Just One Night: Part 2 (3 page)

I look up, wiping the silly tears off my face. “Oh, you have, huh?” I try for a laugh without much success.

“Yes, I have. After this lame dinner, we’re going to go out dancing.” She swivels her hips left and right, snapping her fingers up next to her head. “Yeah, baby. Get it, get it...”

“I don’t think so.”

She abandons her twerky-dancing and pulls me to my feet. “I know so.” She kisses me on both cheeks. “Now fix your makeup and get dressed. Dinner’s at seven thirty and we’re going uptown, baby.”

CHAPTER TWO

William

NONE OF THESE REPORTS IS the one I requested. I shuffle through a stack of papers that contain data on upcoming projects but not the P&L. That brainless ninny is at it again. Her mission? To make me so mental that I’ll jump off the nearest bridge just to escape her incompetence. And while I will admit to having considered it at least twice since Monday, I would no sooner give her the satisfaction than I would give up treacle tarts. It simply will not happen.

“Miss Meechum, could you please report to my office?” I wait for her response. When it arrives, it seems to be coming from a great distance, her voice is so faint.

“Just a second, Mr. Stratford! I’m just …
ack!”

The sound that transmits after her unfortunate scream can only signify a tumble. Or perhaps she’s wrestling a troll. It’s difficult to tell from where I’m sitting, but it sounds a mess.

I almost don’t want to ask, but my deceased mother’s voice in my head forces me to at least inquire as to her wellbeing. “Are you all right, Miss Meechum?”

No answer.

I pause in my paper shuffling. “Miss Meechum, if I have to get up from this desk to rescue you, and you are
not
in need of rescue, I shall be very cross with you.”

“No! I’m okay! Just … dammit … give me a second, would you?”

I press the disconnect button, severing the connection. Usually my assistant is more tractable and circumspect than this. Perhaps it is an emergency.

Getting up from my chair, I endeavor to be as quiet as a church mouse. I can’t have her thinking I’m some sort of knight in shining armor to be called upon when her plumbing goes awry or her electrical panel blows up, now can I? I shall supervise in secret just in case she’s bleeding from an artery.

A peek outside my door is all I require to come to terms with the fact that this woman who is supposed to be running my business life has to be the most catastrophically uncoordinated person in the entire godforsaken city. What was my father thinking when he hired her? Knowing him, he was probably thinking of his golf game. It’s possible Rachel Meechum would make a passable caddy, but as an assistant, she is lacking. Severely lacking.

Her copper-colored hair is caught in a stack of paper trays balanced on a colleague’s desk, and she’s busy trying to untangle herself, mumbling talk I’ve only heard in American movies coming from the mouths of street urchins. There is no arterial bleeding, but there is a lot of hair involved.

I know I should probably help her, but my week has been dreadfully dull. I lean against the doorframe as I continue my peeping. This is the best entertainment I’ve had since …

No. Stop. I shall not think about that now. The specter of that evening has been haunting me regularly for nearly six days. Six days! Looking down at my watch confirms it. I met the indomitable Jennifer No-Last-Name exactly five days, eleven hours, and twenty some odd minutes ago. Not even a full twenty-four hours with the woman and my life was turned upside down and inside out. It has become painfully clear over the last several days that I need to, as Miss Meechum says,
get a life
. This appears to be the only way I will get Jennifer out of my blasted steel trap of a brain. I shall begin with the getting a life program next week. After I’ve gotten to the bottom of the P&L issues.

I watch in undisguised admiration as my industrious assistant leans over a cubicle on her tiptoes, takes a pair of scissors from a nearby desk, and proceeds to cut off the offending chunk of hair that has kept her tethered. Why she takes the extra time to retrieve the severed nest of red frizz when she’s free to leave is beyond me. Will she use rubber cement to glue it back on? I wouldn’t put it past her. She can be rather industrious when the mood strikes.

Withdrawing into my office before she catches me gawking, I make efforts to hasten over to my desk. My face is a mask of civility laced with a tich of impatience as she comes into my office. There is a large space on the left side of her head, sans frizz. No hair. Just a space. It presents a serious challenge to my attempts at remaining my sober, English self.

She smiles, her hands gesturing in a frenzy all around her. “Sorry it took me so long.
Phew!
This office is
big
. I pretty much just walked like two miles to get here.”

I suppose we’re going to pretend that she didn’t just wrestle a paper tray and lose. My eyebrow lifts. The devil in me refuses to play along so easily. “From your desk?” I pause so that can sink in. “Just outside my door?”

“No, from the coffee room.”

“Ah. A whole ten meters away. I hope you haven’t pulled a muscle.” I push the pile of papers she gave me earlier out towards her. “Have you put it in it’s place?” I ask.

She looks down at the reports. “Put what in it’s place?”

“The coffee pot … or whatever it was that was giving you fits.”

“What?” A light goes on in her head, no doubt a dim one. “Oh, that. Ha, ha. No … I mean yes. I took care of it.” She punches the air for emphasis. “I sure told that coffee pot who the boss is in this place.”

“And who would that be?” I’m quite sure the coffee pot would win the contest if it were based on IQ alone.

“You, of course.” She tries to smooth down her wreck of a coiffure.

“Very well, then. Thank you for seeing to that degenerate coffee pot. Can’t have it overstepping its bounds, now can we?”

“Sir?” She tilts her head. “Are you joking with me again? Should I call your doctor and see if he has time to see you before the weekend?”

“I’m perfectly healthy.” Too healthy. If only I’d been sick with the bubonic plague last week-end, everything would have turned out ever so much better. “I need the P&L from last quarter showing our turnover to include the overseas assets. Didn’t you read my email?”

“Yes, sir, of course. I read all your emails.” Her face turns bright red and she stammers. “I mean, not
all
your emails of course. Just the ones that come to my inbox from you. I would never invade your privacy that way and hack into your accounts.” Her face is suddenly white.

My eyes narrow of their own accord and I make a mental note to check the history registered to her computer. Spying on me is a terrifically damnable offense that I will delight in firing her over. “Show me.” I say, holding out her papers.

“Show you?” I am reminded of a canine, the way she tilts her head. So confused. So lost.

I sigh deeply and speak slowly. “The P&L?”

She smiles in what looks like relief and rushes over to my desk. “They’re right here, Mr. Stratford.” She moves through the papers like a dealer at a blackjack table in Monte Carlo. It pains me that she’s better at it than I was. She wrestles paper baskets and loses, for God’s sake. Where does that put me? Below the coffee pot in the office hierarchy? Now there’s a thought.

“Riiiight here.” Holding out three papers from amidst the fifty or so I had earlier, she stands before me triumphant. And I am rightfully put in my place when I glance at them and realize they are exactly what I said I did not have.

Who is the canine now? Yes. That would be me.
Woof
, indeed.

“Thank you. You may leave now.” I ignore her in favor of the documents I hold in my hand. Something is not quite right with our projects in Scotland, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to leave here tonight before determining what exactly the problem could be.

“But … sir?”

“Yes?”

“Um … you have to leave.”

I use the utmost patience and willpower to place the reports down in front of me with barely a whisper of sound. “Are you kicking me out of my own office?”

“Yes. No. Kind of. You have a meeting.” She points at my computer screen. Her finger trembles with the effort.

I frown, turning in my chair to look at my calendar. Glaring out at me is a dinner party I completely forgot. I shall blame my distracted mood on Jennifer No-Last-Name. She is entirely at fault for my loss of focus. Her, Miss Meechum, and the blasted coffee pot that is currently mocking me from the kitchenette.

“Send Edward,” I say, going back to my reports. My brother needs to earn his keep. Let him spend the evening pretending to like those obnoxious playboys and their embarrassingly eager hangers-on.

“He’s already going. Your father said you both need to be there. There will be at least two potential investors attending who he says you have to get on board before the end of the quarter.”

I wave her away. “Stop. You’re babbling. It’s embarrassing.”

“Sir, I’m serious.”

I look up at that. A woman with hair like this simply cannot ever be serious. It’s a scientific impossibility.

Stressed out, I believe, is what they call a person who looks as she does at the moment. “It’s really important,” she whinges. “I don’t want your dad to think I’m not doing my job.”

“What if I find your job performance irritating beyond measure?”

“Don’t be silly. You totally love me.”

My face falls. Did she just say
love?
Good God. Another one to be culled from the herd, weak, guilty of confusing business with pleasure. This is one of the times that I wish I were born as ugly as a rock. I could get so much more done with a face that only a mother could love.

“Gah!
I totally didn’t mean that the way it sounded!” She backs towards the door with her hands up in surrender. Or perhaps she’s directing traffic on her way out. “No offense, sir, but you’re not my type. You’re way too … you know … stick in the mud. Oh, shit. Oh, dammit! I didn’t mean it like that! Help! Ack! I have to go!” She leaves my office in a tangle of limbs and hair, and the sound of crashing comes from around the door jamb. “Please don’t fire me! I’m going to leave before I say something I’ll regret!” This, as if she hasn’t already.

The sound of the ticking clock on my desk becomes more noticeable as the cacophony that is Miss Meechum beating a hasty retreat from the building subsides. I estimate at least five employees will come to work on Monday and wonder what happened to their desktops as her wide rear end has surely taken down both light-as-a-feather papers and fourteen-ounce staplers with equal measure and efficiency. I could send them a personal instant message with one word: Meechum, and solve the mystery immediately. But I won’t. Let her explain her handicaps on her own. I have work to do.

My telephone rings when I’m only five minutes into my analysis. I grind my teeth together in frustration. Will it never end? Why is everyone always conspiring to keep me from my work?

“Stratford,” I say, barely paying attention to my caller, still focused on the numbers in front of me.

“William! It’s your father.”

He’s using his jovial voice. I am instantly on my guard.

“Hello, Father. I’m delighted to hear from you.”

“Bollocks! Are you on your way to the dinner party?”

I stare at my calendar. The awful event mocks me: You want to analyze your P&L? So sorry, but you’ve been summoned to the depths of hell where you must pretend to be charming and thrilled to be present among idiots.

“Actually, I was in the middle of something.” This is useless. My needs are always put in the boot in favor of my father’s.

“Nothing that can’t wait, I’m sure.” Jovial is slipping. We are now moving into darker waters. He may golf his days away, but that does not mean he isn’t still the devil incarnate when he wants something done with his business. I can hardly complain; he has put me in charge of the empire and the position comes with a flat and an Aston Martin.
Stratford. William Stratford.

I sigh in defeat. I do not have the energy to fight the patriarch this evening. Perhaps another time when the stakes are higher. Checking the calendar confirms that I have the week-end to figure out the problems that plague our Edinburgh project.

“I’ll be there in thirty minutes,” I concede.

“Better hurry. You’ll miss the cocktails.”

“And what a crime that would be,” I mutter.

“A crime, indeed. His collection is second to none! Tell Malcolm I said hello.”

Tell him yourself
. “Of course, yes, sir, I will. You can depend on me.”

“Good man. Will I see you at Sunday brunch?”

“Must we?” My father has chosen the most annoying of American pastimes to indulge in now that he’s retired.

“Stop being such a fuddy duddy.”

“Fuddy duddy? Fuddy duddy? Who is this fuddy duddy of which you speak? Certainly not me. I am the bell of the ball. A swash-buckling pirate of the high seas seeking adventure at every turn. The man soon to be wearing the lampshade at the party.”

My father chortles, his big belly laughs threatening to dislodge a lung. “That’s my boy. Until Sunday. Feel free to bring a date, by the way.”

“Absolutely,” I say as cheerily as I can. “As soon as hell freezes over, I’ll get right to that.”

My father is probably still laughing as I stand, disconnect the call, and collect my jacket. My wristwatch tells me that I’ll be an hour late to the dinner, and knowing that my brother
won’t
be sends me out the door in a hurry. Who knows what kind of trouble he will brew up with potential clients before I can stop him.

CHAPTER THREE

Jennifer

CLUB SIXX IS A SWANKY restaurant that doubles as an intimate club after eleven. I’ve never eaten here before but this is just another day at the office for Mia. She saunters in like she owns the place. “Show me to the cocktails,” she said to the maitre d’.

“And you are with what party?”

“Don’t play, Pierre. You know who I’m with. And I
am
the party, by the way.” She winks at me.