by Jordan Bell
“It’s Sunday, Damian,” I said sweetly. “What do you want?”
He sounded surprised. “Damian? What happened to Mr. Vaughn?”
“It’s Sunday. Professionalism doesn’t apply when I’m not being paid. What do you want?”
“I need your help.”
“Of course you do. Do you remember our conversation about the higher laws? Go with the black Armani shirt with those shiny stripes and the dark blue Versace tie. It makes you look artsy and sophisticated.”
He paused and I thought I could hear a taxi honking in the background and the furor of pedestrians. “That’s not even the most expensive shirt I own.”
“God, of course it’s not.”
“Come outside, Mia.”
“Come out…what?” I went to the window and sure enough, there he was leaning casually against his town car. A small, bald man waited in the back seat behind the driver. Stanley Beeber, I presumed, and every bit his name. Damian had his phone in his hands, was punching it with his thumbs with increasing violence, a Bluetooth in his ear. The wind mussed his hair, but he looked good and casual in a plum red button up and chinos. I rarely ever saw him out of his expensive suits. “How in the hell did you find me?”
“I have my ways, now get out here.”
I snapped my phone off, glanced at the bride and mother-zillas, and decided now was as good a time as any to indulge my psychotic boss in his co-dependency issues. I hiked up my yards of satin and slipped out the door and onto the street. He didn’t look up at first, but when he did, his bright blue millionaire eyes blinked, astonished.
“Wow, Mia.”
“Wow, stalker. I’m a little busy trying to make my sister’s dreams come true.” I ducked my head down and held my hair from my face so I could see into the car. “Mr. Beeber. I trust you had a nice flight?”
“Oh, yes, yes. It was pleasant. Thank you for the wine in my hotel room. Very thoughtful.”
I straightened and gave Damian my best squinty-eye. “See, I’m thoughtful, and you’re infringing on my away-from-work-time. How can I possible serve you, Mr. Vaughn?”
“I can’t unlock my phone.”
I sighed, plucked his phone from his hands and started punching in codes. Somehow he’d managed to turn the language to French. “You could have called your service provider.”
“Whose number is not programmed into my phone by voice command. Do you think I like having to track you down for every little thing? It’s like being married without the,” he paused and I paused. I glanced up from his phone, raised a slow eyebrow, and dared him to finish that sentence. He cleared his throat first and glanced away. “You should feel flattered I need you as much as I do.”
His tone was playful, as usual, but also a little frustrated. He’d had me organizing his life the moment I was hired, and truth was I was just better at it than he was. It was meant to be that day I stepped out of college and begged the HR lady in his building for a job, any job, please God give me a job. He’d been standing there, enjoying the demonstration of my lack of dignity or self-respect, and hired me. The first thing he did was hand me his phone and say, “Make this work.” His lock code was my birthday.
“Flattered,” I sighed.
Damian’s cheeks flushed warm and he looked down at the ground between us, stuffed his hands into his pockets while he waited. The way he slouched on purpose, he looked like a fashion ad. “You look very nice in that dress, Mia. You clean up surprisingly well. Are they letting you keep your hair the way you like it?”
I blew a strand of the fire engine red from my eyes in protest. “Would you believe that discussion is on our agenda for today? We have an agenda. They fucking printed it out before we left this morning. Weddings are monstrous affairs. They’ll have to hold me down and shave my head first.”
“That is something I would buy tickets to see.” He reached up and tucked the errant piece of hair out of my eyes and behind my ear, then jerked his hand back quickly. I finished changing the language and pressed his phone back into his hands.
“Your independence has been won, my lord and master. Is there anything else I can do for you for free?”
“Condescending sarcasm is not cute on any woman, Miss Waters. I like the lord and master part, though. Maybe Emperor Vaughn or your majesty? Can you get some business cards made?”
“Leave, before I murder you and hide your body in the tulle and lace room.”
“That’s the obedient assistant I like to hear. See you tomorrow at breakfast, Mia. Say hello to your mother for me.” He waved and I turned to see a gaggle of my family pressed ardently against the windows to get a good view of my humiliation. I frowned at his headlights before stomping back inside.
***
Damian relaxed in the big front window of the coffee shop, our private table because no matter how crowded the place was, that table was always open. He was reading the paper and didn’t seem to notice he was slouching in a suit so expensive it made me sick to think about. His hair was tamed this morning, dark and still a little damp.
I pulled my coat buttons apart as I made my way around the tables to where he waited with my breakfast and white chocolate mocha latte.
“Is that their special?” I asked, a little surprised at the plate of two donuts he had set out for me. I slumped into my chair and disentangled myself from my coat.
“Yes, and your barbaric coffee drink.” He didn’t look up from his newspaper as I settled in.
“It just seems kind of, I don’t know. Pedestrian. You know?”
“Bit of a spoiled brat, aren’t you?” He glanced up and I stuck my tongue out at him. He smirked. “It’s pistachio glaze, if that tarts it up enough for you.”
“Oh, well, that’s a horse of a different color altogether.” I picked up the donut, careful not to crush the glaze as much as possible, and took a decadent bite. The pistachio flavor was subtle but consistent and the glaze melted quickly on my fingers and tongue. It was over too quick though, and I licked my fingers like a heathen.
Damian shook his head and turned back to his paper. “Raised by wolves,” he muttered.
***
The office was up in arms when we got there, people swarming the copy room like Brad Pitt was in there signing autographs without a shirt on. I gave Damian a what-the-fuck-is-going-on look and he just shrugged. I wanted to call BS because who doesn’t know what’s going on in his own company to make people start behaving like animals over the last package of post-it notes?
It was like the end of the world, the way they ran around, making calls, throwing paper.
And then there she was, The Dragon in Dolce & Gabbana, on fire, charging us as if we were a tiny village begging to be burned to the ground.
“No way, I’m out of here.” I made to run and Damian grabbed my arm in a vice-like grip and held me against his side.
“If you leave me right now, you’re fired.”
I plastered my face with a placating smile and held still. “I hate you,” I hissed through my teeth, then greeted our destruction. “Ms. Aguirre! Love the dress. This season, right?”
“Speak when you’re spoken to,” she snapped and came right up to Damian like she planned to jam her tongue down his throat. In her insane high heels she stood level with Damian and stared him down like her very life blood depended on his complete domination. And then she grabbed his coat and shirt in her blood red fists and growled like an animal.
“This account is mine, Damian. Mine, and if it’s not I will sacrifice someone, starting with your pet assistant, do you understand me? Mine.”
I swallowed. Damian swallowed.
“Corrine, I really have no idea what you’re talking about. Clearly it means a lot to you, though.”
“For fucks sake. Maybe if you spent less time at breakfast and more time trying to rule the industry.” She let him go with a shove, her red red nails bright in the fluorescents. “You’ve got five minutes to catch up, and then I’m taking this account by the balls a
nd going to Blackwell with it. Do you understand?”
“I’ll see you in five, Corrine.”
“Want me to get you a coffee while you wait, Ms. Aguirre?”
“Oh, go staple something, useless sychophantic whore.” The Dragon spun away from us and made for her secretary’s desk, firing death threats between each command. I stared, and then started after her but Damian’s grip pulled me back to him.
“Not today, Mia.”
He led me to my desk with a grip that actually started to hurt. “Did you hear what she called me? I don’t even know what sychophantic means, but whore I got. I am offended deep in my soul.”
Damian put me in my chair and started scrolling his phone for some clue as to what had turned the office into a mad house. “It means to use flattery to win favor from people of influence.”
I scoffed and threw my coat over the back of my chair and booted up my computer. “I most certainly do not flatter you for anything.”
He sighed and headed for his office. “No, you don’t, but I think I could use some today. Please go find me some gossip, Mia. Right now.”
“But I am not a…”
“Now, Mia!”
Damian slammed his door shut and I closed my mouth without another word. He’d never yelled at me before. Something really was happening.
***
At 7:32 a.m., Michael McKinley, 89 years old and founder of McKinley Security Intelligence Systems, died of a heart attack at Hope General Hospital. Damian and I had been eating breakfast while every company like Vaughn & Marley went into lockdown mode with everyone worth anything trying to get Michael McKinley’s grandson, sole inheritor of his company, on the phone for ten seconds of uninterrupted begging. The grandson, Todd McKinley, was a doctor and had no interest in the company, so the whole affair became the plump, red apple in the Garden of Eden. The question on everyone’s tongues was, what can we give Todd McKinley to let us have a piece of his apple pie?
Damian stayed behind closed doors with a steady stream of ladder climbers coming and going. None of them spoke to me. There was so much nervous anxiety in the air you could taste it and it tasted like sweat and pheromones. This account made everyone hot. It was a career maker account. A multi-billion dollar hog of an account.
Near the end of the day when it was clear no decisions would be made before morning, I knocked a little mousy knock on Damian’s door and waited for him to give me the go-ahead to enter. It was slow to come, but finally he called me in.
“Mia,” he sighed with a kind of relief that almost broke my heart. “Come in.”
His tie was completely unknotted and hung loose and forgotten around his neck, the top two buttons unshackled. He’d been running his hands through his hair and it stood out messy and a little sweaty.
I shut the door behind me and made my way around the side of his desk. He pushed back and slouched deep into the leather of his executive chair. I held out a coffee to him, extra sugar and cream, though he’d never even notice. He took it gratefully.
“You read my mind, Mia.”
“That’s what I do, boss.” I slid up on the corner of his desk nearest him and crossed my legs. His eyes unfocused sleepily and stared at my knee. Or through my knee. I didn’t think he could actually see me. “You ok?”
“I am very tired. I feel like I’ve been blindsided for eight hours straight, and we aren’t any further than we were when we walked in this morning. Everyone wants a piece of this account, and it’s not like I have it to give. We need it though, at least, we need our competitors not to get it.”
I winced. “So, do you think this is a bad time to ask for a favor?”
“Sychophantic whore,” he teased tiredly. He sat his coffee on the desk top and without asking, like this was normal for us, reached for my legs, uncrossed them, and scooted his chair closer. He took my hips and centered me. I held still because this was the most physical contact we’d ever had in the year I’d worked for him. We got along, sure, but something about his exhausted, beaten down look made me think he was desperate for comfort in a way he’d never needed from anyone before. It made me want to reach out and stroke his hair, his shoulders. Damian was a powerful, ambitious man, but he was good too, and kind and easy going and generous. Moments like these made him vulnerable to the people willing to devour him for a piece of his empire.
“Mia,” he said seriously. “As long as you don’t ask me for Todd McKinley, I will give you anything in the world. Anything. Just ask and it’s yours.”
“Devil,” I chided, and very gently touched his hair. It was sweaty and dirty from touching it all day long. He groaned a little, closed his eyes, and set his forehead against my knee. He exhaled weakly and I stroked his hair back from his face. Something in my chest twisted painfully and for a moment I couldn’t find my voice. It ran out of the room in terror. “If I’d known you were in a giving mood, I’d have requisitioned a pony for the cube next to my desk. Unfortunately, it’s your clout I need.”
He made a strangled laugh against my leg. “My clout is usually an affront to you.”
“Irony, she’s not lost on me.” Touching Damian like this made my heart pound like a racehorse in my chest, but men don’t make me nervous and Damian even less so. This vulnerable neediness was so strange and unwelcome to him. I felt violently protective. I dug my fingertips into his scalp and massaged to the back of his neck. His hands tightened on my hips.
“It’s about my sister’s bachelorette party on Friday. She wanted to have it at this hot new Place-To-Be-Seen club downtown. I said yes, sure, because we’re beautiful girls, right? How hard could it be to get in? As it turns out, pretty hard. You can’t just be young pretty girls anymore, apparently, you’ve got to be elite, prestigious young pretty girls with a name they want on their guest list. I already told her I’d get her in and now I’ve discovered I am too small to even make it on the waiting list. I was hoping you could twist some arms, storm the doors like my corporate knight in shining armor.”
I could feel his breath against my skin. He didn’t speak for a moment as I massaged his neck. “You’re talking about Michael’s, right?” he asked finally.
I pulled my hands back in surprise, “Yes! How did you know that?”
He groaned and tightened his fingers into my waist, dug his fingertips into my skin. “Don’t stop, Mia.”
It was too intimate. When I lowered my hands back to his neck I suddenly felt like something we were doing was wrong. I touched him, and he felt strong and new beneath my hands, but this seemed too close to something else and all my instincts screamed stop.
Once I’d resumed, he relaxed again physically. “I’ve been to a few meetings there. You’ll like it. It is very you.”
“You’ve been there?” I almost laughed, but that just seemed mean.
“You don’t know everything about my every waking moment, Mia.”
“Somehow I doubt that, boss.”
He made a tired little laugh. “I’ll have your name on the guest list. They will bend over backwards for my name. And your tab will be on me. Don’t argue. I can’t fight you tonight.”
“Ok,” I said, and he slid his hands down my thighs to my knees and sat up, his eyes glassy and red.
“You should go, Mia. I have a lot of work to do still tonight.”
My hands came away from him and I struggled between wanting to put them back and wanting to get the hell out of the room as fast as possible. “I’ll have some dinner delivered here for you. Don’t work too hard, Mr. Vaughn. You can’t make Todd McKinley answer if he’s not ready to.”
“I can make him do whatever I want, Mia.” He pushed away from me, the cool, put together CEO retaking his body. “That’s how I got to where I am now, by making people answer the phone when I call.”
Four
Silver strappy heels that glitter – check. White thigh-high stockings and matching garter belt – check, check. And the dress? I scored big when I found this little white and silver cocktail dre
ss in a consignment shop downtown. It’s got a sweetheart neckline and a-line silhouette that made my breasts look fan-freaking-tastic. The bodice was tight with silvery, shimmery beading that promised to sparkle beneath the club lights, and a feathery satin skirt that fell just over the garter straps. I opted to accessorize down with just a white satin ribbon collar and fake diamond beads threaded on a matching white satin ribbon bracelet that tied in a butterfly bow at the inside of my left wrist. Standing out against the white and silver I secured the strands of dark fire engine red hair in a messy, coquettish up-do. I felt delicious and there were few things I found more empowering than feeling strong and beautiful. Tonight I wanted to stake hearts with a single, sultry look. Tonight I wanted to be the one everyone listened to and wanted to be loved by.
Damian went above and beyond and sent a limo to retrieve the lot of us. I only kind of knew my sister’s girlfriends, but they were all impressed. My sister, Cassandra, mumbled “this must be a dream,” on repeat as we drove to the club.
Michael’s fit on the corner in front of a big high rise hotel, squat and black and perfectly cube shaped, like an ultramodern Borg ship. We had rooms in the connecting hotel.
A line stretched from the front doors down the walk and halfway around the building, and our limo pulled right up to the Guest’s Only valet. A man in a tuxedo took my hand and escorted me to the door with the girls close at hand. They ogled the line we walked right passed and the bouncer who took my name and then personally walked us through the front doors. A woman in line yelled “Cock sucking bitch!” and I grinned because that wasn’t even the worst thing I’d been called that week. At least this time I kind of deserved it.
It was not hard to see why Michael’s made beautiful young people crazy. A wash of plum incense doused us when the curtains parted, and in the cool air the sound of piano playing some haunting melody from a small raised stage in the far corner, just beneath the heavy, techno base of heart throbbing dance music. Where we were led was wonderland, bruise purples and blues, blacks and lilacs. Every inch of the club was draped in fabrics, tactile and billowing from unseen breezes. The light was low, muted, pointed along pathways between small isolated islands of couches and lounge chairs in a variety of fabrics and styles from modern to Victorian throwback. Beautiful women whispered into the ears of beautiful men, and everyone drank glowing liquid from martini glasses. The patrons touched each other intimately, casually, slowly in time with the music.
