“Because where I come from,” Janet said, “they have a saying too.”
Kimmie and William both rolled their eyes. But Richard was interested. “Which is?” he asked.
“Where I come from,” Janet said, “they like to say where there’s smoke, there’s fire. Or fire done been there.”
William frowned. “Please disregard that nonsense,” he said to Richard.
But Richard was smiling at that ‘nonsense.’ And then he broke into laughter. Janet was surprised at how his sad eyes suddenly had a spark in them when he laughed.
But then the laughter ended almost as quickly as it had begun. “Explain,” he said to her.
She realized then that he hadn’t remembered her at all. Not her name. Not her face. Not her. He seemed to have remembered absolutely nothing about that sweet, innocent night they spent together. And that next morning and trip to the drug store. A night and morning that, for a shamefully long time, defined her very existence.
But before she could respond, William again interrupted her. “I really don’t think a response like that is worthy of an explanation,” he said to Richard. “I don’t think it’s worth your time, sir.”
Although William seemed ambivalent to Richard’s quick temper, Janet wasn’t. She could see Richard’s temper flare again as soon as William said what he thought. “I don’t give a fuck what you think,” Richard said to William. “So shut the fuck up!”
What an ill-tempered person, Janet thought. She wondered if he was always so crude. And she wondered why that fire never translated into his stark, tired, sad eyes.
But then he turned those eyes to her. “Explain,” he said to her again.
“Not for nothing are those women threatening to sue,” Janet said.
“Oh, it’s for something,” said Kimmie, jumping right back into the fray. She was determined to win that contract against all odds, and maybe earn herself a partnership in Rooney and Rice while she was at it. “Maybe it has something to do with the fact that his company just settled a big case involving sexual harassment here in Tulsa,” she continued, “and those women in Cope want in on the action. But you didn’t know about that, did you?”
Janet looked at Kimmie. She knew good and gosh-darn well that she wasn’t briefed at all before being dragged along by William. But she ignored Kimmie’s pettiness. “Yes,” she said to Richard, “it is suspicious that after your company settles a major case those women suddenly decide to sue you too.”
“But where there’s smoke, there’s fire,” Richard said. “Or just smoke,” he added.
“Maybe they want your money,” Janet said. “Or maybe they have a legitimate complaint of harassment. Or maybe it’s both.”
But Richard was staring at her. “You’re a gut girl, aren’t you?” he said to her. “What does your gut tell you, young lady?”
A gut girl? Janet had never heard it said that way before! But it was the truth. She always relied on her own instincts. “It’s usually both,” she said.
“It’s almost never both,” William said. “It’s always money, Mr. Shetfield, as I’m sure you’re well aware.”
Richard stared at Janet a moment longer, without even acknowledging that William had said a word to him. They treated her without even a modicum of respect. And she took their bullshit like a pro. That was the Janet he remembered. That resiliency! That innocent view of life when there was nothing innocent about life. He wished to God he had went back to see her all those years ago. He wished to God he would have tried to change his life to make it work. He could have been a husband. A father. He could have had a family of his own. But all he had was money and power. And an empty bed unless he grabbed some random woman, looking for money and power herself, to help him make it through the night. And then he was empty again.
Janet wasn’t empty, but she was getting very uncomfortable. Because he was staring at her with a look she couldn’t read. With a look that either seemed to suggest he was considering what all they’d said, or had already dismissed them out of hand.
And then he abruptly rose to his feet. This time all of them, including Janet, stood up too.
And without saying another word, Richard left the room.
They all looked to William. But William’s jaw had already tightened, and his face was already turning beet red. He knew exactly why the man walked out. Janet contradicted Kimmie and made it appear as if they didn’t have their act together. He knew exactly at whose feet he was putting that failure.
He gave Janet another one of his icy looks, and then he walked out too.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
On the ride back to Cope, you could slice the tension with a knife. Nobody said a mumbling word. Until William was tired of stewing in his own juices and let Janet have it.
“I told you to keep your trap shut!” he yelled as he drove. “Didn’t I tell you to keep that backward-ass mouth of yours shut? Now look what you’ve done!”
Janet was shocked. “What I’ve done? What did I do?” she asked.
“You opened your mouth,” said Kimmie. “And cost us that contract.”
Janet frowned. “I cost that contract? That’s ridiculous! The man asked me a question and I answered it. What else was I supposed to do? Ignore him?”
“Yes!” said William, nearly jumping out of his seat. “Yes, gotdammit! But oh no. Not your ass. You made it look as if we weren’t on the same page.”
“We weren’t,” said Janet.
“That wasn’t his business,” said Kimmie. “You made it his business.”
“He asked a question and I answered it,” Janet said. “That’s all I did. And I never once heard him say you weren’t getting the contract.”
“He didn’t have to say it. His silence spoke volumes. You’re the only one who doesn’t seem to understand that.”
“You shouldn’t have brought her along,” said Kimmie. “I told you that when you were saying you wanted her to be involved in more higher profile cases. I told you that’s not a good idea. I told you that just last night.” And then she caught herself. “This morning,” she said.
Janet remained quiet. She answered a question. That was all she did. How could that be wrong? They didn't give her credit for anything! But that was all the more reason why she felt good about her decision.
And when they made it back to the office, she didn't delay. She went to her cubicle, pulled the letter up on her computer, changed the date, printed it out, and walked over to Kimmie's office.
“What's this?” Kimmie asked when Janet handed the letter to her.
“It’s my resignation,” Janet said. “I’m giving two weeks’ notice.”
Kimmie looked at the paper, and then looked at Janet. “Resignation? You can’t resign! We’ve got the end-of-year markups to submit. You always do that for our unit, Jane.”
“I showed you how to do it numerous times,” Janet said.
“But I couldn’t understand that shit! And you know it! You can’t resign!”
“I’m resigning, Kimmie. It’s not up for debate.”
Kimmie couldn’t believe it. “Then you’re the one’s going to tell him,” she said, hurrying from behind her desk. “Come with me!”
She marched Janet down the hall to William Rice’s office. One knock on his door and she entered without waiting for permission. Janet entered behind her.
“I’m busy,” William said.
Kimmie placed the resignation letter on William’s desk. He didn’t bother to pick it up. “What’s this?”
Kimmie looked at Janet.
“It’s my resignation,” Janet said.
William frowned. “Resignation? You’re going to resign after what you did to me in Tulsa? You’d better be grateful I didn’t fire your ass!”
“I’m resigning,” said Janet. She wasn’t about to have a firing on her resume. “I’m giving two-weeks’ notice.”
“Two weeks my ass,” William said. “You’re getting off my premises now. Get out now!”
; Janet was angry too. “Put it in writing.”
William frowned. So did Kimmie. “What?” Kimmie asked.
“I offered two weeks’ notice in my resignation letter. You will not put on my record that I abandoned my position when I don’t show up for work for the next two weeks. Put it in writing that you want me out today, and I’ll be happy to leave right now.”
William was livid. “You don’t tell me what to do you . . . you . . .”
All three of them knew what he wanted to say. But he didn’t have the nerve to say it.
“Just get out,” he said. “Get out now!”
“Then I need to remove that two weeks’ clause out of my letter,” Janet said.
Kimmie looked at William. He nodded his head. And Kimmie pulled out a pad, wrote that Janet was asked to leave today rather than the two weeks’ standard as per her resignation letter, and then Janet accepted the signed and dated page.
She had been applying everywhere, ever since she knew she’d never get ahead, nor get any respect at Rooney and Rice. She had hoped to have a position lined up before she submitted her resignation. That was why she was holding it back. She already was living paycheck to paycheck as it was. But she followed her instincts. And her instincts had told her that today necessitated that she resign before they fired her. Three weeks before Christmas.
She told Beth and Marveen goodbye, and a few others in the office, but Kimmie was watching and none of them wanted to be on her shit list. They barely grunted in Janet’s direction. People who couldn’t stop running to her for her help, suddenly didn’t know her name. Suddenly didn’t want to know her name. So Janet just grabbed up the few items she owned, and left.
It felt like the time when she left the Henleys.
Only this time there was nothing to celebrate.
Only this time it didn’t feel like freedom.
It felt like failure.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
He leaned back on the sofa, inside the video room of his home in Tulsa, and pressed the button on the remote control. With his legs crossed, a pad and pen in his hand, his reading glasses on, and a lit cigar between his fingers, he looked at the 90-inch monitor as the recordings of his daily meetings appeared on screen. Because he recorded all of his daily briefings and meetings, too, each had been labeled by his assistant and stored according to meeting time. But the only one he was interested in seeing again was the first one. A meeting he had held with a conglomerate from Rome looking to invest in Shetfield Oil. Richard had nothing to do with that aspect of the Shetfield empire. He rarely even ventured into the state of Texas where their largest refinery was housed. But he had promised his older brother to take the meeting and give his recommendations. Richard knew next to nothing about oil, but he was spot on about human behavior. His brother needed to know if those businessmen were looking for an amicable partnership, or a hostile takeover, something his brother constantly had to deal with.
He took some notes as he watched and listened to those men in the meeting. His first impression had been a negative one, but he couldn’t put his finger on why. That was why he recorded every meeting. To go back and find out why. And as he watched and listened, he got his answer. And took down notes.
He was still writing when the video of that meeting ended, and the video of the second meeting he held that day came on. The meeting with the representatives of Rooney and Rice. When he heard the comment, “now this is what I call a room,” he looked up. And that was when he realized the next meeting was being shown. He almost looked back down. That meeting, in his view, was a colossal waste of time. Rooney and Rice might be a big deal in Cope, but they weren’t ready for prime time in his world. But just as he was looking back down at his writing pad, the camera caught a whiff of her, and he looked back up.
Janet.
Janet Evans.
But they called her Jane at Rooney and Rice.
He remembered holding her all night that night as if it had happened yesterday. He remembered how he’d never laid in a bed with a woman before without having sex with her, but how he’d never been more satisfied in his life.
He remembered that next morning, too. And how he still hadn’t gotten over that one. How he still felt as if he had ruined her life. Was she married now? Did she have kids? He never checked on her. He felt, had he found out, he would not have been man enough to leave her alone. He didn’t have some man look into it for him, nor did he check himself. He manned-up, and left her alone.
He took a slow drag on his cigar as he watched to see her face in the group. When she was too far away for him to render any conclusions, he grabbed the remote and isolated her in the frame. And he magnified her. Now she was as large as his monitor screen.
And that was when he saw it again. That something that had pricked him when he laid eyes on her again at that meeting. That something he thereafter tried to ignore, but he kept taking peeps at her because it was too strong to ignore.
But what was it that he was seeing? She had such a strong face. A face that had been hewn from a rock of offense, in Richard’s view, where soft beds and sweet childhoods had not been a part of her past. She’d seen a lot. She’d been through a lot. And the trauma of that hard life she wore like a second skin all over her face. Even as her skin, he’d also noticed, was smoother than any he’d ever recalled. Even as her hazel eyes appeared as witnesses to the harshness of the world, but still managed to retain their softness, and sweetness, and, he would daresay, innocence.
Wow, he thought as he stared at her. As he froze the frame, with a picture of her larger than life, on his massive screen. And it suddenly flooded back to him. He should have given it a shot. He might have actually been happy in this life, had he given her a chance.
She was the girl from Grundy Street. She was the girl with the innocent eyes. She was the girl he’d wished to God, for years on end, that he had never left that morning. But not for her sake. For his sake.
He looked down, at her small hands. There was no ring on it. None. Which should not have made him feel some kind of way, but it did. He felt a sense of what? Relief? Thrill that she might still be available? But that was craziness on top of craziness!
“Janet,” he said out loud, staring at her. “Janet Evans.”
“And who exactly is Janet Evans?”
Richard almost jumped out of his skin when he heard a voice just above his head. He turned quickly. And it was only then, when he saw that it was his big brother standing just behind him, did he settle back down. “You almost scared the shit out of me, Monty!” he angrily protested.
Montgomery “Monty” Shetfield smiled. “Almost?” he responded in his usual deadpan way.
“How do you do that?” Richard asked. “A mouse makes more noise than your big ass when they break into somebody’s house. Which is what you just did, by the way. Your big ass just broke in here without permission. How did you do it? And take off that big-ass hat in my home!”
“Make me,” Monty said without the theatrics of his brother as he walked around and sat in one of the two wing chairs flanking the sofa. Richard was right. He was a big man. Whereas Richard was six feet tall, Monty was six-three and even more muscular than Richard. And he stretched out every inch of that tall muscularity when he sat down.
And he didn’t remove his giant, Texas-size hat either.
“I ask again,” Monty said. “Who’s Janet Evans?”
Richard gave his brother a hard look. Everybody thought he ran the Shetfield empire because he was so glitzy and was always out front. But he didn’t. He ran his own empire. Monty ran Shetfield Oil, which eclipsed anything else in their portfolio.
Monty looked at him. “Who is she?”
Richard finally looked away from his brother and at the screen again. At Janet’s life size face on that screen. “She works for Rooney and Rice.”
“For who and who?”
“A consulting firm,” Richard said, staring at her again, as took another drag on his cigar.
&nb
sp; “I thought Trevor Reese handled our consulting,” Monty said.
“He does.”
“Then why are you,” Monty started to say. And then he caught himself. “Let me guess,” he said. “She interests you?”
But Richard didn’t respond. He twirled the butt of his cigar around in his mouth and continued to stare at the screen.
Monty stared, too, and ultimately hunched his shoulders. “I don’t get it,” he said. “She’s not your usual cup of tea at all.”
“Didn’t know I had a cup of tea,” Richard shot back.
“Oh, you have one. Big hair. Big boobs. Big ass. Or should I say, in the case of your women, fake hair, fake boobs, fake ass.”
“There’s nothing wrong with enhancements,” Richard said. “It’s a woman’s prerogative.”
“I prefer the natural look.”
“In Texas? The capital of fake? Give me a break! Besides,” Richard added, still staring at Janet, “it doesn’t get any more natural than Miss Evans. She’s not even wearing makeup.”
Monty stared at Janet on that big screen, and then he looked at his brother. “Leave her alone, Dick. She’s out of your league.”
Richard smiled. “Really?”
“Yes, really!”
“And how do you suppose that?”
“Because she looks like she’s ethical and has some pride about herself. She’s not one of your money-grubbing sluts. But you dangle something as powerful as all your attributes in somebody’s face, they’ll become as slutty as they need to be. Don’t turn her out like that. When you love and leave those women of yours, the money you give them soothes their hurt. You love and leave a girl like her? Money won’t soothe shit with her. You’ll devastate her. Leave her alone, Dick.”
Richard continued to stare at that face on the screen. His brother had a point, although he was wrong about one thing. Richard never loved and left any woman. Because he never loved any woman. And his ladies understood that he never would. Whenever he left them, and he always did, they had nothing to cry about because he never pretended it was anything more than what it was. But had he tried, he just might have made something happen with somebody like Janet. He might not have left her.
Plain Jane Evans and the Billionaire Page 9
