Four
Itold myself nine hundred times that I should not be angry.
Sam was undercover. The woman was probably undercover too.
Or if she was not, she was a beard, and he would not touch her in any way that could be construed as remotely romantic.
I knew it—knew him—and the whole thing was too ridiculous to even consider.
My brain understood. My heart seconded the notion, knowing how it felt about him, knowing how he felt about me, and that was all well and good, except that my body was hot and needy, just thinking about him.
The cold shower I took when I got home didn’t work, and I was just as hard and aching and miserable as I was when I got there.
I had to pull out the big gun and watch Saving Private Ryan.
Anyone who could do anything but bawl after the first five minutes of that movie, let alone keep their libido running, had a mad, scary sex drive.
Mine shriveled up and died, and I fell asleep on the couch.
By Sunday morning, I was mad. There had been no call from Sam, no email, and no late-night booty call.
His case—whatever it was about, strippers, drugs, all set to a Hans Zimmer soundtrack—was lost on me, but was obviously infinitely more important.
I called and canceled dinner with Dane and Aja because I would be such horrible company. No reason to make them miserable too.
There had to be some sort of noise on in the background when I was cleaning—or just home for that matter. Silence creeped me out unless I was reading, but since reading normally put me to sleep, it all worked out.
So, Monday morning, before work, I was walking around, putting all the various items away—the vacuum still in the middle of the hall, the broom next to the front door, and everything else—when I got a frantic call from Michelle.
“Jory, honey, did you ask to be off the Fisher account?”
“No. Why?” I answered, yawning.
“Because you’re off of it and Fallon’s working it with me. I hate Fallon.”
I was confused, so when I got to work, I went straight in to see my direct boss, Becker Rowe, doing the fake-left-and-then-right maneuver to get into his office around his secretary.
“Jory?” he snapped irritably when he saw me, waving at Miss Shelton to kill her motor when she came charging into the room. “It’s fine,” he told her. “I have to see Mr. Harcourt this morning anyway. This is just somewhat earlier than I imagined doing this.”
Doing … this … uh-oh.
“Please, Jory, have a seat.”
Never ever good to be invited to sit down and have a talk with your boss first thing on Monday morning. I was so fired.
“I pissed off Mr. Fisher, huh?”
He squinted at me before he let out a long, deep sigh. “Yes, you did, and I must say that your antics this time were, by all accounts, completely and utterly unprofessional.”
Funny? Yes. Guaranteed to keep me my job? Probably not.
I wondered who had ratted me out.
“Mr. Fisher called and spoke to Nora and—”
“Mr. Fisher called?”
“Yes.”
Hayes Fisher had called himself to bitch about me. What an ass. And he had complained to Nora Talbot, our operations manager.
“She said that he was incensed.”
Incensed? Really? I doubted that. Nora Talbot loathed me.
Even if Mr. Fisher had only been really, really annoyed, he would have been “incensed” when the story was repeated to my boss.
Not that I doubted that Mr. Fisher hated me.
Apparently, whether or not Mr. Fisher wanted Dane to design a house for him was a nonissue in the big picture.
“Your complete lack of propriety has become an unwelcome burden on this firm, and furthermore—”
“Sir,” I said, cutting him off, “you really don’t need to run down all my flaws. We both know there’re a lot, and neither one of us wants to be here all day. Am I right?”
I was. I was always right about bad stuff. It would be nice to be wrong once in a while.
Everyone was in the regular Monday morning meeting, except me.
I was cleaning out my desk—no personal memorabilia allowed, only one family photo permitted—my final paycheck in the breast pocket of my suit jacket, and gone before anyone got out.
Of course, I was looking at a picture of Sam as I rode down the elevator with my box.
The security guard checked it on my way out, and that didn’t help.
What was worse was that I had no one to whine to about the debacle my life was at that moment.
Dane would be mad at me for going to see Eddie Liron after he told me not to.
If I expected sympathy or a chocolate shake, which was what I really wanted, I would have to come clean.
I was not in the mood to come clean or be a grown-up.
The idea of covering Mr. Hayes Fisher’s front yard with toilet paper was very appealing.
But Dane would cancel his appointment with the man for no good reason other than thinking that the guy was a dick for getting me fired.
But really, I had gotten myself fired because I just couldn’t keep my big mouth shut.
And that trait was technically Dane’s fault because he never made me keep my mouth shut back when I worked for him, but he was my brother, so …
It all whirled around in my head, but as I was trying to catch a cab with my box of nothing, except my framed picture of Sam, I felt like crap. And then it started to rain.
“Jory?”
I turned to my left, and there was Fallon Strauss. He was going in, and I was coming out for the last time. I shook my head and started walking away. But he was suddenly there, in front of me, lifting an umbrella over me, staring into my face.
“What’re you doing?” he asked, looking me over, up and down.
“I’m going home,” I said, walking around him, the rain that was really starting to come down soaking me in seconds.
“Jory,” he barked at me, barring my path again, the umbrella keeping me from drowning as he stepped in closer. “What’re you talking about? We’re both late for that stupid meeting.”
I shook my head. “I just got fired.”
His lime-green eyes got huge. “Are you kidding?”
“No, I’m not ki— I gotta go, Fal. I’m gonna drown here.”
He grabbed the lapel of my peacoat and dragged me halfway down the street to a steak house that had a wide awning. The restaurant wasn’t open yet, so we were alone, but it was loud, the water rushing down the sides as if the sky had opened up and just dumped down water.
“Jory,” he said, shaking himself off, taking off his wire-framed glasses, which had fogged up, “what’s going on?”
I put my now-soggy box down on the bench under the restaurant menu board and took his glasses from him before he could say a word.
My T-shirt, two layers down under my suit jacket, was dry.
I wiped the lenses carefully, the cold air hitting my bare abdomen like ice, and then handed them back. His expression was hard to read.
“That was certainly a nice view,” he said, smiling sheepishly.
“Sorry?”
He shook his head. “Jesus, Jory, are you really this oblivious?”
“You lost me.”
Heavy sigh from him then. “Were you serious? Becker fired you?”
“Yep, just now. I pissed off Mr. Fisher, apparently.”
He nodded. “I see. That explains my client meeting this afternoon. I was supposed to be seeing Michelle this morning.”
“Supposed to be?”
“Yeah,” he said, dragging his hand through his short, dark brown curls. “Listen, I’ve been working on a deal for a while now that I’ve wanted to talk to you about, so this is absolutely amazing that I ran into you … and fucking terrifying at the same time.”
I studied his face and realized he looked really nervous.
“Jory, I’m resigning today and going to work for Benchmark Limited, and I would really, really like it if you came with me.”
I was still home, sleeping in my bed—I just knew it.
“What?”
He exhaled quickly. “You—I listen to you when we have meetings and stuff, and your ideas about events are great. They just never put you in charge of anything because you’re so all over the place.
I think your thoughts and sort of rabid excitement would be fantastic if it was tempered with someone who grounded you and could see the task through to the end. ”
I was in some bizarro alternate universe where Fallon Strauss and I were friends or had actually spoken more than ten words to each other in our entire lives.
“I’m freaking you out.”
“Little bit, but go on.”
“Michelle’s so worried that I want her job that she can’t get past it.
” He smiled at me, shifting from one foot to the other, his restless hand back in his curls, tugging on them.
“But she said that as far as concepts go and coming up with things out of the blue, you’re the guy.
It’s just that your follow-through is shit. ”
Which was true. Michelle knew me at work very well.
“She didn’t have to say it was shit.”
A smile lit his eyes, and I actually saw the man for the first time. He had dark, thick, wavy brown hair; olive skin; and expressive eyebrows that made him look like he was plotting something.
Handsome? No. But warm and easy to like? Yes.
So, why hadn’t I really seen him before this?
“So, Pete Riggs over at Benchmark, he told me I should bring you in, have you sit down and talk to him so he could see what you’re like.
I mean, it’s event planning, and I know it’s not what you want to do with your life, but you get that you’re very good at it and people just either love you or hate you from the second they meet you. ”
No argument there.
“So, maybe you want to go home, change, and meet me for lunch at one at Carnivale downtown with Pete and his business partner, Anna Pearlman.”
“You’re serious?”
“Yes,” he said, chuckling, “very. I think you and I could work really well together, and even though I know it might not be for long—since, like I said, I know it’s not your lifelong dream or anything—I’m willing to try it.”
“When were you—”
“I was going to ask to see you today. I sent you a text message.”