by Amy Brent
Stan introduced them as if we were meeting at a cocktail party. “Candice, this is Mrs. Nelson from Human Resources and Mr. Griffin from our legal department. They both looked at me without saying a word.
“What’s up, Stan?” I asked, forcing a smile that didn’t want to be there. Stan cleared his throat and clenched his hands together until the knuckles turned white.
“Candice, it’s come to our attention that during your trip to Tucson you engaged in certain activities that… well… quite frankly, are not acceptable as proper conduct for a Goldman & Stern employee.”
There it was.
I had literally fucked my way out of a job.
I tried to hold the smile, but it was no use. It melted from my lips like a snowman on a hot day. I did the only thing I knew to do. I played dumb.
I said, “I’m not sure I know what you’re talking about.”
The lawyer chimed in. His tone was brisk, like a prosecutor questioning a witness. “Miss Carlson, while you were in Tucson did you engage in sexual relations with Tanner Wright, CEO of Wright Enterprises?”
I suddenly knew how Bill Clinton felt when he was caught banging Monica Lewinski in the oval office.
I did not have relations with that woman, Miss Lewinski…
“I’m sorry, I don’t understand why that’s anyone’s business…”
“It’s a simple question, Miss Carlson,” the lawyer said with a dismissive shrug. “Did you or did you not have sexual relations with Tanner Wright, CEO of Wright Enterprises and a client of Goldman & Stern, while you were in Tucson. Just answer yes or no.”
I blinked at the woman from HR. She was looking at me like she’d caught me banging her husband in her bed. It was a look of disgust and disbelief.
I leaned in to her and said, “Do I have to answer these questions? Don’t I have rights under the EEOC or something?”
“I’m afraid the Equal Employment Opportunity rules are not pertinent in this situation, Miss Carlson,” she said, looking down her nose in judgment at me. “Just answer Mr. Griffin’s question, please.”
I glanced at Stan. He was studying his hands on the table. He wouldn’t look up at me. I set my jaw and looked directly at the lawyer.
I said, “Yes, while I was in Tucson I was involved in a personal relationship with Tanner Wright.”
The lawyer’s eyes went around my face. I could see the corner of his mouth twitching. This was kind of turning him on a little. Douchebag.
He said, “You were involved in a sexual relationship.”
“Yes.”
“Yes what, Miss Carlson?”
I took a deep breath as my career vanished before my eyes.
“Yes, Mr. Griffin. While I was in Tucson I was involved in a sexual relationship with Tanner Griffin, CEO of Wright Enterprises.” I gritted my teeth at him. “Is that good enough for you.”
“It is,” Griffin said with a nod.
“In that case, we have no choice but to terminate your employment immediately and have you escorted from the building,” the HR lady said. She blew out a heavy sigh, as if she’d been holding her breath the entire time.
“Stan, you can’t let them do this,” I said, desperation creeping into my voice. “I’m the best analyst you have. Stan? Talk to me.”
Stan finally looked up and shook his head. It was that moment that I knew all was lost.
“I’m sorry, Candice, but your actions have put Goldman & Stern -- and our relationship with Wright Enterprises – in a very precarious position. I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do.”
The lawyer stood up and opened the conference room door. A burly security guard was standing at parade rest outside the door.
The lawyer nodded to me and said, “Escort Miss Carlson to her desk and see that she retrieves only her personal property, then show her out of the building.”
Tanner
I felt like a total douchebag when Henry told me that Goldman had fired Candice because of our affair. I felt like a douchebag because I knew ahead of time that she was going to get fired and I didn’t do a fucking thing to stop it or to warn her.
Jesus, what an asshole I was!
That sort of thing wouldn’t have bothered me a bit before I met her. Now, it ate away at my gut like a cancer.
I also knew that Henry was the one who demanded she be fired. I was livid at first, but finally came to see that he was right: I had to stop thinking with my cock and start thinking with my brain.
I liked Candice a lot – AN AWFUL LOT -- but if news of our relationship came to light, it could create the appearance of impropriety that could kill the Anderson deal.
As Henry so aptly pointed out, the financial news media would have a field day. “I can see the headlines now,” he said, holding his hands in their air with thumbs touching. “Billionaire playboy fucks management consultant doing due diligence on a major acquisition. Click here for all the juicy details.”
“You’re overexaggerating,” I said, sitting next to him as the plane circled the Atlanta airport. “That won’t happen.”
“Don’t kid yourself. The financial press loved this sort of dirt. They call it hot sex and cold hard cash.” He blew out a long breath and gave me a sideways look. “Tanner, you know I’m right.”
I knew he was right, but that didn’t make things any easier.
“So, what do you want me to do?” I finally asked in defeat.
“First, you have to break off all communications with her. You can’t text her, you can’t call her, you can’t Facebook her, and you sure as hell can’t send her Anthony Weiner dick pics. None of your usual stuff.”
“Okay.”
“And if she tries to contact you, you have to ignore her. Do you understand? Block her from your phone and have no further contact with her.”
I had my phone in my hand. I had been holding it in anticipation of the plane landing. The first call I had intended to make was to Candice. It was a call I wouldn’t be making. I glanced at Henry and gave him a nod. “Okay.”
He put a hand on my shoulder and gave it a shake. “Don’t look so down, Tanner. After we close the Anderson deal you can go back to fucking anyone you like. Well, anyone except Candice Carlson.”
Tanner
I couldn’t bring myself to immediately block Candice’s number, nor could I just instantly banish her from my mind. I replied to a few innocent texts, claiming to be too busy to chat.
Then Henry caught me reading a text during a meeting while he was speaking. He simply reached down and plucked the phone from my hands without skipping a beat. He tucked the phone in his jacket pocket and went on with the meeting as if nothing had happened.
I felt like a child who’d had his favorite toy taken away in front of the whole class.
And without Candice in my bed and in my arms, it was a very lonely, sleepless week.
We arrived back in Chicago on Friday morning. The Goldman team – without Candice – was waiting in the conference room for us after lunch.
“Stan, how are you,” Henry said as we entered the room. He shook hands with Stan and the other three stooges. I took a seat and squeezed the red rubber ball between my hands.
“We’re all good, Henry, thanks,” Stan said in his obnoxious, over-eager manner. “And I think you’ll be very pleased with our report.” Christ, this guy needed a fulltime assistant just to keep the brown wiped off his nose.
“We’re eager to see the report,” Henry said, rubbing his hands together eagerly. “This is the last box to be checked before we sign the final acquisition papers on Monday. If Anderson gets a clean bill of health from you, we’re all set.”
Stan leaned over the table to pass out the perfectly-bound copies of Goldman’s report. He sat down and opened his copy, and waited for the rest of us to do the same. I didn’t bother looking at it. I didn’t want to touch the fucking thing.
That report, and my own actions, had ruined Candice’s life. And there was no one to blame but me.
If I
had just listened to Henry, if I had just kept my dick in my pants, Candice would be sitting across from me now, pretending to ignore me.
“So, let’s begin with our review of the financials,” Stan said, flipping through the report. “That starts on page 5.”
Before he could continue, the conference room door opened and a large black man wearing a dark suit and tie appeared. Behind him were two other men who sported equally-serious looks on their faces. Behind them was a woman with a short-cropped haircut and a pinched face. I immediately took her as someone from the government.
“What the hell is this?” Henry asked.
The first man held up a badge that made Henry’s mouth clap shut. “I’m Agent Richter with the FBI. These are my associates, Agents Brent and Kline. And this is Helen Walters from the Securities & Exchange Commission. We’re looking for Henry Costas and Tanner Wright.”
“I’m Henry Costas,” he said. Henry glanced at me. “This is Mr. Wright. What’s this about?”
The FBI agent pulled a folded sheet of paper from inside his jacket and handed it to Henry. Henry opened the paper and scanned it without his glasses. The color drained from his face.
The G-man said, “Gentleman, we have a warrant to seize all files and documentation from these offices and your personal possession pertaining to the pending acquisition of Anderson Telecommunications by Wright Enterprises.”
“For what purpose?” Henry said. He glanced at me again. I’d never seen him look so nervous. His reaction to this little raid was interesting, to say the least. I sat back and crossed my arms over my chest and kept my mouth closed.
The woman from the SEC moved to stand next to the FBI agent. She said, “It has come to the attention of the SEC that an off-shore company called Creative Investment Partners has been buying an unusually high number of put options pertaining to Wright Enterprises and Anderson Telecommunications stock.”
“People buy puts all the time,” Henry said.
“That’s true,” she said, “But when the person behind the company acquiring all those puts is an officer of one of the companies involved in acquiring the other, that is called stock manipulation and is against the law.”
I tapped the rubber ball to my chin and asked, “And who is this mysterious person behind Creative Investment Partners?”
Agent Smith nodded at Henry. “Henry Costas.”
“Our initial investigation suggests that Mr. Costas was buying up large numbers of puts because he expected the stocks of both companies to crash after the news that the financial reports of Anderson had been altered by management consultants from Goldman & Stern.”
“What?” Stan looked like he was about to shit in his pants. “We didn’t alter any financial data.”
“Are you with Goldman & Stern?”
Stan slowly nodded.
“Our suspicion is that Mr. Costas was going to claim that you altered the data in exchange for a large contract to do due diligence on the deal,” she said, handing him her card. “We’ll need to interview everyone who worked on the project.”
Now I understood the reason Henry insisted on hiring Goldman & Stern in the first place. He would need a scapegoat when the shit hit the fan.
Poor Stan looked like he was going to have a coronary. The rest of the Goldman team sat wide-eyed with their mouths hanging open as their eyes darted between one another.
I must admit, I would have enjoyed the show if it hadn’t meant that my mentor and best friend was trying to screw me. I swiveled my chair to face him.
“Henry?” I said, the rubber ball flexing in my hand. “Why would you do such a thing?”
“You have the right to an attorney, Mr. Costas,” the FBI man said.
“And I have the right to know why he would betray me,” I said. “Why Henry?”
Henry looked down and shook his head. “I’ve been trying to get you to grow up for years, Tanner,” he said, rubbing a knuckle under his nose. “I’ve watched you get rich while the rest of us worked our asses off to build this company. You’ve made billions of dollars while the rest of us fed off your scraps.”
“You’ve made hundreds of millions of dollars, Henry,” I said. “Was it not enough?”
“I’m tired of playing nursemaid to you,” Henry said, looking away. “It’s time I got what was coming to me.”
“Well, I’m pretty sure you’re going to get that,” I said. I looked at the lady from the SEC. “Can I ask how all this came to light?”
“Our office was contacted on Monday by a Ruth Bennett,” she said, reading the name off a notepad in her hand. “She’s a money manager with Smith-Barney here in Chicago. She was alerted to potential improprieties in the Anderson books by a client of hers. A Miss… Candice Carlson. Miss Bennett contacted our office and we fast-tracked the investigation given the pending acquisition of Anderson Telecom by your company.”
“I assume that acquisition is now on hold?” I asked with a smile, already knowing the answer. Fine by me. I didn’t want to buy Anderson anyway. This was Henry’s baby all the way, and now I understood the reason why.
She said, “Yes, we have an order from a federal judge halting the acquisition. The SEC and the state attorney general’s office will be conducting a full investigation.”
“Fine by me,” I said. I set the rubber ball on the table in front of Henry. “Here, you might need that.” I held out a hand to the feds. “Officers, take him away.”
“We’ll need you to come down and speak with us as well, Mr. Wright,” the SEC woman said, handing me her card. “We have no reason to suspect that you were involved in anything inappropriate, but you’ll probably want to bring an attorney along just in case.”
“I’ll have my attorney set an appointment for Monday,” I said, slipping the card into the back pocket of my ratty jeans. “I have something extremely important to take care of first.”
Candice
After getting unceremoniously fired and escorted from the building on Monday morning, I immediately tried to call Tanner, but found that he had blocked my number from calling his phone.
I immediately knew that something was wrong.
Tanner might have put on the bad boy billionaire persona to everyone else, but to me, he was just Tanner, the amazing man that I couldn’t stop thinking about. The man that made passionate, sweet love to me and in whose arms, I fell asleep every night.
There was no way I was just a fling.
I knew it in my heart.
There wasn’t a shadow of doubt in my mind that Tanner cared deeply for me.
And I cared just as deeply – if not more -- for him.
I could feel it in my bones.
I flagged down a cab and climbed into the back and gave the driver my home address. I tried Tanner’s phone again with the same result.
The little electronic voice told me to fuck off, my number had been blocked.
The voice was wrong.
Tanner would not block my calls.
Something else was going on.
My suspicious mind went into overdrive. It didn’t take long for me to realize that Henry Costas was the one keeping us apart. He had blocked me from calling Tanner’s phone. He had ordered Stan to fire me.
But why?
How was I a threat to him?
You’re not a threat to him, the little voice said.
It’s your relationship with Tanner that’s the threat.
Henry Costas, you slimy douchebag cocksucker.
I’d had red flags waving in my mind since the moment I met him…
Little red flags waving in the air…
Little numbers flying by…
I slid open the contact for Ruth Bennett and called her office. “Ruth Bennett, please. Yes, it’s Candice Carlson.” Happy hold music filled my ear for a moment, then Ruth’s cheerful voice came on the line.
“Candice? Hi, what’s up?”
“Ruth, I may have a problem” I said. “And I need your help.
Candice
My phone was on the bathroom counter and I had the Bluetooth thingamabob in my ear. It was Friday night in one of the biggest cities on the planet, and there I was in my bra and panties, shaving my legs in the bathroom sink.
I know, it was sad, the things you did when you were an unemployed, unattached, single girl in the big city.
You shave your fucking legs in the bathroom sink, you eat a gallon of Haagen-Dazs chocolate chip ice cream, and you cry yourself to sleep watching a rerun of Bridget Jones Diary on cable.
I tapped the soap off the razor and picked up a towel to dry my leg. The call waiting tone pinged in my ear. Thank god, a reason to get off the phone with my mother.
“Mom, that’s someone calling. No, I don’t know who it is. Mom, if you’ll let me hang up I’ll find out who it is. Okay, love you to. Kisses to daddy.”
I tapped the little button on the Bluetooth without looking at the caller ID on my phone.
“Hello?”
“Hi,” Tanner’s voice breezed softly in my ear.
“Hi yourself,” I said with a sigh. I put a hand over my heart to keep it from pounding through my chest. I lowered myself onto the toilet. My legs were shaking. I didn’t think I could stand.
I asked, “How are you?”
“I’m fine. How are you?”
I struggled to keep the tears at bay. “I’m okay. I heard about Costas being arrested. I’m sorry if I killed your deal. I had to protect you. I hope you understand that.”
“I can forgive you if you can forgive me,” he said. “I was a fool to listen to Henry. I was a fool to let him keep you from me. I won’t ever let anyone keep me from you again.”
The tears began to flow despite my best efforts to keep them locked away.
He asked, “Can I see you?”
I asked, “Yes, where are you.”
He said, “In the hallway outside your door.”
EPILOGUE: Candice
Six months later…
I stood at the bathroom sink, wiping steam off the mirror with the back of my hand. My long hair was wrapped in a towel. My naked body was covered with little beads of water that ran down between my breasts and sluiced through my short pubic hair to my clit.