Games We Play

by Cynthia Dane

  To be fair, Leah wasn’t conventionally dressed, but Sloan had done a bang-up job providing Leah with her uniform today. What man could say no to admitting a lady with feisty makeup and a mini-skirt that screamed she was open to other activities, for the right price?

  Nobody but Aaron would recognize the necklace around Leah’s throat. Not even the receptionist, who had seen the original ring on Ms. Sloan’s finger for half of her marriage.

  “Mr. Giles?” the receptionist said, knocking on the door to a conference room and poking her head inside. “The donuts you ordered are here.”

  “Donuts?” Leah shuddered to hear that man’s voice. One of the recent phone calls with Sloan revealed his real role in the fall of their marriage much too long ago. Men like that are a cancer on women everywhere. Even if Leah got it in her head to start dating men again, it was guys like Aaron who made sure she never tried it. “I didn’t order any…” He stopped before the doorway, taking in the sight of the made-over Leah, who hardly looked like the woman he first encountered in Rose City Bakery. “Never mind. Send them in.”

  Had he recognized her? Sloan insisted that he wouldn’t, because he forgot the faces of women as soon as they no longer had anything to do with his life. As far as he knew, Sloan and Leah were permanently broken up. He didn’t know about the investments around Portland, because that was done under Sloan’s own company.

  Still, that did not make his leering any easier to bear. Not even when Leah noticed that most of the other businesspeople in the conference room were a smattering of well-dressed women and their male cohorts. Leah made eye contact with one of them, but the woman looked away as if she had never seen Leah before. To be fair, the only other time they had spoken was via teleconference with Sloan here in Chicago.

  “Seems someone has ordered us some morning refreshments,” Aaron said, eyes never leaving Leah’s legs poking out from her skirt. Sloan called it. He hasn’t noticed my necklace yet. “Anyone care for some donuts?”

  “They’re actually cupcakes, sir.” Freshly baked the night before in a rented kitchen. “They’re delivered on behalf of Ms. Sloan.”

  Aaron stiffened. It was that moment he recognized Leah, and his face couldn’t possibly pale more than it did in that ghostly moment.

  “What the hell is this?” he snapped, those true colors showing through when the white left his face. He flipped open the lid on the box. Leah stood to the side, hands clasped before her and chest prominently stuck out. Not to show off her cleavage in her skin-tight blouse, but to make sure he got a great view of the repurposed wedding ring strung tightly around her neck. It had been easy, Sloan swore, to transform the bracelet into a choker. “He’ll get the message.” The choker was more like a collar, after all. Aaron understood what collars meant.

  A series of pink, frilly cupcakes looked up at him. Leah had painstakingly decorated each one, using her best calligraphy to spell out “FUCK YOU, I’M TAKING EVERYTHING.”

  Aaron closed the box in a huff. No man’s cheeks had ever been so red. “You need to get out,” he growled, as if no one else could hear him. “I don’t know how you got in here, but…”

  “Well?” Someone’s voice overpowered Aaron’s from the other side of the room. “Do we get a cupcake?”

  Leah glanced at Erica Mann, who appeared ready to have a super-serious business meeting as soon as Aaron settled down again. Too bad she was in on this as well. According to Sloan, it was half of Ms. Mann’s plan they currently enacted.

  “There’s been a mistake,” Aaron said, already perspiring. To the receptionist still lingering in the doorway, he said, “Get my lawyer on the phone. Now.” He stopped her before she left. “The divorce lawyer.”

  The receptionist glanced at Leah before rushing to her desk. Security was no doubt also on its way.

  “You need to leave,” Aaron said, attention returned to Leah. “Take your cute little cupcakes and get the hell out of here. Now.”

  “Is there a problem?” A large man in sunglasses and a dark suit approached them. The only reason Leah didn’t shudder at his presence was because she knew he was one of Erica’s men. Part of the plan, girl. Cool it.

  “No problem!” Aaron’s tone did not imply that no problem was found. In fact, there was a big problem, and that problem was Leah’s presence tainting this ill-fated business meeting. “This woman seems to have found the wrong conference room, that’s all. I believe you want two floors below us, hon.”

  Erica’s bodyguard flipped open the lid. “Looks like somebody’s in trouble.” He shot Leah a look. She may not see his eyes behind his sunglasses, but she struggled to hold in a smile, anyway. “I don’t wanna be this guy.” He turned to his boss, who now stood at the end of the conference table with her arms crossed and head cocked in amusement. Somehow, Erica Mann conveyed a more masculine energy than Aaron, who was already rattled enough to stick his head out the conference room door and demand to know if his divorce lawyer was on the line yet.

  “Marital troubles, Giles?”

  “Nothing that will affect our meeting, I assure you!”

  Erica fixed one of the buttons on her suit jacket. Bulky rings and onyx cufflinks made her hardened edge more intimidating as she narrowed her eyes and shot a heated glare at the back of Aaron’s head. “I should hope not. I need to be back on the west coast by this afternoon. By the way! Speaking of your lovely wife…” She pushed herself off the oval conference table. “Where is Ms. Sloan? You know she’s the one I brokered this deal with. I should like to have her here.”

  “Unfortunately,” Aaron bit behind his teeth, “she’s taken ill this morning.” He caught sight of Leah again and said, “What are you still doing here? Get out!”

  “There’s no need for performative male aggression,” Erica said. “This poor woman simply took a wrong turn. By the way,” a grin of anticipation crossed her face, “Where did you get that lovely necklace? What is that? Vintage? I swear I once saw a ring exactly like it.”

  Aaron did a double-take at Leah’s necklace. “That’s… get out!”

  “I’ll be happy to leave in a moment,” Leah said, shaking off his anger, “but there’s one last thing Ms. Sloan wished me to give to you.”

  “Oh my God, what?”

  Leah reached into her cross-body bag and pulled out a letter, handwritten by Sloan. On it, she declared that she had more than enough evidence of his less than savory behaviors during their marriage to take him to the cleaners. Including how he had admitted to fucking with her birth control, transcending what most judges would consider harmony between man and wife.

  “This is bullshit!” The letter landed on the floor. Erica feigned shock and appall. Her bodyguard moved in, but that wasn’t a feint. God only knew how Aaron really got when angered. “There is no evidence of that! It was…”

  “Who the fuck were you, to dictate what happened to my body without any input from me? You know? The woman who owns this fucking body?”

  The words echoed in the conference room. Aaron jumped a foot off the ground before almost knocking over his receptionist, who had run back into the room to announce the sudden arrival of someone else.

  Sloan stood on the other side of the door, her phone playing the recording over her head. “Your husband. What more is there?” Aaron’s voice soon continued.

  “Margaret!”

  “What is it, snookums?” Sloan ducked beneath his arm and into the conference room. She shared a knowing smile of greeting with Erica before dealing with her husband once more. “It’s true. I’m wringing every cent I can out of your disgusting face. Oh, and I’m leaving Giles & Sloan to start my own company. That I’ve already founded with most of our investors.”

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” Aaron gestured to Erica. “Right now?”

  “What perfect timing,” Erica said. “You’re saving me so much time that I do not have, Ms. Sloan. If you could please tell your husband that I will be joining you in your newest venture, with no intention to follow throug
h with his, then I…”

  “You can’t do this!” Red faced, Aaron jammed his angry finger between Sloan and Erica. “You can’t up and walk away with investors when we’ve already used their funds!”

  Sloan remained calm. “I can. I will. I have. I’m not going to worry about a thing, because you’ll be paying for most of it after Giles & Sloan is liquidated. You’ll be lucky to afford a cute one-bedroom apartment with your new squeeze Christie after this is all over.”

  “You can’t… where is my lawyer?”

  “Hopefully, he’s on his way, so he can tell you the fantastic news.” Sloan sank into the nearest chair. “Thank you so much for your time today, Ms. Mann,” she said to Erica. “I’ll see you in California next week for our first meeting about Sloan & Co. Industries.”

  “What?” Aaron was halfway out of his suit jacket by the time Erica and her entourage sauntered out of the room. “You knew about this already? Then what was… this meeting…”

  Sloan drummed her fingers against the arm of the chair. “Oh, this has been in the works for a long time, Aaron. So long, that I have the best divorce lawyer in the business lined up to help me castrate you and feed your balls to the hounds of hell.”

  That was Maxine’s cue to push aside the receptionist and enter with a slight skip to her excited step. This was, she later admitted, her favorite part of divorces. “Sorry we’re late!” she cried, referring to the older man in a brown suit behind her. “Aw, looks like we missed the party. Is it too late to get in on this hot, heteronormative action?”

  “Who the hell are you?” Aaron first gestured to Maxine, then to the man behind her. “Who the hell is this?”

  “Good morning, Mr. Giles.” The man in the brown suit extended his hand. “I’m Peter Barnes, Ms. Sloan’s divorce attorney. I hear that your representative is now on his way?”

  Maxine patted Peter on the back. “He was my lawyer during my very messy, very drawn out divorce a few years ago. I’m a richer, stronger, and better woman because of him.”

  “What the hell is this?” Aaron sank into the chair next to his wife. “Some kind of lesbian power party?”

  “Maxine here has all the connections women like us need in America.” Sloan spun around in her chair. “You knew about me meeting Erica Mann. You had no idea why I was meeting Maxine, though. Better for you to think I was off to visit Leah.” She patted her lap. Leah picked up one of the cupcakes from the box and brought it over to her girlfriend. For the first time since they last crossed paths in Portland, they touched.

  I’m sitting in her lap. In front of all these people. Oh my God. Leah couldn’t help but grin while she held up the cupcake with the letter F on it, as if she were displaying it for some zany morning game show.

  “You’re an awful cunt, you know that?”

  “Isn’t that what attracted you to me all those years ago?” Sloan leaned toward him, teeth bared and dripping with venom. “A cunt you could break in?”

  “Can’t break in what’s already broken, Mags.”

  Leah was prepared for flailing anger and caustic banter between the divorcing couple. She was not, however, in the mood to deal with an abusive man who had not only admitted to putting his wife through a hell she never asked for, but had no problem verbally abusing her in front of the new girlfriend and strangers.

  Before Sloan could react, however, Leah followed her instincts. The cupcake smashed against Aaron’s face, frosting dripping down his chin and vanilla cake flying up his nostrils.

  His cursing reached new levels as he jumped up from his chair and danced around the office as if his trousers were on fire. Sloan laughed, holding Leah closer to her torso.

  You laugh, but he had that coming. He had something else coming, too. Leah scrambled off her girlfriend’s lap and did not back down when Aaron rounded on her, cake still sliding down his cheeks and staining the front of his suit.

  “You’re a…” She almost faltered, because not once in her life had Leah Vaughn stood up to a man on the verge of losing his shit. She’d never dealt with an abusive ex. She’d never looked the man who impregnated her in the eye and thought “I’d be okay with you dead.” She’d spent her whole life playing everything so safe that this moment was like dropping rocks on top of her head. She might as well use those same rocks to walk into the deep end of a swimming pool and stay there until she drowned. “You’re a monster. How could you take a woman and do that to her?”

  “Who the fuck are you?” Even with cake on his face, Aaron was still an intimidating menace when he barked like a rabid dog. Leah kept her fear inside and only showed him a brave face she mustered when she glanced back at Sloan, who kept careful distance with one eye on the scene unfolding before her. “What the fuck do you know about my marriage!”

  “I know you stole over ten years of her life.” Leah’s balled fists hung at her sides. She would never lash out and strike the man, but damn if her anger didn’t want to explode! “You took someone and made her unable to trust herself in relationships. The only reason I’m here today is because I love her enough to help her through what you did to her!”

  “Love her?” Aaron scoffed. “I’m the only person capable of loving that bitch. You have no idea what it means to deal with the real her. She’ll chew you up and spit you out faster than you can beg for it.”

  “Let’s calm down now…” Peter the divorce lawyer said. Maxine remained beside him, on her phone and calling God knew who. “We can resume these discussions as soon as your lawyer is here, Mr. Giles.”

  “Fuck all of you!” Aaron threw his fist in the lawyer’s direction. Sloan sat up straight in her seat. Leah took a giant step back, but it wasn’t quick enough to outpace the man coming after her. “Do you know what she’ll do to you? She’ll hurt you worse than I ever could!”

  Leah couldn’t hide her fear any longer. She had used up every reserve of courage she had in her gut, and God only knew how long it would take to build up enough to face him again.

  He obviously was the type who loved a good wounded puppy. Because that was his fist coming for Leah’s face, convinced that she wasn’t quite wounded enough.

  Her scream once she realized what was happening could have shattered cheaper glass.

  Not that she needed to scream. Sloan was already out of her chair the moment her husband raised his fist. Either she had a keen sixth sense for what he was about to do, or this played into the fears Sloan had harbored since kindling a relationship with Leah.

  Perhaps both.

  She threw herself between Aaron and Leah, but not to take the hit on her girlfriend’s behalf. Sloan was too quick for that. Aaron, the cupcake-stained fool that he was, soon received a slap on the face and a firm push to the chest. He stumbled backward and landed in his chair.

  “Don’t. Touch. Her.” Sloan slammed her hands on the arms of his chair and heaved fire in his face. The man was too shocked to say or do anything. “You’re right, Aaron.” Her maniacal hiss kept Leah at a fair distance. Maxine was out of the room, demanding that the receptionist get security up there faster. The only person to get closer was Peter, and his hand was firmly on his phone, recording the moment for posterity. “I’m a fucking cunt. I own that. I always have, you good for nothing piece of shit. Because I’d rather be a cunt than a dick. You know why?” She pinched his greasy cheek. “At least cunts taste good.”

  Security arrived ten seconds later. Aaron barely had his bearings back, but he wasn’t about to intimidate anyone with that much confection on his complexion.

  “Do you wanna play a game, Aaron?” Sloan stood a few feet away, arms crossed while security got the scoop from Peter and Leah. “How about Monopoly? Because I’m about to own your Boardwalk.” She stomped her foot. “This building. The penthouse. The vacation house in the Poconos. All of it! You don’t get anything anymore!”

  She grabbed Leah’s hand and pulled her out of the conference room. Half of the staff in the main office pretended to not have heard or seen anything as the
y went back to their emails and tribulations with the copying machine. Leah wondered if any of them would come bear witness in divorce court.

  She didn’t have much more time to wonder. The first thing Sloan did when they were in her high-rise office was kiss her girlfriend and promise that the worst was over.

  It was only then that Leah let her fears spill out of her. Her trembling earned her the hardest hug any woman had ever given her.

  Chapter 32

  “I still can’t believe you hit him with a cupcake.” Sloan laughed into her cocktail, freshly made and delivered to her temporary accommodations six blocks away from The G&S Building. “The only way that could’ve been better was if it were a pie.”

  Leah, dressed in a comfortable shift dress, stifled her own laugh. “I didn’t know what else to do. He was saying such terrible things about you!”

  You should’ve heard what he often said in private. Sloan had brushed most of it off over the years, because what was the point of internalizing one man’s disdain for her? She wished she could say it started when she broke up with him, but when she thought about it, she realized that her ex had been getting under her skin from the first night they spent together.

  That had been part of his appeal, since it was rare for a man to make her think of him for days afterward. Most men were quickly written off as either inconsequential or nothing but trouble. Aaron? He had played his seduction so well that Sloan hadn’t realized what happened until she was in love with him. It wasn’t real love. I know that now. It was dependency. Something not even she could avoid when confronted with the wrong person.

  Her therapist had been trying to get her to see that for years. Yet Sloan, being who she stubbornly was, had no desire to say, “I had no control in the situation. He did it. He has the blame. Maybe I was a victim.”