Or lover?
Or future wife?
Flustered by the uncertainty, Emerson inhaled sharply. “It’s none of your business why I’m here!” he rumbled.
“You rang every buzzer. I heard you down there.” The elderly man had reached the landing. “You’re the it’s me I let in.”
“No, the lady in this apartment let me in.”
“No, she didn’t.”
“Yes she did.”
“Bullshit. She did not!”
Emerson was skating the rim of what was left of his patience and he barked like a neglected junkyard dog, “Mind your own business, Grandpa! Go home and watch a game show! Have a glass of warm milk and go to bed!”
“I know I’m old, but don’t you think you can push me around. I know the lady isn’t home.”
The old man took two steps forward and leaned close, right under his nose. Two narrow fingers poked into Emerson’s chest. He caught the sweet fragrance of chocolates and sherry.
“If you don’t leave,” the wizened man pushed his glasses up his nose, “I will kick your ass, call the police, and toss you out on the sidewalk myself.”
Emerson had a good thirteen inches and seventy pounds over the little man. For a fleeting moment he felt the menace in the old man’s tone, but he turned his back, ignoring the threat, and began to pound on Olivia’s door, bellowing, “Olivia, open the damn door! Open this door now! You owe me an explanation, so open the fu—”
The foot that hit him squarely in the coccyx resulted in a jolt up his spine, and it was breathtaking. Emerson sagged against Olivia’s door, the pain shooting along his arms to his palms now flattened on the face of the door, the surge finally ending as it left the tips of his fingers.
When he turned, the wizened gentleman had his fists raised in an old-time pugilistic stance, his chin tucked against his chest. “You going to leave or do you want another kick up the ass before I call the police?”
Chapter 24
Olivia was not about to sacrifice twelve of her favorite CDs to another failed love affair. She’d lost enough of her music collection to Karl. Besides the music she’d left in her office, the irreplaceable photos of her parents were there too. Since lunchtime was when the fewest E&P employees were around, she infiltrated the building to collect her precious things. She crossed the lobby and got in an elevator car—the one place she knew she didn’t have to worry about bumping into Maxwell. She rode to the twentieth floor and moved through the empty linoleum tiled hallway. As quietly as possible, she unlocked her office, left the keys in the door, and went inside to stuff the pictures and CDs into a wide shoulder bag.
For a moment, she stood looking out the window, up along Michigan Avenue, at the splinters of blue sky she could see between buildings, her hands balled into the pockets of her shorts. In seconds, the pain came again, welling up like a boil and chicken pox combined.
She shouldn’t have come here. She should have stayed in Ella’s apartment for the rest of the week. The newlyweds weren’t coming back until next week, there was ice cream to eat in the freezer, and no one would interrupt an all day soak in Ella’s spa bath. It had been a great plan, but Olivia was tired of soaking in the bath, tired of crying in the bath, tired of crying. She inhaled slowly and swallowed the tears that had fallen so readily over the last three days. Good thing she had a wad of tissues in her pocket. She wiped her eyes, blew her nose, and tossed the spent tissue into the trash.
“Olivia?” Pete said from the doorway.
She turned to her old friend. “Hi, Pete.”
He hesitated for a moment then came into the office and hugged her tightly. “Are you here by yourself?”
She gave his cheek a quick kiss and wiped her eyes. “Yes.”
“Where’s—”
“Listen, I think you should know,” she pulled from his embrace, “in case you didn’t already work it out, I quit.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“Yes I do. Oh, yes I do.”
“No. It’s your life. You and Karl…well, Ella was upset at first, but she really understands why you left. She just wants you to be happy. You see who you want to see.”
“I don’t want to see Maxwell.”
Pete ruffled a hand through his short dreads. “Yeah, I gathered that from where you left him.”
She hoisted her bag to her shoulder. “Do you need me to sign papers for termination?”
“No. It’s fine.” He shook his head. “Hey, why don’t we find a quiet place and talk? You tell me what happened, and I’ll fill you in on the last year of my life as well as a few other things. Come on. Emerson’s still at lunch and he’ll be a while.” He offered his elbow.
Olivia sniffled and looped her arm through his.
Finn lagged two steps behind as they trudged up the stairs. As far as foul moods rated, Emerson was operating at a level one tenth below the temperature of the surface of the sun. His employees knew to stay out of his way when his fury sat like a blazing corona around his head. Finn was the only one brave enough to approach him and like any good personal assistant, he knew when to be diplomatic with his boss. He knew when to indulge, when to be subtle, and when to tell it like it was.
Finn glanced at him, nose twitching slightly. The man was about to be indulgent or subtle or diplomatic. Maybe even all three. Emerson wondered which one would come first. The fact his assistant didn’t grumble about hiking up the twenty flights of stairs was indulgent. “You’ve got a girlfriend, don’t you Finn, her name’s Evangeline, right?” Emerson’s voice rang in the stairwell.
“Yes, Maxwell.”
“Been together long?”
“Two years.”
“Is she nuts?”
“Sorry?”
“Nuts. Evangeline. Has she ever gone off the rails? You know, one minute she seems fine, the next she’s plunged a homemade shiv into your gut.”
“No. She’s pretty normal.” Finn’s nose twitched again, as if the unusual questions about his personal life made him uncomfortable. Typically, he got winded somewhere around the fourteenth floor, but he suddenly seemed to find a previously unknown source of untapped energy and reached the twentieth floor in step.
“Well, if she’s normal, ask Evangeline if she knows what I did wrong.” Emerson opened the stairwell door and held it for Finn to pass through. “Ask her if she can see anything in my—”
Finn elbowed him. Hard.
“Fuck, Finn, just tell me it’s none of my business!” Emerson snapped, rubbing his ribs. A second later he followed the jut of Finn’s chin.
Olivia ambled down the hallway with Pete, her sandals clacking on the old terrazzo floor. She had her head down, a blue tote bag over one shoulder, and an arm through Pete’s.
“Olivia,” Emerson said her name.
She looked up, stopping dead in her tracks for a moment.
She glared at Pete. “Not you too,” she said through her teeth. “You liar.”
“Now wait a second…” Pete gestured awkwardly.
“You all suck,” she said. “You suck so hard.” She turned about and walked back the way she’d just come.
Emerson followed her. “Olivia, wait.”
She went around the corner, heading toward the elevator. Pete watched Emerson stride after her with fervent resolve twisting his mouth. Curious to watch it play out, unable to help themselves, he and Finn exchanged glances and trailed after them, but the couple changed direction, coming back toward the stairwell.
Emerson caught up to her, snatching at her arm. Pete had to jump out of the way to keep from being run over. Olivia darted into his conference room. She tried to close the door before Emerson could follow, but he’d grabbed the bag on her shoulder and it jammed the door open. She dipped her shoulder to let the bag slide off. He was right behind her to catch it. As Olivia moved around the table, Pete and Finn stood out in the hall, watching through the glass, straining to listen.
“What are you doing here?” Emerson asked with he
r bag in his hand.
“I quit and came to pick up my personal things. May I have them back?”
“Three days, Olivia. Three days!” he thundered. “No one’s heard anything for three days!”
“What do you want, Maxwell?”
“Emerson, Goddamn it! My name is Emerson!”
“Don’t yell at me. I’m not Timmons and I don’t work for you anymore.”
“Why did you do that?” Emerson pushed inside the conference room and bit the words between his clenched teeth so he didn’t shout them like he wanted to. He dumped the bag onto a chair and paced in front of the door.
She simply sat against the edge of the table and looked out the window at the spectacular city view. She didn’t look at him. “Do what? Quit? I think that should be obvious.” Her voice was as smooth as the top layer of crème brûlée, without any hint of brittleness. She had that unruffled control and even-keel civility again. She gave absolutely nothing away about how she felt.
“No, you mean little ferret, why did you leave me there and take off? I trusted you and you left me to die inside a dark, airless pantry!”
“You had air.”
“You know what I mean! You just left me there!”
“I’m sorry. For that I am sorry. That was wrong of me.” She looked down at her hands. “You didn’t deserve that, but…I wanted to hurt you the way you hurt me. I trusted you, you hurt me and I was angry.”
“I hurt you? You were angry?”
“Did it take you long to find the duplicate key hanging inside the pantry, or did Vivian let you out before you had a chance?”
“Why is that important, Olivia? You left. You left me. You left the reception. Nobody knew where you went. Where did you go?”
“Home.” She shrugged.
“No you didn’t. I went to your house to look for you. You weren’t there. Your neighbor literally kicked my ass because I didn’t believe him when he told me you weren’t home.”
“My neighbor kicked your ass?”
“The old guy didn’t like me pounding on your door. Where the hell did you go?”
“Why does it matter where I was?”
“I…I…” Emerson sat on the narrow ledge in front of the window, his tailbone still feeling as bruised as his ego. He looked at her and she stared at the shoes on her feet. “You were with him in the kitchen. Vivian saw you outside with him before you all took off. He was putting bags in your car. You went back to Karl?” he asked very softly. “You did, didn’t you? I didn’t believe what Vivian said. I didn’t want to believe what Vivian said she saw. I didn’t want to believe Ella when she told me, but that’s what it was all about. You left with him. You really went back to your ex-husband.”
“Karl?” Olivia’s shoulders shook as she laughed. “I didn’t leave with Karl. I asked him to take Ella and Craig’s suitcases out to their car because I knew you weren’t going to be in any condition to do anything. Karl was still with DeeDee when I drove off.”
“Then why did you leave?”
“I had no reason to stay.”
“You had no reason to stay? What did I do? How did I hurt you? What did I do?”
Finally, he’d asked the right question. Her head jerked up, a solar flare burst behind her eyes, and her cool façade incinerated. “You nauseating, manipulative, lying bastard. You got me. I loved you. I actually loved you. I said those pointless three little fucking words, you went off on that spiel about destiny, and you had me. God, I was stupid. I convinced Ella little things don’t matter, but they do matter and I missed them all. You were so embarrassed I witnessed your irrational vulnerability you had to find out what terrified me, didn’t you? That’s what it was all about. And you figured while you were at it, you could screw me, literally, too. I heard you and Craig before the ceremony. I heard it all. I was on the balcony while you were downstairs where Mimi and Tex went at it like a couple of back-to-nature enthusiasts. You were fucking laughing, laughing like it was the biggest fucking joke in the universe! Like those silver-breasted aliens you believe in and your claustrophobia aren’t? How could you do what you did? How could you use a person like that? What kind of men are in your family? What kind of twisted men are you and Craig? God only knows what you told your father!”
Emerson was working hard to remember the conversation he’d had with Craig before the ceremony. They had talked about a lot of stuff; the honeymoon to Spain, the dollar to euro exchange rate, but that was innocuous. Then there was the discussion about how well he and Olivia seemed to be getting along and maybe that’s what she overheard, some part of that, but he couldn’t remember saying anything awful about her.
The only awful thing, the only awful words that stuck out in his mind from that day was what she uttered, just before he realized she’d locked him inside the pantry. She’d said consider yourself set up. And all at once, coupled with everything she had just said, those words suddenly took on a new sense.
Olivia thought this had been a con. A big fat ruse. A colossal scam.
Oh, hell, no wonder she locked me inside. Emerson groaned. “Wait a second. You think this is something I set up. You think it’s something I orchestrated just to get you in bed.”
Olivia glared at him, flexed her right hand, and shook out the desire to curl it into a fist. She sucked in a breath between her teeth and exhaled with a shudder. “I’m a gullible fool. You’re no different than Karl, you just speak better fucking English.”
Her words rammed into his gut and made him wince, the air in his lungs expelling with a pop. Incredulous, Emerson shook his head, frowning. “Where do you get the idea I’m like him? Look, I may be a dipshit sometimes, but when have I ever acted like that shithead? Do you honestly think I devised some kind of elaborate scheme because you said you weren’t interested in me? This is unbelievable! You’ve got this all wrong. All wrong.” He glanced toward the windows around the conference room door and spied Pete. “Pete, get in here, you eavesdropping smartass!”
Pete shook his head, biting his lips together.
Hands on her hips, Olivia pushed off the table and stood solidly on both feet. She looked like Wonder Woman.
“Pete’s not going to save you this time. Admit it, Maxwell,” she snarled, “after what happened with us in the elevator, the wedding was a perfect cover. You just had to ask your cousin or my friend Pete to lend a hand,” she waved sarcastically to Pete standing outside the glass, “and as the best man you could step in or lend a hand anytime anything needed doing because you were a member of the wedding. It was sort of your social responsibility to get to know the bridesmaids without seeming out of place, wasn’t it? You made it look so effortless. High marks for your acting talent. You believe in fate, my ass. Just like Karl, you believe in ass period! Fuck. Fuck this.”
Emerson got to his feet. “Olivia, you’re delusional and paranoid. I didn’t set anything up. I had nothing to do with arranging anything. I was the one just left holding the bag in the pantry.”
“Bullshit.”
“Oh, it seems like bullshit. There was a set up all right and not just your luring me into your sweet little ambush. I forgive you for that, by the way, but they set it up, they roped us in, played us off one another and we stepped right into it. I was as clueless as you were.”
“What are you saying now? You were framed? And you’re calling me delusional?”
“No, honey, we were framed.”
Her eyes narrowed, and she snickered acerbically. “Okay, uh-huh. Who framed us?”
“Your best friend, Ella. The bride with her list of demands, was trying to play Cupid with us. She demanded everyone keep their mouth shut and do what she wanted.”
“You’re out of your mind.”
“Am I? Well, who changed rooms on you? Who put your suitcase in my room? And let’s backtrack from there a bit. I swear, Olivia, I knew nothing.” Emerson turned toward the door. “Pete, you get in here and tell her! You tell her Ella’s grand plan! Now!”
The quest
ions he’d asked were accelerating around in her head like a qualifying lap at the California Speedway. Olivia stared at Maxwell and didn’t want to believe.
She pushed past him, yanking open the door to a sheepishly smiling Pete, a grinning Josh and Timmons, who had come to simply rubberneck, and Finn, who was scratching his head.
The conspiratorial evidence drew together like a spider weaving a web in the morning sunlight and as Olivia walked down the hallway toward the elevator, the design became clear, individual moments glistening like drops of dew. It had all been there right in front of her, just like Maxwell suggested, every sneaky little opportunity to put them together had been used. Ella, Pete and Craig had used their hands to weave this sweet trap, using the wedding as bait.
Thoughts ticked over in Olivia’s mind.
From the room switch due to Jason’s “allergies” to the suitcase mix-up, to suggesting Martin as a hook-up. It had all been coordinated. Olivia wondered if the garish Barbie doll wedding cake delivery had been a well-choreographed decoy too. The more she thought about it, the more she saw a trail of breadcrumbs had been left along the way. There had been those questions about bringing a date to the wedding, the comments about the attractive qualities of Maxwell, and the reminder about their almost blind date, the sly looks, the abrupt end to conversations…it had all been Ella feeling her out, gauging just how far she could go. How did I miss it when she’d been so obvious?
Because you’ve been, as Ella put it, flat.
Flat like a dead battery that needed a jump.
Flat like a tire that needed air.
Flat as if she’d been run over by speeding… Olivia groaned at her mind’s comparisons.
Pete and the other three men had followed them at a discrete distance, she heard them mumbling to each other while Maxwell growled at Pete, who grimaced.
“Pete?” she turned in front of the elevator, and looked at him apprehensively. “Tell me this isn’t the truth. Please. Tell me Ella didn’t orchestrate this.”
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