Della

by Julie Michele Gettys

  “Yes, as a matter of fact.” He leaned in, lowered his voice. The sparkle in his eyes danced above the dim table light. “I’m really hung up on you. I know we’ve only known each other a short time, but I can’t get you off my mind. No matter how hard I try, bingo, there you are, struttin’ your stuff. Drives me nuts.”

  Memories of Kent flashed through her mind, how he had swept her off her feet. Not this time. “Sweetie, we haven’t even been to bed together. How can you be so crazy for me?”

  “Sex isn’t everything. It’s the frosting on the cake that’ll happen when we’re ready. I just want to get to know you.” He winked. “You’ll be everything I’ve imagined.”

  Rick was the first man who was willing to know her before having sex. Lillian had warned, “That’s the only thing they all want. The sooner you give it to `em, the more you’ll get.” Was Rick different? Maybe it was she who was different; maybe she should give him a chance. He was a fox, for sure. She gazed at him, nearly hypnotized by his stunning looks, as were the other women checking him out. It made her proud, because she knew he was hers if she wanted him.

  Rick ordered salads, and seared salmon with crispy noodles. A little something for her thighs, but what the hell, you don’t get a chance to celebrate like this every day.

  “Here’s to the new girl at Gates International.”

  “To us,” she said. The cold, tart bubbles tickled going down, cheering her on. She had a new look, a new job, and a new guy. What more could a girl want?

  “You know,” he said. “I almost got your phone number today. I knew I couldn’t find you in the book. Jesus, there’s at least twenty phone books with a ton of Garlands in this damned megatropolis. Besides, I was sure you weren’t listed. I don’t know anyone who is. Why do they need all those books?” He took a sip of his wine. “I took a chance and called Globe. I told someone named Diane I was a personal friend.”

  Della bristled. The nerve of this guy, checking on her, calling her old employer to get her number!

  Before she had a chance to interrupt, he went on, “She transferred me directly to Jack Davis. You know what that jerk did?”

  “No.” The champagne wobbled in her shaking hand.

  “He asked me if I was hiring you. I told him I was a personal friend. After a long pause, he invited me down to his office. Said he had to meet me in person before he’d consider giving out your number. He sounded like he didn’t believe me. I figured, what the hell. After what you told me about him, I thought I’d check him out.”

  “You didn’t?” she asked, shocked.

  “Now, don’t be uptight.” Rick took her hand in his.

  He went on as if this were nothing. Her new world was collapsing on her, in one fell swoop. For Rick to trot off and meet her former boss, whom she had only referred to with disdain, was more than she could bear.

  “When I got there, he said it was martini time and asked me to join him for a drink.”

  “Tell me you didn’t go.”

  Rick nodded. “He seemed nice enough. My curiosity got the best of me.”

  Della’s stomach churned. She wanted to get up and leave, flee this classy joint and this crummy excuse for a dinner celebration. “I can’t believe it.”

  “We just had a few drinks and talked. He asked me a lot of questions about what you were up to. When he was convinced I wasn’t hiring you, he said if I’d tell him where you were interviewing, he’d give me your number.”

  She sat there, stunned, unable to speak. She squeaked out, “You didn’t tell him?”

  “Hell, no, what do you take me for? The guy’s a nervous wreck. By the time he finished a couple of drinks, he was pouring his soul out. Mostly about you. He was feeling no pain when he said Wes Gates had yanked his account from Globe after you left.”

  “He what?” No wonder Jack had come to offer her old job back, and Wes Gates had hired her on the spot.

  “Yanked his account from Globe. Can you believe it? I knew right then you’d gotten the job.”

  Her jaw dropped. “And I thought Jack wanted me back because I was so damned indispensable.”

  Rick lifted his glass. “You’re a winner, baby.”

  She didn’t return the toast. As she had suspected, Jack was desperate when he came to her apartment. He must have been on stroke status when she told him she had to think over his proposal. He probably thought she’d jump at the chance. Her ears didn’t perk up and tune into Rick’s musings until she heard him say, “–your mother, dad, everything.”

  “Say again?” Della’s blood ran cold. Her carefully laid plans for a new life were in jeopardy not one day after she made them. If Wes Gates found out about her lies, she’d be kaput, out. She didn’t stand a chance for a new life with Jack Davis around.

  “I said, he told me your life story. All about your mother, dad, everything.” Rick took her hand in his. “You poor baby. You’ve been to hell and back. I felt so guilty while he gossiped–all I wanted to do was get up and take off. And after listening to him for two hours, he still didn’t give me your number. Jesus, I was pissed.”

  “Now, I’m pissed.” She stood up, leaned over the table and whispered, “Why the hell didn’t you leave when you thought about it? My personal life is my business. If I want you to know something about me, I’ll be the one to tell you.” Just when she was taking an interest in Rick, he spoiled everything by intruding in her personal life. Except for her brief experience with prostitution and subsequent arrest, she might have told him the truth herself if she really loved him and trusted him.

  Trust wasn’t in her vocabulary, nor was love.

  She snatched her purse from the empty seat next to her. “Take me home.” Tears bubbled from under her eyelids, and her entire body shook.

  5

  Della arrived at Gates International early the next morning, after hardly sleeping a wink. She paused in the lobby, fired up over actually working in this magnificent building. That is, if everyone in the place didn’t know her private business by now.

  On her way across the lobby to the bank of elevators, she stopped to admire the three aquariums filled with exotic fish that lined the wall. No empty tanks here. Jack needs these in his office.

  Waiting for the elevator, she thought about Rick, how he had quietly driven her home, apologetic for overstepping his bounds. He kissed her goodnight at her door and asked if she’d consider seeing him again if he promised never to nose in where he didn’t belong. “I’d feel the same as you if someone dug around in my past, too,” he said. At her door, he held her close and whispered sweet nothings in her ear. Rick Courtney still had a place in her life.

  When she awakened this morning after a wonderful dream about him, she called and gave him her phone number. “If all goes well on my job, I’ll see you this weekend,” she promised. She needed this week to acclimate herself.

  The only activity in the lobby of Gates International was a security guard watching a monitor and shuffling papers. With a sigh, the elevator doors opened to Wes Gates leaning against the chrome railing. Her heart stopped.

  “I knew it,” he said, standing tall. “An early bird.” He smiled at her, deepening the heavy lines around steel-gray eyes. A handsome specimen for his age; he towered over her. He didn’t try to cover his burgeoning middle with his Brooks Brothers suit. She was awestruck. Her first thought was to ask him why he pulled his account from Globe. She thought better of it. Something new for her, thinking before speaking.

  “I knew you were special,” he said. “Join me for coffee?”

  “I’d love it.” He just asked her to spend some quality time with him, and she’d bet he had no intention of asking her to make the coffee. He pushed the button to the top floor, then directed her into a plush dining room. “This is for the employees, if they want to eat on the premises. We have special rooms for meetings, and an executive dining room for us hotshots.” He laughed and winked. Jack Davis thought of himself as more of a hotshot than Wes Gates did, but their acco
mplishments were as different as night and day.

  She watched as a few busboys in black and white garnished the tables with carnations and linen napkins.

  Wes guided her by the elbow into a small room with a large table that seated fifteen or twenty people. They sat, he at the corner, making sure she had the head seat. A waiter came in and poured coffee.

  “Good morning, Wes,” the young man said, smiling.

  “Hi, Jeff. How’s the wife and kids?”

  He knew his employees, right down to the waiters in the cafeteria. They called him by his first name. She was impressed.

  “So, Della. How’d you sleep last night? Nervous?”

  “I didn’t, and yes. But I feel great.”

  He added cream and sugar to his coffee. “Doctor swore me off this stuff, but I slip.”

  She chuckled, feeling a little awkward.

  “I didn’t want to scare you yesterday, but we’re in the process of going public and I want you to work on the project. It’s big. You’ll get a bird’s-eye view of our company.”

  Please, she prayed, no machines on my first day. I’ll die. If there was a God, He was probably out to get her for all those lies.

  “Are you all right? You look a little green around the gills.” He laughed and patted her arm. “You’ll do fine. Iris and I will be there for you.”

  Fear coursed through her. Rick’s words last night about Wes wanting more from her than an employee was the impetus that made her say, “Why are you doing all this for me? I’m nobody. You can hire anyone you want. I heard you pulled your account from Globe when I left.” Her heart banged in her chest. She was flapping her mouth again, maybe even putting her new job in jeopardy, but dammit, she had to know.

  He sat back, a look of astonishment on his craggy face, his cup in his hand suspended midair. “Well.” He cleared his throat. “If you must know, I had you checked out. I liked what I learned. You’ve done a wonderful job for us at Globe, and I thought you were the type of employee who’d fit in here.”

  She felt the color drain from her face. Had he caught the lies on her application when he checked her out? Did he know about her past?

  “It wasn’t hard,” he said. “Your education checks out. I think you should take classes for your Bachelors. We’ll pay the tuition. Jack Davis spoke very highly of you before he found himself another protégé. I like to get my newest executives before they’ve developed too many bad habits. You’re qualified to work for me.” He relaxed, set his cup down.

  Out of relief, she laughed too loudly. “There’s opportunity for me to grow here. I just can’t believe you hired me.”

  They continued their bantering down the elevator to the eleventh floor and into her new office overlooking Sunset Boulevard. Iris waited with a pile of papers under her arm.

  Iris went over the project, with Wes throwing in an occasional comment. It was a prospectus for Gates International to go public. Everything was top secret. She was being pulled into the very heart of the organization her first day on the job. Wes expected a perfect draft by noon, using a Dictaphone or some such animal, and Word, which she had never seen outside of a TV commercial.

  When they left her alone in the office, she crumbled, her elbows on her desk, her face in her palms. After sitting like that for a full five minutes, she peeked through her fingers and cracked a smile. At least the desk was wood.

  Why didn’t a secretary do this job? God knows, there were enough of them sitting around these swank offices. No, they were testing her. She lied about her skills, telling Wes she knew how to use Dictaphones and computers, so asking one of those secretaries in the pool for help was out of the question. She had to figure them out for herself.

  The Dictaphone wasn’t a Dictaphone at all. It was a little black lump in a leather case that looked like it was right out of a spy movie. She didn’t know which end was up. All the secret stuff she was supposed to type was in there. She fiddled around, trying to figure out the damned thing. Finally she ripped through all the drawers and found an instruction manual. Ah-hah! That’s it. Read the instruction manual.

  Wes’s voice came through loud and clear on the tape. “Good morning, Della. I hope this doesn’t scare you off. I know it’s a big task, but I know you’re up to it. See? You’re already listening to my tape.”

  She leaned back with the earphones on her head, shaking as he reeled off figures, company names, credits, debits, the whole financial picture of Gates International. They were staggering, beyond her comprehension. She wondered why they were bothering going public with figures like these. Of course, she didn’t know much about stocks and bonds, why companies were publicly held. But it looked like she was going to learn all about it, in a big way.

  Next, she tackled the computer. She turned it on without a hitch. Big friggin’ deal. She had worked on computers before, but how did one do Word? She let out a breath, then looked for a manual. They had a bunch of Dummy books out, didn’t they? Another hour down the toilet, but now she was cooking. This was easy. She typed up the first page, printed it out. Everything was too far to the right. Now what? She crumbled the paper and threw it in the wastebasket, then fiddled with the command buttons. After an hour of such blunders, her wastebasket overflowing, she printed out what she considered an acceptable draft, like the sample copy she’d found in one of the folders.

  She heard a light noise, something hitting the floor. The last paper ball she crushed and threw on top of the heap had rolled off like a feather in the wind, and landed on the floor under her feet.

  There was no way she wanted Wes or Iris to see how many tries it had taken her to finish the document. She grabbed her purse, put the contents in a plastic bag she found in one of the drawers, and stuffed all but two balls of paper into her purse. She squeezed the clip shut, lay the purse on the floor and stepped on it.

  Her first morning was almost a disaster, but she had survived. She was now ready to undertake any assignment Wes or Iris put in front of her.

  Wes knocked and entered her office. She leaned back in her chair, a Cheshire cat expression on her face. She handed him her work.

  He glanced it over and said, “I’m impressed.”

  “`Twas a snap, Wes.” She cleared her throat. “Nothing to it.”

  “You’re a chip off–” He stopped. “How about some lunch? My wife, Carrie, is coming in. She wants to meet you.” With a glint in his eye, he said, “She has to approve all my assistants.”

  Her bubble burst. Did that mean she wasn’t officially hired? She had believed all Wes’s assistants were either overweight or homely to meet his wife’s approval.

  Why hadn’t he introduced them before he hired her?

  * * *

  Carrie Gates dashed out of the beauty parlor, late as usual, while Wes waited patiently, as he always did for her. It was her nature, gave her a sense of importance, a showbiz thing without the showbiz, something she’d earned living with Wes Gates for twenty-six years.

  Today, she was edgy. Wes had hired this young woman without consulting her, passed her off as a mere clerk when, in reality, he had hired himself a new assistant. What this Della Garland had over the others was a mystery to Carrie. But in a few short minutes, she intended to find out.

  She strode through the secretarial pool, nodding greetings, flashing her diamond-studded hands from one girl to the next. They all smiled graciously at the boss’s wife. She loved the feeling it gave her. Just as she was about to open Wes’s office door, she spotted an attractive woman in her mid-twenties sashaying through the office, her auburn hair in a twist, neatly dressed in a blue suit. Every secretary chatted or waved at her as if they’d known her forever. She had to be Della Garland. My, my, my! No wonder Wesley didn’t want her to interview Della. The poor darling wouldn’t be working here.

  She waited until she was within earshot, then said, “Hello, you must be Della Garland.” The honey fairly dripped from her cherry-red painted lips.

  “Yes, I am,” Della said, holdi
ng out her hand. “Are you Mrs. Gates?”

  “Carrie, please, and yes, I am. I understand we’re lunching today?”

  Della opened Wes’s office door, and they entered together. Wes was putting on his suit jacket. “Well, I see you two have met.”

  “Yes,” Carrie said with a raised eyebrow. “I’m sorry I’m late. That Teresa is so slow with my hair.” She laughed and turned to Della. “It takes longer when you get older and have to do all that stuff to keep up with the younger gals. Competition, you know.”

  “You have no competition, my dear.” Wes winked at Carrie, and she smiled back.

  In the executive dining room, Della and Iris sat across from Wes. Carrie took the head seat. The waiter handled their orders. Carrie noticed Della ordered only iced tea and a small dinner salad, no dressing. No wonder her waist was so small. Of course, being in her mid-twenties didn’t hurt, either. Another thing Carrie noticed, watching her talk with Iris about the prospectus, was that Della had certain features that reminded Carrie of herself when she was that age. She peered over at Wes, who was intently watching Della. Was he looking for a new model? He’d been faithful, adoring, always kept her up on that pedestal. She must control her emotions. Tonight, she’d ask him why he hired Della without her input.

  Wes leaned back as the waiter set his lunch down in front of him. “Della pulled off a hot one today.” He leaned forward, picked up his fork. Everyone else stopped talking. “She completed the prospectus without coming out of her office for help, even though she’d never used a word processing program or a transcribing machine. I watched.” He chuckled.

  Della looked startled. “How did you know?”

  “I saw it in your eyes when I interviewed you. I was sure you’d run out and ask one of the secretaries for help. But you figured it out all by yourself. I like your style. You’re worth your salt, my dear.”