by Peggy Jaeger
“What do you mean?”
I could hear papers rustling in the background and knew he was most likely in his office. Even on a weekend, Dan was always working.
“Wants to meet on your home turf to intimidate you. He could have held the meeting at one of his offices downtown or a hotel conference room. By coming to you, he gets to see the lay of the land first person, plus puts your back up because he’s invading your space. It’s a smart, tactical move on his part.”
“Well, it sucks,” I said. “Royally.”
“No argument from me. Where are you anyway?”
I told him about the wedding.
“Nell with you?” he asked. I’d always secretly harbored the notion he was in love with Nell but, for some reason wouldn’t or couldn’t tell her. His voice, whenever he spoke of her, took on a calm, soft timbre, so in contrast to his usual pit bull bark.
“Yeah. Why?”
He sucked in a deep breath. “Let her know Culverson’s sniffing around her financials as well.”
“He wants both our businesses?”
Nell’s face went white, her beautiful, naturally pink mouth forming a moue of surprise.
“Maybe. Probably. Why look into her financials if he wasn’t considering it?”
“Good question.”
“Look, I gotta go. I’m gonna do a little digging of my own. I got your back on this, babe. Call me tomorrow when you’re free, ‘kay?”
I told him I would. Right before ending the call, he added, “Tell Nell I’ve got her back too, would ya?”
After disconnecting, I gave Nell a rundown on the call while I waited for the info to load on my cell.
“Holy crap.” Nell slumped down in her chair.
“My sentiments exactly.” I took a quick glance at my display screen. 50% complete stared back at me.
“This guy’s file is huge. It’s still loading.”
The tinny sound of trumpets blaring rang out and made Nell, me, and everyone else in the reception lobby jump.
“Please proceed into the dining hall,” the maitre’d call out. “The bride and groom have arrived.”
As a unit, Nell and I rose from our chairs. “You might want to reconsider having a drink,” Nell said, tucking her clutch under her arm.
For the first time since Dan’s call, I smiled. When I looked down at my phone, the smile vanished.
“Oh, shit!”
Several disapproving glares turned my way when I stopped short.
“What?” Nell grabbed my arm, forcing the phone into her view.
Her gasp was louder than my exclamation, and now even more stern looks bolted our way as the throng made its way around us.
Her beautiful blue-eyed gaze whipped back to mine. “Ella?”
Dumbfounded and speechless, two things I rarely was, I stared down at the display screen where Duncan Prince’s picture finished uploading.
And damn. It was Buddy, my one-night stand.
Chapter Six
“Are you two having a good time?” Carrie Ann leaned down between us, and I seriously had to give her kudos. The seams in her gown stretched in agony with each subtle movement she made, and I feared the dress wouldn’t last the night intact.
“The food is delicious,” Nell said with a smile, her first one since Danny’s call. “Great choices.”
Carrie Ann dipped down and wobbled like a Weeble for a moment, and I knew it was because her dress was suffocating any non-ordinary movements she tried to make. Her cherry red lips planted a kiss on Nell’s cheek, and right before she toppled into Nell’s entrée, we both reached out and grabbed one of her arms to keep her upright.
“Oops,” Carrie Ann giggled and shot a hand to her mouth. It was then I realized it wasn’t only the constricting dress causing her to sway. The bride was a little more than tipsy. A lot more, in fact. She’d been hiding it well, but when thrown off-balance in her four-inch bridal stilettoes, the truth was unleashed.
“A couple of Casey’s relatives wanted two meat choices instead of fish,” she said, attempting to stand up straight again. With one hand smoothing down the front of her gown from waist to crotch, she took a deep breath—a fleeting and terrifying vision of her breasts exploding from their captured cocoon into my face crossed the front of my mind—and added, “It cost a boat-load more, but he said his folks would pay the extra, so.” She shrugged.
With her plastered smile in place again, she said, “Gotta go make the rounds. Have fun.”
And then she hobbled off to another table.
Nell’s smile dropped, as did her gaze.
I reached out and squeezed her arm. “You doing okay?”
“Shouldn’t I be asking you that question? You’re the one who slept with the enemy.”
Nell was, well, Nell. I’d never been mad at her a moment since we’d known each other, and I wasn’t now, even with that crude statement looming between us. Those of us who knew her best realized Nell used verbal barbs as a defense mechanism ever since the whole public debacle with her father. Everyone from paparazzi to nosey reporters and award-winning TV anchors, even the instructors in our classes, made her life hell during the time he was the center of every news story on air, in print, and online. With daddy incarcerated and mommy committed to a locked institution, Nell became the face of too many intrusive and hurtful stories and comments to name.
I knew she was terrified something would happen to our businesses, especially since her mother’s continued care depended on Nell’s steady influx of cash. This proposed buyout or takeover or whatever it was, which neither one of us wanted, weighed heavily on her mind.
“In my defense,” I said, “I didn’t know he was the enemy when I slept with him or I never would have.” I’d told her all the titillating details of my night during the salad course.
Nell had the grace to look contrite. She bit her bottom lip as tears sprouted in the corners of her eyes.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “That was uncalled for.”
“Yup.”
When she looked back at me and could see I wasn’t mad, she visibly relaxed her shoulders and took a deep breath.
The sound of the band intruded on any further conversation. Casey and Carrie Ann were called out to the dance floor. They’d danced their first married dance to John Legend’s All of Me, but since the food had been served and the booze was freely flowing from the open bar—a classy move on her parents’ part—the fun part of the reception could start. There’d be an hour of dancing and drunken cavorting, twerking, and general white-people-can’t-dance-moves before the cake was cut, the obligatory garter thrown, then the dread of every woman over the age of twenty-five commenced: the ceremonial bouquet toss.
Like every wedding I’d ever attended, I would be long gone before being single gal-shamed into partaking of that embarrassing ritual.
Nell grabbed my hand to get my attention over the din of the pumping music.
“Come to the bathroom with me.” She rose and, with my hand still in hers, pulled me up with her.
We sidled along the perimeter of the dance floor and made it out into the corridor unscathed. And by unscathed, I meant we weren’t corralled into dancing by any of the Dirty Damsels’ drunk-and-getting-drunker bridal party.
Nell did a quick recon of the bathroom like the good little paparazzo-detector she was, determined no one would be able to overhear us, then turned to me. “What are you going to do about Prince?”
I was still having a tough time thinking of him with that name. He’d probably be Buddy to me forever. “I don’t know,” I admitted honestly.
“Do you think he knew who you were?” Nell rested a hip against a sink ledge and crossed her arms over her chest.
I shook my head then shrugged. “I don’t see how. He didn’t know I was going to be at the penthouse. No one, aside from you did, since Marley Waters had been scheduled for the job.”
“No, but he might have recognized you. Your business logo is on the Dirty Damsels unifor
m top you make everyone wear, so he could have noticed the name. And I’m sure Culverson briefed him about you. Danny says he’s been brought in to help Culverson, right? He’s some big wig financial genius?”
I pulled out my phone and called up Danny’s email. It was still shocking to see Buddy’s picture on my display screen, but I scrolled past it to the first article.
“Master’s from Columbia,” I read to her. “PhD from the Berlin School of Economics. He’s got a doctorate in business.” I scrolled a little more. “Worked as a financial analyst for the London Stock Exchange for two years…then took a private job with Consolidated Limited. Jesus. This is some pedigree.”
“What else does it say?” Nell’s gaze cut to the mirror. She must have seen a hair out of place because she turned to face the mirror fully and started fluffing her bangs.
“He’s been a private consultant for the past two years. Owns his own firm called DLP Analysts. Wonder what the L stands for.”
Before I shut it down, I looked at the Google image again. Damn, the guy was smoking hot, even in a one-dimensional digital picture.
And, double damn, he was now someone with the power to take all I’d worked so hard for away from me.
“Louse?” Nell offered. “Liar? Loser? Lech?”
“Stop.”
Our eyes met in the mirror, and she had the grace to look contrite. Again.
“It’s not his fault about any of this, Nell,” I said. “Let me finish.” She clamped her mouth shut and took a deep breath. “Culverson’s the bad guy here. He’s the one who wants to own the world. He’s the one we have to fight against.”
“You’re not the least bit suspicious or upset about Prince? About how your paths crossed so conveniently? About…sleeping with him?”
I let out my own sigh. With a quick glance at the mirror, I rubbed some bleeding eyeliner away from under my eye. “I admit it looks suspect, even though I really don’t believe he knew who I was. And as far as the night we spent together, well, I don’t regret it. Not a moment.”
Nell studied me in the looking-into-your-soul way she’d perfected over the years. It was one of the reasons she was such a savvy businesswoman. She could sniff a liar out in a five-minute interview, and her bullshit radar was hyper-acute.
“Are you sure it’s not the memory of the mind-blowing sex talking?”
I couldn’t help it. I laughed at her description.
“I’m serious, El. Are you sure you’re not letting the fact you’re attracted to this guy—more than you’ve been to any other guy for the past year—color your reaction to this whole situation?”
“Nell, I think you know me better,” I said. As a defense, it was weak.
“I do. Usually. But I’ve never seen you react to a guy the way you did last night. You went off with him without knowing a blessed thing about him. You don’t do that. Ever. Not even when we were in college and the upperclassmen sniffed around you like you were fresh meat at a starving man buffet.”
I couldn’t argue with her because she was right.
How could I explain to her that Buddy sent every female strand of DNA in my body on heightened alert? Even before the amazeballs sex, I wanted to know him, to be with him.
“And answer me this: how did he know your name? Did you tell it to him when you were at the condo? Because he knew it at the club.”
Had I? My memory shot back to those few moments we’d interacted during the afternoon. Buddy had called me Cinderella a few times, but I had no recollection of telling him my actual name. Most people never used it, calling me Ella instead. And he’d said it again in Diablo when he came to the table.
Could this whole meeting have been a set-up, orchestrated by Prince and Culverson? But if so, why? What purpose would it serve? Unless they wanted to embarrass me, claim I slept around with strangers, proving my judgment was shaky, in order to propel me into selling my business, I couldn’t see the intent. Or how it would benefit them. This was the twenty-first century, and single women were allowed to have sex without being publicly vilified for doing so.
My face must have registered my thoughts because Nell crossed her arms in front of her chest and said, “You didn’t, did you?”
“No.”
She shook her head and swiped her hands down her face from forehead to chin. Exhaustion was etched in the corners of her eyes and mouth.
“I don’t like this. Not one bit. This guy came out of nowhere, insinuated himself into your life, and now we find out he’s Culverson’s secret weapon. We need to meet with Danny and devise a plan of attack. Tuesday morning is going to come fast and furious, and we need to be prepared for the worst.”
I agreed. I called Danny, and the three of us arranged to meet the next morning at his office.
Neither of us felt much like celebrating anymore, and we didn’t want to be Debbie Downers on Carrie Ann and Casey’s special night, so we said our goodbyes to the happy couple and left the reception.
Our apartments were across the Park from one another, so we each hailed a taxi. I let Nell take the first one. Before getting in, she stretched up and kissed my cheek. “Get home safe.”
“You too.”
When she was settled in, she leaned out the window and added, “Try to get some sleep.”
“Yes, Mom.”
In my own taxi, a few moments later, I laid my head back against the seat and sighed.
What a mess.
For the first time in a long time, maybe even my entire adult life, I’d met a guy who seriously fulfilled every secret fantasy of the perfect man for me. Drop dead gorgeous, hot-as-hell, attentive, and now I could add rich and educated to the mix.
Unfortunately, I could also add potential threat to my livelihood.
Back at my condo, I de-weddinged. I shook out of my dress and hung it in the closet, scrubbed my face clean, and slathered on a quart of moisturizer, pulled my hair into a topknot, and folded into my most comfortable sleepwear outfit of sweats and a thick flannel t-shirt.
Sleep wasn’t going to come easily, despite the little I’d gotten the night before. I was too keyed up. My brain was dancing in a Zumba class jumble of thoughts and questions, all of them about Duncan “Buddy” Prince.
A quick cup of decaf coffee from the Keurig, and five minutes later, I booted up my Mac and Googled him.
Holy Christmas.
There were thousands of links with his name attached. Most of them were about his business career. I found one mention in People UK about a charity event he’d attended the previous year. A close-up shot in front of a step and repeat banner highlighted the event and showed him decked out in a body-hugging tuxedo, his massive shoulders almost taking up the entire shot. His hair was a little longer and a tad curlier at the ends, and my fingers itched over my keyboard at the remembrance of how they’d felt threaded within it. His lips were pulled into the smile that held a thousand secrets as he gazed into the camera lens. I knew what hid behind that smile, and my thighs involuntarily pushed together as I wriggled in the chair.
Some flavor of the week actress wannabe clung to his arm. The blurb under the photo claimed she was one of the event’s organizers. Knowing how wily and underhanded the British daily rags could be, I was surprised there wasn’t anything salacious or titillating accompanying the article.
I scrolled through several more links about something called The Martha Baxter Foundation. Buddy was front and center in all the articles about donations garnered for the foundation. I clicked on a cross link to find out more about it and was engulfed in another thousand or so mentions. My eyes were now blurring from lack of sleep and stress, so I signed out and plopped into bed. Before I mentally shut down for the night, Buddy’s face jumped in front of me. He was wearing the uber-sexy smile he’d worn right before he made me come more times than I ever had before. I knew down to my curling toes if I dreamed at all, it would be of him.
***
“I hope you got a couple pumpernickels,” Danny said when I walked in
to his office the next morning. “‘Cuz I’m starving.”
I leaned down and kissed his cheek. “When have you ever known me not to bring you pumpernickel bagels?”
A grin spread across his face and made him look all of seven years old. “You’re the best.” He took the two bagel and spreads-filled bags from my hands and walked over to the kitchen area in his office.
Nell was already seated on one of the leather couches, a coffee cup in her hand. I’d called her the moment I awoke because I wanted to ask her if she thought I should tell Danny about my encounter with Buddy…Prince. I needed to get used to calling him Prince. He was the enemy now. She told me to be upfront with Dan. He should know about the encounter, so if it came up during the meeting with Culverson, he’d be prepared and not blindsided.
Danny, being the uber type A guy he was, got right down to business.
“Here’s what I found out. Culverson is looking to diversify more into the private sector. That article in the Times Business section a couple months ago about your business, El, drifted into his financial air space. His lawyer caught it and told him it would be a good idea to look into.”
“How do you know this?” I asked while I slathered butter across my egg bagel.
Danny gnawed at his own bagel and washed it down with a gulp of coffee from a mug with DYNAMITE COMES IN SMALL PACKAGES emblazoned across it.
“There’s a chick in Culverson’s mid-town office I know from the gym. I struck up a conversation with her one day, she mentioned who she worked for, and I filed it,” he pointed to his head with his index finger, “for future reference. When I found out Culverson was snooping around your financials, I called and asked her about it.”
“And she told you?” Nell asked. “Just like that? She’s not worried divulging private business information can come back to bite her in the ass, job-wise?”
Danny shrugged, a gesture summing up everything about him. “What can I say? Chicks trust me.”
I laughed. “Truth. What else?”
“Culverson liked what he read about your company, how it’s a niche business, and thinks it should go nationwide. He wants to have it for his own stable.” He eyed Nell. “The writer mentioned how you two were friends from college and now both run your own companies. Culverson’s lawyer thinks both businesses are worth pursuing and convinced him to look into acquiring them.”
