by Mary Calmes
Dane stood with Truman, glancing around the room in response to what the other man was pointing out. I realized that not one pair of eyes in the room was not on the two of them or, more precisely, on Dane. Easy to understand the fascination, as in his black Versace suit with the black dress shirt underneath and black cashmere topcoat, he looked like he had just walked off the cover of a magazine. The short jet-black hair and the steel gray eyes, sharp, chiseled features, his height, the width of his shoulders, his chest, and just the way everything fit... he was breathtaking. The air of cool detachment, the absence of a smile, the way he oozed confidence... his presence in a room was palpable, he charged the air around him. And I used to think I was over-romanticizing him, but after five years of being his assistant, after being with him when he met people, seeing their reactions, I knew it was simple truth. The man was riveting and there was no way not to notice.
I walked over to him and he tossed me his digital camera.
"What am I doing with this?"
"Look at the woman in the fifth picture."
I flipped through the photos as he was offered a drink that he graciously declined.
"Who is that?" he asked me, leaning in close, pointing on the screen.
I turned and looked up into his eyes. "That's Sabine Raleigh."
The completely vacant look I got in return made me laugh.
"Who?"
"You went on like three dates with her," I informed him.
"When?"
"Late July."
He scowled at me.
"What?"
"Are you sure?"
"Am I sure of what? That you dated her?"
"Yes."
I wasn't positive if he was kidding or not. I almost laughed.
"Jory, are you—"
"You're not kidding." I was in awe. "Holy shit."
"Watch your language," he snapped at me, shaking his head before he pointed at Truman. "Go thank him for his hospitality so we can go."
I did as I was directed and hugged Truman and Bette again before I caught up with my boss. His hand went where it always did, to the back of my neck, as he steered me out of the house. I would have walked into the side of the car, as I was looking at the rest of the pictures, but he grabbed the collar of my coat and yanked me to a stop.
"So what happened?" I probed, looking up at his profile.
"Get in," he said flatly, holding open the door of his Mercedes for me.
I got in, leaned over, and opened his door before putting my seat belt on, still flipping though the photos. The camera was really nice, and from the looks of it Jude's home was stunning.
"What's he got? Like a loft or something?" I asked when he got in.
"Or something."
"It's nice."
"Yes, it is."
I waited until we were on our way before I asked again what had happened.
"Wait," he said suddenly, pulling over to get out and take off his suit jacket and lay it over his topcoat in the backseat.
When he got back in and pulled away from the curb I asked him again what he'd done. There was no answer.
"Boss?"
"You know what," he exhaled quickly. "Stop saying that, all right?"
I looked at his profile. "Stop saying what?"
"Boss."
"Boss?"
"Yes, don't—it's not us anymore."
This was news. "So what should I—"
"Just use my name. Just Dane all right?"
"Okay."
"Excellent." He sighed, long and loud.
"So... fess up. What'd you say to Sabine?"
He cleared his throat.
"I'm waiting."
"I told her it was a pleasure to meet her."
My eyes widened as I looked at him.
He glanced at me before he rolled his eyes.
"Oh shit," I breathed out. "What'd she say?"
"She slapped me and left."
I almost laughed but I covered it with a lot of coughing.
"It's not funny."
"No, it's not," I agreed, clearing my throat. "Jesus."
"You're not helping."
I flipped through the pictures again.
"Say something else."
"Like what?"
"I don't know."
"Should I say oh shit? 'Cause I'm thinking oh shit."
"Jory—"
"Oh shit," I breathed out again. "Christ, Dane, maybe it's time to slow down, huh? Holy crap."
"I truly had no idea who she was."
"Holy shit."
"Stop saying that."
"I can't help it. She must have been so humiliated. I mean... I never really liked her but damn... at least I remembered who she is."
He made a noise of disgust.
I raked my fingers through my hair. "Poor Sabine. She's gotta be horrified."
"I would imagine so."
"Holy shit."
He growled and told me to shut up.
"And she's the one with all the great restaurants, remember?"
Clearly, from the vacant look on his face, even with prodding, he had no idea.
"Well I can tell you that she called for two weeks after you broke up with her."
"I don't remember that."
"'Cause once you break up with them, I'm on deck." I cracked a grin. "I handle cleanup."
He looked at me hard.
"What?"
"You do a lot for me."
"'Cause ya pay me to," I teased him.
He grunted and leaned back, getting comfortable in the seat as he drove. "I turned down the food offer for you. Mr.
Ward's wife wanted to make you a doggy bag."
"Oh that would've been nice."
"No," he said, squinting his eyes. "You don't do charity."
Which made no sense. "It's a common form of kindness here on Earth to give people food to take home with them when they leave. We even have special receptacles to carry the food in. It's called Tupperware."
He grunted again and I settled back in my seat, watching the streetlights go by.
"I hate leftovers."
We had been silent for several miles and so his voice, coupled with the fact that he was still following the same train of thought, surprised me.
"What?"
"Leftovers," he repeated. "I hate them. It's never as good as you remember."
"Uh-huh." I smiled slowly. "You think maybe you're over-analyzing this a little?"
He cleared his throat.
I waited, and when he remained silent I was going to just start talking about something, anything, some random topic, but when I opened my mouth he began.
"Before my parents were killed, my mother had ordered a cake for my birthday. Eighteen was huge, and the party she had planned was going to be a spectacle. The news that the plane had gone down came the same day they delivered the cake, and I guess our housekeeper just shoved it in the refrigerator without thinking."
He never talked about his parents, so I was silent, making sure I didn't disturb him.
"I found it in there like a week after the funeral, this huge Superman cake. What possessed her to order it I will never know, but it was there, taking up an entire shelf with like
'Happy Birthday to our superhero' or something to that effect on it." He was silent for a few minutes, just watching the road. "And I knew she would have gotten the biggest kick out of watching me blow out candles and do the Superman pose and everything else, so I took it out and cut a slice."
I couldn't imagine how much Dane missed his parents.
There had just been the three of them and his grandmother.
She had passed two years before his folks. And they had died aboard a private plane on their way home from one of his father's many business trips. His mother didn't usually go with him, but the meeting had been in San Francisco and she loved the city by the bay.
"The cake was really good, I remember, but there was so much of it. If I'd have had my party... but it was a full sheet an
d I was just one guy. I swear it lasted forever. Every night for desert—I had it. My friends came by, my dad's business associates, people I didn't know—I offered everybody cake and they probably thought how weird it was that I had this cheesy little kid's cake, but nobody said anything about it."
I stared at his profile and waited.
"I remember there was still half of it left and I tried to give some to Jude to take home. He said he hated leftovers, and I realized that that was all it was—something leftover. I had made a big deal out of something I'm sure my mother would have tossed out the next morning, if not the night of the party. She always wanted me to live in the moment—the cake lying in the fridge day after day would have annoyed the hell out of her."
I nodded as he turned to smile at me.
"I pitched it the next day."
"And so what—now you don't believe in leftovers on some spiritual level?"
"I just don't like them at all."
"So that's why I couldn't take any from Mrs. Ward?"
"Yes."
"Spoken like someone who never had to make one meal stretch into two or three. When you grow up poor, leftovers are part of survival."
"I hate them. I never want to see something twice. You can have too much of a good thing."
I shook my head. "You're very disturbed."
"Obviously."
"Are you going to send Sabine some flowers and a card of apology?"
He rolled his eyes like I was stupid. "Sure. Find me a card for I'm sorry I forgot you."
I chuckled. "Seriously... maybe you should slow down, huh, player?"
"Shut up."
I sat there, smiling out the window.
"You're saying you have no weird thing from your childhood that makes no logical sense?"
"No, I won't say that."
"Tell me."
I shrugged. "Garbage bags."
"I'm sorry?"
"Garbage bags. You know the plastic kind? Hefty or Glad or whatever."
"Yes, I know what a garbage bag is, just make me understand."
"Okay. See, when I was little it was a luxury item. We used the plastic bags that they packed our groceries in to put trash in because real garbage bags were at the bottom of the list. My grandmother lived on her Social Security and the state helped her with food stamps for me. That was all there was, so... but the little bags broke all the time and sometimes all we had were the brown paper ones. It was a mess."
"And what?"
"So now I keep like four different sizes of garbage bags at all times. I completely freak if I run out of them. I feel like I'm back there in the trailer park."
"But you loved your grandmother."
"I did, but I didn't love being called poor white trash for where I lived. I didn't love our scary neighbors or never having enough so we could pay the electric bill and eat at the same time. Sometimes at the end of the month all we had was rice and beans."
"Which is probably why you don't eat either."
"Probably."
"Huh. Garbage bags."
"Yep. Any size you need." I sighed. "Even got lawn bags."
"You don't have a lawn."
"So not the point."
He laughed softly and then let out a deep breath. "We're both deeply flawed."
"You think?"
"I know."
"Well, if no leftovers and a variety of garbage bags is the extent of our neurosis—then I'm fine with it."
"Okay." Dane agreed with me.
"Okay."
"Are you tired?"
"No, why?"
"I don't feel like going home."
"You wanna hang out with me?"
He shrugged and I smiled because he did.
"Did it hurt when Sabine slapped you?"
"Could we stop revisiting this topic?"
I almost cackled. "Open mouth, insert foot."
"Shut up."
"Your friends are gonna give you so much shit."
He groaned loudly and I asked him what he wanted to do.
"I don't care."
We drove to the Varsity theatre downtown where they were showing Breakfast at Tiffany's and they had recliners, couches, and overstuffed chairs instead of rows of seats. I got us both steaming mugs of oolong and got a weird look when I passed it to him before I sat down.
"What? You don't want me to sit by you?"
He just continued to look at me like I had sprouted wings or something equally strange.
"You want me to pull a chair over here in case some hot woman wants to sit down?"
He sipped his tea. "No."
"Then what's with the look?"
"No look, it's just interesting."
"What is?"
He turned his deep dark eyes on me. "You, Jory."
"Me?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
He smiled over the top of his cup. "Well, the fact that you're here hanging with me at twenty-two years old instead of out getting laid... that's interesting."
I snorted. "I'll be twenty-three in January."
"Which has what to do with anything I just said?"
"I dunno."
"Just talking to hear yourself, huh?"
"No, I just... isn't Thanksgiving a holiday that you're supposed to spend with your family?"
"Yes, it is."
I looked him in the eye. "Well then."
He stared at me and I stared back and between my words and the way I met his gaze with my own, he understood what I was trying to say.
"Okay," he said as the movie started.
And somewhere near the middle of the film he gave my leg a gentle pat as he slouched down in his seat. It was not to be missed that the man treated me more like his brother than his assistant. I wondered briefly if he realized it himself.
Chapter Two
Sitting at the bar the next evening at The Arbor, watching Trip on the dance floor with his friends, I wondered how I had so misread a dinner invitation. I thought we would get drinks, move on to dinner, and finally take a walk and get to know each other. I had imagined us alone. Apparently he had imagined dancing at the club with friends. He had invited half a dozen people to join us and he was currently sandwiched between two very beautiful women, doing the bump and grind. As I glanced at them I realized that what I had thought would be just him and me, he had seen as an opportunity to party. And I could get out there and do some dirty dancing of my own, but I didn't feel like it. At twenty-two, I was tired of the club scene. I'd rather be home ironing my clothes. This was what came of having a fake ID at sixteen. All the excitement was gone by the time you were legal enough to do all the things the law said you could.
I declined two drinks the bartender tried to put down in front of me, sent over from men I didn't know, and instead paid my tab and headed for the door. I glanced over my shoulder but Trip didn't even notice. I was going to make a clean getaway.
Outside on the street my phone rang and I leaned back against the glass window and answered it.
"I need to talk to you," Sam Kage said flatly on the other end.
I was surprised that I was talking to the vice detective again. I had thought our last encounter was it. When he came to my apartment in the middle of the night and yelled at me for not letting him protect me, I thought I had finally driven him away. I had hoped I was wrong, prayed I was wrong, but feared I was right. Sam Kage had a hold over me that was hard to articulate and I was usually so good at talking.
"Jory."
"Sorry, why do you need to talk to me?"
"You're my witness, you idiot."
My friend's husband had killed a man and I had been around to see it. Sam Kage was the detective on the case.
Thrust together by circumstance, we had found something more, something unexpected, and it had been moving forward until we hit a snag. Sam considered me, sleeping with me, having me around, a detour when I had been thinking permanent. I had left instead of trying to sway his feelings. And it killed me to leave him, b
ut I knew that it would be fatal down the road. As it was I thought of him often, and each and every time my heart hurt. Even being on the phone with him was hard. But once I could breathe I could guess why he was calling. I had been chased by guys sent to silence me and my testimony just nights before and he was probably following up on that. I had called his partner, Dominic Kairov, instead of him, which I knew had been petty.
It was the reason for Sam's appearance at my door in the wee hours of the night. He had showed up to yell at me.
"Are you there?"
"Yeah, sorry. Go ahead."
He cleared his throat. "You know those guys that chased you the other night, we brought them in on—"
"You know who they are?"
"Yeah, we know who they fuckin' are."
"Oh."
"Oh," he repeated like I was brain-dead. "Jesus."
"Maybe I'll just hang—"
"Wait," he said fast. "Just wait."
I sighed long and loud but said nothing.
"Okay, so like I said, we brought them in on separate charges and their rap sheets are good for attempted murder, aggravated assault, and attempted rape. Lucky... you were just lucky they didn't get a hold of you."
"Yeah," I agreed.
"Yeah? That's all you have to say?"
"What do you want me to say?" I said softly, rubbing the bridge of my nose, realizing that I hadn't eaten dinner yet and I had had a lot to drink while I was watching Trip dance.
"Why do you sound all weird?"
"I'm drunk," I said flatly.
"Oh yeah?"
"Yeah."
"Where are you?"
"I'm on my way home."
"How 'bout you meet me for dinner?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"You hate me." I said and I sounded petulant even to myself.
"I don't," he said, and I could almost hear the smile in his voice. The flutter that rolled through my stomach was really annoying.
"Well, I hate you." I was back to sounding like a brat.
"No ya don't."
And I didn't. I was crazy about him plain and simple and too drunk not to show it. I chuckled. "Well somebody hates somebody or we'd be together."
"You're a drama queen, that's why we're not together."
I grunted.
"Just come on. Tell me where ya are."
So I told him and he said to give him five minutes. I promised to give him that. I fiddled with my phone, deleting old text messages and downloading a new song for my ringtone. It was always a good diversion. I lost track of time.
