Chapter 11
CHAPTER 11
Dana
For good.
As she and Kurt made their way to Mr. Hawkins office, those two words kept reverberating in her head. It wasn’t so much the words themselves, but the finality he’d put behind them. This wasn’t the first time Kurt had expressed frustration with the methods she’d used to get her end results, but this time… this was different. She’d known him long enough to recognize that this wasn’t simply some garden-variety “ oh, Dana, you crazy scamp, you” irritation. She’d stepped over a line.
What she wasn’t sure of was exactly how to step back across it.
She couldn’t focus on that right now, however. They were headed to Derek Hawkins’ office, and the concern she needed to deal with was how to convince the man that what she’d done was in his best interest, even if it’d been done without his permission.
She glanced around the lobby of the main building as they crossed through it. He was a businessman, so… that would be her approach. Don’t make it personal, or a challenge to his authority. Instead, admit she’d been wrong, play a little submissive to his clearly dominant characteristics, then seal the deal by telling him she was going to help make him richer than he’d ever thought possible.
Easy-peasy.
She and Kurt reached Mr. Hawkins’ office wordlessly, where Kurt knocked twice on the door. A muted, “Come in,” came from the other side.
They both entered the same room as before, but this time rather than asking them to sit, Mr. Hawkins regarded them coldly as they came in and stood in front of him. The man Kurt had told her was Jagger was there too, his welcome just as cold as Mr. Hawkins’. He stood off to the side in silence, next to a rather large armoire, his gaze disapproving.
“You lied to me,” Mr. Hawkins pronounced after a long moment. “I made it clear to both of you that my terms were you were to stay out of that mine until I heard back from my lawyers, and then I’d let you know if you could go in or not.”
Dana gave him her best look of contrition. “I’m very sorry, sir. You’re right, I didn’t wait for your permission as we agreed. But please understand, I needed to get in there, and I couldn’t run the risk they wouldn’t let me. I owed it to my employers—and also to you—to make every effort I could to confirm what I suspected. To get the results everyone has come to rely on me for, and to prove to you I was right.”
“Oh, don’t give me that,” he snorted. “The hell you couldn’t have waited. People may’ve given you a long lead in the past to drag them around by the nose, but I’m not one of them. When you’re on my property, you follow my rules.”
“I understand, sir, but as Kurt will verify, I’m really not good at that.”
“I don’t need Mr. Ellery to explain to me what you’ve made abundantly clear. But not following rules or respecting other people’s boundaries is what’s going to get you arrested and have your boss trying to explain why one of his employees trespassed into my mine and nearly got herself killed.”
“I really don’t think it needs to come to that, Mr. Hawkins,” Dana implored. “If you’ll let me explain what I found?—”
Mr. Hawkins made a curt, dismissive gesture. “I really don’t give a damn what you found. I run a very respectable, very well-established, very profitable business that I’m proud of. Now, I know your passion is all those pretty little rocks your boss loves sending you out to discover, but me… I couldn’t care less.”
Dana stiffened. “This isn’t about ‘pretty little rocks,’ Mr. Hawkins. These are some of the most valuable?—”
“Let me guess,” a voice challenged her.
Dana snapped her head toward the voice, her eyes going wide with surprise. She’d not expected the person who’d just spoken—Jagger—to have anything to say about what was going on here tonight. She’d assumed his presence was as a security guard or something of that nature. Whatever his capacity, though, he clearly felt himself in a strong enough position to comment, which made what he said next even more shocking.
“You didn’t come here looking for sapphires, did you? You came here searching for rare earth metals.”
Dana gasped.
What the fuck?
“How did you know?”
“Let’s just say you’re not the first,” Jagger answered curtly.
Dana swallowed, words escaping her for a second. This… this wasn’t anything she’d expected, at all. However, she couldn’t let this man or Mr. Hawkins gain the initiative here, because she needed to get this situation back under control. Her control.
“Okay,” she drove on, waving her hand as if to diminish what he’d just said, “so, if you know that, then you must know they are some of the most difficult minerals on Earth to find, and the money they’re worth is?—”
“I. Don’t. Care,” Derek shot back in a clipped tone, his eyes blazing cold. “I’m not sure how I can make that any clearer, Ms. Aziz. I have what I want in life. I’m not interested in get-rich-quick schemes. The sapphire mine serves the exact purpose I need it to, just the way it is.”
Dana swallowed. Mr. Hawkins wasn’t falling for her plan as easily as she’d hoped, and the presence of the other man was disconcerting. She was going to need to regroup. “Okay, fine, I understand,” she said in a calm, placating tone, “but what I did, I did on my own. None of this is Mr. Ellery’s fault. He had no idea what I was doing.”
Mr. Hawkins turned his gaze to Kurt. “Is that true? You didn’t have any idea what Ms. Aziz was planning?”
Kurt blew out a sigh. “When I couldn’t find Dana, I had a pretty good idea what she was up to. I’d hoped I was wrong, but when Roman said she’d come into the gift shop, and he hadn’t seen her leave… my gut told me what I was going to find.” He glanced at Dana, then shrugged. “Besides, it doesn’t matter what I did or didn’t know because Dana and I are partners, and I should’ve done more to stop her.”
Mr. Hawkins drummed his fingers on his desktop for a moment before addressing Kurt. “I like to think myself a pretty good judge of character, so I don’t think I’m far off the mark when I say this isn’t the first time something like this has happened before, is it?”
“Maybe not the first, no,” Kurt replied expressionlessly.
“And have you ever had any luck stopping her in the past?”
“No… but that still doesn’t matter. ”
Mr. Hawkins brushed the answer away. “But you’d like it if you could, wouldn’t you?”
There was a short pause that seemed to stretch far longer than it did.
“Yes.”
“ What ?” Dana snapped her head around. “Kurt… why? You know what I’m capable of, what I’ve done, the things I’ve”—she stumbled, the word tumbling out before she could catch herself—“ we’ve accomplished!”
It didn’t work. He caught her mistake, rolling his eyes even as she tried to correct it.
Fuck.
This wasn’t fair. He was blindsiding her with this in front of others, not in private where she could talk him down off whatever ledge his anger had him walking along. Which she was sure she could do if he’d give her the chance because… well… this was him just overreacting, right?
Right?
“Dammit, Dana,” he growled with exasperation, “you just don’t get it, do you? None of that’s going to matter if you’re dead! And the way you keep pressing your luck, that’s exactly what’s going to happen!”
“That’s bullshit!” Dana cried. “Everything in life worth doing, worth accomplishing, takes risk!”
“Not unnecessary risk,” Kurt fired back.
“I don’t take unnecessary risks.”
“Yes, you do! And I’m not the only one who sees it! The board sees it, the underwriters see it, even Gary does. I see it, Dana. And I’m not sure if it’s simply the thrill you get from the risk, or something you’re trying to prove to yourself, or what, but if we can’t find a way to rein this in, provide you with some sort of discipline to stop you from pushing boundary after boundary, then we’re going to need to go our separate ways.”
Whoa, whoa, whoa…
Disbelief drew her mouth open. This was spinning out of control. Kurt had been upset before, but something this time had pushed him beyond that event horizon. He was clearly more than just “ oh-I’ll-eventually-get-over-myself ” upset. And this “ we’re going to need to go our separate ways ” crap…
What the fuck?
“I can’t do this anymore,” he finished quietly. “I care for you too much to keep going on like this.”
She blinked rapidly. She’d known Kurt cared for her because… because of course he would in the same way she cared for him. It was perfectly normal for friends—especially ones as close as she and Kurt had become—to feel that way. But this was different. There was more to what Kurt had just said than the care one co-worker might have for another, even if they did happen to be fuckbuddies. No, the way he’d said it… he wasn’t just thinking of her like a casual acquaintance. He was intimating far more than that.
And when he used the word discipline…. He’d mentioned it before, and both then and now the sensation that had pricked at her was impossible to ignore. Kurt had spanked her before, belted her before, even flogged her. But that wasn’t what he was talking about right now. No, this… this was something else entirely. This went beyond the kinks they shared in the club or the bedroom.
And all that portended sent a tendril of thrill racing through her. A feeling that was eerily like what she felt every time she took the risks he was railing at her about this very moment .
“I really don’t think,” she said, darting a glance toward Jagger then Mr. Hawkins, “this is the appropriate time to have this conversation.”
“Maybe it isn’t,” Kurt replied, running his hand over his head, “but I won’t put this off forever. I’m serious, Dana; I care about you, but I can’t keep digging you out of holes in the ground. We need to find a way to come to some sort of compromise over this. Things just can’t keep going on the way they have been.”
The room went silent. Kurt’s eyes were fixed on the ground ahead of him, and the way he was clenching his hands made it clear how serious he was. They’d fought before when Dana had gone her own way; and she’d thought what had happened after Argentina had been the worst. But back then, Kurt had simply been angry over what she’d done. There’d never been any mention of consequences, and certainly never any threat of leaving.
That clearly wasn’t the case now. She’d been worried about how to get back across the line she’d stepped over, but until this moment she’d not realized how serious the issue had become.
And she honestly wasn’t sure what to do.
Mr. Hawkins cleared his throat, and both she and Kurt looked up at him.
“You two clearly have some things you need to talk about. I’m going to give you time to do that.”
“What do you mean?”
“What I mean is, for now I’m not going to call Dan Forrester and have him throw you in that cell of his over in Porter’s Corner. And I’m going to hold off on calling your boss as well.”
“Thank you,” Dana replied softly.
Mr. Hawkins pointed. “But we aren’t done with this by any stretch. I’m going to give all of us some time to think things over, but when we get back together, it’ll be so I can lay out my terms, my conditions, and my rules.”
He paused, but his gaze didn’t move toward Kurt. No, his gaze remained fixed, boring directly into hers.
“And make no mistake, darlin’. They aren’t negotiable.”