She would be more compliant with Mr. Kurck. It wasn’t his fault he was a too-rich asshole, and he certainly wasn’t worse than her own Mr. Edmondsson, with his “back when we were at the pole” and “I take my coffee with a half-teaspoon of sugar. One half.”
When Markus Kurck next came into the living room, May gasped. Newly shaved, hair glistening, he perfectly filled an obviously custom-made charcoal suit, pants fitted at the back and knee as it they’d been sewn onto him. His blue Oxford shirt had those odd French cuffs, still loose, and he carried shined shoes in his hand and his suit jacket over his arm.
“Help me with these,” he said, and dropped a pair of cufflinks in her hand. He sat next to her, bumping her hip and dipping the overstuffed sofa so much she trampolined up an inch. She scuttled half a foot down the sofa and leaned back toward him, hoping he wouldn’t notice.
He didn’t seem to, his expression a thousand miles away as he held out a hand toward her, wrist up. May pressed the two cuff-holes together and slid the tiny link in. She clicked the link into place, and then looked at it. A tiny cartoon penguin.
She looked up at him, startled. He shrugged, a little sheepish. “They’re good luck.”
“Mine’s a Hello Kitty bracelet.” May cringed inside. Why had she said that?
“Hello Kitty has no personal meaning,” he said sententiously.
“H.K. has whatever meaning a person chooses to give her.”
“I see I’ve hit a nerve.” He raised an eyebrow at her. How did he make them triangle like that? “Other sleeve, please.”
He shifted toward her, dropping his shoes on the floor. She clicked the cufflink on, then, belatedly remembering her promise to herself to be nicer, ran her fingers across his pulse point.
He jumped, or she did. He lifted his wrist to inspect it. “Static electricity in June, May?”
Trying to cover the shock of what she’d just felt—it could not possibly be lust—May went for the easy joke. “Just the excitement of being here with you, Mr. Kurck.”
“Excitement, little May? Then by all means, call me Beau.”
He was all joviality in the elevator, but his mood grew cooler and more introspective with every block closer to the restaurant they walked. May’s mood did the opposite. The day was beautiful, with the bright blue sky and mild weather that lulled one into thinking that DC summers were Eden. They’d get two weeks of this, tops, before the muggy-swamp weather took over for the rest of the summer. She wanted to soak in this wonderfulness, since it would not last.
Now in the restaurant, their moods were reversed. Beau paced, and May stood calm as a yogi. Neither touched the pitchers of ice water and margaritas on a shiny platter at the edge of the table for eight. There weren’t any place settings, so May expected it would be a short meeting.
Beau stopped short. “Why no cutlery?”
He didn’t expect this to be a short meeting? May vamped. “This restaurant makes a big deal of the silverware; they bring it out special for each course.” He wasn’t really listening to her, obviously, because he fell for it.
She’d seen Jane Lindell in photos and news video, of course, but when the senator breezed across the threshold, May had the feeling she’d never seen anything like this.
It could have been the power suit, the power posture, or the perfect fake-sun-streaked hair, but May suspected Sen. Lindell’s secret was her amazing face. Not beautiful, not perfectly symmetrical even, but the combination of strong jaw, pert nose, eyes somehow both sharp and round, and a generously wide mouth stopped you in your tracks. Even Beau Kurck, allegedly familiar with the face and the person, was taken aback for a moment.
“Who is this handsome man, Sadie?” The senator shared an odd sort of glance with Sadie, who simpered—really, that was the word for it—and shut the door. They must have left the senator’s staffer out at the bar.
The senator turned back to Beau, drinking him in. May didn’t blame her. Beau’s beautifully cut suit completely covered but somehow also enhanced his beautifully cut body. But for some reason the senator’s gaze slid too quickly past him to May, standing at his side.
“Cute cut. Pageboy suits you.”
May struggled to come up with an answer. No one in power had ever noticed her before, much less said anything to her. While she’d railed about it to her friends, it turned out she now saw that she really did feel more comfortable as one of the anonymous and unmentioned.
But before she could get even a simple thank you out, the senator’s genial, glad-handing expression froze.
She looked back at Beau, and her almond eyes widened. “Boris?”
“In the flesh.”
The senator, that power player, seemed to involuntarily take a step back. A chill settled at the edges of her eyes. May fought the urge to step closer to Beau, protect him. As if she could offer any protection.
The senator looked him up and down. “You look fantastic, Beau.” Somehow she made such an extreme compliment sound back-handed, and his nickname an epithet.
“I’ve done everything you said.” Beau’s voice had a quality May hadn’t yet heard. Firm, yes, determined, yes, gorgeous, yes. What was it?
Honest. He was speaking from his heart.
“I need a drink,” The Senator moved around the table, away from them, and sat down.
May picked up a glass and looked at the pitchers. “Water? Margarita?”
Lindell shot a startled glance at her. Beau interrupted. “You like margaritas.”
“Liked. Ten years ago. Bourbon on ice, please. Now.”
Sadie jumped into action. She pulled May by the arm toward the door, opened it and pushed her through. “I’ll get the drink. End every sentence with ‘senator,’ remember?”
The senator called from behind them. “Girl. May, right? Come sit next to me. We’ll start with water.”
Sadie pushed her back into the room, and May poured three glasses of water. Placing one at the seat directly across from the senator, she brought the other two with her as she went to sit as invisibly as possible beside the politician.
Lindell drank down half the water in one gulp. May was rather glad they’d started with the water and not the bourbon.
“Sit, Beau. It’s been a long time.” She sighed, as if she’d rather it had stayed in the past.
He sat, loosening his tie a bit as if it helped him clear his throat. “Thank you for agreeing to meet with me privately.”
“I agreed to meet Sadie’s secret funder.”
Beau Kurck took a breath in, and changed in front of May’s eyes. She could have sworn he was three inches taller, his eyes steely determined, and stranger still, that his smell and taste had charged the air with something. Electricity? Power?
“You told me I wasn’t marriage material. I was frail, unambitious, not living up to my potential, weak. Looking back, I have to agree. Let me finish. I’ll be short.”
“I changed my body, my mind, and my career. I run a multi-million-dollar company that brings work to my hometown and joy to millions. I’ve done something with my life, as you put it. Still, something is missing.”
He leaned in, arms resting on the table. “You’ve done so well, Jane. I was so proud when you ran for your late husband’s House seat, and to be the youngest senator, how marvelous. But something is still missing in your life, as well.”
May saw that gaping hole in her own life. If only someone like Beau Kurck wanted to help her fill it. She was melting for him, and he wasn’t even talking to her.
“So, Janey, I’m back. I haven’t been faithful, but that’s probably an advantage. I know what I’m doing now. I can love you better. I want to love you better.”
He paused. Now was the time to ask, and May was sure he didn’t want to ask. He wanted to tell Jane Lindell to say yes. May wanted to tell her to, as well.
Beau reached halfway across the table, palm up. “Jane Lindell, will you marry me?”
Yes, yes, May said silently, pulling her own hands in to cover her heart. How blas
ted romantic! She pulled her gaze away from that outstretched hand and looked at the woman beside her.
Sen. Jan Lindell’s back was pressed into the back of the chair. Her hands were clasped on the edge of the table. Her eyes spoke pity.
Shit.
“Boris. Beau. I am so proud of what you’ve done. I knew you could do it, and if I was the prod that booted you in the butt, I’m glad.”
He pulled back his hand, sliding it under the table. “But.”
“But I never felt the same way for you as you did for me. We were in high school, for heaven’s sake. You know, that fumbling attempt at sex when we were seventeen, it was actually good for me.”
May’s ears were burning. Where was Sadie with that drink?
“So you could reject me with no qualms?” His voice was flat, but with an effort.
“Sweetie.” He winced. Even May hated to be called sweetie. To call a man that—ouch. “Listen. This is the thing. It’s not known, outside a few, but I’m gay. My time with you, that’s what finally forced me to admit it.” She turned her hands, palm up, and shrugged.
May made a noisy show of reaching the pitcher of margaritas. She did not want to see his face. She concentrated on the glasses, pouring out two, making sure the ice didn’t splash too loud. She pushed one across the table and took a big swig of the second.
He didn’t touch it. “But you were married.”
“A beard. He liked men; I liked women.”
“So the bereaved widow, all an act?”
“I did love him, and I still miss him. But I didn’t fuck him.”
May watched his glass rise as he lifted it, as he took a small sip, and lingered on his mouth as she heard the glass clink back onto the table. He was pressing his lips so tightly together she was sure they’d have a crease.
“I see.”
She raised her eyes to his. He was concentrating on the glass. Then he looked up but past them, to his left. Remembering?
Sadie’s entrance did not faze him, but the senator sighed her relief. Sadie’s gaze flicked across all their faces as she stepped past May to hand the drink to the senator.
Lindell took the drink, and grabbed onto Sadie’s hand with her other hand. “You didn’t tell me it was Boris Kurcki.”
“Boris?” Sadie’s gaze flashed across the table, to the ruggedly handsome, abstracted man who sat there. “But he’s not coltish at all.”
“Not anymore,” the senator said, draining her drink. “Get me another.”
Sadie frowned. “You have a dinner speech later.”
The senator leveled a chilling glance at her, and after a long moment, Sadie slipped back toward the door.
May followed Beau’s gaze following Sadie to the door, settling on the door as she closed it again. Flashing back to the senator.
“The penguin’s flack?”
“I had no idea it was you behind Cranky Penguins. Brilliant. Kurck is the common spelling?”
He passed a hand across his eyes.
The senator turned to May. “He’s all yours, sweetie. And I don’t need to remind you, do I, that this conversation is confidential? Sadie would not be pleased if anything were to leak.”
“Of course. Senator,” May remembered to add at the last minute.
“Think I’ll take that drink at the bar.” Lindell pressed her hands on the table to push to a stand. Beau, too, pushed up to stand, swaying slightly. May scrambled to her feet and out of the way.
The senator held her hand out across the table. Beau shook it, a pitiful shadow of what May knew he’d wanted.
“I am proud of you, Beau. I wish you all the best.” Jane Lindell’s step grew firmer with each step toward the door. May held it open for her, and by the time she was through it she was The Senator again.
May heard her assignment slump back into his chair.
“You want to be alone for a minute?”
“No. Come, sit next to me, like you did for her.”
With one more longing look at the outside, happy world, May shut the door on it. She grabbed her glass and pushed the platter of pitchers closer to Beau. He lifted the margarita pitcher and refilled his glass. He held it up for her, and she set her glass on the table for him to top hers off.
She pulled the rolling chair next to him out, trying to ever-so-subtly move it a little farther from him and that aura of masculine despair. But since the aura filled the room, it was rather a lame gesture. She sat down and opened her mouth to say—what?
“Just sit. And drink.”
May pulled out her phone. “Just texting Sadie that she doesn’t need to come back.”
He grunted. “Understatement.”
Sadie’s reply was almost immediate: Buy food, booze, anything. Fdn will reimburse. Or we will.
Kurck’s face was too still. If he wasn’t pouring, lifting, and sipping heartily of the margaritas, she’d have thought him an automaton.
“Want some salt with that?”
His fist smashed down on the table. The pitcher, now ice only, jumped. May’s glass tipped, and before she could catch it, spilled toward her lap.
She pushed the chair back, rolling into the back wall, and stood up. Beau lifted his hand over her still-spinning glass and smashed his palm onto it. May closed her eyes, praying it was safety glass.
She opened them again. No blood. But he wasn’t done. He tipped the last of the margarita from his glass onto his tongue, and then threw the glass at the table. This time, the glass splintered. May put her hand out to shield her eyes.
“I told you not to talk. Now look what you’ve done.”
May had never seen anyone go from cold to red-hot in zero seconds. She swallowed her heart back into her chest and did not look at him.
“May. Look at me.” His voice was at the regular timbre again.
She shuddered. “I think it’s time the bear was fed. Eat here or...”
“Let’s get out of here.”
****
She took him to Ben’s Chili Bowl, the alcohol-soppingist food she could think of. Then they walked, and walked, and walked. He said very little, but whenever she made a gesture toward leaving him, he grumbled and rumbled, and she was afraid he would cry, and they’d all end up at the hospital. So they walked. The mild night, gorgeous with moonlight, made the raw pain on his face, so poorly hidden, look macabre.
Finally, they reached the dusty edges of the Mall, and May heard the nearby church bells toll.
“Midnight, Mr. Kurck. We should get you home. Work in an hour, you know.” Men liked to work their feelings out, right? And he surely loved his work.
“Fuck them,” he said. “If I go to work now, I’ll just fire them all.”
Out of options, footsore, and brain-sore, May stepped off the path and dropped to a seat on the grass.
“You’ll stain your slacks.”
She stretched her legs out. If she’d known she was going to be hiking the entire length of DC, she’d have worn the slingbacks, not these open-toed monstrosities.
Beau took a few steps, saw she wasn’t following, and came back. He circled her. “You need your rest,” he said. “We should get a cab.” He pulled her to her feet and back the half-block to
Independence Avenue
.
She told the driver to drop her off first, and then take the gentleman to his hotel. The driver looked his commiseration with Beau, as if he was sorry the gentleman wasn’t getting to first base tonight. Looking out the side window, May rolled her eyes.
“Do you promise to go straight to the hotel and nowhere else until I get there at eight? You have your leftovers, here, and plenty of coffee in the room.”
“Don’t treat me like a child,” he said, petulance dripping from his voice.
“I apologize. You’ll do it?”
“Aye-aye.”
Not five minutes later, the taxi slowed in front of her row of brownstones behind
DuPont Circle
. She took Beau’s cold hand in hers. “I wish
I could make it better,” she said, and was surprised to realize she really did. “See you tomorrow.”
She’d forgotten to leave the porch light on, so the taxi waited until she got her keys out and door unlocked. It was at the corner before she’d closed it again. She rested her forehead on the painted wood. What a day.
She kicked her shoes off and dragged herself to the bathroom, undoing her belted dress as she walked. Dropping them and her underthings in the hamper behind the bathroom door, she picked up her two-piece pajamas and headed for the shower. Ten minutes of hot water running over her head, her shoulders, her back, washed much of her tension away. It wasn’t even her tension, she realized. It was for him.
How she felt for him. She’d never changed her life so totally to impress someone else. He’d made so much of himself. And for what? He wasn’t doing it for the intrinsic joy of it. Or was he? Could a person truly be as successful as he was solely to please another? An imaginary other, in this case.
It wasn’t until she had stepped out of the bathroom that she heard the pounding at the door. She started for the door at a run. What if something had happened to him?
She didn’t even look out the peephole, but threw the bolt and jerked the door open.
Beau Kurck sat on her stoop, a box of tequila beside him. And a crazy-wide smile rainbowing across his face.
“Beautiful May in June,” he croaked, likely thinking he was crooning. She looked past him, wondering how many of her neighbors were witnessing this.
“Nobody but the man with the golden-haired yappy dog,” Beau said happily. The condo association president. Fantastic.
“Get yourself right in here now,” she said, trying to whisper but sounding more like a hiss. “How much have you had to drink?”
“Not nearly enough.” He lurched to his feet and handed her a plastic bag of groceries. He picked up the box, which had more than one kind of bottle from the clinking she heard, and stepped across her threshold. “Finns can hold their liquor.”
“Not all Finns,” she said, leading him in and to the right. She set the bag on the kitchen counter. Pretzels, frozen pizza, and more Finn Crisps, along with the leftover chili and fries from Ben’s.
“This kitchen is smaller than mine,” he said, pushing the now-empty bag to the side to set the box on the counter. “I’m not even sure the tequila mix will fit in that tiny icebox.”
Babysitting the Billionaire Page 3