Benevolent (5 page)

I made it to the office bright and early the next morning, before anyone else. It felt good to not be running late or rushing. It also felt good to wake up with Gabi in my arms. Her smile and her kiss goodbye were relieving. I didn’t have the added stress of her and how she was handling things as I started my workday.

The stress I did have, though, was catching up on all of the work I had to miss out on by leaving early the day before. My inbox was full and so was the basket of missed call memos. The light on my desk phone was blinking, alerting me to voicemails that I needed to listen to. I sat down at my desk and began to sort through it all. I started with the phone, expecting a message from Eden that she had changed her mind about her employment with me.

By the time I reached the last message, I was surprised there wasn’t one from her. They were all business follow-ups and inquiries. I shrugged it off and went through the stack of memos. None of them were important, most of them had called and left a message anyway. I finally turned on my computer and began to go through the endless list of emails. I, again, expected to find one from Eden, but there was none from her there, either.

I checked the clock for the first time since I arrived; it said it was eight thirty. She didn’t show up, not that I expected her to, but she did so without even leaving me a message. For some reason, that was what bothered me most. I continued to go about my business before my office door creaked open. I didn’t look up, expecting it to be Alex checking in on me like he usually did. But there was silence, so I eventually turned my head from my emails to the door and the awaiting person. I froze, all except my hands that wouldn’t stop shaking. I had never felt that level of nervousness before.

“I didn’t think you were coming in,” I acknowledged her.

Eden quietly turned around and closed the door behind her before walking to the front of my desk and sitting down.

“I wasn’t going to, to be completely honest with you. But like I told you at the bar, this is my dream job and I won’t give it up for any reason. Even if that reason is because the owner, and my boss, is a cheating asshole.” Her words were like a slap in the face.

I wanted to explain, but I knew there was no possible way to do that. Hell, I couldn’t even explain it to myself. I was speechless and could only sit there with my jaw hanging open. It would have been a lie to say I wasn’t happy to see her, but I knew my conscience would be taking a brutal beating for it. I had to remind myself how qualified she was for the job and how much easier she’d make my business life, not so much my personal life.

“I just have one thing to say to you, Mr. Kauffmann—”

“Dane. Call me Dane. Everyone around here does. I don’t do formalities,” I interrupted her.

“Mr. Kauffmann,” she repeated. “I will work here and I will perform to the best of my abilities, but don’t expect me to extend my niceties to you. What you did was such a dick move. And I can’t respect you as a person after that.”

“Please, just hear me out. I am not a cheater.”

“That’s such a lie. You may be a guy and all, but let me make some things clear… The things you did to me last night are considered cheating. Kissing is cheating. Touching is cheating. Grinding your hard-on into me is most definitely cheating.”

I shook my head in shame. She wouldn’t understand, but the stubborn boy in me wouldn’t give in. It wouldn’t let her have the last say when she didn’t even know me. She didn’t know my life or what was going on in it. I wouldn’t explain all of that to her, since I never talked about it with anyone, but I would explain what happened and why.

“I may have done those things last night, but that was the first and only time I had ever done anything like that. I made a mistake, but it doesn’t make me a cheater. There’s a lot of shit going on at home and I got lost in your company. But trust me when I say this… It. Won’t. Happen. Again.”

“You can bet your ass it won’t happen again. I fucking despise cheaters.”

I nodded in agreement. “So do I.”

“Then you must despise yourself.”

“I do,” was all I could say to her.

Her eyes went wide like she hadn’t expected me to say that. She really didn’t know me. I wanted her to know me. I wanted to know her, but that was never going to happen. It never could happen. Even if I wanted it to, it wouldn’t. At least something good came out of it. I knew there would be no more flirting.

“Are you finished before we move on to the actual work part of this day?” My tone was hard and stern; I wasn’t exactly sure where it came from since I didn’t often speak to my associates in that way.

She nodded in silent agreement and allowed me to continue.

“As you already know, when companies are faced with bankruptcy or closing, they call me. I go in and help them change things in order for them to stay open and operating, and for them to understand how to keep doing so. I invest money into the company and hold the decision-making capabilities. I pretty much buy the business for a limited amount of time. I do this because in the event the company doesn’t succeed, I refuse to let the owners sell off its parts and pocket the profit. If that happens and the business needs to be chopped and sold, the profits go to the employees. But that has only happened a handful of times. I pick and choose which company I bail out for that reason. I won’t take on one that is too far gone. And my payout at the end of the contract is based upon my initial investment, plus the success of the company. That’s where I need your help. I have too many coming in for me to research them all on my own. I outsourced that part once, but it ended up screwing me in the end, telling me that businesses were solid returns when they weren’t. I was taking on companies that had far too many risks and cost me too much money. I won’t make that mistake again.

“I currently have a department that weeds out the good from the bad and sends me a list of the good. Even that list is too intensive for me to shuffle through alone. I need your help graphing them, charting them, showing me risk factors and where the money is. I need all the information on the business all the way back to when it was only a thought in the creator’s mind. Is this something you think you can handle,
Miss Clare
?” I didn’t plan on it, but I spit her name out no differently than she had mine earlier.

She shifted in her seat and her face turned stoic. “Yes, it is. But let me point out that I didn’t do anything to you to warrant such distain. You have no cause to say my name with such hatred. If this is how it will be then I will go work somewhere else and wait until another position opens in a different department of this company.”

“You didn’t do anything? You kissed me first last night and then blame me for responding.”

“I kissed you, yes, but that was before I knew you weren’t available. It was your responsibility to have told me that piece of information from the beginning. You had so many opportunities to tell me and you didn’t. You didn’t tell me at the bar, you didn’t tell me here when you ruined my chances in PR, and you didn’t tell me after I kissed you. Instead, you followed me, grabbed me, and then kissed me back. That wasn’t on me. That was all you, buddy. So like I said, if this is how you’re going to treat me, then tell me now.”

The way she spoke to me made me want to grab her face. After that, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with her. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to yell some more, defend myself again, or if I wanted to kiss her. I knew I wanted to kiss her, but I also wanted to yell. I had been holding it in for so long. Holding it in with Gabi, with work, and then with Eden. I wanted to yell at her when she walked out on me the day before. I wanted to yell at her after she walked off from the pier without a word. And I wanted to yell at her then. I didn’t understand why I wanted to yell so much. I didn’t know where all of the anger had been coming from or why it suddenly felt so extreme that I thought I’d bust. All I knew was that I wanted to yell.

“I made a fucking mistake,
Eden
. I wanted to tell you, but I knew if I did, things would change between us. I didn’t want them to change. You made me laugh and I almost forgot what that felt like. I didn’t want to give that up. This…” I wagged my finger in the air between us. “…this is why I didn’t want to tell you. Things changed. Even if what happened last did never happened, it still would have changed. You would have looked at me differently. You would have talked to me differently. And I didn’t want to stop laughing.” My breathing grew deep and my voice quieted down. “I didn’t want to stop living.”

She didn’t say a word. She sat there and stared at me as her face softened and her eyes grew wide. Her tongue peeked out from between her lips as she licked them and all I could do was stare. I couldn’t believe I had just blurted all of that out. It wasn’t my intention. I wanted to yell. Instead, I opened myself up for the first time in years.

“Tell me about her.”

I looked up at her, wondering why she would say that.

“Please, just tell me about her.” Her voice was soft and pleading.

My eyes darted around the room, trying to figure out what to say.

“How long have you been together?” she asked.

I smiled nervously. “Since high school. I was dating the cheerleader, of course, and she was just this quiet girl. I couldn’t help but notice her and finally, I decided to talk to her. But before you say anything, I broke up with my girlfriend first.” I was sort of teasing, but wanted to clarify so she couldn’t throw anything back in my face.

She smiled and shook her head. “And you’ve been together ever since?”

I nodded. “Yup. Through everything.”

“Is that why you were quiet last night when I showed up? You said you had things going on, was it about her and that’s why you didn’t want to talk to me about it? Because you didn’t want to tell me you were with someone?”

I didn’t want to say it, but I knew I needed to. I needed to tell her so that she could see that it wasn’t just because I didn’t want her to know I was unavailable, but I also needed to say it to get it off my chest. I had never, not once, opened up about it, and if I was asking Gabi to, then I needed to do it as well.

“We found out we were going to be parents. It wasn’t planned, but it was something we both knew we wanted eventually. I won’t lie, it was scary. Neither one of us knew how to be parents, and we weren’t exactly prepared for it, but those two lines made it very clear that it was something we would be doing whether we were ready or not.” I took in a deep breath. It was what followed that I had never discussed with anyone. “When she was eleven weeks pregnant she miscarried. They say that it just happens sometimes for no reason. But she took it really hard. I took it hard but not nearly like her. And I think most of my pain was because she was hurting so much. Yesterday was her due date. And I had forgotten about it until she called me home and reminded me.”

Eden gasped. “I’m so sorry.”

I shrugged my shoulders. Apologies didn’t fix anything. “I think the hardest part is that she keeps referring to the baby as a she, even though we never knew what it was. To me, it was just a pregnancy. But to her, it was a baby. It was a baby girl. And I have mixed feelings about it. It’s not that I didn’t love it or want it, but to me, it wasn’t quite a baby. Maybe that makes me an asshole, I don’t know.”

“It doesn’t make you an asshole. It’s harder for guys to understand the concept of a baby before it’s born. It’s different with women. We feel the change in our bodies. It’s not just a concept to women, it’s real. That doesn’t make you an asshole.”

I stared at her with so many things I wanted to say. So many things I wanted to ask. Her demeanor changed and it made me move with caution.

“Have you ever?” I didn’t finish my question. She knew what I was asking.

Her head shook from side to side. “No, but I did know a few people that were.”

When she told me that she was a good listener, she wasn’t lying.

“So yesterday was hard?” she asked.

“The last seven and a half months have been hard. She hasn’t let it go. She’s depressed all the time and I don’t know what to do about it. It’s just been really hard because I’ve moved on and sometimes she makes me feel guilty for doing so. And then there are times I resent her for holding on.” I knew I said too much. I should have just left it alone. It wasn’t my place to talk to another woman about Gabi. Especially another woman that I have kissed and fantasized about.

She kept her gaze on me but didn’t speak. She didn’t offer any advice or ask any more questions. She sat there and waited for me to continue. It was almost like her dark green eyes were pleading with me to keep going. I didn’t want to, but it seemed I was a slave to her eyes.

“She used to see this psychologist and agreed last night after I got home that she’d go back to him. I just want her to be the same happy person she was before. I used to be happy. I used to be fun.”

“Until this morning I would have thought you were happy. And I did think you were fun.”

How did I tell her that all of that was because of her? She made me laugh and joke around. She had put the smiles on my face. But I couldn’t tell her that without sounding like a cheating bastard. And the last thing I wanted to do was remind her that that’s just what I was.

“I guess some people just have a way of bringing that out in me,” is all I said.

A smile lit up her face and did something to me. Even after the night and morning I had with Gabi, her smile could still affect me. I hated that. I had hoped that after making progress at home, Eden wouldn’t still be able to cause me such conflicted feelings. Looking at her mouth, it reminded me of something.

“You really don’t listen to me, do you?” I laughed. “I told you to not cover your ink and to keep in your piercings. Why would you take them out?”

“It’s not professional,” she said as if it were obvious.

I pinched my brows together and blinked a few times, expressing with my face that I thought she was crazy. I made a show of my arms that were visible due to my sleeves being rolled up. “Clearly, my company doesn’t follow the same idea of professionalism that you seem to think. If the founder wears his ink proudly, then so should you. You are my sidekick by the way.”

She laughed and it put a smile on my face.

“And fuck what people say is professional. I like the Monroe and the nose stud. From now on, it’s part of your uniform. Come in without it again and I’ll send you home. But I am thankful you listened about your hair; it looks good.”

She nervously played with her large curls that hung down low on her back with a few draped over her shoulder. I must’ve thrown her off with my compliments because she turned quiet again.

“That wasn’t me hitting on you. That was just me giving you a compliment.”

“I know.” She didn’t and I could tell. It was a lie, but whatever.

“Ready to get to work?” I asked and she nodded.

I sent her to her office, which was an empty room attached to mine with another door accessible from the hallway. It was empty because it had been a very long time since I actually had someone to occupy it. The temps I used typically sat at the front desk and acted more like a receptionist than my assistant. Which was fine with me, they never really did any actual assisting anyway. I decided to keep them coming even though I had Eden to cover things. Eden wouldn’t be fetching me mail or coffee, or taking phone calls. They could still do all of that.

I gave her a file that I had already gone over. She didn’t know that, of course. It was one that I had discarded due to the risk factors. From the cover, it looked like a pretty solid business, one that would be what I liked to call a jumper—the ones you jump on quickly because they were smart investments. But once I dove into their personal backgrounds, the risks became too high. I knew it would take her all day to find it, if she ever did, and I was using it as a test. I was testing her to see what she would find, how long she’d spend on it before making a decision, and ultimately, what decision she would come up with. Her transcript from NYU was impressive, but I had hired people with impressive resumes before to only learn later that their intelligence didn’t transfer from college to the real world. I was interested to see what she came up with.

She was in her office when I went to lunch, and she was still in the same place an hour later when I returned. I wanted to interrupt her and tell her to eat something, but I needed to keep my space from her. I decided I would tell her on my way out that in the future, she needed to take some kind of lunch break, even if it was only for half an hour. I didn’t like my employees overworking themselves. An under-cared-for associate wasn’t any good to me.

She never left her office until almost four o’clock. I was on the phone with Gabi when she walked in through the door that connected my office to hers. Gabriella was going on and on about some shopping trip she went on, and although I was excited that she had gotten out of the house and seemed happy for the first time in months, I had work to do.

“Gabs… Gabi…” She still talked without listening to me. “Gabriella, listen to me. I have to go. I have someone here that just walked in. I’ll see you when I come home.” She finally heard me that time and told me she loved me. “I love you, too. I’ll see you later.”

Eden stood there and listened to my conversation until I hung up. She hesitantly handed me the folder and waited until I opened it. “That was fast. I wasn’t expecting you to come up with a decision so soon. Looks like a good choice, doesn’t it?” I asked, baiting her.

“Yes, it does.”

I looked at her. I won’t lie, I was disappointed in her answer.

“However, I don’t think you should do it.”

That got my attention. “Oh yeah, and why is that?”

“Well, although it seems great and all, I started looking at the Johnson brothers, the ones that bought the company a few years ago. They both struck it big at a casino and used their winnings to buy the company. The company itself is what’s making it seem like a great idea because the company is great. However, the new owners not so much. I would have had this back to you just after lunch, but I was waiting on a phone call. I just got it and it confirmed what I had suspected. They’ve been gambling, with big money. And even though I can’t prove that it’s company money, I just don’t think it’s a safe investment. Too risky.”

I was stunned into silence. She managed to find this all out in less than a day. It was impressive and I wanted to smile, but I was too shocked to do anything. I looked at her face and she seemed nervous as she waited for my response.

“I could fucking kiss you right now.” It was a figure of speech. Even though I really could’ve kissed her right then, I still only said it as it was commonly repeated. I didn’t miss the wide eyes she gave me, though. “Well, you know what I mean.”

“So my decision is all right?”

“All right? It’s fucking perfect. I had already canceled this one out last week; I just wanted to see what you’d say. I’ve gotta tell you, Eden, you had me scared when you first came back in. But I’ll admit, I’m an extremely smart man for hiring you.”

She finally laughed at that. “Yes, let’s go ahead and give you all of the credit for my work.”

“What? You didn’t know that’s what would happen when you took the job?”

“I should have, huh? Why would I possibly think that a man like you would give me any credit?” she teased. It was nice to have our banter back after the explosive morning we had.

“That’s your mistake. See? I can give you credit.”

She threw her pencil at me and shook her head in amusement.

“Good job today, Clare.”

“Thanks, Kauffmann.”

“Go ahead and go home. I’m getting ready to leave anyway. It was a good first day. You know, once we got passed the morning.” I smiled, as did she. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

She smiled and went back to her office to get her things before she left. I waited until I knew she was gone before heading out. I didn’t want to be stuck with her in the parking garage. Even though we were able to get things out to each other didn’t mean I wasn’t still affected by her. The only thing keeping me safe at work was the fact there was a desk between us.

When I got home, Gabi was in the kitchen making dinner. It was such a shock to see her that way that I ran to her and held her from behind. She smirked and batted my hands away as I tried to taste her cooking. I hadn’t seen her in the kitchen in so long and I couldn’t even express the joy I had felt from seeing it.

Not that I was one of those men that thought their women should be in the kitchen, but she used to love cooking for me. Once she miscarried, she stopped. In fact, she stopped so many things. Her cooking me dinner was the first of many things; I just knew it.

Even though she seemed as if she was getting better, she was still quiet while we ate. I wasn’t expecting that, especially after her ranting on and on about shopping while I was at work. It all began to make sense once she did start talking.

“So, I was thinking. I’ll go to see Doctor Greiner next week, but I don’t want to be on any pills. I don’t want to feel fucked-up all the time. So what if I just went to talk to him?”

“I think that’s a great idea, Gabs. Whatever works, you know that.”