by July Hall
Charles went still. His hands curled into fists again. Sandra and Meiling took one look at each other and then at the door.
The maid beat them to it. Before Zhou could say anything else or Charles could do something massively stupid, she slammed the door in their faces and left them all in the corridor.
“Mr. Magister,” Meiling said softly. Charles looked down at her, and she took a step backward at the blaze in his eyes. “I…I’m sorry that didn’t go according to—”
Charles looked back at the door.
“Please,” Sandra blurted, and put her hand on his arm before she could think better of it. She even tugged at him, glancing toward the nearby private elevator. “Let’s just go. Unless—” She exchanged another helpless glance with Meiling. “Maybe it was something I did? Maybe I could talk to…”
Charles grabbed her arm, just as she’d grabbed Meiling, and dragged her toward the elevator. She barely managed not to stumble in the high heels he’d told her not to wear. Oh Jesus, what the fuck had happened back there?
When they’d all three piled into the elevator and were descending to the lobby, Charles barked orders into his phone, telling his driver to be ready at the curb for him, Miss Dane, and Ms. Yu. Then he called Violet and told her to make sure the jet was ready for takeoff and that the hotel would get his and Miss Dane’s things to the airport immediately.
Meiling looked at Sandra. Her eyes widened. Sandra wondered why. Then she realized how close Charles’s body was to hers, how warm, and it was because he’d put his arm around her shoulders. She hadn’t even noticed at first. She wondered if he noticed now, as he spoke to Violet.
Meiling’s gaze shuttered, and the friendly colleague Sandra had known vanished. In her place stood a polite stranger. A stranger who would never dream of commenting on an employee who was sleeping with the boss. She turned and looked resolutely at the stainless-steel elevator doors.
Sandra’s face got hot. Her whole body got hot. She’d never felt so mortified, not even as a child being picked on. She fought not to push away from Charles. It would only upset him more, and it was too late anyway.
This was what it would be like if people knew—people she respected, whose professional opinion she valued. She’d known that on an abstract level, but seeing it in person really brought it home. Meiling Yu had officially just written her off as Charles Magister’s piece of ass.
Charles stuck his phone back in his pocket. Sandra felt his body stiffen when he realized what he was doing, and he pulled his arm away. But the damage had been done.
“Ms. Yu,” Charles said.
Sandra closed her eyes and waited in dread for the hammer to fall: Charles would make some kind of threat, and they’d argue about it on the way to the airport, because he just couldn’t get away with doing that to people, he couldn’t, not when it was about her—about them—
“I would strongly suggest you not work with Richard Zhou in the future,” Charles said. “You’ve only got my word for it, but he can’t be trusted. At the very least, don’t work with him alone.”
Meiling turned just enough that Sandra could see her surprised expression in profile. “Yes, Mr. Magister,” she said.
Charles took a deep breath. Sandra still stood close enough to him that she felt his shoulders rise and fall. “Of course I’ll compensate you for your time and the fees you’ve incurred working on my behalf.”
“Thank you, sir,” Meiling said, sounding more uncertain than ever. “But if my firm failed to meet your standards in any way—”
The elevator dinged as they reached the ground floor. “It didn’t,” Charles said, and gestured for Meiling and Sandra to precede him into the beautiful lobby with its stone walls and running fountain.
His car waited at the curb. It was the same model of Rolls-Royce Phantom that chauffeured him everywhere at home. “Where should we drop you before we go to the airport?” Charles asked Meiling.
Meiling looked more and more astonished. “Nowhere, thank you,” she said. “I’ll return to my office, and it’s out of your way.” She gave him a faint smile. “If you insist, I’ll put the cab fare on the invoice.”
“You do that,” Charles said dryly. “Good-bye, Ms. Yu. I’m sorry things didn’t work out.”
“As am I, Mr. Magister. I hope this won’t dissuade you from working with us in the future, should you wish to.” She bit her lip anxiously. “I’ll try to see what went wrong.”
“No. Don’t ask,” Charles told her. “When you see something like that—don’t ever ask.”
After a moment, Meiling nodded. Charles gave her a brisk nod and turned toward the car. Sandra lingered a couple of seconds before following, half hoping that Meiling would maybe smile at her, or at least say something like It was nice working with you, or...
Meiling didn’t. She turned and began walking down the sidewalk, holding out her arm to hail a cab.
The driver held the door open, and Sandra followed Charles into the car. She settled against the leather seats of the Phantom and tried to collect herself. She had a suspicion that Charles was doing the same. He stared out of the window. One hand, clenched into a fist, rested on his knee.
Moments later, the car glided into the traffic of the city. Sandra couldn’t hear much of it. Charles’s car was practically soundproofed on the inside. Wealth could buy you silence in many ways.
Maybe Meiling would tell her coworkers, some of whom Sandra had met personally. Maybe she wouldn’t. Maybe it didn’t matter at all. Sandra leaned her head back against the seat, inhaled deeply through her nose, and exhaled from her mouth. It helped to slow her racing heart.
She turned to Charles, who was still looking out of the window. “What happened?” she asked.
He shook his head. “Not now,” he said, with a glance at the driver.
Oh, now was a fine fucking time for him to care about whether or not the help knew about them. He hadn’t cared about butlers, bellboys, security guards, maids, flight attendants, PAs, or rare trade brokers, so why some random chauffeur in Hong Kong?
Yes. Why now, in Hong Kong? Sandra closed her eyes. If Charles was clamming up in front of the chauffeur, it had nothing to do with Sandra. It had something to do with what had transpired between him and Mr. Zhou.
Now that she’d had a few moments to compose herself, Sandra remembered Zhou’s cold, dark eyes. She shivered. Talk about the spider at the center of a web. And whatever had happened back there—whatever he’d said—it had been enough to make Charles lose his cool in a way she hadn’t known was possible.
Just thinking about it made Sandra feel her own surge of anger, one that had nothing to do with her insecurities or wounded pride. Who was Richard Zhou, anyway? Just some guy who ran casinos, places for foolish people to lose their money. He was a leech, a cheat, little better than a drug dealer. You could be addicted to gambling, right? There were support groups and everything.
Who was a man like Richard Zhou to sting Charles Magister like a gadfly?
Seen in that light, Sandra almost didn’t care anymore, almost wanted to take Charles’s hand and cuddle up next to him in the car. After all, he’d grabbed her in the elevator, apparently without intending to. Maybe he’d like that.
Still without looking at Sandra, Charles pulled out his phone and tapped at the touchscreen. Then he growled, “Hello, Stephen?” in a voice that did not invite any cuddling.
For the rest of the ride to the airport, she listened to Charles filling Stephen in on the details of his meeting with Andrew Huan. They didn’t interest her very much, but it seemed like that part of the trip, at least, had been fine. It sounded like Charles was satisfied with Mr. Huan’s progress toward setting the Hong Kong office straight.
She heard Stephen’s voice say something indistinct. Then she saw Charles’s hand clench into a fist on his knee again. “That was not as satisfactory,” Charles said. Stephen said something else. “Yes,” Charles replied. “Too bad.”
He wasn’t looking at her. H
e was very deliberately not looking at her. Sandra stared at her knees.
By the time he hung up, they were nearly at the airport. Charles turned to her with a bitter smile. It looked awful on him. “So, did you enjoy Hong Kong?” he asked.
“Parts of it, yeah,” Sandra managed. Really, it had been amazing until the final nosedive. She cleared her throat. She could do better than that. “I’m glad I came. Thanks for arranging this. I met a lot of people.” Even if they lost all respect for her, well…they’d still work with her, if she was their way in to Charles Magister’s pockets. They’d see she was good at her job. Maybe she could earn back their respect in time. “And I learned a lot,” she added.
She tried to smile at him. In response, his eyes only darkened, and he ground his jaw.
“Charles,” Sandra whispered, but he held up his hand and shook his head.
“We’ll discuss it on the flight home,” he said. She nodded. Okay. Just so long as they did discuss it. She couldn’t tolerate being in the dark much longer.
When they boarded the plane, Laura the flight attendant greeted them with her friendly smile. She had to know what Sandra and Charles had gotten up to during the overnight flight to Hong Kong, but she had a better poker face than Meiling. Or at least she’d had more time to practice it between then and now. Sandra still couldn’t look her in the eye.
“Your luggage just arrived, Mr. Magister,” she told Charles. “We’re loading it now.”
“Load it faster,” Charles said, in a tone that was pretty grim even for him. “I hope nobody is stupid enough to try and complicate our departure, but I’d rather not find out for sure.”
Sandra’s heart froze as she thought of what she knew about the big five families of Hong Kong. They were all over local government, among other things. Zhou probably knew lots of people at the airport. And at the police station.
The thought alone was enough to make her sit rigidly in her seat, clasping her hands deathly tight, hardly daring to breathe until the plane was taxiing down the runway. Charles sat across from her, sometimes looking out of the window, sometimes looking at her with an expression she couldn’t read.
He’d already told Laura that they weren’t to be disturbed unless they called for her. No fun and games today.
When they’d reached cruising altitude, Charles looked at Sandra again, sighed, and inclined his head.
They were alone in the compartment. “Well?” Sandra said, folding her arms.
To her surprise, Charles got a strange look in his eyes. It wasn’t cold or angry; it was almost bleak.
“Charles?” she prompted. Her voice shook. She cleared her throat. “What the hell happened back there?”
He sighed. Then, to her shock, he said, “I’m sorry.” He glanced toward the bedroom door. “Let’s discuss it in there. This is too…” He gestured around the cabin. “Businesslike.”
“Okay,” Sandra said, more and more spooked. She followed him into the bedroom. He gestured at the leather armchair in the corner and then sat down on the edge of the bed, resting his elbows on his knees.
This did not bode well. Sandra sat in the armchair and tried not to let her own knees knock together. She almost said You’re scaring me to death, but—what if this was about to be a really bad talk? Or even the talk? Had something happened back there to convince Charles that their relationship was a bad idea?
If that were so, then Sandra would rather not rip open her chest and show him her beating heart before he crushed it to a pulp. She tried to look cool. “What happened?” she asked yet again. “Why did you hit him?”
“Circumstances demanded it,” Charles said. Sandra tried to remember where she’d heard that before. “Richard Zhou decided to play cat and mouse, as I told you he would.” She watched Charles’s hands curl into fists. “He wanted—what I wouldn’t part with.”
Sandra frowned. “But you said anything on the list was fine. And he picked everything on the list out himself.”
Charles ground his jaw. “Yes. I suppose I was outmaneuvered. I should have pretended to be more interested in the list than I was. He could tell I didn’t really give a damn about any of it.”
That seemed like the opposite of Negotiating 101. When you haggled for stuff, weren’t you supposed to pretend like you didn’t care and that you were fine with walking away? “So what did he want, if he was willing to negotiate?” Sandra asked.
“Something not on the list.” Charles winced. “I don’t know how he even knew about it, but he did.”
“And it was something that insulted you?” Sandra pressed. He nodded. “Charles, can’t you tell me what it was?” Maybe it was some big family secret she wasn’t supposed to know about.
Charles took a deep breath and appeared to come to a decision.
“He wanted you,” he said.
* * *
She didn’t pretend to misunderstand. Instead, Charles watched as Sandra’s face went pale.
“Me?” she said. “What does that even…oh God.” She shuddered. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”
He swallowed. “I am.” Serious, but receding from homicidal. He’d needed every moment between Zhou’s outrageous suggestion and now in order to calm down and speak with her rationally. With the horrified look on her face, he lost all the territory he’d gained.
Circumstances demanded it. Indeed. Generally, any alternative was preferable to physical violence. Violence was not his way. The damage it inflicted was only temporary, and Charles preferred to leave a more lasting impression.
But when a boy called your brother a faggot, or a man offered to buy your lover—well, you had to hit him. Many things had changed over thirty years, but not that.
As it turned out, Richard Zhou wasn’t totally untouchable. Charles’s hand still hurt from the punch.
“His eyes were so cold,” Sandra said. Then she curled up into a little ball in the chair and hugged her knees to her chest. She glanced past Charles at the opposite wall, as if she couldn’t meet his gaze. “Oh God, he gave me the creeps.”
Charles felt the fury rise once more. “Did he say something to you before I arrived?” he demanded. “Did anything happen?”
“No, not like that. He was just—‘creepy’ isn’t the right word. I don’t know what is. He scared me.” She shuddered, and squeezed herself even tighter. “He thought that was okay? Like, he legitimately thought he could ask you that?”
“He learned otherwise.” Charles reached for her. He would unwrap her from that shivering ball, warm her and reassure her. Hitting Zhou, holding Sandra…sometimes a man had to work with his hands.
Sandra cringed away from him and shook her head. “You said you don’t know how he knew about us. Really? Maybe I did something, maybe I said something.” She flushed. “I tried not to. I tried to look normal.”
She had tried. The fault was not hers. Charles doubted that Zhou had paid attention to her at all. He would have been watching Charles, gauging his reactions to everything. He would have noticed the way that Charles had glanced at Sandra; perhaps his gaze had softened, or his posture had relaxed. Perhaps he had simply glanced at her too often, period. It was a problem he had.
Richard Zhou, a man Charles had never met in his life, had needed all of two minutes to figure out what Sandra Dane meant to him.
And then Charles had gone and put his arm around her in the elevator without even thinking about it, because she was there, because she was his. That was the sort of slip he couldn’t afford to make. But how could he avoid it when he wasn’t even thinking about it?
“You did nothing wrong,” he told Sandra. “He saw my weakness and went for it.”
“I feel like something slimy just crawled over me in the dark.” She rubbed her forehead and then ran her fingers back through her hair, messing up her bun. She swallowed. “But that’s how Meiling saw me too.”
Charles stared at her. Maybe he’d misheard. “Ms. Yu?”
“Yeah.” Sandra bit her lip and couldn’t seem t
o look at him. “She saw you put your arm around me. And she gave me this look, and all of a sudden I wasn’t a person anymore. I was just your plaything.”
Charles’s skin prickled. It looked as if he had yet another fire to put out in Hong Kong. Soon, Ms. Yu’s little firm would find itself with a lot less business. “She’s wrong,” he told Sandra.
Sandra didn’t seem to hear him. She looked at her knees. “Your world is fucked up,” she said. “Kristen was right. He thought he could say that? That’s the kind of thing that goes on? Your world is fucked up and awful.”
“Richard Zhou doesn’t live in my world,” Charles snapped. “He’s no businessman, he’s a goddamn card shark.”
“He’s not alone,” Sandra said. “Charles, he looked at me and he saw—” Her hands curled into fists. “He saw your fucking car, or your chess set, or something. It was the same with Bradley.” Charles froze. “I wasn’t a person, I was…” Her eyes lost focus, as if she was gazing off into the distance at something only she could see. “I was something to you,” she said after a moment. “That’s all. Richard Zhou wanted me because he wanted to get one over on you, and Bradley wanted me because he wanted to look good in front of you, and—Jesus, don’t you get it? How am I even supposed to take that? If I’m just—”
Charles moved without thinking about it, just as he had in the elevator; by the time he knew what he was doing, he’d already yanked Sandra out of the armchair. She yelped, stumbled, and landed on the bed next to him. Before she had a chance to struggle or protest, he wrapped her tightly in his arms and looked down into her wide blue eyes.
“You are something to me,” he said through his teeth. “You are…” Irreplaceable, essential, worth more than pearls or diamonds or every penny I have. “Fucking hell, what do you want? I am who I am. There will always be men like Zhou.” With fragile noses. “If you give a damn what they think about you, you’ve already lost the battle.”
“It’s easy for you not to give a damn what people think,” Sandra said. “You don’t have to.” Before he could reply, she pressed her face against his shoulder. Then she put her arms around him and held him tight.