“And I appreciate it,” said Kay. “But these men out here, Rog? No thanks. I’ve had too many bad experiences.”
Rog nodded. “I feel you,” he said. “But you’ve had such a run of bad luck that something was bound to break eventually. I was hoping this new guy could have been that break.”
Before Kay could respond, her office door flung open, and Senator Drake, with Mindy at his side, rushed in. Kay and Roger both stood on their feet.
“What did you do to my wife?” Drake angrily asked Kay as he walked up to her desk.
Kay frowned. “I didn’t do anything to your wife. She slapped me.”
Roger was shocked. “She what?” he asked.
“Why on earth would my wife slap you?” Drake asked.
“She accused me of sleeping with you,” Kay said. “Which we both know is ridiculous.” Kay and Rog both glanced at Mindy. “But she was certain I was the mistress,” Kay added.
“She said your boyfriend knocked her down,” Drake said.
Rog looked at Kay as if she had lied to him.
But Kay was shocked too. “My what? He’s not my boyfriend. I don’t even know him. He had a meeting with you!”
Drake was surprised. “With me?”
“Yes! Nicholas Bacard is who she’s talking about. He helped me after your wife slapped me down. She started it. He finished it.”
Rog and Kay both could see the embarrassment on the Senator’s face. He was a world-class cheater extraordinaire, but he still had a conscience about it.
“It was still wrong,” Mindy, always the instigator, said.
And her words gave Drake fire again. “What did you do to help her?”
This man, Kay thought. “To help her?”
“When he knocked her down, what did you do to help her?”
“First of all,” Kay said, “he didn’t knock her down. She knocked me down. And second of all, what was I supposed to do? She came at me!”
“She wants you out,” Drake admitted. “She wants you fired. You can’t stand by and let somebody defend your honor by disrespecting my wife’s honor. Not going to happen. Not on my watch!”
Kay was offended. And she allowed her heart to overrule her head, and she fired right back. “Oh, yes,” she said, “we should always defend your wife’s honor because we all know what a good, upstanding husband you are to her. And how you defend her honor.” She glanced at Mindy, and then looked back at him. “Don’t we?”
Rog knew she was a goner now. And he was right. Drake was enraged. “Don’t you dare talk to me like that, you bitch! Who do you think you are? Apologize at once!”
Kay knew she had crossed the line, but the nerve of him after all she’d given to him! And even as Drake waited for her to apologize, she held firm. She couldn’t do it. “She came at me,” Kay said. “I did nothing wrong. I have nothing to apologize for.”
But her words only enraged him further. “You’re fired!” he yelled at her, shocking both her and Roger, and even Mindy. “You’re fired! And that’s effective immediately. Pack your shit and get out of my office this second!”
And then he left her office, with Mindy hurrying behind him. Even she looked back at Kay. Even she didn’t expect him to go that far. Not for a wife everybody knew he didn’t give a damn about!
Rog, stunned, looked at Kay. Kay stood there momentarily, still unable to believe he went that far herself. She stood up to him for the first time in her life, and that was what it got her? She was fired for doing nothing wrong? But she served at the pleasure of the Senator. He was no longer pleased. She had to go.
And she left. Rog was still shocked, and Headquarters was still humming right along as Kay gathered up her things out of the desk drawer, grabbed her keys and her phone, and walked out of the building. Her staff thought she was going to drop off the list of expenditures for next week’s activities. Or she was going to that donor meeting across town. Or she was doing a myriad of other things Kay Laine did for the Senator in the normal run of a day. She walked out, for good, and not one of them were the wiser.
And when she put her things in the trunk and got into her car, she could only pray it would crank. The service mechanic at the dealership said it only needed a starter, and they installed one that morning and returned it out front, but she never test drove it to be sure. Now she was praying it would run. Because she needed to run. She wanted to run away!
And it did. It cranked like a baby. And she sped away and made her way home. But the tears were flowing before she pulled into her driveway.
When she pulled into her driveway, she sat in her car and stared at her house as she looked at it over her steering wheel. Alone again. She worked her ass off for Eddie Drake since college. For all those years. He moved her up the ladder, but he didn’t do her any favors. She deserved to move up. She worked harder and smarter than anybody else in his office and he knew it. But for him to fire her over what he knew was a lie still stunned her. And now she had to go home, to her big empty house again, already with no husband and no children. Now she had to go inside that empty house with no job too. With nowhere to go tomorrow morning when she got up.
Tomorrow, she thought. And it was a pitiful thought.
Why not try something new?
That was the question he asked her last night. Why not try something new? His plane, he said, would be waiting for her at the airfield. All she had to do was go there and hop on for what he all but promised would be the ride of her life.
But nooo! Not Cautious Kay. She would do nothing that would bring even a hint of reproach to the Senator’s good name. That same Senator didn’t give a damn about her good name, but she was so devoted. So loyal. Such a fool!
And then she remembered what else Nico said. What do you have to lose, he asked her. And he was right. What did she have to lose now?
And she became determined. It was still before noon, but she backed out of that driveway and drove to that airfield as if she would stop at nothing to try something new. Even if it meant losing the nothing she had. But she wasn’t thinking about the downside. If she thought too hard about it, she’d never do it. So she didn’t think about it at all. She just did it. She drove to the airfield, saw that big Learjet, with his company name on it, on the tarmac, and relaxed. She was going to do this shit, she said to herself, pumping herself up.
And then she froze.
Was she insane? She was about to get on a plane to go have sex with a man she hardly knew! Was her life that hollow? Was she that desperate?
She leaned her head back and closed her eyes. She was just going to compound her problems by getting on that plane, and somehow she knew it even then.
A sudden knock on her driver side window startled her and caused her to jump. When she looked, she saw that a man was standing beside her car. He had obviously come from the plane. She pressed down the window just enough to hear his voice.
“Miss Laine?” he asked her. He had what she detected was a French accent.
“Yes?”
“My name is Pierre Carron. I am Mr. Bacard’s assistant. His plane is ready to transport you, madam,” he said.
“And where exactly is this plane supposed to transport me?” Kay asked.
Pierre seemed surprised that she didn’t know. “Why to France, madam,” he said, as if she should have known.
Kay was floored. “To France? France in Europe?”
Pierre smiled. “Is there another? Mr. Bacard has business he had to attend to. I’m to see you safely to his estate on the Riviera.”
“The French Riviera?” Kay couldn’t believe it. “You’re joking.”
“No madam. I assure you Mr. Bacard does not joke.”
Kay was beyond stunned. She was stupefied. Here she was thinking he was going to jet her over to New York or DC for bed action and maybe even dinner, and then jet her back home in time for bed. But he was expecting her to fly to France for that bed action? To France? What kind of slut did he take her for? He was out of his mind!
“But what do I tell Mr. Bacard, madam?”
“You tell him I said no. No way. Not possible,” she said. Then she frowned. She’d compounded her distress already. “Tell him anything you like,” she added, and drove away.
She shook her head as she fled. What kind of fool he took her for, she wondered.
Probably the same kind Eddie Drake had taken her for.
Tears returned. She could hardly see the road for the tears.
CHAPTER TWELVE
At the home office of Bacard International on the south of France, Nico sat at the head of the table in his board room. Everybody had input on whether or not to rescue a major tech giant, and they all were giving their two cents. But Nico sat back and listened. That was what he did. He hired the best minds in the world, paid them top dollar, and allowed them room to make their best arguments. At the end of the day he still was going to do what he thought was best, but he always wanted to make sure they weren’t telling him something he hadn’t already considered.
His cell phone rang. When he saw that it was Pierre, he stood up and walked out of the boardroom. In the corridor, he answered the call.
“She said no, sir,” Pierre said.
Nico frowned. “What do you mean she said no?”
“She showed up. But when I told her we were there to transport her to your estate in France, she said no. ‘No way. Not possible,’ to quote her directly.”
Nico was kind of thrown. She said no? That had never happened to him before. “What reason did she give?”
“She didn’t give a reason, sir. She just said no. A rather flighty individual, if I could say so myself, sir.”
Nico frowned. “You cannot say so,” he admonished his aide. “Who do you think you are?”
Pierre cleared his throat. “I beg your pardon, sir.”
But Nico wasn’t thinking about Pierre. He was thinking about Kay, and rubbing his forehead. He could not wrap his brain around the fact that he’d been turned down. “And she just left?”
“She bolted like a wild boar, sir,” Pierre answered him. “If you will forgive my metaphor.”
Nico exhaled. He was disappointed. He was looking forward to spending the night with her. To get that need for her out of his system and then move on with his life. But her need for him apparently wasn’t nearly as strong. He had read her wrong. “That’ll be all,” he said to Pierre. “Take it in,” he added, meaning his corporate jet, and ended the call.
But then Kay’s fresh face flashed in his head, and he couldn’t get those large, beautiful, sad eyes of hers off of his mind. And that need he had for her when he first saw her reasserted itself. But why? It was a crazy idea flying her all the way over to France anyway. A batshit crazy idea when he considered all the women he could have at the drop of a hat.
But none of them would be Kay.
None of them would be that one particular woman.
And that ideal, of Kay as somebody different than all the rest, caused him to readjust his way of thinking.
Was it really that crazy after all, he suddenly wondered.
Then he realized he was either readjusting his way of thinking, or he wanted to be with her so badly that he was flat-out lying to himself.
But either way, it amounted to the same thing: he had to see Kay again.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The next morning, after her alarm sounded, Kay quickly got out of bed the way she’d been doing for years. She got into the shower, brushed and gargled, and made her way into her bedroom. When she saw the clock on her nightstand, and realized she was running late for work, she began to get in a hurry.
And then she caught herself.
Stunned, she remembered she had no work to go to, what was she doing? How could she have forgotten?
She stood in the middle of her bedroom and ran her hands through her hair. She allowed the tears to flow again, the same tears that put her to sleep last night. Then she felt silly and wiped them away quickly with the back of her hand. Eddie Drake firing her wasn’t the end of the world. What was her problem? Time to get over the pity party, she told herself, and get busy making a plan for act two of the rest of her life.
She put on a pair of biker shorts and a top that just barely covered her breasts, a top that exposed her flat stomach, and brushed her hair into a thick ponytail. She was about to make her way out of her bedroom and downstairs, to shoot some caffeine into her, but her cell phone rang. It was Rog.
“Have you decided yet?” he asked her.
She sat on the side of the bed. “No, Rog. You know I haven’t.”
“I know you haven’t. I was just checking on you.”
Kay exhaled. “Thanks.”
“It was wrong what Eddie did to you yesterday. Dead wrong. And I told him so.”
“Oh, yeah? And what did he tell you?”
“To mind my f-ing business and get back to f-ing work. So I got back to work. I have a wife and a kid. I can’t afford to lose this gig.”
“I totally agree,” Kay said in complete sympathy. She wouldn’t want anybody to lose their job because of her. Especially not her best friend.
“But as soon as you say the word,” Rog continued, “I’m out of here. And just like he dismissed you summarily, without giving you a chance to even plead your case, I’m going to do the same thing to his arrogant butt. He does a lot of good for the black community, Kay. He really does. But how could a man who does that much good be so bad?”
Kay shook her head. “I’ve been asking myself that same question. And the answer is I don’t know. But he does a lot for the community. We have to give him that.”
“Right.”
“What is he telling the staff about my absence this morning?”
“Nada,” said Rog. “Not a word. He just said Mindy is his new chief of staff, and left it at that.”
Kay frowned. “Mindy? You’re joking!”
“Wish I was, Kay. But I’m not. That’s when I got a flood of phone calls.”
“I got a flood of calls last night myself. But nobody told me he put Mindy in charge.”
“They didn’t know it until this morning. That’s when I found out too. Everybody’s shocked. She couldn’t supervise her way out of bed.”
“But she can sure as hell supervise her way into bed. His specifically.”
Rog laughed. “True that,” he said, and then Kay’s doorbell rang.
She frowned. “Are you playing games with me, Rog?”
“What game?”
“Are you at my front door?”
“No! Why would you ask me that?”
Now Kay was curious. She walked over to her bedroom window and looked outside. When she saw that same SUV from two nights ago, she was at first surprised, and then kind of excited. “I’ll call you back,” she said to Rog and ended the call. And then she hurried out of her bedroom, and down her stairs.
The bell rang again when she got downstairs. But before opening the door she looked at herself in her foyer mirror. Her hair was in a ponytail, and looked decent enough, but she realized she had on no makeup. She’d forget her head this morning, if it wasn’t on her body! What was wrong with her? But then she realized, too, that it didn’t matter. That man was going through all of that trouble for a booty call, not for her, and she had to face that fact.
She was glad she didn’t have on makeup. Let him see what he was really getting. And she opened that door.
But as soon as she saw Nico standing there, looking so sexy in his designer suit, and with that sensuality he carried with him like a second skin, she regretted her decision not to look her best. And she felt naked.
Especially when his well-experienced eyes stared at her face, but then trailed down her body, looking intensely at the little top she wore that barely covered her large breasts, at her exposed stomach, at her skintight biker shorts. Then he looked
back into her eyes. “Good morning,” he said.
“Good morning.” He also looked a little pissed, she realized.
“May I come in?”
Before she had opened that door, she wasn’t trying to let that man up in her house. She, in fact, was going to tell him to take a hike, what was his problem? The last thing on her mind right now was sex, so he could just forget that plan. But that was her thinking before she opened that door.
Now that the door was opened, and she saw him again, she opened the door wider, stepped aside, and allowed him to walk on in. That same cologne scent she smelled on him two nights ago left a trail of masculinity behind him.
Nico, too, felt that powerful need again as soon as Kay opened that door and he was in her presence again. A need he couldn’t even explain. She wore no makeup this time, unlike she had when he first saw her, and he was impressed by how fresh she looked without it. A lot of women couldn’t pull that off, but she was able to.
And that body, he thought, with those curves for days, had him hard as a rock as he walked into her suburban home.
Kay closed the door. He waited for her to invite him to sit down, but they just stood there. “May I sit down?” he asked her.
Where was her manners, she thought. “Yes. Please. Would you like some coffee, or something to drink?”
“No, thank you,” he said as they both walked into her living room and sat down: he in a chair. She on the sofa. He folded his legs, to avoid exposing his hard-on.
“How can I help you, Mr. Bacard?” she asked him.
“Nico,” he said. “Or Nicholas. Never Mr. Bacard.”
“What can I do for you, Nico?” she asked again.
“Sometimes crazy makes sense,” he said. to her.
She stared at him. Because, incredibly, she knew exactly what he meant. “But sometimes,” she finally responded, “crazy is just crazy.”
He smiled. And then he laughed. “You have a point,” he said, glanced down at her legs as she folded them, and felt himself getting harder. He had to have her in the worse way. “But I didn’t come all this way if I believed that to be true. Which I don’t.” He leaned forward, staring at her. “Why didn’t you take the ride?” he asked her.
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