LOVING THE HEAD MAN (3 page)

       “Remove that jacket so I can get a look at you,” he ordered.

       She did that, too, revealing a soft white, sleeveless blouse tucked into a tight black skirt.  She was curvaceous and seemed to have it together, although she rarely worked out.

       He removed the jacket from her arm and tossed it onto the chair.  “Turn around,” he again ordered, and she did that too, although she still didn’t see the reason for such an inspection.  She knew she was no fashion plate, if that was his point.  She’d had too many financial obligations to her younger siblings, to her irresponsible mother, to her trifling older brother Ricky to ever have enough money to give in to vanities.  That was why her business suit was off the rack department store, rather than the tailored looks favored by the Colgate crowd.

       She expected Alan to rip into her appearance when he told her to turn around, and to make some comment about how his grandmother had more style.  But he didn’t say a word. 
When she was about to turn back around, however, he had moved up behind her and placed his hands on her hips.
  She immediately protested, moving quickly and angrily to turn, but he tightened his grip and pulled her closer against him, rendering her immobile. 

       “What do you think you’re doing?” he asked her in a soft, but undeniably stern voice.

       It was more of a question Bree figured she should have been asking, given what he was doing to
her
, but she said, instead, “please let me go,” in her own brand of sternness. 

       “And what if I don’t?” he quickly replied in a snarky tone.  “What are you going to do about it?   Scream?  Cry foul?  Take your marbles and go home?  Because that’s where you’ll be going, Miss Hudson, if you even
think
about disrespecting me.”

      
Disrespecting him
?
she
thought. 
Was this guy
nuts
?  “I’m not disrespecting you, Mr. DeFrame,” she said.  “Just please let me go.  Just take your hands off of me now.”  She said this with finality, as if it was her last warning, but Alan seemed to relish the challenge.

       “I’ll take my hands off of you when I’m good and ready to take my hands off of you.”  He began massaging her hips, holding her tighter still.  Bree cringed and angrily tried to move out of his grasp again, but again his grip tightened and she couldn’t take one step.  She could feel him expanding against her, as if an interview she thought would be all about business, had disintegrated into a sex romp for him. 

       “You got what it takes, you know that, Bree?”  His mouth was within a half inch of her ear.  She could feel his hot breath.  His eyes were assessing her smooth, thin, swan-like neck.  “Of all the others, you got it, baby.  That’s why Mr. Colgate told me to bump somebody more deserving and give the last slot to you.  He saw something in you, too.  He mentioned something about trial presence.  He believes you have what it takes to win over a wavering jury, to get that favorable outcome, which he views as priceless in our line of work.  But I’m not Robert Colgate.  I don’t give a damn who you win over.  When I look at you, I don’t see any skills of persuasion, or courtroom presence.  When I look at you, I see skills in the bedroom.  I see you naked beneath me, this fine ass of yours—”

       “Let me go!”  Bree said as forcefully as she knew how, trying with all she had to sling herself away from him, literally tussling with him to get away.  “I’m not playing now,” she warned, her teeth clenched.  “Let me go!”

       Her indignation seemed to anger him, instead of shame him, and he slammed her harder against him, encircling her with one hand and grabbing her by the chin with the other.  At first it was a battle, as she fought hard against his pull.  But he was far too strong.  He managed to turn her head sideways and her chin upwards, until she was stubbornly looking him in his face.

       “Who do you think you’re talking to like that?” he said to her.  She was even cuter, he thought, when she was angry.  “You think I’m one of those country boys back home?  Are you foolish enough to believe that?  You’re ambitious or your black ass wouldn’t be here, so let’s cut the good girl routine, all right?  You want what I’ve got because I’m the man who stands between you and your greatest dream,
girl,
you’d better remember who you’re talking to!”

       He exhaled, regret showing in his murky blue eyes.  “I was just trying to help you out.  I was trying to give you a leg up since your limited abilities certainly aren’t going to do you any favors.  You’re competing against the cream of the crop, woman. 
The best of the best.
  And you come here from some backward Mississippi watering hole with some second rate education and expect to be in contention for a job at
Colgate
?  Are you
kidding
me?”

       Again he paused, again Bree battled to be free.  But he kept on talking.  “You’re cute, but you ain’t all that.   Almost every female out there better looking than you.  But Colgate saw something in you, something that made him question our selections,
something
he’d never done in all the years I’d been running this program.  So I figure hey, a ladies man like Robert Colgate sees something in you, there has to be something there.  It can’t be your
looks,
I don’t see anything remarkable about that face.  You’re just another cute face, if you ask me.  So it must be this fine body of yours.”  He pulled her closer
still,
Bree fought him even harder still. 

       “What’s wrong with you?” he asked angrily, ramming her against him, seemingly amazed by her willingly to battle him back.  “All those other female finalists out there know how to play the game, they didn’t give me this hard a time, and every one of them already stands a better chance than you.  What’s your damn problem?”

      
Yet another pause, still more regret in his eyes.
  “Thought I’d let you prove to me that you’ve got more going for you than your background, because that’s going against you.  But you want to play the innocent.  You want to play the virtuous woman who wouldn’t dream of sleeping her way to the top.  Then fine.  Play her.  But when you’re ready to play it my way, which you will when reality sets in, come see me.” 

       Then he not only released her, but shoved her away from him as if she disgusted him now.  She stumbled and turned around quickly, mortified by his treatment.  She raked her hand through her braids, raking them out of her face, and stared at Alan DeFrame in disbelief.  Tears strained her lids.

       “Get out of my sight,” he ordered in a nasty tone.  “Consider this meet and greet a failure.”  And then he turned and walked back behind his desk. 

       Bree stood there momentarily, stunned, dumbstruck, angry and sad, more emotions building inside of her than she could even express, and then she did as he ordered, and got out of his sight.

       And like her colleagues, she left his office in a daze.  But as soon as she saw the other finalists, she couldn’t laugh it off the way they had, she couldn’t call it brutal as if his brutality was all in the game.  She, instead, got away from them, too.  Alan’s behavior was a joke to them, something up-and-comers had to simply endure.  But his sex-laden harshness wasn’t funny to Bree, and she wasn’t interested in
enduring
it.

       That was why she kept walking.  Out of Alan’s office, out of the board room where the other finalists were assembled, across the hall and into the stairwell.  She went up the stairs to the roof deck where Monty Ross, Mr. Colgate’s assistant, had showed them when he gave them a tour of the building earlier that morning.   Monty had called it a haven, the place to go if you wanted to get outside to smoke or to gather your thoughts or just to get away, without going all the way downstairs. 

       For Bree, it was a getaway.  A place not only to gather her thoughts, but to decide if she should report Alan DeFrame’s ass to the EEOC or just get back on the bus for Mississippi now.  Toss her dream to the wolves since they were already trying to devour it. 

       She opened the stubborn door of that roof top and walked to its’ rail, inhaling the windy March breeze and taking in a top-side view of the great Chicago skyline. 

       She didn’t realize it, because she didn’t bother to look, but she had company on that roof.  For Robert Colgate was seated beside a table near the back, his legs casually crossed in an elegant pose, as he sipped his coffee, smoked his cigarette, and stared in surprised silence as the same young woman who had been haunting his dreams, suddenly appeared.

TWO

Bree didn’t realize Robert Colgate was staring, she had no clue that anyone else was on that rooftop, because her entire concentration was on that encounter she had just endured with Alan DeFrame.  She stood at the rail, her braids blowing in the wind, and she had to fight with all she had to keep from breaking down in tears.  Alan made it sound as if she would never be victorious unless she gave in to his perverted whims, which she was certain she would never do.  But if she didn’t, he’d made even
clearer,
she may as well pack up and leave now because she didn’t stand a chance.

       She wiped a tear that had escaped from her eye.  Because she knew she couldn’t pack up and leave.  She had too much riding on a successful outcome.  She couldn’t sit back and let a jerk like Alan DeFrame determine her destiny or, even worst, her family’s destiny. 

       She, instead, stared out over that rail and considered her options.  She could turn him in, of course, to the firm’s HR Department, or even to the EEOC.  But how could she prove her allegations?  Although he had pressed against her and touched her inappropriately, and his words made clear that she had better get with the program or else, she still would have to prove it. 

       And the other finalists certainly weren’t going to back her up.  They all laughed it off when they came out of Alan’s office, even though they admitted the encounter was brutal.  Bree was convinced that if she accused a man like him of bad behavior, she’d be on her own, and would more likely be the one chastised and blamed.  She may even be asked to leave the program.  Maybe even sued for defamation of character by the brilliant attorney DeFrame, he seemed like the type. 

       Bree sighed in a loud, anguished release.  She would have to give it time, think her options through carefully, before she made any moves.

       Just as she made up her mind to wait, her cell phone began ringing.  She looked at the Caller ID.  It was her mother.

       “Ricky’s in jail,” her mother said into the phone as soon as Bree said hello.  Fannie Hudson wasn’t predictable when it came to most matters, except when it came to her devotion to Bree’s sorry older brother.

       “He’s in jail again?” Bree asked.  “He just got out.”  She had the phone on speaker, because her mother tended to yell rather than talk.  And because of that Robert, who had no intentions of overhearing her private conversation, heard every word.

       “It’s bad this time, Brianna,” her mother said into the phone.  “Don’t you minimize
this.
”

       “I’m not minimizing anything.”

       “He’s the best child I got and you don’t like it so you always bad-mouthing him.”

       Bree rolled her eyes.  Her mother spoke of Ricky as if he was a wonderful, delicate soul, not the lazy, selfish, trifling thug he was.  “What did he do this time?” she decided to ask, refusing to get into it with her mother.