by K. T. Tomb
When the elevator doors opened into the lobby, he swallowed hard, turned his head and smiled at Natalia. He could tell that she was nearly as nervous as he was and their smiles were meant to encourage one another.
“Here we go,” he sighed, stepping off of the elevator and approaching the waiting area between the two offices.
“Mr. Thorn. What a pleasant surprise.” Rebecca had been the first to look up and recognize Robin as he stepped into the waiting area. The bright smile faded for a moment as she looked at the absolutely stunning Natalia with her hand looped through the crook of Robin’s arm. She glanced at Robin, expecting an introduction. When it didn’t come immediately, the smile reappeared. “Who’s your friend?”
“Oh, Rebecca, I’m sorry. My mind was on other things. This is Natalia. Natalia, my former assistant, Rebecca.”
“Pleased to meet you.” Natalia’s beaming smile lit up the room as she responded with her thick accent. Daggers had already been directed toward her, but she brushed them aside without acknowledging that she noticed them.
“Likewise.” Rebecca extended her hand and maintained the fake smile she had already plastered on her face. “Aren’t you just gorgeous!”
“Thank you,” Natalia responded simply.
“Well. Mr. Thorn, this is certainly a surprise. What brings you in from Caracas?”
“I just wanted to drop in and see Will and then head out to the house and see dad, maybe catch up with Zach too.”
“Well of course you do. You may not have met Will’s new assistant, Caroline. Let me introduce you.” They walked across the waiting area to the desk that was in front of Will’s office door. Caroline rose to her feet and stepped around her desk as they approached. “Caroline, this is Mr. Robin Thorn, our CFO. I don’t believe you have met him yet.”
“You are the last of the brothers for me to meet. It is nice to finally make your acquaintance.” She extended her hand toward him.
“Thank you, Caroline. I trust you are keeping my brother in line?”
“I’m doing the best I can. Mrs. Thorn is certainly helping a great deal in that department.” The smile remained on her face as she paused and turned her attention to Natalia.
“And this is Natalia, Mr. Thorn’s friend,” Rebecca cut in before Robin had a chance to introduce her. The way the line faded off at the end was a signal of her disapproval. Sweet as the introduction was, Rebecca had the tonal communication of southern women down to an art and hoped that Caroline would pick up on it, though she doubted the Venezuelan woman would.
“Natalia. What a delight.” Not having the same predispositions that Rebecca had concerning Robin, her greeting was genuine.
“The pleasure is mine,” Natalia replied.
“You are from Venezuela, then?” Caroline was doing her best to make Natalia comfortable, though she wasn’t sure what was going on with Rebecca. They would have to talk about it later.
“Yes. All of my life.”
“How are you finding the United States?”
The wording of the question confused Natalia and she glanced up at Robin for assistance.
“Do you like it here?” Robin put it into simpler words.
“Oh yes. I love it here. I have been enjoying myself very much, thank you.” Though Natalia had to be extremely uncomfortable while being checked out by the two office assistants, she maintained her composure quite well and even outshone the two of them by being genuine.
“I will buzz Will and let him know you’re here.” Caroline reached over and pushed the intercom button. “Mr. Thorn is here to see you.”
“Send him right in,” came the reply from the speaker on the phone.
Caroline moved quickly toward the door and pushed it open to show Robin and Natalia into the office. Will was tapping at the keyboard of the computer on the credenza and therefore was turned away from them as they entered.
“Dad. I’m not sure that things are working out exactly like we had set up with the Simmons case,” he said, beginning a conversation with the only Mr. Thorn who came to call upon him regularly. When he received no reply, he turned to look, turned back and then did a double take. “Well, I’ll be damned. You’re not the Mr. Thorn I was expecting.” He rose up out of the chair and came around the desk to greet his brother.
“I don’t guess I am.” Robin beamed. In spite of the tension that had been between them, he was still welcomed cheerfully.
“How are you doing, Robin?” He shook his hand firmly and then pulled him into his chest for a shoulder to shoulder man hug.
“I’m doing good, great actually.” Without hesitation, he presented Natalia. “This is Natalia. Natalia, my brother, Will.”
“Very pleased to meet you.” Natalia stepped forward and extended her hand.
“The pleasure is certainly mine,” he responded, pressing her hand to his lips. “You are stunning!”
“Thank you,” she replied. “I understand that you also deserve congratulations on your recent marriage.” She stepped forward and placed a soft kiss on his cheek.
“Thank you very much.” He paused for a moment to catch his breath. “Robin, you should have called; we could have had lunch and I have meetings. Have you been out to the house yet?”
“We were headed there next. We just got in and came straight here.”
“Catch me up on what is going on in Caracas real quick.” He looked at his watch. “No. You know what. Let’s slip downstairs and go get a cup of coffee. We can catch up on business later this evening. The two of you will come join Aurora and me for dinner tonight, won’t you?”
“Of course.”
“Alright. Let me grab my jacket and leave a message with Rebecca. Aurora is out chasing down some loose ends. I don’t know what we’d ever do without her.”
He opened the closet door and pulled his suit jacket off of a hanger and then punched the intercom button on the phone. “Rebecca, would you let Aurora know that we’ll have two dinner guests tonight and then…”
“I’m already on it, sir. She said that she would be running late tonight, so y’all should meet at Rissoli’s.”
“Some of Aurora seems to have rubbed off on you. Did she give you a time?”
“She thought around 8:00 p.m.”
“Okay. Thank you.”
He turned away from the phone and looked up at Robin and Natalia. “You know what? You two make a dazzling couple.” He hustled around the desk. “Let’s go get that cup of coffee. Damn, Robin. It’s good to see you.” He slapped his brother on the back as he reached for the door handle.
Chapter Five
Thorn Industries,
Alpharetta, Georgia
“I don’t trust it.” Rebecca was referring to what appeared to be a rather serious relationship budding between her former boss and the caramel-skinned supermodel that he’d brought into the office and surprised them with the day before. She’d been much too busy to sit down and talk about it with Caroline the day before.
“She seems nice to me,” Caroline responded. She sensed that Rebecca might have a twinge of jealousy concerning her former boss and was playing it cool. She needed her job and she couldn’t afford to get tied up in company gossip after having only worked there for a couple of months. There had been an interim assistant after Will’s first one was arrested for blackmailing several prominent members of the company. Had she been an insider, she would have known that there was more to the story than that, but she had intentionally been hired because of her lack of knowledge in those particular affairs.
“Of course she was nice. She was trying to impress everyone.”
“She is stunningly beautiful and curvy. I’ve heard South American women are like that.”
“They were probably fake. Women can get breast augmentation in Colombia, Venezuela and all of those places down there for little to nothing.”
Caroline hoped that if she could change the subject slightly, she might get out of the gossip hot seat. “I heard that Sandra down in marketi
ng got hers done in Guatemala.”
“That’s what I’m telling you. They are dirt cheap down there. I would never go for that down there. Think of what complications might go along with it. Why, you might end up losing what little you got to get that little extra packed on.” She made a face as though she had just eaten something foul-tasting. “Sandra did that, really?”
“That’s what I’ve been told.”
“Bless her heart.” She thought about it for a minute. “I guess that’s one way to get more sales or to get a promotion, right?”
So far her strategy had worked and Caroline was off the hook. “Neither of us have that to worry about.” She giggled.
“Being promoted or having it packed on?”
“Either one.”
They enjoyed a good laugh for a moment and then Rebecca suddenly turned serious again. “He’s only been down there a little bit over a month. That is simply not enough time to be bringing a woman back to meet the family. Something about all this just isn’t right. And did you see that lost look in his eyes?”
“I wouldn’t know the difference. It’s the first time I’ve met him.” Caroline was going to be dragged into the gossip whether she like it or not.
“I’m telling you that for a man of his stature to be so quickly taken in like that…” She paused as she searched for words that simply weren’t coming to her. “There’s something that isn’t right.”
“Maybe they just hit it off. You know, love at first sight and all that.”
“Not Robin Thorn. He’s too calculating for something like that. No, I don’t trust this and I’m going to have to look into it a little bit more.”
“They had dinner with Will and Aurora last night; maybe Aurora picked up on something. You should talk to her.” Caroline was hoping that shifting things toward Aurora would allow her to escape the entire thing. If Robin was happy with Natalia, it really didn’t matter to her at all.
“Well, normally I would tell you that you’re a genius for coming up with that idea, but Aurora is so starry-eyed with honeymoon love right now that she would be useless. She’d buy right into that ‘love at first sight’ crap right now.” She made the quotes signal in the air as she spoke.
Caroline simply shrugged. She had no idea what to say and hadn’t been able to be let off the hook, in spite of her best efforts.
“I’m going to start an investigation into this. There is something that is not quite right in all of this and I’m going to find out what it is.” As she spoke, she took her empty cup to the sink, rinsed it out and hung it on her peg above the break room sink.
Caroline repeated the same actions and the two started out of the break room and back toward their desks.
Rebecca continued what Caroline had rightly determined to be a jealous tirade as they walked. “You know, Robin Thorn could have any woman in northern Georgia or all across the south if he wanted. High society ladies too, not some low-life South American girl with fake boobs.” She cut the statement off when they entered the waiting area and took note of a client sitting in the waiting area near Will Thorn’s portion of the room. Though Rebecca was steamed over what was taking place between her former boss and his new flame, she was a consummate professional and would take office gossip no further than the break room.
When she sat down at her desk, Rebecca rolled her neck around on her shoulders and then pushed her shoulder blades together to stretch muscles that had suddenly started to get stiff with the new added stress. She had noted the return of her challenge when she had looked directly into Natalia’s eyes. A woman who did that was hiding something and she knew it.
Natalia Caliente – or whatever her name was – would not make a fool out of Thorn Industries or Robin if Rebecca had anything to say about it. What was she after? What was her angle? Why had she singled out Robin? She certainly had all of the assets to seduce a man and cast a wicked spell over him, but was she merely a gold digger or was something else going on?
She admitted that she had a twinge of jealousy and there was the possibility that she was allowing that to cloud her judgment, but her gut told her she was sensing something more than just her own jealousy. Robin was a nice enough looking man, but, in all honesty, he was an accountant and sort of boring. Hot girls like Natalia wanted to be where the action was. They wanted to be around interesting and exciting guys; at least that was her experience.
Rebecca had made a number of attempts at getting Robin’s attention before she started working for him. When he had taken her on as his assistant, she had assumed it was because he had started to take an interest in her. However, relationships among employees was one area where Robin was something of a stickler. He would bend the rules in other ways to suit his needs, just like he had done when he had blackmailed several of the company executives and tried to ruin the negotiations that were taking place with Tsang Wei Electronics and Xaoping Exports. He nearly got his brother, Zach, put into a Chinese prison where he would have certainly been left to rot.
Though Robin had seen fit to step outside the lines to take over Thorn Industries for himself, he had, at the very same time, been extremely critical of the relationship between Will and Aurora. He had even gone as far as accusing Aurora of attempting to seduce John Thorn in order to make her position in the company permanent and gain a piece of the Thorn pie. Robin’s bitterness had lingered even during Will and Aurora’s wedding, though he certainly showed all of the signs of humility and seemed to have let go of his former prejudice for a time.
With all of that in mind, the warm and cozy way that he and Natalia stood side by side simply didn’t fit right. There was also the fact that Robin had once made it quite clear that as long as Rebecca was his employee, there would be nothing beyond a professional working relationship between them, something that had cut her to the quick.
She and Aurora had done an excellent job of unraveling the blackmail and Tsang Wei issues. She would do the same with whatever was going on with Robin. As a loyal employee of Thorn Industries, she felt it was her duty to protect the company. If she was wrong, then she’d have to eat crow. It was better if she kept things to herself for a while at first.
As she logged onto her computer, an idea suddenly popped into her head. Knowing how reserved and introverted Robin tended to be, he certainly didn’t pick up Natalia in a club. To find a woman like her, he would have had to use a dating service. She did a search of dating and matchmaking services in Caracas. Knowing Robin, he would have used a very high-end service that offered plenty of discretion. After scanning the half dozen sites that came up, she narrowed it down to two and settled in to study everything she could about the services.
Chapter Six
Macaracuay Sector,
Caracas, Venezuela
“I understand that you just returned with Mr. Thorn from the United States?” The man spoke from among the shadows within the office. He was nothing more than a broken up profile could be seen by anyone sitting in the other part of the room. The light focused in the direction of the visitor also made it difficult to identify him.
“We did.” Natalia was trembling and she could barely speak above a whisper.
“Very good. It seems that you are fulfilling your terms of the contract so far.” The shadow slid an envelope down the long conference table toward her. “That is the initial portion. As you know, from now on, in order to earn the remainder, you’ll need to do exactly as we ask. Understood?”
“I understand.”
“And, of course, you also understand what will happen if you double-cross us, right?”
“Yes.” She spoke low with her face turned downward.
“I’m afraid you’ll have to speak up.”
“Yes, sir. I understand that as well.”
“It would be a pity to have to harm your Nana and Buelo, wouldn’t it?”
“I couldn’t bear it.” She felt the tears welling up in her eyes at the thought.
“With that in mind, tell me everything that you
’ve learned about Robin Thorn and Thorn Industries so far. Remember, much of this information we already know, so this is something of a test. To make certain that you’re being honest with us. You understand.”
Natalia began to tell all that she had learned. Their time together had allowed her to become very well-acquainted with Robin’s role in Thorn Industries as well as what they actually did in Venezuela. By traveling with him to the U.S., she had gotten a better look at some of the company’s structure. She also became aquatinted with Robin’s brothers, father and the extremely sharp wife of the new CEO, Aurora Thorn.
She had taken a liking to Aurora almost instantly and felt like Aurora’s acceptance of her was genuine, though she seemed to be cool and distant when it came to Robin. With Aurora, Natalia had been able to relax a little bit more, because Aurora spoke fluent Castilian Spanish and they were able to converse apart from the others. Because of her attachment to Aurora, Natalia left her out of the report that she was making to the man in the shadows.
“Very well,” he said when she had finished. “You have obtained accurate information. As I said before, most of it we already knew, but you did fill in a couple of blanks for us. Now, listen to me carefully. You need to find out more; however, take your time. It has to come naturally so that no one becomes suspicious. Do you understand?”
“I understand.”
“Good. We will call on you again in a few months. Keep things moving in the right direction.” She heard a buzz to her right. The door opened and a large man dressed in a dark suit held the door for her as she exited the room.
