He laughs and replies, his head jerking in the direction of the private rooms.
Jealousy explodes through me. Fuck no. Before I’m aware of what I’m doing, I’m there, standing next to Dixie. I place a possessive hand on the small of her back. “Hello again,” I murmur into her ear. I stare down the other guy. “Sorry,” I tell him, wincing inwardly. I sound like a damn dog marking my territory. “She’s taken. Find someone else.”
He gives me an assessing stare. “I’d rather let the lady speak for herself.” He turns to her, his gaze softening. “Would you like me to call a monitor?”
“No, I can handle Hunter on my own.” A smile touches her lips. “But thank you for asking. I really appreciate it.” She waits until the man moves away and then swirls toward me. “Are you out of your mind?”
I’m certainly acting like it. What the hell is wrong with me? “I’m sorry.” Fuck me, I can’t believe I just did what I did. “I shouldn’t have got in your way. You have every right to approach whoever you want. I’ve behaved appallingly.”
She stares at me for a long second, and then she exhales slowly. “You were right. I’m not ready to play at the club. Magnus invited me to scene with him, and I wanted to bolt. Maybe Eric’s right too. Maybe I really do want missionary in the dark.”
Fuck me, now she’s down on herself. I feel like a complete asshole. “Eric was out of line,” I tell her. “He was so far over that he can’t even see the line in his rearview mirror. As for sex, can I offer you some unsolicited advice?”
She doesn’t look at me. “Why not?”
“This is the deep end of the pool,” I murmur. “You’re learning how to swim. If you want to explore BDSM, find someone you trust. You have friends in the lifestyle. Ask them for references. The right partner will listen to what you want, and he won’t overwhelm you.”
She gives me a long, inscrutable look. Then she pulls away. “See you around, Hunter,” she says.
Then she leaves.
I take a deep breath. The band is in full swing. It’s late, and people are forming into pairs, triads, and foursomes, and heading off to the back rooms. This is when the action really begins.
I came here looking for casual sex. A woman to dominate. An encounter that would make me feel in control again. Something that would make me forget the ache in my heart.
But the luster is gone.
Eric is no longer in sight. He must have left. I walk over to the bar and settle up, and then I too head home.
9
Eric
I get to work early Monday morning and head straight to Dixie’s office. The door is open. She’s got her headphones on, and she’s engrossed in her work. I knock on the frame a couple of times, and she finally hears, lifting her head with a smile of greeting.
A smile of greeting that quickly fades. She takes off the headphones and surveys me warily. “Eric,” she says. “How can I help you?”
It’s half-past six. The place is empty except for the two of us. I’m not a morning person, but I got up at the ass crack of dawn because I didn’t want the entire office to hear me grovel.
I hold out the coffee I got her as a peace offering. “I owe you an apology. I behaved appallingly on Saturday. I said terrible things, I acted like a complete dick, and you have every reason to be furious with me.”
She takes the coffee from me. “You haven’t poisoned it?” she quips.
“It’s a caramel macchiato,” I reply. “There’s enough whipped cream on it to cause a coronary, if that’s what you mean.”
Her lips twitch. “The whipped cream is the best part.” She takes an experimental sip, and pleasure fills her face. Fuck me, she’s beautiful, and I need to get my head out of my ass because she’s a coworker, and I’m not stupid enough to get involved with someone I work with. Even if this gig at Xavier’s is temporary.
“Why did you say it then?” she asks me.
Ouch. I was really hoping she wouldn’t ask. “Do we have to get into it?”
“Let me quote you,” she says. “‘At the end of the day, what she wants is missionary with the lights dimmed.’ Yes. I want to know why you said that.”
“My last serious girlfriend…” Fuck. “I dated someone who thought she wanted to explore kink. Turns out she didn’t. It blew up in my face. You remind me of her.”
“Why, do I look like her?” she retorts. “You don’t know anything about me.” She takes another sip. “Thank you for the coffee. I didn’t know you knew how I took it.”
“I’ve heard you place your order during the afternoon coffee run.” I run my fingers through my hair. “Sorry again. I’ll leave you to your work.”
I turn to go. I’m a few steps away when I hear her voice. “Eric.”
“Yeah?”
“I screwed up the first time we met. You screwed up Saturday night. Call it even?”
Words escape me. She’s far nicer than I deserve. “I’d love to.”
She nods. “Okay. I’ll have the Fullerton contracts you asked for on your desk by ten. There are a lot of them. If you tell me what you’re looking for, I can probably narrow it down.”
My first instinct is to say something vague. I have a sense that something is amiss, but I don’t really know for sure, and I don’t want to commit to an answer.
But then I realize that’s not right. Dixie is a part of Xavier’s senior team. He trusts her enough that she’s in the running for the COO job. She’s been poring over every contract since she started, and she’s smart. “I don’t know what I’m looking for,” I confess. “But something doesn’t feel right.”
“No doubt. Pierre didn’t do his job for many years.”
“No, this is more than Pierre’s negligence. On the surface, everything looks fine, but I’m missing something. So far, all I have is an instinct, but I’ve learned to trust mine.”
“Instincts are patterns your subconscious recognizes,” she says. She takes another sip of her coffee. “Can I show you something?”
I move behind her so I can see her screen. Her hair smells like roses. No, not her hair. There’s a tube of hand lotion next to her.
She clicks around on her screen, minimizing the document she's in the process of reviewing. A printed contract is on the desk next to her keyboard. It must be displeasing her; her highlighter has been at work liberally, and the margins are covered with notes in her tiny, neat handwriting.
Everything about Dixie is neat and contained. For a second, I wonder what she would be like in bed. Would she be polite and well-behaved, or would she become someone else?
Stop lusting after your coworker, Kane.
I’ve got to straighten up. I need to put a stop to this attraction to Dixie. Xavier will take a very dim view of this. It’s the kind of thing that is liable to ruin a relationship with a very good friend.
“I was looking at this set of transactions from Unplug,” she says. “Take a look at these training expenses. Don’t they seem off to you?”
I scan the invoices she’s highlighted. “Remind me what Unplug is?”
“It’s a small non-profit,” she replies. “Carl Siregar started it ten years ago. He teaches people how to unplug from technology. Leforte Enterprises bought it four years ago. I don’t know why. It doesn’t really fit neatly into our portfolio.”
“Xavier probably thought it was a good idea, and he threw money at it.”
“In that case, he should have used his charitable foundation to fund them,” she responds.
She’s not wrong.
“Anyway,” she continues. “Unplug only has six employees. Notice anything?”
I look at the numbers again, and this time, I see what’s caught her eye. “A non-profit with just six employees pays two hundred thousand dollars for leadership training to a company called XPM?”
“Exactly,” she says. “Doesn’t make sense.”
“Shouldn’t this have been flagged?”
“You’d think, right?” She grimaces. “Pierre personally s
igned off on this training.”
“Is that suspicious?”
“Pierre didn’t read the things he signed, Eric.”
“Of course not,” I say dryly. “Why bother doing the job that Xavier’s paying you to do? It’s a good thing Valade is in Montpelier. I feel the urge to punch him.” It’s not even seven, and I’m already ready to call it a day. “I’ll talk to Stone. His team needs to do a full-fledged audit of Unplug’s books.” I move away from the maddeningly tempting scent of roses. “Thank you, Dixie. This is extremely helpful. I’ll keep you posted on what I find.”
She looks faintly surprised. “You will?”
“Why wouldn’t I?” Something else occurs to me. “Hang on, you’re the General Counsel. Why are you looking at Unplug’s financial transactions?”
“I’ve told you I want the COO job, Eric. If I’m going to succeed at it, I’ll need to have a handle on all of Leforte Enterprises’ subsidiaries, big and small.”
“Is that why you come in early every morning? Do you ever take any time off?”
“I do okay.”
She’s bristling a little. “You don’t need to be defensive about your ambition,” I tell her. “I’m just wondering if you’re getting enough downtime, that’s all.”
Xavier should just give her the damn job right now. She’ll get some sleep, and I can get the hell out of here before I do something I regret. Like make a pass at Dixie Ketcham.
Ten hours later, I lean back in my chair and rub my eyes.
XPM is registered as a charity, but the transactions I’ve found paint a far more damning picture. They’re involved in money laundering and tax fraud.
Even worse? XPM is owned by a dummy company in the Bahamas, which in turn is owned by another dummy company in Liechtenstein, which in turn appears to be owned by Xavier Leforte.
Somebody is trying to frame my friend. Somebody is exploiting Pierre Valade's lack of attention to make it look like Leforte Enterprises is engaging in criminal activity.
I pick up my phone to call Xavier.
This isn’t good. This is very, very bad. This is a disaster.
10
Dixie
All day, I have difficulty concentrating. I can't stop thinking about Eric.
You don't need to be defensive about your ambition, he'd said to me.
My experience has taught me otherwise. William, my ex-fiancé, hadn't wanted me to go to law school. "I’m going to be a doctor,” he’d said. “I’ll make plenty of money for both of us.” He hadn’t even considered the possibility that I wanted to be more than Dr. Gifford’s wife.
At my last job, the partners—all men, all over sixty—had looked askance at me when I spoke up. I was expected to take notes at meetings, and when I pointed out that I was one of their peers, not their assistant, I wasn’t considered a ‘team player.’
The lead partner, Roy Rollins, even expected me to make coffee. Roy, I could somewhat forgive—he was almost eighty, but the rest of them, not so much.
I should have fought back against the institutional sexism, but it was a difficult time in my life, and I had too many other things to worry about. My mother was dying, and her insurance wouldn't pay for experimental drugs. Even for the treatment they grudgingly covered, the co-pay was a fortune.
My mother had faults—many of them. We didn’t always see eye to eye. But I loved her. I didn’t want her to spend hours on the phone arguing with her insurance company. She didn’t have the energy for it, so I took it over, and I took over her care. My brother was supposed to help, but Michael always talks a big game and rarely delivers.
I’d gone into debt from her medical bills, and I desperately needed to keep my job to stay afloat. Fighting back is a privilege for people with options. I hadn’t had any.
I have no regrets about any of it; I did it for my mom, and I’d do it all over again. But I didn’t realize, until Eric spoke up, that I had such deep scars from working at Rollins, Atterby & Rourke.
In the early days, I’d kept my head down at Leforte. I didn’t like Pierre, and we sometimes clashed because he thought I was being too cautious, but mostly, I kept out of his way. Even when Xavier took over, that behavior had carried over. I’d been nervous when I told him I was interested in the Chief Operating Officer role. I’d been bracing for rejection.
Somehow, Eric saw that. He sees me. And that is baffling, it’s infuriating, and it’s maddening.
Because it’s Eric Kane. He drives me nuts. He makes me want to claw his eyes out. I certainly don’t want to like the man.
I work through lunch. I’m dealing with another terribly written contract from Zephyrus, and it takes me all morning and a good chunk of the afternoon to finish. When I’m done, I outline my concerns to Kevin Hughes, hit ‘Send,’ and stop at the kitchen to eat some instant ramen.
I’m barely back at my desk when John Stone swings by. “I was just on the phone with Kevin,” he announces.
Ugh. I raise my chin, knowing where this is going. “Let me guess. He doesn’t like my conclusions.” I hand him my printed copy, the pages covered with red ink, my notes in the margins. “I can’t approve this, John. There are too many risks.”
He exhales in exasperation. “I don’t understand what the problem is,” he grits out. “We never had so many hold-ups out of Legal before you joined.”
Yes, because Pierre kept overruling your General Counsel’s warnings. His departure should have given you a clue.
“That’s neither here nor there,” I reply calmly, drawing on reserves of patience I can’t seem to find around Eric Kane. Maybe it’s because Eric can take it when I disagree with him, while John’s ego does not allow him to acknowledge my expertise. “My role is to keep Leforte Enterprises out of trouble. This contract will not do that.”
“You’re being uptight,” he snaps. “You lawyer types don’t realize that you have to balance risk against growth. We cannot be excessively cautious; our competitors are going to walk all over us.”
My reserves of patience disappear down the drain. “I have an MBA, John. I understand the concept of risk-reward. My assessment stands. I will not okay this contract as written.” I take a breath, unclench my jaw, give him a polite smile, and try to smooth things over. “If you’d like, I’ll have Leona Miller review the contract as well, to see if she agrees with my assessment.”
Leona has been with Leforte Enterprises for twenty-five years. She’s the most experienced lawyer on my team. I asked her once why she hadn’t applied for my job, and she’d bluntly retorted that she was happy to avoid the bullshit.
John nods tersely and exits my office without another word. I exhale, annoyed with myself. Leona doesn’t need to review this contract; I already know she will reach the same conclusions as me. I shouldn’t have let John bully me.
Admit it, Dix. It’s because he called you uptight.
Gritting my teeth, I print out a clean copy of the contract and head over to Leona’s desk. The other lawyer, a petite Black woman with short grey hair, is on the phone. I start to leave, and she gestures at me to take a seat. “One minute,” she mouths.
I nod and wait for her to finish up, trying not to eavesdrop on her conversation. She shakes her head when she hangs up. “My niece is trying to decide which college to go to,” she says. “Do you have nieces or nephews, Dixie?”
“My brother Michael has two boys. Five and three.”
“Ah, those are the fun years. Then they become teenagers, and when you try to tell them that they shouldn’t pick the party school, they don’t listen.” She rolls her eyes. “An out-of-state party school, to add insult to injury. Stacey doesn’t know what she wants to do, and she has no concept of how expensive a four-year degree is.”
“Maybe she could take a gap year.”
“My brother and his wife won’t entertain the idea. They still act like she’s a child, not a young woman on the cusp of adulthood. But you didn’t come here to listen to my family woes. What can I do for you?”
I hand her the contract. “Can you review this?”
“Sure.” She starts to read it and then frowns. “This is Zephyrus, right? Weren’t you working on it?”
“I’d like to know what you think.”
Leona gives me a puzzled look. “I don’t understand. Why would you want me to review your work? The odds of you missing something significant are pretty much zero.”
At least Leona thinks I can do my job. “I’m being a team player,” I reply, using air quotes around the word ‘team.’
“Was it Kevin Hughes who whined about how Legal is holding him back or was it Stone?”
“Stone.” I get to my feet, and a wave of exhaustion washes over me. “Thank you, Leona. Kevin’s breathing down my neck. Can you review it by Wednesday?”
“Yes, that should be fine.”
I glance at the time as I walk back to my office. My assistant Andie is packing up her belongings. “Is it five already?”
“It’s half past.” She gives me a disapproving look. “You should leave. What time did you get here this morning? Five? Six?”
“Six.” Eric Kane had, unexpectedly, been here too, with an apology and a caramel macchiato.
“Go home, Dixie,” Andie urges. “You don’t see John Stone working these hours, do you?” A sneer fills her face—Andie does not like John. “Take an evening off. You’ve more than earned it.”
I mentally review the outstanding work and realize that there’s nothing so urgent that it needs to be done tonight. Huh. That hasn’t been the case for months. “You know what? I think I’m going to do just that.”
I hit the gym on my way home. The new class schedule is available, and people are standing in line to sign up. I overhear snippets of their conversation as I swipe in. “What are you signing up for?” an Asian woman asks her friend. “There’s a self-defense class I want to take, but it’s at seven in the morning. That’s far too early.”
A stray memory strikes me. I have a black belt in judo. Drop the knife, and step away from the woman, or you are going to be exceedingly sorry.
Daring Dixie Page 6
