Executive Perks

by Angela Claire

  Oh shit.

  He should just drive on out of here. Or at least call 911 and then drive on out of here. Let the professionals take care of this.

  His hand went to the key in the ignition.

  Of course it was awfully close to the main house. And who knew how far away fire trucks were in the boonies like this.

  With a sigh, his hand fell away from the key, and he got out of the car and trudged back to the doorway, noting disgustedly that it was unlocked. In the Becketts’ rarified world, people apparently did not break into houses.

  Or set fires.

  He opened the door.

  * * * * *

  “Hey, you people got a fire extinguisher?”

  Brendan, Missy and Virginia traded incredulous looks at the voice shouted down the hall at them.

  “Jesus,” Brendan said. “Is the bastard torching the place?” He threw down his towel and raced out, Virginia and Missy right behind him.

  And there was Aaron Winston on the landing at the top of the stairs, glaring at them.

  “What did you do?” Brendan shouted.

  “Your shack or greenhouse or whatever the hell that structure is connected by some kind of glass tunnel to the house is on fire.”

  “What?” Virginia ran to look out the hallway window in that direction. The leaping orange and yellow flames testified to a many alarmed blaze that must have been going on for quite some time, too long for Aaron Winston to have set it, though probably not even Brendan would have believed he had. A corporate titan probably would get kicked off the stock exchange for that kind of thing.

  “Oh my God!”

  Virginia didn’t know if it was Missy or herself who’d cried that, but she said quickly to her sister, “Call 911.”

  She dashed into her room to throw on jeans and a shirt and then rushed downstairs to locate the fire extinguisher in the butler’s pantry.

  She found it and ran out outside madly toward the greenhouse, which was now almost white with fire. Somebody grabbed the extinguisher from her hands and she saw it was Winston. He directed it toward the blaze while Brendan aimed the garden hose full force into the fire as well. The combined force of their efforts wasn’t going to be enough, given the stage the fire had gotten to.

  Winston repeated the sentiment over the sound of the fire and water. “How far is the nearest fire station?” he shouted to Brendan.

  “Not sure. A few minutes at least.”

  “Let’s hope they don’t take long or you’re going to see this reach the house no matter what we do. Is there anybody still in that part of the house?” Winston pointed toward the wing closest to the fire.

  “No, that’s the servants’ quarters,” Brendan answered, both of them still shouting as they aimed their respective implements at the flames, dimming the inferno only slightly. “The servants usually vacate the house on the weekends if the family is in.”

  Winston arched one black eyebrow. “Isn’t the point of servants to be around to, ah, serve?”

  “We have a skeleton staff on most of the time to take care of the house year-round, but when we’re here we don’t need anybody waiting on us. We can put our own dishes in the dishwasher.” Brendan unexpectedly grinned at Winston and Virginia was relieved to see a ghost of a smile in response on the other man’s face.

  By the time the roaring fire trucks pulled up to the blaze and began to douse it in earnest, Brendan and Winston, relieved of their task, were both drenched with sweat and soot from the fire.

  Virginia and the twins—Mindy had arrived from who knew where—had been watching from the sidelines and looked uncertainly around. The fire chief approached Virginia. “It’s probably okay to go back into the house now. We have this under control. Just don’t go into the wing near the fire until I give you the word the fire is completely out.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Any idea how this started, by the way, Miss Beckett?”

  “No. None.” She glanced at Mindy and Missy. She had a few questions for them about that party last night.

  Unexpectedly, Winston appeared beside her. “Do you think I could get a soda or something? My throat is parched.”

  “Yes, I’m sorry. I should have thought of that.”

  The family and Winston all trudged into the house, leaving the firemen to their job. Animosities seemed to have subsided for the time being and they all went into the kitchen. Soliciting Winston’s preference, she handed him a cold can of iced tea from the fridge.

  He popped it open. “You really have no idea how the fire started?”

  “No.” She glanced uncertainly at the twins, but Brendan beat her to it.

  “Were any of your friends last night smoking something they shouldn’t have been and so may have hidden out in the greenhouse to indulge? Maybe left a lit joint lying around?”

  “No!” the twins answered, completely in sync before Missy took the speaking role. “You know we don’t do that and we don’t hang around kids who do.”

  “It just makes you want to eat junk food anyway, and why get fat for something that just makes you woozy? I prefer other kinds of buzzes.” Mindy cast a flirty glance Winston’s way, not having been here for the whole fight scene. “What are you doing here, anyway, Mr. Winston?”

  “Long story. Never mind. But I don’t believe the fire was started by a lit joint or cigarette. Or by accident, anyway.” Winston took a swig of the iced tea as they all digested the observation.

  “Why not?” Brendan asked.

  “Because it’s too coincidental. I assume you know that Virginia and I were in a car accident last Monday. Well, from what my driver said, I don’t think that was accidental either.”

  “That’s a pretty big leap in logic to go from that to this.”

  “Maybe. But then there’s what happened last night.”

  “I don’t think you want to bring that up, Winston,” Brendan warned. But Virginia held up a hand to halt him.

  “No, hear him out, Brendan. I didn’t think his theory had much weight when he first told it to me, but now I’m starting to wonder.”

  “What theory?”

  “I think Virginia wasn’t just drunk last night. I think somebody may have deliberately slipped her something to cause it.”

  The twins’ mouths fell open and Brendan looked at Winston suspiciously.

  “Not me.”

  “Not him.”

  Winston and Virginia spoke their defense of him at the same time.

  “Your sister was really out of it. She was more than drunk. I’d suspect ecstasy, but since it usually comes in tablets, it’d be hard to mask that in a drink. So I’m thinking GHB, maybe.”

  “Liquid ecstasy,” Brendan muttered.

  Missy piped up, “You know, I think you’re right about that, Mr. Winston. Unless you downed a fifth of vodka while nobody was looking, Virginia, you were too out of it to just be drunk from a few glasses of wine. You were so passed out, I couldn’t even get you out of your clothes. I didn’t think anything of it because I know you’d never take drugs. I did wonder, though.”

  “When I, ah, cooled off, I realized that and began to wonder too,” Winston said.

  “Oh, Virginia, you poor thing.” Missy came over and slipped her arm around her sister’s waist, leaning her head on her shoulder in that exaggerated way she had. “I had a friend at school who was slipped some drug at a club once and it was awful for her. She was…well, never mind.” Missy popped her head off Virginia’s shoulder. “I’m so glad Mr. Winston was above taking advantage of something like that.”

  Virginia pushed Missy away as her sister beamed at Winston. Looked like the hero worship was back on. Mindy too smiled at Winston.

  Winston didn’t seem to notice. “With the car accident and now this fire, I’m really starting to think someone is targeting Virginia. And there’s more.”

  “Jesus, I’m getting a beer for this,” Brendan grumbled, reaching for a cold one from the fridge.

  “Hand me one too
,” Mindy directed nonchalantly.

  Brendan opened it and sipped. “Not ’til you’re twenty-one, squirt. At least not in my presence. So what did you mean by more?”

  Winston put down his can and leaned casually back against the granite island. “Well, Virginia, you once asked me how I knew to contact the right person in the Beckett family to buy my stock and I didn’t answer. But I’m answering now. It was mysterious. I didn’t go looking for it, and it almost never happens that way. This investment banker came to me with the details out of the blue. He wouldn’t tell me how he knew, so I just paid him and took the tip. I haven’t seen him since and didn’t really care. But with all this, it’s making me think.”

  “Making you think what? What does that mean?” Missy asked, genuinely unsure.

  “Well, it means not everybody welcomes my presence in their company and when somebody deliberately opens the door to me, well, they usually don’t have too kind feelings for the people inside the house I’m entering.”

  “Too complicated,” Virginia muttered. “It means, Missy, that somebody set a corporate raider on our company to take it over, maybe because they didn’t like us very much.”

  “Oh, well that’s not very nice.”

  Winston grinned. “You guys are great for my ego.”

  “I’m sure your ego can take it,” Virginia observed with a slight smile.

  “Luckily, I’m very secure.”

  Brendan watched him warily and Winston took the stare head-on.

  “Look, I’m sorry, man, about what I said up there. I didn’t mean it, any of it.” Winston glanced at Virginia, then at her sisters and then back to Brendan. “I was an asshole.”

  “No argument from me.” But Brendan held out his hand to shake Winston’s. As they did, Brendan said, “You don’t have sisters, do you?”

  “No. But I’ve had the shit beat out of me by guys who do, so I should know better than to do that kind of trash talking.”

  Brendan nodded, then shook his head ruefully. “Whoever beat the shit out of you must have been a pretty good fighter.”

  “He was. And I hadn’t even touched his sister!”

  They laughed.

  “Thanks for telling us about the fire. It would have been a lot worse if we hadn’t gotten to it when we did.”

  “No problem.” Winston set down his can. “I guess I should get going.”

  All of her siblings looked uncertainly to Virginia and then conspicuously disappeared with an array of excuses, from taking a shower to checking on long-neglected guests.

  Virginia met Winston’s eyes once they were alone. “Why would someone target us?”

  “I don’t know. But you better watch your back.”

  “Yes, I can see that now.”

  The fire chief ducked his head in and she told him she’d be out in a moment.

  “I’ll see if I can make any headway with the very accommodating investment banker. It might help out with these other things.”

  “Thanks. I’d appreciate it.”

  “I can see what you mean about not suspecting your sisters. You guys seem like a pretty tight family. Look out for each other. That’s nice.”

  “Yeah, we’re close,” Virginia admitted. “The immediate family, I mean. The extended family I could do without sometimes. Aunt Winifred, for instance. I hated her even before she sold you the stock. She’s been divorced about a dozen times and always has some boy toy on her arm.”

  Winston laughed.

  “And I have this uncle who treats me like I just graduated from kindergarten. The worst part is he works at the company. He can never get his computer to work right. He’s always calling IT and lecturing me about everything. I have half a mind to fire him, but he’s pretty harmless.”

  Winston’s blue eyes stayed focused on her.

  “Anyway, I guess you need to get going and I need to go out and find out about our mysterious fire.” She held out her hand to shake his, and with a slight smile, he leaned forward and kissed her cheek. “Goodbye, Virginia.”

  And then he was gone. It was what she’d wanted all along.

  So why did she feel so alone?

  * * * * *

  Aaron Winston aimlessly roamed the Guggenheim, a modern art museum distinguished not only by its fine paintings, but also by its internal spiral-shaped configuration which sloped from floor to floor without the need for stairs or elevators, like a giant corkscrew. He had cut his day short at the office, not an unusual occurrence of late, and was wandering around the city when he had been forced to duck into the museum by the onslaught of a cold November rain. As he contemplated a bizarre canvas slashed with brilliant blue and gold, he thought, for no apparent reason, of Virginia Beckett and swore. A prim, schoolteacher type standing next to him flashed him a disapproving glance, notifying him he had unknowingly said the word out loud, and moved on. Virginia Beckett. Now she was showing up in his vision of abstract art. It was really too much.

  In the couple of weeks since the incident at Bransport, Aaron had lived up to the letter of his vow not to pursue her, at her request, although not to the spirit of it. He had not tried to see or contact Virginia Beckett during all that time. But as much as he consciously purged her from his thoughts, in his subconscious there was no getting rid of Virginia Beckett. She was still firmly in residence in his dreams, kissing him, opening her legs to him, and when he would awaken, sweaty and frustrated, sometimes he would give in to the need to fantasize about her even though awake.

  Kind of pathetic, actually, given how they had left it.

  As much as he told himself that he wanted nothing more to do with Virginia Beckett, however, he could not rouse himself to the idea of bringing any other woman to his bed. Which meant he was in a really bad mood most of the time.

  He managed to be civil to his secretary, Mrs. Fields, and his top executives, but he was curt at best and his attention span was limited. Aaron didn’t hear from Rye for some time after he had accused Aaron of trying to take advantage of a drunk Virginia at the charity ball. When Rye finally called his friend, not to mention best client, he sheepishly apologized. “I shouldn’t have said anything. It was none of my business. You and Virginia are both adults. But you know me and my big mouth. I don’t know when to shut up. So don’t hold it against me, buddy, okay?”

  Aaron told him it was forgotten and started to discuss a business matter, but Rye came back to the subject of Virginia. “So how is that going with you two, anyway?”

  Rye really did not know when to shut up, but Aaron would never get the persistent lawyer off his back without saying something about the whole episode. “I’m not seeing Virginia Beckett. You were right. She was drunk out of her mind that night so I just took her home. And that was it.”

  Rye chuckled, “No follow up? That’s a little hard to believe.”

  He really was a pain, Aaron thought. It was a shame he was such a good lawyer. “Let’s leave it at that, Rye.”

  The brisk chill of autumn turned cold in late October and early November. Perversely, even as Aaron consciously tried to rid himself of this infatuation with Virginia Beckett, he moved his things into the apartment in her office building and began staying there full time, ridiculously elated one Thursday evening when he got the opportunity to run into her at the elevator bank. As if a few minutes of stilted small talk could suffice in place of what he really wanted. Whatever the hell that was. He was starting to wonder whether it was really just sex after all or something else. Something more.

  He reported that the investment banker lead had gone nowhere. The guy had claimed no mystery, that Winifred had contacted him. Virginia in turn confirmed that the fire inspector hadn’t been able to confirm it was arson and she’d had no bad run of luck since then. “Maybe it’s just when the two of us get together that I’m in trouble,” she joked.

  No kidding.

  Aaron caught sight of Virginia once more in the lobby, shortly before Halloween, laughingly doling out candy in the middle of the day to
a group of school children dressed in wild costumes making the rounds of several office buildings, trick-or-treating. She didn’t see Aaron as he hung back trying to overhear her conversation with an older woman he didn’t recognize. “I’m going up to Maine to have Halloween with Allie and her girls,” Virginia told the woman, looking relaxed and carefree. “It should be a lot of fun, dunking for apples, a square dance, the whole thing. The littlest one, Erin, even said she was making a costume for Auntie Virginia. I can’t wait to see it!”

  It was pretty ironic. The more he tried to forget about Virginia Beckett, the more she gnawed at his insides and prevented him from even doing a good day’s work, let alone getting any carefree enjoyment out of life. And she in the meantime was evidently having a nice fall, hanging around with her family.

  Aaron moved from the gaudy blue-and-gold painting he had been examining toward a vaguely comforting metal sculpture dangling from the ceiling out in the hall, and in the process caught sight of a straw-colored head amidst the crowd on another level of the museum’s circular floors. His heart lurched. The business-like Miss Beckett out in the middle of a weekday afternoon? Unbelievable. But as he approached the blonde, he was convinced it was her. Intending to needle her about leaving work instead of tending to the value of his BFD stock, he touched her arm. “Virginia.”

  She turned to face him. It wasn’t her. The woman smiled. Dressed in funky, garage-sale style clothing, she looked like a student or perhaps an actress. And she could certainly play the part of Virginia Beckett. She looked a lot like her. The same fine white skin and long blonde hair. The eyes just blue, not that queer mix of gray in them. A little shorter, maybe, and her features perhaps not quite so defined and patrician as Virginia’s, but alike enough to be her sister. More alike than even Virginia’s own sisters were.

  “No. Not Virginia. Good guess, though,” the woman laughed. “It’s Samantha.” She smiled expectantly at him and he was aware, without at first registering it, that she was smiling at him, flirting with him, in the same way that most women—most women except Virginia Beckett, that is—generally did. For one luscious moment, as she beamed up at him, he imagined that she was Virginia, so relaxed, so inviting, smiling up at him. It was really intoxicating. He realized he was staring. “I’m sorry. It’s just that you look so much like…a friend.”