office high above the city when he smelled his assistant behind him. He knew Susan neared every time he started contemplating whether he’d died and been reincarnated as a gingerbread house. Turning, he leaned against the window in an effort to escape the cloud of perfume that followed his assistant wherever she went. She smoked three packs a day. All the sweet cologne in the world wasn’t erasing that simple fact. It just made her reek like a smoking scone, heavy on the vanilla. He grimaced, keeping his thoughts to himself. Maybe another day.

  Gesturing toward the far wall, she asked, “New pictures?” Susan didn’t do friendly. But today she made an effort at conversation.

  He pointed to the corner. “My mother’s on the left. She finally agreed to move to the city from Chicago.” He’d gotten antsy, so he’d sent a full-time caretaker to his mom’s doorstep in Wauconda, Illinois. The young, pretty nurse had presented a card on arrival. “Happy Monday, Mom,” Ethan had written. “This nice lady could be part-time if you lived much, much closer.” The implication hadn’t been lost on his mother. Keen on her independence, she’d called the moving company, also provided in the card, within the day.

  “The others?”

  “C
ame with the frames.” He frowned at the stock photos. The pasty wedding and boating scenes provided decent business ice-breakers. His fake niece made a beautiful bride, and his imaginary nephew showed promise at yacht racing.

  “You want to do this standing up?” he asked.

  “Never,” she replied, her tone bland. “We’ll sit, like the civilized person I am.”

  Holding his somber expression, Ethan swept a hand toward a sitting area situated in the corner of his office, where comfortable lambskin chairs and a matching couch beckoned for a nap. “Ladies first.”

  She didn’t move. “Mr. Michael is here.” A sly smile threatened behind the set line of her mouth. So much for playing nice. “He’s been waiting approximately fifteen minutes.”

  So Billboard camped in the lobby while Ethan played hostage to his diminutive assistant. I should fire this woman.

  But he wouldn’t. Like Billboard, Susan had been with him since the beginning, and she’d probably be with him till the end. Susan acted the bitch, but she was also brilliant, discrete, and loyal. A prime example of what he demanded—the best.

  Plus, an ugly divorce and two rowdy boys would turn anyone mean. Both young men were in college now, but the reprieve hadn’t lightened her demeanor. The dragon, apparently, meant to linger.

  He returned her loyalty with an astronomical salary and, to her face, playing the hard-ass. It gave her another challenge to power through with a stiff upper lip. Her specialty.

  Susan handed him a shiny binder with an inch of paperwork tucked inside. The first page read, “One—Supplier Scouting—Hong Kong.” While Susan would happily keep Ethan from other pursuits, she never wasted his time. “You’re scheduled for breakfast in Hong Kong on Monday at nine a.m. local time. A car will pick you up, so look for your driver, who will be holding an Atavos sign, in the arrivals lobby.”

  Pointing to the binder, she added, “That’s a copy of your itinerary and hotel arrangements. Behind that, you’ll see my research on Mr. ‘Michael’ Wong Wai Kay. While Mr. Wong is Chinese, his Cantonese habits and customs are dominant. He’s a master negotiator, but in the slow and methodical way that is common in Asia. Punctuality is expected and respected, so, Mr. Big Shot, don’t be fashionably late like you generally are in Europe. Mr. Wong is notoriously detail oriented. Be prepared to discuss the finer points of the deal. You’ll be drinking a lot of tea during the day. No sugar or cream. At night, you’ll switch to something much stronger. Mr. Wong is a traditionalist, which means you should expect at least one lavish banquet. Be prepared to reciprocate.”