Pale Stranger (PALE Series) (6 page)

"You go to college?" he interrupted me.

Apparently I'd forgotten to mention that part to him. "Yes."

He was surprised and pleased by this information; he wouldn't have been if he knew my grades and debt. "What subjects are you studying?"

"Geology. Some guy gave me a rock one time for Halloween instead of candy, and I thought it was pretty cool so I've been interested in them ever since," I replied.

"That must be difficult to manage, the work at the diner and your classes," he wondered.

I shrugged. "I get along." For now.

"Is that why you accepted my offer of a position? To help pay for your college?" he asked me.

I sheepishly smiled. "Maybe?" He smiled and looked at me with newfound admiration; I had to keep my grades hidden from him, but first I needed a final answer to the question of my job. "Before I spill out my life story could you tell me if I still have a job here"

"That would entirely be up to you," he enigmatically replied.

"So does that mean I get to write out my own paychecks?" I guessed. Benson smirked, and shook his head. I shrugged. "You can't blame a girl for trying."

"I could, but I won't," he promised. "As for the matter of your position, you still hold it."

All the weight of uncertainty fell off my shoulders along with my propriety. I jumped out of my chair and dove around the desk to give him a big hug. He stiffened for just a second and then relaxed in my arms. "Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!" I chanted. "Now I don't have to commit seppuku!"

"Seppuku?" he repeated in bewilderment.

I stepped back and shrugged. "It was either that or go live with my mom again."

"You have a parent? Only one?" he asked me.

"And a dad, but my parents divorced a few years back so I don't see him much," I told him.

"My angel has a more unusual life than I thought..." he murmured.

I shook my head. "Nope, it's just your average-everyday-trying-to-live-by-the-skin-of-your-teeth kind of life."

Benson leaned back in his chair and pondered me; science did that, too, but hadn't come up with an answer yet. "I wouldn't know much about that, but perhaps that's one of the reasons I need to keep you around," he replied.

"I could tell you stuff, but if you really want to know about people you're going to have to go out and meet them," I pointed out.

He firmly shook his head. "That's not possible, not in my condition."

I rejected his argument and substituted my own. "You get along just fine with all that covering, so why don't you-"

Benson slammed his fist down against the top of the desk. I jumped high enough to feel the ceiling brush against my head, and came back down rattled. "We will not discuss that any further. I will not leave this house except for business and health, do you understand?" I nodded my head; he'd scared the talk out of me. Benson saw the fear in my eyes and sighed. "I'm sorry, but getting out isn't an option. My secretaries are my link to the outside world. That is their greatest asset to me."

I folded my arms across my chest and frowned at him. "Makes me feel like a phone operator trying to connect you through a long-distance call to reality."

"However you feel it must be this way." He stood and towered over me; for the first time I was reminded that he was my boss and I the lowly employee. "I won't be stared at like an animal at a zoo."

He marched out of the room, leaving me feeling very foolish. I'd already forgotten how he looked, and how Sheila had reacted to him when he'd come into the diner. A lot of other people would react the same way, and no amount of sunblock could block their curiosity for his strangeness. I furrowed my brow and straightened my spine, but winced when it cracked. My new goal in life, behind finishing college and scuba-diving off Hawaii, was to try to get this man out of his white-skinned shell. Judging by his outburst it wasn't going to be easy, but I knew my SSD would come through for me; stubbornness, stupidity, and determination.

All I needed now was a plan. I thought long and hard for all of two minutes, gave up and figured I'd think of something. For now I needed to find where my boss had stomped off to. I found him upstairs in his bedroom pacing the floor; if he'd kept it up he would have come to me in the study. "So, um, that phone meeting you had must have been really short." He'd been quick to appear and greet Cecil.

He waved aside my question with a flip of his hand. "The signal was bad. He'll call back later," he briskly replied.

"And you don't have anything else to do until four, so what would you like me to do?"

Benson stopped pacing and gestured to a chair close beside his walking path. "Sit."

"Woof? I mean, what?" I asked him.

"I want you to sit down and tell me about yourself. Surely you remember the conversation between Cecil and myself. It made me realize how little I know about you. Now I want to know about you," he replied.

"All right, but I hope you're taking notes here. I plan on writing my autobiography someday, so I may as well start now." I slid into the chair and he stood in front of me.

"First off, what is your name?" he asked me.

"Trixie."

"Trixie?"

"Yeah, like the cereal but with more eek to it," I quipped.

"So your full name is Trixie Calhoun?" he wondered.

I smirked and nodded. "Yep. My mother wanted a name nobody would forget."

"And raised a daughter very much like the name..." he murmured.

I frowned. "You murmur to yourself a lot. Didn't you have somebody to talk to other than yourself? What about your previous secretaries? Were they mutes?"

He chuckled; I was glad to see he still had his humor. "No, but some of them believed a barrier existed between an employer and their employee, and idle chat was never to be commenced."

"Um, yeah, no. That just isn't going to work for me," I objected.

"I can see that," he smirked. "You seem to be a very extroverted, personal sort of person."

"And I'm friendly, too," I added.

"It stands out, but I don't believe we're getting very far with your autobiography. Where were you born?"

As much as I loved the topic of the conversation, this wasn't getting me any closer to my life goal of helping out this introvert. Therefore, I decided to be a hostile witness to my own life. "At my place of birth."

"Obviously, but what city? Do you have any parents?"

"It takes two to tango," I reminded him.

He was already exasperated; I had to avoid a meltdown of frustration or he wouldn't open up to me. Instead there'd be an atomic explosion of boss proportions. "Do you have any siblings?"

"That's enough about me, let's talk about you." I didn't give him a chance to object before I swooped on top of him and switched our places. He sat in the chair and I lorded over both him and the conversation. "Now answer all the questions I just did."

"But you didn't answer any of them."

"No excuses, just the facts."

"Fifteen miles away, yes, no." That backfired in my face.

"On second thought, just tell me everything you can remember."

"That's a lot of story. I've lived a long life," he playfully countered.

"Start the same place as the Bible, at the beginning," I suggested.

"I was born sickly, my mother died in childbirth, I was raised by my father until he died when I was ten, and then I was taken in by Cecil, my mother's brother." The facts blew past me so fast my hair stuck out the back.

"Well, that was oddly specific and yet not very helpful," I told him.

He shrugged, but there was a smile on his face. "Turnabout is fair play." So I cheated and held up his wallet. His face fell faster than a cartoon anvil out of a plane. He jumped up and clapped his hand over his nice ass. "When? Where? How?" he stuttered.

"Elementary, my dear boss. I swiped it when we traded places." If there was one thing I learned at a dingy diner was that there were thieves who frequented the place to get at tired customers. I had to learn to grab back the wallets and purses they swiped because the brazen thieves were never going to admit to taking it; not when their livelihood and reputations were at stake. I opened the wallet and looked at the contents. "A driver's license telling me you're thirty, a few crisp one hundred dollar bills, some-"

"Give that back!" He jumped at me, but I swung to the side and avoided his clawing hands.

"-some credit cards, and a folded piece of paper." He stole back the wallet, but I'd already plucked the folded paper out of the container. "And a-" I stopped cold when I saw a child's crayon drawing of a ghostly stick-man with sharp fangs. Beneath the picture was written the word 'monster.' Benson snatched the drawing from me and stuffed it into his pants pocket. "Why...why do you have that?" I asked him.

His face was tense and his voice was strained. "To remind me why I shouldn't go out," he replied.

"Because people will make fun of you?" His reply was to turn away from me. I folded my arms across my chest and frowned at him. "Come on, that's really childish."

Benson's head snapped back, and I wish it hadn't. Those bright blue eyes revealed a deep, bitter anger beneath the surface of his calm demeanor. "Try being on the receiving end of fear from every new person you meet. They whisper and gossip about you because of your appearance, and shun you for the same. Everyone is the same."

Since I was 'everyone' I took offense at his whining. "But I'm not like that. I'm not afraid of you," I insisted. I nodded at his pocket. "And you're the one keeping that around in your pocket. Nobody else is making you look at that picture and keeping you out of sight of everyone. Of course the less they see you the more they're going to be afraid of you. What else are you expecting?"

"Humanity. Dignity," he snapped back.

"You're going to have to earn that from the strangers you meet, not expect them to greet you with open arms and chocolate."

"I don't like chocolate," he told me.

I threw my arms up in frustration. "Fine, expect everyone to greet you with open arms filled with torches and pitchforks, but don't blame anybody but yourself. You're the one keeping yourself shut up in this musty old house, and when you die alone and bitter you're going to be just as musty and old."

Benson plopped back down in the chair and sullenly glared at me. "So everything is my fault?" he bit back.

I frowned back. "No, just all of the decisions you make in your life, including shutting yourself in here," I replied.

He sighed and all the fight went out with the air. His shoulders slumped and he ran his hand through his hair. "What did you say your major was?"

"Geology."

Benson scoffed. "Perhaps you should go into psychology."

I wrinkled my nose. "No, it'd be too tempting for everyone else."

He raised an eyebrow. "How so?"

"They'd want to study me for their cases in abnormal psychology," I joked.

That cracked a smile on his stoic face. "But think how much science is missing from your not taking psychology."

"Science may be missing something, but I know I'm not. I'll take rocks any day over being a lab rat or working with one," I countered. "Now back onto the subject that's most important, which is your mental health."

Benson gave me a pensive, careful glance. "You seem to have a strange fixation with my mental well-being. Why?"

I shrugged. "New life goal."

That surprised him. "To help me?"

"To help you help yourself, and I've only got a week to do it," I replied.

He raised both eyebrows. "So you're staying?"

I shrugged. "Why not?"

"My outburst didn't startle you?" he wondered.

I rolled my eyes, walked over to him and leaned an elbow on his shoulder. "If you think that's scary you should see when a trucker fights a trucker. That's a whole lot of testosterone duking it out in a tiny diner, and other people usually get mad at their meals being spilled and join in."

He smirked. "Sounds exciting."

"Yeah, until you have to beat them off the counter with a tray and clean up the mess afterward," I pointed out. "But enough talking, let's go for a walk."

"I'd rather not."

"Come on, we have a few hours before work." I grabbed his hand and gave a playful tug on his arm. He glared up at me and I performed my best puppy-dog look. Fortunately it didn't scare him; he actually smiled.

"Fine, but not for long. I have my weights to do after the walk."

CHAPTER 6

Preparing my boss for his walk reminded me of getting a kid ready to go outside and play in the snow. There was always that time where they were all ready to go and needed to go the bathroom. That wasn't quite the case here; instead there was a heavy knock on the door as we were walking downstairs. Benson turned to me with a raised eyebrow. "Are you expecting anyone?"