DEFENSE (28 page)

The answering calls for cheers were few and far between. Many people looked like they’d maybe had a bad piece of cake, though I didn’t know how that would be possible. It was great cake.

“I’d just like to say,” Myra cut in, “that I greatly enjoyed my time here, and I will miss it very much. I’ll miss most of all trying to save you from yourself, silly girl. Beauty, good luck. You’re going to need it.”

Everyone laughed, sounding relieved, and the phone at our desk jangled. I’d been so gung-ho in my speech, but now my heart sank. Roland had probably been watching—and listening—to the whole thing. There would be hell to pay.

“I’ll go get that,” Myra said quickly.

“No way,” I protested, stopping her. “This is your party. You enjoy it.”

“It’s probably the last time I’m going to see that man in my whole life,” she said, and I was taken aback to notice that her eyes were filled with tears.

“Myra, if I said something wrong, I’m sorry….”

She hugged me tightly. “Roland Shepard is a lot of things, Beauty,” she said. “And he’s not a perfect man. But you need to remember that he’s a good man, underneath it all. Roland Shepard is a good man who has experienced things no one should. Treat him well. He doesn’t deserve to suffer.”

And that was the last thing Myra said to me in the office, as she sped over to the desk to clean up one of my messes for the final time.

The work wasn’t going to end, I realized, sending a well-worded curse upon Myra out into the universe. She’d told me everything she thought was necessary about this position, but the late hours hadn’t been included.

Who knew, really? Maybe she was able to power through all of the assignments she’d been tasked with in normal business hours. Maybe I’d get to that point, too, someday, when I finally learned the ins and outs of this place—or, at the very least, got my shit together.

It had been more than three weeks since her retirement party, and I missed her every day. Most of the time, I didn’t know what I was doing. I delivered messages I didn’t understand, relayed answers that were equally inscrutable, and tried my best to survive. Sam was becoming more and more of a friend, which I needed.

And Dan was becoming more of a distraction, finding reasons to come up to this floor, even though he’d apparently never frequented the office, according to Sam. His loaded flirtations made me cringe with both pleasure and embarrassment.

I rubbed my face with my hands. Sometimes, I felt completing the mindless tasks Roland demanded of me would be easier with a drink. It didn’t help that I’d been able to drink on the job during my last working stint. Now, any time the going got rough, I craved it.

I inhaled sharply and glanced quickly at the camera mounted in the corner by the ceiling. Stupid thing. It was always there, like a robotic eyeball watching my every move. I’d begun to seriously doubt that anyone was watching, and certainly not Roland. Didn’t the president of a huge company have better things to do with his time than spectate during the not-so-riveting minutia of office work? I figured it had more to do with liability and deterrence: liability if something went wrong, and deterrence to keep things from going wrong in the first place.

Right now, that camera was making me feel like I was being scrutinized, judged for being incompetent enough to be in the office this late, after everyone had long gone home…except for a certain reclusive billionaire.

The camera was also pretty good at compelling me to do my work—and have a little fucking urgency about it.

Something about the office this late gave me the chills. Without the tapping of keyboards and constant level of babble from my coworkers talking on the phone and among themselves, it was as quiet as a tomb. I longed for Sam to sidle over for a quick chat, or even for Myra to still be here so I could ask her a question—even if I already knew most of the answers.

For a girl who’d spent the better part of a year in utter solitude, rarely talking, I’d gotten quickly addicted to sound and noise and activity—and even having people around me all day.

I willed the scanner to hurry up, the shredder to follow suit, and for my hands to stop confusing the two. If only I’d saved this for tomorrow. I’d be in my warm, cozy apartment by now; I could play some music, if I wanted, to break the silence. I supposed that, if I really wanted to, I could play some music now, but it felt wrong. Like nothing was supposed to disrupt the atmosphere.

Like the entire building was waiting for something to happen to me.

“Beauty?”

I gasped and pushed myself away from the desk as my heart leapt into my throat in abject terror. I’d been too engrossed in my thoughts, in the goal of completing the task at hand, to notice the door to Roland’s office swing open. He stood there, the front of him cast in shadow from the gold light at his back.

I guess I should’ve been thankful that I didn’t scream.

“Um, Mr. Shepard,” I said, quickly standing up. Everything about this was wrong. Myra had told me that particular door never opened unless I was going in or coming out. She’d also told me that, in spite of everything—the disfigured face, the hot temper, the tendency to live life in the shadows—he was a good man. Would that also prove to be false? There was no one else here. I was stupid to stay in the office this late by myself. I should’ve just gone home and made excuses tomorrow when I came in, vowing to work extra hard to catch up.

“Please, call me Roland.”

Part of me wished I could see his face—hard to look at, though it was—so I could try and gauge his mood. Did he want me to call him Roland because he was warming up to me, or was it a warning? Myra had told me that the president’s assistant was supposed to get him anything and everything he asked for. What…what if he wanted something I wasn’t prepared to give him? Would he just take it? Did he think himself entitled enough to do so—as a billionaire? My heart pounded so hard that it rattled my ribcage. Did Dan tell him exactly what had transpired between us back at that bar, when I’d performed the personal dance for the vice president of Shepard Shipments?

Is that what Roland wanted? A taste for himself?

“Could I get you anything…sir?” I couldn’t call him Roland. I wasn’t as terrified of him as I had been the first time I’d seen him, but I wasn’t near being comfortable. Even Myra hadn’t seemed at ease during my training in the building where she’d worked for so many years. I couldn’t tell if it was because she had trepidation over entering the retired life, or if it was something more, some endless tension always present in this place.

A feeling of being watched. Watched, analyzed, and judged, constantly.

“Say it after me. Ro. Land.”

If only I could see whether that scarred face was quirking up into a smile to tell if he was joking. What would a smile even look like on that marred expanse of skin? Could he even manage the expression anymore? Was that why he was so impossibly gruff?

“Ro. Land,” I repeated, obedient.

“Roland.”

“Roland,” I said, the name ringing out awkwardly into the silence of the space around us. Not even Myra had called him by his first name.

“There,” he said, his voice warmer. “Was that so difficult?”

“It was, actually,” I admitted. “You’re kind of scary.”

A breath expelled in a burst—was he laughing? Was that a good sign?

“It’s not my prerogative to be scary,” he said. “Could I make it up to you?”

“Don’t feel like you have to do anything to make it up to me,” I scoffed, feeling stupid. “I’ll get over it. Or I won’t. I don’t know. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“I don’t want you to feel like you should keep things from me,” he protested. “I might run this company with an iron fist, but I don’t want my employees to be too scared to speak up when they think something’s wrong!”

His voice had risen progressively with each word, and I hunched down in my chair, ready to weather that infamous temper at full blast, right in my face, with no coworkers around for him to show any restraint.

“I’m sick of people being afraid of my fucking face!” he exploded. “Do they think it’s any easier for me to look at my reflection in the mirror? I fucking hate it, too!”

This outburst surprised me. I’d expected some kind of anger or criticism directed toward me, not back at himself. Up until this point, I was pretty sure that Roland only liked himself and thought that every other human being was a blight to be suffered through as a part of his charmed life.

“If you don’t mind me saying, I don’t think it’s your face they’re afraid of,” I said, shocked that I was daring to travel down this road, especially given the fact that we didn’t particularly like each other very much. “It’s the way you act. You could be nicer.”

“Nicer?” he repeated, as if it were a foreign word—one he didn’t quite understand the meaning of.

“Yeah, nicer,” I said, feeling bold. He hadn’t yelled at me yet. I could push it a little bit, maybe. “Like you don’t have to yell at people, or hide in your office. I think people would like you better if you were maybe more accessible.”

“I’m the President of Shepard Shipments,” he said flatly. “It’s a huge company. Most CEOs aren’t as accessible as I am.”

“You asked my opinion, and I gave it,” I said, not wanting to get into a shouting match at this time of night. “If you don’t mind, I have to digitize all this shit…I mean, all these papers…before I go home.”

“You have to have figured out by now that I don’t mind swearing,” he said.

“Yeah, I kind of did figure that out,” I said. “I was just always told that it wasn’t very ladylike.”

“Fuck that,” he said succinctly, and I laughed. “It’s language. It’s genderless. Say what you want. If ‘fuck’ says it best, then fucking say ‘fuck.’”

“Fuck,” I said obediently.

“Would you want to have a fucking bourbon with me, Beauty?” he asked. “I happened to see that you were still here, and I figured you might like a drink in this digital age.”

“This digital fucking age,” I agreed, feeling closer to him than I ever had. If this was the kind of relationship Myra had with him, then I finally understood why she defended him so ardently. “I will take that drink if you promise you won’t yell at me tomorrow because I fell behind on these papers.”

“Deal,” he said, and I followed him into his office.

My eyes were more used to the dark since I had been sitting in the darkened space outside for so many hours, and I was able to appreciate the sumptuous rug covering the hardwood flooring in the office, the rich brown leather of the furniture, the papers piled high on Roland’s enormous desk.

“I thought we were supposed to be going digital,” I said accusatorially, rounding on him. I was even practically used to his terrible scar—but not the sheepish smile that spread his face.

“Forgive me,” he said, filling a couple of glasses from a snifter. “I still like to read some things on good old paper.”

“Please tell me that you don’t box them up and send them downstairs for digitizing,” I moaned.

“I shred them right away,” he promised. “Cheers to paper. Screens will never replace it.”

“Cheers, though I’m busily replacing paper with screens,” I said, taking a sip of the bourbon. It was excellent, full-bodied and smooth all the way down. I took a larger drink, enchanted. It was the best fucking bourbon I’d ever had.

“Beauty.”

I looked up from my glass of bourbon, into the surprisingly warm eyes of the horrifically scarred man sitting in front of me.

“Yes?” I asked, my voice barely above a whisper. I felt overly warm from the alcohol, but strangely at ease talking with someone who was behind a majority of my headaches and panics and drama at work. Myra had been right. Roland wasn’t that bad at all. I smiled gently to imagine them together, late at night, talking over big glasses of bourbon.

“I have to tell you something.” The man who was usually so sure of everything under the sun—from the time of day to the ebbs and flows of the economy to my appearance—sounded surprisingly unsure of himself.

“You can tell me whatever you need to tell me,” I said, feeling my tongue loosen. “I feel the best I have all day. This bourbon is hitting the spot. Let’s go. Tell me that I need to have my pants hemmed. I’m well aware of the fact, and that I’m wearing club shoes to compensate. Go on. I’m ready.”

“You look just fine,” he said, sounding exasperated, and I realized it was the first compliment he’d ever paid me. It was an odd feeling…though not a very good compliment. “It’s…not about how you look.”

“That’s a relief,” I said, grinning. “Then out with it. What do you have to tell me?”

Roland looked so nervous that I had to resist laughing at him. It was so out of character that it freaked me out a little.

“Just tell me,” I implored. “Anything to put you out of your misery. Am I fired? Just give me another swig of that amazing bourbon and I’ll go quietly.” I laughed and downed the rest of my glass with a flourish, feeling great.

“Beauty, this is serious,” Roland said. “And I have to tell you now because things…are getting too serious. Feelings. I don’t know. I don’t know what the fuck to do anymore. Christ.”

Things? Feelings? Getting serious? My stomach dropped out from beneath me a little. Had he noticed anything between me and Dan? Not that there was anything between us. Just flirting. Oh, and that little lap dance at the bar. What had Roland noticed? Surely something, if that was what we were talking about. I was stupid, careless. I needed to guard myself better; I needed to stare at myself in the mirror and practice my poker face. Even Myra had said I couldn’t control my face when I was feeling something strong.

“I guess I’d better just say it then.” Roland took a deep breath and exhaled. “There isn’t a good way to say this. And I’m sorry that you aren’t drunker.”

“Easily remedied,” I counseled, refilling my own glass daringly.

Roland bit that scarred lip and held my eyes with his, those strangely murky but warm blue eyes.

“Beauty…”—he looked away—“…I’m the reason your parents died. I killed them.”