Five Minutes Late: A Billionaire Romance

by Sonora Seldon

  “Ashley, I need you to do something for me.”

  I glanced up from my phone and met Devon’s steady, searching stare – his mouth was smiling, but those eyes told a different story.

  Something in that look of his and something in the hovering stance of those vulture lawyers said a little formality was in order. “Say the word and it’s done, Mr. Killane.”

  “Ashley, I do hate to bother you with something so petty, but I’d like you to go down to Kitami Neko and place my lunch order in person.”

  He couldn’t bear to have me out of his sight all week, and now he was sending me to a sushi place four blocks away? For a delivery order that I routinely phoned in every morning?

  “Now, sir?”

  “Now. I’m concerned that between the usual lunch rush and that new chef Teshio they’ve hired, there may be a certain amount of confusion afoot down there and mistakes could be made – but if you and your loveliness appear on their doorstep and insist on the proper order in person, I know all will be well.”

  He beamed his confident, nothing-wrong-here smile at me, and I didn’t buy it for one single second. But he kept smiling, the lawyers kept staring, and what could I do but carry out his perfectly reasonable request?

  Thirty minutes later, I returned with a dangling plastic bag bearing the familiar smiling cat logo of Kitami Neko, a bag loaded with the big guy’s usual order of exotic raw fish – exotic and cold and slimy and disgusting, because all the gods intended fish to be cooked, dammit – and as it happened, the place had been way busier and crazier than usual. I had to repeat Devon’s order three times and send it back once, when they got it wrong on the first try. Had my little expedition into the outside world been just as innocent and routine as it looked?

  The lawyers were gone, Devon was alone, and I just had to be nosy.

  “So what was up with the identical triplet lawyers, boss?” And no, they weren’t really identical, they just stared and hovered as if they were.

  He dug into his plastic carton of fish and other nasty stuff, eating quickly since another meeting was scheduled in about two minutes. He dipped a chunk of something revolting into some godawful goop that looked like alien snot, and he answered me with the truth.

  “I had to make certain changes to my will, and those gentlemen were delivering the final version of the document for me to review and sign.”

  He swallowed a mouthful of nastiness, eyed the row of international clocks on the far wall, and added, “This is delicious; it’s such a pity I don’t have time to apply it to your luscious body and find out what it tastes like against the warmth of your ripe, sensitive –”

  No, big guy. Not today.

  “Devon, why would you need to do something with your will? You keep insisting you’re flawlessly healthy, so why – ”

  He was so reasonable about it. “Ashley, I first had my will drawn up when I turned eighteen, and I have updated it at regular intervals ever since. As for this latest revision, it was necessary to account for the passing of Uncle Sheridan – it will not surprise you to learn that he was to receive quite a substantial portion of my estate if something happened to me; with his death, that considerable amount of money and property had to be allocated elsewhere.”

  He used a napkin to dab away some stray crumbs of awfulness, nodded at the office door, and added, “Now, let’s see if those misbegotten wretches from Ripplemead Communications are ready to be bought out yet – would you let them in, please? And once you’ve done that, sit close to me, sweet Ashley – very close.”

  Just like that, we were back to the usual headlong rush, moving a mile a minute and doing it within arm’s reach of each other – and I knew I wasn’t getting another word of explanation about what the deal was with his will.

  I also knew his explanation was the truth – just not all of it.

  The second thing that stood out as we hurtled through the week was Devon’s latest bout of crazy.

  Not that a sudden interest in the weather would have been all that crazy, not by itself – after all, the storm that had chased us out of Montana was headed our way, and it seemed likely to drop a serious amount of snow on Chicago over the weekend.

  Another low-pressure system was lurking over Canada and might come to town as well, and so it made sense that on our first day back, one of the six monitors mounted on the wall of his office just over the door was tuned to the Weather Channel, instead of the usual view from one of the building’s security cameras.

  But the next day, Devon had me get the head of the National Weather Service on the phone for an hour-long grilling on everything the guy knew about the storm system coming out of the west – temperature gradients, hourly snowfall projections, amount of possible variation from its projected course, the works.

  Personally, I thought the online, TV, and print coverage, local and national, was covering all of that well enough for weather civilians like us, but I guess you don’t get to be a kazillionaire by taking the media’s word for anything.

  Wednesday, in the middle of a meeting about quarterly earnings projections for an overseas division of a software subsidiary, Devon broke into the discussion with an impromptu lecture about lake-effect snow.

  He favored us with all kinds of fascinating tidbits, such as the fact that Chicago didn’t often get that particular variety of the white stuff, since the prevailing winds in our area came from the northwest – but that Canadian front moving in from the northeast just might provide us with a record-setting amount of lake-effect snow at the same time the Montana storm arrived from the west, and wouldn’t that be exciting?

  A room full of confused executives traded wary glances and silently asked me for help with their eyes, but all I could do was shrug my shoulders and mentally tell them to just roll with the crazy.

  Thursday, all six of those 50” screens on his office wall showed Bland Boy and Plastic Girl going through their paces, waving at this map or that as they delivered the gospel about isobars and jet streams – and while the faces might change to different generic weather people from hour to hour, those screens stayed on the Weather Channel from then on, day and night. I talked him into at least muting the sound during meetings, but that was the only concession to reality he agreed to make.

  Business was still business during conferences and consultations and public announcements – but in the rare moments when he wasn’t smiling and talking or buying and selling, I sometimes caught him turning to look out at the city and the increasingly grey sky. When I saw that greyness mirrored in his eyes I wanted to cry, though I had no idea why.

  Friday, the first white flakes drifted down between the skyscrapers. Devon had me make a building-wide announcement that everyone was being sent home early, with pay, so they could be inside and safe with their families before the serious snow came down. It sure didn’t hurt his popularity with his employees that he was also insisting in advance on everyone staying home with full pay on Monday and Tuesday, while city snow crews cleared the streets – and maybe Wednesday too, depending on the weather and ‘other events,’ whatever that was supposed to mean.

  Saturday morning, the wind picked up. Snow came down in hissing sheets, piling higher by the hour, and only a few senior executives and a skeleton security staff remained in the building – along with a certain tall, pale, moody guy and his worried round girlfriend.

  After two more meetings, one videoconference with the London office, and a hurried round of phone calls to other Killane Corporate Holdings outposts near and far, the remaining suits were sent on their way.

  Devon then huddled with Mr. Ferrum, as they worked out how to go about paring down to an absolute minimum the number of security personnel who would stay in the building to ride out the storm – Devon argued for sending everyone home right away, while Mr. Ferrum was horrified by the thought of just locking up a ginormous corporate skyscraper and leaving it completely unattended. Whatever – I left them to work it out, and went into the outer office to send Dana
home.

  As it turned out, that took some doing; she may have been a nervous little thing, but she was also dedicated as hell and seemed to feel she owed it to the boss to stay at her post, storm or no storm. I had to march her into the elevator and down to the lobby, where I held onto her arm while I called one of Devon’s bodyguards to drive his four-wheel-drive tank of an SUV around to the front of the building and give the girl a ride home.

  Once I bundled her into the passenger seat with orders not to return until at least Wednesday, I headed back up. When I ducked back into the office, Mr. Ferrum was gone and Devon was alone.

  He stood silhouetted against the floor-to-ceiling window, his back to me as he stared out into the storm.

  The memory was like walking into a brick wall. I saw him standing there, a silent shadow as he looked out over the city, and I stopped short. All those months ago – a lifetime ago – I’d walked into this man’s office for the very first time, and I’d seen him exactly like this: a towering presence standing dark against the glass, brooding in silence with his back turned to me.

  Then, I’d been scared of him, wondering what this insanely powerful nutcase of a man intended to do with me – now I loved him, loved the gentle and haunted man I knew he was, but I was still scared.

  Then, my biggest worry in the world was being five minutes late – now, my worst fear wasn’t losing my job but losing this man, losing him to whatever dark secret he was hiding from me.

  So stop standing here gawking at his back, Ashley – get to his side, where you know you belong.

  I joined him, slipped my hand into his, and together we watched the storm lay siege to the city.

  A sea of concrete and glass and steel and stone stretched out below us, vanishing into the distance and the dim light. Snow poured out of the clouds, drifting down in gentle spirals here and gusting sideways there, as the winds bucked and shifted to every point of the compass. It was only mid-morning, but the streetlights were already on – though not that many people were on the streets, since the going down there was getting worse by the minute.

  I watched a city bus try to lumber to a stop at a red light, fail, and then go sliding through the intersection, barely missing oncoming traffic. Trucks slewed around corners and slid into snowbanks. I saw a police car hit a slick spot and rear-end a taxi, while people who decided to trust only the traction of their own two feet slogged through the mounting drifts.

  Behind us, the Weather Channel announced that governors throughout the region were calling up the National Guard to shut down traffic and patrol the streets, and that sure sounded to me like last call. Time to get out of Dodge while the getting was still good, and before I had to watch Devon standing in a snow drift as he blithely lectured a cold, aggravated, and heavily-armed National Guardsman on the legal theories behind a citizen’s freedom of movement – that was a confrontation I figured we could save for the next apocalypse.

  “So what’s the plan for getting out of here, big guy? Or are we going to stay put and hold the fort all by ourselves?”

  He didn’t look at me. His hand tightened around mine, though. Those long fingers clamped down hard, I felt the faintest trembling running through him, and he still wouldn’t look at me.

  What was wrong now?

  But then he answered my question, and the sunshine tone of his voice said nothing was wrong, not a thing in this world.

  “Well, there’s one more thing I need to take care of here, but as for you, my Ashley, I’m sending you on to your lovely mother’s house. What with my keeping you so dreadfully busy with one thing and another over the past several months, you’ve missed far too many of her Saturday meals, don’t you agree?”

  I did try to make it to Mom’s house for at least a couple of Saturday dinners every month, true – and it was also true that my being the ringmaster for the Devon Killane Traveling Sideshow of Mental Weirdness had meant that lately, she’d been eating alone most weekends.

  During the week too, come to think of it; I remembered that the last time I’d been over there, I’d lectured Mom on how she needed to get herself a boyfriend, but she insisted that she was just fine, thank you – unless, she asked with a wicked smile, I was willing to share Devon?

  Come to think of it, a lively evening of turkey, cheddar biscuits, pecan pie, and shameless flirting with my mom might be just the thing to pull the big guy out of whatever strange mental place he was in right now.

  “So get your ass in gear and come with me – it’s a little early for dinner, but maybe you could use the time to show Mom some of your mad cooking skills, huh? Bet she’d find the idea of a tall, handsome drink of man slaving away in her kitchen to be super hot …”

  He still wouldn’t look at me. He still kept his death grip on my hand. And his mellow, relaxed voice still insisted nothing was wrong.

  “I’d love nothing more than to come away with you, sweet Ashley – but as previously stated, I have one more matter I must see to here, so I’m sending you on ahead to help your mother get a head start on the evening’s festivities. Tell me, do you think it likely that tonight she’ll finally surrender to my raw sexual power? And would you be willing to film our sweaty grappling? I imagine the footage might become quite popular on Youtube, not to mention that –”

  I punched him in the gut with my free hand, because nobody loves their mom THAT much.

  “Nothing doing, asshole – you’ll eat your turkey and pie like a good boy, and you’ll keep your paws off my saintly mother, got it? Now, how about I just wait while you square away whatever this last bit of business is, and then we’ll go impose ourselves on Mom’s patience and food supply, okay?”

  “Ah, but I fear I may be tied up for some time with this, and I would hate to bore you –”

  “So put it off until next week – in case you haven’t noticed, we’ve got a snowpocalypse going on out there, and if you wait too long, you’ll be marooned here inside this giant monument to your bank account. Seriously, can’t it wait? I hear that moist, juicy turkey calling us, and also the stuffing, and maybe pumpkin pie to go along with the pecan, and –”

  “Ashley, this is something that I have already put off for far too long.”

  For just that one sentence, the tension burning along his nerves made its way into his voice. Or maybe I imagined that – because when I looked up at him, his eyes met mine, he smiled, and his voice turned brisk and business-like in an instant.

  “Now, if you head down to the private entrance you’ll find Jimmy waiting for you in a monstrous tank of a vehicle equipped with four-wheel-drive and sporting chains on its snow tires – he’ll see you safely to your mother’s home, and all will be well.”

  “This protective alpha male thing is swell and all, Devon, but I’m perfectly capable of getting there on my own – I’ve driven in nasty weather plenty of times, and in a lot chancier cars than that sweet Mercedes you forced on me.”

  “I think not, Ashley – unless you see a different city out there, one where the streets are not growing more treacherous by the second? What if you slid off the road and became stuck in the ever-deepening snow? With so many accidents already and conditions worsening, how long would you wait there by yourself before help came? It would be irresponsible of me to let you go out into such a storm alone, and so Jimmy will take you – that is final.”

  Devon released my hand and stepped away from me. As I felt circulation return to my fingers, I watched him pull his iPhone from the pocket of his suit and start thumbing through the contacts list – and I noticed that his left hand, the one that had just let go of me, now clutched his right elbow so hard that the knuckles were white.

  What was going on here?

  “Jimmy? Yes, excellent – I’m letting you know that Ms. Daniels will be on her way down to you momentarily.”

  He paused, listening, and then slowly turned on one heel until he was facing away from me again.

  “Yes, my earlier instructions still hold, and you will follow them to
the letter.”

  Another pause.

  “Don’t worry, Jimmy. Everything will be fine.”

  He ended the call, dropped the phone back into his pocket, and turned back to me with one of his classic megawatt smiles.

  “Now, if you’ll hurry off to your enchanting mother’s side, I’ll finish taking care of things here, and all will be as it should.”

  I kept my eyes on his as I grabbed my coat from a chair, shrugged it on, and took a step toward the door.

  Wait, Ashley. Don’t go.

  “Devon, if this thing is going to take you a while, how do you plan on getting over to Mom’s house? Even the biggest and baddest four-wheel-drive vehicle will get stuck out there if you wait long enough, and if that happens, I promise I will not leave you one single slice of pie – are you sure you can’t just come with me right now, and screw business until later?”

  His smile faded away. “I cannot come with you now, Ashley.”

  I backed another step toward the door. He’s just being obsessive about some deal or other, Ashley, so stop being such a big worrying baby – get your ass down to the parking garage, and he’ll be along soon, geez …

  “So how are you getting to Mom’s place, big guy?”

  “Well, that’s why I have a helicopter, isn’t it? So I can soar far above the madding crowd, defying the gods of weather in heated comfort?”

  I aimed a pointed stare at the billowing gusts of wind-driven snow outside the window, and then turned to look at him, one eyebrow raised.

  “You’re seriously telling me that a helicopter can fly in that godawful mess out there?”

  He turned on his reasonable voice again. “The AgustaWestland AW101 is the most sophisticated helicopter available on the civilian market – not to mention that my pilot, Mr. Pulaski, is a former military flight officer with extensive experience in flying helicopters under the most dreadful conditions imaginable. So yes, it will be just fine. Honestly, Ashley, you worry entirely too much.”