by Ashlee Price
I looked around but didn’t see anyone who looked like a billionaire CEO from Australia. With a shrug, I unrolled the sign I’d brought with the name Cane in bold letters and held it up. Besides a few incredulous looks from various travelers and security guards, I stood there without any response at all.
Damnit! He got tired of waiting and he’s in some nearby hotel suite, probably chewing off John’s ear right now. If I blew whatever deal they were cooking up, John’s going to have my ass on a spit and his wife will be sharpening up the carving knives.
Damnit!
But then a distant clapping leaked into my ears over the mumbled announcements and general muttering of conversations and greetings. I couldn’t be sure what it was, but I knew I wasn’t going to find the person I was looking for by standing at that gate holding a sign like some beggar.
I became aware of some kind of chant. It was getting louder, but it didn’t seem to have any words. Not a strike or a protest, I guessed. It was just a vague grunt, uttered by dozens of people at the same time. I took the escalator up to the next floor towards it. As I glided up to the top of the automated staircase, I could see that the source of the sound was the bar next to the Cinnabon.
Chapter 3
The place was packed, and everybody was raising their glasses, filled with beer or wine or cocktails, and swaying them back and forth in sloppy sync, a drunken rhythm they all seemed to enjoy.
“Oye!” they shouted, all at once, “oye!”
Then a single voice rose above them all, clear and strong and rolling with a foreign accent I presumed was Australian. For my sake I hoped it was Australian.
“We’ll make the cradles for to rock,” the voice sang in a sing-song melody reminiscent of an old sea chantey, “we’ll make the bed sheets for to tear!”
I stepped closer, and the man who commanded the voice came into clear view. He was tall, with a lean waste, broad chest and long, strong arms. He stood above the crowd with long, wavy brown hair cascading over a happy smile, strong cheeks, and an even stronger chin. He held up a big, icy flagon of beer, suds spilling over his hand.
“When all of the girls at Peter’s Head say, ‘The Diamond does appear!’” He shouted out, “Sing it with me, you know the words!”
I stood there amazed, and not only by the sight of this man with the crowd in the palm of his hand, leading them through a song I suspected most of them had never heard before. I knew I hadn’t.
“Rise up my voice,” he and half the room sang.
The other half answered together: “Oye!”
What amazed me the most was that this was the man I’d been with in my dream. I recognized him with exact certainty. There was something about the face, the hair, the overall exuberance of the man which I could recognize from a distance not only of several yards, but of several days. It both chilled me to the bone and warmed me to my very core.
He and his half of the room sang, “Let your hearts never fail!”
The others raised their glasses. “Oye!”
“When that bonnie ship the Diamond goes out fishing for the whale!”
The white whale, I couldn’t help but think, the big one.
He and the crowd repeated, “When that bonnie ship the Diamond goes out fishing for the whaaaaaaaale!”
The man called out, “God bless ya, mates!” It sounded more like “moites” in his thick Australian accent, but the cheer of the crowd was a universal language, and their acceptance of him was total and complete.
I had to get to him before anybody else did, and that wasn’t going to be easy. I pushed my way through the crowd, once again feeling my height and my slight weight, forever swimming against the human current. I slithered through two frat boys, one of whom gave me a hard pinch on my ass as I passed.
I spun hard, grabbing the guy’s hand and glaring at him. He wore a shocked expression and stalks of dusty blond hair over his steroid-swollen face. “It’s the post-Weinstein era, you dick! Back off!” There was a hushed disquiet around me as I turned and pushed my way with even more strength and determination.
He saw me coming and greeted me with a slightly inebriated smile on his face. “Oye, what a fine little Sheila we got here!”
“My name’s Sheryl, actually. You’re Langdon Cane?”
“Fah’s I remembah!” His accent was striking, hard to understand at first. But the more he spoke, the more comprehensible he became, the more American he sounded. “G’day, Chah’l!”
“I’m here from Alister Fashions, to drive you to your suite at the Baccarat.”
“Yeah?” Langdon looked around at the big crowd. All eyes were on him and me. “Alright, well, no rush! Pull up a few pints and sing us a tune, eh?”
“Mister Cane, we really should get back into the city. With the holiday traffic…”
“Exactly! Why chahge into that mess when we’re having such a good time, nah?”
The crowd cheered for him and booed me, eyes glassy, hands waving me off, expletives and obscene suggestions tossed up over the crowd and into the corners of my ears. Langdon turned and held his flattened hand out to calm them.
“Alright, mates, take ‘er easy, she’ll be apples.” He looked around, scratching his handsome, stubbled chin. “How ‘bout this, gang… a good ol’ fashioned chug-off!”
The crowd cheered, clinking their glasses and chanting, “Chug-off, chug-off, chug-off, chug-off!”
“Wait, hold on,” I said, louder than I realized, temporarily squelching everybody’s enthusiasm. “I can’t sit around here getting drunk. I’m the driver!”
The crowd booed me again, shaking their heads and snickering.
Langdon said, “Woite a minute, Sheila—”
“Sheryl,” I said, noting the impatience in my own voice but unable to control it.
The crowd threw up their hands with a big, communal “Ooooohhhhhhhh!” I felt like I was back in Brooklyn.
Langdon quieted them and turned to me. “You mean to tell me… you’re droivin’ sobah? You’ll get us all killed, dahlin!” The crowd broke out laughing; with him, at me.
I wasn’t used to that, and I didn’t feel like taking it. I’d already come within minutes of losing my job, so I was ready to let it go rather than be humiliated by this douchebag from down under.
“Alright,” I said, “you and me, two pints, first one down. I win, we leave.”
The crowd fell silent. Langdon looked me over with a gamesman’s smile. “And if I win?”
The crowd released a drawn-out “Ooooooowwwwwwwww!”
I wasn’t sure what to offer, but I knew what I wasn’t offering. “Then we’ll stay as long as you like. Sound fair?”
Langdon gave it some thought. “As long as I like?”
I took a deep breath, knowing it was too late to back out. “That’s right.” Then I realized that an airport bar would probably stay open 24/7, and my heart sank.
“Okay, Sheryl, you got a bet.” The crowd cheered and started doing some betting of its own. “But,” Langdon said, “not with me.”
“Oh, really,” I said, suddenly flush with confidence, “bit of an empty barrel?” It was a phrase for a boastful bluff, one I knew he’d understand.
He smiled. “Dahlin’, I could drink you under the table, then drink you, and then drink the table!” The crowd laughed and clapped. “You need somebody more your size.” Langdon looked out over the crowd. “Who’s up for it?”
Hands shot up, voices shouted out, and I knew right away I’d gotten in over my head.
The big frat guy I’d shot down just a few minutes before barreled up to the bar, the crowd parting to give him a wide berth.
“Me,” he said, eyes fixed on mine, as if I were the prize were he to win.
Langdon said, “What’s ya noime, moite?”
“Clark,” he said with a slow, wide grin. “But they call me Suds.”
The crowd whooped and cheered. Langdon looked at me and I looked right back at him. I could tell he was skeptical. This was a
two-hundred-and-fifty-pound football frat rapist who drank kegs for breakfast and ate girls like me for lunch.
I hadn’t had a beer since college, two years before, and everybody in the bar seemed to know it.
So I said, “Set ‘em up.” The crowd cheered and the bartender brought out two big mugs of beer, iced cold and dripping with suds. The glass mug was heavier in my grip than I’d thought it would be, almost slipping out and shattering, along with my ego and my chances of getting away with Langdon Cane, not to mention my job.
Suds lifted his mug close to his mouth, lips parted, eyes on his beer as he prepared to put me in my place.
Langdon said, “One!”
I let my fingers trace the handle of the beer mug, not even lifting it off the table. All eyes were on me; Langdon’s, Suds’s, everyone’s.
With Suds’s confounded eyes on me, I made my move. While my left hand stroked the handle, my right hand reached up, pulled my gray jacket open and, in nearly the same swift move, unbuttoned my top blouse button.
Everybody but me and Suds cried out, “Two!”
My blouse opened easily and I slid my fingers in under my bra, rubbing little circles around my nipple to the gasps of the stunned crowd.
But Langdon wasn’t stunned, not even fazed. He didn’t even sound impressed. “Three,” he said and nothing else.
The crowd started cheering and hooting and calling and shouting and whooping and hollering, a frantic explosion of released tension, sound and fury.
But Suds just sat there transfixed, eyes locked on my fingers, my semi-exposed breast, the gentle heaving of my upper body. I slowly picked up my beer and took a long, slow slip, letting a trickle of white foam run down my chin, my neck, down to my breasts.
“Suds, man,” his friend shouted out, “what’re you doin’, man? We got five hundred riding on this!”
I tipped my glass up and back, the cold beer much tastier than that I remembered from my college years. I took my time to savor it. Suds was out of it, Langdon was impressed, and that was something I wanted to enjoy slowly and thoroughly.
The crowd screamed louder, some people slapping Suds on his fatty shoulders and shaking him.
“Drink, Suds,” his buddy hollered at him as if trying to save his life, “drink, you fat bastard, drink!”
Even as I kept drinking, lowering my mug to take a moment to lick my lips, my eyes were fixed on Suds. He almost got the mug to his lips, but I could see that it was quivering in his chubby grip. His eyes stayed locked on me as I returned the icy mug to my lips, just a half of it left to go.
I tried not to let it show, but I grabbed a glance out of the corner of my eye at Langdon. He was locked on to my strategy, along with everybody else in the room. But I was sure that none of them could appreciate it as much as Langdon himself—because he was the one I’d designed it for.
Winning the contest was a simple matter of lifting that mug, lighter and lighter, and taking down the last refreshing droplets of victory.
I smacked the glass mug down onto the table and the crowd went wild, some balking and booing, others cheering for me and my underdog victory, Langdon loudest among them.
Suds was still sitting there. The untouched mug finally slipped out of his grip and crashed to the table to spill his beer all over him, sticking his T-shirt to his fat gut. The crowd laughed and pointed.
I turned to Langdon. “I believe a deal’s a deal.”
He smiled easily and pulled out a hundred dollar bill, dropping it on the table behind him. He put out his elbow and I slipped my hand into the crook. He said, “I believe it is,” and we made our way out of the bar and across the terminal toward my car.
***
“Well, that was quite a show,” Langdon said. “And I’d heard you American girls were a little uptight.”
“Maybe compared to you Aussies, but I remember a trick or two from college.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” He offered the line up with a side of sexy smile which I failed to ignore. “You work for John Allistah, yeah?”
“Sure do,” I said. “Just over a year now.”
“As a driver? You seem like you’re capable of a heel of a lot more’n that!” My smile answered for me. “Ever think about living out in Australia? Plenty of work for a gal like you.”
Is he offering me a job? We just met! These Aussies really are off the rails!
“I consider myself lucky to have this job. I haven’t been out there looking for other work… much much less in Australia.”
“Something wrong with the land down undah?”
“Oh, no, I didn’t mean it like that. I’ve never been there, so I really couldn’t say.”
“Oh, you’d love it, Sheryl. Sydney’s one of the great cities of the world, swim the Great Barrier Reef, driving through the outback. Gotta be careful, though; everything out there wants to kill ya.”
We arrived at the car and climbed in. “Welcome to my world.”
Langdon got into the front seat, taking me a little by surprise. He looked at me, then glanced at the empty back seat. “You don’t mind, do you? I hate the feeling of being chauffeured around like some dandy.”
“No, it’s… it’s fine.” He tossed his alligator-skin attaché case into the back seat. “Um, Mr. Cane—”
“Please, Sheryl, call me Langdon.”
There was a little nervous tension in the car. Up close, he was even more handsome, and his charisma really filled the car. His shoulders were back, his hair long, his face chiseled with a wry grin and a furrowed brow; and that was just everything above that incredible chest, broad and athletic, leading down to a tight physique without an inch of fat, and beneath that…
“Sheryl?”
I looked back up into his eyes, hoping my guilt and shame weren’t too obvious. But I was quick to say, “Oh, um… Langdon… didn’t you have any luggage? Did we leave it back at the bar?”
“Nah, I never pack luggage.”
“Never?”
He shrugged. “Don’t like draggin’ it around.”
“But… what about clothes, and—?”
“Got necessities in the case,” Langdon said. “I just buy new clothes wherever I am, then ship them home.” It made perfect sense for anyone who could afford it, he explained. “This way I’m always dressed for the weather, what most shops sell is seasonal. Everything always looks good and new, and I never have to go clothes shopping at home.”
I had to admit, “Seems like you beat the system.”
“I sure did, Sheryl,” he said, turning to glance out the window, “a thousand times over.”
We drove on, the sparkling lights of Manhattan burning up the dark horizon. Langdon looked over at me, his eyes tracing my body. “I hear the scandals are flyin’ ‘round the U.S. like bats on fire.”
I broke out in a little chuckle at his colloquial expression.
“I guess so,” I said. “I suppose it’s always been that way: powerful men taking advantage of their power.”
“And beautiful girls taking advantage of their beauty.”
“Just because a woman looks a certain way, that doesn’t mean she should be mistreated. Is that the way you do things… down under?”
“Not me, Sheryl, never dance with the staff. No reason for it.” I didn’t have to ask him to explain. A man like him could have any woman he wanted, for as long as he wanted, and probably did. “How ‘bout ol’ J.A.? He ever dip his pen in the company ink?”
“Not as far as I’m concerned,” I said, pretending that employment was the reason John and I had never gotten together. Giving it some thought, I didn’t think it would have stopped me if there hadn’t been so many other complications.
“That so? Must be some other lucky guy, then.” I knew what he was asking, and I flattered myself into thinking that I knew why. Before I had a chance to answer, Langdon seemed to read my expression, using a sixth sense most people had no access to. “No,” he said, “it can’t be that you’re not dating anyone?”
“‘Fraid not,” I said with a little sigh.
Langdon shrugged again. “I guess that makes sense.” Reading my vague sense of indignation, he explained, “Gorgeous thing, standards gotta be pretty high. Girl like you, she won’t take it from just any guy.”
My tide of pique was ebbing in the warm sunlight of flattery. “Well, I am pretty picky about who I date, that’s true. But I’m not gorgeous… and I’m not a thing.”
“Didn’t mean nothin’ by it, Sheryl. Just impressed, that’s all.”
We drove on in a protracted silence. I wasn’t sure if I’d shattered the mood or not, turned a potential friend and professional contact into an estranged and embittered enemy. It was the opposite of what I’d intended, but it wouldn’t have been the first time that happened and it probably wouldn’t be the last.
We pulled up to the Baccarat Hotel, gleaming with glass and metal, red-jacketed valets springing into action as I came to a stop. “You’re all registered. Just go up to the front desk and they’ll give you the key card.”
“Great, let’s go.”
“Oh, um, gee, that sounds great, Mr. Ca—Langdon, but we just met, and I really don’t think I should just follow you up to your room like that.”
Langdon threw out a hearty laugh. “I didn’t mean that, Sheryl. But what time is it? Barely nine o’clock. The night’s still young.” I was relieved to hear him say that; I’d still been a little nervous that I might have insulted him just a few minutes before. Two bitchy retorts in a row would be a clear message, one I didn’t want to send. So I smiled, and he read it rightly. Matching my smile with an even wider one of his own, Langdon threw the car door open and said, “Alright then, let’s hit the town!”
Chapter 4
We picked up Langdon’s key cards and the front desk had his attaché case sent up. Langdon crooked his arm at the elbow and I slipped in my own much smaller, thinner arm.
We walked out onto West Fifty-Third and then hit Fifth Avenue, lit up with red and white Christmas lights. There were elaborate displays in every shop window—trains running through foam mountains draped with white felt, robot Santas sitting in rocking chairs, forever checking their endless lists, a quill to check off the naughty and the nice.