Fringe Benefits

by Christine Pope

  “Any more filing?” I asked, hoping I didn’t sound too desperate.

  “Perhaps later. But if you could proof this for me?” And he handed me a few sheets of paper covered with single-spaced text.

  “I could have typed that in for you,” I said, even as I took the document from him.

  “No doubt. But it was something I worked on over the weekend. I wouldn’t ask you to come in over the holiday.”

  I couldn’t exactly argue with that. Or rather, if I’d told him I would have been more than happy to come in on my day off and handle whatever business he required, I probably would have just sounded needy and pathetic.

  So instead I nodded, murmured something noncommittal, and escaped to the relative safety of my desk. I went ahead and booted up the computer, even though I wouldn’t need it to proof Pieter’s document. Unless he’d decided to play a joke on me and had written it in Dutch.

  Of course he didn’t. No, it was perfectly good business English, a somewhat lengthy missive to a contractor with instructions for expanding the storefront. Apparently negotiations for him to purchase the boutique next door to his antique shop had just been finalized, and so it was time to move on to the next phase of the expansion. I’d had no idea he’d planned to enlarge the store, but then again, I hadn’t even known he owned a store until last Thursday.

  I wasn’t sure why he’d asked me to proof the letter. It was flawless as far as I could tell. Maybe he’d thought that since I’d been an English major, I’d have mad skills in the grammar department. I did pretty well, but I wouldn’t have called myself an expert. Sometimes a second set of eyes helps, though. And of course I needed to do whatever I could to justify my grossly inflated salary.

  Even after making myself go through the letter three separate times just to be sure, I didn’t find anything wrong. So I went back in to Pieter and said, “This looks fine to me.”

  “Excellent. Could you run it over to Max at the store? I wanted to have him look at my proposals before I contacted the contractor. I would have sent it by fax, but Max called me on Saturday and informed me that the machine at the shop appears to be out of order.”

  I wondered why Pieter didn’t simply email the letter, but maybe their fax was one of those all-in-one deals that also functioned as a printer. If it were really out of commission, maybe Max couldn’t print anything at all.

  “Sure,” I replied. I was less than thrilled at having to deal with Max again, but I’d just have to put on my big-girl panties and pretend he hadn’t gotten under my skin with his “flavor of the month” comment. At least Pieter had given me a real task to perform.

  “You remember how to get there?”

  “Of course. I never get lost.”

  He smiled. “A good talent to have.”

  I can also tie a knot in a cherry stem with my tongue, I thought, but I knew better than to volunteer that particular bit of information. Maybe someday I’d have the opportunity to show Pieter what else I could do with my tongue….

  A wash of heat went over my face, and I turned quickly, saying over my shoulder, “I’ll just get going—”

  “I’ll call to let Max know you’re on your way over.”

  I nodded, although by then I was probably out of eyeshot. Damn, I really needed to figure out a way to keep my brain from going off in forbidden directions like that. If Pieter had seen me flush, God only knows what he must have thought the reason was. Awkwardness at having to face Max again? I hoped Pieter would think it was something that innocuous.

  My purse still sat on top of the desk where I’d dropped it as I came into the office. I scooped it up with my free hand as I hurried out the door. The weather had stayed unseasonably mild, and the morning air felt good on my flushed face. As I slid into the driver’s seat of the Mercedes, I wondered how Pieter’s innumerable secretaries had ever worked up the nerve to approach him in a sexual way. Maybe he’d always been the pursuer. I had no idea, although I had a difficult time envisioning him in that role. Then again, just because he had acted irreproachably around me didn’t mean he’d been the same with those other girls. I was different, right?

  I wished I felt a little happier at being so damn unique.

  By that time of morning the worst of the rush hour traffic had dissipated. I made it to the Pyramid Imports storefront in just a little over five minutes. Since it was still before ten and the shops weren’t open, I was able to secure a great parking place almost directly in front of the store. I glanced up at the posted signs to make sure my good parking karma wasn’t the result of designated street sweeping that day or something, but I seemed to be safe.

  I had to knock on the door, since of course it was still locked, but Max opened it for me pretty quickly. His eyebrow had a sardonic tilt, and I almost thought he was going to make some sort of catty comment about being surprised to see me. Instead, he just took the paperwork I handed to him and immediately began to look it over.

  He probably meant for me to take that action as a dismissal, but I didn’t feel like climbing right back into the car. Besides, it was ridiculous for us to continue to circle one another, claws out, like a couple of cheerleaders vying for the attention of the school quarterback. I was fairly sure that in this matter at least Van Rijn played exclusively on my team.

  “It sounds pretty impressive,” I commented.

  Max didn’t look up. “What?”

  “The expansion. I bet you’ll be able to display things a lot more effectively. It is a little cramped in here, especially toward the back of the store.”

  Then he did glance over at me, eyes narrowing. Maybe he’d taken my remark as a criticism of the way the store was set up. For all I knew, that was his domain.

  “So you have a background in merchandising, too?”

  “No,” I said blithely. “Just speaking as a consumer.”

  “I suppose you’ve spent a lot of time in antique stores.”

  “Not really, although my Grandma Pat’s house probably came close.”

  He raised a hand. “Spare me the details. I shudder to think.”

  Annoyed, I lifted an eyebrow. Way to make an assumption, jerk. My grandmother happened to own some pretty gorgeous antiques, although they were Victorian and a little frillier than most of what Van Rijn had in his store.

  At that moment I really didn’t care what Max thought of me. The superior airs were getting pretty old. I asked, “So did they have a class in Asshole 101 where you went to art school, or did you come by that naturally?”

  For a second Max just stared at me. Then he actually laughed, a real laugh that somehow made him sound almost human. “So she does have a backbone.”

  “Last time I checked, yeah.”

  “Well, that’s different.”

  “So I hear.” I probably should have kept my mouth shut, but I couldn’t resist adding, “Pieter’s said the same thing.”

  Max’s smile slipped a fraction. “Oh, really?”

  I didn’t blink. “Really.”

  Another pause. Then Max went over to the low, wide desk that served as his base of operations; a computer sat off to one side, and a leather-bound organizer lay open on the old-fashioned blotter. He set down the letter I’d brought and then faced me as he leaned against the front of the desk, his arms crossed. “So did you go with him this weekend?”

  The question caught me completely by surprise. “Excuse me?”

  “He went to Santa Barbara for the weekend. Did you go?”

  Of course I didn’t, which meant Pieter probably had been with a female other than me. Somehow the thought made a sick wave of bile rise in my throat, but I swallowed and forced it back. This was ridiculous. It wasn’t as if he and I were in any sort of relationship other than a professional one, and he had every right to do what he wanted with his personal time. And for all I knew, Max had let this little piece of information drop precisely because he had guessed it would upset me.

  Ah, logic. Too bad logic had very little to do with any of this.
/>
  “That’s kind of a personal question, don’t you think?” I countered.

  “So you didn’t go.”

  Knowing I was damned no matter what I said, I settled for giving a noncommittal shrug.

  “Well, congratulations. I think you’re the first one to make it to the two-week mark without ending up in the sack with him.”

  I didn’t think that was a feat deserving of congratulations. However, I tried to sound utterly bored with the whole conversation, even though inwardly I was praying Max felt inclined to dish some dirt. “You seem to know a lot about it.”

  “You work for someone this long, you get to know certain things.” This time the gaze that met mine was frankly pitying, and I found I didn’t like it. At all. “I don’t know how he does it.”

  “Does what?”

  “You’re not a very good liar. Maybe you just haven’t had much opportunity.”

  Well, Max had me there. No, I wasn’t a good liar. It wasn’t a talent I’d ever wanted to cultivate.

  He went on, “I don’t know how he manages to make every straight female in a five-mile radius fall for him. I’d say it was his looks, but fine as the man might be, there are plenty more in this town who’ve got just as much going on.”

  I couldn’t argue with that comment, either. Hadn’t my very first impression of Pieter Van Rijn been that he wasn’t exactly handsome, striking as his eyes might be? It was hard for me to say for sure, though. First impressions might be lasting, but they were inevitably overlaid by the thousands of other images and memories that accumulated afterward.

  Somehow I managed to say, “I haven’t fallen for him.”

  “You know how I said you weren’t a very good liar?”

  I gave a grudging nod.

  “You haven’t exactly improved in the last ten seconds.”

  There was no way to reply to that. I crossed my arms to match his stance and waited. Somehow I knew there was more.

  “You probably don’t want any advice, and I’m probably not the best person to give it. But you seem like a nice girl.”

  His words echoed what Jonah’s stepmother had said about me. Was it that obvious? Did I exude “girl next door from Billings” from every pore?

  “You’re right,” I said, keeping my tone as cool as I could. “I don’t want any advice.”

  “Too bad, since I’m going to give it anyway.” His dark eyes narrowed as I shifted my weight from one foot to the other. Maybe he thought I was going to make a run for it. The thought crossed my mind, but I forced myself to stay put. No one likes unsolicited advice, but on the other hand, I figured Max might give me some much-needed insight into Pieter Van Rijn’s motivations.

  “I don’t know what made him try the straight and narrow path,” Max said. “Maybe turning forty really did catch up with him. What I do know is that if he’s trying to keep things professional, then you had damn well better do the same. No matter what you might feel.”

  I wanted to protest that I didn’t feel anything, but since I didn’t want Max to call me a bad liar all over again, I kept my mouth shut.

  He went on, “Pieter doesn’t talk about it, but he got burned badly. I don’t know all the details, and I really don’t want to. Guess it’s not my business, although I would have been more than happy to comfort him in his hour of need if necessary. Then again, it was practically ancient history by the time I hired on. Anyway, he doesn’t let people get close. Charming as hell, sure. Just don’t ask him about his family or why he came here to L.A. Or anything else personal, for that matter.”

  Great. And of course I’d had to open my big mouth last Friday and ask him why he’d chosen Los Angeles, of all places. There wasn’t anything I could do about that now. Besides, he’d deflected my query quite neatly. Par for the course, according to Max.

  Since I didn’t know what else to say, I settled for remarking, still in that cool, disinterested tone, “My relationship with Pieter is purely professional.”

  Max’s eyebrow assumed its usual sardonic tilt. “I’ll bet it is—but only because he’s keeping it that way for some reason. And if you can’t handle it, then maybe it’s time to look for another job.”

  Never! I thought, but I knew better to say that out loud. Melodrama’s great for daytime TV. Real life? Not so much. “I’m handling it just fine. It’s a great job. I’d be stupid to screw it up.”

  “Yeah, you would,” Max said darkly. “Anyway, that’s my Dr. Phil moment for the day. You should probably get going—Pieter might be wondering what’s taking you so long.”

  “I’ll just tell him you wouldn’t stop flirting with me,” I replied, and Max gave me a pained look.

  I knew better than to push it. Max had said his piece. Any further protests on my part would just prove to him that I really did have it bad for Pieter Van Rijn and was therefore incapable of listening to reason.

  So I said good-bye and walked out with my chin up, then drove too fast back to Pyramid Imports. I didn’t know whether I was rushing so I could get away from Max or because I couldn’t wait to get back to Pieter. Either way, I knew I was in trouble.

  Of course Pieter made no mention of the length of time I’d spent at the shop. I supposed I could have come up with the ever-handy traffic jam/road construction excuse if necessary, but since he said nothing about the matter, I kept my mouth shut. Instead, I slid into my chair, picked up the correspondence he’d left for me to transcribe, and got to work like a good little secretary who’d never had one X-rated thought about her boss.

  I couldn’t concentrate, though. I kept making stupid typos and had to continually stop and go back to fix what I’d done wrong. My brain wouldn’t leave me alone. Santa Barbara? Why? With whom? And why hadn’t he said anything to me about going away for the long weekend?

  Because it’s none of your business, the logical side of my mind tried to tell me, but even that didn’t get me to stop. My thoughts chewed at the mystery the way a dog might keep returning to a well-worn bone. If Pieter had someone in his life who merited a long weekend in Santa Barbara, then why hadn’t he taken her instead of me to Howard Freeman’s goddamn party? At least that way I could have avoided the whole Jonah mess.

  Then again, how romantic a weekend could it have been if Pieter had found the time to draft that long letter to his contractor? I had a brief mental image of some nameless blonde fuming while Pieter typed away on his laptop and smiled despite myself. Anyway, I had no way of knowing whether the mythical blonde even existed, or whether Max had simply brought up the Santa Barbara trip because he knew it would upset me.

  My cell phone rang. Normally I shut it off while I was at work, but I’d left it on while I drove over to the shop and had forgotten to take it offline once I was back at the office. I had it set up to ring five times before it went to voicemail, and I knew I couldn’t just sit there and let it ring and ring and ring. Better to take the call and hope it was something I could handle quickly.

  The voice on the line was female, unfamiliar. “Katherine Wheeler?”

  “Yes,” I said, with some hesitation. A part of me always hated to admit my identity to strangers on the phone in case they were telemarketers just looking for an opportunity to get their hooks into you.

  “This is Anita Silva from the Chrysalis Music Group. I believe you recorded a cover of one of our clients’ songs.”

  That awful sinking feeling in my midsection was back, along with a sensation of rapidly encroaching nausea. I swallowed and said, “Um…excuse me?”

  “This is the Katherine Wheeler whose cover of ‘Promises in the Dark’ was played on KFAB last Friday, September first?”

  “Yes,” I replied miserably.

  Ms. Silva’s voice sharpened. “In order to legally cover a song for broadcast or duplication by other digital means, you are required to purchase a license to do so. We can find no record of such a license. Perhaps you are unaware that failure to obtain a license can result in fines and civil prosecution?”

  Fran
kly, I didn’t find much civility in Ms. Silva’s tone. But she probably just thought I was another one in the long string of intellectual-property thieves she had to deal with every day. Maybe if I explained what really happened—

  “I’m really sorry about that,” I said. “But I never meant for that recording to be broadcast or heard by anyone outside my family. I just recorded the song so I could send it to my parents back in Montana. A—an acquaintance of mine submitted it to the radio station without my knowledge.”

  My explanation sounded disingenuous even to me, and obviously she didn’t think much of it, either. “Ignorance of the law is not an excuse. I’ll need your service address so I can send you the paperwork for this case.”

  For a second I considered giving her a fake address. But that would only postpone the inevitable, not to mention making Chrysalis Music Group even more pissed off at me. She’d mentioned a fine. Maybe I could just throw a little money at them and make the whole thing go away. I didn’t like the idea of parting with cash I didn’t have just to appease a recording company that probably had more money than God, but I liked the idea of going to court even less.

  Mentally cursing Jonah Freeman and his vast, unmitigated stupidity, I gave Ms. Silva my address. As I did so I started to fantasize about how I could make Jonah pay the damn fine. The tried-and-true breaking his kneecaps method was tops on my list. After all, I didn’t see why I should have to foot the bill for this debacle when it was all his fault anyway.

  As Ms. Silva interrupted my bloodthirsty reverie to repeat my information back to me to make sure it was all correct, I looked up to see Pieter approaching down the hallway. Great. Perfect timing.

  “A timely reply is in your best interests,” she warned me.

  “Sure. Of course. I’ll get right on that,” I replied, then snapped my phone shut. To my surprise, my hands were shaking.

  Pieter paused at my desk just as I bent down to throw the phone into my purse. “Is everything all right?”

  Everything was most definitely not all right, but I didn’t see the point in telling him that. “Sure.”