“Nice work, ma’am – if you ever feel like getting into the security field, I would be more than happy to hire you.”
“Thanks, Mr. Ferrum, but I wouldn’t know one end of a gun from the other, for one thing, and for another –”
“I can teach anyone with half a brain how to use a gun, ma’am, but good instincts and a fast reaction time can’t be taught, and you obviously have both of those in spades.”
Devon must have been freaking out for a second there when I was sending Asshole Boy to the floor, but you would never have known it from the calm pride in his voice.
“My bold and lovely Ashley has many skills, Mr. Ferrum.” I looked over at my guy to see him wearing his one and only genuine smile of the morning, and it was like the sun coming up.
Uncle Sheridan took the time to freshen up his espresso, stirred it a bit, and then glanced down at the fallen flower of the Killane tribe as if noticing the kid’s existence for the first time. Raising an eyebrow, the sweetest old man ever deadpanned, “I admire her skill in homing in so precisely on such a small target.”
I bit the inside of my cheek to keep myself from exploding in a fit of giggles, and a glance at Devon showed me he also had all he could do to keep from falling apart laughing. Meanwhile, Mr. Ferrum grabbed Keiran the Fuckup by one arm and hauled him to his feet. The kid’s eyes were still wide and glassy, but hey, at least he managed a weak moan as Ferrum thrust him at his fellow assholes.
“If you gentlemen will please take this young man in hand, we’ll be heading down to the lobby now.” He turned to the boss and added, “That is, if you’re done here, Mr. Killane?”
“Quite done, Mr. Ferrum – these men are history.”
You’d think Keiran Asshole’s uncles and cousins would have howled with fury, threatened me, taken some kind of action to express their rage at the kid getting what was coming to him – but instead, they submitted to reality like weak little pussies.
None of them even offered the poor dumb brat a single word of sympathy or support. Pretentious Asshole just grabbed him by one arm, an unidentified supporting asshole took him by the other, and they dragged him away between them without a single backward glance at me or Devon or Uncle Sheridan, who was still savoring his espresso as if nothing of any particular interest had happened. I might have heard Keiran’s father Head Asshole mutter something like, “you worthless little pop-brained moron,” into the kid’s ear as they all slunk away, but that was just about it.
And then there was the applause.
Yep, right after the door closed behind the assholes and the security guys escorting them toward their future as prison bitches, the executives in the center of the room clapped, cheered, and whistled like the studio audience for “American Idol.”
I would have assumed they were applauding the success of the whole ‘torpedo the bastards’ operation, except that they were all looking right at me, while calling out, “Sweet aim, Ms. Daniels,” “He won’t forget you anytime soon!,” “That one’s a keeper, Mr. Killane,” and, “Loud and proud, Ashley!” – I wasn’t even sure exactly what that last one meant, but I loved the sound of it.
The boss nodded to his cheering underlings. “And you’ve all done brilliantly as well – you have my deepest appreciation for the months of hard work you’ve put in on this project, and it was an honor to have you at my side for the closing act. Now, I’m quite sure we’ll be working together on many equally rewarding endeavors in the future, but for today, we’re done.”
His smile was sincere, sure – these were his people, after all, not the members of the Asshole Hall of Fame – but I could tell from the faint sheen of sweat breaking out on his forehead that his iron control couldn’t last much longer. I raised an eyebrow at Uncle Sheridan, who took his cue like a champ; he set down his espresso, he strolled toward the executives, and he went about shaking hands, issuing smiling thanks, and herding them gently but firmly out the door.
The door clicked shut behind the suits, and it was over.
Now it was just the three of us.
19. Never Forgive
“Ashley, are you all right?”
Devon looked damn pale, dripping sweat and shivering ever so slightly as he looked at me – but he still held on, wanting to make sure I was okay.
I made a show of examining my asshole-dropping knee. “Hmm … looks like I have a run in my hose from where this sweet knee of mine introduced poor little Chucklefuck to reality – but other than that, I’m fine, boss.”
“Uncle, are they all gone?”
“Devon, the only people here are you, Miss Daniels, and myself. I promise you that everyone else has left, and that we are alone.”
I shot a worried glance at Uncle Sheridan, knowing that if he felt it was necessary to reassure my guy of something he could have seen for himself just by looking around the room, thing were bad and probably about to get worse.
My head whipped back around when I heard a muffled thump echo from the direction of Devon’s desk.
The big guy lay folded over his desk like a marionette whose strings had been cut. His ass was still planted in his emperor’s throne of a chair, but now his upper body leaned forward over Battleship Desk, with his face pressed against its gleaming surface and his arms wrapped around his head. His shoulders shook, his breath rasped in his throat, and now that the job was done, it was plain that his iron control had left the building.
Stop gawking, Ashley. He needs you.
I walked around to the front of the desk and shoved the laptops out of my way; one of them hit the floor with a screen-shattering crash, but so what?
I folded my arms, cocked a hip in a ‘badass big girl’ stance, and tilted my head to one side. “Fess up, big guy – the ‘forget the assholes, blow this town, and do it like bunny rabbits on the beach instead’ option looks a whole lot better right now, huh?”
Devon didn’t look up, but from within the circle of his arms, I heard a muffled sound that might have been weak laughter, and his shoulders stopped shaking. So far, so good.
Something told me not to push him, so I let a few beats of silence drift past, as Uncle Sheridan walked over to join me in front of the desk.
When Devon spoke, he still didn’t look up. He kept his head down, he kept his arms wrapped around his head, and he just talked to the surface of the desk – but his voice was steadier than my nerves, and at least he was talking.
“Ashley, can you do something for me?”
“Need me to knee Godzilla in the groin, boss?”
Still face down, he said to the desk, “Actually, I’d appreciate it if you could call Dana and have her cancel the rest of my appointments for today. I believe I’d like to go home and lie down for a bit.”
“Devon, are you all right?”
A long, long pause. It felt like centuries crawled by during that pause, but it was probably more like thirty seconds.
His shoulders shivered for an instant, but when he spoke to the desk again, his voice was steady – in much the same way that a towering house of cards might be steady, right before a gust of wind collapsed it.
“I am not all right, Ashley. However, I judge that I will be all right once I get home and lie down for a while.”
He communed with the top of the desk for another few seconds, then added, “Also, I mentioned a bonus for Dana earlier – call accounting and have them take care of that, will you? Whatever amount you feel is appropriate.”
My snap decision was that getting called the ‘C’ word, having a chair hurled past her, and being threatened with physical violence meant Dana had more than earned a new Mercedes of her own. I made a mental note to make sure she received the thing in time to drive it to work on Monday.
“And Ashley?”
“Yep, big guy?”
“Could you please have my driver come around to the private entrance to pick me up as soon as possible? I very much need to go home and lie down.”
“Will do, Devon – but I very much need to
come with you and make sure you get home without falling apart, okay?”
The guy who meant more to me than anything finally sat up. He sat up, he gazed around the room with the vacant stare of someone who was trying to identify just where he was, and then he focused on me.
“Ashley, I appreciate your concern, truly – but I hope you can understand that I need to be alone right now. I want you with me, I wish you never had to leave my side, but in order to recover from the events of this morning, I need to go home alone and lie down alone until I am all right again.”
Was he ever all right?
“I really, really do not like the idea of you being alone while you’re like this, Devon. Will you promise to call me the instant you feel the least bit weird? Will you call me if anything at all happens? Will you call me if you just burp, or hiccup, or if the wind blows or there’s an ‘R’ in the month? Promise?”
“Ashley, I will call you as soon as I feel somewhat better. I will call you at that time, and then perhaps you could come to my home – the home that for some mysterious reason you haven’t moved into yet – and we could share a bucket of white cheddar popcorn while watching dozens of episodes of one of those incomprehensible animé series that you enjoy so much. Agreed?”
Well, he was stringing together entire phrases and sentences now, and seasoning them with a bit of humor – maybe he had recovered enough to be left to his own devices for a while.
“If you add some premium ice cream to this binge-watching scenario, you’ve got a deal.”
“Fair enough.”
He was still pale, though, as he turned to Uncle Sheridan – and was his voice coming over all shaky again, or was I imagining that?
“Uncle, would you mind taking Ashley home?”
“I would be honored to see Miss Daniels to her home, Devon.”
“Excuse me, guys, but I drove myself here this morning while I was half-awake, and I am perfectly capable of driving myself back home again. Do I look to you two like I’m about to overwhelmed by an attack of the vapors or something?”
Devon managed a faint smile. “You look to me like a strong-willed woman who’s likely to ignore my wishes by jumping in her car and following me home, convinced she needs to protect me from myself – and so it seems best to have your favorite Jedi master escort you back to your apartment, to make sure you behave yourself and wait for my call.”
He read my mind, the smart damn bastard.
I agreed to let Uncle Sheridan squire me on home, but there were conditions.
Once I called Devon’s driver around to the private entrance, I insisted on all three of us riding down in the private elevator together. I insisted on watching Devon climb into the back of the limousine and drop into his seat with a weary thump. I insisted on speaking to the driver myself and threatening him with horrifying consequences if he didn’t take the boss straight home as fast as possible. I further insisted on standing there with arms crossed as the limo pulled out of the private parking garage, nosed into traffic, and headed off in the direction of Devon’s obscenely expensive mansion.
It probably wasn’t necessary for me to keep standing there until the sleek black monster of a car completely disappeared from sight in the distance, but I did.
At my shoulder, Uncle Sheridan sighed.
“Devon inspires loyalty and love with no idea he’s even doing it. He’s the smartest person I’ve ever known, he’s bold and tenacious, he’s generous and kind and full of humor – and yet for all that, he’s a profoundly broken man. Miss Daniels, believe me when I say I’ve never been one to hold a grudge or bitterly nurse old wrongs – but I will never forgive the Killanes for what they’ve done to that boy.”
I shivered as I stood next to that sweet old man. I shivered, and I stared at the street corner where the limousine had turned left and rolled out of sight between the towering buildings. I shivered like a leaf in the wind, and it didn’t have a thing to do with the freezing cold.
“Uncle Sheridan, is he going to be all right?
“The truth, Miss Daniels?”
“Always, sir.”
He shook his head, he sighed again, and he looked like a man who’d aged a lifetime in the past few minutes.
“Miss Daniels, Devon hasn’t been all right since he was five years old.”
A few hours later, I found out just how broken Devon was.
20. Waiting
Uncle Sheridan’s mint-condition 1939 Packard limousine rolled into the parking lot of my apartment building looking like a luxurious ocean liner pulling up to the dock at a sleazy little marina in the backwaters of nowhere. Once the suave old Jedi peered out the limo’s tinted windows and got a good look at the ‘retro urban apocalypse’ style of the place, he told his driver to wait and insisted on walking me all the way to my front door.
There, the old man stood like an immovable boulder while I unlocked the kazillion or so state-of-the-art deadbolt locks that had come with my new door, and he refused to leave until a) I was inside and safe, and b) he had called one of my bodyguards off ‘sitting in a huge black SUV and watching my building from the street’ duty and insisted that the man stand guard in the hallway directly outside my door until further notice.
I waited fifteen minutes to give Uncle Sheridan time to be well on his way, and then I stuck my head out of my front door and told the bodyguard he was clear to return to the heated leather upholstery and steaming Starbucks latte waiting for him in his Looming SUV of Doom.
Seriously, I knew the bodyguards were dedicated professionals who were just looking out for my safety and all, but those SUVs made me feel like the FBI was watching my place.
You could just move into Devon’s place, Ashley, it would be so easy …
I shoved that thought aside, because I was afraid that if I examined it too closely, I’d be packing my stuff and heading over to my guy’s version of Wayne Manor before I knew it.
So I settled down to wait.
I waited for Devon’s ‘I’m okay’ call. I waited some more. I cranked my iPhone’s volume up as high as it would go, I put it on ‘vibrate’ as well for good measure, and I kept waiting.
I changed out of my ‘office formal’ clothes into a classic ‘Ashley casual’ outfit. The oversized t-shirt I pulled on showed Theodore Roosevelt riding a bull moose into battle against a Tyrannosaurus, while the comfy grey sweatpants sported paint stains from the weekend I’d decided my walls needed to change from ‘blah management beige’ to ‘it was on sale teal.’ I kept my phone within easy reach the entire time, but the stubborn thing still refused to ring.
When I caught myself walking a few nervous laps around my micro-apartment, I decided I needed to chill the hell out. My guy had to get home, change, maybe eat something, and then lie down for a good long while – all that would take at least a couple or a few hours, and I might as well put those hours to good use.
First, I called work and arranged to have my car retrieved from the boss’s private parking area and brought around to my place – once Devon’s call came, I intended to charge over to the Killane Batcave without waiting for a security guy to chauffeur me around.
Second, I called Dana to let her know to clear her boss’s appointment calendar for the rest of the weekend. Another call to the swankiest Mercedes dealer in the state ensured that when she drove back in to work on Monday morning, she’d be doing it in some well-deserved style.
Third, my beloved Playstation was calling my name … and hey, it’s not like the newest shoot-bad-guys-full-of-holes game was going to play itself, right?
Two minutes after the idea crossed my mind, I was planted on the couch, slaughtering virtual terrorists. My phone was in my lap, a bowl of Doritos and a bottle of Diet Coke – I love the taste of cancer-causing artificial sweeteners, deal with it – stood ready on the coffee table, and I was mowing down my opponents with an array of heavy-duty weapons that it would probably take an entire squad of Marines to carry in real life.
In the game’s v
ersion of things, my targets were terrorists from a just-barely-not-stereotypical Middle Eastern country – but in my mind, every one of those bastards was wearing the face of a different Asshole Killane, and it was a pleasure dealing out round after round of hollow-point justice on their sorry asses.
As it turns out, killing terrorists by the truckload while waiting for a desperately important phone call from your hot and unstable boyfriend means that everyone else in the world will choose to call you.
The first time my iPhone rang I jumped, dropped the fragmentation grenade I was carrying in the game, and managed to blow up my own character when I threw the controller aside and lunged for the phone.
It was Mom.
“Honey, I just wanted to see if we’re still on for dinner tonight.”
Shit, I’d totally forgotten about our more-or-less regular Saturday night dinner – I sure as hell couldn’t go now, though, not with Devon in potential freak-out mode.
“Or are you planning on ditching me for a night of passion with Mr. Long, Tall, and Mysterious?”
“Um, yeah, I was heading over to his place later, Mom; we’re going to eat popcorn and argue about the cultural import of animé in modern society, and –”
“Ashley, did your hormones call in sick today? Honestly, if you don’t jump all over that man, you are no daughter of mine.”
“Mom!”
She laughed like the crafty fiend she was.
“That’s okay, baby, we’ll just reschedule. Love you, talk to you later.”
She hung up.
Five minutes into a new mission of death and destruction, the phone rang again. This time, it was a telemarketer, and how the hell had they gotten my cell number? I told the faceless call center drone that I couldn’t talk to him because I didn’t speak English, and then I hung up.
The third call was from my security guy outside, notifying me that my car had just been dropped off.
After a wrong number, my cable company trying to sell me on bundling my services for a fantastic, limited-time-only price, and some idiot who wanted to tie up my time with a marketing survey, I gave up. I shut off the Playstation, I set every incoming number on my phone to ‘mute’ except Devon’s, and I settled down to wait.
Five Minutes Late: A Billionaire Romance Page 22