He whipped around to look at the bed as if I’d stumbled upon some guilty secret. “Um, no, not as such – it’s more of a private project, something I’ve … well, it’s something that means a lot to me, and I wouldn’t want to …”
His voice trailed off. He looked down at the gleaming hardwood floor beneath his bare feet – and when he looked up again, I saw uncertainty and unease and something I couldn’t quite name in his eyes.
“Cassie?”
“Talk to me, cook.”
“Cassie, do you need me? The way I need you, the way we both need to breathe? Because I’m a big weird package, stuffed with all kinds of things that you could probably do without.”
He nodded at the blueprints that overwhelmed the bed. “And I usually don’t even bring it up, but whenever I do talk to girls about what all of that paper and scribbling represents, most of them never begin to understand why it means so much to me. Mostly, their eyes just glaze over and then not long after that, they go looking for a guy who makes more sense than I do.”
He looked at me and then down at the floor again, waiting for rejection.
“Dave, I am not most girls. You may have noticed that.”
He tried to smile. “My Cassie is one of a kind, all right. Or are all Kansas women beautiful warriors full of smarts and sass?”
“We grow up tough on the prairie, city boy.”
Cassie, you didn’t answer his first question.
It was hard, though. Relying on anybody but me was hard and scary and dangerous, and I mostly just didn’t do it anymore. Not since Mom left, not since Dad followed her out of this life, and not since it was just me.
But my dad always did say that in most tough situations, the only way out was through – so I said it, even though it scared me.
“Dave, I need you. I also probably need to have my head examined, but hey, there it is – I need your weird ass. The second we can shoehorn it into your schedule, I’ll listen to you all day about your blueprints and I’ll do my best to understand, I promise. First, though, there’s something you need to do for me.”
“Anything for you, boss.”
“Then get your disgustingly expensive monkey suit on – Vanity Fair is waiting to photograph and interview and market the hell out of my smoking hot boyfriend, so move your ass or I will never, ever, tie you up. Got it?”
“Yes, ma’am.” He saluted me, I laughed, and his lopsided grin lit up the whole world. That smile made me feel so warm.
So needed.
Our appointment with Vanity Fair was a walk in the clouds – and that’s more or less the literal truth, because it happened on the seventy-third floor of the Willis Tower, the tallest and most intimidating skyscraper in Chicago. We showed up almost on time, I faded into the background like a good personal assistant, and Dave owned the place from the moment the elevator doors slid open and we stepped out to meet the interviewer, the photographer, and the gathered masses of aides and interns and assistants waiting for us.
The interview came first, and Publicity Dave aced it. A woman whose clothes said ‘pretentious hipster twat’ flung questions about everything from defense spending to his social calendar to his relationship with his dad at him, and he never missed a beat. He lounged in his chair like a relaxed king who was happy with his peasants, and he fed her the party line answers. He cracked jokes at all the right moments, she ate up his act as if it was sweet butterscotch candy, and his broad smile never wavered.
It was nothing like my Dave’s smile.
The photo session that followed the interview was a perfect storm of primping, preening, and fussing. Dave suffered the attentions of hair stylists, makeup artists, wardrobe assistants, and people whose entire role in the process seemed to consist of fretting and worrying. Light meters were wielded like swords, the perfectly good Armani suit he came in was rejected in favor of something the wardrobe people called “the ideal James Brothers ensemble, this merino wool fabric will look magnificent with his skin tone,” and I had never before seen so much utter bullshit assembled in one room.
I knew the poor guy had to hate all the nonsense, but he hung in there – he pasted on what I already thought of as The Public Smile, he moved where they told him and held still when instructed to do so, he posed this way and that way and about a dozen other ways while the photographer in charge of this circus barked out orders in something that sounded like a really annoyed version of Italian.
Two hours into the craziness, Dave got a precious moment or two to himself. From where I hovered in a forgotten corner of the room, it looked like the hair people and the makeup people were engaged in a turf war or something, but whatever – they disappeared down the hall for a few minutes to settle their differences, so my guy was finally able to breathe in peace.
I stepped around the clusters of light fixtures and over the power cords snaking everywhere to join him in the center of the room. Lights shone on him from every angle, umbrella reflectors surrounded him like a crowd of admirers, and the antique leather chair they’d put him in for the latest round of pictures creaked beneath his weight as he unfolded his long legs and stood up.
“Wow, when did they let a real person in here? And say, do you want to try some exotic pretzel-shaped sex on this comfortable chair? It’s your duty as my keeper to make sure I’m relaxed, after all, and I’m pretty sure if we shriek like monkeys while we pound this chair into kindling, I’ll be a relaxed and satisfied boy afterwards. How about it?”
He said all that loud and proud because of course he did, and Mr. Prima Donna Photographer glanced our way and rolled an eye before returning to his conversation with Pretentious Interview Bitch.
Then Dave’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Thank God you’re here, because otherwise I’d be making up an urgent dental appointment in another country and sprinting for the door. Have you noticed these people are insane?”
I watched a bead of sweat roll down his cheek. “I’ve noticed these lights are roasting you like a Thanksgiving turkey, so have a swallow of water before you melt.” I handed over a bottle of Evian and he glugged down half of it while I folded my arms and went into pep talk mode.
“As for today’s festivities, you ruled in the interview and I think this photography thing is going well so far – they’ve snapped about a gazillion pics and you’ve looked like at least forty billion dollars in each and every one of them. So hang in there – give it a little bit longer, and Operation Cover Boy will be history. I mean, these freaks have to be almost done now, right?”
His wicked grin told me an idea had popped into his brain. Uh-oh.
“Oh, I don’t think so – after all, you’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen and yet they somehow haven’t taken one single picture of you yet.”
“If I’m the most beautiful thing you’ve ever laid eyes on, then you need to get out more – and I am not the star here, remember? That’s you, and I’m the shadow in the background, bringing you water and keeping your mind in the game. Besides, if me and my round ass and impossible hair show up in Vanity Fair, the subscribers and advertisers will demand their money back”
“Really? Let’s let the experts decide – so just hop up and stand on this chair for a second, okay?”
“What? No, I am not doing any weird sex-related stuff on this chair with you, no matter how much you beg –”
“You see, I bet the fine folks of Vanity Fair would be thrilled to get a shot of a gorgeous redhead swooning into my arms from atop this chair.”
A nanosecond later I was trying to keep my balance in heels on top of the chair, and had Dave boosted me up here?
Yes. Yes, he had. So I kicked off my shoes before I could fall flat on my unremarkable face, I pushed my untamed red curls out of my eyes to see the photographer raising an eyebrow at the interviewer, who nodded and then lights flashed and shutters clicked and how had this nightmare dropped onto me from out of nowhere?
I leaned down and hissed in Dave’s ear, “I’ll kill you for
this and dump your body in an alley somewhere, I swear to jumping electric Jesus! They’re taking real pictures with real cameras and I’m not dressed right or made up at all, and my hair looks like a clown wig!”
Dave eased an arm around my waist and pulled me close, until I only had one foot on the chair and he held most of my weight against him. I pressed my face into his neck in a useless effort to hide from the cameras, and I clutched at his shoulders as I fought to keep from toppling over. My sides rose and fell in frantic short breaths beneath his hands, I wondered how I could adore the guy and want to stab him dead with a steak knife at the same time, and then he whispered into my ear.
Nobody else heard. Only me.
“I want the world to see you this way, because you’re mine and I love you.”
An electric shock coursed through me from head to heel and life went on hold for a few breathless seconds. It was like somebody pressed the world’s pause button.
I pulled back, I stared at him, and my mouth fell open. A distant corner of my brain informed me I must look like some gaping idiot fish, but I didn’t listen.
Dave settled his forehead against mine. “You’re my wild woman and I’m your screwball cook, boss. Deal with it.”
His grin melted me, like it always did – and then he pressed a tender kiss to my lips, I kissed him back with a fierceness I’d never felt before, another light flashed … and that was the picture of us that appeared in the next issue of Vanity Fair.
On the cover. Holy shit.
14
Vanity Fair was only the first media outlet to shove a microphone and cameras in Dave’s face that Tuesday – the publicity people on Einar Dallstrom’s payroll had lined up three more interviews for my problem child that afternoon, and I shepherded him from one to the next and then the next like a Border Collie, darting here and there and heading him off whenever he tried to escape the path laid out for him.
The local NBC affiliate sent a reporter to pepper him with questions about his role as heir apparent to one of the largest businesses in Chicago history; Dave nodded, smiled, did a great job of giving smooth answers that didn’t actually say anything – and afterwards tried to drag me halfway across the University of Chicago campus to meet one of his architecture professors, before I cut him off at the pass and insisted he suffer through a grilling by CNN first.
He aced the CNN interview, being all serious and thoughtful and full of pious nothings about the future of the partnership between Dallstrom Defense Systems and this great nation, blah, blah, blah – and then we met the professor at a hole-in-the-wall record store in Hyde Park, the guy turned out to be a freakishly obsessed collector of vintage Beatles vinyl, and I only hauled Dave out of there in time for his live video chat with some Youtube celebrity by promising to treat him to a kinky sex act of his choosing, at a date to be named later.
I think I was kidding.
Another hour of the afternoon was eaten up by Dave having his awesome Viking body measured for a lavish new wardrobe, and that was my idea – I meant for him to look his absolute best for future public occasions, and I’d noticed that his brawny shoulders were no longer a perfect fit for his current stable of suits. It was also my notion to bring along the three-piece Fioravanti outfit that currently ruled his closet and leave it to be altered for Friday night’s festivities, since it would apparently take magical tailor elves months and months to make the new suits from scratch. As I expected, Dave hated every minute of it – he grumbled that it wasn’t his fault he’d put on more muscle since the last time he’d been forced to play dress-up, and I bought his cooperation by agreeing to go wherever he wanted for a late lunch.
That was how we ended up perched on stools at a dingy diner counter in a dicey neighborhood for “the best deep-dish pizza in town, I swear,” and their version of Chicago’s trademark specialty wasn’t half-bad. The rich scents of grease and cheese and lots of other delicious things that were bad for us filled the air, and Dave insisted on hand-feeding me bits of pepperoni even though I objected between bites that we looked really silly. Loud and raunchy music that was a blend of rap and something Jamaican pounded out of the cheap speakers perched on a shelf behind the counter, I leaned into Dave as he put his arm around me, and for those stolen moments away from the limelight and fuss and bother, all was right in our world.
Dave’s 5 p.m. meeting with his dad blew that good mood right out of the water.
Two more hours of life crawled by while I cooled my heels waiting outside Einar Dallstrom’s office in his downtown tower of glass, steel, and ego. I played Smash Hit on my phone, and I called the tailors from earlier in the day with instructions to put a rush on those alterations. I texted back and forth with Kristen while she was stuck across town listening to a vastly important and snooty ballet director begging her for a substantial charitable donation to the art of making stick-thin girls balance on their sore toes for the entertainment of the rich and shameless.
I tried not to hear Einar Dallstrom bellowing from beyond the door. I tried harder not to hear the trapped anger in Dave’s voice, and was I doing him any good at all by enabling this crap?
Just as I began crafting a brilliant and utterly useless plan for kidnapping my guy out of there and making off with him to some blank and obscure corner of the Midwest that not even Sergei could find, the office door swung open. Dave banged it shut behind him in his dad’s face, he grabbed my hand, and he marched us to the elevator.
He didn’t say a word all the way home.
Dave was quiet for a long time. We had Thai food delivered for dinner – yes, even billionaires eat fast-food noodles from those little paper boxes, or at least mine did – and then we curled up together on the couch for another movie night. I wrapped my arms around him, I pillowed my head on his chest and listened to the steady thumping rhythm of his heart, and I waited.
Halfway through the second Lord of the Rings movie, he breathed two words into my hair.
“I’m sorry.”
“Want me to kill him for you?”
“Maybe later.”
“Swell. Do you think these orcs will get their asses kicked, or do we need to send in the Marines?”
“The good guys won the last ten times I watched this, but let’s hang in there until the end to make sure.” His arms tightened around me, keeping me close and warm against his body as we watched the battle rage.
This time Dave was the one who fell asleep before the credits rolled, and I held him safe for the rest of the night.
Wednesday’s schedule led off with ‘nail down Washington contacts’ in my iPhone, so we flew to D.C. – but I didn’t see a single monument or museum all day. Instead, my ass got familiar with a series of uncomfortable chairs parked outside various government offices, as Dave talked his way through appointments with generals, senators, and bureaucrats who were as faceless as their unmarked doors.
That night I found out presidential suites in five-star hotels are a real thing. We soaked ourselves into prunes in the sauna, did battle in the suite’s game room, and feasted on room-service steak and shrimp until one in the morning.
I crawled into bed alone and fell asleep to Dave’s footsteps. He paced the hall outside my room, and I heard his voice as he made yet more phone calls to yet more somebodies he somehow hadn’t covered during the day’s endless round of meetings. I woke up for a few minutes somewhere around three or so and he was still at it – although when I stuck my head out my door to tell him he needed to sleep sometime before Christmas, he ended his call in a heartbeat and put the phone away. Yeah, smart guy, security and classified stuff, I understand.
But I didn’t understand why he slept in a chair in my room, instead of his own bed down the hall. In the grey hours before dawn, I fuzzed myself vaguely awake and there Dave sprawled, his long stilt legs folded up in an uncomfortable bundle and his arms draped every which way over the chair as his eyes sagged shut.
His eyes popped open and his head jerked around when I assured him I
wasn’t going anywhere and that he needed to go sleep in one of the suite’s horrifyingly expensive beds. He shot a quick glance at me, and then at the nearest window. His hand fell to the phone that was still in his pocket. He assured me he’d go down the hall shortly, he just … and I dozed off again.
I might have heard and seen him walking around my room later, as the sun rose and the city came to life around us – but that could have been a dream.
Thursday morning, we Gulfstreamed up to New York City for meetings with UN diplomats, the mayor, and an interviewer from Fox News – and not only did I get us from Point A to Point B in a timely fashion, but I kept the water and snacks and pep talks and mad organizational skills coming, and I even spotted the lead singer of Rats Eat My Brain outside the Fox studio and dragged him up to Dave for an impromptu publicity photo. Yay, me.
By the time we made it back to Dave’s penthouse apartment in Chicago that night, I was exhausted and Dave was three-quarters of the way towards dead – but that didn’t keep him from cornering me in the hallway outside my bedroom.
I shuffled toward my door, leaning against the wall for support and yawning wide enough to swallow a marching band – and then I bumped to a stop, looked up, and saw the obstacle I’d stumbled into was Dave, who was wearing nothing but Scooby-Doo boxers and his skin.
“Did you know that since it’s almost midnight, you have to bless me with a deep, penetrating tongue kiss right now, or I’ll turn into a pumpkin?”
I rubbed my eyes, looked around, and how had I ended up with my back against the wall and a tower of tired and gorgeous man blocking my escape?
“I’d love to help you with the penetrating pumpkins thing, Dave, but I’m not really awake” – I proved it with another shattering yawn – “and plus and besides, we agreed it would be hands-off until tomorrow, remember?”
“So check out my hands.” He leaned closer and planted his left hand flat on the wall next to my head. I glanced at it from two inches away, and then jumped as his right hand settled into place on the other side, fingers splayed wide.
No Dreams Allowed: A Billionaire Romance Page 15