Driving in Neutral (10 page)

It took Emerson a second before he grasped what she meant. He hadn’t intended the baseball game comment to be a come-on, but subconsciously, in that very Freud kind of way, maybe it was. He was turning into a sleaze who winked and soon he’d be into wearing gold chains and exposing his chest hair like Barry Gibb on the album cover of
Saturday Night Fever
. Would he be able to stuff himself into a pair of Bee Gees-tight pants?

Quickly, before he imagined how his genitals would look forming a moose knuckle in white satin pants, he changed the subject. “Are you enjoying the work here?”

“It’s interesting.” She took a small plastic bag from the fridge.

“Is that a euphemism for
it sucks
?”

“No. If that were the case I would have said, it’s
different
. Want one?” She held out the bag.

“What is it?”

“Peanut butter and jelly on Ritz crackers.”

“Peanut butter and jelly? Peanut butter’s for kids. I’m an adult. I eat adult snacks.”

“So that box of Coco Puffs over there with your name and DO NOT EAT all over it in purple marker isn’t yours?”

Emerson laughed buoyantly. “Okay, you got me. I’m a politics-talking, suit-wearing, Coco Puff-eating, big kid.”

“I’ve never heard you talk politics. You’re
‘Timmons, where are the Saunders concept sketches? Josh, get your ass in my office. Finn, where the hell’s my cell phone?’
”

“How do you feel about the European Union?”

“What?”

“The EU, are you for it or do you think it was a huge mistake?”

“It’s all right.”

“There, now we’ve had a grown up discussion about politics. Do you like my suit?”

Olivia laughed and flakey bits of cracker wafted out.

“Yeah, I know. I look good.”

She wiped a fleck of peanut butter from her mouth. He watched her the entire time and it sent a quaver through her stomach. She did her best to convince herself she hadn’t eaten enough and one peanut butter cracker wasn’t going to satisfy her hunger. “With you being such a world-renowned political analyst, I should remind you not to mention politics at the wedding. Ella’s stipulated there will be no discussions about politics, religion or germ warfare. Cigar smoking is out too.”

“At least she left us one of the big three.”

“The big three?”

“You know the taboo dinner party topics, politics, religion, and sex? At least we can talk about sex.”

“You have some kind of disease that compels you to say these things, don’t you?” Olivia squinted, picked up her cup, and left him to drink his coffee alone.

Emerson stalked back to Pete’s office and slammed two fives down on the desk.

“Olivia, can I ask you to do me a favor?”

Olivia glanced up from paperwork and turned down the music she’d been listening to. Pete’s head poked through the door she’d only half closed, his stubby fingers twisting a short roll of hair over and over.

“Sorry. What was that?” she said. “Ella has a flavor?”

With a chuckle, Pete lost a little of his obvious apprehension. “No, no. I said can I ask you to do me a
favor
. Well, not exactly me, but yeah, I guess it
is
for me because…um, well you pass right by his place, more or less, on your way home and I was hoping you wouldn’t mind driving Emerson home today.”

She tossed the highlighter she’d been using on top of a few stapled pages and sat back in her rather comfy office chair. “Right.”

“No seriously. With his bum knee, I’ve been picking him up for almost three weeks, but I have an emergency dental appointment this afternoon. I think I cracked a tooth. I hate the dentist, but I’m partial to keeping my rear molar so I’ve got to face the beast.”

Face the beast
. That was an interesting choice of words. Last night, she’d dreamed Maxwell had hunted her, stalked her through the halls of E&P until he’d ensnared her in the trap of his warm arms. Whimpering like a small animal, she’d been helpless. His hands and mouth moved over her, tasting, nipping, devouring. Heart pounding, she woke up with a fistful of daisy-sprigged sheets. Frustrated, she’d actually contemplated DIY, but, with a huff of drowsy irritation and a warm sexual ache, she flopped over, bunched up her pillow, and refused to engage in any self-satisfying activity while Maxwell’s face still swam before her eyes.
Face the beast
? Olivia didn’t want to face an erotic beast. She wanted to avoid, to steer clear, to out-maneuver Maxwell any way she could. She looked at Pete and shook her head. “I can’t believe you’re asking me.”

“You’ll notice I did…hesitate. But, come on, he’s not
that
bad.”

“He is so
that
bad. He’s a well-dressed wolf or a dark-haired version of Karl.”

“No, he’s not. He’s older. More mature.”

“M-hm.” Snorting, Olivia crossed her arms and leaned forward, resting her elbows on the desk.

“Trust me, regardless of the stupid things coming out of his mouth lately he does have class. He’s a nice guy. So he acts like a fourth-grader sometimes, he likes you.”

“Oh, great.”

“What’s wrong with that? You’re likable.”

“It’s Maxwell’s version of what
likable
means that concerns me.”

Pete ruffled his short dreads. “Come on, please? I’m just asking you to give him a ride home.”

Against her better judgment, and with a sigh of resignation, she said, “Oh, all right.”

Finn stood outside the office door, quietly chastising someone and at first, Emerson didn’t think anything of it. He continued on with his phone discussion because sometimes Finn took disciplinary matters into his own hands so his boss wouldn’t have to. Things changed the second the boss heard
elevator
and
Olivia
used in the same sentence. Emerson dropped the phone in its cradle and crossed the room to yank open the door.

Finn stroked the soul patch beneath his bottom lip, glaring like he meant business and portly Timmons and long-nosed Tony Costa were two guilty schoolboys caught smoking in the boys’ room.

“You two come here. Now.” Emerson glowered and pointed at a spot on the terrazzo. The two young guys slunk forward as he advanced. He wished he had a rolled-up newspaper so he could give both bad dogs a swat on their snouts. They seemed to have the same idea. They winced as they prepared for his onslaught. “I already had a word with you, Timmons,” Emerson said, “and I’ll get back to you in a second, but Costa, maybe you don’t know how this works, you being relatively new and all, so I’m willing to cut you a little slack. So watch this. Timmons, that’s it, you’re off Ingrassia.”

“Come on, Maxwell—”

He held up a hand, palm out. “Can it! I don’t care. Costa, if I ever see you and Timmons here sniggering and winking as you postulate juvenile stories I’ll boot you back to paint.
Paint
. You’ll be coloring things in like a couple of kindergarteners. You got that?”

“Yeah, Maxwell.” Costa ran a nervous hand through his chin-length hair, adjusted his glasses and looked away from the glare of his boss.

“What happened in that elevator is my—”

“Uh, Maxwell? Olivia’s—” Timmons mumbled.

“You’re already in deep, Timmons, so why are you trying to make it worse?” He felt Finn’s hand on his shoulder and held up a finger. “Let me finish, Finn.”

“Maxwell…” Finn’s voice held a note of concern.

Emerson ignored the worry and continued, “Were you two girls picturing her in or out of her underwear? ‘
Dude, she totally looked like Princess Leia.’
”

“Maxwell, please shut your mo—” Finn slid from desperate to defeated. “Aw, boss, you’re dead.”

“I’m what?” he shouted, throwing up his hands. “What do you mean,
I’m dead
? What?”

Timmons pointed. “Uh, she’s behind you.”

“Who’s behi—” Emerson exhaled and turned around.

Olivia gave him a saccharine smile. “I can see you’re really busy blowing smoke up each other’s asses,” she said, her tone as gooey and sugary as corn syrup, “but Pete’s asked me to give you a ride home, Maxwell, and I’m leaving in five minutes. Meet me out front if you’re coming.” She turned, her loose hair swishing across the top of her shoulders, and she ambled down the hall, the flat soles of her pink shoes slapping on the old terrazzo floor.

What the hell had she been thinking? It had been a mistake to believe the elevator incident had slipped into the past just like Karl. Olivia had settled into treating the episode as a joke, believing it was the best way yet to thwart further speculation about her underwear. She thought she’d succeeded in keeping her co-workers’ minds on the animation mock-ups, but obviously her bra, panties, and Maxwell remained a favorite staple of office gossip. She suspected he was the one who continued to churn out the biggest tales.

It was a shame really. She liked him and was beginning to…beginning to…
what
was she beginning to do? Notice him?

No, she’d already noticed him. She’d had those little flashes of memory about the way he smelled. She’d been unconsciously alert to the size of his clean hands and the curious way he had of stroking his bottom lip when he spoke. There had been more than a few times when she remembered the warmth of his hands heating her rain-soaked skin and the way that feeling lingered on her body long after the elevator door had slipped back to reveal an audience of coworkers. Awake and asleep, she had clearly thought about the way his fingers would feel like slipping over her breasts.

Olivia shuddered pleasantly first, then in annoyance.

Five minutes later, when she pulled from the tiny underground lot beneath the Art Deco building, he was outside the front. In the time it had taken her to ride the elevator to the garage, Maxwell had hobbled down twenty flights of stairs, his knee still in the brace hidden beneath his dark trousers. He’d waited in the heat of late afternoon summer sunshine with his suit jacket slung casually over one shoulder.

Before he climbed in, he asked her to open the sunroof and put down both windows, which she did. After he maneuvered, rather awkwardly, into the Aston Martin, a faint shine of perspiration rested on his forehead. His body temperature had risen sufficiently to release the perfumed oil of his cologne and mix with his body chemistry.

It inebriated Olivia in seconds.

Her mouth watered, as if she was Pavlov’s dog and Maxwell’s sweat was the substitute for the bell. She didn’t like the biological reaction, but she was impressed by the simplicity of nature’s chemical design. Still, keeping that design in check, she took a few controlled breaths to clear her head, exhaled without sound and kept her mouth shut.

To Emerson, her silence was a volume of some encyclopedia—the A through Idiot volume. He wasn’t usually clumsy around women, but with Olivia, he was all thumbs, two left feet and half a brain. Being in such a small car didn’t help either. Sweating, his head was a few inches from the roof, his long legs couldn’t stretch out the way they could in his Mercedes, and his voice had cracked when he’d asked her to open the sunroof. Thankfully, the open roof alleviated much of the boxed-in sensation he felt. He saw the sky above and relaxed a little, wondering what glossy drivel would pop out the next time he opened his mouth.

He was glad when she finally spoke.

“Would you rather I put on the air conditioner?” she said, hands loose around the slim steering wheel. “It’s going to get a little windier on Lake Shore Drive.”

“No. I’ve been cooped up inside all day. The fresh air blasting in my face will be nice.”

She shrugged and jabbed the accelerator. The forward movement pushed Emerson back into his seat, the engine purring like a white leopard. He felt himself swallow and let his elbow poke out the open window, the resulting rush of air over his face helped the breath down his throat. “What’s the fastest you’ve ever gone?” he said over the noise of wind and passing traffic.

She grinned. “I took a Bugatti Vayron Vitesse to two-forty-three on a test track.”

“Do you get many speeding tickets?”

“I got that out of the way when I was seventeen. Where do I go?”

“Sorry?”

“How do I get to your house?”

“Oh. Take Lake Shore to Belmont and turn right on Greenview Avenue.”

“Got it.”

Expertly, she guided her little sports car through traffic. Her eyes, darting between the side and rearview mirrors and the cars ahead, never left the road. She seemed able to predict and interpret the movement of other drivers as easily as she had the German films she’d been translating. Emerson had to admit her driving made him curious about her racing days. He would have braked as they approached the bend near the Drake Hotel, but she accelerated, finding the line through the curve in the road. That was all it took for his mind to flash on the photo of her in the red fireproof suit. A flicker of excitement hit him down low.

“How did you start in motorsport?” he said, voice cracking like a thirteen-year-old boy’s.

Not that she’d noticed. Her eyes remained fixed on the road and traffic. “Club racing, sprints, and karting.”

“You mean go-karts?”

“Sort of. They’re bigger and have more powerful engines. I thought about mucking around with NASCAR driving, but that really wasn’t my thing. I was into touring cars and I loved,
loved
test driving. There’s nothing quite like knowing you’re the first to spike the revs to seven thousand and listen to that engine snarl.”

Emerson looked at her small hands making the tiniest of movements on the steering wheel. Her eyes flicked to the mirrors. “Don’t take this wrong, but—”

“Oh, it’s always good to preface a statement with,
don’t take this wrong
.”

“Let me finish, okay?”

She nodded with a little snort.

“You look a little small to be in racing.”

“I’m about the same size as Danica Patrick and she won the 2008 Japan Indy 300 and took third in the 2009 Indianapolis 500. A person’s size has nothing to do with driving skill because racing comes down to fitness and stamina. How do you think rally drivers for the Paris to Dakar do it? They train with weights and exercise until they’re fit and they stay that way. A man can sweat off up to three kilos in a single Formula One race. There’s up to five g’s of force on the head and neck in that kind of racing. Drivers have to be fit to handle that kind of physical punishment.”