IF YOU WANTED THE MOON (6 page)

Tori’s heart pounded too, when she saw him sitting there in his expensive suit, looking as if he’d just stepped off of the pages of GQ, his eyes staring at her with such a fierceness that it made her want to turn back around and forget it. Why did she ever think that she could get along with a man like Ethan Chandler, a man who obviously hated her? He wasn’t going to alow it. He was out for blood, especialy after the way she drew his in that stairwel, and this little trip was just the excuse he needed.

And the way he was sitting there staring at her, as if she was a nuisance suddenly thrust upon him, made her feel as if the weight of the world, a weight she’d carried since childhood when it was clear that her aging parents needed her far more than she needed them, was being doubled on her shoulders now.

“Good morning,” she said, trying to smile, trying to make the best of her predicament despite the obvious uphil climb. But if she had hoped, somewhere in the farthest recesses of her mind, that Ethan Chandler would cooperate and try to make the best of it too, she was sadly mistaken.

“I’m curious, Miss Douglas,” he said as he flecked a barely visible speck of lent off of his pant leg, “what time did Arthur tel you my plane would be leaving this morning?” He said this and then looked at her, as if her reaction, rather than her response, was what he was after. Her heart dropped again.

Everybody, from his most senior executives to the clerk in the mail room, al told her to watch herself, that Ethan Chandler was no easy-go-lucky you could trifle with, but was one of the hardest, toughest s.o.b.’s they’d ever known. And just watching him this morning, as he sat so cooly in his chair as if he were the personification of calm, courteous civility, made her completely understand what each and every one of them meant. “Nine,” she replied to him, trying her best to appear wholy confident, although she wasn’t.

“Nine a.m.,” he replied. “I see.” For a few seconds he didn’t say anything more, he just stared at her. But if she thought for a moment that he was done with her, she thought wrong. “Could you please be so kind as to tel me, Miss Douglas,” he finaly said, “what time is it now?”

Tori wanted to rol her eyes. He was rubbing it in now, she thought. He knew she was late, she knew she was late, why in the world was he taking her through this charade? But she kept her cool. Her goal, for this trip, was to bite her tongue as often as she had to, and keep her cool. “I know I’m late, Mr. Chandler,” she said, “but there was a terrible—”

“That’s not what I asked you,” he said, keeping his cool too, his voice as measured out as coffee grains. “I asked you to tel me what time it is now.”

Tori exhaled. “It’s nine twenty-two.”

“Actualy it’s nine twenty-eight,” he replied. “But what’s a few minutes here or there when a plane is waiting to take off. Isn’t that right, Miss Douglas?”

“Look, Mr. Chandler, I know I’m—”

He stood up so quickly that her voice went silent. He stood so tal, she thought, and so intense, and came toward her with that same force of wil he displayed the first time she met him, that al she could think to do was stare, her once clear thoughts now empty after-thoughts she couldn’t even recal. It was as if, just by coming near her, he had a hold on her again. Only this time it wasn’t physical at al, the way it was in the stairwel, but something entirely different.

“You know you’re what?” Chandler asked in response to her unfinished words that stil hung in the air. His hands were in his pants pockets, his face was directly in hers, his once calm demeanor now intimidating and forceful. “The queen of tardiness? The one human being so self assured that she just know planes wil shut down their engines and wait on her?” They stood toe to toe now, and his big body, his sweet cologne, his presence alone made Tori feel suddenly overwhelmed. And he wouldn’t let up. “Her boss tels her to be here at nine a.m.,” he continued, “but she doesn’t have to worry about that. She’s Victoria Douglas, after al. Good ol’ Tori. And everybody knows the world doesn’t make a move until Tori shows up!”

He moved closer to her - she didn’t think it possible - and her heart started pounding again. But this time, given the fire in his eyes, given the fierceness of his manner, it wasn’t due to lust at al, but old-fashioned, out of nowhere fear.

“Let’s get one thing straight, Miss Douglas,” he leaned to her ear and said, their bodies so close they were one exhale away from touching, “I don’t play. Not with you, not with anybody. If you can’t get it together and prove to me that you’re worthy to run my logistics department, you won’t be running it much longer. Do you dig my drift? Do you understand what I’m trying to tel you? Because if you don’t, I want you to try me. Please.” He stared at her a moment longer, as if he was daring her to try him right now, and then he left her side and headed for the hangar, with Arthur, great flunky that he was, hurrying behind him and looking back at Tori as he ran.

It was as clear as day now, Tori thought. Either she
behave,
Chandler was teling her, or she could kiss that job she wasn’t qualified to have anyway goodbye. Her parents home in Arlington Heights goodbye with it. Her very way of life goodbye too. She tightened her grip on her carrying case and puled the strap of her shoulder bag further up on her narrow shoulder, and she folowed the leader too.

But unlike Arthur, she wasn’t running to her destruction. She was walking, in swift but unrushed strides, ready to put up with as much as she could, ready to kiss it al goodbye if Chandler went too far. She knew it was a great possibility that she could return to Chicago without a job, but she wasn’t about to return without her self-respect.

Ethan Chandler sat quietly in the leather seat of the oversized company plane and went through volumes of work, in between making phone cals, receiving phone cals, and ignoring Tori as they flew on

top of the world. Tori didn’t mind the slight. She, in fact, welcomed it as she sat across from him and took sneak peaks every chance she could. He was a piece of work, she thought, with a reputation to match his bravado. And instead of trying to hit on her, which she appreciated, he was bent over his papers working feverishly, as if he, successful businessman that he was, stil had something to prove. He even wore reading glasses like he was some old man, when her research of him placed his age at thirty-eight. Which meant he wasn’t young, and that he had a lot of years on her, but it didn’t exactly mean out-to-pasture time for him, either.

But that was Chandler. Al about business. Al about the Benjamins. Not once in al of the articles she’d read on him was there a wife mentioned, or children. He had women, always there was a

different woman on his arm. But they were the usual suspects, the tal blondes and other beauty queens, folowing him around to this charity banquet or that charity auction, trying to make a name for themselves on Chicago’s social scene. But those women were just business props for a man like Chandler. Tori didn’t know much about him, but based on how his manhood reacted to her body when she

sat (fel) on him in that stairwel, she would like to think that she knew his taste. And his taste, if she wasn’t mistaken, wouldn’t be for some Miss Virginia who wowed the judges in the swimsuit competition, but somebody like her, somebody with spunk and life, not to mention serious brains.

Although, she’d admit, she wasn’t showing much braininess around him now. But what could she do? She did the math. She tried to figure out if there was any way, any way at al that she could quit this job and stil afford her parents’ mortgage and her own bils. But there was no way under the sun. She even caled around, to her old employers Dow-Tate and Fitzgerald-Waterhouse, and even to some of the larger firms, but nobody was wiling to pay a twenty-five-year-old of limited experience no-where near what Chandler was paying her. He was, from what her checking around uncovered, paying her

twice the going rate! How could she walk away from that?

She couldn’t, she decided, and that was the bottom line. If people quit jobs just because their boss was an s.o.b., then there would scarcely be a soul employed. And so far that was the only mark Chandler had against him. He was tough, or didn’t play, as he put it. Hardly the kind of trait you’d hold against somebody.

Her cel phone rang as she looked, once again, at her hard-working employer. So good looking, and, from those articles she’d read, maybe even an interesting person if he wasn’t so hard-driven. But he was hard-driven, she thought.

“Helo?” she flipped open her cel and said. It was her father, with her mother yeling in the background. Tori leaned her head back. “What is it now?” she asked.

“I live here too,” her father, Earl Warren Douglas, said into the phone. “Do I not live here too?”

Tori could hear her mother yel out a resounding no in the background, but, thankfuly, her father ignored her. “Yes, Daddy,” Tori said and Ethan immediately looked up at her over his reading glasses.

“You live there too.”

“Then why do I not have a say so if this supposed to be my house too? Why I got to do everything Agnes say? Who made her the boss in a house the man supposed to be head of?”

“Daddy, what are you talking about?”

“The couch.”

Tori leaned her head back further and closed her eyes. Ethan stared at her smooth, thin neck. “What about the couch?” she asked.

“She won’t let me sit on it, Tori, that’s what!”

“Don’t you tel that lie!” Tori’s mother, Agnes Douglas, could be heard nearly screaming in the background. “Don’t you dare get on that phone lying, Earl Warren! If you gon’ tel it, you tel it like it is

‘cause I’l be glad to tel it!”

Tori shook her head. “Tel me what? I mean, what do you mean she won’t let you sit on the couch?”

“Just like I said,” he said to Tori. “And I ain’t taking it back either!” he yeled, obviously to his wife. “She won’t let me sit on it. At least not how I want to sit on it.”

Tori sighed. “And how do you want to sit on it, Daddy?”

“Like normal people!” Earl Warren yeled. “Without al that plastic.”

“You ain’t ruining my sofa,” Agnes yeled, once again, in the background. “You know you got a problem!”

“That plastic sticks to my butt,” Earl Warren continued, ignoring his wife’s hysterics. “Every time I go to stand up, every time I go to move from side to side, I got to pul plastic out of my butt. My arthritis crippling enough, Baby Girl. I got to be comfortable when I sit down, but no. She got to protect her precious couch. Wel what about me?”

Tori inhaled and exhaled a great sigh of frustration, and then she began massaging her temples. Ethan watched as her large breast rose up when she inhaled, and then sputtered back down. He looked at her flat stomach and at the short skirt that was inches away from revealing her most intimate details. He crossed his legs.

“Put Mama on the phone,” Tori said to her father and within seconds Agnes, her mother, had taken the helm.

“Remove the plastic, Mama.”

“He ain’t ruining my couch!”

“Then place a sheet over the plastic, at least until I can buy some furniture covers. We’ve been through this before.”

“Yeah, but I don’t like it. Them sheets don’t wanna stay in place when you move around and you know how much Earl Warren moves around.”

“Just, Mother, please, just do it. Don’t get Daddy al upset like this, you know how it affects his blood pressure.”

“What about my blood pressure?” Agnes replied, and on and on it went again. Ethan couldn’t stop staring at Tori, as she sat there, her eyes closed, her graceful neck exposed, talking so patiently with her parents. Every word his people told him about her was positive. How she loved her folks. How she even bought them a beautiful house she could scarcely afford. How she had a few boyfriends in her young life but they al broke her heart in the end and now she was extra cautious. Smart, dependable, resourceful, was her bottom line. But why was it whenever he looked at her, he didn’t see this tower of strength al of his men described? What he saw was a lonely, sad, almost inexplicably vulnerable kid.

She finaly got off of the phone, but kept her eyes closed and head leaned back a few moments longer. When she opened her eyes, Ethan was stil staring at her. And, to her shock, she could almost

detect a look of worry in those once-fierce eyes of his. He even smiled at her, which stunned her even more.

“Everything al right?” he asked her.

She returned his smile, it was so unexpectedly warm, how could she not? “Oh, yes,” she said. “Just the usual unusual.”

“Your parents?”

“Yep. Earl Warren and Agnes Douglas. Some people, you see, have Bebe kids. I have Bebe parents.”

Ethan laughed, which almost startled Tori. But not to fear, it didn’t last long. For as quickly as he had laughed, as quickly as he had shredded that intense gaze of his for a kinder, gentler Ethan Chandler, he went back to perusing his papers. And before Tori could completely comprehend how precious the moment was, his smile was gone, his game face was back on, and it was, as she had expected it would be al along, business as usual once again.

They arrived in Cedar Key at a smal, private airstrip near a busy highway. A tal, black man with a bald head was there to meet their plane. Tori stood up and was ready to unboard, but Ethan was stil on the phone, which meant everybody had to wait. When he finaly hung up, and stood up alongside Tori, he glanced down at her and then looked out of his window at the awaiting gentleman. “Pul down

that skirt,” he said to her as he stuffed papers into his briefcase.

Tori, at first, didn’t get it. What skirt? she almost wanted to ask. “Excuse me?” she asked instead.

Ethan looked at her again, as if he wanted her to fuly understand that he wasn’t taking it back. “Pul down your skirt. It’s too short. This island may be smal but there’s people on it. Pul it down.”

Tori didn’t know how to respond to such a request, or was it an order? She looked at Ethan, who didn’t seem in the least concerned that he would ask her to do such a thing, especialy since it was just as short when he was trying to look up it al during their flight to this island. And he wasn’t complaining then. Now al of a sudden, because other people were going to be around, and, presumably, try to look up it too, he didn’t like it. Tori almost smiled. Was the man
that
controling, or was he genuinely concerned? Yet she did pul it down, skimmying it further toward her knees just a wee bit, not because of any order he gave, but on the off chance that the latter was true and he was, in a fatherly way of course, concerned.