by Margaret
Derek had no idea what William was talking about and he really didn’t care. He planned to be here only a short time. He missed his duties, missed his comrades. He had been in his human form for several days now, and though he was finally getting used to his body (“It’s like riding a horse,” William had told him. “You don’t forget.”), he was having difficulty adjusting to the human weaknesses and frailties. These included the fact that his body required sustenance on a regular basis. That his body felt pain and weariness. That a cold spring wind whipping off the lake froze his ears. That there were such things as alarm clocks that dictated one’s comings and goings. He’d forgotten to set his alarm that morning.
“You’re late, de Molay,” Mr. Fraym had admonished as he thrust a uniform into Derek’s arms. “I expect my employees to be on time! You’d better put that on as soon as you’re finished filling out these tax forms. And don’t complain to me if the collar itches and the pants don’t fit. I don’t care.”
Fraym gave Derek a quick tour of the building, explained his duties, and then escorted him to the lobby.
“This desk is your post. You are not to leave it except to go to the bathroom. There are no cigarette breaks and no lunch breaks. You can eat your lunch here at the desk, but do it discreetly so the tenants don’t see you. You are to keep the lobby neat. Water the plants, pick off any dead leaves. Open the door promptly for the tenants, and keep out solicitors and vagrants. You will call cabs for people and you will be pleasant. Guests should sign in, and all service workers should be accounted for. They aren’t allowed in the front door, as a general rule, but sometimes there are exceptions. I’m paying you to be the eyes and ears of this building. Do you understand me?”
“Uh, yes, sir.” Derek answered, not because he did understand, but because he wanted to get rid of this annoying man as soon as he could.
“Good, then. Put that uniform on and get to work.”
As Derek went to dress, he realized suddenly that he was nothing but a filthy, simpering spy. Spies were necessary evils, Derek supposed. Monarchs employed them to keep track of what their enemies were doing and their enemies employed them to keep track of the monarchs. Generals used spies to find out what the enemy was plotting and thus gain a military advantage. But no honorable man would accept such a base and heinous task.
Derek had been a military commander for many centuries, and at the thought of what they’d done to him, how they had tricked him into accepting this post, Derek grew angrier by the moment. He had thought he was being sent on a mission of great importance. Instead, he—a man of noble birth—was going to be playing the role of servant and, if that wasn’t bad enough, his task was to spy on a female! He was furious. He hoped those under his command never found out. He could imagine them rolling on the floor for eternity, guffawing over his silly uniform, and bowing and scraping and saying “Yes, Ma’am,” and “Yes, Sir, thank you, Sir” in imitation of him.
Derek finished putting on the uniform and took his post just as a woman came out of the elevator. She was blond, tall, slender, and lovely and she looked annoyed. Derek snorted. He’d rather fight dogs for table scraps than bow and fawn over some silly woman who couldn’t open her own damn door. She said something to him, but Derek didn’t hear her at first. He was too busy thinking of how he was going to tell William that he could take this assignment and shove it up his ass.
Then Derek heard the name Rachel Duncan. That sounded familiar and suddenly he realized that this was the female. This was the woman he’d been sent to spy on. The knowledge didn’t make him any happier, except that now he had someone to blame—her. This was her fault. She had gone over to the enemy. The demons had selected her because she was obviously weak-willed. Well, she could quite literally “go to the devil” as far as he was concerned.
He took a good look at her, standing there in the entranceway, and he noted something different about her. Different from all the other humans he’d seen during his brief time on Earth. He asked himself what there was about her that set her apart. She was one of the loveliest women he had ever seen, but that wasn’t it. He compared her mentally to the other humans with whom he’d interacted this very day—the annoying Mr. Fraym, for example. And then Derek knew.
Rachel Duncan was alone.
Not alone as in the fact that she was the only person in the lobby. She was horribly, terribly alone. No loving angel hovered over her. No angel was there to guide her. Even Mr. Fraym had a guardian angel, an angel who el bowed him in his conscience if he was tempted to do something wrong; an angel who watched out for him, reminding him to look both ways when crossing the street or urging him to quit smoking.
Rachel Duncan no longer had a guardian angel, and Derek recalled William saying that her angel had gone missing, perhaps even been destroyed by the archfiends. She was alone and vulnerable and, what was worse, she did not know it. She did not understand her danger.
Derek had just come to this startling realization when Rachel said something to him about opening the door.
Confused by his thoughts and startled by her frank gaze, Derek belatedly remembered his duties. He opened the door for her and held it while she stalked past him. She looked angry, clear through. He supposed he couldn’t blame her. He’d behaved rudely. He was going to apologize, but she was gone before he could say a word.
As she passed him, Derek smelled the scent of her perfume. The fragrance was heady, sweet, and it brought back vivid memories of palace gardens and exotic lands. What was it? Gardenia. Derek had not thought or smelled the scent of gardenias for many long years. The fragrance lingered in his nostrils and the image of her, alone and in danger, lingered in his mind.
“Hm, hm.” A man cleared his throat.
Derek looked up to see a man standing in the lobby staring at Derek. The man held two large suitcases in his hands. Walking over, he dumped them down in front of Derek.
“Don’t just stand there like an idiot. Carry these out to my car,” he barked, annoyed.
Derek did as he was told. He didn’t like it, but he was no longer thinking about asking to be sent back to Purgatory. He couldn’t get the fragrance of gardenias out of his mind.
Rachel Duncan didn’t need someone to spy on her. She was a woman, alone and vulnerable, frail and weak.
“She needs protecting,” Derek told William over the phone that night, after he was off duty.
“That’s not your job, Derek,” William said, sighing. “Perhaps she does need protection. Your job is find out who from. And you’re not going to gain her confidence by being rude to her!”
“I did not mean to be,” Derek mumbled. “I was caught off guard.”
“You have to apologize,” William said sternly.
Derek was silent a moment, then he said, “You are right. I do.”
“You agree?” William was amazed. He’d expected an argument.
“I did not behave as a gentleman toward a lady. I will ask her forgiveness.”
“Not on bended knee,” William said worriedly.
“I know,” Derek replied with a smile. “I am not in the fourteenth century anymore.”
And yet, as he hung up this miraculous device known as a telephone, he couldn’t help but think that what Rachel Duncan needed was a true knight.
Three
Saturday morning, Rachel woke to the chatter of voices coming from her radio. She’d set the alarm for seven a.m. and never hit the snooze button. Hitting snooze was a slippery slope. It led Rachel to frantically racing around the condo with her hairbrush in one hand and her shoes in another, trying to gulp down coffee and simultaneously put on eye shadow, all in the forlorn hope of making it to work by the time the markets opened. She hated doing this; she felt disorganized all the rest of the day. Not to mention the time she’d shown up at the office wearing mismatched shoes or the time she’d accidentally put lipstick on her eyelids. That day she had made a vow—never to hit snooze again.
She didn’t hit snooze, but she didn’t ge
t up either. She lay in bed, snuggling beneath the down quilt, and her one-thousand-thread-count Egyptian cotton sheets. They were so warm and her pillow was so soft that she stayed where she was. It was Saturday, after all.
She smelled coffee. The automatic coffeemaker had come on. The smell was tempting, but the coffee wasn’t going anywhere. She lay in bed and thought, oddly, about the doorman with the ice blue eyes.
He had been on duty yesterday when she’d come back from work. He had opened the door for her with alacrity, springing up from his chair the moment he saw her emerge from the car. His gaze was serious and very intense. She had the strangest impression—that he knew her, or knew something about her. He seemed stern and angry, though this time she didn’t think the feelings were directed at her. He appeared to want to say something, for he had cleared his throat twice and coughed once.
Rachel had swept past him haughtily, putting him in his place, letting him know she was still mad from the rude way he’d treated her that morning. In the end, he hadn’t said a word to her. Rachel couldn’t help feeling that she should have eased up on the guy. His first day on the job and all that. She found herself wondering what the doorman’s voice was like.
Zanus, he had a wonderful voice—it sounded the way black velvet felt. Her thoughts went from the doorman to her client, who was maybe more to her than a client. She lay there, remembering how it had all started.
“I want you to take on a new client, Rachel,” Mr. Freeman had announced. “Mr. Andreas Zanus. He’s a venture capitalist with money out the wazoo, and I want you to treat him like he was made of gold and double-dipped in platinum. Nothing is too good or too expensive for this guy. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Mr. Freeman. I’ll do my best to keep Mr. Zanus happy.”
“I hope you mean that. I think you should know he asked for you by name.”
“He did?” Rachel was taken aback.
“It seems he’s been following your career. Talking to some of your other clients, that sort of thing. He’s very impressed with you. I want you to get to know him, Rachel.” Freeman winked at her. “You know. Be charming.”
Rachel stared at him blankly. Was he really telling her to do what she thought he was telling her to do?
“I gave Zanus your direct number so he’ll be calling you for a meeting. The firm is counting on you, Rachel.”
She had not been looking forward to being charming to Mr. Zanus. She had been resentful, in fact. She had pictured him: flabby, bald, pretending to know all about commodities when, in fact, he knew nothing.
Boy, had she been wrong—about everything!
Zanus made it very easy to be charming; and she found herself trying not to be too charming around him. He had made it very plain that he thought they should be sleeping together, but Rachel was not prepared to cross that line. Not that she didn’t want to, and she had to repeat her mantra every time she was tempted to succumb to his touch.
He is a client. He is a client. He is a client.
She could lose her reputation, her career. She was not willing to lose everything she’d worked so hard to achieve by sleeping with a client.
And so the trip to France, the dinner in Rome—separate bedrooms. Good-night kisses at the door. She wasn’t a prude. She certainly wasn’t saving herself for marriage. That horse had left the barn a long time ago. She was being careful.
But not only that. There was something missing.
“Spring has come to Chicagoland!” the radio was saying in its damnably cheerful voice. “Highs today in the mid-fifties with a forty percent chance of rain this afternoon.”
“What am I doing lying here dreaming about men?” Rachel asked herself. “I should be thinking about money!”
She made her bed while she was still in it, a little trick she’d learned from Cosmo, which involved pulling the sheets and the comforter up to cover the pillows and then sliding out from underneath them. She wasn’t much of a house keeper and she wouldn’t have concerned herself about making her bed, but she disliked crawling into cold sheets at night. Bad enough she had to crawl into bed alone.
Rachel used the quiet time on Saturday morning when no one was stirring and her phone wasn’t ringing to go over her charts for the past week. It was important to keep your eye on the big picture, as well as the day-to-day ride on the market. She charted the prices for the week, and then studied the graph to see if a trend emerged. A trend could be anything—a head-and-shoulders curve, a slow downward sloping dive, a fast upward swoop. She could usually find some sort of sign that would tell her if the market was going to surge or pull back over the next quarter.
Rachel printed out her chart and posted it on a large cork bulletin board wall that decorated one of the walls in the condo. The cork board looked really tacky, didn’t quite fit with her decor. She didn’t mind. Someday, when she’d made her millions, she’d replace the cork board with a Picasso.
She was standing as far back from the chart as she could, squinting at the paper, trying to see where the curve was going, when her phone rang. The land line, not her cell. That startled her. No one she knew was up this early on a Saturday. Not even her mother.
That thought made her nervous. Maybe something had happened on the cruise. People were always disappearing off cruise ships. Perhaps Dad had suffered a heart attack. She looked at caller ID and breathed a sigh that was part relief and part hesitation. It was Zanus. Even after three months of dating, he still made her a little nervous, like any minute he was going to tell her their wonderful time together had all been a mistake. It was just one of those things. Oh, and by the way, he was going to yank his millions out and sue her firm. But maybe all that would change if she would sleep with him. She picked up the phone.
“Hello?”
“Rachel?” said his voice, very deep and resonant. “It’s Zanus. Sorry to disturb you so early, but I have something important to talk to you about.”
“Okay,” Rachel said, her heart sinking. Good conversations never started that way. Breakup conversations started that way.
“We’ve been together a few months now, and you have been wonderful—both on the job and off. I want to take you out for a special dinner this evening. I am sorry I didn’t call sooner, but I thought I might have to fly to Cairo this weekend. As it turns out, the meeting was postponed. I know that you probably have already made plans—”
Sweet of him to lie like that. He knew perfectly well she wasn’t seeing anyone else.
“—but I thought I would take the chance. Are you free tonight?”
Rachel was startled. Zanus hadn’t seemed the type to get sentimental over anything, much less her. Then she realized what this must be about. They had been spending a lot of time together and they had not yet had The Talk.
“Uh, let me look at my calendar,” Rachel said.
She shut her eyes and slumped down in the chair. The Talk—where you decide if you are exclusive, and feelings are discussed and general nervous ness and discomfort ensued.
Rachel hated The Talk. She had been hoping that with Zanus, these subjects would never came up. Why should they? Theirs was a business relationship. Or it had been up until now. She really did like him, but she didn’t want to blow whatever they have by revealing too much too soon. Damn, she hated this. But he was her client and, beyond that, he was special to her. She couldn’t very well back out. Besides, she felt a flutter of excitement. Maybe The Talk with him wouldn’t be so a bad, after all.
“I can cancel my other…thing.” She was a little flustered. “Dinner would be wonderful.”
“Excellent. I’ll make reservations at Charlie Trotters. Are you familiar with that restaurant?”
“Uh, why, yes,” Rachel said. She couldn’t believe it. She had been wanting to eat at Charlie Trotters forever. It was only the very hottest restaurant in the city. Charlie himself was a culinary legend. “But you won’t get a table. You have to make reservations months in advance.”
“Leave that to me, my
dear,” he said with a chuckle. “I’ll pick you up at eight. Late seating starts at nine.”
Trying to sound casual, she continued, “Charlie’s not in his raw food phase anymore, is he?”
She hoped that didn’t sound too snide.
Zanus only laughed. “No, Charlie’s not in the raw phase anymore, thank goodness. I didn’t care for it either, to be honest. But the man didn’t gain his reputation by being ordinary, did he? I’ll pick you up tonight at eight.”
“Yes, eight is fine.”
“Perhaps, later, I can come to your place for a drink,” he said.
“Uh, yes. Sure. Maybe. I’ll see you at eight.” Rachel hung up and collapsed on her couch and thought things over.
In her excitement over Charlie’s, she’d forgotten about The Talk. She had been worried that this might be the Let’s Just Be Friends Talk, but what if it was the tonight I Get to Try Out Your 1000-Thread-Count-Sheets Talk. What would she say to that?
Sure Zanus’s voice was wonderful—his fingernails manicured, his Thomas Pink shirts pressed with the perfect amount of starch, his cologne specially made for him in France. But wasn’t this just ego disguising itself as a man? She had been dating him for three months and Zanus hadn’t even bothered to ask her if she wanted to go to Trotters or if she preferred someplace else. Thinking back, he’d never asked her where she wanted to go. He took her places he picked out.
Two months ago, he’d called her the night before to tell her that they were spending the week-end champagne tasting in France. Then there had been the weekend in Rome for the opera and a fourteen course dinner with his business partners. He’d at least given her a couple of days notice on that one. Now he was taking her to one of the best, most expensive restaurants in the entire United States. And he’d never asked if she wanted to go there.
Trotters had a set menu and if you didn’t like what he was serving that night, you didn’t eat. Of course, she would have chosen Trotters above anywhere else in the city, but Zanus didn’t know that. Or did he? Did her know her that well?