The Hinky Bearskin Rug (30 page)

“Dumbell.”

Sharisse
smiled grimly. “So they’re on board. It doesn’t hurt that that EEOC agent was
here for three days. That put some guts into them.” Sharisse hesitated. “Your
mom seems on edge.”

“She should
be. She’s as bad as Precious.”

Sharisse said
drily, “The difference being she was with the head of the firm for twenty-three
years.”

Lena drew a
deep breath. Her mother’s loyalties were, thankfully, not part of the plan
either way. She resisted the urge to call Onika at the hospital.
If I can’t do this on my own—

Instead she
said, “You’d better get out of here before Steven comes back and starts
hammering on the door.”

“He’s getting
worse,” Sharisse said. “He’s crazy. I mean, he was inappropriate before, but
lately — the language he uses to the employees — and the way he talks to Maida!”

“Oh, really?”
Lena said with sinister meaning. She was surprised how angry that made her. “How
does he talk to her?”

“It’s like
he’s baiting her. Used to be, it seemed like she would snarl back, but not any
more. He’s out of control.”

That’s Onika’s fault. Her and her crazy
plan to push Steven over the edge.
Great plan. Except somebody else wound up paying for it.

“I have a
plan.” Lena patted Sharisse’s hand. “You know what I need from you.”

Sharisse said,
“Go get ’im.” She jerked her thumb up.

Lena smiled.

The deeper she
got into Steven’s locked files, the wider she grinned. She copied all the files
she wanted, compressed them, and emailed them to Jewel.

Her cell phone
rang as she was finishing the last of the mail. Lutheran General Hospital.
Onika’s doctor? Oh, no!

“Everything
going okay?” came Onika’s gravelly voice.

“Ohmigod, you
scared me to death. Are you okay? Did the new test results come back?” Her
hands were busy deleting the evidence of her work from the email system.

“I’ve got
mono. I’ll have to stop kissing Harry.”

“You’re
kidding.” Relief flooded Lena. “Four MRIs and a CAT scan plus bloodwork and
exploratory surgery to find out you have mono?”

“Joke. It’s
lung pre-cancer, but they got it early enough. How’s the op?”

“I just got
our files. Now waiting for the grenade to go off.” Lena glanced through the
venetian blinds on the narrow floor-to-ceiling window beside Steven’s office door.
“I’m locked in Steven’s office at the moment.”

Onika chuckled
weakly. “We’ll nail him. You, me, and Miss Thing from Consumer Services.” She
coughed. “They treating you okay there?”

“No.” Lena
flushed. She hadn’t visited her old friends since she joined Artistic, and now
she was realizing how smart she’d been. “They’re freaking. They can’t get past
the porn thing.”

“Sorry, honey.
I did warn you when you started, it changes your life.”

“It does
indeed.”

“Did your mom
warm up yet?”

“No.” Lena’s
tone did not invite comment.

“Hm. Well,
remember what I said. Steven’s been going up the pole. He’ll probably top out
on you today. If he does—”

“I know, I
know.”

“Do you have
the ikon?—No, not now. I said, No!—Sorry. The nurse keeps coming in with a
fistful of horse pills. I’d be meaner, only he’s got a cute butt. Where was I?”

“I have the
ikon.”

“If he gets
violent, if he bats it out of your hand or something, you still know what it
looks like.”

“Of course.
I’ve been at Artistic for two whole years! Onika, take your meds and get some
sleep.”

“I’ll lie here
on my bed of pain, fretting, until I hear from you.”

“Great.
Something else for me to worry about.”

“Phone me when
it’s over.”

Clay talked
Jewel into spending the morning in his suite at The Drake. Working. Definitely
not having sex. Jewel hadn’t referred to the hinky thing again. She was so
darned tough, he couldn’t tell if she was hiding butterflies or if she’d simply
put it out of her mind. He wouldn’t be surprised either way.

He’d been pretty
good at not thinking about that, himself.

Clay felt he
was dancing on a volcano-lip. While Jewel went over the Othmar file on her
laptop, he counted his blessings. Randy was still out of the picture. Good. She
was still acting friendly to Clay. Another plus.

At this point
he ran out of blessings and counted his liabilities.

One. He had
one big fat naked major liability.

I am not fat!

Clay’s breath
clutched up, as it did every time Wilma spoke when he wasn’t expecting it.
Especially with Jewel present. He had to be so careful of what he said out loud
and what he thought.

If Jewel ever,
ever figured out that he’d been harboring this succubus, this sex demoness—

I am not a sex demoness! I am a
goddess!

—This pain in
the behind the whole time, if she realized that Clay had let her blame herself
for their last evening together going hinky—

“You want some
tea? I’ll call room service,” he offered, to shut up the racket in his head.

Jewel’s laptop
dinged. “Check it out. Lena-slash-Velvita just sent me twenty-two meg of data
she snitched off Steven Tannyhill’s computer at BB.”

Clay frowned
absently. “What’s she doing over there?”

“Beats me. She
said she had a plan to make Steven miserable, but I never dreamed she would,
like, cooperate with our — wow. Look at this.”

“What is it?”

“Bring me that
list of properties for the Circle Line.”

Clay got up
and brought it to her. “Oh.” Looking over her shoulder, he recognized Mrs.
Othmar’s address. “This is off Tannyhill’s computer?”

“The
motherlode. Properties. Secret land trusts. How he shuffled the properties
between the trusts and then sold to the city, so we wouldn’t catch on. All his
bank accounts. All Bing Neebly’s. Escrow accounts. Wire transfers.” Her eyes
got big. “We’ve got him. We’ve got them both.”

“Yeah, but you
stole the proof. You can’t use it as evidence. Lena doesn’t have a warrant to
be snooping in Steven’s computer, does she?”

“Technically,
she could be called ‘an informant.’ When an informant snitches evidence, it’s
kind of a gray area.” Jewel started printing files. “But I realized just now
that we won’t need admissible evidence, because it won’t get into court. I have
a strong hunch I know how the Chief Attorney will want to handle this.”

“Bully.” Clay
felt no triumph. He didn’t give a darn about the case. He’d had three — no,
four shots so far at getting closer to Jewel. And he’d blown them all. He would
bet a nickel she was pining for His Hinkyness and his magic mojo at this very
moment.

Someday she’ll love sex with you just
as much, I promise,
Wilma
said in his head.

Silently, he
told Wilma,
You mean sex with us. You
know, she used to like sex with me alone just fine.

Not enough,
Wilma pointed out.
You said so yourself.

Not enough to
walk away from Randy.

Clay
swallowed. It was a hard thing to admit to himself, but he didn’t want to win
like this.

Like how?
Wilma said, eavesdropping on his
thoughts.
By dragging her down to your
level?

By getting somebody else to open her up
for me.
There was a
forlorn little girl inside Jewel he longed to comfort.

You would have to be a sex demon to
reach those parts of her,
Wilma said.

Thanks for zero comfort,
he thought.

Or a goddess,
Wilma said.

I don’t want your help with it!

Wilma sounded
exasperated.
Or you could quit lying to
her.

I don’t lie to her! Much.

You don’t tell her how you feel.

That’s when it
hit him.

He got up and
went into the bathroom, shut and locked the door, and sat down on the toilet
seat cover, rubbing his forehead.

You wanted to have with her what she
has with Randy.
Wilma
was still lecturing.
You’re getting it.
We can get even deeper into her, if you’ll let me—

I can’t. I can’t let you. And now I
can’t do it without you, either,
he thought,
because I can’t get rid of
you.
Horror filled him.

He groaned
aloud, “What have I done?”

Well, that’s not very nice!
Wilma was clearly offended.

Jewel tapped
on the bathroom door. “You done in there?”

Clay raised
his voice. “Uh, I think I may have a touch of the flu. Why, do you need the
bathroom?”

“Never mind. I
have to run out and get a newspaper. You want anything?”

“I’ll be fine.
I just need a little time here,” he called through the door.
See what you’re doing to me? I can’t talk to
her when I have to, because I’m talking to you.

“Come to think
of it, I’ll better hit the Swiftymart for a thumb drive,” Jewel said through
the door.

“Okay,” Clay
called.

Her footsteps
moved away. He cracked the bathroom door open. Twenty seconds later he heard
the suite door close.

He stood and
stared into the bathroom mirror, feeling a hot spot like a red hot poker poking
his heart. “What’s the matter with me?”

It’s probably just —
Wilma began in his head.

“Can you show
yourself? I have to see you. It’s too hard for me to talk to something hidden
in my head.”

I can show you a picture in your head,
she offered, and suddenly she was there,
a faintly see-through version of herself between him and the mirror, her sweet
young face hopeful and worried.

“That’s even
creepier.”

She frowned,
and her image vanished.

He sat down on
the edge of the tub. “Show yourself, please?”

She oozed out
of his chest, about eighteen inches high, standing on nothing, stark naked.

Clay shut his
eyes. “Clothes, please.”

Well!
I hope you realize that it’s not smart to insult a sex goddess.

He opened his
eyes and found her dressed in a cut-out steel bustier, with shin greaves and
spiky gloves and a horned helmet, like a porn Valkyrie. She looked annoyed.

He put out his
hands. “Look, I’m sorry, I don’t want to insult you. Okay, you’re a goddess.
I’m confused.”

Don’t waste that stuff on me,
Wilma snapped.

Now he realized
that, though she was standing astride thin air, she was actually, really, still
inside his body. Inside his head. She knew how he really felt.

He couldn’t
hide anything from Wilma.

His
self-control fled.

“I feel like a
rat!” he burst out. “Jewel is this rock. She’s straight and clean and decent.
Normally. Normally she would never turn her back on somebody in Randy’s
position, no matter what her relations with him were like. I only wanted a fair
shot at her!”

There was
nothing fair about taking a sex goddess on board and letting her fool around in
Jewel’s carefully guarded mind. Nothing decent about making her think she’d
become tainted with Randy’s magic. He groaned and ground at his temples with
the heels of his hands.

You
could just tell her the truth.

He raised his
head. “What, that I’m possessed by the — the spirit of the Artistic Publishing
Company? That I want her for keeps, and it’ll be just the cozy three of us
until I can figure out how to get you out of me?”

It’s
not that big a deal.

“You don’t get
it. This is her job. She’d have to, I don’t know, condemn me, or have Randy
take me out to the hinky dump. Maybe you and the Tannyhill guy had a cozy thing
going over at the Artistic where people are used to you, but I have a job, and
my job is the same as Jewel’s job, and it’s all about keeping stuff like you
covered up. She hates that part. She’s too honest for the work. I have to be
here to help her with it.” He stopped ranting because he’d run out of breath.

You don’t like me,
Wilma said, her lower lip drooping.

He closed his
eyes and heaved a long sigh. “I like you. You’re adorable. But I’m not cut out
to be a goddess’s whatever—”

Avatar.
You’re my worldly manifestation.

“I’m a walking
pocket zone. If I can’t shift you, I’m screwed, and Randy knows it. He’s known
all along.” The pit of his stomach turned over. He slumped. “I’m screwed.”

Wilma looked
concerned at last.
That’s not as good as
fucked, is it?

“I was so
eager to get the jump on him and his sex demon mojo.” Clay shook his head. “No
wonder he hasn’t said anything to Jewel. He doesn’t have to. I’ve lost her.
Plus, now I’m as cursed as he is.” He laughed a hacking laugh. “He’s probably
been sitting in that bed at Velvita’s, laughing his rear off, just waiting for
me to realize all this.”