Company Man (25 page)

During the drive from the high school back to Stratton, Nick found himself thinking about Cassie Stadler.

She was not only gorgeous—he'd had more than his share of gorgeous women over the years, especially during college, when Laura had wanted them to “take a break” and “see other people”—but she was so smart it was scary, eerily perceptive. She seemed to understand him fully, to see through him, almost. She knew him better than he knew himself.

And he couldn't deny the physical attraction: for the first time in over a year he'd had sex, and he felt like a sexual being again. This was a sensation he'd almost forgotten about. The pump had been primed. He felt horny. He thought about yesterday afternoon and got hard.

Then he remembered who she was, how he'd come to know her, and his mood collapsed. The guilt came surging back, worse than ever.

A voice in his head:
Are you kidding me? You're screwing the daughter of the man you murdered?

What's wrong with you?

He didn't understand what he was doing. If he allowed himself to get close to her…Well, what if she found out, somehow? Could he keep up this crazy balancing act?

What the hell am I doing?

But he badly wanted to see her again. That was the craziest thing of all.

It was late afternoon by now, and he didn't have to return to the office. He pulled over to the side of the road and fished a scrap of paper out of his jacket pocket. On it he'd scrawled Cassie Stadler's phone number. Impulsively—without heeding that chiding voice in his head—he called her on his cell.

“Hello,” he said when she answered. His voice sounded small. “It's Nick.”

A beat. “Nick,” she said, and stopped.

“I just wanted to…” His voice actually cracked. Just wanted to—what? Turn back the clock? Reverse what happened That Night? Make everything
all better
? And since that wasn't possible, then what? He just wanted to talk to her. That was the truth. “I was just calling…”

“I know,” she said quickly.

“You okay?”

“Are
you
?”

“I'd like to see you,” he said.

“Nick,” she said. “You should stay away from me. I'm trouble. Really.”

Nick almost smiled. Cassie didn't know what trouble was.
You think you're trouble? You should see me when I've got a Smith & Wesson in my hands
. Acid splashed the back of his throat.

“I don't think so,” Nick said.

“Don't you think you've done enough?”

He felt something like an electric jolt. Hadn't he done enough? That was one way of looking at it. “Excuse me?”

“Not that I didn't appreciate it. I did.
All
of it. But we need to leave it there. You've got a company to run. A family to hold together. I don't fit into that.”

“I'm just leaving an appointment,” he said. “I can be there in about five minutes.”

 

“Hey,” Cassie said, opening the dusty screen door. Carpenter-style jeans, white T-shirt, flecks of paint. Then
she smiled, a smile that crinkled her eyes. She looked better, sounded better. “I didn't think you'd come back.”

“Why?”

“Well, you know, buyer's remorse. Regret over what you'd done. The usual male stuff.”

“Maybe I'm not your usual male.”

“I'm getting that idea. Bring me anything today?”

Nick shrugged. “Sorry. There's a bottle of windshield-wiper fluid in the trunk.”

“Forget it,” Cassie said. “That stuff always gives me a hangover.”

“Might have a can of WD-40 around, too.”

“Now that's more promising. I'm really digging the idea of having the CEO of Stratton as my personal grocery boy.”

“Point of pride with me. Nick Conover buys a mean turkey sandwich.”

“But should I take it personally that you got me nonfat yogurt?” She brought him inside. “Let me make you some of the tea you bought.”

She disappeared into the kitchen for a moment. She had a CD on, a woman singing something about, “I'm brave but I'm chicken shit.”

When she came back, Nick said, “You look good.”

“I'm beginning to feel more like myself again,” she said. “You caught me at a low point the other day. I'm sure you know how it goes.”

“Well, you look a lot better.”

“And you look like shit,” she said, matter of fact.

“Well,” Nick said. “Long day.”

She stretched herself out on the nubby brown sofa, with the gold thread woven through the upholstery like something out of the 1950s.

“Long day, or long story?”

“Trust me, you don't want to hear a grown man bitch and moan about troubles at the shop.”

“Trust me, I could use the distraction.”

Nick leaned back in the ancient green La-Z-Boy. After a few moments, he began to tell her about the Rumor, leaving
out a few details. He didn't mention Scott by name, didn't go into Scott's disloyalty. That was too painful a subject right now.

Cassie hugged her knees, gathering herself into some tight yoga-like ball, and listened intently as he explained.

“And if that weren't enough, I get a call from Lucas's school,” he went on. He stopped. He wasn't accustomed to talking about his life that way. Not since Laura's death. Somehow he'd gotten out of practice.

“Tell me,” she said.

He did, telling her, too, about how he'd called Lucas at home, confronted him, and how Luke had hung up. When he finally checked his watch, he realized he'd been talking for more than five minutes.

“I never understood that,” Cassie said.

“Understood what?”

“Kid gets suspended for three days, meaning what? They don't have to go to school for three days? They stay home?”

“Right.”

“And get into more trouble? That's supposed to be a punishment? I mean, a baseball player gets suspended for five games for fighting with the umpire, that's a punishment. But telling a kid he can't go to school, which he hates, for three days?”

“Maybe it's like social humiliation.”

“For a teenager? Isn't that more like a badge of honor?”

Nick shrugged. “Wouldn't have been for me.”

“No, you were probably Mr. Perfect.”

“No way. I got into the usual trouble. I was just careful about it. I didn't want to get kicked off the hockey team. Hey, where's that tea?” he asked.

“That stove takes forever. Electric, and underpowered. Dad wouldn't allow gas in the house. One of his many ‘things.' But we won't go there.” She craned her head, listening. “I'm sure it's ready now.”

“Just that all this talking makes a man thirsty,” Nick said.

Cassie came back with two steaming mugs. “English Breakfast,” she said. “Though I saw that you also bought me
a box of Blue Moon Kava Kava and Chamomile mix. I'm guessing that's not Nick Conover's usual cup.”

“Maybe not.”

“Why do I get the feeling you've got me figured for some sort of New Age nut?” She shrugged. “Possibly because I am one. How can I deny it? You make chairs, I teach asanas. Hey, when it comes down to it, we're both in the sitting industry, right?”

“So you're not going to tell me about my aura.”

“You can take the girl out of Carnegie Mellon—and believe me, they did.” A smile hovered around her lips. “But you can't take the Carnegie Mellon out of the girl. Never really got into chakras and shit. There's a lot of my dad in me. I've got an empirical streak a mile wide.”

“And I took you for a nineteen waist.”

“Thanks.” She took a careful sip of her tea. “So you've got problems. You'll deal, because that's the kind of person you are. When life gives you lemons, you make lemon Pledge.”

“I was expecting something more Zen, somehow.”

“I see you haven't touched your English Breakfast. So what kind of tea do you like?”

“Any kind. So long as it's coffee.”

She found a bottle of Four Roses bourbon on a low table beside the sofa, handed it to him. “Put a slug of this in it. It'll cut the tannins.”

He sloshed a little into his cup. It definitely improved the taste.

Cassie was looking at him with cat eyes. “So are you here for me or for you?”

“Both.”

She nodded, amused. “You're my caseworker?”

“Come on,” Nick said. “You're not exactly a charity case.”

“I'm doing okay.”

“Well, I want you to know that if you're ever not doing okay, you've got me here to help.”

“This is starting to sound like adios.”

“No. Not at all.”

“Good.” She got up, tugged at the cord on the venetian blinds, closing them and darkening the room. “That's a relief.”

He came up to her from behind, slipped his hands under her knit top, and felt the silky warmth of her belly.

“Why don't we go upstairs?” Nick said.

“We don't go upstairs,” she said at once.

“We don't, huh? Okay.” Slowly he began moving his hands upward until he found her breasts, teased her nipples as he kissed and licked the back of her neck.

“Yeah,” she said throatily.

Still with her back to his, she brought her hands around to his butt and squeezed each cheek, hard.

He entered her from behind this time.

 

“Jesus,” he said, and she looked up at him, her eyes gleaming.

It took him several minutes to catch his breath.

“Wow,” he said. “Thank you.”

“My pleasure.”

“Well, mine, I think.”

She took a sip of tea, curled up next to him on the sofa. She began singing along with the CD, which must have been set on repeat mode, something about “best friend with benefits.”

“You've got a nice voice.”

“Sang in the church choir. Mom was a real holy roller, used to drag me there. It was the only thing that got me through. So, boss man, you can't give up the fight, you know.” An odd sort of vehemence had entered Cassie's voice. “You've got to play the game balls out, with all your heart.
Everything
matters.”

“That's the way I always played hockey. Gave it my all—you have to.”

“Always kept your head up while you skated?”

He smiled. She obviously got hockey too. “Oh yeah. Put your head down for a second, and you're signed, sealed, and delivered. The game's fast.”

“You been keeping your head up at Stratton?”

“Not enough,” he admitted.

“I suspect people maybe underestimate you sometimes, because they sense you're eager to be liked. My guess is that people who push you too far live to regret it.”

“Maybe.” Memories swirled in Nick's head, dark ones that he didn't want to reexamine.

“You've already surprised a lot of people, is my bet. Dorothy Devries—she's cooled toward you in the past several years. Am I right?”

Nick blinked. It wasn't a conscious realization he'd had, but it was true. “Yes,” he said. “How did you know?”

Cassie looked away. “Don't take this the wrong way. But when Old Man Devries's widow appoints a successor, there are a lot of things going on in her head. One thing she's
not
looking to do is to bring in someone who's going to show up her beloved Milton. A reliable hand on the tiller, sure. The kind of reliable guy about whom you could say, ‘He's no Milton Devries, of course, but who is?' They could have poached some hotshot from the competition—I bet that would have been the usual thing. But it wasn't what she wanted. You were meant to be Milton's mini-me. Then you came in, and you kicked ass. You weren't Milton's protégé anymore. And even if she benefited from that financially, the whole Nick Conover show had to bother her too.”

Nick just shook his head.

“You don't believe me, do you?”

“The trouble is,” Nick said slowly, “I do believe you. What you say never really occurred to me before, and it's sure not doing anything for my ego, but when I listen to you talk, I'm thinking, Yeah, that's probably what went down. The old lady wasn't expecting what she got. Truth is, I wasn't either. I got in there, made three or four critical hires, let them do their thing. It could have played differently. I'm not that smart, but I know what I don't know. What I'm good at, maybe, is bringing in smarts.”

“And so long as they're loyal to you, you're going to be
okay. But if they aren't family-first people, you could have problems.”

“Family-first?”

“The Stratton family.”

“You really are the woman with X-ray eyes,” Nick said. “You see right through people.” Suddenly he shivered. How much
did
she see? Did she see the blood on his hands? He swallowed hard. It wasn't a good time to start losing it.

“You know what they say.”

“Who?”

“They. Anaïs Nin, maybe, I forget. ‘We don't see things as they are. We see things as
we
are.'”

“Not sure I get that.”

“And the hardest people to see, sometimes, are the people we love. Like your son.”

“A complete mystery to me these days.”

“What time did you say your kids would be home?”

“Less than an hour.”

“I'd like to meet them,” she said.

“Uh, I'm not sure that's a good idea,” Nick said.

Cassie got to her feet, ran her fingers through her hair. “Jesus, what am I saying, it's a
terrible
idea,” she said. The change in her was abrupt, startling. “What was I thinking? I'm not part of your life. I don't make
sense
in your life. Listen, I'd probably be ashamed of me too.” She tugged at her paint-flecked jeans. “So let's leave things here. After all, we'll always have Steepletown. Goodbye, Nick. Have a good life.”