by Tara Lynn
Something wasn't right. I leaned in, but she ducked her eyes.
“As Kerry says,” Phil spoke up from the other end, “we're all here to serve. And I think all of the prodigies in this room share your view. Grow or die.”
“Right.”
I tried to lift Kerry with my gaze, but it didn't work. There was my foot, of course, but that seemed far from the right gesture for the moment. Phil kept talking though.
“So our team will be led by Leo Ginsberg. He's actually headed to Harvard Business School later this year, but you'll get to hire him while he's still cheap.” Phil chuckled.
“It'll be an honor to help you, Mr. Stone,” a round, energetic voice said.
I glanced over. Leo was a solemn ginger boy with a block face and glasses. He looked smart, but that wasn't the point of all this.
“Leo, you sound like a swell guy and all, but I'm a Wharton man myself. I was actually wondering if the team leadership could fall to-”
A sharp little heel struck me in the calf. I bit my lip. Kerry had scribbled a giant “No” facing me on her sheet.
“Actually,” I said, swallowing my tongue. “Never mind, Leo. I think you'll do an amazing job.”
I surveyed the entire room. “In fact, I'm sure you'll all do an amazing job.”
The smiles on their faces were genuine now, from their eyes to their ears. Why in the world was I not seeing it on the one face that mattered?
I pulled my phone. “Phil,” I said. “Would you mind if I had the room? I've got a small conference to hold.”
“Of course, Mr. Stone.” He and the consultants scattered to their feet. Kerry tried, but I weighed her hand down with mine. The edges of her eyes simmered, but that didn't stress me. I just wanted to know why.
Phil hustled the consultants out, then waited at the door.
“I'm gonna need Miss Martin present for notes,” I said.
“Ah,” he shot her a last look, then shut the door.
I ducked down into Kerry's vision. “Are you alright?”
Her words came through gritted teeth. “Get you hand off me.”
“What?” I tore my palm away. “Sorry, sorry, did I hurt you?”
She yanked back, crashing her chair into others further down the table. She strangled her armrests and just sat huffing at me.
I had seriously fucked something up here.
“Tell me what I did, darlin'.”
Her eyes condensed to coals.
“Am I a human to you?” she asked.
“What?”
“Am I a human or just some toy?”
“You're not a toy!” I wheeled around the corner, but she clattered her chair chain further back and I stopped. “I respect the hell out of you. You're more real than any other girl I've met.”
She shook her head. “I always knew there was something off about you. It didn't click until I heard the word ‘billionaire,’ but it makes so much sense now. What I do - my job, my life. It’s all just a game to you.”
“It's not.”
“No? Then why did you march in here and take over my life?”
“That wasn't my aim. I thought if you were too busy to see me, then I could bring myself to you.”
Her eyes flared wider. “So this job is all BS? You wasted a couple hundred grand just to have me in arm's reach?”
“The job's completely real.” I pulled open my laptop. Fuck, was I going to have to write this girl a powerpoint to show her what she was doing to me?
Just my luck, the presentation crashed on me.
“You seemed like a decent guy.” She was speaking to herself. “You treated your men well. You tried to understand their work. Heck, I thought you were smart. And now you’re wasting company money trying to buy me.”
“Habibi Solar is real. The project is real and so is my acquisition. I came here with real work. I just thought it'd be fun if I could get you out to the Middle East with me.”
That stopped her sulk, if only by igniting her. Her skin burned like lava against the dark leather seat. She looked like a goddess in her rage.
“This isn't fun, Deacon. This is my place of work. This is my livelihood.”
“I understand. Trust me, darlin', I do.”
“No, you don't.” She spat, edging in closer. “How could you? You were handed the keys to the world the day you were born. I had to fight to even get the freedom to think my own thoughts.”
“What?” I had no idea what she was on about now. “Listen, it wasn't as easy as you think for me, either. I'm a fighter just like you.”
“Not a fair fighter.” She sank back in her seat. “It worked so hard to get this job. It took me two years to get choice assignments, but I did it on my own. No family to help me, no money to back me, just pure hard work. And I wouldn't have it any other way. Now you swoop in, and act like you're god’s gift by forcing me to be yours.”
“I'm not! This is an international assignment. That'd be a boon to your career no matter which way you cut it.” I held a hand to my heart. “Say the word and I'll take you off though. I promise. I overstepped here. I see that.”
She laughed harsh and high. “It’s too late for that, now. People are already watching the two of us. They’re analysts. If I skip on this 'awesome international assignment,' people will figure out why. Suddenly I'm the office slut.”
I rubbed my forehead, my world dissolving as she laid bare the truth of what I'd done. Yeah, I had considered her career, but I had put my desires first. It'd be bad enough if that was all there was to it, but by the molten tremble in her brown eyes, I’d clearly hit on something deeper. Something dark and wrong.
“What should I do?” I asked.
She rolled back towards me, her flower scent wilted over that of my own dawning sweat. “Don't worry, I'll do your job. I'm damn good at what I do. But that's all I'll be doing for you. The only time you'll be seeing me is when I'm in the office.”
My heart turned to a prune, but I nodded. “Whatever you say.”
She clutched her dark binder against her chest, eyes tight in another swell of anger. “You’re going to listen to me from now on? Good. Forget about putting me in your cage. Don’t ever come near me again.”
She turned and clipped out as professionally as she had entered, shutting me in alone as she left. Only the buzzing lights filled the silence.
I sat under the glow of the projector, taking it in, basking in the cold echo of what I had wrought.
CHAPTER NINE
Kerry
I sat alone in a spacious exterior office, willing the financial numbers on my laptop to tell me their story. My nerdy brain usually assembled them all nice and neat for me, but now it looked like just a jumble of digits. This must be what normal people saw.
I sighed and looked out at the large pond down at ground level. The sun would have made the rippling waters blinding, but the tinted windows kept it cool and calming. This was a nice office. It'd take a while to get it working inside Stone Holdings.
Lucky me. I'd gotten it for spreading my legs.
Deacon could spin it any way he wanted. He could even mask it by giving my whole team their own rooms like this. But I saw the snide looks I got at our evening team meetings now. The whispers that disappeared under the a/c’s whir when I entered a room.
They were the best analysts in the company. And it didn't take a lot of analysis to figure out what had happened.
My hands were clenched so hard just thinking about it that my nails dug into my palm. Yeah, this wasn't calming me down any.
Maybe sinking one of these fists into Deacon's smarmy face would. It was almost too bad he hadn't been around the whole week we'd been working here. He hadn’t attended a single meeting, just sent in a vice president from his in-house accounting team.
No, it was a good thing he wasn’t around. Even after years of deconditioning, I couldn't trust I wouldn't slowly just defer to his seniority.
Even if I didn’t, socking a client wasn’t exactly going
to get people to stop talking.
Ok, even if I hit him in private, it wasn’t like I could crack the powerful cliffs of his cheek. I'd just end up cupping his face.
That'd just give him an excuse to scoop me up in his arms. He'd probably punish me for it, right here on the desk. It wouldn't matter at all to him that our winding silhouettes would be obvious to anyone who walked past the fogged glass walls. He’d do whatever he wanted to me.
Someone rapped once on the door.
I startled from my nightmare of a daydream. Even with Deacon out of sight, my traitorous mind just kept leading me further into Deacon’s grasp.
“Come in,” I said, brushing my shirt down.
Trey strode in, an immaculate slate suit draping off his long, lean form. He could have crashed a Houston Rockets post-game press conference and not looked out of place. Or he could have just as easily crashed a Harvard economics lecture. The guy was really smart.
“I've got the files you requested,” he said. He fanned himself with a brown folder just a shade lighter than his face.
Oh, good, something real to be annoyed about. “Habibi Solar sent you a paper copy?” I said. “Are you serious?”
“Some of the guys in the Middle East are old school when it comes to existing contracts.”
“Or they're hiding something.”
His lips trembled then stilled. “It’d surprise me if they are.”
Of course it would. He’d done all this work already. It’d taken one meeting for it to be clear that he wasn’t expecting much from us. My team and I were just actors in a really dull improv skit.
Though maybe that was because I’d gone and shut Deacon down with a ‘no’ instead of a ‘yes, and.’
“It’s always good to be skeptical,” I said.
“Sure enough. That’s what you’re here for.”
He handed me the folder. My fingers brushed his palm as I grasped it. His skin was rougher than his manicured hands and his VP title suggested. Not exactly cowboy hands, but not completely moneyed ones either.
I took a fresh glance at him. He wasn’t old at all. He could be Deacon’s leaner twin if they were the same color.
“Can I ask you something?” I said.
He chuckled. “You’ve asked me more since you walked in than the rest of your team combined.”
“This is more personal.”
“I see.” His eyes glowed like copper. “Go on.”
“How long have you been working here?”
“Stone Holdings? Two years.”
“Two years! You’re a VP in two years?”
He rubbed the back of his neck. “It’s not the first time it’s happened. Deacon’s father got a couple guys to shoot up too.”
I nodded. He was no simple liaison. He was one of their best guys. Just like we were our firm’s top consultants. Why was he being wasted on a useless project?
But then his words made sense.
“Deacon’s father had a couple guys,” I said. “Does that make you Deacon’s guy?”
It should have made him puff up. No guy wanted to belong to someone else. But he shrugged. “You could say that. I wouldn’t be a VP in any other damn company, that’s for sure.”
“But are you guys close?”
His eyes went slender. He adjusted forward. “We hang. Why? You need to reach him?”
“No!” I snapped to my screen as if something had popped up. “I just wanted to know who exactly I’m dealing with.”
“Will I do, then?”
God, what had gotten into me? This guy was my boss here. I was being way too informal. “Of course. Sorry.”
He watched me a moment longer, then shoved up out of his seat, much the same way that Deacon did. Maybe they really were twins somehow.
“Holler at me if you need anything more,” he said, clicking the door shut behind him as he left.
He hadn’t seemed pissed off. That was good. Whatever this case meant or didn’t, pissing off my client still mattered.
I looked up Trey quickly on the org charts. His resume on there was amazing. Ok, yeah, he’d come from the same top business school as Deacon. But he’d graduated as valedictorian, won dozens of awards, published papers and even led the sports teams.
It made me realize two things, though. Deacon might act like a dictator, but he wasn’t starting a cult. He kept good people close, not just loyal ones.
The second thing, I couldn’t be sure was true. Maybe Trey was just our liaison just because he had done the earlier study. But it seemed possible that he was Deacon's way of staying just out of arm's reach.
I wasn’t crazy enough to ask Trey if he was babysitting me. But it made sense.
Deacon wasn't stupid. He must know the pain I sometimes thought about inflicting on him while I stewed on his useless project. He would have to take his reports from a distance.
Still, my chest felt a little tighter as I kept working. I couldn’t tell whether it was because I was being watched.
Or because my watcher was so far away.
****
My phone rang just as I got out of my car back in my apartment complex. It was a Houston number, but not in my contacts. I only knew one of those.
I held my breath, but hit answer. I could always hang up if Deacon said something I didn't want to hear.
But it was a soft woman’s voice that came out: “Hello, Kerry.”
It wasn't Deacon. This was someone who I had far less desire to hear from.
My mother.
“Why are you calling me?” I said. “I told you never to call me.”
“Kerry, stop it. This is serious.”
“I don’t care. I don’t want to hear it.” She was lucky that she hadn’t put my father on the phone. I wouldn’t have stood two words from him.
“Your father is sick,” she said.
“I know that. You’re both sick.”
“Enough. I’m telling you he might have cancer.”
My lips bent up, but I pressed them flat. No, I wasn’t a monster. I wasn’t going to toast to someone’s bad health. “I’m sorry to hear that,” I said. “But I have to go.”
“Kerry, stop and think a moment.”
That was the wrong thing to say. Being free to think was what had got me here.
“Please don’t call me again,” I said.
Her voice trilled on, but I clicked it off. I stood in the warm, muggy lot, breathing softly. Outside the gate, a woman jogged by in tight clothes with her dog loping along beside her.
Life went on. Normal life went on. I was here. I knew who I was now. No force would take me back to that house.
What if he were in a hospital though? That would be a safe place to see them.
I breathed the thought out of my head. There was still nothing I’d learn from talking to her. And there was certainly nothing I needed to hear from him.
I unlocked the door. Mira was my oasis. Maybe she’d be painting inside. Watching her always brought me back down.
Oh, she was painting alright.
Her easel was set up in the living room, over a bed of newspaper. She stood before it, hair bunched up, wearing a smock smeared with red, staring at her canvas like she was a chainsaw murderer and it was the victim. Snowflake sat watching, swishing his tail, transfixed by her ferocity.
“You, uh, alright there?” I asked, moving tenderly her way.
“I’m great,” she said, still huffing. “I’ve got so much feeling to work with here.”
Her painting was a crumpled fence of red and orange strokes. I placed a hand tenderly on her shoulder.
“What exactly inspired this…bout of creativity?”
“Family.”
“Ah.” My own blood rose back to a simmer. “I understand.”
“You don’t,” she said. “This is so not part of the tapestry of an ordinary human life.”
Normally, I didn’t much care for being undercut, but Mira got a pass. Her folks had their own special brand of crazy.
; “Come on.” I unhooked her spattered apron and led her back to the couch. “Tell me about it.”
Still staring at the bizarre picture she’d slashed together, she shook her head. “I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
“Do about what?” I grasped her dark tan hands in mine. “Tell me.”
She finally met my eyes. “My parents want me to marry a guy.”
“They’ve always wanted you to marry one guy or another.”
“It’s so not the same this time. They found this Indian doctor who wants an artist wife and they’ve made it very clear that I better fall for him.”
“So just go mess up another lunch date.” I smiled. “He sounds rich. Didn’t you say you’d try out a rich guy?”
“It’s not a trial, Kerry. They’re pressing me to accept.”
“Accept what? All they can do is have you meet. This isn’t India. They can’t make you marry him.”
“That doesn’t even work in India anymore,” she said, sighing. “You know what does? Cutting off your daughter’s rent.”
“They’re cutting off your rent unless you marry a guy?” My grip felt weak suddenly.
“My rent, my tuition, everything.” She gave me a mournful look with her deep, dark eyes. “Apparently they only tolerated it because they were building me up to be some boring guy’s manic pixie dream girl. I’m just in finishing school apparently.”
I understood that all too well. It was amazing how close our lives came when we’d grown up on opposite sides of the planet. It wasn’t religion chaining her as much as culture, but there was hardly any difference.
My mother couldn’t have picked a better day to call. I needed a fresh reminder of who I'd become.
I threw a tight hug around Mira. “I’ll help you figure it out. Don’t worry. Worst comes to worst, I at least have your rent a bit.”
Mira laughed out a sob against my shoulder. “That’s sweet Kerry, but I can’t live with you forever.”
“Just until you figure things out. No one should force you to be with someone you don’t want.”
Mira pulled apart with a smile. “Guess this means I’ll have to start understanding the whole concept of money right?”
“You don’t spend much, but yeah, it can’t hurt to cut down. Personal finance is easy. I can start you off right now.”