Into My Arms

by Lia Riley

  The kitchen floor creaks before ice-cold glass presses against my neck. “What the hell?” I yelp, spinning around.

  My latest roommate, Courtland of the Clan K-Y, grins down at me, gripping an unopened beer bottle. “You need to relax, honey.” He pushes up his black-framed glasses. Each of his ribs are visible because he’s not wearing a shirt, only low-slung athletic shorts. The hair feathering his lower abdomen resembles an unwatered houseplant and a snarling tiger is inked across his concave chest. Courtland is also a software engineer who happens to pay for two-thirds of the rent—granted, he gets the killer master bedroom in the bargain.

  “Sit. Take a load off and have a beer with me,” Courtland drawls.

  I step away. “Can’t. I…I have to get back to work.”

  He gives serious bedroom eyes, a look that I’ve ignored the last month by holing up in my room, scuttling out to venture to the apartment complex’s workout studio or to fix a depressingly quick meal.

  “You just got home.” He steps forward, his graze crawling over my boobs with all the subtlety of a drunken cockroach.

  “Yes, but…” This ain’t home sweet home when I have to wipe doorknobs with wet wipes. I half turn, shoving my ramen packages into the cupboard. “My boss asked me to come back. Some sort of a night meeting.”

  “What’s Z like anyway?” Courtland asks, rocking back and forth on his heels as if he can’t decide to continue the advance or accept retreat. “You never say, but come on, something. One little morsel.” I recognize that look of avid curiosity all too well. When people find out I work at Zavtra Tech, that I’m actually Aleksander Zavtra’s executive assistant, I’m assaulted by questions. Questions I can’t begin to answer because I know very few things about him.

  He is curt.

  He is methodically organized.

  He is fond of one overpriced exotic fish.

  I shrug in response.

  Courtland lets out a sigh, as if I’m being a major wet blanket. “How about a foot massage before you hit the road?”

  I don’t return his skeevy smile. He has the confidence of a guy who ate a decent dinner and has a bank balance with enough 0s to rival a can of Spaghetti-O’s.

  Yum, Spaghetti-O’s. Maybe on payday.

  When the time came to move to Silicon Valley, start a job, and begin a new life, I found out quickly the joke was on me. All my apartment applications were denied, the credit reports revealing how badly I was screwed. My options are limited. I can either shake down my folks for money they don’t have, press legal charges, or pay off their business debts myself.

  I’ll take depressing door number three. My salary is better than decent. Another year of belt-tightening and I’ll have the bills paid off. Until then, I have to guard against rickets and withstand a string of shitty roommates.

  “Come on, Beth, live a little. You look like you need to undo that top button, maybe the next one too.” Courtland holds out the beer bottle and his fingers glisten. Nasty. My stomach lurches. I can see Courtland’s desire in his eyes, the way his thin lips part, the rapid hitch of his breath, and the trace of perspiration beading his hairline.

  This isn’t the first time he’s felt out the possibility of a friends-with-benefits arrangement, even though we aren’t even pals. But…crap, imagine if I were his girlfriend? I bet my share of the rent would disappear in a flash. He would take me grocery shopping or for rides in his Porsche convertible. I bet he’d love to doll me up over at Santana Row. Imagine getting real salon haircuts again rather than trimming my bangs over the sink.

  If I slept with him, I could have everything I miss about my old life—everything except self-respect.

  Tears prickle in the corner of my eyes. “Ouch, my contacts,” I mumble, rubbing them away. Shoulders back, lift that chin. Can’t let him see that he’s getting to me.

  “I didn’t know you wore any,” he says.

  Because I don’t. I am a lying liar who lies.

  And I’m at the end of my tether.

  I grab my purse. “Have a great night,” I call, beelining for the door. Maybe I can move out and live at my desk?

  * * *

  Twenty minutes later, I pull into the Zavtra Tech parking lot. The modern office rises from the bleak tarmacscape, shining against the night like a shimmering spaceship. There are still plenty of cars in the lot even though it’s after ten. The black Tesla is in the spot marked CEO.

  I’m not sure Z ever goes home, even though he has his choice of any number of lavish residences, including those in Los Altos Hills, Big Sur, Vail, New York City, and Moscow. He’s half Ukrainian, or Russian; no one is really certain of his origin story. There is a subtle Eastern European bite to his consonants.

  I swipe my keycard to enter the building, avoiding the elevator that goes directly to the Fishbowl. Before I face the three hundred e-mails that have no doubt flooded my inbox during the last hour and a half, I go to the executive break room. This is where the good stuff is stashed for the bigwigs at Zavtra Tech. I’m not a bigwig and technically not supposed to open the freezer and scan the items that in no way belong to me.

  But considering that today I’ve mulled over the idea of whoring myself to my roommate and selling a rare fish on the black market, stealing chocolate toffee ice cream is the least of my current sins. I’m desperate enough for a sugar fix to covertly scoop myself a bowl, grab a spoon, and shove the container back in the freezer, trying not to wince at the $14.99 price tag on the lid.

  Fifteen bucks for a pint of ice cream? Jesus, were these organic grass-fed cows milked by nuns who took a vow of silence in a luxury convent?

  When I get back to my seat, I bang the bowl triumphantly on the desk and the spoon clatters to the floor.

  “Crap.”

  Koroleva’s mouth silently opens and closes. Her ever-watchful eyes are cold and blank, probably just like her owner. I spend most of my life in the sole company of a fish worth more than me, and I’m starving yet spoonless. This is my life.

  I pick it up anyway and lick the ice cream, basically going down on this bowl. It could easily be a porno—a broke, hungry food fetish porno.

  At least the only creature bearing witness is a fish.

  My computer pings.

  Z.

  I wipe my mouth and realize ice cream is smeared on my nose. The camera stares and a terrible feeling sinks in. What if he really can see me? What if this isn’t a weird one-sided fantasy?

  What if he…watches me?

  That’s stupid and paranoid. Reclusive, billionaire geniuses do other things besides ogle their personal assistants. They are too busy refreshing offshore bank account balances, or buying ungodly amounts of random items on Amazon, or heck, buying Amazon full stop. Except he always knows when I’m here.

  Ping! I flinch in my seat.

  Aleksander Zavtra: Bethanny. I am happy to see you

  Case in point. I glance at the camera again. How many times have I glared at that thing? Jesus, have I ever picked my nose, or scratched, or…

  I pick up the ice cream and give it a slow, defiant lick.

  Never has he written anything more than professional directions. Call this person. Cancel this meeting. Order this. Tell so and so to do the thing. Or not to do the thing.

  I type back, licking chocolate from my lips: I’m ready. I omit the second part of the sentence, the question of the night—for what?

  The reply is immediate. Meet me on the roof in five minutes. Bring Koroleva.

  Chapter Three

  Beth

  Four minutes are wasted trying to figure out how to transport Koroleva. I can’t very well plop a million-dollar fish in my half-empty ice cream bowl for transport. Next to the tank is a small cupboard and inside—bingo!—a box of two-gallon plastic bags. I yank one out and search for a way to grab her. I’m hardly a primitive survivalist. I don’t even like handling raw chicken.

  The fish’s stare holds a definite challenge, all “I’d like to see you try.”

  �
�If my ass gets fired over you…,” I mutter. Z is notoriously anal about punctuality.

  I roll my sleeves and go on tiptoe, swishing the bag through the water. “Come on, get in the bag.”

  She darts around the edge, nibbles the plastic.

  “Go in your home,” I order.

  Great. I busted tail getting a 4.0 grade point average and landed a job at the most up-and-coming company in Silicon Valley to get all Happy Gilmore a fish.

  My life is officially ridiculous.

  Screw this. I move fast. A quick ninja dart of the hand and Koroleva is in the bag. I make sure to collect as much saltwater as possible, because I have no idea what Z is up to and there is no way I’ll give mouth-to-gill or be tasked with sourcing the world’s smallest defibrillator.

  She thrashes with enough strength that I need to keep both hands steady on the bag. Forget my purse. Z said to go to the roof. Not Mars. Maybe all he wants is some special stargazing time with his weird pet. Who am I to question? I’m just a peasant off to have my first audience with the king.

  I get into the elevator. My keycard is pinned to my hip. I shimmy against the reader and use my nose to hit the button. The one marked R.

  The door opens and I step out, glancing at my watch. Six minutes and forty-two seconds. Not good but if he’d given me better instructions—scratch that, any instructions—then I would have been the model of punctuality. The night is warm, no fog coming off the bay. Summer heat clings to the air, and city lights spread in every direction. But that dazzling sight isn’t what demands my attention; no, that would be the loud helicopter engine. The blades create a furious draft that whips my hair back from my face. This is Z’s famous helicopter, the Sikorsky S-76C, a retrofitted Black Hawk kitted out for luxury civilian use.

  Katya, Z’s ever-present bodyguard, strides toward me in his typical black suit, black shirt, black tie uniform. A few of us around the office privately call him Rainbow Brite. Guess he wears those ubiquitous aviator sunglasses even at night. “Good. You have fish,” he says in his thick Eastern European accent.

  I hold the bag out and he stares at Koroleva.

  “Go on, then,” I say after the longest pause in recorded history. “Take it.”

  He turns back to the helicopter, ignoring me. “Come.”

  Sweat prickles my chest. “Where?” I have to shout to be heard over the helicopter’s wop-wop-wop. I can’t climb into that metal coffin. I am afraid of flying in commercial planes and only head to the airport under the influence of a hefty dose of antianxiety medication and even still, my heart rate stays over one hundred for the entire flight. A helicopter is a million times worse; I might as well be locked in a flying coffin.

  “He’ll tell you.”

  He as in Z? So he’s here, inside the helicopter?

  I almost drop the fish worth more than my life. My palms sheen with sweat while my stomach hollows as if I hadn’t just eaten a bunch of ice cream. I close my eyes, let the scene disappear for a few seconds, and breathe deep, holding to the count of four. When I return to the present, I’m ready to deal with whatever is coming.

  You can do this.

  Katya helps me inside the interior, which is decked out with a flat screen, bar, and four oversized leather chairs. On one sprawls my boss, the guy who tops every “Richest Under Thirty” list. Feared. Revered. And currently glaring at his phone as if it contains the meaning of life and the news is not good.

  I can’t see his face, just the top of his head, thick dark hair, not shaggy, yet long enough you could run your fingers through it. The glossy texture invites touch, but when he glances up, his distant gaze projects “keep out.” His right eye is lighter and more yellow than the left, with rings of gray and brown around the pupil. The strange mosaic makes the captivating color impossible to define. What does he tell people at the DMV?

  Z doesn’t possess smooth, symmetrical good looks, but his craggy, chiseled-from-granite features would rubberneck any warm-blooded woman’s head. He doesn’t look like the kind of man who would be content to sit behind a desk all day or overindulge at expensive French restaurants. There is no billionaire spread softening his abdomen. Perhaps he flies in teams of Swedish synchronized swimmers to work out with during off hours.

  A strange tension builds within my body, prickles the hair on my neck. I fold myself into the opposite seat, no easy feat to be graceful in a slim-fit pencil skirt while gripping a saltwater-and-fish filled bag.

  “You’re late.” He speaks in a careful monotone.

  Over the phone, his sexy Slavic accent can be arresting but the effect is ten times more potent in person. Count to four! Count to four! Breathe! And remember, sexy as sin or not, he’s still typical Z. No polite and friendly “Hello, how are you, Beth?” or “At last, we meet in person,” or “Greetings, peon who has sat outside my office for months doing my every bidding.”

  “Yes,” I say, thrusting forward the bag, the strange spell he momentarily cast popping like a soap bubble. “Sorry. Your fish didn’t want to go easily into this good night.”

  He flinches from my touch. It happens quick, so quick I’m not sure if I make it up, except that I automatically cringe in response and the bag sloshes. Koroleva twitches in alarm. Oh God, don’t let me drop her.

  “I am going to the coast for the weekend,” he says abruptly.

  Okay, have fun with that. “Am I to do anything in particular while you are away?”

  He glances back to his phone. The screen lights his brutally handsome features. “I want you to join me.”

  My heart forgets to take the next beat. “You do?” I gape at him. What the hell is going on in that brain? And how exactly does flying in a helicopter-of-death without a change of clean underwear fit into my job description? I’m happy to go above and beyond in my role, but I also want advance notice, and a toothbrush.

  At last, after at least a minute, his gaze snaps back to my face. “Well?”

  “Excuse me?” I’m still reeling.

  “Are you coming, then?”

  “I just asked if—”

  “I’m not interested in hearing my words parroted. What is your answer?” His tone is curt. Asshole curt. Yet the tension radiating off him is nearly palpable, a tightness vibrating the air.

  My chest throbs. He is going to require me to go on high blood pressure medication.

  “You have ten seconds to decide. Yes or no, Bethanny.”

  No one ever calls me by my full name except him.

  “What good is an assistant unwilling to assist,” he mutters, keeping his voice pitched loud enough that I’ll hear every word.

  Oh hell no. But shit, I am pitching my new app concept to the Zavtra Tech Ideas Circle next week. An idea that I’m hoping will launch me from the Fishbowl and into the ocean. I’m ready to swim with the sharks.

  I bite the inside of my cheek as my stomach muscles tense. Do it, play nice. Suck up. My pulse spikes and not just because of the impending flight. Don’t freak out. This is for some work function. You can impress. Except, crap, I don’t even have my purse. It’s locked in my desk.

  “Yes, fine. Okay,” I say when time dwindles down to the final seconds. I want to get on his good side before pitching my app to his investment team. Also, I really don’t want to go home and spend the night with my creeper roommate, and maybe…just maybe…I’m desperate for something that feels different, wholly unexpected. A few years ago, I survived a near brush with death, a car accident that killed my best friend, Pippa. Now I’m forgetting the present to live focused on the future, a day without debts, when I can stand on my own two feet. But I shouldn’t forget about the adventure in today.

  Is it possible that dislike and attraction can be two sides of the same coin? As much as Z drives me crazy, I’d be kidding myself not to admit the draw to the man across from me, the man I have spoken to hourly for months but have never seen face-to-face. The man whose aftershave is a peppery, pine blend that makes me want to inhale deeper, except he just muttered
something to Katya that sounded like Idi and oh God, oh God, my breath comes out in a burst. We are airborne.

  Okay, okay, this is really happening. And if I’m choppering off into the night with my boss, then it’s high time to stop projecting that Z’s some sort of secret, brooding romantic antihero. Even though he’s wildly attractive.

  And a young billionaire.

  Many times over.

  Crap, let’s face it—ain’t no one kicking that fantasy out of bed.

  But in real life, this guy is a dickhole who cares more about his precious fish than the warm-blooded employee sitting beside him.

  The office is out of sight in an instant, and it doesn’t take more than a few minutes until the lights of Silicon Valley are gone, and we are choppering over the coastal dividing range. Below could be my parents’ winery where they’re sleeping snug, undisturbed by the knowledge they won their financial security at the price of mine.

  I glance back to Z time and again but never once does he look out the window or toward me. The way he grips his phone is unnerving. He doesn’t run his finger over the screen or tap out any texts. I don’t get the impression he is doing anything except staring emptily. Guess he’s got enough billions to afford eccentricity.

  New lights in the distance take on a familiar shape. That’s Monterey Bay, where I grew up. We cut south of Santa Cruz and angle over Moss Landing and then past Monterey and Carmel. The lights vanish again, and that’s because we are flying along Big Sur, a rugged stretch of coast famous for its foggy weather, tight valleys, and jagged thrusts of cliffs that drop sheer to the ocean. A playground of beat poets back in the fifties.

  I haven’t panicked this entire flight. The strange realization hits me like a lightning bolt. Strange, my breathing rate isn’t even fast. It’s as if the cold, strong presence across from me emanates a strength that I can latch on to. Which means that I’m going a little nutso, because while there is indeed a cold, strong presence nearby, it’s more a blast of North wind, frostier than a Minnesota winter dawn.

  “Excuse me?” I say, and nothing. I lean forward and raise my voice. “Excuse me, Z?”