Business of Love

by Hodges, Cheris

  Great, she thought. I can put off the inevitable for another few hours.

  * * *

  After the tour of old Charleston, Darren and Jill headed home. As she slept in the passenger seat, he stole glances at her. What had he done to be so lucky to have her in his life?

  Rushing or not, I’m going to ask Jill to marry me. I love her and I want to spend the rest of my life with her.

  It was mid-morning when Darren and Jill happened upon the small restaurant where they’d stopped on the way to Charleston. The waitress smiled when she saw them cross the threshold.

  “Y’all are back,” she said.

  “Yes, we had to have some more of that fried chicken before we headed back to the city,” Darren said.

  “Good thing y’all beat the lunch rush,” she said, then pointedly looked at Jill’s hand.

  Darren knew she was looking for an engagement ring. “Come on, let’s sit down,” Darren said as he took Jill’s hand into his.

  After they ate Henry’s famous fried chicken, they headed back to Atlanta.

  “I really don’t want to go back,” Jill whispered.

  “Aw, you know you missed being in the office and texting on your Blackberry.”

  She reached over and pressed her hand against his thigh. “No, I didn’t. You kept me thoroughly occupied.”

  Darren couldn’t help smiling under her praise. “I aim to please, ma’am.”

  “And that you did. Since tonight is actually Valentine’s night, you have to please me again and again.”

  He winked, and then said, “I don’t see that as being a problem.”

  Jill smiled and leaned back in the seat, though she didn’t remove her hand from Darren’s lap. “I knew you were going to say that.”

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Two days after Valentine’s Day, Jill was sitting behind her high mahogany desk, looking over merger papers and reviewing messages she’d received while she was out of town, when Madison burst through her office door.

  “Jill, have you seen this?” She plopped a copy of Atlanta Scene magazine on her desk. “You’re on the cover and the story is scandalous.”

  Jill snatched up the magazine and her eyes bugged when she saw the headline, “The CEO and the Fireman.”

  Jill fumed as she read the story, which described her as a maneater, said she used men as pawns, that the only thing she cared about was business.

  “When it comes to Jill Atkinson, everything is about business and there is no business of love,” the article read.

  “I can’t believe this bastard!” she exploded.

  “So who sold you out? The man in the picture or the person who wrote the article?” Madison asked. “I mean, what is this, a ghetto tabloid?”

  “How did you get this?”

  Madison flipped another page. “They’re all over town, like Creative Loafing.”

  Jill dropped her head into her hands. “This can’t be happening.”

  “How did we end up running an ad in this trash?”

  Jill snatched the magazine from Madison, then shooed her out of the office. Then she yanked the phone off the hook and angrily dialed David’s number.

  “Sorry, the number you have called has been changed to a non-published number,” the recording relayed.

  Jill slammed the phone down and opened the magazine to look for the office’s address. It was a post office box. But Jill knew where she could find David. He’d be sitting at the Atlanta Bread Company, eating a bagel with lox and sipping decaf. She hoped to catch him in mid sip so that she could splash the hot coffee in his lying face.

  Grabbing her purse, she stalked out the door. “I’ll be out for the rest of the day,” she barked on her way out. The thought of what Darren’s reaction would be to the magazine took a backseat to taking off David’s head.

  She walked into the Peachtree Street restaurant and there he was, sitting at a table, surrounded by potential advertisers. Everyone was looking at the current copy of his magazine. Jill wanted to walk over there and turn that table upside down. Instead, she calmly walked over to the table and cleared her throat.

  Every eye turned to her and the awkwardness that enveloped the room could have been filleted and fried.

  “David, I’d like to have a word with you,” she snapped.

  “Jill,” he said. “I’m in a meeting here.”

  “And you’re about two seconds from a lawsuit. We can talk now or in court,” she said firmly.

  David stood up, straightening the lapels of his jacket. “Gentlemen, if you would excuse me.”

  Jill pointed to the front door. Outside, she turned and faced him with angry flames flickering in her eyes. Then she hauled off and slapped him. “You lying son of a bitch. And then you had the nerve to use my ad in this smut.”

  David stroked his jaw, which stung from her blow. “I warned you. So don’t come in here acting all surprised about this magazine or my cover article.”

  “What about the money?”

  “This wasn’t about money, I told you that too. Jill, you can’t go around embarrassing people and think that it won’t come back to bite you. I’m sure your little fireman friend has seen this magazine and wants nothing else to do with you. And why would he?”

  “Darren loves me and nothing you can say in this rag of yours is going to change that. You’ll be hearing from my lawyers.” She turned on her heel to walk away.

  “Sue me all you want, but seeing that look on your face and watching those businessmen in there shrink away from the ‘great and powerful’ Jill Atkinson made it worth it. I wish I could see the look on your face when you try to explain yourself to your firefighter boyfriend. Maybe I should put another tail on you so we can capture the aftermath.”

  “You bastard. What perverse pleasure do you get from doing this to me? Do you feel like a real man? Did you grow an inch or two in your pants? You can write all the lies you want about me but I’ll still be a better businessman than you will ever be and yes, I fired you when you were trying to steal my company. Why don’t you write about that in your smutty magazine?” Jill stormed away from him, muttering curses under her breath.

  This was far from over and David was going to pay.

  * * *

  Darren walked into the fire station with a two and a half carat diamond engagement ring in his pocket. He’d made up his mind that he was going to marry Jill. Why should he wait when he knew he loved her and she loved him? The song “Maneater” by Hall and Oates was blasting from the speakers as Darren headed to his office. He furrowed his brows, wondering why someone was playing that old song. After entering his office, he sat down and started to pick up the phone to invite Jill to lunch. Cleveland burst through his office door.

  “Darren, we need to talk,” he said.

  “What’s with the music?” Darren asked as Cleveland closed the door behind him.

  Cleveland sat on the edge of the desk. “Have you…”

  “I’m going to ask Jill to marry me,” Darren exclaimed.

  “Don’t do that, man. Jill isn’t the woman you thought she was. She’s a liar and good at it because she had me fooled.”

  Darren eyed Cleveland with questions flickering on his face. “What are you talking about?”

  Cleveland shook his head. “You haven’t seen it, have you?”

  “Seen what? What are you being so cryptic about? You’ve met Jill, she isn’t a liar. I love her and I’m not going to let your sour attitude ruin my chance at happiness.

  Cleveland lifted his hips from the desk and handed a copy of Atlanta Scene to Darren.

  “Man, I’m sorry.”

  Darren read the article. The one thing that stood out was that Jill was the CEO of DVA. She wasn’t a dedicated employee, she owned the place. Why had she lied to him about that? Had she just toyed with him for her own perverse pleasure as the magazine suggested? What about all of those promises that they’d made? When she said she loved him had she been lying then? Seething with anger, Da
rren balled the magazine up. “What the hell is this?”

  “I don’t know, some new magazine. It’s all over town, though. Even Ma has seen it.”

  Darren wanted to punch something, smash something against the wall. “I can’t believe this,” he muttered. He pulled out the black velvet ring box. “Why do I keep making the same mistake when it comes to women?”

  Cleveland put his hand on Darren’s shoulder. “It’s not you. These women in Atlanta are just scandalous. They lie without a conscience and then call us dogs. This is why I’m not trying to…”

  “Just cut it out. Why don’t you just leave?”

  “Man, don’t do anything…”

  “Get out!” Darren bellowed.

  Cleveland left, knowing he was going to have let his brother deal with his heartache and disappointment in his own way. He didn’t want to watch Darren go through this again.

  Darren slammed his office door behind Cleveland, and then slouched in the chair behind his desk. How had this happened to him again? How had he given his heart to the wrong woman for a second time?

  Am I such a fool that women feel like they can tell me anything and I’ll fall for it? Jill, how could you?

  He stood, pacing back and forth as he contemplated calling her. What would he say and why would he ever want to speak to her again? Jill had done the one thing he couldn’t forgive her for: She’d lied and in so doing had made a fool of him.

  Darren snatched up the phone, his heart thumping like a war drum.

  “Jill Atkinson’s office,” a woman said.

  “Is Jill there?” Darren said more evenly than he felt.

  “She’s out of the office today. Is there a mess—”

  Darren hung up before she could finish speaking. Next he called Jill’s cell phone and the voice mail picked up immediately. Darren slammed the phone down, cracking the hard plastic of the receiver.

  He was afraid to go to her house because he didn’t know how he would react to seeing her. Would his love for her take over his anger or would his anger boil over, causing him to say the most caustic things to her?

  Even though he was hurt, he didn’t want to go out of his way to make her feel his pain. Despite his anger, Darren still cared about her and he couldn’t make himself stop. He had to see her and find out why she’d lied to him.

  * * *

  Jill sat in her home, drapes drawn, the phones shut off and the lights dimmed to near darkness. It was bad enough that David had broken her heart all those years ago but now he had humiliated her for the whole city to see.

  What did I ever do to deserve this? She pondered as she drew her knees into her chest. She knew Darren had seen the magazine by now and she was going to have to explain herself to him. Leaning back on the sofa, she exhaled loudly. She couldn’t put it off any longer, she had to call Darren. Just as she reached for the phone, the doorman buzzed her.

  “Miss Atkinson, Mr. Alexander is here.”

  “Send him up,” she said, her voice quavering. It was time to face the music and Jill knew she wasn’t going to like the song.

  She opened the door and Darren stood there with a stoic look on his face.

  “Hi,” she managed.

  He stood in the doorway and didn’t make an effort to enter her place. Instead, he looked around the foyer. “All this time I wondered how you could afford all of this. I didn’t ask you because it wasn’t my business. Lo and behold, Jill Atkinson is the CEO of DVA, the company she works so diligently for and I’m just the flavor of the month.”

  “Darren, that article wasn’t true it was…”

  “Are you president and CEO of the company?” he asked as if he were asking her the score of the Atlanta Hawks game. “I mean, time and time again you talked about your boss, how he gave you tickets to the Falcons games and how he appreciated your work and all this time you were talking about yourself. Bravo, Jill, you made a fool of me. You even tricked my brother and it’s not easy to pull the wool over his eyes.”

  “Darren, if you would just let me explain,” she said. “I was afraid that if I told you the truth that you would look at me differently and I didn’t want that.”

  “Save it.” He turned to the door then whirled around to face her again. “I told you from the beginning that I couldn’t tolerate being lied to and you did it every day. Every time we made love, every time I looked into your eyes and poured my heart out to you and said I loved you, you made a conscious effort to lie to me. And why? Did you think I wanted your money? Did you think that I would all of a sudden quit my job and expect you to take care of me? What the hell did you take me for? A gigolo?”

  Tears welled up in Jill’s eyes.“Darren, I’m sorry.” Jill said, her voice wavering like a flag in the wind.

  “Sorry for what? Lying or getting caught?”

  “Please, just listen to me.” She reached out and tried to grab his hand, but Darren yanked away from her.

  “I don’t know who you are,” he said, “and I don’t think I want to.” Darren turned on his heel, ignoring Jill’s desperate pleas for him to listen to her. She ran after him as he approached the elevator.

  “Darren, I love you.”

  Pressing the down button on the elevator, he didn’t reply nor did he turn around and look at her.

  “Did you hear me?” she probed. “I love you and we can work this out.”

  He stepped on the elevator, faced her and shook his head. “How do I know you’re not lying right now?”

  The doors closed before she could say anything else. What more could she say? She’d known this day was coming. Had she been smart, she would have told Darren herself. As much as she wanted to blame David, she couldn’t. Hearing Darren say all of those things to her had driven home the point that she had lied to him over and over again. Knowing how difficult it was for him to trust women, she’d still lied. How many times had Shari urged her to tell him the truth? How many times had she come close to telling him the truth?

  She walked into her penthouse with her head down and tears streaming down her cheeks, knowing she had just lost the best thing that had ever happened to her.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Two Months Later

  Jill secluded herself in her penthouse until the hubbub about the Atlanta Scene magazine article died down. She didn’t even bother with a libel suit against David because it would have only made the story stay around longer.

  If she were truly honest with herself, she couldn’t blame David for the end of the relationship. It was all her fault. She had made one excuse after the other for not telling Darren the truth about being the CEO of DVA. In the end, it was her lies that had pushed him away.

  I was such a fool, she thought. The moment I met Darren I knew he was different, I should’ve been honest with him from the beginning.

  Jill took solace in the fact that David’s business venture was falling apart. After the second issue the magazine was quickly losing steam and advertisers were starting to pull their ads. The word on the street was that David was seconds away from having to discontinue the magazine.

  Darren wouldn’t return her phone calls and on the off chance that he picked up the phone when she called, he slammed it down immediately. Conventional wisdom told her to give up and move on with her life. But how could she just walk away when she loved Darren more than she loved anything.

  Every time the phone rang she prayed it was him, but her prayers were in vain. He didn’t stop by nor did he e-mail. Jill knew she needed help to win his heart back and the only person who could assist her was probably the last person who would talk to her—Cleveland Alexander.

  Just as Jill was about to walk out the door, the phone rang. She rushed to grab it, hopeful that it was Darren.

  “Hello.”

  “Jill, it’s Shari.”

  “Hi,” she said, disappointment peppering her tone.

  “Wow, don’t be so happy to hear from me.”

  “It’s not that, I was just hoping that you were—�
�

  “Darren?”

  “Yeah, he still isn’t talking to me. I don’t know what more I can do to make him understand how sorry I am about what happened and for lying to him.”

  “You’re going to have to go to him. As much as you two love each other, I’m sure you can work it out. But you were wrong, Jill.”

  “I know. What if he can’t forgive me? Look at how long it took you and me to get right.”

  “That was different,” Shari said. “You told my husband I was pregnant before I could and I was a little salty about it, but I got over it. When you care about somebody, friend or otherwise, you forgive them.”

  “I knew how Darren felt about honesty.”

  “And anyone could see how Darren felt about you. That man was crazy for you, and those feelings don’t just disappear.”

  “It’s been two months. What if they have disappeared?”

  “Do you know how long I held a torch for Tyrell? I still care for him and he’s dead and gone and I’m married and carrying another man’s child. Two months is not enough time for that man to stop loving you.”

  “What am I supposed to do to get him to listen to me? Do you know how many voice mails and e-mails I’ve sent him? He has yet to respond to any of them.”

  “Then go see him,” Shari said as if she were telling her what kind of toothpaste was on sale at Kroger this week.

  “I’m afraid.”

  “Jill, in love, just like business, you have to take risks,” Shari said.

  Sighing into the phone, Jill repeated her mantra, “The bigger the risk, the bigger the return, right? I know what I have to do. Shari, I’ll call you back.” Jill hung up the phone and headed out the door. She knew Cleveland wasn’t going to be happy to see her, but he’d get over it. With Cleveland’s help, she was going to throw herself on Darren’s mercy and pray that he would be forgiving.

  After driving around Cleveland’s neighborhood for about an hour, she finally pulled into the driveway. She squeezed the steering wheel, said a silent prayer and then got out the car. As she approached the door, her heart thudded like a flat tire, sweat beaded up on her lips and her hands felt slippery. With each step she was more and more nervous. What if Cleveland slammed the door in her face?