Darius, p.8
Darius, page 8
Except back then, he’d been thinking there was never going to be any more contact between them. So what was the point.
Now, however, he’d evolved to thinking there shouldn’t be any contact.
Progress, thy call sign was self-deception.
“That’s a nice name,” she said. “It’s old-fashioned. It suits you. Is it okay if I ask you what you do?”
“You can make any inquiry of me you wish.” He smiled, even though he didn’t like fudging his truth. “And I’m a security guard.”
“Oh? Like for a building or a mall?”
“Private security, actually.”
“A bodyguard?”
Well, yes, if Wrath ever decided to assume the throne, and the Brotherhood returned as a personal guard unto the King.
“Pretty much.” He leaned into the table. “That’s why I’m going to give you my number. If you ever feel threatened, you can call me. I have some background and experience when it comes to protecting people—and of course, there’s always your police, too. You should never hesitate to call them, either.”
“Was that fancy BMW your boss’s car?” Anne put her hand up to her mouth. “Oh, God, are you in trouble at work? I’m so sorry I ran into your—”
“No, I’m not in trouble.” God, he hated not being totally honest with her. “And it was worth it. Meeting you, I mean. Well… not like that. Crap—I’m babbling.”
Anne opened her mouth. Closed it. Lowered her eyes.
“Sorry,” he said remotely. “I don’t want to get creepy on you.”
“You’re not. And if I’m honest, I don’t quite know how to handle… this.” She frowned and wiped her hands on her napkin. Even though they were clean. “I mean, not that this is a this. You coming here tonight, I mean. Like, anything date-ish, or anything—you know what, I need to shut up, too.”
“No, you don’t. I always want to hear what you’re thinking.”
She flushed and looked away, as if she didn’t want him to know how much that pleased her. “But you just brought my shoe back. That’s why you’re here. That’s the purpose. Right?”
In the silence that followed, he studied her downturned face, memorizing the curve of her lips, the lashes that hid her eyes, the flush on her cheeks.
“It’s not just about the shoe, Anne.”
As her stare flipped back to his, he spoke slowly so that there was no risk his accent would get in the way of his meaning. “I know you’ve just gotten out of a really bad situation, so I’m not asking for anything other than a little time to get to know you. But blind luck put us both on that road at that moment. Don’t you think that might mean something?”
Of course, blind luck had also brought her a fucking psycho with an upward-mobility fixation and a wardrobe out of a Florsheim ad.
Also a round of X-rays.
“I’m not going to push you,” he murmured. “I’m not like him.”
“Oh, you are definitely not like Bruce.” She shook her head. “He never said thank you, and he never brought me a shoe.”
“Next time I’ll show up with something even better.”
“I’m not really a flowers person.” She flushed again. “Sorry, that’s not really romantic of me, is it. And maybe you aren’t thinking in those terms—”
“I was thinking socks, actually.” As Anne laughed, he knew it was the best sound he would ever hear. “Maybe it’ll be a set of tubes. Could be tennis with the little balls at the heels. Hand knit or machine washable? I’m going to leave you guessing in hopes the mystery keeps you interested.”
She threw her head back and outright giggled—until she grimaced and put her hand on her side. “Oh, jeez, I’m going to have to take it easy over here. Or you’re going to have to be a lot less charming.”
Sitting back in her modest house, in her modest kitchen, at a small table in a little alcove… Darius realized that he suddenly, and most unexpectedly, had the whole world in front of him.
He really did.
“I wish I could stay longer,” he whispered.
There was a pause. Then in a rueful voice, she said in an equally soft way, “And I wish I had another shoe for you to bring back.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
As Anne arrived at her desk the following morning, her telephone was already ringing. Launching herself into her chair, she nearly knocked over her office plant to catch the call.
“Hello, this is Anne—”
“Mr. Thurston wants to see you upstairs in his office.”
As the voice of the senior partner’s secretary speared into her ear, she kept the groan to herself. Miss Nancy Martle was over fifty, married to her job, and built like a battleship. In her gray suits and her fifties-era cat-eye glasses, she would have been considered a stereotype if she didn’t inspire fear in just about everyone. Including the attorneys.
“When would he like—”
“Now.”
The call was cut off and Anne hung up her end. Glancing around, she saw other members of the support staff finding their seats at their desks, putting down purses, taking off coats. Everyone was female except for two supervisors who were men, and the rows of workstations were kitted out with identical accessories—single rolling chair, single visiting chair, wastepaper basket, phone, typewriter, and a coat stand. Overall, the wide-open space sparkled with cleanliness and efficiency, everything white and chrome. Then again, Beckett, Thurston, Rohmer & Fields invested properly in their facilities, even for the little people—
“You still hurting bad?”
As the question was posed, Anne snapped to attention. “Oh, Penny, hi.”
“So how are you?” Her next-door neighbor shrugged out of her incredibly pink coat. “You don’t look good.”
Try facing Mr. Thurston on an empty stomach. Hell, make that Miss Martle.
“I’m fine, Penny. Thanks. I just have to go upstairs.”
“Oh, check you out.” The woman hung her blinding outerwear on a hanger on her stand. “Fancy. You getting promoted or something?”
The girl was in her mid-twenties, but looked older because she had Tammy Faye makeup and a bottle-blond bleach job on her bobbed hair. With her too-bright, too-tight, always-Easter-Sunday clothes, she was a cartoon character who’d been colored in by an exuberant, if sloppy, hand.
“Nothing like that.” Anne grabbed a steno pad, even though she hadn’t been asked to bring one. “I’ll be right back—”
“You’re going in your coat?”
“Huh—” Anne flushed and took off her jacket. “Sorry, I’m a little distracted.”
Penny’s heavily penciled eyebrow jogged up into her glossy forehead. “You get back with Bruce or something? Please tell me that’s a no.”
Of all the people she worked with, why had she told Penny the whole story? She might as well have put a notice in the Caldwell Courier Journal. “Ah, no. It’s not… Bruce. I have to go, be right back.”
Anne all but bolted for the elevators, and as she ran off—or tried to, what with the aches that were still hanging in—she had the sense that there were eyes on her. Except she was used to that. Ever since word had gotten out that she was dating Bruce, she’d been a topic of conversation. Thanks, Penny. And now with her own blabbermouth, she’d made herself even more visible. Surely, though, someone else in the firm could date somebody who seemed on the surface to be too good for them only to have the guy get canned for faking his résumé? It could happen… right?
Then again, maybe she and Bruce had set such a high standard for gossip it was never to be repeated.
Talk about your professional accomplishments.
At the bank of elevators, she hit the up arrows on both sides of the short hall, and she was lucky that there was a bing almost immediately. Hopping into a car full of suits and ties, she shuffled off to the side and kept her head down and her eyes on the marble floor.
Lot of wingtips. Lot of deep-voiced jocularity about golfing at the club, and whiskey, and that cart girl who really knew how to polish balls.
Naturally, the hale-and-hardies rode up to the twenty-ninth floor, and also unsurprisingly, they got off first, elbowing for position as if the evacuation were a race. No one held the doors for her, and she had to catch the brass and mahogany panels before she was locked in and sent all the way down to the lobby.
The reception desk and waiting area for the main attorney floor and its boardrooms was directly ahead, and the brunette-haired woman in charge seemed to have been chosen as a piece of art that could answer a telephone. Tall and slender as a model, she was wearing a black suit that coordinated with the black-and-gold color scheme of the decor, and the ceiling light above her was angled down like she was a painting. Still, her red-lipped smile seemed sincere, and her eyes were not judgmental in the slightest as Anne cautiously approached.
“Mr. Thurston is waiting for you.” The woman indicated the way to her left with a manicured hand. “Would you like me to have a coffee brought to you?”
“Oh, no. No, thank you. No.”
“Go right down.”
“Thank you.”
The firm’s Big Wig waiting area was like a hotel lobby, full of modern marble sculptures and padded leather chairs, and its view of Caldwell’s twin bridges was beautiful, especially on a sunny May day. The fresh flowers in crystal vases were a nice touch, too, the flares of pastel yellow and pink adding discreet pops of color.
Passing by a lineup of high-end conference rooms, Anne came to a second reception zone that was smaller, but no less formal, and there was Miss Martle, sitting at her desk like a sentry in front of a military garrison. The woman was on the phone, speaking quickly and with force, and as she held up her forefinger for Anne to wait, you had to wonder if the thing was loaded and what kind of range it had.
Miss Martle ended her call. “You may go in. He’s off his line now.”
Anne’s eyes shifted to the open doorway beyond. “Thank you.”
Approaching the corner office, her feet made no sound on the thick carpeting, and she could smell fresh coffee and something cinnamon, as if there were a cook somewhere making the partners their breakfasts to order.
It’s a different world, she thought as she stepped inside what was considered hallowed ground.
Silhouetted against the view of Caldwell’s other half, sitting behind a desk the size of a king-sized bed, Mr. Thurston was white-haired and distinguished in his pin-striped suit, looking as if a Supreme Court justice and a Wall Street tycoon had had a love child.
The man glanced up from an orderly stack of documents and removed his tortoiseshell reading glasses. “Miss Wurster. Sit down.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Closing the distance, she lowered herself into an oxblood leather seat across from the man. The royal-blue-and-gold office was so vast that it had its own meeting table, as well as a bar and what had to be a private bathroom off in the corner. Mahogany shelves filled with leather-bound books covered all the walls, except for a six-by-six area reserved for a full-length oil painting of a man who looked so much like Mr. Thurston that he had to be the man’s father or grandfather.
They had the same icy blue eyes.
And wow… Bruce had painted his apartment the exact shade of this navy color, hadn’t he.
When there was a soft click from behind, Anne twisted around to find that they’d been shut in together.
“I understand there has been some unpleasantness,” Mr. Thurston said. “How are you feeling.”
Totally not surprised the man knew about the whole thing—because nothing escaped him if it involved his firm—Anne raised a hand to her temple. She’d replaced the hospital’s bandage with a couple of Band-Aids, and she was hoping to go without them entirely soon.
“I am fine, sir.” She went back to clutching her steno pad. “Thank you.”
“I never did care for that McDonaldson character. Saw right through him. Glad he’s gone.”
“Yes, sir.”
“There’s a reason that we don’t encourage interoffice dating.” This was said with censure, as if she were Eve with an apple, as if she had courted trouble and shouldn’t be surprised when it came to her. “It’s really not appropriate, but you young people have different ideas of things.”
“We disclosed our… we did go to human resources. Per the employee manual.”
The hmrph that came back at her could have meant a lot of things, none of which were complimentary. “Enough about that.” Mr. Thurston linked his fingers together over the case work he’d been reviewing. “We, the firm, want to make sure you’re taken care of.”
“I’m sorry, sir?” Outside the office, a phone rang softly. “So I’m not fired?”
Mr. Thurston waved his reader glasses. “Of course not. You’ve never caused any trouble outside of this McDonaldson business.”
Between one blink and the next, Anne relived the feel of Bruce’s hands locked on her throat, and saw his screaming, furious face inches in front of her own. The temptation to point out that being assaulted by a man whose lies had been exposed wasn’t something she had “caused” stung.
“So we’d like to give you a thousand dollars.”
Anne lifted her brows and tilted forward in the chair. “Excuse me?”
Mr. Thurston smiled like a king sparing the life of a serf. “I know, it’s a lot of money. But this firm cares about its employees. We understand that there was a visit to the hospital for your very minor injuries and we want to help with your medical bills. We know that we’re being too generous. People first, though. It’s our slogan.”
No, Anne thought. The firm’s slogan was Integrity, Excellence, Legacy.
“I don’t need any money,” she said. “I just want to keep my job.”
Mr. Thurston’s hand moved to rest on a piece of paper… and what looked like a corporate check.
“Your job is safe.” That self-satisfied smile came back, the one that was an internal reflection of his belief that he was superior to most people, and yet not without a heart. “We just want to make things easy on you.”
Anne’s eyes lingered on the check. She couldn’t read the writing from here, but it wasn’t blank and the blue sprawl on the signature line was no doubt Mr. Thurston’s.
“Is there a problem, Miss Wurster?”
“I don’t need any money, thank you.” She got to her feet. “I’m very grateful, however. I’ll just go back to work now.”
Those pale blue eyes narrowed on her, a mask coming over the man’s features, locking all that patrician down—which gave her a sense of exactly how good Mr. Thurston was at his job at the negotiating table.
“You must have a lot of savings,” he murmured, “to turn down our generosity.”
“Thank you for thinking of me.”
“Well. I’ll just keep this here.” He tapped the check and the piece of paper. “But only for a day. I am not going to talk you into accepting the goodwill of your employer.”
Foolish girl, the tone implied. You foolish, silly little girl.
Anne looked past the man to the view. Out on the Northway, morning rush hour traffic was backed up on both sides of the river, the lines of cars crawling toward clogged exit ramps and crowded surface roads.
“Miss Wurster?”
“Thank you, Mr. Thurston,” she said quietly. “Have a good day.”
She turned away without a dismissal, and felt a cool wave of disapproval escort her out the door. On the far side of the inner sanctum, Miss Martle was on the phone again, but the woman’s eyes snapped up from her desk and focused on Anne’s hands.
As a flare of surprise registered on that disapproving cat-eye-glassed face, Anne wanted to go home. And as she went back through the main reception, got to the elevators, and hit the down arrow, she wondered if she had the guts to put the lobby to good use and walk away from the building, tossing the steno pad in a municipal garbage bin—
“Psst.”
Anne glanced to the right, to the head of a back hallway that accessed the service facilities and freight elevators. “Hello?”
“It’s me, Charlie.”
“Charlie—”
“Shh.” A disembodied hand shot out and its forefinger crooked at her. “C’mere.”
Anne glanced at the receptionist, who had her phone up to her ear and her eyes down on whatever she was writing.
“What’s going on,” Anne murmured as she scooted out of view.
R. Charles Byrnes III was a Mr. Thurston in training, with the same bone structure, same Brooks Brothers wardrobe, probably the same family tree, if you went back seven generations of white bread. The difference was thirty years and maybe a little bit of true conscience, although whether the latter would last as time went on, who knew. The guy had it now, though, and that was why she’d gone to him when she’d found out about the wage garnishment.
Plus Bruce had been his paralegal.
“Did you take the money,” he demanded as he brushed back his thick blond hair.
She did a double take. “Excuse me?”
“Tell me you didn’t take the money and you didn’t sign anything.” As she struggled to follow, he got impatient, but kept his voice hushed. “That’s why I saw you walking into Thurston’s office, right? The full story is out—not by me—and he wants to pay you off.”
“Ah—he said the firm would like to take care of my medical bills.”
“Did you take it?”
“Oh, I don’t need the money—”
“It’s not about the cash to them. They want you to sign a release. McDonaldson was an employee and so are you. That asshole might have attacked you off-site, but the partners are not going to want trouble in the press or with their blue-chip clients because a hire they failed to do proper due diligence on assaulted one of their backroom girls. They’ll throw a little cash your way in the hopes this will go away, but you need to hold on for more—”
He stopped talking and looked over his shoulder as a uniformed maintenance worker came out of the stairwell.
In the pause, Anne felt compelled to lean back and check to make sure the Brooke Shields at the reception desk was still busy and no one was by the elevators. Yup. All clear.
