Just One Night, Part 1: The Stranger (6 page)

The green marbles have rolled in another direction. I recognize the embarrassed blush on Sonya’s cheeks. “I don’t know if he mentioned it,” she says, following my gaze to Mr. Dade’s door, “but he has a meeting at nine thirty.”

“Yes,” I say, finally trusting myself to whisper a few words, my buttons now all neatly hooked. “With me and my team.”

“You’re his nine thirty?” She walks back to her desk and checks her computer screen. “Kasie Fitzgerald?”

I nod.

“Ah,” she says, sitting down, “you came early.” Apparently struck by her own unintentional pun, her mouth twitches with the effort to keep from giggling.

Her amusement does not sit well with me. The unaccountable confidence I felt just moments ago wanes and I press my legs together so tight the muscles of my hips and thighs shoot up little daggers of pain in protest. I may be desired but I have also risked humiliation.

Pride and shame smash into each other, causing an avalanche of less comprehensible emotions. I want to go home, lock the door, and try to make sense of the battle going on inside me.

But I had told my team to meet me in the waiting area outside Mr. Dade’s office. So I drink my SmartWater and try unsuccessfully to wash down the confusion.

I refuse to look at Sonya as the minutes tick away. I pretend I don’t see her when she knocks on the door of Mr. Dade’s office and asks him if there is anything she can get him. I wonder if he’s as embarrassed as I am, but the assured and professional tone he uses with her belies no discomfort. I’m the only one unnerved.

She returns to her desk and tries to flash me a conspiratorial smile but again I ignore her. I tense even more when I hear familiar voices coming from down the hall. My team of four files into the waiting room like a pride of lions on the hunt, with Dameon, the only man on my team, hanging back and letting the women take the lead. Nina, Taci, and Asha are my women. Their movements are slow, almost languid, but there’s stealth there. They’re taking it all in, trying to spot the company’s weakest links. They’re hungry and they’re ready to pounce on anything that smells like opportunity. But they don’t see me . . . or rather they do but they don’t see my details. They don’t see the crease in my shirt that is almost gone now. They don’t see my clenched fists resting in my lap. All they see is Kasie Fitzgerald, greeting them one by one as they walk in. The only thing that strikes them as unusual is my hair that now hangs loosely around my shoulders. It contradicts the severity of my suit and it’s a style my coworkers have never seen me wear. They all take a moment to throw me a compliment along with a curious look. I thank them for the former and ignore the latter.

When Mr. Dade walks out, I rise and rigidly accept the hand he offers me.

“Miss Fitzgerald, it’s so good to see you again.”

His teasing smile is disconcerting. I want to check to see if anyone else notices but I don’t want to give myself away. “May I introduce you to my team?” I ask.

He nods and I go around and give him the names of my colleagues. He greets them with his casual confidence and clipped words of greeting before turning his smile back to me. “I have to say,” he says to the room in general, “your boss has impressed me. Her enthusiasm and passion give me hope that you can help bring Maned Wolf to the next level.”

I glance quickly over at the assistant, who is now biting her lip. But my team doesn’t notice anything unusual.

I breathe a quiet sigh of relief for that small blessing and replay Mr. Dade’s statement in my head. I’m more taken with the word “boss” than I am with the subtle innuendo. This is
my
team. I have never had one before. I’ve finally been given control!

But when we follow Mr. Dade out of the waiting room, as he begins the tour, I replay other things in my head—the feel of his hands between my legs, the kisses he placed in my hair.

And as I think of these things, I look back at the assistant. She’s watching me, almost wistfully, almost admiringly.
She
sees my details. And in this moment I realize that control is becoming increasingly out of reach.

CHAPTER 7

R
OOM AFTER ROOM
,
office after office, Mr. Dade leads my team through the winding corridors of his life. And it’s clear that this really is his life. Evidence of that is in the way he describes his products with a boyish giddiness that I haven’t seen before. It’s evident in the way he caresses the plans given to him by the engineers he introduces to us. Not as intimate as the caresses he shared with me earlier but loving nonetheless. I hear it in his easy laughter as we chat with his marketing team over a lunch meeting in the conference room. He knows the names of every employee and knows exactly how they fit into his operation. He recites their duties to us with the enthusiasm of a man reciting the stats of his favorite football players. My staff takes copious notes as do I. But even as my pen glides over my notepad my eyes continue to flicker up to him. Everything about him fascinates me. Even the way he moves as he leads us to our meeting with his other top executives.

“Keep in mind that this place is more than just a company to Robert and me,” his VP says good-naturedly as he shakes my hand, then Asha’s, then Taci’s, and so on. Mr. Dade stands a step behind him, owning the room without saying a word. “Particularly for Robert,” the man continues. “His house? That’s Robert’s home away from home. But this is where he really lives.
This
is his true home.”

The statement takes me off guard. My career has always been a huge part of my identity. I’m driven by success, motivated by failure . . . but the company that employs me . . . was there ever a time when that place felt like home?

Mr. Dade laughs softly and shakes his head. “You’re not much better, Will. If I’m here for seventy hours of a week, you’re here for sixty-eight. It’s why your wife hates me so much.”

Their banter is good-natured and kind. More than that, it’s brotherly. Tom Love, Nina, Dameon, were any of them family?

I watch as my team flashes plastic smiles and nods encouragingly at this man, Will, who is now rattling on about projections and corporate ambitions. I don’t know these people. Yes, I know their strategies, their work ethic, their level of intelligence, but I don’t know what makes them truly unique. I don’t know how long that wedding ring has been on Taci’s finger or who put it there. I don’t know why there’s just a tan line where Dameon’s band used to be. I don’t know what pictures are inside that Tiffany’s locket which always hangs around Nina’s neck.

And they don’t know me. If they did, they’d spend more time wondering about why my hair is down.

The only one of them I’ve ever spent any time wondering about is Asha. She has a seductively dark energy, darker than her brown Indian eyes or thick black hair. Her dress is tighter than anything I would ever wear to the office but her conservative blue blazer makes it acceptable. Still, you have to wonder what happens when she leaves the office and takes off the blazer. Does she live another life?

I wonder, but if I’m right, it would be hypocritical for me to fault her for it.

Mr. Dade is looking at me now. I feel it without having to return his gaze. The man can slip inside of my head as easily as he slides inside of my body. He looks away, toward the VP’s desk, not so unlike the desk I had been on just over an hour ago—eager, wet, his.

I cross my arms over my chest self-consciously. I’m in a room full of strangers; what would these strangers think of me if they knew? What would they think if they saw? Would they look at me the way Sonya looked at me?

Images dance inside my mind, too quick for me to catch or suppress. I see myself on that desk, with a room full of my coworkers. I imagine them watching as he undresses me; I see their eyes follow the path of my silk blouse as it floats to the floor, the first item in a continued cascade of fabric until I’m clothed in nothing but the cool air and the warmth of Robert Dade’s touch. I hear the soft murmurs of our audience as Robert explores my body with his, as he opens me up with his hands, his mouth. . . . I sense them moving closer as I succumb to every kiss, every stroke and caress. And they watch as Robert growls his desire and enters me. Beams of pleasure shoot through my body, then his; we rock with the impact as the room sighs and gasps. I’m completely exposed to all of them. And in that moment they understand me. All of me. Not just the ambitious businesswoman who advises the world’s CEOs, not just the polite lady who knows which fork to use while dining at the city’s five-star restaurants. Now they know that the same woman who can lead them to power and success, the same woman who can conquer every professional challenge, can unleash a delectable chaos when she is touched just the right way by just the right man. . . .

I shake myself out of it, stunned by the outrageousness of my fantasy and even more unnerved by the idea that the man who is now standing across the room from me could possibly be the right man. I glance over at him and I see that he’s still looking at the desk. His eyes dart back and forth as if he’s in REM sleep with open lids. He, too, is seeing things on that desk that aren’t there.

That wasn’t just my fantasy. Without sharing so much as a gesture of communication, we had shared the same sort of vision.

This man who I had met less than a week ago: I know him better than Nina, Asha, Dameon, or Taci. I know what he wants.

He wants me.

He sighs quietly. I’m the only one who notices the slight rise and fall of his chest. He walks across the room, idly, seemingly without purpose. But I know better. He crosses in front of me. No more than a foot separates us in that fleeting moment of passing as he moves to the window. It’s the tiniest signal, a little gesture to let me know that he wants to be near me. What surprises me is that what I see in his face is more than desire; it’s frustration, determination . . . maybe even confusion that matches my own. Will, still talking, still answering the questions of the team, glances in Robert’s direction as he passively stares out the window. The deep lines that are etched across Will’s forehead deepen further. This isn’t Robert’s normal behavior. He’s reacting to some invisible element that Will can clearly sense but not feel.

Ha, you just thought of him as “Robert” rather than “Mr. Dade.”
My little devil relishes in my increasing familiarity with this man who has unleashed her. My angel just quietly shakes her head and thinks of Dave, the man who buys me roses and rubies.

“So your main focus is optimal positioning before your initial public offering?” This from Asha. She’s looking at the VP, but I sense that she’s particularly tuned in to Robert.

“Timing is everything,” Robert says quietly. He turns away from the window and smiles at Asha but the smile has a hint of melancholy. “We need to project strength, and the vulnerabilities need to be buried so deep, no one will be able to dig them up for years. We can’t have the big investors perceiving us one way and the smaller ones another. That would only lead to conspiracy theories about insider trading and unethical practices. We must be universally seen as a giant.”

“Every company has their weaknesses,” Asha counters. “If you seem too good to be true, investors won’t believe in you.”

“They will believe because they want us to live up to the myths they’ve already created for us,” Robert explains. “Our job is only to help them see what they want to see and be who they want us to be.”

I stare down at the hard, gleaming wood floor beneath my Italian heels. Yes, I know Robert Dade better than anyone else in this room. I understand him because, at least on some level, I understand myself.

CHAPTER 8

H
E’S AN INTERESTING
MAN
,” Asha says as we walk to our cars. The rest of the team has parked in Maned Wolf’s parking facility but I parked a few blocks away on the street. I didn’t want anyone noting how early I had arrived. Asha apparently parked near me for reasons I can only guess at.

“He was so enthusiastic for the first half of the tour,” she continues, “and then . . . something happened in that office.”

The wind is picking up, lifting my hair, chilling my neck. “I didn’t notice,” I say. My car’s in sight now. I reach for my keys.

“You did,” Asha says, “and now you’re denying it. I wonder why?”

I turn my profile to the wind so I can look at her. I hadn’t expected her brazenness and I speculate on whether or not a confrontation is brewing. But she doesn’t say any more until we reach my car and even then she only adds a cheerful good-bye as she continues her walk to her own vehicle.

Asha started at our firm only weeks before I arrived. All these years I had quietly admired her mystery. Only now does it occur to me that she might be dangerous.

I get in my car, grip the wheel, and breathe, waiting for my thoughts to catch up to my actions. Looking up at my reflection in the rearview mirror I touch the freckle that I forgot to cover up this morning. When did I become so careless? When did I become one of the lost?

But that’s an easy question to answer. I got lost at the Venetian in Vegas.

If I want to find my way, I have to retrace my steps. Find that path I strayed from, rediscover the joy of being loyal to one man. If I can mentally retrace my steps, I can leave this insane detour behind.

At eight I’m meeting Dave for dinner, but that’s well over three hours away.

I pick up my phone and call Simone.

*     *     *

W
HEN I GET
to Simone’s condo, it’s just short of five o’clock. She waves me in. On her beige couch are leopard-print throw pillows; on the walls, framed black-and-white photographs of women and men dancing, the sensuality of their movement caught in a split-second pose.

“Can I get you something to drink?” she asks. “Tea? Sparkling water?”

“Maybe a cocktail?”

She pauses a moment and looks out the window at the smoggy blue sky. She knows I rarely drink before sunset. It’s a rule my mother taught me when I was young. “Drinking is for the moon,” she would say as she poured her wine. “Darkness hides our smaller sins. But the sun isn’t so forgiving. Light requires the innocence of sobriety.”

But how innocent had I been when I drank water in Mr. Dade’s waiting room, fixing the buttons on my shirt? How many sins have I already committed in the brightness of day? The rules are changing and I need a cocktail to deal.

Simone disappears into the kitchen and returns with two glasses, one for her, one for me. The clear liquid does have the look of chastity but the bite of something much better. I take several sips and lower myself onto her sofa. She places herself on the armrest by my side.

“You always tell me your secrets,” I say. One of those leopard throw pillows presses against my back.

“And you never tell me any of yours,” she replies, lightly.

It’s not true. I told Simone about my sister once. I told her about her blinding brilliance and her energy that was as powerful as it was frightening. But Simone didn’t know those confessions were secrets. For her a secret was something no one knew, not something everyone was trying to forget.

“I never had any secrets before,” I say, using her definition.

“Before.” She says the word carefully, tasting its meaning. She curls a lock of her golden hair around her index finger like a ring.

“You know, secrets and mysteries, they have . . . weight. I’ve enjoyed traveling light.”

“What kind of weight are you carrying, Kasie?”

When I don’t answer, she changes tact. “When did you start having secrets?”

“In Vegas,” I whisper.

“I knew it!” Simone leans forward and places her glass on the coffee table with a triumphant thump. “You were different when you came back to the room—”

“I told you, I had a drink with a man in the bar with glass walls.”

Simone swats aside my words like irksome flies. “There was more.” She gets up as if standing over me will force out my story a little faster. “When I left you at the blackjack table you were still that woman without secrets. And now?” She shrugs.

“Now I’m something different.” I turn my focus inward, gathering up the courage to continue. “I betrayed him.”

“Dave?”

“Yes Dave. He’s the only man I have the power to betray.”

Simone turns out her left leg, shifting her weight forward to her toes. She looks like the immobile dancers on her wall. “It was more than a kiss?”

“Yes, more than a kiss.”

A slow smile forms on her lips. “You slept with a stranger.”

I look away.

“You did it! For just one night you were young!”

“No, I was irresponsible.”

She arches a blond eyebrow. “There’s a difference?”

I make a small gesture of concession to her point. “The thing is, he’s not a stranger anymore.”

And now both her eyebrows reach for new heights. “You’re having an affair?”

I wince, disliking the word. It’s common and ugly.

And it fits perfectly with my actions of the last week.

“He hired me to consult for his company. Even when I’m not talking to him he”—I glance up at the photographs—“he dances around in my head. I’ve been doing things I never thought I would do. I think things I never thought I would think. I don’t know who I am anymore.”

“That’s easy,” Simone says, sitting by my side and slipping my two hands between hers. “You’re a woman with secrets”—she studies my eyes, my lips, my hair—“and you wear them beautifully.”

I pull away. “It’s just my hair, I’m wearing it down.”

“No, it’s the secrets, giving you color, brightening your eyes . . . you look more . . . human somehow.”

“I didn’t look human before?”

“Always beautiful, but a bit statuesque . . . Do you remember the statues we saw during our college trip to Florence? They were fantastic . . . but as grand as he is, I can’t imagine making love to Michelangelo’s
David
. Too hard, too cold, too . . . perfect.”

I laugh into my glass. “I have never been perfect.”

“But everyone thinks of you that way. It earns you admiration . . . now you’re inner human is showing and it sounds as if it’s earning you something . . . warmer.”

“I slept with him today.”

“At his place or yours?”

“In his office . . . on his desk.” I’m surprised that the admission makes me grin.

“Shut. Up.”

I look up at her and for the briefest of moments I bask in her envy, allow myself to indulge in the gratification that comes from my newfound audacity.

“You made love on his desk,” she repeats. “It sounds like a fantasy.”

I shake my head. “That’s the thing, I did it and then I fantasized about it
afterward
.”

“But it was better than a fantasy,” Simone corrects. “It’s a memory now, and it’s yours to keep.”

“No.” I shake my head. “In my fantasy I . . . added things.” I swallow the rest of the burning liquid and tell her my imaginings . . . the image of him entering me while my team looks on. The words are hard to get out but I need to tell someone whose mind might be unconventional enough to explain the shift in mine.

“I imagined myself having sex in front of the people I work with!” I finally exclaim. “It’s a little extreme, don’t you think?”

Simone stares at me for a moment and leans back against the opposite end of the couch. She stretches her long legs toward me so she now has the repose of a Roman who might be fed grapes by beautiful slaves.

“Remember when I used to date Jax?”

I nod. Jax flies into my head with his wavy dark hair and impertinent brown eyes.

“While I was with him I developed this fantasy. . . .”

“ ‘Developed a fantasy,’ ” I repeat. The term sounds so purposeful, as if she spent her nights laying out a structure for her future daydreams.

“I still indulge it from time to time. I’m laying out on his deck on one of his lawn chairs, flat on my stomach wearing nothing but my bikini bottoms. I don’t hear the knock on the door, or the footsteps of his friends.” Her voice is slowing, lowering, changing texture. “He leads them out to the deck. . . . I try to get up with some bit of modesty, my arm covers my bare breasts as I walk to them, shake their hands. I lead them to the living room and they all take a seat. Jax asks me to get each one of them a beer from that little bar area of his. I lean down and take the beer out of the mini fridge, try to open it without revealing too much, but every once in a while they get a glimpse. I’m pouring an ice cold beer in a glass for each one of them and now I serve them . . . wearing almost nothing.”

“And then?”

“Jax asks me to sit next to him. He doesn’t want me to get more clothes. He wants me to be there with him right now. And so I oblige. He’s already turned the television on; it’s the Lakers as it always is with him. . . .”

I can see by the glazed look of her eyes that she’s not with me anymore. She’s by Jax’s side . . . wearing almost nothing.

“His hand falls to my leg and I shiver as it moves up and down . . . in front of all these men.” She shudders and suddenly I’m self-conscious. I shouldn’t be seeing this. I was not invited into this room full of men.

“Jax tells his friends that I am the most orgasmic woman he’s ever been with. He tells them he can make me come with a touch.”

I close my eyes and turn my head. I’m not seeing Simone anymore. I’m not seeing Jax. I’m seeing Robert Dade, his hands sliding higher and higher up my inner thigh.

“He hands one of them his phone, asks him to record us . . . he even invites his friends to record it on their own phones if they like, so they can see me climax whenever they want. I’ll be in their pocket, exposed for their pleasure.”

I suck in a short breath. This isn’t my fantasy but I understand it. I feel the cameras on me, feel the stares.

“The bikini is only tied together with pretty little bows placed on each hip. He unties the knots, lets them see me, and then, as they watch, as they film me, he touches me, moving his finger slowly then faster and faster . . . I can’t control myself anymore. I’m writhing around in my seat as they watch. I let the fingers of one of his hands explore my depth as his other hand pulls my arm away from my breasts. And the men, they keep watching, keep filming as I come closer and closer. . . .”

Her fingers scratch against the fabric of the couch. I don’t have to look at her to know that she is now completely lost in this reverie. But then so am I.

“One man comes closer, he sees everything, they all do and I know I shouldn’t like it but I do. I know what Jax is doing is wrong, displaying me like this, touching me like this in front of all of them, but knowing that only makes it all more intense. And in front of their eyes, in front of their cameras I come . . . they watch and Jax makes me come . . . I come in front of a room full of men.”

She and I open our eyes at the same time. “That’s a fantasy,” she says softly. “I would never do it. Not in front of Jax’s friends . . . definitely not with all their cameras trained on me . . . but that’s the joy of fantasy. There are no rules, no limits, no consequences, no judgment. Just irreproachable pleasure.”

I sit with this for a moment, delighting in the idea that something so scandalous can be irreproachable when contained inside the mind. But then I am not so constrained.

“I slept with Robert Dade, more than once.” Reluctantly I step out of the ethereal mood Simone has cloaked us in to acknowledge this reality. “There will be consequences.”

“Yes,” Simone agrees. “But sometimes consequences are good . . . even when they don’t seem that way at first.”

“I’m engaged to another man.”

Her eyes fall to my hand. “No ring yet?”

“We found one. . . . Dave wants to see if he can get the jeweler to lower the price.”

Simone’s smile fades, the haze of recent pleasure slips away. “How many millions does Dave have in his trust fund? Four? And he’s making, what . . . a hundred and twenty thousand a year at his firm?”

“About half that for the former, almost twice that for the latter,” I say but quickly add, “he’s conservative with his money. I like that about him. He’s never reckless.”

Simone brings herself into a more erect position, moving slowly like a woman approaching a potentially explosive subject. “Has he ever said the words, ‘Will You Marry Me?’ ”

“That’s not really the point—”

“Maybe not, but did he say them?”

I don’t want to answer this question. It will paint Dave as cold, as cold as the statues Simone compared me to. But I came here for honest advice and so I force myself to give an honest answer.

“He said,” I begin, falter, and then let the rest of the words spill out in a rush: “He said I think we should go ring shopping.”

Again she nods, no judgment in her eyes, just thoughtfulness. “Did he talk about wedding dates?”