“You’re treating me like a child,” she retorted. “I’m sick, not incapable.”
“I never implied anything but,” Xavier assured, pressing the rim of the spoon more insistently against her bottom lip. “The hardest thing a strong woman ever does is allow someone else to shoulder her burden. Believe me, though, it works out better for all involved in the end.”
Meekly, she swallowed the soup. “Who told you that?”
His smile brightened. “It’s one of my mother’s tried-and-true sayings. A truly impressive woman, much like you in spirit.”
“Ornery, high strung, and too ambitious for her own good?” Rosalind asked.
Xavier raised an eyebrow.
“It’s what my first college advisor said about me,” she replied, having lost all of ten years in her tone. “Said I was too determined and driven, and that if I planned to have any sort of career I had to learn to soften my approach or I’d be sidelined as someone who doesn’t work well with others, a loose cannon. He also told me if I wanted any kind of happy family life, I should lessen my goals.”
“American men,” Xavier huffed, adding an eye roll to compliment. “They never know what to do with a woman who is both smarter and more capable than them and beautiful. They think you have to be one or the other. I’m glad to see you didn’t take those words to heart.”
“What do you mean, ‘American men’?” she asked, accepting another spoonful of soup and his compliment, this time without protest. “Aren’t you American?”
“I’m Canadian, actually.” Xavier coughed a chuckle. “Well, naturalized now, of course. But by birth and by legacy, French Canadian. And my mother was originally from Lyon, so I guess you could even say French French Canadian. All that means is that I have an inclination to love hockey and to dislike the English.”
By the time he got her to accept a fifth spoonful of soup, her eyelids had begun to grow heavy, her frame relaxing back against the pillow. Which is just the conclusion his mother would have suggested. ‘A belly full of soup, and a night full of dreams, and you will be all better come morning,’ she’d have said.
“Okay, I can’t eat another bite. Thanks.”
“No, you’re going to finish this bowl,” Xavier insisted. “We need to weigh down your stomach enough to give it second thoughts of any kind of rebellion.”
Though he could tell she wasn’t happy about it, she acquiesced to down a few more mouthfuls. He was about ready to tell her she’d had enough when her question stopped him cold.
“Where did you run off to?”
Pausing with the spoon held high, it took him a moment to feign confusion. “I left a note. I told you I’d be right back. I ran down to buy the stuff for the soup.”
“No.” Rosalind turned her head away from the offering. “I mean at the charity party. One moment you were there, and the next, vroom. Gone.”
“I… saw someone I knew,” he lied. “I’m sorry I didn’t get a chance to say good-bye. By the time we finished catching up, it was time for me to leave. You looked beautiful by the way. You should wear formal gowns more often.”
A meek smile shone through the tired expression. “Sadly, other than the wedding gown, that’s the only one I have.”
His eyes instinctively went to the closet. “I forgot that you already have it.”
“You want to see it?”
She rose, despite Xavier’s insistence otherwise. He could tell from the lethargy she displayed it wouldn’t be long before she’d collapse back on the bed, asleep. Rosalind disappeared into her closet before reemerging a moment later with a clear garment bag through which the outline of a white gown could be made out.
“I’d take it out, but it’s getting old and I’m trying to minimize its exposure to the air until the wedding,” she explained. “It was my grandmother’s. It was meant to only be wardrobe, but she convinced the costume manager to let her buy it.”
Xavier’s eyebrow rose. “Costume manager?”
Rosalind returned the dress to its dark confines in the closet before crawling back in to bed and answering. “She wanted to be a star. Never really made it, but she was one of the Goldwyn Girls for a few years. Eventually she gave up, moved up to Capitola, opened a diner, and married my grandfather. They had been married for forty-two years when he died. They were,” she sighed, “so incredibly in love.” Her face fell, and Xavier could tell Rosalind’s mind had gone to another place in her memories. “Do you think I’m crazy with this whole finding a husband like this thing?”
He stilled. “You do realize I have a financial incentive to say no to that question?”
“I do, but honestly, am I insane?”
He pushed the spoon toward her mouth. “No, Rosalind. I don’t think it’s crazy to want someone to share your life with. And as long as you find him, who cares how?”
She smiled as he pulled the spoon back, and a tiny drop of the broth dribbled down her chin. He grabbed a tissue from the box on the night stand and pushed it to her face. Rosalind sighed and turned into his hand. Her wet eyes softened, and he barely stopped his thumb from grazing over her bottom lip.
The time had come for escape. “Wait, there’s one more thing.” He ran to the kitchen and returned with a tall bowl of steaming water.
Rosalind shifted a bit. “Is this where you go psycho and I tell the news crew later that I should have seen all the blazing red flags?”
The steam bowl filled the center of the tray. Xavier found a towel by the sink. He fetched it and wrapped it over her head. The fact that it made her look a little like a bride did not escape him.
“I’m not sure if there’s anything to this, but Helen’s Hut had two selections for your olfactory pleasure, and this seemed the better option.”
“All out of mary jane, was she?”
He couldn’t tell if she was joking. She leaned over the pot and inhaled, slowly, deeply, purposefully. As she exhaled, a smile tugged at the corner of her mouth.
“Lavender.”
“Amongst other things,” Xavier confirmed. “You don’t mind?”
She preceded her response with another inhalation. “No, I love the scent of lavender. And… hmm, I think lemon and maybe, pine? No! Eucalyptus. Yes, I love this. Thank you, thank you. This really does make me feel better.”
“Maybe I should swing by there and get some for myself on the way out.”
Falling back in to her pillows, her eyes fluttered closed. “Thanks, Xav. For everything.”
“You’re welcome,” he said as he crossed to the door and turned out the light. “Now, get some sleep. I’ll see you soon.”
Bait & Switch
Jack Colbon slapped down the stack of manila files on the desk like the piece of furniture had just insulted his mother, forcing Xavier’s eyes away from an email.
“What the hell are these?” Jack planted his hands on his hips and assumed his best I’m-being-serious-now pose.
With a wary motion, Xavier poked the pile. “Manila folders?”
“Don’t screw with me, Xav. You know what I mean. Your assistant just dropped these on my desk, saying they’re the Betters files for tomorrow night’s dinner meeting. We’re supposed to discuss the six profiles you already gave her. Six highly-qualified candidates. You and I have been working on these for weeks. A VP at Google, a self-made investment banker, a District Attorney… Those we agreed to push. Not this bunch of yahoos. Who the hell are these clowns and where did they come from?”
“You shouldn’t cuss, Jack. It’s so unbecoming in a woman of your temperament.”
Beets could not best the shade of red that Jack’s face became. “What is going on! Did you take me off this assignment and not tell me? Am I getting fired?”
Xavier closed his laptop. Keeping the hidden truth away from Jack’s honed perception would take all his concentration. There was a reason he considered Jack Colbon the c
losest thing he had at Hommes HQ to a first mate. Without Xavier’s background in education in psychology, the guy just had a way of picking up on the unspoken and predicting the undone. If there was one person Xavier would never want to see at a poker table, Jack claimed that title out loud and in Technicolor.
And yet, at the same time, he couldn’t let Jack think this confiscation of facts had anything to do with him.
“Close the door.”
“Close the…” The balding man’s fingers threaded through his remaining patches and pulled. “Oh, God, you are firing me.”
“I’m not.”
“You are, I know it,” Jack babbled. “You’ve been hiding something the last few days. You’ve avoided the subject whenever I brought up this assignment. We’ve been friends for years, Xav. Just… Just give it to me straight.”
“I bet that’s the only time in your life you’ve ever said that.” The corners of Xavier’s mouth twitched. “Now close the door and have a seat. Please.”
The quip threw Jack off kilter. He stared, huffing and wide-eyed, at his mentor. After a moment, his body came back to life, carrying out Xavier’s request. He eased himself in to the chair one vertebrae at a time.
“You’re right,” Xavier began. “I have changed my strategy on the Betters case. You’re also right that I’ve been keeping it from you. My apologies. I had planned to tell you this afternoon.”
“I have kids to support. You do remember that, don’t you?” Jack fretted.
Xavier waved away the comment with a swipe of his hand. “Oh my God, for the last time, I’m not firing you. Just listen, will you?”
Jack demurred, “Sorry.”
“It’s okay.” Taking a deep, cleansing breath, Xavier started again. “I’ve been developing my profile on Ms. Betters over the last few weeks through several observation sessions. I have one more to complete this afternoon, but I’m fairly positive this is the tact we need to take. In short, I’ve come to the conclusion that Rosalind will not accept whoever we offer to her in the first round. She’s a learn-refine-hone type of person. Didn’t you say as much when you were headhunting Carmen?”
Jack’s gaze went blank as he searched his memory. “A bit. She did want to discuss with me the type of person I was going to find after I profiled her, and made a few suggestions.”
“They weren’t suggestions, they were kindly-worded demands,” Xavier said. “And for something of this nature, she’s going to be even more apt to reject the first lot. I never presented her with the original candidates, by the way. It was a spur-of-the-moment decision. In hindsight, I see what a good decision it was.”
“So, we’re pulling out of the search?” Jack asked confusedly.
“No, we’re just being more mindful about the way we orchestrate it. We’re giving her this dummy batch at the meeting tomorrow. She will reject them immediately. Then we’ll solicit her feedback and present her in a few days with the candidates you and I decided on a week ago. Then she’ll find someone who will truly fulfill her desires. That’s the whole of it.”
“Oh, it is, is it?” Jack squinted one eye and cocked his head to the side.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner.”
Jack leaned forward. “When you say sessions, just how many does that include?”
Xavier reopened his laptop. “One at her home, one over dinner, and a very brief encounter at a charity ball.” He supposed that nursing her when she was sick technically didn’t count.
“You didn’t visit her at BetaHouse?”
Xavier schooled his features, putting on his best poker face. “I was supposed to shadow her last Thursday, but she came down ill. That’s where I’ll be this afternoon, actually. In the end, this isn’t a workplace appointment, so I don’t think it matters really.”
“Xav?”
He flashed his eyes at Jack only long enough to acknowledge him. “Yes, Jack?”
“Are you falling for Rosalind Betters?”
It happened before Xavier could stop himself. His hand went to his chin, pinching it. A physical marker of a lying man; he was surprised how difficult it was to deny the instinct even knowing it would give him away.
Jack shot up to his feet. “Oh, my God, you are. You’re falling for Rosalind Betters. No wonder you’re trying to sabotage her prospects. What the hell, Xav? You told me yourself, BetaHouse is a huge fish for us. If you go off and screw that up by sleeping with the CEO…”
“Stop!” Xavier demanded, putting two hands up. “Okay, yes, I find myself… liking her. However, there’s no need to be concerned. I’m a professional, and I will see this through, the right way. No one said anything about sleeping with her.”
“But you want to, don’t you?”
Xavier’s eyes found a spot on the far wall, again giving away his answer. Running a hand through his hair, he huffed out his frustration. “Well, who wouldn’t? She’s beautiful, charming, funny, confident. Need I go on? Yet, I stress again, I will not jeopardize seeing this out. The commission on this is running well into the five figures. I won’t put that in danger for the company just to indulge a little crush. I don’t do the casual hookup thing anymore. The plan remains to get Betters a fiancé and to the altar in June. I have every intention of seeing that through.”
Despite the veracity of his tone, Jack still proved doubtful. “You know what they say about good intentions, don’t you?”
Projected Revenues
Xavier stared at the balding fifty-something on the couch across the way from him. They met eyes briefly, and quickly looked elsewhere. Xavier wasn’t that keen on talking at the moment, but when the man looked up again, conversation seemed inevitable.
“Here to meet someone?” the man asked, a jolly shine to his voice that made Xavier crack a smile.
“Yes, Rosalind Betters.”
The man pursed his lips. “Oh, Tyrannosaurus Sex herself, huh?”
“I’m sorry, what?” Xavier carefully kept his tone even.
“Don’t tell me you’ve never heard that? Everyone in town calls her that. That, or Rosalind ‘Put Outs’ Betters.”
Xavier shook his head.
“Yeah,” the man continued, “she’s got quite a reputation for being a predator in the board room, but man, that body almost makes it worth it, you know. Just saying, I might not mind getting called into the boss’s office if she was the one handing out the discipline.”
Xavier closed his eyes and tried to gather his wits. He wasn’t sure what part of the man’s face he should slap first, he only knew it should hurt as much as possible. He drew a deep breath and cautioned himself not to scream.
“I’m sorry, why are you here exactly?” he asked.
“Job interview. I’m, um, Lazlo Spinner,” he said, extending out a hand, which Xavier shook only out a sense of social obligation. “But all my friends call me Les.”
The headhunter swallowed. “I can’t imagine why.”
Les’s vacant expression and start at a retort were cut off by Carmen’s arrival to the waiting room. She smiled at both the men, but directed her invitation to Carmen. “You can come in now, Xavier.”
“Thank you.”
“No problem.” Carmen led him through the door to the inner sanctum of BetaHouse. “This way.”
“Carmen?”
“Yeah, Xavier?”
He circled his fingers around her wrist and motioned her in close, keeping his voice low. “That man in the lobby, he’s not someone my firm sent over. What is he interviewing for?”
Confusedly, she searched the air for her answer. “A sales position, I think.”
“He’s a sexist pig. Don’t hire him.”
They exchanged the expected pleasantries as they walked to the far side of the third floor, where the executive offices were located. As far as layout of the workers went, it was the fairly typical fare.
A large, open space had been populated with rows of uniform cubicles, creating a grid of worker hives from one wall to another. A few of the employees sitting in what he determined was the finance section, given all the bar charts pinned to the walls of their space, looked up as he passed with mixed curiosity. Most of the workers, however, either barked into phones or kept their eyes fixed on the screens in front of them.
“Things been busy since the big deal?”
“Like you wouldn’t believe,” Carmen answered, leading him up a flight of stairs that led to a loft. “We’re getting ready to move to new offices, too. Need space to expand. Everyone feels in a rush to get as much done as possible before then. We’ll be offline for four days.”
“You mean Rosalind actually agreed not to work that long?”
Carmen chuckled. “I see you’ve grown to know her. She timed the move to overlap with Kamakshi’s wedding, otherwise she’d probably be on the phone the whole time in India.” The assistant sighed. “Actually, the move is good. Rosalind hates this office.”
“Hates it? Why?”
At the top of the stairs, Carmen indicated the view of the floor below the loft provided with a wide sweep of her arm. “This used to be a hat factory. Rosalind’s office was the owner’s suite. She says it has bad juju, like they’ll come to believe she looks down on them and thinks of herself as high and mighty.”
The philosophy would have thrown him for a loop given what he knew of her, but then Xavier remembered that she’d grown up in Santa Cruz, outside of the Haight one of the last hippie refuges. Surely a little of the spiritual mumbo-jumbo of that culture seeped into her blood somehow.
“Well, then, happy moving.”
Strudel’s ears steepled when Xavier and Carmen walked in. The German Shepherd didn’t exactly warm to him on their first and only meeting. Nevertheless, the pooch had seemed to wake up on the other side of the doggie pillow this morning. As Xavier sat, Strudel crawled out from under Rosalind’s desk and pushed his snout under Xavier’s hand. Rosalind, mid-conversation, only acknowledged her guest’s presence with a few flicks of her fingers signaling hello. Carmen mouthed “good luck” before taking her exit.
Have Gown, Will Wed Page 10
