Chapter 6 – Anna
SIX
ANNA
She didn’t want to be saved.
The knock on my door startled me. It was both loud and simultaneously authoritative.
It was the kind of knock I’d heard many times before when I was about to be kicked out of a room for failure to pay rent by a landlord or a cop.
Which wasn’t possible, because I’d paid for the month in advance once I’d gotten my first check.
My first serious paycheck.
There were times, I still couldn’t believe it. What they’d called a paycheck at the diner hadn’t counted. Most of the money I’d made there came from tips. And I’d learned very quickly that tips on breakfast and coffee were pretty much shit.
But after my first two weeks at E.G.A Associates…there was a check.
E.G. had been so annoyed because I’d forced him to print a physical check from his HR software when I’d said he couldn’t pay me by direct deposit.
At the time, I didn’t know what that was. I did now.
Because I had a fucking bank account.
A bank account. With a balance. And a debit card. Where I could go to a machine and simply demand it give me cash in twenty-dollar increments.
The banking system was awesome.
Flush with cash and confident in my right to be in this room, I walked over to the door. It could be the cops just canvasing for information. Something had gone down the block over two nights ago and I’m pretty sure I’d heard a gunshot, although I told myself it was just a truck backfiring.
Pushing my face up against the peephole, a distorted image of a man on the other side came into view.
“Fuck,” I muttered.
“I heard that,” E.G. announced through the, apparently, paper thin door.
“What are you doing here?” I shouted at him. “This totally crosses my line.”
“You keep assuming this is some kind of game played with rules we’re both expected to respect. This is my game. All the rules are mine. I don’t care what lines you think you have.”
“This is such bullshit,” I muttered. I’ve never in my life stomped my foot on the ground but I wanted to do it now.
“Heard that, too,” he said through the door. “Open up.”
“I told you, I don’t want to be saved, E.G. We don’t know each other well, but I promise you I’m not that girl.”
“We don’t know each other at all, Flowers,” he said. Then his voice changed. Lower, deeper. Less sarcastic and more serious. “There was a gang related shooting two blocks over from this motel. You can’t stay here. I’m still enough of a man on the inside to not allow that.”
Enough of a man? E.G. was without a doubt the largest and most substantive man I’d ever met.
Would ever meet, probably.
He wasn’t going to leave. That was obvious.
Glancing down at myself, I was wearing No-Nonsense leggings and a cotton tank top with a built-in shelf-bra.
I hated that his low sexy voice hardened my nipples, but I wasn’t putting on a bra for this fucker.
He could deal with my B-cup breasts and bare shoulders because I did not invite him here.
I didn’t have to present professionally in any way. He was the intruder.
Another look behind me to make sure the bed was at least made, my stuff was, what little of it there was, tucked away in the drawers and closet.
I removed the chain link from the lock and opened the door, but remained in the doorway so he didn’t get the impression he was welcome inside.
He was still dressed in what he’d been wearing that day at the office. I had no idea about fashion, but I understood quality and the forest green shirt he wore probably cost more than the monthly rent on this place.
He immediately pushed past me into the room.
“Yo! Vampire. You know you need an invitation first.”
He sneered and then started to move about the space like he owned the place. Two double beds, a dresser with a television. A bathroom and a closet next to that. It was run down, but it was clean. I tipped the housekeeper to make sure of that.
“Unacceptable.” I heard him mutter under his breath.
“I didn’t ask for your approval,” I told him quietly. Feeling every ounce of his billionaire judgement.
Turning quickly to face me, he took in what I was wearing, much like he assessed the motel room.
The word unacceptable pulsed in my brain.
“Pack your things. I’ve found you better accommodations. This area of Houston isn’t safe.”
“No,” I said, folding my arms over my chest. Partly as a defensive mechanism, partly to detract from the fact I wasn’t wearing a bra. “I paid for this place for the rest of the month. I’m not going to get a refund if I leave. And I’ve been safe here.”
“You’ve felt safe? Here?”
“I didn’t say I felt safe, I said I’ve been safe. Nothing bad has happened.”
“Yet,” he said, ominously.
“Look, I’m not some Disney princess. I know how to take care of myself.”
“You’re armed?”
I shrugged. “I don’t like guns. I have a knife and a canister of mace.”
He grimaced as if my self-protection efforts were pitiful. I forgot how it completely ruined his handsome face when he did that.
“You don’t like guns and you moved to Texas? Not great planning on your part.”
I rolled my eyes, which I knew he hated. It was a habit I was having a hard time breaking, but this time I didn’t care. Exasperation, which was what I was feeling right now, needed to be expressed both verbally and physically.
“E.G., seriously. I get your concern, I guess. But I’m fine. I haven’t missed a day of work, have I?”
“You’re surrounded by addicts, drunks, and hookers. Which is why there was a shooting two blocks away. You’re not safe. As I explained earlier today, my concern goes only in so far as it impacts my working life. This bothers me, so it has to change.”
Yeah, the message had been received. He didn’t give two-shits about me. Which was fine, because I didn’t give two-shits about him as long as he paid me.
I think some part of my brain had been waiting for this ax to drop the entire time. I didn’t belong in his world. In any part of it. I’d walked into the wrong office and fell into probably one of the most ridiculous situations a person could imagine.
Nothing about us fit. I knew it. He knew it. If anything, this motel room proved that more than my cheap clothes and even cheaper shoes ever did.
It’s in the back of the bottom drawer. You should take it out.
My eyes went to the dresser unconsciously, but I couldn’t make myself do it.
“What are you going to do?” I asked him, standing in the space between the two double beds. As many feet away from him as I could get in the small room without hiding in the bathroom. “Fire me? Again?” I didn’t add for real this time.
“Have you looked me up online?” he asked me.
I blinked. Then blinked again, hoping my hesitation could be explained by his sudden change in topic. “Why would I have done that?”
“Of course, you have.”
Shit. Of course I had. I just happened to be a shit liar.
“So what,” I said, trying to sound utterly unimpressed. “You, like, invented the internet. Big deal.”
“Hardly that, but you must know at one point I had a company with over a thousand employees. Do you know what some of their perks were?”
“Double-ply toilet paper? Because our office building could use some.”
“Catered breakfasts and lunch five days a week. A full-service Starbucks in the lobby. Company laptops, company phones, company cars. And rental accommodations for new employees until they could save enough to afford real estate. Silicon Valley homes, where the company was based, were ridiculously over-priced.”
“Sooooo. You’ve been holding out on me,” I said.
That made his lips twist up at the corners. His version of a smile, which was oddly reminiscent of Batman’s Joker. As humorless as it was, it always felt like this weird accomplishment. Like I was pulling something from him, he was reluctant to give.
“I didn’t want all that fuss again,” he said, looking around the room instead of at me. “When I decided to return to work, I didn’t want what I had before. I wanted to keep things simple. However, my philosophy hasn’t changed. Happy workers make a happy work environment, which makes me…”
“I know you’re not going to say happy,” I said, with a laugh. “You, my friend, are not a happy person.”
“I’m not your friend and I don’t need your judgement on my mental state,” he snapped.
“I’m saying my being here isn’t out of character or habit.
I’m putting you up at a Marriott Extended Stay, which is a couple of blocks from the office.
You’ll stay there until you find a suitable, affordable apartment that’s convenient. ”
“Dude, you haven’t been listening,” I snapped back. “I found a suitable apartment that’s convenient and I’m signing the lease on Friday.”
He looked over my shoulder, instead of directly at me. “I’ll be the judge of that. Now pack.”
I considered my options.
As a rule, I could be stubborn. It was a survival mechanism in the system. Because you needed to figure out quickly, what you weren’t going to budge on and learn to plant your feet in the ground. Hard.
Drugs. Crime. Sex.
However, I knew E.G., and he was equally stubborn and intractable. If he thought it was his obligation to see my ass into a Marriott Extended Stay, whatever the hell that was, he wasn’t going to back down.
I could fight him, but I didn’t see the point.
I was leaving in a week anyway. Of course this place did not make me feel safe. But since I couldn’t remember a time or a place in my life when that had ever been the case, it didn’t bother me as much as it obviously bothered E.G.
The man had an ego. You didn’t build the kind of empire, the one I’d learned about online which would no doubt show up in my browser history, without one. It would impugn his manliness, or whatever, to refuse this.
At least it didn’t feel like charity. Or pity.
“Fine,” I relented.
“Fine,” he repeated, and I could see his smug satisfaction having won this battle. “I’ll wait outside.”
“It’s like a hundred degrees outside. At least this place has some AC.”
“I’ll wait outside.”
I rolled my eyes again, but this time I turned away from him before I did. “Suit yourself.”
He closed the door behind him and I took the time to change into jeans and a t-Shirt. The jeans would be hot, but I wasn’t ready for E.G. to see my legs in the single pair of jean shorts I owned. A pair of jeans I’d worn so thread bare, I’d cut them and made them into shorts.
I pulled out my duffle bag and started throwing all my non-work clothes in haphazardly. I didn’t have much. My work clothes, however, I kept on hangers in the small closet. Those would have to be spread out in the back seat of his car so they didn’t wrinkle.
My toiletries were limited to shampoo, conditioner, toothpaste and deodorant. I used the complimentary hotel soap, so no need to pack that.
Other than that, there was a hairbrush, a toothbrush, and because I was cash flush these days, a tube of mascara that I’d been practicing with to no great results so far. I shoved all of it into a side compartment of the duffle bag.
The only thing of value I had was the company laptop. I’d been nervous bringing it back to the motel at first, for fear it would have made me a target. I was always careful to hide it in a paper grocery bag any time I was leaving or coming home with it.
I could have left it at the office, but E.G.
would often send me emails or IMs to make a note of things that had to be handled in the office the next day.
It just made things easier to always have the laptop with me.
I stuck it and the charger cord on top of my clothes inside the tote bag I used to carry my lunch and heels to the office.
Just one last thing. In the back of the bottom drawer.
Leave it. If you leave it, you can pretend it never happened.
Except, I couldn’t. There never any point in pretending shit didn’t happen. I found what I was looking for and pushed it to the bottom of the duffel bag underneath all my clothes.
No more than seven minutes later and I was ready to go. I pulled the six hangers off the rod in the closet and folded my work clothes carefully over my arm and threw the duffle bag over my shoulder.
I stepped outside into the late summer heat of Houston and winced. I’d thought New Jersey was humid in the summer, but Houston was worse.
And no, I really hadn’t considered the whole gun thing when moving.
My only thought had been…away. Someplace new and different.
E.G. was standing next to a black Mercedes in the open space in front of my door. The car was a standout amongst all the parked vehicles, but as long as we were leaving now before the night crowd rolled in, we shouldn’t be hassled.
I took a step but stopped when I saw someone sitting behind the steering wheel.
“It’s just my driver,” he explained. When I hesitated for a second, he opened the back door to the car. “We’re just going a few miles down the road. You can put your stuff in the backseat.”
Wordlessly, he opened the back door so I could lay out my work clothes along the length of the seat. I stuffed my duffle bag onto the car floor and got in, directly behind the driver’s seat.
E.G. walked around the car and got into the front passenger seat.
“Marriott Extended Stay. On Connor Street,” he told his driver.
In a few seconds, we were backing away from the hotel room. I would call the front desk when I got where I was going. Let them know I’d left at least, even though I knew I wasn’t getting my money back for the days not used.
“Put your seatbelt on,” E.G. snapped, looking over his shoulder to where I was sitting.
I leaned back against the leather and pulled the seatbelt over my chest. Realizing everything had happened so fast and probably without enough of a fight from me, I found myself annoyed.
“You know, you make an excellent kidnapper. If the whole billionaire thing doesn’t work out for you.”
“My tolerance for smart asses doesn’t diminish outside the office,” he replied, then faced forward.
The car was the perfect temperature. Cool, without being freezing. The seat was butter soft.
“Fuuuuck,” I said, as I sank into the luxury of the car. “You could just let me live in this car and I’d be good.”
“Pass.”
The driver didn’t say anything, just kept his head forward. But as we turned onto the street with a row of hotels, E.G. turned to me again.
“You looked me up online,” he said, his expression blank. “So you know.”
I nodded. I did know.
“That picture on your desk…that’s your wife who died?”
He didn’t nod but instead turned to look out the window.
“Her name was Allison.”