Fierce (Not Quite a Billionaire)

by Rosalind James

  Finally, she stirred and said drowsily, “A shower would be good. Before I go.”

  “Mm,” I said. “Another bath, maybe. I’ll wash you, eh.”

  “No...no more. ” She sat up, groaning a little, and ran a hand through her disheveled hair. “Nothing else. Please.”

  I had to smile at that. “Sweetheart. I know.”

  I lasted through another movie night, the promise of another Saturday-night date, telling myself that this was fine, this was the way I liked it. Limited. No expectations. And then, on the way home from another bout of washing-up, I was ringing Eugene.

  “What?” he asked without saying hello. “Too late to be calling me, man. You canceling on me again? You need your ass kicked good. Gettin’ fat and lazy.”

  “Nah,” I said impatiently. “Tomorrow night’s on. This is something else. Debra around?”

  “Yeah, right here. What, you takin’ that girl away again? Man, you got it bad.”

  I sighed. “I need a chat, that’s all. Put her on.”

  I did my best to keep it businesslike once Debra took the phone. “I need an opinion,” I said.

  “Uh-huh.” She sounded exactly like Eugene, making me wonder how much of a topic I’d been. Not a comforting thought.

  “Ideas,” I plowed on. “About Hope. And Karen. I’m...” I cleared my throat. “Spending some time with Hope, but I think I need to include Karen as well if I want any more of it. And I don’t have much clue about what a fifteen-year-old girl would want to do. She wasn’t too keen on the rose garden. I’d think shopping, but she didn’t seem like much of a shopper, and Hope’s got a bit of a thing about—”

  “About not wanting to get bought,” Debra finished. “Yeah. Hm. Give me a sec here. Museum, maybe.”

  “Again,” I said, “maybe not, eh. Hope loves art. Karen—I’m thinking not so much.”

  “Not that kind of museum. Science museum, something like that. Or take ‘em out to a Broadway show. Some big musical, hot ticket. They choose which one, and you make it happen. Spoil ‘em both a little. That’d work. Women don’t want to get bought, but they sure do like to get spoiled.”

  “A science museum wouldn’t be too bad,” I conceded. “But a Broadway show? Not my idea of a good time.”

  “Seems to me we had this talk. It ain’t about what you want.”

  “Right,” I said glumly. “Cheers.”

  The next voice I heard was Eugene’s. “Hang on a sec,” he said. “Let me get out my calendar and a big ol’ red pen so I can put a circle around this day. Yep, this is what we call a red-letter day.”

  “Rack off,” I said. “See you at seven tomorrow night.”

  I rang off and wondered what had happened to my life. One minute, I’d been in control. The next, I was spending my evenings with Hope and Karen in their flannel pajamas, doing the washing-up, and contemplating the prospect of The Lion King. It wasn’t a pretty picture.

  First Class

  Another couple weeks had passed, and I’d had as much as I could take of one night a week holding Hope’s hand on the couch, a family-friendly outing with Karen, and one additional evening during which Hope and I did our best to slake a week’s worth of sexual frustration in a few hours.

  No matter how persuasive my arguments, though, she refused to come to my office during the workday, or even to meet me on the roof. It wasn’t nearly enough, and I knew I should find somebody else. I’d break it off with her first, because I wasn’t that much of a bastard, but the last thing I needed was an unavailable woman. If her attitude didn’t change soon, I decided again on every night that I wanted her with me and she wasn’t there, I’d end it. And then, every time I was with her, I found myself giving her one more chance.

  After our third movie night, though, when I was helping her with the washing-up, she said, “So. This weekend.”

  “Yeh,” I said. “I meant to talk to you about that as well. I’d like to take you out tomorrow night, as I can’t do Saturday. Even if that means we get Debra over here again to be with Karen.”

  This time, I told myself, I meant it. If she said no to this, she was just playing games.

  She glanced toward the bedroom door. Closed. Karen had seemed tired tonight, had fallen asleep during the movie and gone to bed straight away afterwards, and the apartment was quiet.

  “Oh,” Hope said. “You can’t? Never mind, then.”

  “Wait. What?” I’d missed something. “What were you going to say?”

  “It doesn’t matter.” She kept her head bent, her gaze on the plate she was scrubbing. “Just that Karen’s made a friend at school, and there’s a dance Friday night, so they were planning to spend the weekend together. At the friend’s, I mean. So I’d thought I could spend the night. If you wanted. But I’m sorry.” She looked at me at last, unsmiling, her gaze steady, and I had the unwelcome feeling that she’d known exactly what had been on my mind. “I can’t do tomorrow night. This weekend—It’s kind of a big deal for Karen. Her first good friend at school, her first dance, and the night before...she’ll be picking out clothes and things. She’ll be nervous, because the friend has money, you know, and we—well. Karen says she doesn’t care, but I know she does. So I’m sorry, but I can’t.”

  “Hope. Wait.” The relief was there, out of all proportion to the importance of my sex life. “Then that’ll work.”

  “What will work?”

  “I’ve got an unexpected meeting on Friday afternoon in San Francisco. Things heating up on a deal. With those two women you...ah...didn’t meet the other week.”

  “During our respective non-dates.” She was washing up again, but her shoulders had relaxed a little.

  “Those would be the ones. And probably a bit more wrap-up on Saturday, I’m thinking, so I wouldn’t have been back in time to take you out. But if Karen’s sorted, you can come with me, and we’ll get our night. Because yeh, I do want it. In fact, you can fly out Friday morning with me, and we can have two nights.”

  It didn’t work out quite like that, of course, because she refused to allow me to tell Martine she was required on the journey, or to fly out on the jet with the rest of the team.

  “This is my job,” she said. “If you tell Martine that, she’ll know, and everybody else will know, too. And then, later...she’ll fire me. I know she will.”

  She didn’t have to tell me what later meant, and I didn’t tell her that Martine wouldn’t be sacking her, because I wouldn’t be allowing it.

  “Right, then,” I said instead. “Martine will be getting a request for your help on Friday afternoon from...from somebody, and you can come out then. We’ll fly back together on Sunday. Commercial,” I added when her mouth opened again. “I’ll send the others back on the jet on Friday night. They’ll be rapt about that. Happy?”

  She finally took her hands out of the sink, dried them on a kitchen towel, and turned to me. “Yes. Of course I am.” She laughed, sounding as relieved as I felt, and as always, I got that feeling her laugh always aroused in me, of the sun coming out after a storm. “You’re going to take me to San Francisco, and we get to spend the weekend together? Of course I’m happy.”

  “Got a funny way of showing it, don’t you,” I muttered, but she didn’t pay that any attention. She’d stepped straight into my arms, arms that went around her as if they had a mind of their own, and I was lifting her to be kissed. One of her soft little hands was around my head, pulling me into her, the other was stroking over my nape, and I was so relieved, and pretty bloody happy myself. And, in not too much time at all, more than that.

  I’d sat there all evening with her, pretending to watch that movie with Karen sitting on her other side, but I hadn’t seen a thing. I’d only felt the fire burning a little hotter with every brush of my hand over the delicate skin of her forearm, there on the underside where she was so sensitive. I’d only felt the shivers she was trying to hide, the breath she was trying to regulate, as if they’d been coming from my own body. I’d been fifteen again,
trying to get somewhere on some girl’s parents’ couch, except that it was even worse, because I knew exactly what Hope and I should have been doing.

  And now, she was letting me know what I had to look forward to. Making those urgent little noises into my mouth that set me on fire every time. Letting me hold her the way I’d wanted to all night, her sweet body pressed tight against mine, one of my hands around her head, holding it still for me, the other reaching around to lift her off her toes.

  I wanted to carry her back to that couch, strip those Wonder Woman PJs off her, plunge straight into her, and show her she was mine. I knew how she’d gasp when I did it, how tight and hot she’d be around me, how I’d have to put my hand over her mouth again to keep her quiet, and how much she’d love it. I knew exactly how it should be, and I needed to do it, and I knew I couldn’t.

  She pulled back first. Of course she did.

  “Whoa,” she breathed, leaning back in my arms. “I just wanted to say...yes.”

  “I think you did,” I said. “Think you said just exactly that. And as it was exactly what I wanted to hear, I’m happy. Though I’d be happier to be inside you right now. So you know.”

  I knew her little smile would be peeping out, even though I couldn’t see it, not with her pressed up close to me again. “So does this mean we get to be tourists? I don’t have to pretend to be sophisticated? Will you take me across the Golden Gate Bridge?”

  I had to smile myself at that. “Yeh. I’ll come up with a plan for your next big adventure. How’s that?”

  “Mm.” She had her face against my shoulder now, was rubbing her cheek into my T-shirt like a kitten, and my hand was still tangled up in her soft hair. “You do that. I like your plans.”

  So that was another week when I didn’t break it off with her. But then, that was because she’d seen it my way.

  I almost didn’t go to San Francisco after all.

  I knew how upset Hemi would have been at the idea. He hadn’t been happy about my limited availability. And as much as I hated the thought of losing him—well, losing him sooner—I was more afraid of what would happen if I gave into him. If I went against my own better judgment, my own urgent priorities, for something that, no matter how my treacherous brain tried to spin it, wasn’t love and never would be. If I lost not just my heart, but my self-respect.

  He’d made it more than clear that he wasn’t in this for the long haul, and I couldn’t afford to lose my head. Even if he’d never said a thing, a few minutes of research in any business magazine would have clued me in. It wasn’t that there was gossip about his private life. It was that there wasn’t, because he didn’t have relationships to gossip about. He had arrangements, complete with nondisclosure agreements. I didn’t do arrangements, though, and he didn’t do relationships. So instead, we had something that existed in the uneasy space in between, something I didn’t want to examine too closely, because its balance felt so precarious, the slightest touch could send it toppling and shattering.

  So why did I almost not go to San Francisco, knowing that that failure could have been the shove that would break us? Because of Karen.

  She was restless all Thursday night. It seemed like every time I fell asleep, she shifted again, and I woke. Finally, sometime in the wee hours of the morning, she sat up, turned on the light, and scrabbled for her pills, then lay down again while I stroked her hair and felt the tension in her body. And ten minutes later, she dashed for the bathroom and lost everything in her stomach.

  “Really bad?” I asked, wrestling my way out of my own fatigue to follow her with a glass of water, help her clean up, bring her the medicine so she could try again. To rub her back and try without success not to worry about this.

  The migraines, instead of getting better, had been getting worse. The medicines weren’t doing the job anymore, and no matter what the doctor had said last time I’d taken her, she needed something better.

  She didn’t answer me, just curled up in the fetal position on the bathroom rug. “Just let me lie here,” she said, her voice thready. “No light.” So I went for a pillow and blanket and covered her up, sat with her a little longer, held her head twice more when she was sick again. And finally, when she said she was better, took her back to bed so we could both get a few hours’ sleep.

  “Do you want me to stay here this weekend?” I asked in the morning, suppressing a pang at the thought of Hemi.

  Despite everything I’d said, she was getting into her school uniform. “No,” she said. “I’m fine. It’s always worse in the morning, and then it gets better. Anyway, the pills are working now. I’m OK.”

  “Next week,” I said, “we’re going back to the doctor again, and I’m going to tell him they need to do more tests or something. I’m going to insist. We’re going to sit there until he listens.”

  “We can’t afford tests. You know we can’t.” She sat down on the bed to pull on her tights.

  “We’re going to get them anyway.” I smoothed her hair back from her face, and for just a minute, she leaned into my hand. “You sure you wouldn’t rather I stayed, just in case?”

  She shook my hand off irritably. “Yes. I’m not ten. I just have a headache.”

  I still hesitated, until I got the bright idea of calling Debra. I had a feeling that her services weren’t cheap, but there was no way I could fly across the country without knowing we had a backup plan. And it probably wouldn’t be necessary. Karen wasn’t sick every day. And maybe I could ask Hemi for help paying her, if it came to that. Maybe.

  “Sure, hon,” Debra said easily when I made the call. “If she gets feeling real bad and needs to come home, have her give me a call. I’ll take care of her. You go on.”

  With that sorted, and a promise from Karen to call me, and Debra too, if she needed us, not to mention my own unannounced plan to call her often enough to get her thoroughly annoyed, I took a car service to the airport on Friday afternoon. A call to Karen from the airport told me that (a) she was fine, and (b) I should stop bugging her, so I decided that for tonight, at least, I would enjoy myself.

  My third flight ever, and this time, it was first class, which was as different an experience as Hemi’s wine was from anything I’d ever drunk before. It might not have been a private jet, but it was good enough for me. I didn’t get as much as I should have out of the experience, though, because half an hour after the flight attendants served dinner, I fell asleep, and only woke when we were beginning our descent into the city.

  That part of it was worth it, though. The plane banking, turning in a wide circle over the winking necklaces of light marking the path of the bridges that stretched across the dark expanse of the bay, with the entrancing, compact San Francisco skyline, all towers and hills and undulating shoreline, laid out below me like the world’s biggest present.

  And when I wheeled my suitcase out of the security area of San Francisco Airport at seven o’clock, Hemi...wasn’t there.

  Of course he wasn’t. He was having dinner—a business dinner—with the Brunette Bombshells. I ignored my absurd disappointment and took a cab to the Fairmont Hotel. We started with a thoroughly uninteresting ride down a dark freeway until the lights of the city were visible, then embarked on a much more exciting journey through busy city streets and up ever-steeper inclines, past cable cars with passengers hanging off the outside, the rattle of the underground cable clearly audible together with the merrily clanging bell that announced that I was here. Until, at last, we were climbing one final hill that felt nearly vertical, all the way up to what the driver informed me was the top of Nob Hill. And pulling into a semicircular driveway in front of another grand entrance. More flags fluttering in the breeze, another historic stone building rising above us.

  As soon as the cab had had pulled to a stop, a uniformed doorman was reaching for my bag, and I was walking into another impressive lobby, all carved wood and stonework, being handed another keycard across a marble counter, taking a sedate ride to a high floor in a richly pane
led, gold-railed elevator car, wheeling my suitcase down a floral-carpeted corridor and into another suite, and doing my best not to feel like a mistress.

  Still no Hemi, of course. But every sign of him. This time, we were sharing, and his clothes were hanging in the closet, which made me ridiculously happy. There was a huge vase of red roses on the table, too, their spicy scent perfuming the air. Red for passion, I guessed, which worked just fine for me. Next to that, a media player with a little iPod stuck into it, asking for me to press a button, which I did, filling the room with soft, sexy music. A piano, the sultry purr of Norah Jones, and a whole lot of longing.

  And, finally, a tray holding a bottle of red wine, a corkscrew, two glasses, and a note.

  Back by 9:30. You’ll have to get started without me this time.

  Which made me smile more than a little.

  I thought about opening that wine, and then I thought about how delicious it would taste if I were drinking it wearing only Hemi’s favorite bra and underwear, his black heels, and a smile. About how he might feel about that, and what he might do about that. So I got started on the first part of that plan: getting clean, and getting pretty.

  And then, all right, maybe I got a little distracted. But in my defense, it was a very, very nice bathroom.

  I stepped into the tub, turned on the rainfall-style showerhead to the perfect temperature, closed my eyes, and let the water wash over my hair and down my back. I’d just...hang out here for a minute, I decided. It felt so good after the stress of the night before, followed by a day of dealing with Martine’s demands, the look on her face when she’d told me that Marketing had requested my help, and then the long journey.

  All over now, because I was here. Warm, and naked, and in a pretty terrific shower that wasn’t a hose attached to the bathtub in my kitchen, and thinking about Hemi.

  I turned, welcoming the gentle cascade on my breasts, a warm caress as soothing as a lover’s hand, as gentle as a kiss. Trickling down my belly, pooling between my thighs. Touching me everyplace I needed it, everyplace that ached.