by Kristi Lea
“How do you feel about your daughter having a relationship with a known philanderer like Forrester?”
Helmut sat on the edge of the bed, elbows on his knees, resting his forehead on his hands. What would the man say about his treatment of Claire? What would Helmut do if Claire were his daughter? He pictured his sister sitting abandoned in that restaurant, no money, no cell phone, no transportation. Screwed over by some asshole of a boyfriend.
If he were James, Helmut would beat himself black and blue.
“Ladies and Gentlemen,” James began, holding up one hand to silence the rapid-fire questions. Once he had the attention of the reporters who surrounded him, he looked straight into the camera. “I have a statement. But I am not speaking as the Chairman of the Board of S&F. An official spokesperson will issue a statement soon.”
A roar of complaints went up from the waiting press. James held up one hand again and the rumble of voices quieted again. “I have a statement as Claire Sheffield’s father. Claire is my youngest child, and my only daughter. As all fathers are, I suspect, I feel very protective toward her. She may not always believe that of me. Lord knows I’ve made enough mistakes of my own.
“And I have known Helmut Forrester for many years,” James continued. “Though Claire will always be my little girl, my daughter is a full grown woman who makes her own decisions. She could do far worse than to engage in a relationship with Forrester. For Helmut, he could not find anyone better. Now, butt out of my family’s private lives and return to covering legitimate news stories.”
Helmut stared at the TV as the news anchors began making polite speculation as to the company’s official reaction to the scandal would be.
James had just stuck up for him. It wasn’t a ringing endorsement, but the man could have lambasted Helmut for all the world to hear. It was something.
***
Claire shut herself into her hotel room, where it was quiet at last.
Her neck ached, and her knee, where it had banged against the divider wall in the cab. She stood up and walked to the bathroom, the salty tears making her contacts burn. She took ibuprofen and then had to practically chisel the lenses off her eyeballs. She slipped on her glasses—narrow, thick-framed, ones she thought made her look scholarly.
She had a message from Helmut. “Call me back. It’s urgent.”
With a sniff, she padded back to the bedroom. As she exchanged her ruined suit for a pair of yoga pants and a tank top, she tried to remember what her plans for the evening were supposed to be. Oh yeah, a casual interview over coffee with one of the reporters from Business Week. Not doing that now.
She contemplated her cell phone. Helmut was supposed to be a casual fling. A nice little indulgent interlude with a man used to casual flings and indulgent interludes. He was like a chocolate truffle. Delicious, but not something she could eat for dinner every night. So how had she let her body come to crave his touch, long for his arms to hold and comfort her? When did she begin to crave his smile, his wry sense of humor?
He was probably just down the hall. She shivered, remembering him pressing her up against the hotel door just that afternoon. How easily she had surrendered to that passion, without a single thought for what was in her best interest. Her career’s best interest. Her company’s best interest.
She needed to clear her head. She deleted the voice mail. She would talk to him tomorrow.
She found her cell phone and texted Steph, asking her to cancel the Business Week interview. Claire had the reporter’s cell phone number, but she didn’t trust her own voice.
“Way ahead of you,” came the text reply not two minutes later. “Pls call.”
Claire dialed.
Steph picked right up. “You can totally salvage this, Claire. Any press is good press, right? At least you’ve guaranteed that the stands will be filled for tomorrow’s demo flight. Nothing like a little sex scandal to get butts in the seats.”
“Is that all you’ve got? I’m such an idiot, Steph.” Claire sat down in the office chair at the small computer desk and spun lightly back and forth. “What is it with my taste in men?”
“Didn’t you tell me you were going into this one with your eyes wide open?”
Claire caught herself mid-spin. “Well, yes, but I thought...I don’t know what I thought.”
“He is a major improvement over Frank.”
Claire heard clicking noises coming from the background.
“Oh, shit, Claire.”
“What now?”
“Your father. He just made a statement.”
Suddenly the two lamps in the room were too much light. Claire squeezed her eyes shut against the drilling pain that shot through her skull. “Don’t tell me, Steph. I’m going to sleep.”
“It could be a lot worse, Claire. Do you even want to know what he said?”
Claire pictured her father’s stern face when she’d told him about Frank’s cheating earlier that day. “Not particularly. Talk to you in the morning.”
Chapter 17
Hotel room service delivered the worst-tasting fifteen dollar cup of coffee Claire had ever had. She winced as she took a hearty gulp, hoping that “bad” meant “full of caffeine.” She would need every milligram to stay on her game through this morning’s demo. Just a few more hours and she could catch a plane home. Away from the reporters. Away from the mess she had made.
She unwrapped the towel from her freshly-shampooed hair and sat down at the desk, comb in hand, and flipped open her laptop. While it booted, she focused on the tangles in her hair, and tried to breathe deeply and slowly. Too bad she couldn’t fix the knot in her stomach with a comb.
Steph was a miracle worker. Claire had turned over control of her email inbox last week to monitor and sort the contents. Steph must have been up half the night keeping tabs on the incoming messages. There were only a dozen entries on the main screen, each of them work-related. Claire deliberately ignored the brand-new folders labeled “Interview Requests,” “Well-wishers,” and “Handle At Home.”
Leaving her hair to air-dry, Claire began at the top of the list of actual work. First, a memo from accounting. The corporate credit-card snafu had been cleared up, and the card company had mailed replacement cards to everyone. Next was a summary of industry news clips for the day, including details on a new luxury jet model being released by one of S&F’s competitors that would compete directly with several of their own models. One of the technical managers had a report on how new FAA guidelines regarding radio usage in flight would affect the production lines next year.
At the bottom of the list was the weekly profit-and-loss report of all of the business units, auto-generated out of the accounting system every Friday night. The numbers were always raw, and sometimes had errors or missing entries. But Claire liked to see the data that way. Even in-flux, the numbers gave her a good sense of how things were really going.
She broke off a chunk of the brittle croissant that had accompanied her coffee, and began skimming the columns. One number stood out. A huge expense check, over fifty thousand dollars, just cleared two days ago for the Shadow Fly project. At least two executives had to sign off on a single payout that large, and she had no idea what it could be for. Claire clicked on the number to see a digital copy of the expense report, and saw an error message instead. “Network Communication Failure.” She tried several other fields in the report. All had the same problem.
Claire dialed Steph immediately.
“What’s wrong?” her friend said sleepily.
“Sorry to wake you, Steph. I was looking at the Friday P-n-L. I wanted to drill into some of the numbers, but I can’t get to any of the detail reports. What’s with that?”
Steph yawned into the phone. “I saw that last week, too. When I asked someone in IT, they said the links only work when we’re on our network in the office. Tell me which ones you need, and I’ll email them to you separately.”
Claire glanced at her watch. It was three a.m. in Chicago. “Th
anks, but I’ll be home by tomorrow night. It can wait until then. I don’t need you cabbing all over town this time of night just for a few numbers.”
Steph mumbled something incoherent, and Claire said goodbye. She could ask Ben Lackey about the charge at the demo soon enough.
She dressed carefully, choosing the most conservative black pantsuit left in her garment bag. The fabric was heavy for the late spring day, but she wanted to look as polished and austere as possible. The photo image of herself, blond hair tumbling loose over her shoulders and skirt hitched up to her thighs was not something she wanted reinforced with the press. S&F’s luxury planes should be sexy, not its executives.
Clutching her laptop case tightly in both hands, Claire stepped into the hallway and paused for only the briefest moment before lifting her chin and walking toward the elevator. She ignored the thudding of her heart and the lump in her throat as she walked past Helmut’s door. She wondered whether he was on the other side of it, watching the news, or sleeping. He could have company for all she knew.
Matt, the Marketing VP, met her in the hotel lobby. He greeted Claire politely enough, but the ride to the airport was silent torture. She could feel his unasked questions clouding the air in the town car, like smoke in a crowded bar.
She had no answers to give him.
There was no point in jumping to a defense. That would only make her look guilty of something. As for any other discussion of her relationship with Helmut, well, she had to discuss that with Helmut first.
Relationship.
Claire turned the word over and over in her mind, like a puzzle she couldn’t quite solve. Was this a relationship? It was sex, definitely. She didn’t want any more than that. Did she? She’d had a relationship with Frank for years. One full of humiliation and dependency. And sex. And a few fun memories, especially early on. And lots of humdrum ones. Did she really want to face that again?
Helmut was fun. He was exciting. He was worth having shaved legs and sexy underwear, witty stories culled from the week’s doldrums of work so she could make him smile. He was shiny and new and mysterious. A relationship meant stubble and morning breath and showing her granny panties and ratty old bathrobe. Conversations about groceries and laundry and unloading the day’s struggles on sympathetic ears. It was seeing his toothbrush next to hers in the bathroom, and his feet propped next to hers on the coffee table.
She had to cut off this train of thought right there, before the image of the two of them cuddled on the couch, watching the evening news started sounding good. Way too damn good. Claire stared out the window as the scenery changed from cityscape to industrial as they neared the airport.
Matt finally broke the silence. “Have you talked to Lackey this morning?”
“No. He’s supposed to get there early with the aircrew and technical support team, setting up.”
“Yeah, well, I hope the guy got some sleep last night. I gather some of the team was out late working.”
Claire frowned. She had meant to go over today’s briefing with Lackey after the press conference yesterday, but got derailed by the scandal. As soon as they’d gotten off the stage, she’d jumped in a cab for the hotel.
The cab driver had to drop them at the security checkpoint. They flashed their conference ID badges and caught a lift on a courtesy golf cart to the hangar where the S&F team was setting up.
Inside the metal-sheathed building, one of the company’s private jets, used for transporting the technical team and all of their equipment, was parked. Most of the wide concrete floor was left open, with a row of steel workbenches arranged along one wall.
It reminded Claire a bit of a woodworker’s shop, with power tools scattered across the lengths of countertop. On closer inspection, it was more of a mad inventor’s basement. Scraps of metal and piles of screws, fasteners, and bundles of cable lay here and there. Off to one side was a metal divider with a welder’s mask propped up against it.
Lackey was there, huddled with two other employees she had only briefly met, looking at a computer screen with what she thought was a schematic drawing of the tiny helicopter that they’d be demonstrating today. One of the men gestured at the screen while Lackey shook his head.
He glanced her way and straightened. Grabbing his suit jacket from the workbench behind him, he crossed the ten yards of concrete floor at half a run. “Good morning, Ms., er, Claire. Can I get you a cup of coffee?”
He took her by the elbow and steered her away from the workers.
“Uh, thanks, Lackey. I wouldn’t mind meeting your team when they have a minute,” she said as she followed him toward a kitchenette. “I wanted to review the agenda for this morning’s presentation, and I have a couple of questions on this week’s p-n-l.”
“Great, great.” He glanced over his shoulder and shut the door behind them. The kitchen space wasn’t much more than a sink, a mini fridge, and a microwave with a small laminate table along the opposite wall. Not luxurious, but there was a tray of bagels and pastries and a large carafe of hot coffee and paper cups.
“I hear you had a late night last night,” she asked as he fussed over choosing a paper plate and a napkin. While he worked, Claire studied the man. He was good enough looking, she supposed, with sandy brown hair that looked ruffled above one temple, and clean-cut features. He handed over a cup of steaming black coffee, and she could see dark circles under his eyes.
“No biggie,” he said with an exaggeratedly relaxed shrug. “Just the usual cram session. Guess I never broke the habit from college. What did you want to go over?”
With the table full of pastries, there was no room to set anything down. Claire handed him back the coffee and pulled out a copy of the expense report she’d printed before she left this morning.
“Check these out,” she said as she exchanged her papers for the coffee.
“What the—” Ben ran his free hand through his hair as he skimmed his eyes over the numbers.
The door opened, and a young woman in khakis and a Sheffield & Fox golf shirt stuck her head in. “Ben, we need a decision on the—”
He cut her off. “Coming.” Ben shrugged helplessly and shot Claire what she supposed passed for a charming grin. “Forgive me, Ms. Sheffield. Duty calls. Terry can walk you out to the tent by the bleachers. We have chairs set up, and a table if you needed to spread out your work. I’ll come by as soon as I can.”
Claire caught the quelling glance he tossed at Terry as he passed her out of the kitchen, and she frowned again, wondering what was going on.
The woman, Terry, wasn’t much help. Claire asked her a few polite questions about her job and how long she’d been with the company, but got the barest answers imaginable.
Matt was already waiting under the shade of the canopy, talking on his cell phone, laptop open in front of him. Claire settled in and flipped open her own.
***
Helmut gripped the passenger handle of the cab with all of his strength. The driver was erratic, stopping suddenly and speeding up too quickly, throwing them around the passenger seat. Harriet Freeman sat next to him, staring open-eyed outside the car windows.
She was exactly what he had expected from an engineer: somewhat mousy, with a plain face and dull brown hair, and average figure. But her eyes sparkled with intelligence and she had an air of open honesty about her.
“Have you ever been to Paris before?” he asked, flinching as the cabbie slammed on his brakes again.
“No. Will we pass the city?”
“Le Bourget is only a few miles down the road from the main commercial airport. We would probably already be there if it weren’t for all of the traffic.”
“Oh.” Her face fell.
“You can do some sightseeing later.”
“Maybe. I wish my husband could have come with me. We talked about Paris for our honeymoon, but decided on a cruise instead. Maybe for our ten-year anniversary next year. It’s supposed to be such a romantic city.”
Helmut smiled tightly. Roma
ntic indeed.
His ID got them in the gate of the show, but not through the VIP gate. The cabbie left them by the entrance. Helmut glanced at his watch then at the exhibition map posted by the entrance. “The demo starts in half an hour, but it’s on the far side. You OK to walk?”
“No problem,” she said with a half-smile. Harriet hitched a laptop bag over one shoulder and followed Helmut, wheeling a small carry-on suitcase behind her.
They passed through exhibition halls and crowded corridors, weaving around throngs of people crowded around a display of airplane seats showcasing built-in entertainment screens.
“Mr. Forrester,” his companion said. “I was wondering about something.”
Helmut’s footsteps slowed. Her face was red, and she seemed to be struggling with keeping the laptop bag balanced on one shoulder. Helmut gently took the suitcase from her. “Call me Helmut. What were you wondering?”
“Why did you believe me, when Lackey didn’t? Everyone knows...I mean, I thought that I heard...” Her face blushed a deeper shade of red.
“That we were buddies?”
She nodded.
Helmut clenched his jaw. “Some things are more important than your buddies.”
She nodded again, and seemed satisfied with his answer.
“What about you, Harriet? Why was this so important to you? Assuming you’re right—and I do believe you—you are risking an awful lot by this. Your job for one.”
She shrugged. “Some things are more important than jobs.”
Helmut’s lips quirked. Two weeks ago, he thought nothing was more important than work. But his job was long gone. By interrupting a press conference, he risked Claire’s anger, and her company’s reputation. By not interrupting, he risked her life. He picked up the pace, making sure Harriet kept up with him.
After the long walk through the interior of the show, the bright sun blinded Helmut. And a security guard stopped him at the ropes leading to the bleachers.
“Your pass, sir?” the man asked in heavily accented English. He a thin patch of salt and pepper hair ringing a shiny bald spot that glared like a headlight in the morning light.