Robert’s feelings, however, weren’t nearly as astounded. He was upset by this display. She obviously was a member of the cleaning crew, her sweatshirt bore that out, and he wanted to know why it was that she could find all this time to play around when she obviously had work to do. But as he looked into her eyes, her light green eyes that were as large as her pretty face was small, eyes that looked so pitiful and sad that they suddenly tugged at his heart, he softened. She was breathing heavily as she stood against him, her sizable breasts lifting up and down as if she’d been running a marathon, and he quickly realized that her demeanor was not indicative of playfulness at all, but terror.
The source of that terror, Willie Charles, slid around the corner and up to the elevator too, ready to jump on board and trap her inside. But as soon as he wedged his body in between the doors as they attempted to close, he stopped where he stood. And he couldn’t believe his eyes. The boss himself, the one man in this whole wide world Willie Charles just could not stand, was holding that witch of a woman in his arms. “Mr. Kincaid?” he asked, astonished.
As soon as Robert heard Willie Charles’ voice, he stopped staring into Carrie’s eyes and released her from his grasp. Her heart dropped when he released her. “Hello, Willie,” he said.
“Good evening, sir,” Willie Charles replied, now smiling. “I didn’t expect to see you tonight.”
“Obviously not,” Robert said as he pulled out a handkerchief and began to wipe his big hands. That reaction by Robert reminded Willie Charles of just why he hated Kincaid so much. He was always so smug, Willie Charles felt. He was always looking at him and talking to him and treating him as if he was the scum of the earth. Willie Charles had seen his kind all his life. White boys who wore their fancy suits and drove their fancy rides and acted like the world owed them respect.
“What’s the problem here?” Robert asked him.
“No problem at all, sir. None at all. We was just horsing around. But it won’t happen again, I promise you that.”
Robert glanced at the young lady who now stood so close beside him that she was actually brushing against him. He knew Willie Charles was lying, he knew this girl wasn’t horsing around with anybody. But Robert also knew that he wasn’t about to get involved. “See that it doesn’t happen again,” he said sternly and walked off of the elevator.
“No, sir, it definitely won’t,” Willie Charles said as he quickly pressed the elevator’s hold button to make sure Carrie didn’t try to make another one of her getaways. “You know me, Mister K.,” Willie Charles continued, putting on his best phony smile. “I’m all about getting that work done. And that’s exactly what we’re gonna do: get that work done.”
Robert was about to walk away, to just forget about Willie Charles and everything else associated with him, but he looked at Carrie again. She stood in the elevator looking so confused, as if she didn’t know why she was even there, as if she was fighting back tears with everything she had. And for some unfathomable reason he couldn’t begin to understand, she tugged at his heart again. He exhaled. “You okay?” he asked her.
The compassion in his eyes made her want to tell him the truth and say no, nothing about her life lately has been okay. But why should he care? It was obvious to her by the way he released her, by the way he couldn’t wait to get away from her, by the way he so quickly believed Willie Charles, that the last thing he wanted was to be bothered with her. He had even wiped his hands, as if touching her had somehow contaminated him. I’m fine, she wished she was strong enough to say, just to prove to the world that they weren’t about to get the best of her. But she wasn’t fine, and that was the problem. “No,” she said to Robert, and Willie Charles shot her a look so terrifying that it made her skin crawl. He was petrified. Didn’t she know what she was saying? he wondered. Didn’t she realize that she could cause him to lose his job, not to mention Myers to lose that entire Dyson contract, if she fessed up to Kincaid? Didn’t she realize who she was about to spill the beans to?
Apparently she realized something, Willie Charles decided, because instead of busting him for his nothing short of sexual harassing behavior, she asked Robert if she could have a drink of water. Willie Charles nearly sighed relief. Robert frowned. “Water?” he asked her.
“Yes.”
Robert looked deep into her eyes as if he was studying them, and he understood. She was such a pretty young woman, he thought, with that vulnerable, who me look about her that a joker like Willie Charles wouldn’t hesitate to try and exploit. If he hadn’t already.
“I think I can round you up a glass of water, young lady,” Robert finally said. “Come with me.”
Carrie exhaled, and followed him.
SEVEN
Carrie quickly followed Robert away from the elevator, refusing to even look back at that trifling Willie Charles, her every instinct telling her that she was far safer with this tall stranger than with the man she thought, just yesterday, was the answer to her prayers. That was why she followed closely behind Robert as he walked down the long hall, through a suite of smaller offices, and then into his own big office. He motioned for her to have a seat on the sofa, which she promptly did. He walked behind the spacious, full-fledged bar and began preparing her a glass of water. She stared at him, at this white stranger in such a beautiful blue suit, at this big man with such a lovely spirit about him, until he returned her gaze. She quickly looked away.
“Sure you don’t want anything stronger?” he asked her.
“Positive,” she said with a nervous smile. “I don’t drink alcoholic beverages.”
Figures, he thought, as he walked over to the sofa and handed her the water. She drank heartily, holding the glass with both hands as she drank the entire contents, and then she looked up at her now staring host.
His breath caught when those big green eyes looked up at him, and he suddenly felt an odd sense of concern for Carrie. What had Willie Charles done to this young woman, he wondered, that had her literally shaking in terror when she ran into his arms? Had he come on to her? Had he threatened her? Had he touched her? Robert’s jaws tightened at the thought. He actually believed, during this one moment in time, that he could have harmed Willie Charles if he’d touched her.
“I was thirsty,” Carrie said as she handed the now-empty glass back to Robert. “Sorry about that.”
“Nothing to be sorry about,” Robert said as he sat the glass on the cocktail table. “Anything else I can get for you?”
“Oh, no,” Carrie said, quickly rising to her feet. “You’ve been most kind as it is, and I’m sure you’re very busy.”
“I’m okay,” Robert said as he unbuttoned his suit coat. “Sit down. Please.”
“I don’t want to trouble you any longer—”
“What’s your name?”
“My. . . name? Carrie. My name’s Carrie.”
“You’re not troubling me at all, Carrie. All right? Now sit.”
Robert smiled when he said this as if to help relax his nervous guest, but given what Carrie had just been through with Willie Charles, she was too suspicious of any man’s generosity to even think about relaxing. Although, she had to admit, his face seemed to glow with warmth, and his soft gray eyes had a knowing look about them that made her feel as if he completely understood her.
“I don’t mind if you sit down too,” she said, patting the seat beside hers and smiling greatly, a gesture that almost made Robert smile. She was offering him a seat in his own office. Now that took nerve, he thought.
But he sat down beside her anyway.
Carrie felt a sudden jolt of excitement when Robert’s large body sat beside her. She began talking, rambling even, anything to keep her sense of awkwardness from becoming too apparent. Why this man was affecting her this way was a mystery to her, but it was undeniable. “That water tasted great,” she said. “It’s not from the tap, is it? It’s like that spring water, that bottled water you can buy at the Pigly Wigly?”
Robert almost smiled.
“I’m not sure, but I believe so,” he said.
Carrie looked back at him. She was sitting on the edge of her seat, but he had leaned back in a slouched position, his legs crossed, his eyes seeming to stare right through her. “You aren’t sure?” she asked him. “You mean to tell me you don’t know where your own water comes from?”
“It’s always here is what I mean,” he said. Carrie, however, still stared at him. Not because, as Robert thought, she didn’t understand him, but because she couldn’t take her eyes off of him. “I don’t go out and buy it,” he added. That still didn’t stop Carrie’s stare. “You’ll have to ask my secretary. I’m not in charge of the water.” He finally said this when it was obvious to him that nothing he said was going to satisfy that curious look on her face.
“What are you in charge of?” she willed herself to ask.
Robert smiled. “Too much,” he said.
“Is this your office?”
“Yup.”
Carrie looked around. “It’s very nice. It’s certainly a lot for one person.”
“Agreed. But in my line of work you have to impress or you may not seal the deal. It’s the art of the deal, that’s all.”
“That’s stupid.”
Robert smiled. “Is it?”
“Of course it is. If I want to make a deal with somebody I wouldn’t give a flip nickel what their office looked like. I would be more concerned about their competence and what all they could do for me. Know what I’m saying?” She asked this and looked back at him. Those eyes of hers seemed to stun him again and he blinked.
“I know exactly what you’re saying,” he said. “And I agree with you.”
“But you keep up appearances anyway?”
“That’s right.”
“Why? You aren’t the boss?”
“Yes, I’m the boss.”
“Just not the boss of yourself?”
Robert smiled. Sometimes he wondered. “I think I am,” he said.
Carrie shook her head aggressively. “That’s the difference between you and me,” she said. “I know I am. I used to give my mama fits about it too. She said I was more stubborn than a Peeping Tom in a girls locker room.” Robert laughed. “But I didn’t care what she or anybody else said about that. You have to know what you believe in and stick to it, no matter what.”
“Yeah, well, Carrie, you keep on living. Life has a way of tossing all kinds of twists and turns into that straight line of beliefs you talk about.”
“I’m sure it does. But God will see you through.”
Robert didn’t respond. He used to believe that too, believed it with every fiber of his being. Now he didn’t know what he believed. “What was that all about with Willie Charles?” he asked her.
“Willie Charles?”
Robert didn’t respond.
“Nothing really. He just. . . He just got on my nerves, that’s all. It was nothing.” She knew Willie Charles’ behavior deserved to be uncovered, but there was something about telling a black man’s faults to a white man that didn’t sit right with her. She just couldn’t do it.
“Why were you so terrified if nothing had happened?” he asked her.
“Terrified? Me?”
Robert nodded. “Okay,” he said, deciding right then and there to forget about it. She wasn’t about to rat out Willie Charles and he was going to respect that.
“You like working here?” she asked him, to change the subject.
Robert thought about it, although he didn’t know why. “Sure. I love working here.”
“What do you do?”
“Everything.”
Carrie smiled. “That’s no answer.”
“It’s not?”
“No. An answer is supposed to be specific to the question. What’s your job title in this big place?”
Robert paused. He wondered if she’d clam up, become intimidated, when she found out who he really was. “Was senior vice president for many years. Now I’m the recently appointed CEO,” he said. Then he looked at Carrie to gauge her reaction.
Carrie, however, didn’t show any reaction. “Chief Executive Officer,” she said. “Are you ‘chief’ because of your age or because of your experience?”
Robert laughed, he couldn’t help it. And as for Carrie clamming up, he should be so lucky, he thought. “Probably both,” he said.
Carrie smiled. Then nodded her head. “CEO. Now that’s a title. I remember when I got to be head cashier at this diner back home and how great it felt. I felt like I had really done something with my life, you know? But of course my mama, everybody calls her Honey, didn’t think so at all. She thought I was wasting my life rather than doing something productive with it. She wanted me to marry Dale Mosley, you see, not because she thought he would be this wonderful husband for me, but because he promised to give her the house she’s staying in. His family owns a whole lot of rental properties around town. Nothing big like what you do, but it’s a big deal in little Attapulgus. That’s my hometown. Attapulgus, Georgia. You ever hear tell of Attapulgus before?”
Robert shook his head. “I don’t believe I have.”
“Don’t feel bad, nobody has. But that’s where I’m from and the day I got to be head cashier at that diner was the second greatest day of my life. But Mama, like I said, didn’t think it was a big deal at all. She hated the idea. I had graduated third in my class and was supposed to go to college, you see, but I didn’t quite make it—”
“Why not?” Robert asked, his interest suddenly peaked.
“Why not what?”
“Why didn’t you make it to college?”
Carrie hesitated. Too long a story, she decided. “I just didn’t,” she said.
“That’s no answer either, young lady. You can’t let life’s circumstances deter you from taking care of your business, you should know better than that.” Robert said this harsher than he had intended, but for some reason the idea that she had squandered a chance to make her dreams come true upset him. “If you would have went on to college as you should have done,” he went on to say, “then you wouldn’t have to scrub floors for a living, or put up with clowns like Willie Charles.”
Carrie didn’t know how to respond. “Scrubbing floors is an honest living too,” was the best she could finally think to say.
“I would never suggest that scrubbing floors wasn’t an honest living. That’s not the point I’m trying to make here.”
“I don’t see where there’s a point to be made. It’s my life, my decision.”
“I didn’t say it wasn’t your life or your decision. Did I ever once say that it wasn’t your life?”
Carrie smiled. “Why are you so upset?” she asked him, amazed by his reaction.
“I’m not upset,” Robert said in such an exasperated way that it only highlighted the fact that he was highly upset. “I’m just saying that if you, somebody who graduated third in your class, had the opportunity to go to college, to take care of your business, and you squandered it—”
“My mama got sick,” Carrie said and looked at Robert, her eyes loaded with the anguish of what those few words really meant.
“Sick?”
“She had a stroke two days after I graduated high school. Everything was set. I had a full scholarship to Georgia Southern, I had a dorm room already assigned to me, I had my entire professional career mapped out like a life plan. But what was I supposed to do? Leave my mama in a coma in the hospital and go on and, as you put it, take care of my business? My mama nearly died and she had nobody to care for her. She was my business.”
“Of course,” Robert said, feeling like a jerk for coming down so hard on her in the first place. “I’m sorry.”
“No, it’s okay. You didn’t know. But that’s why it just wasn’t meant for me to go to college. Not then anyway. And after a while it just wasn’t practical for me to go. Mama still expected me to do certain things for her, she’s a very demanding lady, and I had to work and earn a living. So I did what I had to do.
”
Robert stared at her. Life was never simple, he thought. People look at Carrie and see nothing more than a black woman scrubbing floors, somebody who was a living monument to what happens when you don’t take advantage of the American dream. When, in truth, she couldn’t wait to take advantage of it, had it all mapped out and everything, but that terrible teaser called Fate got in the way. “Any regrets?” he asked her.
Carrie quickly nodded. She couldn’t lie. “Yes,” she said. “Plenty. But there’s nothing I can do about that now. That’s why it was so special to me when I became head cashier. Not just cashier. But head cashier. Like I’d finally accomplished something, despite my setbacks. It was the second greatest day of my life. So when you say you’re CEO and all, I know how you feel.”
Robert wanted to shake his head, not at the absurdity of Carrie’s comparison, but at the fact that he was sitting here listening to her at all. He had work to do, he didn’t come by the office just for the hell of it. He came to pick up that budget analysis on Dyson’s mall proposal the accounting department had worked so hard at completing. His plan was to grab it, go home and review every detail before tomorrow’s board meeting, and then get to bed. But something about this woman glued him to his seat. Most females her age bored him to tears with all of their eagerness to please him and chitchat about silliness, but this one was different. She was undoubtedly young, but she had an aura of wisdom about her that fascinated him. And although she seemed eager to please him too, she also seemed principled, and courageous, and innocent as a dove. He almost reached out and touched her beautiful, silky black hair, to comfort her, as he couldn’t seem to help but get caught up in the rapture of that innocence.
But then he caught himself. He fell for Gloria’s dove-like routine once too, and what did that get him? A woman who never loved him, who deceived him mercilessly for nearly twenty years, who gave him nothing but a broken heart, a loss of faith, and enough regret to last a lifetime. He exhaled and kept his hands to himself. He was fooled once. Never again.
A Special Relationship Page 5
