by Amy Faye
“Yes, sir,” she says. She’s surprisingly obedient ever since I got her under my thumb. I’d expected it to take a little bit of work to get her listening to me, but as long as my requests are fairly reasonable, she’s been even better about it than she was before.
Into the car, and we’re driving. It’s a thirty minute drive, and we spend most of the ride across town not talking. It’s not until we’re pulling up in front of the tall office building, practically shining as if the windows were made out of brass, that she speaks.
“So what’s this personal matter?”
“I guess it applies to all of you, as well.”
“Oh?”
I let out a long, low breath. “I suppose you know that I didn’t found Blunden Industrial, don’t you?”
“I guess so,” she says, her eyebrows knitting together. “But I mean, I don’t know that much, really. I didn’t pay close attention to the history of the company or anything like that, so I don’t know if I’m really qualified to…”
She shrugged.
“Well, Mr. Blunden, the original, my father, still owns the company. At least, he did.”
“Did?”
“He’s been in a coma for the last five years. Hence the reason that I’ve been running the day-to-day operations. Hence the reason that I’m not exactly worried about my position here.”
“What’s changed?”
“He’s not in a coma any more.”
“Your father woke up?”
“No,” I say softly. “He’s not going to be waking up. Not ever.”
I can see her shiver beside me. “I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be.” I hold the door open for her and she steps inside. “I said goodbye years ago, when they told me that chances were somewhere between slim and none.”
“So, what’s the lawyer want to see you about?”
I let out another long breath. “Inheritance, Cait. Inheritance.”
There’s a man behind the desk. He’s wearing a suit, and even to my relatively well-trained eyes it’s a nice one. It does almost nothing to hide his massive bulk. It does nothing at all to hide the shoulder holster that he wears under it, with the butt of a largish handgun sticking out.
“Hello, I’m Jasper Blunden, I’m here to see Mr. Spencer?”
He looks down at the desk behind the counter and then when he looks back up he’s got a pair of cards in his hand. I pin one onto my chest to mimic the one that the guard has on his own jacket, and then pin the other onto Cait.
For an instant she seems almost surprised by it, but if it’s a real bother to her then she doesn’t show any indication of it. The guard indicates the direction of the elevators, which make a cross pattern in the center of the large room, and I head over without waiting for a sign that Cait is following.
I push the button to go up. Fourteenth floor. They don’t have a thirteenth, which means that this is the unlucky one. Good. I’m glad. I’ve always loved these sorts of serendipity. Maybe it’s going to be in suite 1408 or something.
A moment later, the door opens. A small Latino woman steps out, and we step in. I jab the button for fourteen.
“Are you sure you’re alright?”
I don’t look at Cait. I’m not going to acknowledge the question as serious. “I’m fine.”
The elevator starts to move. Once upon a time, I disliked these contraptions. I can see Cait stiffening as it starts to move. I understand that. The feeling of being completely out of control.
She’s got to deal with it, though. She’s got to deal with it quite a lot, between the elevator up and down from our offices, this elevator right now, and the fact that she’s got to do just about anything that I say.
When we get up to fourteen I find out that I misunderstood the situation with the Spencer firm. It’s not just a little suite. It’s the entire floor; the elevator opens directly into a waiting room, three different small pockets of people sitting in chairs and leaning in to whisper to each other.
A woman behind the counter leans forward with interest that I have no doubt is completely fake.
“Can I help you?”
“I’m Jasper Blunden, Mr. Spencer is expecting me.”
“Oh! Mr. Blunden. Right this way.” She points over at a door a few feet away. I reach for it as she gets up. It’s locked from this side, but a moment later she reappears as the door opens. “We’ve been expecting you.”
I nod. “I should hope so. My father’s been a long-time client here, and I would hope that with the amount of money he’s spent…”
She doesn’t seem to react to the implied threat. I don’t know if she even notices it, or if she’s used to it, or what.
So I follow behind, now silent. Cait follows a little way behind; as usual, I’m acutely aware of her presence. Aware of the way that her hips sway when she walks, even when I’m not watching. The image flashes into my head again and for a moment I’m distracted from the frustration of having to jump through all these hoops for a man who never had any particular respect for me.
At the end of the hall, the door is labeled Mr. Rich Spencer with the word Partner below it in small text. I can see through the door that someone’s sitting at his desk. I presume that it’s Spencer himself, and when she opens the door, my suspicions are confirmed.
“Mr. Blunden! How good to see you!”
I give him a hard smile and try to pretend that I’m not annoyed with the entire thing.
“Mr. Spencer. How’s business?”
He’s got a used-car-salesman smile and his hair is greased back ostentatiously.
“Great, my man. Just great. So why don’t you have a seat. You’re his secretary?” He holds out a hand to Cait that I almost want to cut off. She takes it. “Man, but aren’t you a pretty one! Better not start working for me, or I’ll bite off a piece in a heartbeat.” He winks. Cait doesn’t look him in the eyes.
“So you said something about a stipulation in the will.”
“I did. To business.”
“Cait, will you get a recording of this?”
“Yes, sir,” she says. She pulls her phone out of her pocket and sets it on the table to record. “Recording.”
“Okay. Stipulation. What’s that?”
“It’s a bit unusual, but I really can’t change that. The late Mr. Blunden was extremely specific with this one, and I couldn’t talk him out of it.”
“Okay?”
“He indicated to me that he felt very strongly about a family bond, about wanting to keep the place as a family operation.”
“Okay, so… what’s that mean?”
“I don’t know if this is uncomfortable, Mr. Blunden, but… are you married?”
Six
Cait
I never know the elder Mr. Blunden. He’s a bit of a legend, in a certain sense. The older folks, the veterans, most of the people in the senior management bullpen outside my office, or at least Jasper’s office, knew him.
Which means that by reputation, at least, I was aware of him. I’d heard tell that he was an eccentric, or at least a little bit unusual in his methods. It depended heavily on who you were listening to, but nobody thought that he was perfectly orthodox and not in any way strange or unusual or abnormal. The only question that people had to answer was whether or not they liked his more unusual traits. The fact that they existed was beyond anyone’s ability to doubt.
So I guess I’m not that surprised that his eccentricities remained in death. But I am surprised by this particular one. Marry before the official reading of the will, or be disowned? Some people, particularly older folks, are big on marriage. It means something to them.
But that was precisely the strange thing about it: Craig Blunden had never married. He’d fathered four sons, by four women, and never married any of them. There was no doubt in anyone’s mind that he was a womanizer of the worst sort. Maybe that was why he’d written the will that way. To make sure that his sons learned from his mistakes.
But then to s
pring it on them like this? If the lawyer hadn’t taken Jasper aside before this, it was intended to be a big surprise at the official reading. Which, incidentally, was tomorrow afternoon.
At that point the company would have fallen to the youngest Blunden boy. I can see the anger and confusion still playing out on Jasper’s face, an hour after we left.
“What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” he answers. His voice is low and rough and annoyed. “It’s not like I have anyone on the horizon.”
“I’m sorry that this happened,” I offer. I shouldn’t be. I should be glad. Once he’s gone, my problems go with him. I can get a recommendation from Arthur, no problem. At least, as long as he keeps the company, but there’s no way that he’s going to keep it for long. From what they tell me, he’s too busy writing novels, or something. No interest in the business.
“I’m just going to have to find a way around it,” he says. He doesn’t sound nearly as shaken as he looks, and he doesn’t look nearly as shaken as he ought to. He’s already moved on, it seems, to making a plan to get out of this, too.
“Oh?”
“I just have to get married by tomorrow.”
“There’s a three-day waiting period in Michigan,” I say absently. “So you’re going to have to get around that somehow.”
He shrugs. “Ohio waived their waiting period in 2001. So I should be able to get the license through without too much trouble. Might have a little trouble with an out-of-state resident trying to use their system, but I’m going to do it in person, so…”
“Oh.” I guess I didn’t think of it like that. The way that he’s acting is as if he’s expected this all along. Except that I saw the look on his face in the office. He’s just recovering quicker than I expected.
“So now I just need a woman to marry.”
I blink. “Uh. You have all this plan and you don’t even have a girlfriend or something?”
He looks at me flatly. “You think I’d have played around with you if I were dating someone? I may be a scumbag, but I’m not a cheating scumbag.”
That’s a surprise, too. I always kind of lumped the two together. Like, if you were that big of an asshole, you probably didn’t draw the line at being a son of a bitch in particular ways.
“I see.”
“That gives me an idea, actually.”
His fingers grip on the steering wheel. I hear the leather creaking under his fingers. And then suddenly I get a very similar idea, and I have to wonder if they’re the same thing.
“I don’t know if…”
“You like money, don’t you?”
“What?”
“How about half? I’m not asking you to stay forever. Just the, whatever, year that the old man demands.”
“What?”
“After that, you walk away with half the inheritance. I keep the company, of course. So your half would be mostly monetary.”
“You’re joking. I’m not going to marry you.”
“Not for all the money in the world?”
“Not for the god damn Hope Diamond.”
His jaw sets, but he doesn’t look angry. That surprises me and even scares me a little bit. He doesn’t look like a man who’s just been told no. He looks like he’s been told that the point is negotiable.
“I don’t know, Cait. I feel like we’ve got a connection, you and I.”
“What?”
“There are worries, you know. Security concerns. I always worry about what happens if I piss off the wrong person. Dad was a security nut, and I guess of all his little quirks, that was the one that rubbed off on me. Constant fear that someone’s going to come in, they’re going to rip me off. Steal my stuff. Steal my work computer, with all the client data on it. Steal my television. Hell, maybe they just steal my bottle of ‘37 Glenfiddich.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You know what would be worse than having everyone find out that you’re lusting after your boss? At least to me. Again, you’re a free woman, and you can do what you want.”
“What are you saying?”
I almost feel bad. But I guess I don’t feel that bad, after all.
“I’m saying that, I guess I should have warned you in advance, but I have the office wired up, just in case there’s any security concerns. If something goes missing, I just go back through the tapes on my own computer, and there you go. I see the guy’s face, because of course, he doesn’t know that it’s there.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You know what else that might have captured, though?”
I shiver. I know exactly what it might have captured. “You wouldn’t.”
“You’re right. I wouldn’t. I would hate to, you know? Because if I did, then it would be because I had just lost control of my company, the company that I’ve spent my entire life working to keep control of. At that point, it’s nothing but petty revenge, but what can you do? I’ve already been screwed over completely. There’s nothing I can hope for except to get a little amusement out of getting screwed over, right?”
I shiver again, harder.
“And if I go along with you?”
“Then nobody has to get hurt.”
“And at the end of the year?”
“You walk away several million dollars richer. Painless.”
I think about it. Then I think some more. It’s a big decision. But I have to be realistic about the options that are laid out in front of me. There aren’t many available at this point.
“What would I have to do if I agreed?”
Seven
Jasper
I’ve never imagined myself to be the marrying type. It’s not something I ever wanted for myself. So there might be some women, or even some men, who have imagined themselves walking down the aisle, big beautiful ceremony, and so on.
My assumption was that eventually, I might have to settle down so much as to have a live-in girlfriend. That would be quite a big change, for me. But I wasn’t there yet. At least, I hadn’t thought I was there yet. I didn’t need it emotionally, and financially, it would only make life harder.
But apparently, the costs of not being married had just risen exponentially, and that means that regardless of what I might want and what I might be comfortable with, I’m married now.
I look down at the little piece of paper. Mr. Jasper Blunden and Miss Caitlynn Donigan to be joined in marriage. Two people I haven’t ever met before in my life signed below that, a Justice of the Peace and a Deputy Clerk. I don’t know what I’m supposed to think about it.
I certainly don’t feel any different than I did before this, but I can feel something changing, at least. Some part of me is twisting up inside. Frustration with the old man, I think.
I look over at Cait. She’s asleep in the passenger seat. I push the certificate into the back seat and with it, push the thing out of my mind. It doesn’t mean anything to me, except that I don’t lose my inheritance outright to that twit Arthur.
She really is very pretty. I guess I knew that when I hired her, but at the time, it hadn’t been anything more than hiring a pretty face to have her around. I wish that I could say I was so clever that I saw all of this coming, and that I’d hired her with the plan to seduce her all along. I’d be lying.
I step on the gas and we pull off the side of the road, and into what counts for traffic. Then again, at this time of night, nobody’s on the road.
The miles tick by slowly, one after the other. My eyes hurt from staring at the road, particularly this far past dark. A street-light ahead is out, and for an instant we’re plunged into darkness. Then a second later we’re back in the illumination of the real world. Just like this marriage, really.
I take a deep breath. When did I turn into this person? How do I feel about it? I don’t know, and I don’t care. Not about either one. I did what was in my power. If there was a reason that I shouldn’t have, then people shouldn’t have given me that kind of power
.
Beside me, Cait stirs in her sleep and straightens her neck. “I’m awake,” she announces, as if it disproves the quiet snoring that she’s been doing since her head started to duck down onto her chest.
“Hey,” I say softly. “We’re just passing back into Michigan now.”
“Oh.” She stretches, as much as you can stretch inside of a car. Even one as spacious as this one gets cramped when you’re trying to take up all the space in it. “What’s up?”
“Nothing. Just driving home. You want me to drop you off at your place? I guess we’re supposed to be living together, but I assume you’ve got stuff to pack, and whatever.”
“You can help me with that in the morning,” she says. “I’m tired.”
I’m tired, too, but I have to keep driving. We’ve got forty minutes before we’re even in the vicinity of the city. After that it’s going to be another twenty or thirty getting anywhere, and when we’re going to two separate places, that just takes longer still.
“I know,” I say instead.
“I can just stay the night on your couch or something,” she says. I take a deep breath. Calm down, boy. I need to sleep at some point tonight.
“I’m pretty tired myself,” I admit finally. There’s a moment where I ask myself how serious I am about this. Then I get my answer immediately when I feel the pit of my stomach open up and adrenaline start pumping at the idea. Like a delayed reaction.
“Yeah? I’m sorry.”
“You know what you could do to help?”
She raises an eyebrow. I see it in the corner of my eye, and for a moment I consider responding to it directly. Then I change my mind.
“Take those tits out again. Refresh my memory.”
“What, so you can get them on the car security camera, too?”
I bark out a laugh. “You’re paranoid. ‘Car security camera,’ she says. Who the hell puts a security camera in the car? I just use the GoPro, and you can see it right here. It’s pointed forward.”
That’s not a lie. In fact, none of it is. Sheer obedience is good enough for me. I’m more than happy if she just does as she’s told.
