by Claire Adams
“Just be careful. Do you have protection?”
“Yeah.”
“Good. Keep it close.”
“Did you need anything?” I asked.
“I wanted to get a dozen of those cherry chocolate chip cookies. They’re amazing.”
“Okay.” I turned back and ducked down to get a box.
“I was also wondering if maybe you’d like to come to dinner with me tomorrow.” His voice dipped low when he asked, betraying the profundity of his intentions.
“I can’t. I mean—not that I don’t want to go, or that I’m rejecting you or anything. It’s just that Chloe isn’t here, and I still have to make everything. We keep running out of those orange and ginger snaps.”
“I don’t want to leave you here alone after what you told me. Would you mind if I stuck around with you for a while?”
“That would be amazing, but you have to do one thing for me.”
“What’s that?”
“I’ve been dying to make this apricot streusel recipe, and I need your opinion on it.”
“That sounds delicious.” I led him around back into the kitchen. He took one look at the mountain of dishes sitting in the sink and started washing his hands.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“I’m not letting you clean this whole thing yourself. You’ll be here all night.”
“You’re a dear.”
Archer finished the dishes faster than I could dirty them, and when he was done, he was the perfect spectator, never once interrupting me as I rushed around, making dough, syrup, and batter. He watched closely, silently admiring my technique.
I finished baking and walked into the kitchen to grab my cleaning supplies so I could close up. Archer stopped me. “You look like you’re ready to collapse. Let me sweep and mop.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah, it’s no problem.”
“All right.” It was my turn to admire his technique. The man might’ve been a billionaire, but he knew how to clean better than any janitor I’d ever met. He had a way of reaching all of the dark corners that usually got neglected and making them shine.
“That must’ve been your military training.” I was standing at the register admiring the lobby.
“I used to clean latrines with a toothbrush. This is nothing comparted to that.”
I laughed. “Now’s the real test. Can you handle the apricot challenge?”
“I believe so, but no peanuts. I’m allergic to nuts. You don’t have any here, do you? Just a fleck in the air, and I’ll fall over dead, I swear.”
“Shit, really?”
“No, I’m fucking with you. I’ve had four of your peanut butter cookies in the past week. They’re one of my favorites.”
I slapped him on the back playfully. “Come on.” I showed him into the kitchen. “Let’s start that streusel.”
The apricots were juicy and sweet, with just the right amount of tart. Archer couldn’t help himself. The second I gave him a bite, he just started eating it, so I sat down with him, and we finished it together.
“Chloe is going to be so mad.” I set my spoon down and backed away from it. “We were supposed to make this together.”
“I’m sure that she won’t mind after the day off.”
“She’s a little jealous, I think. She’s playing it off like she’s skeptical of you, but I think she wants to keep me all to herself. You’re going to get nothing but snide remarks from her.”
“That’s okay. So long as I get you.” He leaned in and kissed me.
“We’ll see,” I said and got up. “I should get going.”
“I’ll walk you to your car.”
We turned off the lights and armed the alarm. Then we walked out back into the lot. I scanned the lot for any sign of Mr. Beetle, but he was nowhere to be found.
“Thank you for staying,” I told Archer when we got to my car.
“Of course,” he said. “I don’t want anything to happen to you yet. I’m just getting started.”
I looked around the lot, then back at Archer, and threw my arms around his neck and offered him my lips. He fell into the kiss like a boulder falling off a cliff and slammed his tongue through my mouth, showing off the full force of his bestial nature.
He left me light headed when I pulled away. “I’m kind of excited for tomorrow night.”
“So am I.” That confirmation was enough to throw my stomach up in the air and send it crashing down. We waited and held one another for as long as we could. Then I got in and drove away with a huge smile on my face.
Chapter Seventeen
Archer
I pressed the intercom button my phone. “What’s up?” Angela asked, sounding frazzled.
“I’m sorry to do this to you…”
“But?”
“I’ve got a two-foot high stack of paperwork and a date in two hours. Please tell me you can stay and handle some of this for me.”
There was a long pause where I imagined her putting the phone on mute and throwing things around. “I don’t have anything better to do,” she finally said. “You need me to sweep and mop the lobby to give the janitors the day off?”
“Angela, you must know that without you, my life simply would not function. You are not just an administrative assistant. You’re a badass bitch who worked her ass off to get a position with one of the richest men in town, and you deserve it.”
“Thank you, Archer. That means a lot.”
“You’re welcome, and when you get off, take the company card. Get yourself something nice and have dinner.”
She thanked me and graciously allowed me to transfer the brunt of my workload to her. I was lucky to have dedicated people in my life who wanted the best for me, my company, and the boys. They were genuine, capable, and they actually cared.
The drive home was quick. Traffic had mostly thinned out by that time, and I was getting anxious. I had less than an hour and a half to get ready to go to dinner and pick up Zoe, and I wasn’t about to be late.
When I walked inside the house, Mona was sitting in the living room, reading with the TV on so she could watch what the boys were doing. She looked up at me.
“What are you doing? You’re going to be late. Come on.” She pulled me by the sleeve up to my room and started shuffling through my clothes. “So, you’re going to tell her about the boys tonight, I assume?”
“I—what? No. Why would do a thing like that?”
“Because sooner or later, she’s going to wonder why you waited so long to tell her you had kids. I’d be wondering at this point. That’s something she should’ve known before the first date.”
“You’re right.” I sat down on the end of the bed. “I have to tell her, don’t I?”
“Yes, of course. You shouldn’t have kept it a secret in the first place. Now you’re going to have to explain it all and come up with a reason why you omitted one of the most important facts about your life until now.”
“Oh, no.” I laid back. “I’m so stupid, Mona. I had the perfect chance. She asked me straight up why I keep going back and forth with her, and I told her that it was because my life is complicated. Now she’s going to wanna know why I didn’t tell her then.”
“Secrets and lies from the very start.” Mona pulled out a tight baby blue button up with a pair of jeans. “You’re not going to get away without telling her everything you lied about.”
“I know, and she probably won’t trust me when I tell her about the twins, either. She’s going to think it’ll just be one secret after the other. You know why she thought I gave her the cold shoulder on her first date?”
“She probably thought you were married.”
“She did.”
“You might not get away with this.” She handed me my clothes.
“What should I do?”
“Tell her everything, not just that you have boys. That won’t be enough. Open up to her and make sure it really comes from deep down. If you do that, and she rea
lly likes you, she’ll listen.”
“Jesus, this could end before it gets started.”
“Remember what I’m telling you, and don’t you forget. You’re not going to get anywhere if you don’t take a risk.”
“Yeah, yeah...” I grabbed my clothes and hopped up to get into the shower. “I’ll tell you how things go tomorrow when I see you.”
“Good, and give it a bit this time before you decide to break her heart.”
“Yeah, yeah…” I jumped into the shower.
I left the house half an hour before I was supposed to pick up Zoe. It wasn’t enough time. She lived on the other side of town, off one of the busiest streets in the city. I called her once I hit the freeway.
“Hello?” she answered.
“Hi, I’m so sorry, Zoe. I’m on the freeway now. I might be a couple of minutes late.”
“That’s all right. I was actually thinking of calling you for the same reason.”
“Good. We’ll both be late, and neither of us will be offended by it.”
“Thank God,” she sighed. “I thought you might think I was skipping out on you.”
“That’s not going to happen. You are mine for the evening. I worked for that privilege, remember?”
“How could I forget? The kitchen hasn’t been that clean since I opened the place.”
“Would you like to go to that lobster place you talked about?”
“Fresh Catch? Fuck yeah, I would. Hurry. I’m starving.”
“I’ll be there as soon as I can.” It seemed like the entire city was on the road that night. There must’ve been an event downtown. It never got like this otherwise.
When I knocked on Zoe’s door, she inched it open slowly, the lights off in her apartment, revealing a fiery red gown that seemed to flow down her body with a slit that traveled up her legs. “Hello,” she said in a sultry whisper.
“Can we just skip dinner and fuck right now?”
“Not yet. I’m starving.” She tried to play it off and keep her eyes straight when we walked to the car, but I could see her eyeing me, looking at my arms and my chest. It was sexy, being admired by a woman as powerful as her.
“Traffic’s a bitch,” I said when I got the car started.
“That’s because of the street music festival. Me and Chloe go every year and pass out pastries.”
“I wonder if they have a good rock band. I’d love to rock out to some metal.” I threw my head up and down.
“I’m sure they do. They let anyone play there. Last time, there was this guy with a gray Moses beard sitting in the lotus position playing a pair of wooden pipes. He was so high, he just kept blasting the same note over and over again, probably thinking he was about to reach enlightenment.”
“I would’ve loved to see that.”
“We should walk around a bit after we finish eating. He’s probably there right now, whistling himself into a higher plane of consciousness.”
We both cracked up laughing. “Oh, God.” I was still beet red. Finally, when I caught my breath, I asked, “How are things at work? Have there been any sightings?”
“No, and I don’t want to talk about it. So far as I’m concerned, you and I are the only people who exist tonight.”
“Are you sure? Zoe, I’ve been worried ever since you told me.”
“I’m positive. You and I are the only two people in the world who matter right now.”
I went quiet. There were two people who mattered just as much tonight, and I wasn’t sure how I was going to tell her about them. There was a line of cars for miles backing up the downtown exit. We had to take the next exit and drive through the back roads to get to the restaurant where a crowd of people was waiting out front.
We stopped next to the alleyway near the entrance. “There’s a wait,” she said. “Do you think we can get in?”
“Are you kidding?” I laughed. “We don’t have to wait with the common folk. Come on.” I whisked her through the alley to the kitchen entrance in back where a bus boy was sitting on a milk crate smoking a joint.
When he caught sight of us, he stopped, halfway through a hit, his eyes wide. The smoke caught in his throat, and he keeled over hacking. I waited for a moment while he regained his bearings. When he did, he looked up at me. “Please, please don’t say anything. I—”
“Just go tell Brendan that Archer is here and that I need a table for two in the back.”
“Sure.” He jumped up and ran inside.
Zoe was trying not to laugh. “That was good.”
“Maybe I can scare the boy into giving us a free bottle,” I joked.
“You’re ruthless.”
“You have no idea.”
The back door opened, and a large Mexican man with a bright red face came out. “Archer, how are you, man? You should’ve told me that you were coming. I just used the last of the bay scallops.”
“That’s all right. I think I’m in the mood for lobster.”
“We’ve got plenty of that. Come inside. Your table’s ready. I hope Marco didn’t disturb you.”
“No, he’s fine. I think we disturbed him though.”
Brendan laughed. “He was pretty shaken up. That’ll teach him to smoke on break.”
We walked inside the cramped kitchen, through the office, into a low-lit room with candelabras sitting in each corner, illuminating our small, private booth. I waited for Zoe to take her seat before I sat down.
“What can I get you to drink?”
“I think we’ll try out one of your vintage roses.”
“And are you ready to order?” he asked.
I looked at Zoe. “I’ll get the lobster,” she said.
“The same for you, Archer?”
“Yes, please.”
“I’ll have your order out in a minute.”
When he left, Zoe leaned in. “I’m glad you chose the rose. It will go perfectly with the lobster. I’m surprised you knew that.”
“This is why I learned it. To impress women.”
“You dog.” She kicked me under the table playfully. “I’ll bet you have a different girl every night.”
“I used to; I won’t lie.”
“I wouldn’t believe you if you did.”
“But it gets boring after a while, and I don’t like having to go through all the effort of hunting somebody down, trying to convince them that I’m worth it, all so I could do the same thing I was doing every other night.”
“So, you want something stable?”
“I just don’t want to have to pretend to want something I don’t. If I wanted sex, I could probably just walk out of here right now and pick a girl. It’s not hard, but what’s the point? It’s not satisfying. There’s nothing deep or profound about sticking my dick in somebody I just met. Besides, half the time the women I meet only care about one thing.”
“The money.”
“And who can blame them? The world’s not an easy place. They have to get ahead, but that doesn’t mean you have to lower yourself to having sex with somebody in hopes of getting a new purse or a pair of shoes.”
“I always wondered how men like you find women.”
“We don’t, not usually. There are ways, like matchmaking services, and we can always date within our class structure. But until you actually have the cash, it’s impossible to describe the magnitude of wealth and what it does to your life and the people around you.”
“I’m curious.”
“It’s all about greed and envy. If people see that you have that kind of money, they get all worked up. They want to know everything about you and tell you their life stories. Then they just have a few issues that they need help with. Issues that only money can solve, of course.”
“Of course,” she said, nodding.
“Then there’s family. I’m blessed to be an only child, but I’ve met a lot of people who ended up floating the people they love through rehabs, buying them houses, giving them allowances, all so they can be screwed over. It ends up turning pe
ople sour. Billionaires lock themselves in their houses. They pay for every security measure you can imagine and live like they’re about to be shot at all times. You’ve never seen paranoia until you’ve met a neurotic billionaire.”
“I couldn’t do it.”
“I don’t. I choose the people who I talk to carefully and live my life. I don’t need a bulletproof car and a moat to make myself feel secure. I just need things to work at the company.”
“Is the money what influenced your decision to stop talking to me?” She was looking me directly in the eye as if she was challenging me to lie to her.
“It was part of it, but you’re not the kind of woman to spread her legs for the first rich man who comes along. So, I wasn’t really worried as much about that as I was the chaos of my daily life.”
“I’ll bet that is on a completely different level,” she said.
“Does that bother you?” I had to test her first.
“Rose for the lady.” Brendan walked in and set a wine glass down for Zoe. The sweet, pink aroma of the wine caught my senses, and my stomach started growling. “And for you.” Brendan poured me a glass and left the bottle. “Your order is almost ready. I’ll be back shortly.”
“Thank you, Brendan.”
“Of course.” He ducked out.
“I’m thinking of adding an apricot streusel to the menu, something that they can call in ahead of time for.”
“Do you normally let people call in ahead for orders? That sounds like a huge shift in your business plan.”
“It is, and no, we don’t do it yet, but Chloe started talking about it to me the other day. We have a huge menu, and I don’t know if you know much about food service or not, but that’s a big mistake. It’s all about simple, mostly uniform ingredients.”
“Right.” I took a sip of my wine.
“But there’s so much more that I can do that customers aren’t experiencing, and we want to bring that to people.”
“I see. Can you keep up with it?”
“That’s the only reason I’m even considering it. If I get a deadline, I’m going to make it. I plan ahead. That’s how I always do things. It’s the unexpected stuff I can’t take care of.”
She was thinking of altering her business plan to decrease her workload. I couldn’t throw in a couple sleepless nights and a frantic trip to the hospital. I knew, even if she didn’t say anything, that she was already stretched so thin from the business that she wasn’t sure if she could keep up.