Who's on Top? (10 page)

“I guess.” He sighed. “You girls are all grown-up now. I remember you all playing around the house with your Barbies.”

She smiled at him. “That was a while ago.”

“Don't know where the years went. And now you have your own business. How's it all going? You turning a profit yet?”

Jane wanted so badly to tell him yes. But cash flow was always a problem. She'd be struggling once again to make their loan payment for the month.

“Well,” she said, thinking about the lucrative potential deal with Zantyne and Arianna. “Business is really good, but it takes a while to get the numbers where they should be. Looks like we've got a deal in the works, though.”

She felt…funny…as she said it. Dominic had told her everything she needed to know. All she had to do was log it in her report and give Arianna the results she was obviously looking for. So why did the idea make her queasy?

Her dad looked at her with pride. “You'll pull it off, Janey. I've never had any doubt that you'd be a huge success at anything you tried. It's just not in your nature to fail.”

“Yeah,” she said slowly. “Thanks.” She hugged him and they went back outside.

“So, Gil,” said Shannon, scooping up an extracrispy drumstick. “Tell me about these sculptures of yours. I hear they're amazing.”

Gil shrugged uncomfortably and took refuge behind a mouthful of coleslaw.

“They are,” Jane agreed. “You have to show her after dinner, okay?”

He nodded.

“Did you contact Jim and—”

Gil shot her a look. “Yes. He took the slides. He had some recommendations about where to send them, too.”

“Great. That's just great, Gil.” Jane made herself shut up and crossed her fingers that her brother would actually mail out the pictures.

J
ANE SAT ACROSS HER DESK FROM
Lilia and Shannon. “Okay,” she said. “We've got to talk cash flow, scheduling and marketing this morning. So first I need you two to go over your receivables with me….”

The three of them discussed their billing and clients, upcoming presentations and seminars and efforts to bring in more business.

“When do you think you can hire a receptionist?” asked Lil.

Jane thought about Zantyne and Arianna again. “Soon, I hope.”

“And a cleaning service,” Shannon added.

“As soon as we can get our receivables outnumbering our payables—by a significant amount.”

Shannon nodded. “So what's going on with the Zantyne woman?”

I was afraid you were going to ask that.
Jane stalled a moment. Then she told them what had happened with Dominic at dinner, leaving out his more personal revelations.

“He sounds obnoxious,” said Lilia.

Jane shook her head before replying. “Sayers is a man fighting for his career. He told me some things that give him motive for bad behavior with a female boss. And then he shut down. I can't really blame him. I'm the enemy. And I can't deny that someone's history has a great deal to do with shaping who he is today.”

Lilia made a noise of dissatisfaction. “I wish you could spill the beans!”

“Yeah,” said Shannon. “We want the real dirt on this guy.”

“I can't tell you anything—you know that. It's a breach of confidence. All I'm going to say is trust me—he had a horrendous time of it as a kid. We're talking Mommy Dearest times ten.”

“So you're right on target,” said Lilia. “That should wipe out any doubts you've had about the boss lady.”

“Yeeeaaaah,” Jane agreed.

Shannon gave her a sharp glance and Jane avoided it. Her friend knew her too well. “Oh, would you just go ahead and sleep with the guy?”

Lilia's brows rose.

Jane blinked. “Excuse me?”

“It's very clear that you're dying to do just that.”

“I am not! How can you say such a thing?”

“Honestly, Jane! You've been looking lustfully at
doorknobs
since Sayers walked into our office. How long has it been since you last got some, honey?”

Lilia gave up her struggle with gentility for once and laughed.

Jane glared at both of them. “This is not funny!”

Shannon winked at Lilia and Jane's irritation level rose.

“You cannot think that I would sleep with a client.”

“Sure would help to get to know him better.” Shannon grinned.

“No, it would not. It will only confuse the issues.”

“Oh, it
will,
will it?”

“Leave me alone.”

 

J
ANE SAT GLUMLY IN A LOCAL
Laundromat, watching two different machines shimmy and shake. They held her clothes—the ones she could no longer wash at home for fear that the ruby-red lace tap shorts would melt into the very gears of her own Whirlpool appliance.

She had to call a repairman. She really did. But she dreaded facing him when he detached the lingerie. No doubt he would pull it out shred by shred, dangling them dubiously from a pair of pliers. Then he'd have a big laugh at her expense with all the other appliance repairmen at their local bar.

Worse, he'd see what size panty she wore! Because of course the darn
tag
wasn't stuck—no, it flapped handily for anyone to see. Anyone who happened to stick his head into her washing machine.
Jane O'Toole's butt is a size large!
the tag proclaimed.

Why, oh, why had she bought the damned things? What had possessed her to throw them into the wash without one of those mesh bags? And how much was
she going to have to pay for the ultimate in humiliation? Eighty bucks? Ninety?

Hey, Mike!
she could hear the repair guy saying.
Guess what I pulled out of some woman's washer this morning?

The thought crossed her mind that her brother Gilbey could probably do the job, but a, he'd hang out for the day and eat anything not nailed down and b, she didn't really want Gilbey looking at her racy panties, either. Her father? Out of the question. There were just some things you didn't show your family.

The man across the Laundromat kept trying to catch her eye. The one who looked as if he hadn't showered in three days and ate live rats for breakfast. Jane carefully avoided his gaze and inspected her shoes. They were serviceable black pumps, the exact model of her serviceable brown ones. Boring, Shannon would call them. Jane called them comfortable.

She flipped through another few pages of the glossy women's magazine on her lap and wondered why she couldn't seem to look away from a human praying mantis—the model was that skinny—sporting hot-pink hoochie-mama sandals with silver stiletto heels. They were fabulous, and Jane did her best not to drool while reminding herself sternly that hot-pink hoochie shoes belonged in her life about as much as the Hope diamond.

A brief fantasy flashed into her head: she wore the pink heels, a zebra-striped micro mini dress and absolutely nothing else—for Dominic Sayers, of all
people. Ha! His tongue unrolled like a cartoon dog's, lapping hungrily at her toes.

Yeah, right, Jane.

Speaking of toes, the praying mantis's little piggies were painted pink to match the sandals, and she dangled a tiny, elegant, hot-pink handbag only big enough to hold a lipstick and a bit of sin.

Jane glanced down at her scarred brown briefcase and grimaced. If she lived in Miami, perhaps she could mince around in sexy stilettos with a designer bag hanging off a manicured finger. However, she lived smack in the middle of Connecticut, where thick, woolly Fair Isle sweaters and rubber duck boots were always the height of fashion. Connecticut was hardly known as the State of Seduction.

Too bad. Because she really liked those shoes…. Jane tore off the praying mantis's foot, shoe and all, and stuffed it into her briefcase. If she weren't so sensible, she'd feel a retail crime coming on. But she was sensible, and therefore she'd resist. No visit to Beckindale's exclusive department store lay in her future. She'd just savor the photograph.

Her laptop winked balefully at her, reminding her that instead of reading mindless magazines and dreaming of being a sex kitten, she should be balancing Finesse's books for the month with her Quicken program.
Ugh.

As one washing machine went into its spin cycle and the other made dubious thumping noises, she opened up the computer and pulled an envelope of
receipts out of the side pocket of her bag. Lilia had offered to take over this task, but Jane preferred to do it herself. Even after years of studying effective management techniques, she had a hard time delegating. The irony didn't escape her, but she couldn't bypass her own personality, either. Darn it. Well, no one was perfect, not even her. Even though her ma had always told her she was. Jane smiled at the memory of being Mommy's perfect angel and shook her head.

If only her ma knew how much debt her perfect angel had taken on to start Finesse! Jane pulled up the Quicken software, her smile fading fast. The offices, their salaries, their health insurance, the cost of marketing. If Finesse didn't get some major business on the books soon, the bank was going to start heavy breathing down her collar.

Lilia had a group seminar on business etiquette coming up, as well as a gig to teach some eighth-graders in a private school. And she was advertising in the upper-end neighborhoods for cotillion classes.

Shannon was speaking to a women's club in Farmington and to one in Stamford. Then she had seminars lined up on several college campuses, one in a large sorority. Jane prayed she wouldn't forget to get rid of the weird nail polish colors, not to mention removing the pink streak from her blond hair. Shan was going to have to remember that this was not Los Angeles!

Jane could barely remember the three of them at age fourteen, dressed in their matching school uni
forms. Surely Shannon had never worn drab olive cardigans, white button-down blouses and navy plaid skirts? Oh, and knee socks with loafers! But the past didn't lie.

Jane, today, came the closest of all of them to wearing that old girls' school uniform. She'd traded the knee socks for knee-highs and the loafers for pumps, but she still wore a uniform: the pantsuit. Okay, so she didn't own anything in plaid, but there were an embarrassing number of plain white shirts in her closet. Ditto white bras and panties.

Which was why she'd rebelled one day and sent off for the ruby-red lace. See where impulse had gotten her?

She needed a pair of pink stilettos like she needed a hole in her head.

Jane again avoided Mr. Rats-for-Breakfast's intense stare and began to work, fingers clicking busily over the keyboard.

Two plastic chairs down from her, a couple of older women gossiped about their neighbors, relatives and congregation members.

Across from them sat a wizened old man who was picking his teeth and, to Jane's disgust, sucking on the, uh, treasure trapped between them.

She prayed for her twin washing machines to do their job speedily and resolved to drag home wet clothes. Her dryer worked perfectly well, and she really wanted to get out of the Cash-Wash. Where were the hunky young guys featured on the C-W TV ads?
The ones who were clad only in their last pair of clean underwear and had to ask women for advice on water temperature and detergent? Talk about false advertising!

When the lurching and spinning of the machines came to a stop, Jane piled all of her soggy clothes into her white plastic laundry basket and tossed her briefcase on top. She lugged the heavy load past the gossips, the tooth-picker and finally Mr. Rats-for-Breakfast, avoiding his gaze for the last time. Keeping her eyes fixed upon a red sock in the basket, she bumped out the door with her behind. She was glad neither Dominic nor Arianna could see her right now, since she looked a lot more like a chambermaid than the CEO of her own company.

As Jane drove home, past the mini-mart and the dry cleaner and the gas station, thoughts of Dominic intruded into her mind. For the first time she considered whether or not she owed him an apology. She'd behaved somewhat like a terrier in the restaurant, cornering him about his past. And she didn't want to think about the fact that her behavior had been fueled by her own defensiveness. She couldn't just relax and let down her guard around Dominic Sayers. He threatened her—not physically—on some deeper, primal level.

She stopped for a traffic light and it hit her: she knew she couldn't manage him. He was beyond her control. She struggled with the revelation.
I am the ultimate control freak.
She didn't necessarily like it, but there it was.

Jane managed and controlled everyone in her life, especially the men in her family. She'd had to hold them together emotionally when her mother died.

I can't control him, and that scares me. Unnerves me.
Worse, it drove her wild. She was always struggling for the power seat with him in the room. And he saw through it.

Dominic saw through her surface competence to the vulnerable woman underneath.

It was just hell on a woman when she couldn't keep her sphinx face.

The car behind her honked, and Jane realized she'd been staring into space, driving on Mars instead of Route 4 in Farmington. Dominic had her all tangled up.

She saw him as a boy in her mind's eye—a dark, skinny tangle of elbows and knees, at the tip of a twenty-foot mast in a thunderstorm, trying to untangle a spinnaker line.

She tried to imagine the kind of mother who would send her child up a lightning rod on a turbulent, thunderous afternoon.

She tried to imagine the kind of woman who would burn down her own house just to get her son's attention. Just to keep her gravy train en route.

Jane turned into her driveway without being conscious of how she'd gotten there. Her eyes were wet with tears. Oh, yes. She had an apology to make.