The Sandstone Affair (An Erotic Romance Novel) (11 page)

I stop by the hospital to sit with Dad. That’s
what the nurse calls it–sitting. He hasn’t really opened his eyes or
communicated with more than a few hand squeezes since I left last night. I ask
the nurse if this is normal.
“For him it is,” she says gently. I watched
her come in with a cloth and some lotion. She washed his skin and then rubbed
the lotion into his hands, arm and cheeks. “No matter how much fluid we give
them, people tend to dry out in the hospital.”
“I feel so helpless,” I confess. I don’t know
who this nurse is, but I make a vow that when I get Lynx back, I’m going to
assign my best feature writer to do a story about ICU nurses and what an amazing
job they do. She nods empathetically. “Is there anything I can do to help him?”
The nurse hands me the lotion and wash cloth.
“I meant isn’t there something I can do to
change the situation for him? Help him wake up or get him to move around more?
I know there’s really nothing I can do.”
“My experience is that when there’s nothing
you can do,” she says gently squeezing the lotion into my hand and placing it
on Dad’s arm. “Small things are sometimes all you can do.”
She’s right. I finish with Dad’s arm and reach
for my cell phone.
“Mark, it’s Julia,” I say to the voice mail
prompt, thankful I don’t have to speak to him in person. “Saturday at noon,
Café San Carlo in the Village. Be prepared to pay for three.”

~~~

I sit with Dad most of the morning. He’s
still breathing, but largely unresponsive. His grip is getting weaker. Yet, he
did signal that he knows I’m there.
I tell Janice to meet me at 11:30 so I can
catch her up with what’s happening and explain why I am allowing Mark to meet
with both of us. I probably don’t need thirty minutes to get Janice into the
swing of this meeting, but I have to give her at least some clues because I
have no idea what’s going to come up.
“Café San Carlo?” Janice says as she sits down
looking at the beautiful Italian décor. “Don’t you think this is a little
pricey for a woman who just lost her job and a woman who is probably going to
in a few weeks?”
“We aren’t paying. Order anything you want,” I
reply, keeping pace with my friend. It’s nice to be talking about anything that
isn’t serious. Of course, that’ll change soon. “I’m ordering the Seabass
Marichiara and a nice glass of Lambrusco.”
“Really? Then I’ll just have one of everything
and a bottle of something red,” she laughs. “Seriously, who’s coming to meet
us, Rupert Murdoch?”
“Think local, less famous, better looking and
much more stamina in the sack.”
“Um… wow… if he wasn’t rich I’d say the UPS
guy who delivers in the afternoons, but I’m pretty sure he’s not eating here
before hauling our packages up from the street. Who is it?”
“Okay, okay. It’s Mark. We’ve hit a break, or
a snag–I’m not sure which–with his plan and we need your help.”
“Mark Stone? You got it. Anything to get his
asshole brother out of your office and off my ass.” She holds up a glass to get
the waiter’s attention and orders a spicy Malbec.
“I hear you. The plan is to get Lynx back before
the papers—”
“Hey! Wait a minute,” she interrupts me in
mid-sentence, giggling like a schoolgirl. “How do you know Mark Stone is good
in the sack?”
I blush as I realize this is not going to be
as easy or smooth as I had hoped if I don’t cough up at least a few details. I
plunge into the part of the speech I rehearsed, hoping Janice’s questioning
mind doesn’t take me too far off the planned path.
“Okay, look. That’s why I asked you here
early. I need you to know something and keep it to yourself. If anyone finds
out this information, it could be bad for all of us–you included.”
“Tick, a lock,” she says, pretending to lock
her lips and throw away the key.
“I’m… well… I’m kinda,” I stammer and play
with napkin. Finally, I blurt it out like someone who is possessed. “I’m
sleeping with Mark. It’s not a big thing, or a relationship and we aren’t
moving in, getting hitched or planning kids. It’s just sex.”
“Wow.” Janice sits there with her mouth
hanging open. I’m not sure if it is because of my revelation or the blurting,
convulsive way I made it. “You and Mr. Stone? Wow.”
“Don’t mention it to him,” I say nervously.
“Why? Doesn’t he know you’re having sex?”
“No! I mean, yes! He knows we are having sex.
I just don’t know if he wants you to know.”
“Oh. But I do know.”
“Don’t mention it.”
“Okay.”
“But if he mentions it, don’t act shocked
about it.”
“Okay.”
“And don’t deny it.”
“Are you sure he knows you two are having
sex?”
“Shut up!” We both are laughing so hard tears
are falling from our eyes. It feels so good to laugh again.
“Lovely ladies on a pretty day. Boy, am I a
lucky man or what?” Mark says as he sits down beside me. He reaches under the
table and puts his hand on my thigh. The feeling of his strength on my body
grounds me. For the first time all day I’m not nervous, tense or giddy.
“Mark, I don’t think you’ve met Janice. She’s
my assistant at Lynx and my best friend.”
“I’ve talked to you on the phone several
times.” Mark smiles while Janice appears to be melting. “It’s wonderful to meet
you. I want to thank you for being so brave. Staying at Lynx while my brother
runs amok can’t be easy.”
“Blake’s not as nerve-wracking as Valerie
James. Every time she comes in, I get the shivers.” Janice leans toward Mark as
she talks, opening her body stance. My anthropology professor would have said
she was “inviting the mate.” “If you ask me, you’re the brave one, Mr. Stone.”
“Oh, how so?” Mark asks. I reach my leg over
and give Janice a good swift kick in the shin under the table. She blinks, but
never shows her pain. Good woman.
“For taking on your brother and putting your
own position at risk to defend Julia,” Janice makes up a good cover. “I’m happy
someone has taken an interest in her, ah, helping her! Taken an interest in
helping her.”
Mark smiles politely. He asks what I’m
planning for lunch and browses the menu. We listen to Janice babble on about
running the office without me, and how the tension is high when Blake or
Kenneth show up to lock themselves in my office, but people actually find excuses
to leave the room when Valerie is there. The waiter appears and Mark flags his
attention.
“The lady will have Seabass Marichiara with
house vinaigrette on the side and a glass of Sorbara Lambrusco, and I will have
the shrimp scampi with Mosel Riesling,” he says and gestures to Janice for her
order. She’s so shocked she stumbles through her decisions and I’m not sure she
even got what she wanted.
I have to admit that I have never been ordered
for since I’ve become an adult. There’s something old fashioned and quaint
about it, yet I blush, thinking that Janice is probably about to pass out. Lord
knows if Greg had ever tried a stunt like that I would have lectured him until
his ears bled. But with Mark, it didn’t seem like a “stunt”–he genuinely likes
to care for me.
“Why does Valerie keep coming to the office?”
Mark asks Janice once the waiter leaves.
“Why does a lioness stalk her prey?” I answer.
“But Lynx isn’t prey anymore,” Mark responds.
“She’s already got it. If we can’t file a rejoinder with the court in time,
it’s a done deal.”
“Yes, you’re right.” I agree, looking at his
face–so earnest and masculine. I catch Janice out of the corner of my eye still
staring at me. I’m sure she’s thinking the old me would have argued with him,
even though he’s right, just to make sure my voice was the dominant one. But I
don’t need to argue all the time anymore. I really am happier just letting
myself be me. “Janice, why is Valerie there?”
“She’s looking for something,” Janice says,
ever guarded. “She spent the first week or so in your office going through
every folder, every paper, and every computer file. She would spend hours in
front of your computer. Then she started talking to staff, using the notes
Blake and Kenneth provided from their ‘interviews’ with us. She keeps asking
what we worked on in the past year, and what we’re working on now. She pretends
she’s just getting info to merge us into Ladies World, but it’s clear she’s not
getting the answer she wants.”
“If she was on Julia’s computer, she did more
than talk to the staff. She’s been searching their files,” Mark says.
“We figured it out. Well actually, Mark
figured it out. When that IT guy from Sandstone came and put that management
software on my computer he was actually installing a way for my computer to see
every file on staff computers, and a way Blake could interact with our
network.”
“Oh my gosh,” Janice responds. I’m not sure if
she’s reacting to the idea of Blake being in our system or the fact that I gave
Mark credit for the idea. “If Blake can access our network, he can see
everything–our emails, our contact lists, and our finances. He would have
access to everything!”
“We need to shut the network down,” I say
reacting to Janice’s energy and the thought of Blake Stone’s slimy finger rummaging
through the files of my company.
Mark shakes his head. “We need to keep it open
and get the records of what he’s done. We also need to find a way into his
system.”
“You’re right,” I say to Mark. “But how do we
do that? Can you get your IT guy to come back and change the program? If you
can see us, why can’t we see you?”
“No, he would complain to Blake that he had to
do off site work, and Blake would catch us. If he thinks we have a clue about
what he’s been doing, he will destroy the evidence. And, with Valerie all over
the place, she’s sure to notice a change. She’s got a good eye for things like
that.”
“How do you know that?” I ask, completely
distracted from the real issue for a moment. His hand squeezes my thigh
teasingly.
“Because she’s one of our largest properties,
remember?” he says nonchalantly. “Does Lynx have its own IT person?”
“Kevin. He’s a good kid. Runs the network and
the website,” I say when I notice Janice shaking her head.
“Kevin’s gone. They fired him the same day
they fired you. Kenneth said we wouldn’t need any more IT help because Ladies
World had a whole department for IT.”
“They’re definitely using the computer for
their scheme,” Mark confirms.
“Good news is that Kevin got a job with
R&C Associates on the next floor. They were looking for a good IT guy.
Maybe I can get him to come down when Blake and Company aren’t around. I’m sure
he’d love to help us get back at those jerks.”
The food came and it was delicious. I have
good taste in places when someone else is paying the tab. Mark continued with
his gentlemanly manners, offering me more wine, picking up my napkin when it
fell.

This is actually the first meal we have had
in public together. In all the chaos, we skipped the dating and went straight to
the heart of the matter. This dating thing is kind of nice, and yet–I keep
looking down at his lap as we sit here, imagining myself just leaning over
impulsively and taking him in my mouth. When did I start having sex fantasies
over lunch?
“So, let’s do this. I’ll see if I can look
around Blake’s office and find where he’s keeping the records. Janice you have
two jobs. Access your network’s history page and start printing out every
transaction, website, or change that’s been made since the transition, and see
if you can get your friend Kevin to reverse the backdoor so we can see all of
my brother’s dirty little deeds.”
“What about me?” I ask. “I know I’ve made a
mess of things since this started, but I need to be proactive and be a part of
saving Lynx.”
“Your job is to figure out what Valerie James
is looking for, and give it to her.”
“
What?
” Both Janice and I speak in
unison.
“Look, she isn’t hanging around Lynx to
transition it into her magazine. She has people to do that. She’s looking for
something you have. A source or a lead or something. The only way to get her
hands out of the mix so we can do this safely is to give her what she wants. Do
you have anyone or anything you think she might be after?”
“She probably wants the—” Janice began but
stopped abruptly, quite possibly because of the sharp pain she felt in her leg
from my shoe.
“The T list,” I blurted out. “The T list is a
collection of people around town… um… everyone from street people to cops to
shop owners who give us tips. We get a lot of our exclusives from folks on the
T list.”
Janice stares at me making it painfully
obvious that I’m making this crap up as I go along. But, Mark seems to buy it
for now.
“And you don’t keep this list in your
computer?” he asks.
“No. It’s too valuable. Can you imagine what
someone would do with our list of secret sources? The only copy is at Janice’s
house. I don’t even keep it at home because I don’t want anyone finding it,” I
babble. Now the crap is really flying. “But, I can’t give it to Valerie James.
It would cut my heart in two.”
Mark looks over at Janice to see if any of
this is true, but she has buried her head in her crab lasagna and won’t look
up. Still, she’s not denying it.
“Okay. So Julia, you and Janice go through
your ‘T-list’ and redact any source you can’t afford to give up, but don’t take
all the good stuff out–you need to make it seem legit. Then Janice can tell
Valerie when she comes in that she found it in a file and thought Val might
need it. That will back her off.”
We finish lunch chatting about music,
interests and plans for Lynx if we get it back from Blake in time. Mark is
cordial, charming and Janice is clearly smitten by him. He pays and excuses
himself from the table so he can get back to work and figure out a way into
Blake’s office.
“What in the world?” Janice asks the minute he
is out of hearing range. “You nearly took my leg off!”
“Look, I trust Mark,” I start.
“You trust him? You’re freaking in love with
him, but you don’t trust him.”
“Take two: I am learning to trust Mark. You
know Greg messed me up. Anyway, you and I both know Valerie is looking for the
Wall Street story. But I’m not ready to give that up yet. It’s the only thing
of value that Lynx has left. Mark isn’t a journalist. He doesn’t get how much
difference the right story makes. He would want me to turn it over, and I don’t
want to argue with him about it.”
“Since when?”