The Exhibition (An Executive Decision Trilogy)

by Grace Marshall

  Stacie was going over the details for the installation of the bank of security monitors. Martin Flannery had reassured her there’d be no problem installing the switches to control the cameras where she wanted them and making sure that nothing was obvious. The monitors could easily be housed in the large closet next to the bathroom in her office. She was giving the blueprint one last look-over when the landline rang. She picked it up without thinking. That was a big mistake.

  ‘Stacie, returning my little gift has cut me to the core. Surely you don’t hold the past against me …’ Terrance Jamison’s voice was as velvety smooth as it always was, like something you wanted to rub up against, like something you wanted to get lost in. Like something in which you did those things at your own risk. She could almost hear him smiling as he spoke.

  She grabbed for the edge of the desk and would have missed the chair she was about to drop into if Martin Flannery hadn’t saved the day by sliding it beneath her at just the last minute. She forced a smile and gave him the thumbs-up. Security officer, PI, ex-military – he was the best at what he did. The last thing she wanted was for him to be suspicious.

  ‘Sorry, now’s not a good time.’ She tried to sound matter-of-fact over the phone without raising any red flags with Flannery. ‘I’m in the middle of something.’

  ‘Surely it won’t last forever, darling. Be a lamb, finish it up now,’ Jamison said. ‘I’m sending my limo to bring you to my place for lunch, and I won’t take no for an answer. I’ve been very lax in my hospitality, and it’s past time that I welcomed you back to Portland properly.’ No doubt he heard the reluctance in her silence and somehow he managed to make the hurt in his voice seem nearly tactile. ‘It’s just lunch, Stacie. I promise I’ll be a total gentleman.’ He offered a soft chuckle, just barely loud enough for her to hear and yet loud enough to make the fine hair on the back of her neck rise. ‘Though God knows you don’t always make that easy for me.’

  Before she could do more than shudder, he went on. ‘I just sent Todd with the limo and, taking into account construction on I-5, I’d say you have about 30 minutes to wrap up whatever business it is you’re handling at the moment and make any of those ever-so-perfect excuses you’re so good at making to whomever you need to. Oh, I know you’re a busy woman, and I’m a busy man, so I promise I’ll have you back to the salt mines in plenty of time to toil on. I’ll see you soon, darling.’

  The line went dead.

  ‘Stacie? Stacie, are you all right?’ It was only when Martin Flannery shook her arm gently that she realized she was still sitting with the phone gripped to her ear in a painful fist.

  She caught her breath and nodded. ‘Fine, Martin. I’m fine. Just an unexpected meeting. Are we finished here?’

  ‘You are. My men have already started working in the basement and they’ll be working around the clock to finish up for you, just as you requested. It’ll be done in plenty of time.’

  ‘And the money?’

  Martin offered her a broad smile. ‘Paid in advance is something we seldom get in my line of work, Ms. Emerson, but yes, thank you. The money for the job has already been deposited, just like you said it would be. Now just leave the rest to us, and don’t worry.’

  And she wouldn’t. At least not about the security system. She was sure with Martin and his team on it, it would do exactly what she needed it to. She barely had time to freshen her make-up and check her hair before the limo arrived. She wouldn’t go before Jamison alone, for the first time in more than ten years, without looking her absolute best. She needed every edge she could get.

  There was no way to hide anything from Martin, and that worried her a bit. Still, there was nothing for it now but to be as upfront as she could. She found him on the ground floor, looking over the schematics with one of his colleagues. ‘I have an appointment across town,’ she said, trying to act like it was all business as usual. ‘I’ll be back as soon as I can.’

  He offered her a reassuring smile and held her in his sharp blue gaze. ‘We’ll be here. Don’t worry.’

  It was the second time he’d told her not to worry. And somehow that reassured her in spite of what was about to happen.

  She was thankful that the limo was unmarked and as discreet as a limo could be. Terrance Jamison was a master in the art of discretion when it suited him. But then he wouldn’t consider his connection with her something to be discreet about, and this was probably the last time she would be able to hide it. Still, she hoped that no one had seen the limo arrive around back to her private entrance of the gallery.

  As she slid onto the leather seat and the driver shut the door, she thought about Harris Walker, thought about their night together, thought about the fact that there were still bright spots in a world that was about to turn very dark. For a painful moment, she wanted desperately to stop the limo, get out and run to Harris, forget everything else and let it all go. With a sudden shiver, she remembered Zoe, remembered finding her like she did, knowing what she knew, and living with the constant niggling doubt, the constant wondering if she might have been able to do something, anything. Surely there must have been something she’d missed, something that, if only she had done it, could have made the difference. But there had been nothing. She had been totally and completely helpless.

  When she remembered that night, the night she truly realized just how in over her head she really was, she recalled it with the sounds of sex. Perhaps that was because when she revisited that night in her dreams, she always heard their lovemaking from a long way off – if you could call it lovemaking. It was only much later, too late, that she learned just how cruelly Jamison had used Zoe. In her dreams, she could hear them the moment she entered Zoe’s building. She could hear them in the elevator all the 29 floors to the flat as she rode with her heart in her throat, fearing for her friend, wondering why she hadn’t shown up for their dinner meeting, or at least called. Zoe hadn’t been herself since – well, since Jamison came into the picture as more than the distant presence Zoe spoke about from time to time. In her dreams, she heard their moans and gasps as she exited the elevator and walked the interminable distance to Zoe’s front door. In her dreams, the door was always wide open with a view into Zoe’s bedroom, with her naked on the bed, with Jamison on top of her.

  In reality, she had heard nothing, been aware of nothing, until it was too late. In reality, she feared the worst. So when Zoe had left no messages and not returned her phone calls, when there was no answer at the door, she let herself in with the spare key Zoe had given her. In reality, it was the fact Zoe’s bedroom door was closed that had led her to knock softly, call Zoe’s name, and push the door open, fearing … She wouldn’t have dared name exactly what it was she feared. And looking back, even in dreams, she could never visit that unnamed fear without its true horror being thrust upon her in reality far worse than any of her nightmares. It was the beginning of the end – or at least in her memories that’s how it felt. But in reality, the end had begun the moment Zoe had introduced her to Terrance Jamison, with Stacie still flushed from the excitement, from the glitz and the triumph of her second exhibition.

  Even after she pushed the bedroom door open it took her a few seconds to make the connection, to figure it all out. At first she saw only a man’s back, a man lying face down on Zoe’s bed. For a split second, she thought someone was assaulting Zoe. It was then she heard the sounds of sex, as though someone had just turned up the volume, as though a tidal wave of noise and smells and connections had washed over her, threatening to drown her. And then she heard Zoe’s yelp of surprise, saw a naked arm shove from under the fully-clothed man, and Zoe called her name.

  ‘Stacie, Jesus, Stacie, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I meant to call. Really I did.’

  It was all so disjointed in her mind, even though at the time every second of it felt like a pinprick to cold skin, so vivid, so powerfully focused.

  It was then she realized the man was Jamison. He rose from the bed, still wearing that same sm
ile he always wore, as though he owned the world and he were greeting a favorite vassal. She had interrupted their lovemaking and he welcomed her as if he were inviting her to tea at the Ritz. ‘I wasn’t expecting you, Stacie,’ he said. But she knew that he had been. She could see it in his eyes, feel it in the way he looked at her. She was exactly who he was expecting, and it was as though he had forgotten Zoe was even there.

  ‘I’m … I’m sorry. I was worried. I was worried,’ she managed before turning and fleeing. In the back of her mind she could hear Zoe’s voice, high-pitched and thin with words staccato and clipped, the way she always sounded when she was drunk. But her words sounded like gibberish against the hard hammering of Stacie’s pulse in her ears as she fled, feeling mortified and humiliated and other hot prickly things she didn’t want to think about. Then Jamison yelled something that had silenced Zoe. Stacie heard the bedroom door slam with a loud crack, and then he was calling after her.

  ‘Stacie! Stacie, wait!’ He caught her by the arm in the hallway by the door, his grip talon-tight. His white shirt was untucked and unbuttoned to show the mat of hair across his chest that glistened with the heat of arousal. He’d made no attempt to do up his fly, and his erection fought against black boxers. He smelled faintly of whiskey. Mostly he smelled of sex and something else, something that prickled along her skin and made her shiver. He had never been anything but pristine, never been anything but under control, and the sight of him like this frightened her, confused her.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ She forced the words through the desert of her mouth. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t know.’

  And then he pulled her to him with such force that she cried out, and he kissed her. It wasn’t a kiss she had ever dreamed of or hoped for. It was a scorched earth kiss that took no prisoners and left no hope for survivors. As fear rose to the surface over lust and confusion, he crushed her hand to his bare belly, his muscles tightening as though she had punched him. He slid her palm down into the tent of his boxers, down over the prickle of pubic hair, and forced her fingers closed around the obscene heft of his erection, the erection he’d elicited by what he had done to Zoe. Before she could utter a sound, he took her mouth again and shoved her hard against the wall, his hand bruising an irresistible path up under her skirt, over the tops of her stockings and into her panties.

  From her bedroom, Zoe was repeating the same gibberish over and over again like a mantra, like a hypnotic spell. And whenever she remembered that night, Stacie felt as though she might well have been hypnotized or drugged or maybe temporarily insane. Or maybe, she’d hoped against hope, maybe she had only dreamed it.

  All of it, the noise, the smell, the fevered touch of his body, of his mouth pushing at her until, at some point in an eternity that couldn’t possibly have taken more than minutes, Stacie kissed him back. At some point, she curled her fingers in her hair and cried out in frustration, in confusion, in fear, pushing back, clawing and gripping at him where he still held her hand to his cock. And then he shuddered against her and she felt the warm stickiness of his semen erupt over the tight grip of her fingers, and still he held her. Zoe’s high-pitched mantra became mere background noise as he stroked feverishly between Stacie’s legs and dug thick fingers between her raw folds, grunting to gain his breath, cursing and shoving at her.

  ‘I keep waiting for you and you keep running from me, making excuses,’ he gasped against her ear. ‘So I’ll take what I can get. For now. But I won’t wait much longer. I always get what I want. Always. You should know by now, those are the rules.’ With a nearly painful rub of his thumb, she came in a trapped animal cry that drowned out the high-pitched rhythm of Zoe’s mantra as it clawed its way through her lungs and out of her throat. Then he stepped back, his chest rising and falling spastically, his eyes locked on hers, and that was the first time she ever remembered his eyes joining in the emotions of his face. It was hunger that stared back at her, like he would devour her whole, like she was prey and he had already taken her before she even knew what had happened. He jerked her hand from his boxers and wiped it on the hem of her skirt. With a little kitten cry, she shoved him away and ran out the door.

  It was ages before she came back to herself. ‘New World Gallery, lady,’ the cabbie was saying. ‘This is where you wanna go, ain’t it?’

  She paid him and stumbled up to her flat. Hours later, she woke in the middle of the night, trembling and goose fleshed and, at the same time, aching with arousal. In her dreams she had revisited Zoe’s flat and relived the experience. This time, Jamison had fucked her against the wall, bruising her insides with each thrust, raking her raw even as he wrung orgasm after orgasm from her wounded flesh. It was only after she had masturbated, masturbated in great, gasping sobs that felt like they would gut her, that she remembered exactly what Zoe had been saying that night. “Don’t hurt her, don’t hurt her! Terrance, don’t hurt her!” Over and over again she’d said it, begged it, pleaded it. Stacie had not been able to go back to sleep.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Stacie shook her head as though that would somehow dislodge the memory she didn’t want and most definitely didn’t need under the circumstances. With Jamison it had never been just hate. That would have been so much easier. Somehow, with Jamison, hate co-existed with all-consuming lust, and he was able to fan the flames of both, a fact that made the agony of those early years in New York more horrendous and more riddled with guilt.

  She stared out the window of the limo as they crossed the Willamatte River. Her mind was made up. She wouldn’t drag Harris Walker into this mess. And she wouldn’t allow him to matter to her any more than any other artist she had ever worked with. She wouldn’t. She straightened in her seat and focused, focused all of her energy on meeting Jamison. She couldn’t dare go to him unprepared. Not this time.

  When the limo pulled up in front of the Hotel Monaco, Stacie got the message. He was meeting her in a hotel, as he would a prostitute. It was one of the subtle ways he would devalue her and demoralize her to remind her of her place in their relationship. She rode the elevator to Jamison’s grand suite on the top floor, once again looking down on Stacie Emerson from outside herself, once again distancing herself from what was to come. It didn’t matter what he did to her. She would endure what she had to. She knew that going in.

  She barely finished knocking before he threw open the door in a grand gesture, as if he was welcoming a long-lost friend. But then he simply planted himself in the doorway, looking her over. She stood with her shoulders squared, allowing the inspection she knew she had no say in, as he took her in with a gaze that felt somehow invasive and yet totally polite. No one who saw them together would ever catch the subtext and yet she did, as he knew she would.

  He was like he always was: perfect. He couldn’t have been more so if he had showered and dressed only minutes before. His eyes were sparkling blue ice. His white-blond hair was perfectly cut and styled. His charcoal suit accentuated his slender build, hinting at hard-muscled, broad shoulders beneath tailored lines. It was understated enough to say expensive without taking any attention from the man who wore it. He was tall enough to look down on her, but not so tall that he stood out in a crowd. He didn’t need the extra height to stand out in a crowd. He was stunning. Frighteningly so. He was a master in human behavior, in negotiating strategy, leaving her standing in the hallway under his intense gaze just a second too long for comfort before he took her hand and led her over the threshold, bowing to brush a cool kiss across her knuckles. As the door closed quietly behind them, he captured her other hand as well and stood gazing into her eyes with a look that could almost be mistaken for adoration but for the hard-metal edge to it that she had only learned to recognize after it was too late.

  She forced herself to stand still, detached from past nightmares and future hopes, as she looked Terrance Jamison right in the eyes and smiled.

  At last he spoke. ‘I don’t know how it’s possible, Stacie, but you look even more stunning than you did the last tim
e we were together in a hotel room.’

  She felt as though he had just punched her in the stomach; she felt as though he had found the thread that held her together, the one that would unravel the last ten years of her life and leave her cowering in the corner as he had left her back then. But she was no longer that woman, she told herself. That woman was dead. ‘I look much better when I’m not bleeding,’ she said.

  The look he gave was one of deepest repentance. ‘Stacie, have I not tried over and over to apologize for that unfortunate incident? I was provoked. You know that. I never wanted anything but the best for you, my darling, always the very best. I was wounded to the core that you took that little incident so personally.’

  That was it. That was the whole of his response. He was provoked – meaning of course, that it was her fault. He was provoked! He was fucking provoked! Good! A little anger in her belly was what she needed right now. As he folded her arm over his, she felt as though molten steel had just replaced her backbone and she could feel it hardening even as it burned like acid.

  He led her to the dining table in the sitting room, which was already laid with a feast. ‘I hope you don’t mind. I took the liberty of ordering us the smoked chicken salad. I seem to recall that was one of your favorites, am I right?’