by M. O’Keefe
Perhaps this outfit was ridiculous, but it felt good on my body. And that was so novel and strange and . . . important.
“Do I have a different car?” I asked. I’d only ever seen the shiny black town car.
“The senator has a Porsche 911 and a corvette stingray. Or had . . . I guess. They’re yours now.”
Mine now. Wild. What else did I own, I wondered, that I didn’t even know about?
But Porsches and Corvette Stingrays felt like advanced cars, and I was very much a beginner.
“No,” I shook my head. “The town car sounds fine.”
“All right,” Theo said and walked around the car to the passenger seat.
I slid into the expensive leather driver seat and put my hands on the wheel.
“This is fun, isn’t it?” I said.
“Yes, ma’am,” Theo answered, and I caught his smile before he could put it back behind the mask he usually wore.
The sun was just coming up, and the spring mornings were cool, damp. All the green trees and grass were shrouded in a thin layer of mist. The Constantine Compound was over the hill in front of me. The turret just visible.
Why didn’t I leave Bishop’s Landing? I wondered. I’d spent most of the night thinking about Ronan’s words. There was nothing really keeping me here. Caroline. The executive director job, which I was pretty sure was just going to be for show.
I had more money than I knew what to do with. I had houses in other cities that I’d never been to.
I’d lived on this hill in Bishop’s Landing for almost my entire life. Except for the year and a bit that I was at school, I’d lived in a house on this hill. I hadn’t really ever vacationed anywhere. No girls’ trips to Paris. No all-inclusives in Mexico. Perhaps the answer to why didn’t I leave was I didn’t know where to go?
Lord. That was sad, even for me.
But what I really felt was something so much more complicated. Something about my sister and my mother and the willow tree and how I’d never felt safe . . . anywhere.
“Ma’am?” Theo said.
“Call me Poppy.”
“That’s not . . .” I glanced over, and Theo was shaking his head. His blond hair was long with a curl to it, and it was a little wild in the damp morning. “No.”
“Okay, but I’m going to call you Theo.”
“That’s fine.”
“So, I’m going to call you by your name, and you’re going to call me ma’am like we’re on Downton Abby or something?”
“I don’t know that show.”
“We’re the same age, Theo.”
“No, ma’am, we’re not.” He was probably ten years older than me, which meant he was still young. We were both young. And now we were alone in the front seat of this car. As far as intimacy with a man, this would have ranked pretty high if Ronan hadn’t come along and blown the curve by putting his mouth on me.
“Can I pay you to call me Poppy?” I asked.
He laughed and then tried to cover it up with a stern sounding cough. “You are very—” he stopped himself. Shook his head.
“I’m what?”
“Different. This morning.” Oh, how helplessly he said that. Like he wished it wasn’t true. Or that he wished he didn’t notice. But he wasn’t wrong – I was different. And it was time for my life to look a little different, too.
“You know something,” I said, opening the driver side door to get out. “I would like to drive the Porsche.”
Theo’s eyes went wide and his smile – if you could call it that – was very nearly approving. “It’s a stick shift,” he said.
“That’s fine,” I said, though it probably wasn’t.
Ten minutes later I was grinding my way down the hill from my house.
“Clutch,” he said. Again.
“Right, right.” There was a small hill and a stop sign ahead. “Oh no. Should we go back and get the town car?”
“Don’t be scared,” he said. “And you’re doing fine. No one is great at driving a stick shift right away.”
“You’re lying.”
“I’m not, ma’am.”
“I’m going to stall it.”
“Clutch, shift, gas. You can do it.”
Seamlessly, I shifted out of first into second. No stalling. No grinding.
I gasped with delight.
“Nice,” he said.
Instantly I did something that made the car shudder and grind. “Oh my god, this is awful. Is it me? Is it this car?”
“It’s the stick shift and you’re doing great. You really are.” Theo was a very enthusiastic teacher and surprisingly calming. “On this hill, careful you don’t . . .”
The car stalled.
“Do that?” I asked.
Theo actually laughed, which cut my nervous energy in two, and then I was laughing.
I put the car in park and restarted it just as a man in black training pants and a sweat-stained shirt ran across the road in front of us. At the sound of the car starting, he glanced over, and our eyes met.
“Ronan,” I breathed.
He stopped in the middle of the road, facing us. His unreadable eyes traveling from Theo’s face to mine.
His dark hair was slick on his forehead, and his chest was heaving. In the thin running gear, he seemed bigger than he usually did. His chest was wide. His shoulders broad. Less a deadly blade and more a blunt object.
He grabbed the hem of his shirt and used it to wipe his face, revealing the pale skin of his stomach. The ripple of muscle.
My smile faded slowly from my face as my body remembered what he did to it last night. My body wanted more. So much more. All at once my body wanted everything this man could do to it.
“Come on, man,” Theo said and reached over and honked the horn. The car was tiny, and Theo was not a small man. We were shoulder to shoulder in the front seat, and when he reached past me we touched even more.
Ronan saw it all. But his face registered nothing. Nothing at all.
What is he thinking? Did he care? Did it matter that I was sitting so close to another man? I smiled to see if there was a reaction. His face didn’t even reveal that he knew me. Let alone that he’d put his mouth on me.
He walked to the side of the road and watched us as we drove by. The gears grinding, the car lurching.
I looked back in the rear-view mirror, and he was still there. Still watching.
“You all right, Poppy?” Theo asked. Dropping the ma’am, and I quite suddenly wanted it back. The distance. Which was ridiculous. Ronan wasn’t my . . . anything. His dark stare, that I still felt on the back of my neck, was another one of his games.
“I’m fine,” I said, and I pushed the clutch, shifted to third and took off down the hill.
Monday morning Theo drove me into the city.
“You sure you don’t want to try?” he asked. The window was rolled down, and his eyes met mine in the rear-view mirror. They were nice eyes. Brown and big. Kinder than I’d ever noticed.
“Driving around Bishop’s Landing is one thing. Manhattan is another thing all together. I’m just trying to save your life, Theo.”
“Well, I appreciate that, Poppy.”
My name in his mouth sent a strange ripple through me. I wasn’t sure if I was uncomfortable or if I liked it.
My phone rang, saving me from contemplating kissing Theo in order to forget Ronan and what a mess that would be. The screen said Zilla.
“Excuse me,” I said to Theo.
“Of course,” Theo said and pushed the button that made the window between us slide up.
“Hey,” I said. “How are you, Zilla?”
“I’m fine. Good. How are you? I didn’t hear from you after your meeting with Eden.”
“Oh, right,” I said, that weird meeting forgotten after Ronan and then the driving lesson. “It was fine. I mean. I didn’t get a lot of information. It was probably a mistake trying to pry.”
There was a second of silence on Zilla’s side. “You’re joking,
right?”
“No. I mean. I appreciate your effort but—”
“My effort?” She laughed. “God you’re such an infant sometimes, Poppy.”
That stung. Really stung. But it also worried me. “Are you all right?” I asked.
“Oh Jesus Christ,” she said. “For once this isn’t about my mistakes. You owe Eden Morelli a favor, Poppy.”
“I know.”
“Do you know what kind of favors she wants?”
“No.”
“Bloody ones. Criminal ones.”
“Zilla—”
“And you don’t have the senator there to protect you.”
“Protect me!” I scoffed, the sound scraping through my throat. “Is that what you thought he did?”
“No,” my sister said, reeling herself in. “Of course not. I’m just saying the Constantine/Morelli world works differently.”
“I know how the world works,” I snapped. “The world kills your mother when you’re sixteen and gives you a father who burns through all the money. The world gives your sister a psychotic break—”
“Poppy,” she breathed.
“And takes away every choice we have except one. One choice. One choice who broke my finger because he could. Who threw books at my head. Who left bruises on my body. Who was so driven to have a baby that my feelings on the matter did not count.”
I closed my eyes and pressed my shaking fingers to my eyes. “Don’t tell me how the world works,” I whispered. “I’ll talk to you later.”
Without giving her a chance to say anything, I hung up. And because I knew she would call back with all her apologies, I turned off my phone.
The Halcyon Building was a skyscraper in midtown. Walking up to it I always felt like a character in Legally Blonde. A little out of place but determined to try. There was a jazzy little number playing in the background, something plucky. Today I felt that so keenly it was like a laugh or a sob caught in my throat. I was going to do this. Executive director of a million-dollar foundation. If I had doubts, I was trying hard to squash them under some undeserved optimism. Unearned confidence.
But Caroline was right. I had ideas. Good ones. And now I had a lot of money to put them into action.
I was new at believing in myself so it took a second, but by the time I got in the front door I was swinging my new briefcase around like I was about to burst into song. The foundation was on the 24th floor, and when the elevator doors opened there was a big wide desk with ‘Better Families, Better New York’ in gold and black lettering against a white wall.
Justin was sitting there and looked stunned to see me. And I was a little stunned to see him.
“Poppy?” he said, getting to his feet. “I didn’t know you were coming in today?”
“I told Caroline I’d be coming in today.”
“Oh no,” he said. “My mistake. Let me call her, and she can be here in twenty minutes.”
“Actually.” I leaned forward, speaking conspiratorially. “I don’t want a big fuss, and we both know that Caroline is the definition of a big fuss.”
Justin smiled, and I smiled back at him, relieved that he wasn’t offended by the joke. But also suddenly wondering if he was going to go and tell Caroline. But then that thought was disloyal, so I shoved the whole thing aside.
“Seriously. I just want to look around. But what are you doing here?”
“Caroline wanted me to come down to set up some systems.”
“Oh. Well, systems are good.” What kind of systems did people have to set up? I wondered.
“The phones are working. Interoffice email. The official receptionist starts next week.”
Oh. Those systems.
He began to pull documents off the desk and hand them to me. “Here’s a list of applicants for the position of your assistant. We can call them for interviews whenever you’re ready.” There was another stack of papers. “Here are the first rounds of funding requests. I haven’t vetted any of them.” He handed me another stack. “And here is the old funding criteria from Caroline’s other foundations. We thought that might be a good jumping-off place.” More stacks of paper. More and more and more. “Here are media requests. Again. I haven’t vetted all of them. But if you’re ready to start, flag the ones you like, and Caroline will look over them.”
“Sure,” I said, overwhelmed and trying not to be. “Where’s my . . . desk?”
He smiled at me, and I had to admit I did like Justin. He was competent and kind. It wasn’t his fault that he always looked like a little puppy.
“Follow me. I think you will be very pleased.”
We rounded the desk into a small open concept room with two desks. One of them positioned in front of another closed door. Justin opened it and stepped back, smiling.
“Oh my gosh,” I whispered, stepping into the office. One whole wall was nothing but windows, floor to ceiling. A beautiful cherry wood Queen Anne desk with a sleek computer monitor on top. The wall opposite the windows had a massive white board and calendar. Three chairs set up with small tables between them. Morning meetings with my team. It was feminine and majestic and so, so amazing.
“Caroline thought you might enjoy this set up. She thought you’d want to be a part of things, instead of just making decisions in your office.”
“It’s amazing,” I said.
Justin looked down at his watch. “I have to go,” he said.
“Of course.”
“I will email you the codes to lock up. Passwords for the computers. And other than that . . .” He smiled at me. “Feel free to poke around all you like.”
Justin left, and I heard the beep of the main door and figured he must have engaged the alarm, and so all alone and feeling very safe and very excited, I sat down behind my desk and got to work.
I wasn’t sure what time it was when the door beeped again. The sun was setting over the west side of the city, and I was starving. “Hello?” I said. “Justin is that—”
Into my new world; my beautiful feminine space where I was hoping to build my team and my future, walked Ronan Byrne. In a dark suit and a darker expression.
“What are you doing here?” I asked and got to my feet. No matter how our encounters ended, they started with me being scared of him, and I wasn’t sure if that was stupid, or smart. But no matter what he did to my body – my brain did not trust him.
The thing about this man, the awful terrible thing about him was what he made me feel. The sight of him in my doorway triggered my fight or flight instinct, and he also turned me on. My belly was soft for him. And I didn’t understand how he managed to do all of that, or what I was supposed to do with the push and pull of it all. It was too much.
He was too much.
“I’m just looking around.” He put his hands in his pockets, like he was some regular guy doing some regular thing. “Quite a set up.”
He stepped forward, and I stepped sideways thinking if I had to, I might be able to get to the door. Immediately he lifted his hands.
“I’m not here to touch you,” he said, his lips kicked up with that charming half-smile my body loved so much. “I swear it.”
I didn’t believe him. Not a bit.
“How’d you know I was here?”
“Caroline told me to come check on you.”
“You always do what Caroline tells you?” The words came out snappy and sharp. A red flag in front of a bull, and as soon as they were out of my mouth I regretted them.
His eyes seared me. My skin by all rights should have been blackened and smoky. I stepped back, waiting for him to come across this room, put his hand around my neck and pin me to the wall.
Just thinking it I was scared. And wet between my legs.
What is wrong with me?
“Have you eaten?” he asked. I blinked at the change of subject.
“No,” I said. “But how—”
“Let’s go get something,” he said, jerking his head to the door.
I blinked at him, shook, ab
solutely shook by this strange version of him. “What’s wrong with you?”
“I offered to feed you, and you think something’s wrong?”
“Yeah.”
“You’d rather I put my hand down your pants?” He nodded at my body. I’d taken off the jacket and just wore a cream shell and my black pants.
“No.” Yes.
“I could order something up,” he said. “A salad—”
“What the fuck are you doing?” I snapped.
“What the fuck are you doing?” he snapped back, his eyes alight, and the half step he took towards me lit me up like a bonfire. But then he stopped. Reined himself back in. “Justin said you’d been here since ten. It’s four now.” He looked around. “And I don’t think you’ve eaten anything.”
I wasn’t hungry. But now my stomach growled. Now I was ravenous.
With his phone out, he turned, facing the window and the four o’clock sun that came in like butter to the room. A quick call and lunch was coming.
And I saw how this might spin out. We might sit down, he might have a sandwich. I might have a salad. He’d revert to the charming man he’d been at that party. I might revert to not being terrified and turned on at the same time. All of that might happen. But what I couldn’t understand was why?
I put my hands on my hips and didn’t sit down. “What are you after, Ronan?”
“Well, Poppy.” He ran a hand through his hair. The dark strands holding themselves in place for just a second before slipping down over his eyes. “I believe I owe you an apology.”
That was not at all what I was expecting, and I actually took a step back.
“I’ve shocked you. Well, frankly, the way I’ve treated you, I’ve shocked myself. I think . . .” He glanced around. “Is there a drink in here somewhere?”
“Water?”
“A proper drink, like.”
In the credenza behind my desk there was a pretty stocked bar. Justin thought of everything. “What would you like?”
“Is Jameson’s too much to ask for?” he asked.
I opened the cabinet and checked inside. “Apparently not. Though . . . there’s no ice or anything.”
