Ignite Me (The Annihilate Me Series)

by Ross, Christina

  The rest of our day and evening wasn’t just spent having sex, though we certainly enjoyed our share of it. More importantly, at least for me, is that it also included conversations we had after we’d made love.

  Those conversations turned out to be personal and revealing, plunging further into what it was like growing up in our respective families, what it was like growing up poor for me and wealthy for him, and how coming out of each situation had defined the people we were now.

  Throughout the day, room service delivered breakfast, lunch, and dinner to sustain us. We ate, we made love, but what was most important to me is that we came to know each other so intimately over the course of only two short days that when Sunday morning arrived, it was truly bittersweet. At least for now, our time together was over.

  And that crushed me.

  “I need to finish that report,” he said when he woke up.

  “You do have to finish it,” I said. “And I want you to call me on my cell if you need any help with it. Promise me that you will, Brock.”

  “I’m not about to turn that offer down,” he said as he kissed me. “So, you know, expect a call. Or two. Or probably five.”

  I laughed when he said that, but Brock looked so seriously at me when he reached out to touch my cheek with the back of his hand that he stifled my laugh and then seized our final moments together with a kiss that sent shockwaves through me.

  “I can’t tell you what these past two days have meant to me, Madison.”

  I’m in love with you, I thought. Even though I knew that I could never tell him that at this point in our relationship, somehow I had fallen in love with him.

  And God help me because of it.

  When we’d first made love, both of our hearts were on the line. We’d discussed it. But now, at least for me, it had crossed an impossibly wide crevice. At this point, if he chose to walk away from me, I knew that I would only fall through that crevice and be burned for believing that all this was so much more than I’d thought it was.

  “I feel the same,” I said.

  “But do you feel what I feel?” he asked as he took me in his arms.

  Instead of revealing what I felt, I just looked at him—and wondered what he felt.

  “I think that you do,” he said after awhile. “And while I know that all of this has happened fast, maybe that’s just sometimes how it is. I don’t want to pressure you or confuse you, Madison. I just want you to know that you’ve come to mean a great deal to me. I only hope that what we’ve experienced together over these past two days will get better from hereon.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  When I returned home that afternoon, Rhoda wasn’t at the apartment. Not that I expected her to be there because Rhoda worked seven days a week, and with the tourist season in full force during the summer, weekends were her best days for making money.

  But when she did arrive home just past six, she came into the living room in a white smock, faded blue jeans, a chunky red necklace around her neck, and a matching red-and-white kerchief on her head. She gave me a kiss on the forehead, and the dreadlocks that weren’t secured by her kerchief fell into my face.

  “Sorry about that,” she said as she brushed them aside.

  “I think I’ve been whipped enough this weekend, Rhoda.”

  She batted her eyelashes at me. “I know. And just imagine if it had been Brock doing the whipping now.”

  “I don’t think I could handle it. At this point, my body needs a rest.”

  “We’ll discuss all of your escapades in a moment,” she said as she plopped heavily onto the sofa opposite me. “But first I have to tell you that since you came to New York, I don’t think we’ve ever spent so much time apart. It’s been strange not having you here. And I’m not going to deny it, toots—it was lonely without you.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  She waved a hand in the air. “Look, it is what it is. And that wasn’t meant to be a guilt trip. I just wanted you to know how much I missed you.” She lifted her feet onto the top of the coffee table, held out her right hand straight in front of her as if she was studying her nails, and then she said in a light voice, “So, you know—tell me everything. . . .”

  “Let’s just say that the past two days have been an emotional rollercoaster. But before I go into great detail, how much do you already know?”

  “Not all of it,” she said. “I rarely know all of it. And I have to say that this time, even though we’re together in the same room and there’s a formidable amount of energy flowing between us right now, I’m only getting broken pieces of what you experienced. I’m assuming that’s because on some level, you might be feeling conflicted about what happened between Brock and you, and that you haven’t completely sorted out exactly what you feel. Thus the broken imagery I’m seeing, which suggests confusion. But I’m not sure, so why don’t I get each of us a glass of wine, and then we’ll talk?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “Give me two secs.”

  When she returned with the wine, we lifted our glasses to each other before we sipped.

  “So, spill it, lovey. Tell me what you want to tell me.”

  “I always tell you everything.”

  “Then tell me everything.”

  I told her about our weekend—from the sex straight down to the serious conversations we’d shared. I told her that I thought I was falling in love with him, and how absurd that seemed to me. I told her that after knowing him for such a short period of time, what I was feeling couldn’t possibly be love, so I figured it could just be lust. And then I told her when I said that to her, it felt like a lie to me because I knew in my heart that what Brock and I had shared over those two days was more than mere lust, even if I didn’t want to hear myself saying it out loud at this point. So I admitted that to her. I told her that the beginnings of love were what I felt in my heart, even though the logical side of my brain was telling me to hold back. Don’t go so fast. That I’ll only get hurt. And on and on and on.

  So I asked Rhoda for her insight.

  “Look,” she said. “There is no time limit on love, OK? When people come to me and ask me about love at first sight, I know for a fact that sometimes it’s the real deal, toots. Other times, it just isn’t. I’ve been through this too many times to count. There are times when it’s obvious that love will take much longer to grow between two people, and that they should stick it out and wait for that to happen—if they want to. Other times, when someone comes to me and wonders if a certain man or woman they feel for will one day return their love, I sense that they won’t—and then I ask them if they really want to know the truth. If they do, I’ll tell them, even though it kills me that I’m stealing away their hope. I can continue on with all of the different variations of how love blossoms and grows and dies between couples, Madison, but what I’m saying to you now is that there is no definition when it comes to how and when love strikes. It can indeed happen at a first glance. It can indeed occur over a mere weekend. But for some, it can also take years to take hold. Worse for others is that it might not happen at all.”

  “Do you know what’s to come of this?”

  “I do. But we have our agreement, and I think it would be a terrible idea to tell you anything. You either need to go forward with this or not. Give yourself completely to him or don’t. If he tells you what he feels—and if you’re feeling the same—then you need to decide right then and there if he is the man you’ve been waiting for.”

  “And what if he never tells me?”

  “You’re a modern woman,” she said. “If he doesn’t, take matters into your own hands and tell him how you feel. Ask him how he feels. If you feel the same, great. If you don’t, well, at least you had a lovely weekend. And I’m not being snide when I say that, Madison, because I think that you needed that weekend. You finally trusted someone again. You opened the door to your heart and let another man in knowing the risks. So, brava! At this point, it’s all up to you. This is your
fate, and it’s also your life. And at some point, you’ll need to take charge of it. Or not. He might make a declaration on his own. Who knows?”

  “You do.”

  “I do. And I’m here to tell you that, out of respect for you and your own personal growth as a woman, I’m keeping mum about all of it.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Brock and I didn’t talk on Sunday, and though I missed hearing his voice, I understood that he didn’t need any interruptions from me. He had to finish rewriting his report for Alex, and because he was under the gun, I knew that he needed to focus.

  If at any point he felt that he needed to reach out to me and bend my ear for any reason, he knew that he could call me. But he didn’t, so I had to assume that things were going smoothly for him, which was good because I knew it would be better for him if he came through for Alex on his own.

  So on Monday morning when I arrived at Wenn for work, it was with butterflies in my stomach. I’d be seeing Brock again, and that alone made me happy.

  When I arrived on the fifty-first floor, I dipped my head into Blackwell’s office to say good morning, but she wasn’t there, though her desk light was on. She must have stepped out, so I went to my desk, started my computer, and was just getting settled in and preparing for whatever the day would bring when Brock came into the office.

  When he saw that Blackwell wasn’t in her office, he turned to look at me with a twinkle in his eye. I saw him look fleetingly around the office for other signs of life, and then, without warning, he quickly moved toward me and gave me a chaste kiss on the lips before he walked into his office as if nothing had happened between us.

  But my hammering heart told another story.

  It was then that Blackwell returned.

  “Madison,” she said as she stopped by my desk. She was wearing yet another Chanel suit, but this one was black, which surprised me because it was summer.

  “Good morning, Ms. Blackwell.”

  She folded her arms in front of her and studied me.

  “Is it?” she said. “I wonder. But I do need to ask—why is your lipstick smeared?”

  Oh, shit. . . .

  “Is it?”

  “In fact, it is.”

  I watched her glance over toward Brock’s office, where his light was on, and then she turned back to me.

  “I need you in my office,” she said. “But not before you do each of us a favor and fix that train wreck of a face of yours first.”

  When she said that to me, there was such coldness in her voice, I felt a chill run down my spine. I reached for my bag, removed my compact, opened it and looked at myself in the mirror. Brock had indeed smeared my lipstick, some of which was now on the side of my mouth, as if I’d somehow been slashed with a knife. With a sense of haste and trepidation, I blotted my skin with my makeup pad, touched up the area in question, added a fresh swipe of lipstick, and didn’t dare look across the room at Brock when I stood and smoothed the skirt of the yellow suit I’d worn that day.

  Blackwell, after all, was sitting ramrod-straight in her office chair—and she was looking straight at me.

  “Close the door behind you,” she said when I walked into her office.

  What in the hell is this about?

  I closed the door.

  “Why is your suit so loose?” she asked.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I know it’s a size too big. When I bought it, I was a size larger than I am now. But I thought that it looked OK before I left for work. As I’ve told you before, right now I just don’t have a lot of clothes to work with. But once I get paid, I can assure you that will change.”

  “Save me your tears. What size is that suit?”

  “A seven.”

  “And you’re a six now?”

  “Between a four and a six, but probably closer to a six.”

  “Then I suggest that you find yourself a tailor if you’re going to show up to work looking like that in this town, because I can tell you this, girl, not many bosses will put up with that kind of sloppiness, least of all me.”

  Was I about to be fired? She’d just said, “in this town,” not “at Wenn.” What in the hell had I done to piss her off? On Friday, I thought that we’d parted on good terms. She’d even given me a compliment, for God’s sake.

  “Take a seat,” she said. “You and I are about to have a little chit-chat.”

  “Have I done something wrong?” I asked.

  “Here’s how this is going to play out, Madison. I don’t want to hear another word from you unless I ask you a direct question. Is that understood?”

  “All right,” I said as I sat down opposite her.

  She leaned forward in her seat, put her elbows on her desk, and rested her chin on her interlocked fingers. “How was your weekend?” she asked in a voice that was so sugary sweet, it could have rotted my teeth.

  “My weekend?”

  “Yes—your weekend. How was it?”

  “It was lovely.”

  “Was it, Madison? Really, Madison? Tell me, darling, in what ways was it lovely?”

  If I answered truthfully, she’d can my ass.

  “That’s a personal question,” I said to her.

  And when I said that, the ice returned to her voice. “Oh, but we’re about to get very personal, my dear.”

  Everyone has a breaking point—and at that moment, mine was triggered. I sat up as straight as she was sitting now, I folded one leg over the other, and then I met her gaze with my own.

  “I think we both know that you, as the executive vice president of human resources, have no legal access to my personal life,” I said.

  Blackwell’s eyes widened when I said that, but only for an instant. “Well, look at you,” she said as she leaned back in her chair. “Finally showing a bit of backbone—and at the eleventh hour no less. You’ve been so meek and polite since we first met, I hardly thought you had it in you.”

  “When it comes to business, I’m a dedicated professional. But when it comes to my personal life, I’ll protect that like a pitbull. You think you know me, Ms. Blackwell, but I’m here to tell you that unless we become friendly with each other, which is looking increasingly doubtful, you will never fully know me—just as I will never fully know you.”

  “Well, at least that’s true,” she said. “You don’t know me—though you claim that you do because of all of that ridiculous research you’ve done on me. But I can tell you that you don’t know a thing about me, Madison, as you’ll find out for yourself by the end of the day.”

  What’s happening at the end of the day?

  “But fine,” she said. “You were off-hours over the weekend, and those hours are your own.” She narrowed her eyes at me. “Or were they your own, especially when you and Brock spent Friday and Saturday night at the Plaza Hotel on Wenn’s dime?”

  “When we did what?” I asked.

  “So, you deny it?” she said.

  “I deny that we put anything on Wenn’s dime.”

  “Is that so?”

  “It is so. I don’t deny that I spent the weekend with Brock, not that it’s any of your business. But I deny that we charged any of it to Wenn. I saw Brock hand one of the desk clerks his own credit card when we checked in. I know for a fact that he paid for that room himself, and frankly, I don’t see how any of this concerns you.”

  “Here’s how it concerns me, Madison. And here’s also how it concerns Alex and Jennifer, whom I just met with about this particular dilemma when it came to our attention this morning. Wenn has an account with the Plaza. We place visiting guests there when Alex is striking a deal with out-of-town visitors. The suites we offer are very high-end, which you no doubt appreciated.”

  At that moment, I remembered Brock saying when we toured the suite that we must have received an upgrade. Now I knew why—in a way, we had. But how dare this woman even suggest that Brock or I would do anything as underhanded as stealing from Wenn? That kind of accusation was something I’d never stand for. Y
es, I needed this job, but when my moral character came under attack, that’s when all bets were off. I’d protect it fiercely, and I’d walk away from Wenn in a hot second if she was going to question my ethics. Wordlessly, I didn’t just stare at her—I stared her down, willing her to go on.

  And she did.

  “Apparently, when you and Brock checked into the hotel for your sordid little weekend rendezvous, Brock was asked if he worked for Wenn Enterprises, which he told them he did. After a discussion with the front-desk manager this morning, it was decided that a mistake was made by the clerk who checked you into your room. That person assumed that Wenn should pay the bill, not Brock. At this point, the damage has been settled, and Brock’s credit card will be charged in full—but not Wenn’s account.”

  “If that’s the case, then why am I sitting here talking to you about this?” I said, bristling with rage. “You’ve already settled the matter. It’s finished. You have no reason to question me, so why have you dragged me in here? In an effort to humiliate me? Belittle me? I’m sorry, Ms. Blackwell, but that’s not going to happen. I meant it when I said that I had a wonderful weekend. And I believe that going forward, I’ll be having many more fantastic weekends with Brock, whether I work here or not.”

  And at that, Blackwell threw up her hands.

  “None of this is about you leaving Wenn.”

  “Then what’s it about?”

  “It’s about what you said to me when you first interviewed with me.”

  “What could I possibly have said to you that has anything to do with my personal life?”

  “Seriously, Madison? Have you no memory, Madison? Allow me to take you back to that day. When you interviewed with me, you were the one who said that you were looking for steady growth within a solid company that would come to value you. You were the one who said that you wanted to finally be taken seriously. You told me that you were tired of men getting promotions that you knew you should have received, but likely hadn’t because you were a woman.