“Just a second.” His toothbrush and contact lens case fell into his toiletry bag. His hand wrapped around the handle of the door. “Thanks for coming up so quickly. I really need to… Oh, Rosa… I mean, Miss Betters.”
He tried to read her emotions, but for the first time, came up short. No pouty lips or dull eyes, no slow mannerisms or twirling fingers. She was, frankly, all business.
“Mr. Hommes.” She dipped her head.
How could she be so stoic, like he hadn’t just admitted he loved her and asked her to marry him two hours before?
She seemed to notice the luggage piled up behind him. “Are you leaving?”
“I think it might be best,” he admitted. “Given that we…” His voice trailed off.
“I understand.” Putting her henna-painted hand over her mouth, she cleared her throat. “Well, I won’t take up much of your time then, but can we speak for a minute? It’s business-related.”
Awkwardly, he stood aside and motioned her in. Unlike the night before, Rosalind stayed on her feet and on her game, giving a dictionary-worthy performance of the term unflappable.
“There’s no need to fire me. I know I stepped over the line and I could understand how my professionalism is in question in your eyes. I will accept fully the consequences. I’ll notify my staff when I return that we’re no longer taking orders to fill positions at BetaHouse. I only ask that you keep the details private. My staff are dedicated and hard-working, and it wouldn’t be right to jeopardize their livelihoods because I messed up.”
“Fire you?” Rosalind looked perplexed. “On the contrary, Mr. Hommes, I need your expertise more than ever. You see, there’s a very critical and urgent position of which I just became aware, and I need to be certain I find the best candidate ASAP.” Her eyes shot suggestively to the hotel-branded note pad on the nearby desk. “Perhaps you’d like to jot this down?”
With a sigh of resignation, Xavier shoved his hands in his pockets and turned his eyes to the floor. “Ms. Betters, I’m not sure this is a good time. I have to get to the airport soon, and I—”
“I’ll double your standard commission.” Arms crossed over her chest, Rosalind looked down her nose at him expectantly. “Despite what happened today, don’t think I’m about to discredit your work because of anything you’ve said to me.”
Xavier blinked, then straightened while he took up the notepad and a pen. “Very well, but I hope you’ll understand that when I get back to the office, I’ll be transferring management of the BetaHouse portfolio to Jack Colbon.”
Rosalind made no comment to that, only began to ramble out the details. “The candidate needs to be able to start work immediately. That’s very important. Make a note of that and underline it twice.”
“Yes, Ms. Betters. Qualifications?”
She balanced her chin on her index finger and sucked in her bottom lip. “Truthfulness, commitment, compassion, and I shouldn’t have to mention that I value intelligence and education.” She looked at him pointedly. “Just curiously, Mr. Hommes, where did you go to school?”
Exhaling at the need to discuss himself, he answered, “University of Toronto for my undergrad, then Purdue for my masters.”
“Really?” she asked as though he had just rambled off that he knew pi to fifty places. “Both really good schools.” Turning, she continued, “Anyhow, I also value language, and would prefer someone multilingual.”
He almost rolled his eyes. “Any particular language?”
“Hindi is most useful, but I would really like someone who speaks French as well.” With a grin, Rosalind planted her hands on the edge of the desk behind her, arching her back and looking as coquettish as a teenage crush. “Oh, my, you speak both those languages, don’t you?”
His breath halted. “Rosalind?”
“Answer the question, Mr. Hommes.”
“Indeed, I do. I might also add I have a working knowledge of Italian, born of my love for the Opera.” Xavier ceased scratching his notes and put the pen and pad of paper down. “May I guess the rest of your qualifications?” He took one step toward her, but didn’t dare too much, too soon.
Her smile broadened. “Do.”
“A sense of humor, a disposition toward professionalism and discretion,” he said. “I might mention here the fact that I’m a man living in one of the most technologically-innovative places in the world, and yet I share your preference for the classics when it comes to movies and music. Some might say that carries a bit of humor. Is that good enough?”
Her face brightened. Rosalind straightened, putting one fist on her hip and giving him her best Mae West impersonation. “Too much of a good thing can be wonderful.”
“Also,” he continued, “I think my professionalism has been evidenced on more than one occasion, if not so much today. As to discretion, I would note that I made sure we were alone in a dark corner without prying eyes before I kissed you, and I plan on being equally discreet when we make love for the first time. We’ll be somewhere that we won’t disturb any one and more importantly, that no one will disturb us for a very, very long time.”
She stared blankly in the air, nodding slowly, as Xavier stalked her like a lion to prey, advancing on her with heavy-lidded eyes. “Yes, you’re really taking what I say to heart. Oh, there’s also the condition that the candidate be male. You’ll excuse my asking, but after all we do live in San Francisco and I’ve learned from experience one cannot always assume: are you male, Mr. Hommes?”
Xavier looked down at the small distance left between them. He leaned down and cupped his hands under Rosalind’s knees, pulling up her legs and pushing her back to sit atop the desk. Stepping between her legs, the skirting of her sari hitched up. When she arched back and pivoted her hips forward, clear thoughts became impossi-ble. Need overrode concern. Xavier moved his hands around her hips and pulled her flush against him, bringing a gasp that he felt sinking into his skin, reawakening the desire he’d put in cold storage for too long.
Rosalind grinned as her thighs anchored on his hips and she felt empirically the answer to her question through the thin cotton that separated her from his button fly. “Oh, you are indeed very male.”
“More so by the moment.”
When he kissed her, it wasn’t with the awkward, nervous restraint he had the first time. Xavier devoured Rosalind, pressing his mouth to hers, taking pride in the way she moaned as he tasted her. His fingers laced behind her back, and he felt himself instinctively move with her, his body wanting to demonstrate to her the fact his heart had already declared and which now fell from his lips unbidden.
“Je t’aime.”
Rosalind pulled back, her breath shaky and her pupils dilated. “Et je te désire.”
He paused on her lip. “I didn’t know you spoke French.”
“You never asked.” She grinned up at him.
“And Kane? He said no?”
“Kind of. He asked me to ask him.” Xavier’s confused expression forced her to clarify. “I said no.”
“But…” Xavier couldn’t help the nervous guffaw from bubbling out. “You seemed so set, so determined. What changed?”
Rosalind tilted her head to the side and threw her arms around his neck, pulling his head back to hers. “I realized that I already had everything I wanted, and everything I wanted was you.”
He swept her from the desk and had managed to carry Rosalind halfway to the bed before there was a knock on the door. In a blind head-on collision with reality, Xavier suddenly remembered that he was, in fact, sharing a room with Kane Kennedy, who had already demonstrated a profundity for bad timing. In an exchange of glances with Rosalind, he could tell this same thought was going through her head.
He lowered her to the floor with a groan. “How do you want to handle this?”
Rosalind examined her sari, smoothing it back down over her legs and throwing th
e long accompanying scarf back over her shoulder. “With professionalism. I’m sure we can still manage to eke out a little bit of that between the two of us.”
Xavier laced his fingers through Rosalind’s and squeezed as he leaned sideways to plant a kiss on her cheek. “I’ll be here.”
She winked as she made her way to the door. “I’m planning on it.”
Both she and Xavier were relieved, however, to find it wasn’t Kane, but the valet on the other side.
“Someone asked for help with luggage?”
The thin-as-a-cracker man looked confusedly between the couple. Xavier reminded himself that the bellman at a hotel likely had seen his share of post-coital couples, and no doubt they looked the part. He wanted to get rid of the man as quickly as possible so he could earn the status.
Xavier cleared his throat and indicated the suitcase, garment bag, and laptop carrier behind him. “Yes, those are the bags.”
The bellman flicked his head and made his way into the room, totting his cart behind him. “Going to the airport, sir? Do you need a cab?”
He looked to Rosalind, interrogating her with his expression. “Do I?”
“No, you don’t.” Rosalind reached for her handbag and pulled out some obscene denomination of American greenback. The valet’s eyes bugged from his skull as she handed it over. “These bags will all be going to my suite.”
“Mon trésor, are you sure?”
Rosalind pushed two fingers to his lips, stilling his words. “Absolutely. We have a wedding to plan, after all. We should get to work on it immediately.”
“Really?” Xavier laughed. “Because the way you’re acting, I think you’re much more concerned in making sure we’re ready for the honeymoon.”
A serious look flattened out her smile. “You are going to marry me, aren’t you?”
Leaning over, he planted a kiss on the tip of her nose. “I deserve as much, if not more. I didn’t know it back when we met, Rosalind, but I think this whole time I’ve been looking to find everyone’s perfect match, what I was really looking for was my own. My whole life, what I’ve been hunting for is you.”
“Then I have only one other thing to say to you, Mr. Hommes.” Rosalind leaned in, her lips flush to his, as she coaxed a band of gold on to the ring finger of his left hand. “You’re hired.”
Epilogue: Cordially Invited
“Eleven-thirty?”
“Yeah, that should… No, wait. I have a conference call starting at eleven forty-five.”
“Can’t you get out of it?”
Rosalind double tapped her iPad. “No can do. It’s with Sheila and Michelle. It’s easier to win a Nobel than get their two calendars to line up.”
Xavier scrolled down the screen on his phone. “All right. I’m free after two.”
“And I’m free after two-thirty, so maybe we could plan for four? I’ll be coming from the Peninsula, though, so it will take me a while to get there.”
“I don’t know about that, I got you there pretty quickly last night.”
Rosalind batted Xavier’s arm before remembering what she held in her hand. They both inspected the wounded bouquet with a mixture of concern and amusement.
“Be serious for a second, will you?” She turned her attention away from her tablet on the counter top and removed one daisy with a broken stem from the arrangement. “You don’t need to constantly remind me what a Lothario you are.”
“You’re right, it’s unnecessary to remind you of what you’ve come to so intimately understand from experience. Especially since that would give me an excuse to demonstrate to you again.” He leaned in and kissed away her frustration, a rushed visit of affection that she’d come to learn was Xavier’s opening bid to win her undivided attention.
She pulled back before he could take things any further. “Enough. We’re going to be late if you start off down that road. Let’s ink it in. Four o’clock, then?”
“And… inked.” He maneuvered his phone back into his breast pocket on the inside of his jacket. “Four on the fourteenth. Should make it easy to remember.”
The doors opened just as Rosalind managed to store her tablet away in her bag. Carmen glared at them both with a squinty eye before charging full on in their direction.
“Those weren’t devices you were just using, were they?”
A play at innocence spoiled when they both were unable to wipe the amused guilt from their faces.
With a huff, Carmen crossed her arms over her chest and cocked her hip. “You two are incorrigible. Promise me that there’s nothing in your pockets that’s going to be squawking, beeping, buzzing or vibrating when you get out there.”
Rosalind held her arms out wide and threw herself against a wall, legs in an open stance. “Frisk me, I’m clean. I swear it.”
“Ha ha. And you?” Carmen turned her instigation on Xavier.
“Check, chief. We’ll reserve any additional squawking, beeping, buzzing or vibrating for when we’re without an audience.”
“Hey,” Carmen said, holding her hands up in surrender, “what you two get up to on your own time is your business. I’m just here to keep this event on schedule, so hand it over.”
He crumbled under her attention. Her eyes followed with a knowing keen as Xavier’s hand snaked inside his jacket and withdrew the damning evidence. Carmen snatched the device from his grasp and quicker than a squirrel with an acorn, had the contraband locked up in a drawer.
“Be good, and you’ll get it back afterwards.”
“You know,” said Xavier, “I think I need to have a talk with Jack. This drill sergeant quality of yours doesn’t appear anywhere in your profile.”
“Tell me about it.” Jack came through the door without knocking. Xavier could tell that his second in command was laced up tighter than a tympani in the pin-striped suit. “She put Javier through crowd-control orientation. I assured her that my husband has actually had experience dealing with large numbers of people before.”
“Carmen?” Xavier drew her name out long as taffy. “You do realize Javier runs one of the most renowned restaurants South of Market, don’t you? Hospitality is his bread and butter.”
“Yeah, well running a tight ship is mine, so no lip, Hommes,” the petite Latina replied. “Now, it’s just about go time, so let’s do a check list. Rosalind: check. Xavier: check. The notes on what you guys are going to say when you get out there?”
Xavier gave a crooked smile and held up a piece of folded paper. “Check.”
“Great, then I guess the only thing left is for the two of you to make it public.” Carmen turned back towards the door. “You know what to do. And put those flowers in some water before they wilt. My god, I think that man might be responsible for the black lines of every florist in the city.”
With a flick of the wrist, Rosalind presented her PA a full military salute. Carmen swept out of the room on the wave of an eye roll, taking Jack with her.
Sweeping around, Rosalind reached for Xavier’s hands. “I guess it’s time.”
“It is.” Pulling her near, he drew his lips to hers. “Unless you want to change your mind about who you want to carry this out with. I still have a few other suggestions I could make if you’re interested in options.”
A play slap on the chest served as his final and only warning. “No, you are, without a doubt the only one I’d ever do this with.”
When the doors into the reception room opened, the few dozen invited guests swiveled in their direction. Xavier led the way, leaving Rosalind waiting for the moment of her appointed entrance. At the top of the aisle, Xavier turned to face the congregation, pulling his paper from his pocket.
“Thank you all for coming.”
Reverb hit the speakers as everyone’s hands shot to their ears. Xavier took a step back and tried again in a softer tone.
“We’ll make
this brief so you all can take off for your Labor Day weekends. We have called this press conference to announce the official partnership of my executive and employment recruitment service, Hommes HQ, with the user-driven application-authoring launch pad, BetaHouse. Our partnership will develop an application that will marry, if you will,” he chanced a wink towards the back of the room, “my firm’s personalized approach to matching a future employee with the BetaHouse application’s proficiency at allowing the user to drive the building blocks of their own personal portfolio. The joint partnership will operate as a new entity called Betters Hommes.”
A little chuckle arose from the audience.
“We’d thought you’d like that. The new division will be under the direction of Jack Colbon, who will give a short statement in a few moments. Further details will be released at our demonstration at the Silicon Valley Tech Fair next month. Also joining me today to help answer any questions you might have is BetaHouse’s CEO, Rosalind Betters.”
With strides long a purposeful, Rosalind took to the stage in just four paces. She wondered if the press noticed how Xavier’s hand moved to the small of her back to guide her towards the mic. It wasn’t as though they had decided to lie about their relationship; they had simply decided to ease into it slowly.
Unfortunately, it was too late to cancel the deposit for the winery’s chapel. Considering she’d been luckier that a lottery winner to get it on such short notice to begin with, Rosalind had decided to just cut her losses. It was Carmen’s brilliant idea to use the forfeited booking as the prize in an impromptu promotional campaign. During the three weeks between when Rosalind had come home from India and the original planned date of the wedding, BetaHouse’s “Build your Wedding with our App” contest drew over three hundred entries of couples vying for a Napa valley dream wedding and the attention of more than a few media outlets.
After her remarks, Carmen bounded to the stage to field questions from the crowd. She paused and leaned in to her boss.
“Did you two decide?”
Have Gown, Will Wed Page 20
