Broken Wings (A Romantic Suspense) (7 page)

Frank grunts and I follow him into the private elevator like a good boy.

“Your office is on the twenty-eighth floor. Very swank.”

“Great, I’m thrilled.”

The elevator is more plush than some people’s houses. Real gold on the trim, thick carpet, gilded mirrors all around. The fucking buttons are mahogany. It rises so smoothly I barely feel it at all, and yet it takes us from the fifth floor to twenty-eight in about thirty seconds. I can really only feel motion when it comes to a stop.

It opens into an old-world kind of feel, wood paneling and thick carpets, all offices. No cubicles up here. Frank leads the way and opens the door into my office for me. My name is freshly stenciled onto the frosted glass, above Vice President of Acquisitions. Whatever the fuck that is.

“You stay here and be good,” Frank says in an exasperated tone. “I’ll come collect you at six.”

“What’ll I do until then?”

“I don’t know, look busy.”

He pulls the door shut.

I walk around my office. It’s richly appointed with built-in bookcases and a massive slab of a desk, just standing in here makes me feel old. The only concession to modernity is a computer on the desk, a swanky iMac. I sit down and turn it on, and there’s a knock at the door.

“Come in.”

A woman strides in and closes the door and makes me forget myself for a minute. She’s sex on legs. Tall, with a model’s gait, she has more curves than a mountain highway, several days of legs, a chest that sets the standard for voluptuous, and jet-black hair as rich and thick as silk. The way her top is unbuttoned, I can see a bit of black silk bra beneath her crimson blouse.

“Hi. I’m Melissa. I’m your assistant.”

Her voice is buttery smooth, and she’s giving me a look that would bring the coldest man to attention. I rise from my desk.

“Hi, can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“Did my father tell you to sleep with me?”

Her eyes widen.

Then she slaps me.

“How dare you…”

I sigh. “Just tell me the truth. Nobody here but us.”

She sneers at me, but it turns into a frown. “He didn’t say I had to, but… I got the impression if you make a move and I go with it, it’ll be good for my advancement in the company.”

“Okay, cool, I’m making a move.”

I grab her shoulders and, holding her at arm’s length, push her around the desk and then sit her into my chair. Then I step back.

“Um,” she says, “is this going to be weird? I don’t do weird.”

“No. Well, probably. Okay, here’s what I want you to do. You’re my assistant, right?”

“Yes.”

“So you take all my calls?”

“Yes.” She nods.

“Set things up for me?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, good. I want you to pretend you’re me while I’m gone. Just tell whoever calls or emails to do what I’d tell them to do.”

She blinks a few times. “What? I can’t do that, I—”

“Sure you can. How long have you been with the company?”

“Nine years, I started right out of college—”

“Great, Dad thinks I want some cougar action.”

She sputters in the chair. “What did you call me—”

“A cougar. I’d call you a MILF but I don’t want to presume you have kids. Do you?”

“No, I’m not married—”

“Right, good, though I wouldn’t put it past Dad to send a married woman in here with instructions to suck my dick so I don’t leave.”

She starts to turn red. “He wasn’t that specific—”

I grab the arms of the chair and lean over her.

“Look at me.”

She looks me in the eye.

“You’re hot,” I say. “Really hot. If I was that type of guy I’d have you on the desk already, I mean if you were down, but I’m not and there’s somebody else. Let me ask you something. How long have you worked in this department?”

“Since the beginning.”

“Do you think you could do my job?”

She sighs. “Is this a test?”

“No, just be honest. My dad is an asshole. I’m not going to rat you out to him.”

“Yes, I do,” she says firmly. “I worked under your predecessor for six years, shadowing her every day. I did most of the work anyway. I talked to your father about a lateral move. He once told me I was too valuable to promote, unless we discussed it over dinner.”

“See, everybody here is an asshole! Except I’m not. I’m going to give it to you straight. I want you to button up your blouse and start wearing something comfortable instead of showing leg, beginning tomorrow. Except the blouse thing, do that now.”

Without taking her eyes off me, she starts doing up the stray buttons.

“Okay, next thing. I have way more important shit to do than…whatever this is. I need you to cover for me while I’m out of the office.”

She blinks. “For what? Look, this is my career—”

“If I don’t tell you, you can’t get in trouble. This is acquisitions. I’m going to go acquire something.”

“I could lose my job. I can’t lose this job.”

“I won’t let you,” I sigh. “Look, you got this. Just do everything on my behalf. I’ll be back. Eventually. If Frank shows up and I’m not here, tell him I left and I threatened to fire you if you didn’t cooperate. Cry. He’s a sensitive guy, he’ll buy it.”

“Um. Okay?”

“Good. I’ll be back, good luck.”

With that I stride out of the room and pull the door shut behind me. On my way out I toss my phone, provided by my father, in the nearest trash can.

At the bottom of the tower are storefronts. I walk into the cellular store and walk out twenty minutes later with a new iPhone, and ten minutes after that an Uber driver picks me up and takes me back to the loft, where I retrieve my keys and the Camaro.

Then I dial an old, old number, and hope.

It rings three times, and an elderly man answers.

“Hello?”

“Fitz, it’s me, Jack. I need to talk to Ellie.”

“No,” he says, and hangs up.

I dial again.

He answers again.

“I said no.”

“Wait, goddamn you!”

Silence on the line.

“I just want to talk to her. Put her on. Please.”

“This is what I am going to do. I will tell her you are on the line. If she says to hang up, I am hanging up. If she talks to you and tells you not to call again, or tells me to hang up, I will call the police if you call again. Is that understood?”

“Yes. Just tell her.”

“Very well.”

I tense as I hear the phone clack on the table as he sets it down. My hand chokes the wheel, and I feel myself start to shake all over. Can it be like this? Can it be my last chance?

“Hello, Jack.”

Ellie’s voice is like a balm, even if she sounds so raspy. I let out a breath of relief.

“Talk, Jack. I’m losing my patience.”

“I want to see you.”

“I don’t want to see you.”

My voice cracks. “Please. Just give me five minutes, Ellie. Five minutes. If you tell me to go, I’ll go and never bother you again, I swear on my mother’s grave.”

“Your mother is alive, Jack.”

“Come on, you know what I mean.”

Silence.

“I’ll give you five minutes. Come to the house.”

I park across the street. “I’m already here.”

Ellie

Fitzgerald stands back, a neutral expression hanging on his face. I stand inches from the front door, a heavy four-foot-wide slab of oak from when houses didn’t have any kind of ventilation. The knock comes softly, like he knows I’m right here waiting, damn him.

I swing the big door open, stepping back with it. Jack stands in the doorway in slacks and a shirt and tie with the collar open, his big eyes full of sadness. He looks me in the face without flinching as I take another step back and let him in. He stands still as I close the door behind him.

When I turn around he tries to touch my arm and I jerk back, slipping out of his grip. His hand falls to his side and squeezes into a fist, and he bites his lip hard, until the skin around his teeth goes white.

“Ellie, just hear me out—”

“Let’s sit down in the kitchen.”

I don’t wait for his answer. I walk through the house to the kitchen, a sizable room with big windows that look out over a small backyard, barely more than an alleyway with some patches of grass. I sit down at the big slab of a table and Jack sits at the other end, watches me for a moment, and hangs his head.

“Miss Ellie,” Fitzgerald says, my name hanging like a question.

“I’ll be okay, Fitz.”

He nods and steps out. “I’m in earshot if you need me.”

An old cat clock ticks on the wall, eyes looking back and forth as its tail swings. The sink drips, the drops hitting the bottom of the sink with tiny slaps, and Jack breathes heavily, leans into his hands, and scrubs his fingers through his hair.

He looks at me unwavering, and I match his gaze, looking back.

“Hi,” he says.

I tilt my head to the side. “Say what you’re here to say and get out.”

“It wasn’t my fault—”

“You should leave now.”

“Ellie—”

Fitzgerald steps back into the room.

“I flew thousands of miles for this,” he says, a hint of anger rising in his voice. “You could let me finish one sentence.”

I look at Fitzgerald and nod. He gives Jack a warning look and steps back out.

“I wanted to be there for you, but I couldn’t. When I got out of the hospital two guys twice my size almost carried me to the car and I was on my way to boarding school with a cast on my leg. I was sixteen years old. I had no choice.”

“What about after that?”

He sighs. “Dad said I’d be cut off if I didn’t do what he told me to do. By then…” He looks down. “You have to understand, it still hurt. It hurt every day. I’d be doing something else and I’d just start thinking about you, I couldn’t shut it out.”

“But you tried,” I say softly.

“After two years without a word from
you
, I thought maybe I should.”

I sit up and glare at him. “Don’t you dare put this on me. You
left me
in the
hospital
. After my face was burned off.”

I can see it in his face, the anger. His lips twist, his jaw sets, and he gets that blazing look in his eyes, the same one he used to get whenever something pissed him off. Jack was never the type to let things go, and more than once I can remember him getting into a fight over something silly, until he was in the principal’s office, again and again. More than once it was because someone said something about me, or to me, that he didn’t like.

 
“I thought you wouldn’t want me anymore after what happened. I was afraid you’d think it was my fault.”

“You certainly acted guilty. If it wasn’t your fault you wouldn’t hide.”

The anger fades from his face and he sighs. “I wanted you to contact me, Ellie. I was waiting for a phone call or a text or even a fucking letter. I’d have left right then and my father be damned, but nothing.”

“Very brave to tell me what you would have done, Jack. You knew where I was. All you had to do was come, and you didn’t. You show up
now
, ten years later. What’s the matter, can’t get any action on Tinder?”

“Ellie, I have feelings for you.”

I snort. “That’s cute, Jack. Here I am, the poor crippled girl with the fucked-up face. I guess I should just be so happy that handsome, dashing Jack has reappeared in my life. Should I swoon now, or do you want to get in position to catch me first?”

“I’m sorry—”

“You’re sorry.
You’re
sorry. I got my face burned off and my fucking
father is dead
, and what happened to you? A broken leg and boarding school? Cry me a river, Jack.”

His shoulders slump. “If I could change places with you, I would.”

My breath catches. Something in my stomach flutters, like it’s waking up. I almost believe him.

“You have every reason to be upset with me. I know that. I was hoping…”

“What, that just the sight of you would heal my wounds and I’d jump into bed with you?”

“I was hoping you’d give me a chance. Everything since I left here has been shadow, and you’re the only light.”

“Very poetic. You read that somewhere?”

“I did practice it for a while.”

“Why should I? Why should I trust you ever again?”

He scrubs his fingers through his hair and sighs.

“Just give me a chance.”

“No.”

“Ellie, come on!”

“Is that your whole pitch? Come on?”

“Why are you fighting me? I know you feel something. I can see it in your eyes.”

I stare at him.

“Eye.”

My lips pull back from my teeth and my scars twinge painfully. I rise to my feet and Jack jolts to his, knocking his chair back. He rounds the table and before he reaches me, I slap him. Hard. The impact shocks up my arm, and my hand stings.

He barely flinches. I start to slap him again, backhanded, and his head turns a little, a red welt rising on his cheek. He just looks at me.

“Go ahead. Take it out on me if that’s what you need. Shit, maybe I deserve it.”

Fitzgerald bursts into the room and I almost shout at him to get Jack out of here, to throw him out of the house, but I motion him away instead. He steps back, just outside the door.

I try to rub my aching hand, but my other hand is a useless claw.

“Did that hurt?” he says, taking my hand in both of his. “Hitting me?”

“Yeah.”

He rubs my fingers between his. “Sorry. Make a fist next time, it’ll hurt me more and you less.”

I turn my face away from him.

Jack touches my scarred cheek and turns me back, so I face him.

“You don’t have to hide your face from me.”

“I don’t? I
don’t
?
Look at me, Jack. I look like the monster in a shitty cable movie.”

“Says who?”

He plucks at one of the straps that holds my eye patch in place.

“We should make this a fashion statement.”

I shove him back feebly with one hand and step away.

“Don’t you dare make fun of me.”

“I’m not, I mean it.”

“Jack,” I sigh.

“Ellie.”

“What?”

“When you say my name I’m supposed to say yours. That’s what happens in movies.”

“This isn’t a movie, Jack. This is real life. You don’t want to deal with me. Go find somebody else.”