by Laura Leone
“Wake up. You’ve got to take me home,” she insisted, struggling to sit up.
It took considerable determination and a little ruthlessness, but she got Ross awake enough to get dressed, help her straighten her dress, and drive her home. When they reached her apartment, she told him they could probably still grab another hour of sleep if he wanted to come upstairs.
“No thanks, honey,” he said groggily, running a hand over his unshaven face. “The day has already started in Europe, and I have a lot of calls to make there.”
As was their custom, they didn’t have any contact during the business day. Shelley wondered from time to time what Ross was up to with all these calls to Europe. Memories of their night together flashed through her mind at totally inappropriate moments, and she could feel her body stir. Her imagination was becoming awfully fertile. She was eager to tell him how special last night had been for her; at the time, she had fallen asleep immediately afterward in total exhaustion, and this morning she had nagged him to take her home. He was so tolerant, she thought fondly. She cherished her love for him like a delicious secret.
She would tell him she loved him, of course. She didn’t know when or how, but whether he loved her or not, he should know that someone thought so highly of him that she had fallen in love with him. It would be her gift to him, whatever happened. But for now it was her secret and her comfort.
That was just about her only comfort that Monday. An old and profitable client told Shelley that they had decided to meet with Elite before renewing their contract with Babel. She overheard another client, a woman, telling Francesca that she had met that Mr. Ross Tanner and he was such a charming man, and so handsome it could make a woman think twice about her marriage vows!
Shelley gritted her teeth, trying not to let a very understandable resentment spoil her inner happiness or her erotic memories of the night before. But why did he have to be so very, very good at this?
She sighed, knowing she wouldn’t respect him so much if he weren’t so good at his job. The she frowned. And could he respect her, when he was so much better at their profession than she? The thought troubled her, since she wanted his respect, had always wanted it. And though he had assured her a number of times that she had it, how could it continue if he wiped her out so easily?
Having wrestled with these thoughts all day, and having broken the news to Jerome about another regular client considering Elite, Shelley was feeling frustrated and tense by the time she met Ross in her apartment. His exuberance, his cheerful smile, his irrepressible good mood annoyed her unreasonably.
“I thought about last night all day today,” he told her, his voice low, his eyes intimate. He brushed his lips across hers, and her response to him was so immediate, so uncontrollable, that she felt alarmed by it. She pulled away, suddenly resenting the vulnerability he created in her.
“Is something wrong?” he asked.
“No, I’m just tired.”
He grinned seductively. “I can believe that. After the way you—”
“Can we eat out?” she interrupted. She had a sudden feeling that talking about last night would make her cry.
“Sure,” he said, studying her, aware that she was shutting him out. Had something gone wrong at work? He knew better than to ask.
Their time together usually flew by, yet tonight dinner at Shelley’s favorite Chinese restaurant that evening seemed to drag by. Shelley picked at her food, which was unusual for her. Ross kept trying to draw her into conversation, but she didn’t respond with her usual enthusiasm. He grew increasingly concerned, unwilling to let her bear her trouble alone, whatever it was.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” she snapped at him when he prodded her. His eyes widened. She was sometimes impatient with him, but never curt. She sighed. “I’m sorry.”
“Did something happen at work? Is that it?”
She shrugged. It was work, and it was him. She loved and respected him, and she didn’t know whether he could respect her if she kept losing out to him. She didn’t know whether he could love her at all. She didn’t know how long he’d be around, or whether he even thought about such things. Since they had agreed not to talk about a very important area of their lives, they had left a lot of important things unsaid, despite their intimacy.
She was in love with him, and that meant this carefully defined relationship with its uncertain future wasn’t enough. Couldn’t he see that? she thought with rising irritation.
They drove back to her apartment in tense silence. There had never been tension between them before, she thought sadly. She knew it was her fault, and she was miserably aware that she couldn’t help it. She was tearing herself apart inside.
Ross glanced at her in the dark car. He couldn’t stand the doubts nagging at him. He felt all the hurt and despair of a rejected lover. He’d have to be a fool not to realize that she had maneuvered him into a restaurant this evening specifically to avoid being alone with him. And the restless, unhappy look in her eyes and the tired slump of her shoulders tore at his heart.
They had been so close last night, so completely involved in each other, that their passion had reached a new level, a new depth. A new kind of trust and openness had blossomed between them, making their experience together richer than anything that had gone before. Inflamed by their ardor, plundering the depths of her body, giving her all the dark passion and hidden vulnerability that was inside, he found that she became, somewhere in the midst of her sighs and cries and demands, the answer to every longing he’d ever known.
He couldn’t give her up, he thought with fierce determination, and he wouldn’t let her slip away. In that hotel room in Kentucky this weekend, he’d discovered why all other hotel rooms had always seemed so lonely. The answer was obvious: Shelley wasn’t in them. It was also the reason his lovely farmhouse in Provence had seemed barren, despite the care he’d put into it.
This weekend he’d finally understood what he needed: Shelley, everywhere, in every part of his life, forever. And that was clearly impossible in Cincinnati. He had already taken considerable steps in the past two days to change their situation. He was taking a big gamble, just to be with her, he thought, suddenly feeling a little irritable himself. If only she wasn’t so stubborn about her values!
He parked the car and turned to her in the dim lamplight. She looked more miserable than he’d ever seen her. “Shelley.”
She said, “I’m a little tired tonight. If you don’t mind, I think I’ll just—”
“No, wait a minute.” He stopped her when she tried to get out of the car. “What’s going on?”
“I told you—I’m tired.” Her voice was irritable.
“No, I think you’re mad,” he said, feeling irritable, too. “And not at the world in general. At me—and I don’t know why.”
“Really?” Now she was exasperated. “Sometimes you can be as dense as any man I’ve ever met.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” he demanded.
Shelley paused, took a deep breath, and said, “I think we’re on the verge of our first fight.”
“I guess we are,” he agreed wearily. “Let’s go upstairs. This may take too long to finish in the car.”
“No.”
“What do you mean, ‘no’?”
She said, “I know I’m not being reasonable—”
“That’s one thing we can agree on.”
“I need some time alone to... think about things.”
“What things?” he prodded.
“Come on, Ross. We’re not a normal couple who met through friends or something. We have to deal with what other couples deal with, plus our professional situation and... and...” Tears started to spill down her cheeks, surprising them both. “Oh, my God,” she said brokenly.
All his anger fled as he slid his arms around her and pulled her against him. She had always seemed so stable that he hadn’t realized how much she felt the pressure. The sooner he put his plans into action, the better for bot
h of them.
“Shelley, Shelley, I’m sorry, darling. I’ve been so selfish. I thought just because I was happy, you must be, too,” he murmured soothingly. “I know it’s been tough on you.” He had found everything he needed in their relationship, but maybe she hadn’t, he thought with a sudden lack of confidence.
She sobbed against his chest. How could he be happy? she wondered. From nine to five he had to pretend she didn’t exist, except as a competitor to be eliminated. She had to get some perspective, had to calm down. Oh, Ross, she thought, I love you too much.
“Come on, let’s go inside,” he said softly.
She shook her head. “I still want to be alone for a while. We’ll talk about it tomorrow night, okay?”
“We can’t. I have to go overseas tomorrow.”
“You do?” she blurted. “Tomorrow?”
He nodded.
“How long?”
“Just a few days, darling. I’ll be back by Friday.” He waited.
“Then I’ll see you Friday.”
“Shelley...”
“Goodnight, Ross,” she said huskily, and got out of the car.
Shelley, this is Mike Paige at Keene International.”
“Hi, Mike. What can I do for you?” Shelley said into the receiver.
She sat red-eyed and dispirited at her desk. A sleepless night of worrying and fretting had produced no positive results. She was in love with Ross whether she liked it or not, and she was still committed to her job whether she liked it or not. And everything else was as unresolved as it had been last night. Now she just wished for his safe return from wherever he’d gone. His absence was more painful than anything that had gone before. Is this what it would be like when he moved on to a new city eventually?
“Shelley, my boss has decided to sign with Elite.”
She was silent. She felt as if someone had tolled her death knell at Babel.
“I’m sorry, Shelley. I wanted to go with Babel, but the final choice is his. He met with Tanner yesterday—”
“Ross met with him yesterday?” she interrupted.
“Yes, and offered a final contract which met all our demands...”
Mike continued talking, but Shelley scarcely heard another word. All she could think of was Ross. He had taken her away for the weekend, chased her around the horse farms, made devastatingly intimate love to her in his hotel room, slept in her arms... and then he got up and clinched a deal he knew she’d been after for months. Last night he had talked to her, held her, and soothed her, all the while knowing he had lowered the boom on her career. What did he think she was, some piece of skirt he could play with in the evenings? Didn’t he know her career was as consequential to her as his was to him? Had he no respect whatsoever for her?
After the call was over she raged silently, pacing around the school. Wayne and Francesca looked at her warily, wondering what had caused her caged-tiger act.
How could he have behaved this way? How could he sleep in her bed every night while he spent every day wrecking her business? What kind of selfish, amoral, thoughtless bastard was he?
Nothing would quiet her anger. She called Jerome to tell him she had lost the contract with Keene. She also told him that her relationship with Ross Tanner was over. How could she ever have been fool enough to make herself vulnerable to him? The man had no soul. Wayne, with his exaggerations, had been right about Ross all along.
Wednesday brought no relief to her wounded heart or her shattered self-esteem. She longed for Ross’ return, but this time she longed to see his eyes when she told him to go to hell. She had never felt this way in her whole life and scarcely recognized herself. But then no one had ever betrayed and hurt her as Ross had.
On Thursday a special delivery letter arrived from headquarters. Of course, Jerome had had to tell them Shelley had lost the contract. Never mind that she had repeatedly asked for more bargaining tools. They would punish her now.
The letter was terse and to the point. They were extremely disappointed that she’d lost such an important contract to a competitor who’d only been in town for a few weeks. Considering Tanner’s reputation, they would give her the benefit of the doubt and would neither demote nor fire her. However, they were considering moving her to a quieter location and replacing her in Cincinnati with someone who was more of a match for Ross Tanner.
Shelley’s rage reached the breaking point. She picked up her mug of coffee and threw it across the room. Francesca knocked discreetly at the door and braved Shelley’s wrath to come in and comfort her friend.
Once she had heard the whole story about Keene and Ross, Francesca took a long look at the letter from headquarters. “It is very insulting,” she agreed. “And ‘quiet location’ probably means Outer Mongolia.”
“How could he?”
“Ross?”
“Yes!”
“He never told you he was doing this?” Francesa asked.
“No, of course not! We... I had decided that we should never talk about business.”
“Then how could he tell you?”
“I... He couldn’t, I guess. But how could he do this?”
“Shelley, at the risk of defending this man you have condemned to everlasting hell, how could he not do it?” Francesca said. “It is his job.”
“It’s my job, too!”
“Which is why you did your best to get that contract. You yourself have assured us all that you would not allow your relationship with this man to compromise your integrity. Would you expect less of him?”
“That’s not fair!”
“It is only unfair, Shelley, because the answer is more difficult than you would like it to be. It is so of all human things.”
Shelley sighed and sank into her chair. Maybe Francesca was right. Maybe Ross had to do this or he wouldn’t be the man she loved. Maybe she was so angry because she had seen this moment approaching for days now, and the tension had overwhelmed her.
“What am I going to do?” she muttered.
“What do you want to do?”
“I want to kill Ross.” She ran a hand through her tangle of coppery hair. “I want to turn back the clock and get that contract away from him.”
“You may not need to turn back the clock.”
“What do you mean?” Shelley asked, peering at her.
“He is out of town, vero? Overseas, yes?”
“Yes, probably gloating to Henri Montpazier in Paris about having wrapped up Cincinnati.”
“But then he has not yet signed this contract with them. He has perhaps assumed they will sign it, but that is different.”
“Yes, I suppose it is,” Shelley said slowly.
“So, until tomorrow when he returns, you can try again. A last-ditch effort, I think you call it.”
“Yes,” Shelley said, frowning with concentration. “Your father... used to go ahead and do whatever was necessary.”
“Yes,” said Francesca, following Shelley’s train of thought. “And after all, Shelley, though this isn’t Calabria, what else can headquarters do to you? Firing you would make little difference in a company that has shown so little support for you.”
“Oh, Francesca, what would I do without you?”
“Hopefully, we will not have to find out.”
Shelley called Mike Paige and told him to arrange a conference between her, his boss, and himself for that afternoon. She used every argument, every shred of charm, every bit of strength she had to accomplish just that much. Then she and Wayne set about writing a proposal that no one could beat, not even Ross.
“Headquarters will ax us both for this,” Wayne warned her.
“Then why are you helping?”
“You’re my boss. They’re just a bunch of faceless men in New York.”
“I’ll take you with me to my one-room outpost in northern Alaska when I’m transferred,” she promised.
“Forget it. I want a career with Elite. Have you seen the car Tanner drives? Well... I guess you have.”
&nb
sp; Since Mike Paige preferred Shelley to Ross, he was easy to convince. His boss was another matter. Not only was Shelley a mere woman, and a short one at that, but he had already made his decision and was as inflexible as granite. She really didn’t think she could do it, but she used all the powers of persuasion she possessed. Her career at Babel, she realized, was shot to hell no matter what happened. Something more important than her career rested on this. Her self-confidence and self-respect hung in the balance. Most of all, the next time she faced Ross, she wanted to face him as an equal, not as someone whom he had beaten without effort, not as his weaker adversary.
She stumbled back to Babel late that afternoon. Wayne and Francesca were waiting for her.
“Well?” Wayne demanded the moment she entered the lobby.
She indulged in one moment of breathless suspense, then smiled triumphantly. “I got it!”
They hooted and jumped around in celebration. Teachers and students peeked out into the hallway to ask what the commotion was about. Shelley felt the greatest sense of victory she’d ever known as she showed Francesca and Wayne the signatures on the contract she’d prepared. It was hers, all hers.
She glanced at her watch. “The Chicago office is still open,” she said. “I’m calling Jerome.”
“He’ll kill us,” Wayne groaned.
“Ironic, isn’t it? I don’t have to tell him you—”
“Tell him. I’m Elite-bound. As soon as Tanner gets back into town. Everyone knows the books over there are a hopeless mess.”
“Maybe I’ll even take that job as director he’s always offering me.” Shelley winked at Francesca.
“It’s a shame they already have a secretary...” Francesca murmured.
Jerome was understandably stunned by her news. And full of questions. He blanched at the concessions she’d offered Keene and asked whether there was any chance of getting out of the contract.
“Oh, no, I’m afraid not, Jerome. It’s all perfectly legal, signed, sealed, and delivered. Until the day they fire me, I do have the power to commit the school to contracts.”
He was so eager to call New York that he didn’t even bother to reprimand her. Nothing like this had ever happened at Babel before, and he didn’t know what to do about it.
